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On April 28 2017 01:50 Trainrunnef wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:44 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 01:25 Mercy13 wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote: [quote] Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities. Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment? E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. Surely you don't think that more freedom is always better? Even fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are often limited if there is a compelling reason to do so. Without conceding that all types of political spending should count as speech, there are lots of reasons why limiting private spending on elections should be limited. I've seen you complain many times in this forum about how GOP politicians ignore the concerns of the base, and instead focus on the concerns of wealthy donors. In addition, there was this study from a few years ago: The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded. ... Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: 'When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.'
The positions of powerful interest groups are 'not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens,' but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10%. SourceAre you content with this state of affairs? You first. Why do you want to deprive free speech from people based on income? Or how the hell are citizens supposed to band together and raise the insane capital to get their candidate name recognition and attachment to policy issues if nobody is legally permitted to raise it and his opponent gets the free publicity of the press and maybe favor from aligned media corporations? It's always been the trouble with campaign finance laws; you're drawing distinctions for political advantage and each time I've seen it envisioned, it's just creating a worse situation. but isnt that whats already happening? with the current funding mechanisms out of state money, and corporate funding can pour in and support candidate A while candidate B cant raise the support unless its free, so now he and his constituents, because they have less capital, have a smaller voice. At least with caps on financing you can limit the extent to which this will happen. How about laws to better define super PACs? Laws that required them to have physical addresses, offices and employees? NPR spent a good part of 4 months tracking one down and it turned out to be this one guy in Florida who was hired by some other conservative group to set the entire thing up. He barely knew anything about it or the ads that were being produced.
Any level of regulation would be better than the wild west we have right now.
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On April 28 2017 01:44 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:25 Mercy13 wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 18:23 Biff The Understudy wrote: So this tax reform is a textbook reverse Robin Hood apparently. Steal to the poor, give to the rich. I guess those transfer of wealth upward are deep down the raison d'être of the GOP. Bake it with a sauce of white resentment and you pull the perfect con by getting blue collars to vote to get robbed.
People who know their Washington, is it going to pass? Because at a time where inequalities are one of our biggest problems, this is simply horrifying. Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities. Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment? E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. Surely you don't think that more freedom is always better? Even fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are often limited if there is a compelling reason to do so. Without conceding that all types of political spending should count as speech, there are lots of reasons why limiting private spending on elections should be limited. I've seen you complain many times in this forum about how GOP politicians ignore the concerns of the base, and instead focus on the concerns of wealthy donors. In addition, there was this study from a few years ago: The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded. ... Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: 'When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.'
The positions of powerful interest groups are 'not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens,' but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10%. SourceAre you content with this state of affairs? You first. Why do you want to deprive free speech from people based on income? Or how the hell are citizens supposed to band together and raise the insane capital to get their candidate name recognition and attachment to policy issues if nobody is legally permitted to raise it and his opponent gets the free publicity of the press and maybe favor from aligned media corporations? It's always been the trouble with campaign finance laws; you're drawing distinctions for political advantage and each time I've seen it envisioned, it's just creating a worse situation.
As far as I know no one has ever argued that people should be deprived of free speech based upon their income... That is a blatantly ridiculous statement. Some people advocate for spending limitations because if money equals speech, we get undesirable outcomes when a small group of people gets much more speech than the rest of us. However, limiting the amount a person can spend on political issues is not the same as discrimination based upon income.
Personally I would favor a system which depends largely on public financing of candidates/elections. E.g., every American gets a voucher for a certain amount of money that they can allocate among different politicians. Even if the current system remained in place putting a public financing system on top of it would cause influence to be less concentrated, and may cause the US to look less like an oligarchy.
Edit: And if we are going to keep the current system in place, AT LEAST add some measure of transparency so we know who is donating money to whom.
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On April 28 2017 01:44 zlefin wrote: sometimes old injuries act up or acquire an issue that needs to be dealt with. especially sometimes they end up in a state that's good enough that you can just leave them be, but if it acts up you gotta do something about it.
does a leave of absence mean he can't do votes? or does it just mean he's not going to be going into the office regularly? I mean, it'd make sense to just stay off the foot for awhile, and only come in if really necessary. what're the rules on voting via telepresence or making a note of how you vote and have someone else put it in for you? While it is certainly possible, it is a bit of a massive coincidence that this takes place shortly after he announces he isn't running in 2018 and that it was rumored he was planning to end his term as early as last Friday. Leave of absence generally means he won't be voting or coming in or doing anything related to his job.
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On April 28 2017 01:58 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:44 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 01:25 Mercy13 wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote: [quote] Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities. Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment? E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. Surely you don't think that more freedom is always better? Even fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are often limited if there is a compelling reason to do so. Without conceding that all types of political spending should count as speech, there are lots of reasons why limiting private spending on elections should be limited. I've seen you complain many times in this forum about how GOP politicians ignore the concerns of the base, and instead focus on the concerns of wealthy donors. In addition, there was this study from a few years ago: The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded. ... Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: 'When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.'
