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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#239427: Apr 19th 2018 at 11:16:19 PM

When have facts mattered to Trump, especially about immigrants?

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#239428: Apr 19th 2018 at 11:19:54 PM

Double post.

Trump skipping Barbara Bush's funeral, Melania going in his place.

Considering if he did go, he'd probably make it about himself, it's probably the nicest thing he could do for the family...

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#239429: Apr 19th 2018 at 11:20:31 PM

Pfft. If one really wanted to claim California is a hellhole, one should point to the assholes spawned by Hollywood and Silicon Valley, the natural disasters that plague us, and worst of all, housing prices.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Medinoc from France (Before Recorded History)
#239430: Apr 19th 2018 at 11:42:16 PM

The new NASA boss being a climate change denier is precisely why Trump nominated him, right?

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Ingonyama Since: Jan, 2001
#239431: Apr 20th 2018 at 1:53:35 AM

Yup, and the reason he got in was because Tammy Duckworth was out having her baby, while Jeff Flake changed his vote. Supposedly this is because he plans to vote no on Pompeo, from an article I read this morning, but... >_<

Some articles which I haven't seen brought up.

Sean Hannity is tied to two more Trump-connected lawyers--and they were involved in sending a cease-and-desist letter to an Oklahoma radio station where a conservative activist had accused him on air of sexual harassment. I knew O'Reilly and Ailes weren't the only Faux News abusers!

On a related note, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow is being investigated for allegedly diverting tens of millions of dollars from his Christian nonprofit to himself, his family, and their businesses.

And after the Department of Justice refused to defend against Joe Arpaio's appeal to get his record wiped clean, the non-profit advocacy group, Protect Democracy, filed a request with California’s 9th Circuit Court to appoint a private attorney to defend the Arizona court’s decision. The group hopes to challenge Trump's pardon of Arpaio as unconstitutional by "infring[ing] on the constitutional rights of private litigants and the power of courts to uphold the Constitution, and so is outside the President’s constitutional authority."

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#239432: Apr 20th 2018 at 5:13:21 AM

[up]If that attempt to limit presidential pardons goes through (why do you even have those things?), it's going to be fun watching Joe Arpaio trying to backpeddle on what amounted to a public record admission of guilt in any upcoming reassessment and trial.

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#239433: Apr 20th 2018 at 5:23:25 AM

(why do you even have those things?)

Same reason the Commonwealth has had them since time immemorial - it's a royal prerogative that we just transferred to the President.

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#239434: Apr 20th 2018 at 5:25:10 AM

[up]The "royal prerogative" currently requires parliamentary consultation. What's your excuse for just letting one person go nuts?

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#239435: Apr 20th 2018 at 5:26:45 AM

Before Trump nobody actually went nuts?

BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#239436: Apr 20th 2018 at 5:37:59 AM

So in the continuing push to punish immigrants for wanting to become Americans, checking marriage licenses is the newest way ICE is kicking non-criminal immigrants out of the country. Full article text 

They had shown the immigration officer their proof — the eight years of Facebook photos, their 5-year-old son’s birth certificate, letters from relatives and friends affirming their commitment — and now they were so close, Karah de Oliveira thought, so nearly a normal couple.

Thirteen years after her husband was ordered deported back to Brazil, the official recognition of their marriage would bring him closer to being able to call himself an American. Then the officer reappeared.

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” he said. “The good news is, I’m going to approve your application. Clearly, your marriage is real. The bad news is, ICE is here.”

ICE was Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency charged with arresting and deporting unauthorized immigrants — including, for the moment, Fabiano de Oliveira. In a back room of the immigration office in Lawrence, Mass., two agents were waiting with handcuffs. Her husband was apologizing, saying he was sorry for putting her through all of this.

Karah de Oliveira kissed him goodbye. “I’ll do whatever I can to get you out,” she said.

For decades, marriage to a United States citizen has been a virtual guarantee of legal residency, but with the Trump administration in fierce pursuit of unauthorized immigrants, many who were ordered deported years ago are finding that jobs, home and family are no longer a defense — not even for those who have married Americans.

As the Trump administration arrests thousands of immigrants with no criminal history and reshapes the prospects of even legal immigrants, many who have lived without papers for years are seeking legal status by way of a parent, adult child or spouse who is a citizen or permanent resident.

In a growing number of cases, however, immigrants with old deportation orders that were never enforced are getting the go-ahead after an interview by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles residency and citizenship, only to be arrested by ICE.

“It’s like playing dice in Las Vegas or something,” said William Joyce, a former immigration judge who practices immigration law in Boston. “It’s not 100 percent, but you’re playing with fire if you go to that interview. You can walk in, but you won’t be walking out.”

Like many immigrants detained this way, de Oliveira, a house painter, had no criminal history. To the Trump administration, the other thing they had in common was more germane: a legal but, until now, unenforced obligation to leave the country that had stuck to them for years, even as they pieced together lives and families in the United States.

There's a renewed push to get the Equal Rights Amendment - explicitly banning discrimination based on sex - affirmed to the Constitution. It's only short one more state. Full article text 

Having a sexist in the Oval Office who curries favor with conservative religious groups is having dire consequences. Health workers in developing nations are preparing for a rise in unsafe abortions due to President Trump’s reinstatement of the global gag rule that prohibits federal funding of groups that provide abortion services or referrals. Here at home, his administration has been hostile not only to abortion access, but even to birth control.

But Trump’s presidency is also having some effects he probably doesn’t intend. Rage at the election of a man who boasted about grabbing women’s genitals helped set off the #Me Too! movement. A record number of female candidates are running for office around the country.

