Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
As Florence bears down on the Carolinas, it is interesting to note that there was a Hurricane just off the NE US coast on 9/11.
If that Hurricane had just moved a bit westward, than the terrorists attacks wouldn't have happened or would have been delayed.
Hearing Rachel Maddow got some documents from the Department of Homeland Security where they took millions from FEMA to build the immigration detention centers.
Really good now that we're in the middle of hurricane season.
Here's a link.
It came from Senator Jeff Merkley.
Also, Republicans are really worried by Cruz failing to retain his seat.
Patrick, who chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign in the state, made the case that a Trump visit was needed to boost turnout for Cruz and the rest of the Texas Republican ticket. The lieutenant governor soon got his wish: Trump announced on Twitter late last month that he was planning a blowout October rally for Cruz, his former GOP rival.
The previously unreported meeting comes as senior Republicans grow increasingly concerned about the senator’s prospects in the reliably red state, with some expressing fear that an underperformance could threaten GOP candidates running further down the ballot. Cruz’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, has raised barrels of cash, closed the polling gap and emerged as a cause célèbre of liberals nationwide.
Trump’s rally is just the most public display of a Republican cavalry rushing to the senator’s aid. Cruz remains a favorite to win another term, and some senior GOP figures insist the concern is overblown. Yet the party — which has had a fraught relationship with the anti-establishment Texas senator over the years — is suddenly leaving little to chance. Behind the scenes, the White House, party leaders and conservative outside groups have begun plotting a full-fledged effort to bolster Cruz.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who’s planning an October fundraiser for Cruz at Washington’s Capital Grille restaurant, said he had a simple directive to GOP givers.
“We’re not bluffing, this is real, and it is a serious threat,” Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said in an interview. “If Ted does his job and we do ours, I think we’ll be fine. But if we have donors sitting on the sidelines thinking that, ‘Well, this isn’t all that serious,’ or ‘I don’t need to be concerned,’ then that’s a problem.”
The push reflects a broader anxiety within the party about the electoral environment this fall. It also has practical implications for the GOP: The resources devoted to Cruz include money that could otherwise be used to oust vulnerable incumbent Democrats in red states like North Dakota, Indiana and Missouri.
With O’Rourke outraising Cruz more than 2-to-1 during the past quarter, right-leaning organizations have begun sending resources to the state. The anti-tax Club for Growth, which spent millions on Cruz during his 2012 Senate bid, has started a seven-figure advertising blitz aimed at tearing down the Democratic congressman. The organization has begun polling the race, and David Mc Intosh, the organization’s president, recently traveled to Texas to meet with donors who could help fund the barrage. More than $1 million has been raised so far, people close to the group say.
A handful of other well-funded groups are considering joining the effort, including the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, the Mitch Mc Connell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, the newly formed Senate Reform Fund, and Ending Spending, which in the past has been bankrolled by major GOP financiers including New York City investor Paul Singer. Some of the groups have been in touch with one another as they weigh their next moves and try to determine how much their help is needed.
“I think there will be a lot of money,” said Doug Deason, a Dallas investor and prominent GOP giver who met with Mc Intosh.
Cruz, who aggressively wooed evangelicals during his 2016 presidential campaign, is taking steps to stir interest among conservative groups. He recently attended a Beltway meeting of the Conservative Action Project, a secretive gathering of movement leaders, where he issued a call to arms to prevent a Democratic coup in his state.
They are responding in kind. On Thursday, the Senate Conservatives Fund sent an email to supporters asking them to finance Cruz. The Family Research Council is planning an October bus tour through Texas. And this week, Tea Party Patriots is expected to start a phone, text and mail campaign bolstering the senator.
“Texas is one of our top priority states,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the Tea Party Patriots co-founder. “We want to help Ted Cruz be reelected to the Senate because he’s championed our priorities on Capitol Hill.”
The senator, meanwhile, is relying on the big donor network that fueled his presidential bid. He’s been reaching out to major givers via text message and recently has been in touch with Bekah Mercer, the reclusive conservative megadonor whose father was a primary financier of Cruz’s presidential bid.
Lee Roy Mitchell, a founder of the Cinemark movie theater chain, is among those concerned that major donors aren't taking the senator's reelection race seriously enough.
“We’re solidly behind the senator, and I would like to think most Texans are. I believe they are,” said the Dallas-based Mitchell, an active member of the Koch political network who, with his wife, Tandy, has donated a total of $1 million to a pro-Cruz super PAC. “But there’s a tremendous amount of [Democratic] money being poured in here to change people’s opinions.”