The positions of powerful interest groups are 'not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens,' but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10%. SourceAre you content with this state of affairs? You first. Why do you want to deprive free speech from people based on income? Or how the hell are citizens supposed to band together and raise the insane capital to get their candidate name recognition and attachment to policy issues if nobody is legally permitted to raise it and his opponent gets the free publicity of the press and maybe favor from aligned media corporations? It's always been the trouble with campaign finance laws; you're drawing distinctions for political advantage and each time I've seen it envisioned, it's just creating a worse situation. As far as I know no one has ever argued that people should be deprived of free speech based upon their income... That is a blatantly ridiculous statement. Some people advocate for spending limitations because if money equals speech, we get undesirable outcomes when a small group of people gets much more speech than the rest of us. However, limiting the amount a person can spend on political issues is not the same as discrimination based upon income. Personally I would favor a system which depends largely on public financing of candidates/elections. E.g., every American gets a voucher for a certain amount of money that they can allocate among different politicians. Even if the current system remained in place putting a public financing system on top of it would cause influence to be less concentrated, and may cause the US to look less like an oligarchy. Edit: And if we are going to keep the current system in place, AT LEAST add some measure of transparency so we know who is donating money to whom. I don't think Americans would accept a public financing option for elections; the current ones rae quite limited and rely on a voluntary donation, and even then often aren't used due to the restrictions on them. trying to use the tax dollars to give politicians a voice would just play so horribly (regardless of its actual merit). maybe some way to spin it though.
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"You see judge shopping, or what's gone on with these people, they immediately run to the 9th Circuit," Trump said. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) President Trump said Wednesday that he has "absolutely" considered proposals that would split up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where judges have blocked two of his executive actions.
"Absolutely, I have," Trump said of considering 9th Circuit breakup proposals during a far-ranging interview with the Washington Examiner at the White House. "There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It's outrageous."
"Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit. And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that's like, semi-automatic," Trump said.
His comments came one day after U.S. District Judge William Orrick temporarily blocked Trump's efforts to withhold funds from any municipality that refuses to cooperate with immigration enforcement officers. Orrick, based in San Francisco, argued that Trump had overstepped his authority in January when he directed the Justice Department to put immigration-related conditions on grants for so-called sanctuary cities that may not be directly related to law enforcement. The case, if appealed, would go before the 9th Circuit. Other judges on the court halted two different versions of an executive action aimed at tightening vetting requirements for immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, because both actions called for a temporary suspension of some immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.
"The language could not be any clearer. I mean, the language on the ban, it reads so easy that a reasonably good student in the first grade will fully understand it. And they don't even mention the words in their rejection on the ban," Trump said. "And the same thing with this [sanctuary city decision]. I mean, when you have people that are being enabled to commit crime. And in San Francisco, when you look at Kate Steinle being shot and here is the court, you know, right in that same general area. And when you look at a Kate Steinle, when you look at so many other things."
Trump was referring to a young woman in San Francisco, a sanctuary city, who was gunned down by an illegal immigrant in 2015. He has frequently pointed to Steinle's murder as evidence that sanctuary city policies can be harmful to American citizens.
"Sanctuary cities have been very, very dangerous, very, very bad. And, you know, we've done a great job on law enforcement, we've done a great job at the border," Trump said. "And all of our most talented people say sanctuary cities are a disaster."
Republicans have long criticized the 9th Circuit for its perceived liberal leanings and its enormous geographical reach, which has led to bureaucratic backlogs.
GOP lawmakers have repeatedly introduced legislation that would carve out several states under the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction and create a new court designed to lighten the Ninth's caseload.
The 9th Circuit hears appeals from courts in nine West Coast states and two U.S. territories. Of its 25 active judges, 18 were appointed by Democratic presidents.
Trump said Wednesday that opponents of his policies have engaged in "judge shopping" in their efforts to find a sympathetic judicial platform for their partisan objections.
"You see judge shopping, or what's gone on with these people, they immediately run to the 9th Circuit," Trump said. "It's got close to an 80 percent reversal period, and what's going on in the 9th Circuit is a shame."
