Politics

Another problem with tax cuts going to the wealthy is that their capital is much more mobile than that of the middle and lower classes, whose money goes directly toward consumption, which is overwhelmingly domestic. The rich who will transfer much of their tax breaks to investment opportunities will naturally seek out the best returns worldwide, which are now found in developing economies such as China, India, and Brazil, not in the U.S., so the stimulus will be directed away from the American economy. Since the effect of 30 years of tax cuts, starting with the Reagan administration, has been to increase the disparity between between the rich and the poor, where has …

Well, it looks like it’s not all smooth sailing for Obamacare. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-healthlaw07_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip I wonder if they would have granted these wavers if the election was not less than a month away. Imagine the news reports about 116000 fast food workers and 351000 school teachers losing their insurance because of Obamacare. Notice that the story doesn’t say they won’t lose their insurance in the future. I just says there will be other options in 2014, when government-organized marketplaces will offer insurance subsidized by tax credits.

Hello. I haven't posted in these forums for some time, partly because I've recently become too busy to spend time forum whoring, and partially due to my frustration with the moderation of the Politics forum, a frustration which echoes the frustration I feel with American conservatives in general. Now that election season draws near I thought maybe I'd stop by and share some of my thoughts. So let's start with a local republican candidate for state senate. There's posters for him everywhere. It confused the hell out of me... why do so many local businesses and residents want a Republican candidate? Then I actually read about him... he's pretty cool, albeit a bit of a l…

In another thread jackson33 raised the topic of whether National Healthcare is Constitutional. I'll go ahead an bump it up a notch and ask whether Universal Healthcare is Constitutional. I see something like Universal Healthcare as an embodiment of the idea that the government should "promote the general Welfare" as spelled out in the Constitution. I assume this is the same part of the preamble that "Welfare" itself derives its Constitutionality from. "http://usconstitution.net" (don't know anything about them, but...) describes the "promote the general Welfare" part of the Preamble in this way: http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_pre.html promote …

Similar to my earlier question about history books, I was hoping some of you can give me some recommendations for good books that cover politics in general. I'd like to understand the history of the U.S. parties and how they've changed over the past two centuries to become what they are today. And as far as outside the U.S., I'd love to read something about how the political systems have or haven't worked in other countries, such as why things are different and apparently successful in Europe, but many countries in Africa are failed states, etc. It's sort of a broad scope, but maybe there are some books out there that covers such a general topic. Thanks.

Moon; I'm guessing you want another Gay/Lesbian Thread to discuss you personal opinions on. I'll answer your recent post with this thread, where your welcome to continue. As for the Lesbian Nurse thread, it would be my suggestion you delete the following post, as it's an important issue outside promoting any particular lifestyle...

Over in another thread a question came up over whether Jon Stewart and The Daily Show have, lately, been as critical of Democrats as they have been of Republicans. Let's take a look at some data for the past two weeks. Stewart typically does two segments of "news" before a third segment featuring a guest. Sometimes the guest gets two segments, leaving only one "news" segment, and sometimes they do something else (like promoting their upcoming rallies). As it turns out, we have a total of 14 segments to assess over this most recent span. Thursday, September 30th (Guest: Justin Timberlake): http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-september-30-2010-justin…

Since the military forces of other countries, such as Germany, allow gays to serve openly and there don't seem to be any problems, I can't see what is so different about the U.S. Army that problems with gays would be inevitable. Also, since there are now women in the American military, it shouldn't be assumed that gays or lesbians being attracted to other men or women, respectively, would place inordinate strains on life in military service, since the same tensions must already be present among the much larger populations of straight males and females. What is most interesting about the whole issue is how quickly homosexuality, which until about 30 years ago was crim…

In an effort to sway public opinion toward action on climate change, the organization 10:10 produced the following mini-movie. Based on public reaction they pulled it with a pseudo apology. http://www.1010global.org/no-pressure Way to win the hearts and minds of skeptics 10:10.