After antagonizing the K Street set early in his Senate career, Cruz is courting it as he attempts to fill his coffers. Cruz has been regularly inviting high-powered lobbyists to dinners at Capital Grille and other Washington restaurants.
He’s been candid during the sit-downs about the threat he’s facing for reelection, those who’ve met with him say.
Cruz has filled his calendar with fundraisers, including at least three scheduled this week. And he’s turned to veteran Washington players like Wayne Berman, who’s hosted several fundraising events for the Texas senator. Berman, who sits on the board of the influential Republican Jewish Coalition, has also reached out to would-be givers from the pro-Israel and financial industries.
“Cruz has made a concerted effort over the last year and a half to listen and work with many of us around town,” said U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief political strategist Scott Reed, who attended a Cruz fundraiser last week.
Cruz is also turning to an old foe: Trump.
The senator and the president have gotten over their nasty 2016 rivalry, when Cruz called Trump a “sniveling coward” and pointedly refused to endorse him onstage at the Republican National Convention; Trump dubbed Cruz “Lyin’ Ted” and linked Cruz’s father to JFK’s assassination.
Now, Cruz is leaning on the president to turn out voters with the planned October rally. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. is expected to host multiple events for the senator in the Houston area on Oct. 3.
Trump, aides say, was eager to help. The president personally drafted the tweet in which he announced the rally, which he wrote would be held in “the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.”
Since the 2016 race, Trump has repeatedly told Cruz that he’d like to help him get reelected. Final plans for the event, party officials say, are still being worked out.
Administration officials are among those who’ve privately expressed concern about the senator’s prospects. Those worries burst out into the open over the weekend, when Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told donors at a Republican National Committee meeting that Cruz could lose, a person familiar with the remarks confirmed. The closed-door remarks were first reported by The New York Times.
The sight of national Republicans coming to Cruz's defense would have been almost unthinkable a few years ago. After being elected in 2012, Cruz clashed repeatedly with GOP leadership — he once took to the Senate floor to call Mc Connell, the majority leader, a liar. But senior Republicans are putting all that behind them.
Cornyn, who expects to hit the trail for Cruz in October, lavished praise on his Texas colleague, saying that since the 2016 election he’d become a “team player” who worked collaboratively with fellow senators. In 2014, Cruz snubbed Cornyn, refusing to endorse the state’s senior senator in his primary election.
“We’re all adults, and I’d like to think that we’re professionals,” Cornyn said in the interview last week. “We understand what’s at stake.”
Edited by tclittle on Sep 11th 2018 at 10:38:19 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."Apparently Trump tried to tell the Treasury to just print more money to lower the national debt....
.....
I mean him being this stupid about the economy was a known factor to me, but like.... thats a whole other level of stupid.
He's cancelling two rallies in Missouri and Mississippi: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/10/trump-cancels-mississippi-rally/1255796002/
and https://www.ozarksfirst.com/news/president-trump-rally-canceled-in-cape-girardeau-mo/1434599230
That said, it is better for us that more and more Independents disapprove of Trump.
I mean... if people don't like either side then they won't vote. Someone who's likely to use that logic isn't going to vote for the Democrats period so if they don't vote then it's only the Republicans who have lost out.
So a decrease in approval is fairly likely to result at minimum less people voting, which goes back to my previous point that even if less people vote Republican that's really good enough.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangApparently Trump tried to tell the Treasury to just print more money to lower the national debt....
.....
I mean him being this stupid about the economy was a known factor to me, but like.... thats a whole other level of stupid.
What to expect from the guy who managed to make his casino go bankrupt?
I am very smart! Believe me!
Inter arma enim silent leges![]()
Well, the funny thing about that is that it's not such a terrible idea at its core. Trump clearly isn't approaching it from the perspective of a Keynesian economist who's actually studied and shit, but straight-up money creation as a way to erode debt is entirely valid under certain circumstances. We can go to the General Economics thread if you want to learn more about the topic.
Back when the debt ceiling was such a big issue during Obama's tenure, there was a lot of noise made about the U.S. Treasury minting a $1 trillion coin and depositing it in the Federal Reserve. This money would never circulate, it would simply offset the book value of our debt and let us continue operating without a default. This works because our debt is in our own currency, and we control how much of that there is.
Now, obviously it's not the ideal solution, and there would be consequences, but nowhere near as bad as the consequences if the U.S. stopped honoring its bonds.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 7:08:28 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Trump has apparently random-walked his way through economics and got to MMT. Hah.
Currently I actually think the UK printing money and giving it to the population to pay down private debt is actually a good idea. If it causes moderate inflation then that's a bonus, it erodes the debt further. It also erodes savings, but the inequality skew is so great when it comes to cash holdings that it should be a net plus.