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-absolutely-looking-at-breaking-up-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals/article/2621379
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On April 28 2017 01:45 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:15 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:39 Trainrunnef wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote: [quote] Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities. Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment? E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. If I owned a business that had sufficient dollars to lobby, and or buy politicians into power through campaign donations. I absolutely would as that would net me greater profits. Consider the following situation: I produce a good that is mildly toxic. A watchdog group discovers said toxicity I (using my large marketing budget) distribute misinformation about the product. Through my campaign donations and dealings with politicians I have secured deals for my business where the politicians will vouch for my product and research and back me up with legislation. Public is now confused and doesn't know what is right and i successful defend my company from being destroyed. the above situation is obviously simplified, but take for example the tobacco companies, soft drink companies, etc. who have done this exact thing. it is not the american people i have a problem trusting, it is the greed of the companies. I cant discover that i am being duped if i cant get all the information, and accurate information these days is getting harder and harder to come by. Folks on all sides are poisoning the well of journalism with sensationalist babble, again, because of the greed of their parent companies. First I would propose legislation that any business that has the words news in it should be a non for profit org, and that any for profit, organization have the words entertainment in the name this way the public could more easily separate the chaff from the whey. (just spitballing I havent completely thought this out). Ultimately it all comes down to who the public can trust not so much as can we trust the public, and these days there are scant few organizations that truly have the trust of the public, and even fewer that actually deserve it. And the politicians that made backroom deals to negate the FDA and kill Americans get voted out of office. I'm not going to stand here saying evil, corrupt people in business and government are always limited in the scope of their harm and the checks and balances will always get there in the *tada* nick of time. I am however looking at ways to decrease the overall impact without infringing on real civil rights and producing a net increase in the kinds of corruption. Simplified further, humans are needlessly greedy, and power hungry, and corrupt. So how do you make humans out other humans in check? Any system will be imperfect unless you find angels to run things. Watchdog groups will be run by humans, the justice system run by humans, everything. So the same public that is responsible for voting out corrupt politicians who funnel billions to influence their vote is the public that can band together in their own corporations to spend money on ads to expose scandals and influence their fellow man. And publish books and stage protests and start websites and lobby their politicians. Eventually, you get to where the cabal has to include nearly every institution in society to do their nefarious deeds, and that's (briefly) the closest we can get. Hopefully you can also see the problem where a very big and powerful government can kill disliked industries and do other harms. For example, agency action apart operating in broad laws whose civil servants use their volition to favor and punish as they see fit. That one terminus is indeed a big problem. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have Sorry, freedom of speech does not mean freedom to buy campaigns. This is a problem of your voting system, not with freedom of speech. In other countries, individuals are not running for head of government, but parties do. The parties get money from the state proportional to their election results and on top of that can get donations and member fees. They will then support their candidate with that money and after a few weeks of campaigning, the fucking thing is over. Same for the representatives in the legislatory congress, they are part of a list of people the party wants to see in office, they get money from their party and when they win their district with that money or do well, the party puts them in legislation. YOu can still lobby this and corruption is not magically gone but the politicians do not exactly ow millions of dollars to few rich people. You are saying, there will never be a perfect system, so let's not try to improve it at all. Do you want to become a politician yourself sometime? A lot of the American society seems to build on the idea that some time in the future, what holds you down now might help you when you made it. I am arguing for improvement and it's for funding campaigns for this voting system, not for a future constitutional amendment that rejiggers things. Everyone gets a buy-in. No more of needing to be independently wealthy and less of a dependence on having name recognition heading into the thing. How can you be so opposed to a citizen legislature by demarcating which ones get a voice?
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Venue shopping is a completely valid tactic for a lawsuit. There isn't an attorney that says "any judge will do, its fine. Just pick any court that can hear the case." Trump is signing orders that impact the entire nation. It is a forgone conclusion that liberal judges will hear the cases because that is how courts work.
Second, Congress can break up the 9th Circuit any time they want. It is just that the Republicans don't have the votes. And the judges on that court don't just go away. Trump can't do shit, because that isn't how the executive branch works.
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On April 28 2017 01:23 Slaughter wrote: The problem with the current campaign money issue is that it makes a small group of people's speech far stronger and worth more then millions of people. We shouldn't be a society that values the worth of your vote or speech by the dollars in your bank account. And when you draw restrictions on it, you value certain segments of the millions over others, and increase in value the default voices of media corporations over every other company with a stake in taxation and regulation. You push them into lobbying instead of campaigning. It's no solution.
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On April 28 2017 01:37 Trainrunnef wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:15 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:39 Trainrunnef wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote: [quote] Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities. Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment? E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. If I owned a business that had sufficient dollars to lobby, and or buy politicians into power through campaign donations. I absolutely would as that would net me greater profits. Consider the following situation: I produce a good that is mildly toxic. A watchdog group discovers said toxicity I (using my large marketing budget) distribute misinformation about the product. Through my campaign donations and dealings with politicians I have secured deals for my business where the politicians will vouch for my product and research and back me up with legislation. Public is now confused and doesn't know what is right and i successful defend my company from being destroyed. the above situation is obviously simplified, but take for example the tobacco companies, soft drink companies, etc. who have done this exact thing. it is not the american people i have a problem trusting, it is the greed of the companies. I cant discover that i am being duped if i cant get all the information, and accurate information these days is getting harder and harder to come by. Folks on all sides are poisoning the well of journalism with sensationalist babble, again, because of the greed of their parent companies. First I would propose legislation that any business that has the words news in it should be a non for profit org, and that any for profit, organization have the words entertainment in the name this way the public could more easily separate the chaff from the whey. (just spitballing I havent completely thought this out). Ultimately it all comes down to who the public can trust not so much as can we trust the public, and these days there are scant few organizations that truly have the trust of the public, and even fewer that actually deserve it. And the politicians that made backroom deals to negate the FDA and kill Americans get voted out of office. I'm not going to stand here saying evil, corrupt people in business and government are always limited in the scope of their harm and the checks and balances will always get there in the *tada* nick of time. I am however looking at ways to decrease the overall impact without infringing on real civil rights and producing a net increase in the kinds of corruption. Simplified further, humans are needlessly greedy, and power hungry, and corrupt. So how do you make humans out other humans in check? Any system will be imperfect unless you find angels to run things. Watchdog groups will be run by humans, the justice system run by humans, everything. So the same public that is responsible for voting out corrupt politicians who funnel billions to influence their vote is the public that can band together in their own corporations to spend money on ads to expose scandals and influence their fellow man. And publish books and stage protests and start websites and lobby their politicians. Eventually, you get to where the cabal has to include nearly every institution in society to do their nefarious deeds, and that's (briefly) the closest we can get. Hopefully you can also see the problem where a very big and powerful government can kill disliked industries and do other harms. For example, agency action apart operating in broad laws whose civil servants use their volition to favor and punish as they see fit. That one terminus is indeed a big problem. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have Totally agree. But as P6 mentioned before do you agree that allowing nearly unlimited sums of money to be funneled into politics is a net negative? Do you believe that fundamentally more money=more free speech, and that therefore the ultra wealthy (and politically involved) have and unequal amount of free speech that is both unfair and unsustainable? There's actually an interesting interview going on now on WNYC radio that is discussing inequality. I don't see a way that can take money out of politics in that way based on the way government operates now. If I maybe advance to become head of the company I work for in a few decades, and the legislature decides incandescent light bulbs have to go, or health insurance is going to totally change, or your land is now subject to expensive restrictions, you bet I'm going to fight it with more money to try to pursuade a million apathetic souls that it's unjust and anybody that voted for it ought to be fired. And maybe if I'm gonna promise free stuff, soak the relatively few extremely rich people to redistribute to the poor, I'll have an easier time pursuading a thousand campaign volunteers to spread pamphlets. They'll be richly rewarded.