Pulling some material on the infrastructure spending from the Bush tax Cuts thread The answer to this was yes — Stewart did indeed lampoon this http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-7-2010/indecision-2010---are-you-ready-for-some-midterms- ending with "didn't we do this already? Shouldn't we have like a 22nd-century infrastructure by this point where the bridges and tunnels just come and pick us up at our houses?" I decided to look into this further. The part where Jon Stewart goes for the laugh — $50 billion on top of a previous $27 billion (from the video — for highways and bridges, from the $48 billion total…

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good book or two that covers a broad period of US history (preferably all the way from its founding to the present century) and a book that covers world history in a similar scope, or at least the last couple of centuries. Basically, a general summary of history, government, wars, etc., nothing that focuses too much on any one issue or conflict. Are there any books like this, outside of classroom textbooks? Thanks.

A federal judge ordered the military to take back a lesbian nurse today, citing that both sides seem to agree that her presence doesn't disrupt the unit, therefore it's not a violation of an earlier court finding that removals can only come if the military meets a test of disruption. This comes following a setback for gay/lesbian community last week, when Republicans blocked a bill ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, pushing its consideration until after the election. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIWJ1V2EsAQ8O7sPsyfXG0OAQTBwD9IEJH380 I think this is an interesting case. It may ultimately become a sidebar if Congress does the right thing soon, but s…

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/books/200911/ayn-rand-dick-books-fountainhead This was a pretty interesting read for me, especially as someone who liked Ayn Rand earlier in my life (I read her books in high school and enjoyed them) It's funny how people read the tea leaves of the financial crisis and see two different things. Some people look at the bailouts and see the scenario depicted in Atlas Shrugged actually happening. This article takes the opposite perspective: Randroids caused the financial crisis. The article certainly has an interesting perspective. It describes how many people become temporarily infatuated with Rand then wake up and realize "Oh …

ABC News' Jonathan Karl ran an interesting piece counter to the conventional wisdom tonight about the impact of the Bush tax cuts. Most observers lately have seemed to come down on the side of minor impact on small business if any, focusing on an assessment by the Tax Policy Center that less than 2% of small businesses would be affected (source). But Karl asked the TPC for more info, and found that they've recently upgraded that estimate to 2.5%. Intrigued, Karl asked how many businesses that would be, and the answer he got was a staggering 894,000! There are about 15 million Americans presently unemployed. Can we really afford to unemploy another million or two? …

While the gigantic financial meltdown of 2008 wiped $1.8 trillion in value off the nation's books, the War on Terrorism from 2001 to 2009 had already cost $2.4 trillion, against a total value of all goods and services produced in the United States of $17.5 trillion. Although the number of people killed in the 9/11 tragedy was only equal to the number of people killed every year in the United States by accidental drowning -- a problem which attracts very little funding -- the money spent preventing another 9/11 amounts to $800 million per person killed, or about 700 times more than the value ordinarily assigned to a human life lost by someone else's negligence in a tort s…

New "battleground" poll out today from Politico. These are special polls aimed at identifying key tipping points in the upcoming election. Some interesting take-away's here: - More people get election news from 24-hour cable stations than the networks, and Fox News is much more popular than CNN or MSNBC for that kind of news - Some analysts are concerned that viewers are turning to more ideological sources for news - Newspapers and the networks remain important sources, and in general the networks continue to have far more viewers than cable (the slides seem to be shallow, not steep, but gradual and continuing) - Glenn Beck has more positive than negati…

OK, so better results on a test while under the influence of "stereotype threat" is not quite the same as smarter. Part of the study was to activate "stereotype threat" by exaggerating how important the test is at accurately identifying their intellectual strengths and weaknesses, and asking them about their race, before the test. Black people who watched Obama's success did better than the ones who didn't. New York Times: Study Sees an Obama Effect as Lifting Black Test-Takers These guys think the study is full of it (but haven't actually read the study): Most bogus study ever? Original study: The ''Obama Effect": How a salient role model reduces race-based p…

