The General US Politics Thread

Uhh, wouldn't the "Paul faction" (if such a thing even really exists beyond Paul himself) really side with the pacifistic fringe Left? If anything, the basic tenets of foreign policy (beyond the Iran question) are the one place where Obama and the GOP agree. Democrats too. It's only the hard-libertarian right and the pacifist sector of the Left that are opposed.

Why do we need to proportionally represent anything? A straight up direct election in every time zone simultaneously (so that early polls dont influence the vote on the West Coast). Rural states get their representation via their Congressmen and Senators, they really dont need some sort of pseudo-representation during the Presidential election process.

Yea, president should really be pure popular vote. If nothing else but because bush won despite losing it.

I'm baaaaaaack

A U.S. Appeals Court ruled Friday that the Federal Reserve was within its bounds when it set new limits on debit card fees, tossing out a lower court's ruling against the cap.

Republicans are wishing Democrats an unhappy fourth anniversary on ObamaCare.

President Obama on Friday signed a bill that rolls back flood insurance rate increases on coastal properties called for in a 2012 reform of the trouble National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

edited 21st Mar '14 4:12:32 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

Well that's just petty.

Also Cacti are tough as fuck plants.

edited 21st Mar '14 5:20:44 PM by Thorn14

And in the Poes Law stakes...

The Republicans are trying to get down wiv da kids with their latest adverts, featuring a hipster who supports them. See here:

John Oliver has already skewered him.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Law enforcement officials raided the office and home of Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox (D) on Friday as part of a criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney's office, FBI, IRS and state police.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

So the guy who owns the Drudge Report said he paid his 'Liberty Tax' for not owning Health Insurance.

The problem is, 1) The tax penalty for no health insurance isn't until 2015 and 2) Do people really fucking believe this guy doesn't have health insurance?

And of course, his defense of this when he got called out is to blame the "Main Stream Media"

He could be rich enough and healthy enough to not need health insurance (because even if you're rich, you have to be REALLY loaded if you got something nasty and lingering like a chronic condition or one of the more complex cancers). You'd basically have to be 1% rich to go without health insurance if you're not in mostly-good health. Even then, you'd still have to be... top 20% or so to afford going without (though financially it makes no sense to do so).

The solution to this is to give more power to the municipal level of government, not to give rural voters say over the governance of urban areas or vice versa. You CANNOT govern low population density areas and high population density areas with the same set of policies - they have different infrastructure needs and require different ways to communicate with the voting public.

Really, the states in the U.S. system are middlemen. 75% of what the states do can and should be offloaded to the cities and counties, who should in turn receive sufficient funding from the federal government, proportional to their population, in order to fulfill the functions of government. The remaining 25% is stuff that should probably be in the sole hands of the federal government anyways, like the enforcement of environmental regulations.

Much of the problem today in U.S. politics is that corporate interests are able to attack via the angle of states' rights because individual states do not have the money or manpower to fight back for their citizens' interests the way the federal government does, which allows industries to buy entire states outright (hi there, West Virginia and Montana!). The federal government should have the power to intervene in such cases, while leaving individual regions to determine what policies work best for their current circumstances. And since population density has such a huge impact on what policies work best, much of the responsibilities and powers of self-government should be shifted to the level of government where population density matters: the municipality.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

If most of American lives in urban American hellscapes, shouldn't the federal government try to adress that, considering that's where most of it's people live.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

Shouldn't the policies addressing that just affect the urban centers and not the rural areas?

edited 21st Mar '14 9:05:54 PM by deathpigeon

Why should the country get special laws aimed at it and not where most of America lives? And death you're not a federalist to begin with, you'd rather they abolish the concept of a national government. But for people saying cities should be poorly represented because screw the people, this track of land has less political power than that one. It's like the Republicans that cut food stamps but kept farm subsidies in tact. "It doesn't matter what happens to urban poor people as long as agurbusiness is AOK>"

edited 21st Mar '14 9:15:13 PM by RhymeBeat

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

Anyone hear about the Bond vs. United States case going before the SC?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I'm not saying that either the country or the city should get a special set of laws while the other doesn't. I'm saying they are different sorts of places with different sorts of people that have different sorts of needs, so they should be governed separately by the people who live in them rather than both being governed the same by state or federal governments.

Neither should be represented at all. Both should do things directly for themselves.

edited 21st Mar '14 9:34:34 PM by deathpigeon

Not until now. Gonna keep my eye on that case.

Iran is building a nonworking mock-up of an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that United States officials say may be intended to be blown up for propaganda value.

Yeah, thats always a smart thing to do during peace negotiations.

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

Someone buy that thing off the Iranians before they blow it up. It'd make a kickass movie set.

Oh really when?

That seems horribly impractical since the urban and rural regions, like it or not, are dependent on each other. Making them run by different people just makes the level of coordination needed to share resources and such harder.

Having them each run themselves doesn't mean they can't coordinate. It just means that they get to each set the terms of the coordination on their own terms and by discussing between themselves, rather than it being imposed from on high, and they get to decide how to run things internally themselves.

Yeah, but the coordination between them should be done at the federal level. Leaving it to the states creates a weak link big money can exploit.

A noble sentiment, but small individual political units tend to falter under the pressure larger wealthy interests can apply.

edited 21st Mar '14 9:51:31 PM by RadicalTaoist

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I never said they can't coordinate I said it would be harder. If there's no central authority ordering them to play nice and share I don't see what would stop certain regions from trying to extort others.

Well, yeah. There's a reason we need to smash capitalism.

Fair enough.

Is there a thread for the smash capitalism derail? I disagree with that approach, but I'm a de Soto economist.

Lawrence Walsh, special prosecutor for the Iran-Contra case, dies at 102. RIP Mr. Walsh, we let you down.

The longest running climate measurement project, the Keeling Curve run by Scripps Institution of Oceanography using data from the Mauna Loa Observatory, is at risk of being defunded.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

While I'm the token crazy insurrectionary anarchist communist.

We do have the Economics thread for discussions of capitalism and its alternatives. (I am reminded of the book I reviewed recently on the fashion industry. The answer to all the problems in and with the industry was "smash capitalism."