Once you establish limits, the little guy also just gets screwed going up against the incumbent, no matter how corrupt and bad tempered he is. You're expending millions just to get your district to think "oh that guy" when they hear your name. It's very, shall we say unequal, and the laws that would abridge free speech in that manner are trampling on rights and creating a worse overall situation. I've been through thinking about it many times because it's a difficult conclusion to be happy with, but I'm afraid the alternatives are just too costly to society overall. Citizens United case opinion and dissent bring up these issues if you have the time. It really it's any more unfair than the more successful people experiencing more luxuries in life. I've seen enough people arguing in this thread that a rich person should only be allowed to keep less than fifty cents of every extra dollar he earns (because he earns so many and grows existing wealth easily) to know relying on the millions of people to get it right in campaign finance is unsustainable itself.
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As far as I can tell, the core of the sanctuary city issue is only tangentially related to immigration and much more solidly about federalism.
The federal government sets policies for detaining and deporting immigrants. Local governments have no say in those policies. The federal government can carry them out wherever it wants, including in sanctuary cities.
However, since the policies aren't set with any local or state participation, the federal government can't require local governments to use local resources to carry out those policies. Specifically, the local jail isn't required to house illegal immigrants that aren't serving a state law sentence just because the federal government tells them to.
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On April 28 2017 02:21 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:45 Broetchenholer wrote:On April 28 2017 01:15 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:39 Trainrunnef wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote: [quote] Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment?
E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. If I owned a business that had sufficient dollars to lobby, and or buy politicians into power through campaign donations. I absolutely would as that would net me greater profits. Consider the following situation: I produce a good that is mildly toxic. A watchdog group discovers said toxicity I (using my large marketing budget) distribute misinformation about the product. Through my campaign donations and dealings with politicians I have secured deals for my business where the politicians will vouch for my product and research and back me up with legislation. Public is now confused and doesn't know what is right and i successful defend my company from being destroyed. the above situation is obviously simplified, but take for example the tobacco companies, soft drink companies, etc. who have done this exact thing. it is not the american people i have a problem trusting, it is the greed of the companies. I cant discover that i am being duped if i cant get all the information, and accurate information these days is getting harder and harder to come by. Folks on all sides are poisoning the well of journalism with sensationalist babble, again, because of the greed of their parent companies. First I would propose legislation that any business that has the words news in it should be a non for profit org, and that any for profit, organization have the words entertainment in the name this way the public could more easily separate the chaff from the whey. (just spitballing I havent completely thought this out). Ultimately it all comes down to who the public can trust not so much as can we trust the public, and these days there are scant few organizations that truly have the trust of the public, and even fewer that actually deserve it. And the politicians that made backroom deals to negate the FDA and kill Americans get voted out of office. I'm not going to stand here saying evil, corrupt people in business and government are always limited in the scope of their harm and the checks and balances will always get there in the *tada* nick of time. I am however looking at ways to decrease the overall impact without infringing on real civil rights and producing a net increase in the kinds of corruption. Simplified further, humans are needlessly greedy, and power hungry, and corrupt. So how do you make humans out other humans in check? Any system will be imperfect unless you find angels to run things. Watchdog groups will be run by humans, the justice system run by humans, everything. So the same public that is responsible for voting out corrupt politicians who funnel billions to influence their vote is the public that can band together in their own corporations to spend money on ads to expose scandals and influence their fellow man. And publish books and stage protests and start websites and lobby their politicians. Eventually, you get to where the cabal has to include nearly every institution in society to do their nefarious deeds, and that's (briefly) the closest we can get. Hopefully you can also see the problem where a very big and powerful government can kill disliked industries and do other harms. For example, agency action apart operating in broad laws whose civil servants use their volition to favor and punish as they see fit. That one terminus is indeed a big problem. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have Sorry, freedom of speech does not mean freedom to buy campaigns. This is a problem of your voting system, not with freedom of speech. In other countries, individuals are not running for head of government, but parties do. The parties get money from the state proportional to their election results and on top of that can get donations and member fees. They will then support their candidate with that money and after a few weeks of campaigning, the fucking thing is over. Same for the representatives in the legislatory congress, they are part of a list of people the party wants to see in office, they get money from their party and when they win their district with that money or do well, the party puts them in legislation. YOu can still lobby this and corruption is not magically gone but the politicians do not exactly ow millions of dollars to few rich people. You are saying, there will never be a perfect system, so let's not try to improve it at all. Do you want to become a politician yourself sometime? A lot of the American society seems to build on the idea that some time in the future, what holds you down now might help you when you made it. I am arguing for improvement and it's for funding campaigns for this voting system, not for a future constitutional amendment that rejiggers things. Everyone gets a buy-in. No more of needing to be independently wealthy and less of a dependence on having name recognition heading into the thing. How can you be so opposed to a citizen legislature by demarcating which ones get a voice?