Well, it looks like we are heading for the first hung Parliment since WW 2. We probably won't have a result for a week or so. Projecting forward with circa 71% of the votes counted it looks like this. Labor: 70 seats, down from 83. (Our "Left" wing party) Coallition: 72 seats up from 60 (Liberal and National Parties, our "Right" wing) Green: 1 (Their first seat in the Lower House.) Independent: 4 (And quite smart cookies, these 4) Since the single Green will side with Labor it all comes down to the Independents in the Lower House. Things could change as these are projections and the postal vote is yet to come in. The Australian Electoral Commission has…

Fascinating piece in today's Wall Street Journal, and no, it's not a claim that unemployed Americans are sitting high on the hog with unemployment compensation and refusing to look for work. Some conservatives won't like this article because it shows that the people are disconnected from the demands of businesses. Some liberals, like Paul Krugman, an "economist" who's busy today blasting Republicans, because it doesn't support the narrative about evil corporations hoarding cash. Check out this chart, based on statistics from the US Department of Labor: This quote is fascinating: So what's broken? Well there appear to be two stories here: Qualific…

http://abcnews.go.com/US/definat-pastors-irs/story?id=11726610&page=1 Several pastors across the USA are deliberately trying to lose their tax exempt status by recording sermons and sending them to the IRS. They are doing this so that they can then file lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of the tax-exempt status restrictions. They say that it is unconstitutional because they have freedom of speech. I, however, think they severely misunderstand the situation. While they most certainly do have freedom of speech, they do NOT have the freedom of unconditional tax exempt status. If they fail to meet the conditions for the privilege of being tax exempt…

Great piece today from John Avalon. Avalon is a senior editor at The Daily Beast, which was started by conservatives but has columnists from both sides and a serious focus on a more common-sense approach to governance, elimination of corruption, and a return to centrism in America. Avalon is best known as the author of two books: Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics, and Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. As you can see from the cover, conservative though he may be (he's married to Fox News contributor Margaret Hoover), he has no trouble aiming his shots at the right. Anyway, let's take a look at what he says: h…

California passed a law in 2006 that would have reduced green house emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. (details) But now that the economy has hit the skids, a new proposal would freeze that law until unemployment drops to 5.5% (it's currently over 12%). It's notable that when the emissions law passed in 2006, unemployment in California was at 4.8%. But the proposal has amassed quite a lot of opposition already, ranging from the Governator to unions and eco groups. Backers include oil companies and other business groups. Voters are split on the issue: I don't know who's right, but I think it's an interesting example of how difficult it is to deal with eco…

Ever had a neighbors tree branch hang over your fence and on to your property? Perhaps the shade from the branch killed plants in your garden, or maybe it ruined the siding of your home. You have a right to cut the parts of the branch which cross your property line, sometimes with the caveat that you do so in a way which doesn't damage the vitality of the tree itself. Why is it any different with clean air? When you live by the border of a state or country which emits carcinogenic agents into the air, should you not have recourse to have that addressed without being forced to flee? Do you not have justification and right to ensure that this air gets cleaned up so …

I'm not sure how much discussion value this really has, but I loved the story and thought you all might enjoy it as well. Basically DC Mayor Tom Felty lost the Democratic primary. But in a strange twist of fate, enough Republican voters actually wrote in his name to cause him to win the Republican primary. The GOP didn't actually field a candidate, and the total number of write-ins wasn't huge, but even so it's a pretty unusual event and perhaps an interesting example of bipartisan appeal. He's declined the GOP nom, which he apparently is not legally able to accept anyway, but he did issue this grateful acknowledgement to the write-in voters: http://www.…

This could become an interesting story next week. Apparently a small news service called the Inter Press Service (wikipedia description here) has unearthed an interesting immigration story. These quotes are a good starting point: The catch? These familiar-sounding quotes don't come from Mexico. They come from Guatemala. Apparently Mexico, which has long complained about the US building a wall on its northern border, is now in the process of building one of its own -- along its very long, winding southern border with Guatemala! And it's not small matter, either: Wow! Sure sounds hypocritical to me, at least on surface. But before I get to …