Don't know about the USA data, but we usually look like a sycophantic copy of the states on most charts so I'd imagine you have a similar giant pile of household debt.
Yes, in fact there's a very strong body of evidence that consumer debt was the major driving factor behind both the booms of the past three to four decades and the subsequent crashes. The reason for this is that real incomes haven't increased enough to sustain the desired levels of consumer spending, so people borrow to make up the difference. Households today are far more leveraged than households of 40 years ago, making them far more vulnerable to income and/or credit shocks.
If increasing their incomes directly isn't on the table, paying down their debts functions just as well.
I don't agree with all of MMT, but I do agree with the basic insight that governments creating money doesn't automatically lead to inflation.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 9:57:46 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
You would be mostly correct on debt.
You also have to account for automobile debt, which has quietly become the new waiting sub-prime bubble, and student loan debt, which is actually impossible to get rid of with bankruptcy. I don’t know if you have either of those issues in the UK.
Edited by Mio on Sep 12th 2018 at 10:00:17 AM
![]()
I don't know about subprime auto debt. I do know that I have two mortgage payments and two car payments, and one of those pairs is a lot more money than the other.
I just ignore whatever Trump tweets unless it gets brought up in the news. It's not like he's capable of shocking me with his stupidity any more.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 10:15:08 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"You can safely assume that Trump has no idea what he's talking about whenever he writes his own tweets. That's not the point. What is the point is that these tweets always set off a cascade of abuse directed at his targets from the alt-right, and that has consequences.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Something arguably useful for once...
"Hurricane Florence is looking even bigger than anticipated. It will be arriving soon. FEMA, First Responders and Law Enforcement are supplied and ready. Be safe!" and "Hurricane Florence may now be dipping a bit south and hitting a portion of the Great State of Georgia. Be ready, be prepared!".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman10:1 odds those tweets were written, or at least dictated, by his staff.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
x8
Forget just households, there's too much leverage everywhere. If you look at the level of the stock market and the change in the amount of margin debt taken out it's almost exactly the same graph, same with change in mortgage debt and house prices. Not sure about cars, their sales aren't all debt-financed so I'd imagine it wouldn't have quite as strong a correlation. Hyman Minsky's grave probably powers the nearest town with his spinning coffin.
UK debt since 1900 is basically "flat, flat, flat, Thatcher used Deregulate, near-exponential growth". USA debt picked back up again from 2008 much faster than ours, which is most of the reason for either the USA or UK still growing.
x7
UK car lending data is pretty terrible, but we can tell that it has increased pretty sharply recently. Credit card debt is steadily climbing again. Our student loans are essentially a tax on graduates, very few people pay them off completely and they only take a slice of your income above a certain point. Still not great, but I believe your students have it worse. Are USA student loans private or done through a government agency/quango?
Edited by DeathorCake on Sep 12th 2018 at 2:38:02 PM
The reallocation of public money is documented in a “Transfer and Reprogramming” notification prepared this fiscal year by the Department of Homeland Security, the parent department of ICE, as the agency is known. It was made public by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon in an appearance Tuesday on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” as Hurricane Florence barreled toward the Carolinas.
Merkley’s office provided the 39-page budget document independently to The Washington Post. It shows that DHS requested that about $9.8 million going toward FEMA efforts such as “Preparedness and Protection” and “Response and Recovery” be funneled instead into ICE coffers, specifically underwriting “Detention Beds” and the agency’s “Transportation and Removal Program.” The U.S. Secret Service was also a beneficiary of the reallocation.
And the conspiracy nuts were worried about FEMA camps...
Edited by TerminusEst on Sep 12th 2018 at 7:39:12 AM
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele![]()
The details would be a better topic for the economics thread, so I'll answer briefly here. Student debt in the U.S. is financed through a mixture of public and private sources, but it is not dischargeable in bankrupcty.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 10:38:40 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Yes, but ICE camps only hold nonwhite people so they don't count.
Student debt and our various proposals to fix it are a political as well as economic issue, so here's as good a place as anywhere to talk about it. That said, you summed it up well enough.
Edited by Ramidel on Sep 12th 2018 at 7:31:41 AM
With Florence bearing down on the eastern seaboard, Trump is spending a lot of his time seeking praise for the negligence that helped kill thousands in PR.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/12/politics/donald-trump-hurricane-florence-puerto-rico/index.html

Yep. Trump defying the ICC is one of a number of things about his Presidency that are fairly (and depressingly) normal despite seeming like an aberration.