But you get the exact opposite of that! Even if 20% of your people would all raise 20$ for one candidate, that is 1.2 billion dollars. About as much as the super pacs put in. On one side, you have 60 million people to one candidate, on the other hand 1000 maybe even significantly less. And the more income inequality you have, the thing you don't care about, the worse it gets. Yes, give everyone a voice. Every physical person is allowed to donate up to 100 of his hard earned dollars to a candidate. Other organisations are not allowed to spend money directly influencing the election. And there you go, grassroots democracy. How can you be opposed to a citizen getting as much influence as another citizen?
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On April 28 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote: Venue shopping is a completely valid tactic for a lawsuit. There isn't an attorney that says "any judge will do, its fine. Just pick any court that can hear the case." Trump is signing orders that impact the entire nation. It is a forgone conclusion that liberal judges will hear the cases because that is how courts work.
Second, Congress can break up the 9th Circuit any time they want. It is just that the Republicans don't have the votes. And the judges on that court don't just go away. Trump can't do shit, because that isn't how the executive branch works. Does breaking up the ninth court really help conservatives anyways? It is large enough that it probably should be broken up, but any court district with the west coast in it is going to be liberal anyways (possibly more so than it is currently)
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On April 28 2017 01:58 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:44 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 01:25 Mercy13 wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote: [quote] Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities. Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment? E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. Surely you don't think that more freedom is always better? Even fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are often limited if there is a compelling reason to do so. Without conceding that all types of political spending should count as speech, there are lots of reasons why limiting private spending on elections should be limited. I've seen you complain many times in this forum about how GOP politicians ignore the concerns of the base, and instead focus on the concerns of wealthy donors. In addition, there was this study from a few years ago: The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded. ... Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: 'When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.'
The positions of powerful interest groups are 'not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens,' but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10%. SourceAre you content with this state of affairs? You first. Why do you want to deprive free speech from people based on income? Or how the hell are citizens supposed to band together and raise the insane capital to get their candidate name recognition and attachment to policy issues if nobody is legally permitted to raise it and his opponent gets the free publicity of the press and maybe favor from aligned media corporations? It's always been the trouble with campaign finance laws; you're drawing distinctions for political advantage and each time I've seen it envisioned, it's just creating a worse situation. As far as I know no one has ever argued that people should be deprived of free speech based upon their income... That is a blatantly ridiculous statement. Some people advocate for spending limitations because if money equals speech, we get undesirable outcomes when a small group of people gets much more speech than the rest of us. However, limiting the amount a person can spend on political issues is not the same as discrimination based upon income. Personally I would favor a system which depends largely on public financing of candidates/elections. E.g., every American gets a voucher for a certain amount of money that they can allocate among different politicians. Even if the current system remained in place putting a public financing system on top of it would cause influence to be less concentrated, and may cause the US to look less like an oligarchy. Edit: And if we are going to keep the current system in place, AT LEAST add some measure of transparency so we know who is donating money to whom.
This would probably be the best system. Especaially because it could short circuit the "government regulation of speech" problem... everyone gets a voucher for say $10-$100/year that they can give to any politician* as a direct gift (everyone gets it)
You aren't spending the money on "speech" you are essentially legally bribing the politician. (but the politician would be free to use that money on their campaign... and every citizen has an equal opportunity to bribe the politician.)
So you can't give it to the ACLU or the NRA... but the NRA/ACLU could publish lists of approved politicians in your area (and the ACLU/NRA/SuperPAC Vermin Supreme/NY Times would be able to take donations and use it to pay for any type of speech/press they wanted)
*someone who has or is running for office (potentially limited to offices you are able to vote for directly or indirectly)
On April 28 2017 02:38 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 02:21 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 01:45 Broetchenholer wrote:On April 28 2017 01:15 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:39 Trainrunnef wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote: [quote] As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. If I owned a business that had sufficient dollars to lobby, and or buy politicians into power through campaign donations. I absolutely would as that would net me greater profits. Consider the following situation: I produce a good that is mildly toxic. A watchdog group discovers said toxicity I (using my large marketing budget) distribute misinformation about the product. Through my campaign donations and dealings with politicians I have secured deals for my business where the politicians will vouch for my product and research and back me up with legislation. Public is now confused and doesn't know what is right and i successful defend my company from being destroyed. the above situation is obviously simplified, but take for example the tobacco companies, soft drink companies, etc. who have done this exact thing. it is not the american people i have a problem trusting, it is the greed of the companies. I cant discover that i am being duped if i cant get all the information, and accurate information these days is getting harder and harder to come by. Folks on all sides are poisoning the well of journalism with sensationalist babble, again, because of the greed of their parent companies. First I would propose legislation that any business that has the words news in it should be a non for profit org, and that any for profit, organization have the words entertainment in the name this way the public could more easily separate the chaff from the whey. (just spitballing I havent completely thought this out). Ultimately it all comes down to who the public can trust not so much as can we trust the public, and these days there are scant few organizations that truly have the trust of the public, and even fewer that actually deserve it. And the politicians that made backroom deals to negate the FDA and kill Americans get voted out of office. I'm not going to stand here saying evil, corrupt people in business and government are always limited in the scope of their harm and the checks and balances will always get there in the *tada* nick of time. I am however looking at ways to decrease the overall impact without infringing on real civil rights and producing a net increase in the kinds of corruption. Simplified further, humans are needlessly greedy, and power hungry, and corrupt. So how do you make humans out other humans in check? Any system will be imperfect unless you find angels to run things. Watchdog groups will be run by humans, the justice system run by humans, everything. So the same public that is responsible for voting out corrupt politicians who funnel billions to influence their vote is the public that can band together in their own corporations to spend money on ads to expose scandals and influence their fellow man. And publish books and stage protests and start websites and lobby their politicians. Eventually, you get to where the cabal has to include nearly every institution in society to do their nefarious deeds, and that's (briefly) the closest we can get. Hopefully you can also see the problem where a very big and powerful government can kill disliked industries and do other harms. For example, agency action apart operating in broad laws whose civil servants use their volition to favor and punish as they see fit. That one terminus is indeed a big problem. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have Sorry, freedom of speech does not mean freedom to buy campaigns. This is a problem of your voting system, not with freedom of speech. In other countries, individuals are not running for head of government, but parties do. The parties get money from the state proportional to their election results and on top of that can get donations and member fees. They will then support their candidate with that money and after a few weeks of campaigning, the fucking thing is over. Same for the representatives in the legislatory congress, they are part of a list of people the party wants to see in office, they get money from their party and when they win their district with that money or do well, the party puts them in legislation. YOu can still lobby this and corruption is not magically gone but the politicians do not exactly ow millions of dollars to few rich people. You are saying, there will never be a perfect system, so let's not try to improve it at all. Do you want to become a politician yourself sometime? A lot of the American society seems to build on the idea that some time in the future, what holds you down now might help you when you made it. I am arguing for improvement and it's for funding campaigns for this voting system, not for a future constitutional amendment that rejiggers things. Everyone gets a buy-in. No more of needing to be independently wealthy and less of a dependence on having name recognition heading into the thing. How can you be so opposed to a citizen legislature by demarcating which ones get a voice? But you get the exact opposite of that! Even if 20% of your people would all raise 20$ for one candidate, that is 1.2 billion dollars. About as much as the super pacs put in. On one side, you have 60 million people to one candidate, on the other hand 1000 maybe even significantly less. And the more income inequality you have, the thing you don't care about, the worse it gets. Yes, give everyone a voice. Every physical person is allowed to donate up to 100 of his hard earned dollars to a candidate. Other organisations are not allowed to spend money directly influencing the election. And there you go, grassroots democracy. How can you be opposed to a citizen getting as much influence as another citizen?
Simple problem... is the New York Times allowed to spend more than $100 on ink, paper, server time, and salaries to report on a candidate/law/issue? Because by reporting on a candidate/law/issue they are influencing the election.
Is a sitcom allowed to spend more than $100 on a "very special episode" where they talk about the dangers of drug addiction/child sexual abuse/discrimination, etc? Because that is going to influence any election where the candidate brings up those issues.
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On April 28 2017 02:37 Buckyman wrote: As far as I can tell, the core of the sanctuary city issue is only tangentially related to immigration and much more solidly about federalism.
The federal government sets policies for detaining and deporting immigrants. Local governments have no say in those policies. The federal government can carry them out wherever it wants, including in sanctuary cities.
However, since the policies aren't set with any local or state participation, the federal government can't require local governments to use local resources to carry out those policies. Specifically, the local jail isn't required to house illegal immigrants that aren't serving a state law sentence just because the federal government tells them to. There is a long standing issue with ICE detainer requests too. They are low information legal documents request a suspect be held local government since they have the suspect in custody. The problem is that holding people costs money and it also requires that they be charged with a crime. The local government doesn’t have jurisdiction over immigration, so they can’t charge the suspect and don’t’ have sufficient evidence to hold them based on the ICE detainer. And the local courts don’t have jurisdiction either.
When I worked in probation this very issue came up in court. Some guy had an immigration flag, but was only charged with driving with an expired license. After his hearing, he paid the fine and the DA asked that he be detained. The Judge asked if ICE was there to take the man into custody. They were not there and wanted them to be held for 48 hours. The Judge refused to have the court do it and the DA was unwilling as well. So the guy walked,
Two days later the Judge had a very grumpy meeting with whatever clown they send from ICE and the Judge explained that the judicial branch can’t detain people on behalf of a federal law enforcement agency.
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On April 28 2017 01:47 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 01:15 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:39 Trainrunnef wrote:On April 28 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote:On April 28 2017 00:07 Mercy13 wrote:On April 27 2017 23:58 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 23:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 23:38 Danglars wrote:On April 27 2017 21:15 Acrofales wrote:On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote: [quote] Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities. Lets put that aside for a minute. Do you agree that wealth inequality is one of our biggest problems at the moment? E: and so as not to get a long chain of questions: do you also agree that government ought to work at solving society's biggest problems? As long as inequality can be increased by rich people very adept at growing their money, it's an improper term to use to describe the biggest problem. Joe Plumber doesn't or shouldn't care that there's this one guy on Wall St making an absolute killing that dwarfs his modest business growth this year. He affords a better house, gets off food stamps, gets his kids something nice ... whatever. To steal the way another put it, I know some that couldn't care less if the poor were more poor so long as the rich really bit it. And I know a lot of absolutely miserable countries with low levels of absolute economic inequality. So, no, it isn't a good description of a pressing issue whatsoever, and it isn't the governments job to punish the most successful on behalf of the mob. Pretty sure Joe Plumber is doing just fine. It's Joe Coalminer you should worry about. And José Campesino. And by all accounts, the programs that the current government wants to scrap are directly affecting the money available to these poorest groups of people. So it's not a case of everybody getting richer, but the rich getting richer a bit faster than the rest (which is a long-term problem, because eventually inflation will catch up to the poorest and they will stop getting richer in comparison to inflation even if overall wealth continues to increase). It seems far nearer to a case of the poor actually getting poorer. Joe Coalminer isn't getting off foodstamps. His foodstamp program is getting nixed, so now he'll just go hungry instead. And to add insult to injury, while nixing Joe Coalminer's foodstamp program, there's an incoming tax break for the richest segment of the population. Then don't use inequality to describe the plight of the poor. It makes no distinction. I assume you're not concerned with lax campaign finance laws which allow rich people to buy disproportionate political influence. More inequality = more political influence concentrated with a smaller group. If I'm right that you support this approach to campaign finance can you explain why? Why are you depriving the right to free speech based on income? Why even have a republic if you don't trust the population to not be duped? I've seen enough bias on here towards corporations that happen to produce print and television media and against corporations that produce other goods and services to not trust a single person here to write one. It just doesn't exist and in every case you're better off just letting a free country be free. If I owned a business that had sufficient dollars to lobby, and or buy politicians into power through campaign donations. I absolutely would as that would net me greater profits. Consider the following situation: I produce a good that is mildly toxic. A watchdog group discovers said toxicity I (using my large marketing budget) distribute misinformation about the product. Through my campaign donations and dealings with politicians I have secured deals for my business where the politicians will vouch for my product and research and back me up with legislation. Public is now confused and doesn't know what is right and i successful defend my company from being destroyed. the above situation is obviously simplified, but take for example the tobacco companies, soft drink companies, etc. who have done this exact thing. it is not the american people i have a problem trusting, it is the greed of the companies. I cant discover that i am being duped if i cant get all the information, and accurate information these days is getting harder and harder to come by. Folks on all sides are poisoning the well of journalism with sensationalist babble, again, because of the greed of their parent companies. First I would propose legislation that any business that has the words news in it should be a non for profit org, and that any for profit, organization have the words entertainment in the name this way the public could more easily separate the chaff from the whey. (just spitballing I havent completely thought this out). Ultimately it all comes down to who the public can trust not so much as can we trust the public, and these days there are scant few organizations that truly have the trust of the public, and even fewer that actually deserve it. And the politicians that made backroom deals to negate the FDA and kill Americans get voted out of office. I'm not going to stand here saying evil, corrupt people in business and government are always limited in the scope of their harm and the checks and balances will always get there in the *tada* nick of time. I am however looking at ways to decrease the overall impact without infringing on real civil rights and producing a net increase in the kinds of corruption. Simplified further, humans are needlessly greedy, and power hungry, and corrupt. So how do you make humans out other humans in check? Any system will be imperfect unless you find angels to run things. Watchdog groups will be run by humans, the justice system run by humans, everything. So the same public that is responsible for voting out corrupt politicians who funnel billions to influence their vote is the public that can band together in their own corporations to spend money on ads to expose scandals and influence their fellow man. And publish books and stage protests and start websites and lobby their politicians. Eventually, you get to where the cabal has to include nearly every institution in society to do their nefarious deeds, and that's (briefly) the closest we can get. Hopefully you can also see the problem where a very big and powerful government can kill disliked industries and do other harms. For example, agency action apart operating in broad laws whose civil servants use their volition to favor and punish as they see fit. That one terminus is indeed a big problem. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have You seem to hearken back to the days where pretty much everything was local. However, we live in a world with multinational corporations and globalized trade. While you can sentimentally wish for that to go away, it won't really happen, so trying to limit the government to local action is simply ceding power to other organizations that you have even less control over. "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything you have". Agreed. But a government small enough that it cannot do that is a powerless government in the face of other organizations. And I trust the Googles and Goldman Sachses less than the government. So I'd rather have a government that the population is able to change (through election) that is in theory capable of taking everything away, than have other organizations, equally capable of filling that power vacuum and taking everything away, that you have virtually no control over at all. I still don't see how it is any different between privileging media corporations over other corporations. If whatever ABC affiliate has a cozy relationship with the current guy, you have baked in disadvantages that you must overcome and you do so with raising campaign money. I see your argument, I really do, there's outsize influence. But these proposed changes (and in some cases existing laws) and they just make the situation worse. And most of their hard points are an argument against democratic governance itself: if people are so gullible we have to restrict free speech to protect them, why give them a vote at all? I'd rather more speech, the same nonprofits and forprofits exposing the sponsors and campaign donors, and citizens to make up their own damn minds. And sometimes it might be that Trump is the lesser of two evils despite all his moneyed interests, for that matter.
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On April 28 2017 02:40 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote: Venue shopping is a completely valid tactic for a lawsuit. There isn't an attorney that says "any judge will do, its fine. Just pick any court that can hear the case." Trump is signing orders that impact the entire nation. It is a forgone conclusion that liberal judges will hear the cases because that is how courts work.
Second, Congress can break up the 9th Circuit any time they want. It is just that the Republicans don't have the votes. And the judges on that court don't just go away. Trump can't do shit, because that isn't how the executive branch works. Does breaking up the ninth court really help conservatives anyways? It is large enough that it probably should be broken up, but any court district with the west coast in it is going to be liberal anyways (possibly more so than it is currently)
As far as I know the judges for a circuit court don't have to come from lower courts...If there are 51 conservative Senators and a conservative President, they can appoint conservative judges to any new positions.
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On April 28 2017 02:40 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote: Venue shopping is a completely valid tactic for a lawsuit. There isn't an attorney that says "any judge will do, its fine. Just pick any court that can hear the case." Trump is signing orders that impact the entire nation. It is a forgone conclusion that liberal judges will hear the cases because that is how courts work.
Second, Congress can break up the 9th Circuit any time they want. It is just that the Republicans don't have the votes. And the judges on that court don't just go away. Trump can't do shit, because that isn't how the executive branch works. Does breaking up the ninth court really help conservatives anyways? It is large enough that it probably should be broken up, but any court district with the west coast in it is going to be liberal anyways (possibly more so than it is currently) Exactly. And the same judges are going to be on the bench. They don’t get to pick new ones. Plus that means they have to increase the size of other circuits, shifting courts make up.
It is just something they bitch about and then realize that they can’t do anything because the courts accurately represent the views of that section of the county.
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your choices would have to be really bad for trump to be the lesser of two evils; didn't happen this time for sure. but sadly does sometimes happen throughout the world.
there are issues with democratic governance itself of course, very large and serious issues; we'll probably move away from democracy some once we come up with a better system.
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On April 28 2017 02:46 Krikkitone wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 02:40 Nevuk wrote:On April 28 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote: Venue shopping is a completely valid tactic for a lawsuit. There isn't an attorney that says "any judge will do, its fine. Just pick any court that can hear the case." Trump is signing orders that impact the entire nation. It is a forgone conclusion that liberal judges will hear the cases because that is how courts work.
Second, Congress can break up the 9th Circuit any time they want. It is just that the Republicans don't have the votes. And the judges on that court don't just go away. Trump can't do shit, because that isn't how the executive branch works. Does breaking up the ninth court really help conservatives anyways? It is large enough that it probably should be broken up, but any court district with the west coast in it is going to be liberal anyways (possibly more so than it is currently) As far as I know the judges for a circuit court don't have to come from lower courts...If there are 51 conservative Senators and a conservative President, they can appoint conservative judges to any new positions. That would be challenged instantly. They can’t eliminate seat and then create new ones to fill themselves. The case load isn’t going to change, only the venue. The same number of judges will be needed and they would be expected to take them from the existing sitting judges.
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On April 28 2017 02:49 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2017 02:46 Krikkitone wrote:On April 28 2017 02:40 Nevuk wrote:On April 28 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote: Venue shopping is a completely valid tactic for a lawsuit. There isn't an attorney that says "any judge will do, its fine. Just pick any court that can hear the case." Trump is signing orders that impact the entire nation. It is a forgone conclusion that liberal judges will hear the cases because that is how courts work.
Second, Congress can break up the 9th Circuit any time they want. It is just that the Republicans don't have the votes. And the judges on that court don't just go away. Trump can't do shit, because that isn't how the executive branch works. Does breaking up the ninth court really help conservatives anyways? It is large enough that it probably should be broken up, but any court district with the west coast in it is going to be liberal anyways (possibly more so than it is currently) As far as I know the judges for a circuit court don't have to come from lower courts...If there are 51 conservative Senators and a conservative President, they can appoint conservative judges to any new positions. That would be challenged instantly. They can’t eliminate seat and then create new ones to fill themselves. The case load isn’t going to change, only the venue. The same number of judges will be needed and they would be expected to take them from the existing sitting judges. I was assuming the idea was 9th Circuit ->break into several circuits... then add more judges to each of those circuits (existing ones stay)
In any case, 'west coast liberals' is no explanation for why the court is considered currently liberal, since they aren't selected by people/politicians from their jurisdiction, but by the full Senate+President.
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