And now, on Trump’s watch, feminists could achieve a goal that’s been nearly a century in the making, and that many assumed would never come to pass — the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. It states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

The fight centers on Illinois, where the State Senate recently passed a bill to ratify the E.R.A. If the state House of Representatives also passes the legislation, then Illinois will become the 37th state to ratify the amendment.

Approval by just one more state would bring the measure to the three-quarters threshold required for constitutional amendments. There are a handful of good possibilities, including Florida, Virginia and Utah.

Congress sent the measure to the states in 1972 with a seven-year deadline that was later extended to 1982. Thirty-five states signed on by 1977, then massive conservative opposition arose, stopping further ratification. This recent progress counts as dizzying, considering how long supporters have been at it.

An entire generation of feminists has come of age largely knowing the E.R.A. as their mothers’ and grandmothers’ fight. That’s if they know about the amendment at all.

There are some questions about what will happen if a 38th state ratifies the amendment, given that it would miss the deadline Congress set by at least 36 years, and five states have even voted to rescind their ratifications. But E.R.A. supporters and some legal experts make a case that the amendment should still be recognized, pointing to the 27th Amendment, on congressional pay, which was ratified more than 200 years after its passage by Congress, although no deadline had been set.

Then there’s the question of what the E.R.A. would do. Even the most die-hard proponents of the amendment acknowledge it’s unlikely to radically advance women’s rights, at least in the short term. That’s because many courts have applied the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to sex discrimination, creating a body of case law that’s functioned as a sort of de facto E.R.A. As to whether the amendment could actually undo some programs that are beneficial to women, like sex-based affirmative action efforts, legal experts point to the fact that though the Constitution already protects the rights of people regardless of race, race-based affirmative action continues to exist.

The fight against the E.R.A. is being led by groups on the religious right like the Illinois Family Institute, using arguments that are the ideological heirs of those so vociferously expressed by Phyllis Schlafly, whose group Stop E.R.A. — “stop taking our privileges” — which became the Eagle Forum, prevented the E.R.A.’s ratification at the time.

Those arguments include fear-mongering about how coed locker rooms could become standard and alimony for women outlawed — arguments that are hard to take seriously but that nonetheless helped Schlafly very effectively convince Americans, including many women, that the E.R.A. was bad news.

Another conservative talking point is that the E.R.A. would lead to abortion restrictions being struck down. That outcome is not at all certain, but it would help many women. (For obvious reasons, the anti-E.R.A. crowd already had to slink away from an argument that the amendment would lead to legalizing same-sex marriage.)

Looking at everything the E.R.A. would not do raises the question of why it’s still needed. Here’s why: The court decisions that make up the “de facto E.R.A.” can be undone in a way a constitutional amendment cannot. The E.R.A. would add an extra layer of legal protection for women — and men — against discrimination. This could become especially important if President Trump gets to pick additional conservative Supreme Court justices.

There’s also a symbolic and emotional element to this fight that’s not to be discounted. Ruth Bader Ginsburg summed up this argument in 2014.

“I would like my granddaughters, when they pick up the Constitution, to see that notion — that women and men are persons of equal stature,” she said. “I’d like them to see that is a basic principle of our society.”

Enshrining women’s rights in the Constitution matters. Doing so now, during this presidency, would be particularly fitting.

And one article noting the differences between the Bush and Trump tax cuts, and why Trump's are so much less popular. Full article text 

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A G.O.P. presidential candidate loses the popular vote, but somehow ends up in the White House anyway. His allies in Congress take advantage of his election to ram through a huge tax cut that blows up the budget deficit while disproportionately benefiting the wealthy.

So far this account applies equally to George W. Bush and Donald Trump. But then the story takes a turn. The Bush sales job was effective, but the Trump tax cut was unpopular from the start — in fact, less popular than past tax hikes.

Most Americans say they don’t see any positive effect on their paychecks. Public approval of the tax cut seems, if anything, to be falling.

Which raises the question: Why doesn’t snake oil sell like it used to?

In the past, deficit hypocrisy was an important weapon in the G.O.P. political arsenal. Both parties talked about fiscal responsibility, but only Democrats practiced it, actually paying for policy initiatives like Obamacare. Yet Democrats were punished for doing the right thing, while Republicans seemingly paid no price for their cynicism. Voters focused on the extra money in their pockets, ignoring the consequences of big tax cuts for the rich.

So why is this time different?

Bush and Trump both pushed through big tax cuts for the rich with what amounted to loss-leader cuts for some middle-class families. If you look at estimates of the distribution of their tax cuts by family income, Bush and Trump’s look fairly similar.

But the political background is quite different. In 2000 the U.S. had a budget surplus, and debt had been falling relative to G.D.P., making concerns about long-run fiscal impacts seem remote. By contrast, the U.S. ran large deficits in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and the people who yelled loudest about an imminent debt crisis were the same people who pushed through a $1.5 trillion tax cut.

There are also, I suspect, a couple of Trump-specific issues involved.

Bush ran on his tax cuts from the beginning. Trump, on the other hand, pretended to be a populist and waited until taking office to reveal himself as just another reverse-Robin Hood Republican. This has to be creating some credibility problems. One thing in particular I suspect is registering with voters at some level, even if they don’t know much about the specifics, is the ludicrous optimism of Trump economic promises. Republican claims about the benefits of tax cuts aren’t just out of line with independent estimates; they’re so far out of the ballpark as to be in a different universe.

Anyway, the bottom line is that tax cuts just don’t sell like they used to. Which leaves you wondering what, exactly, Republicans have left to run on.

Republicans needn’t despair. After all, they’ll always have racism to fall back on. And with the tax cut fizzling, I predict that we’ll be seeing a lot of implicit — even explicit — appeals to racism in the months again.

The Take That! at the end is especially nice. I only wish it was wrong ...

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#239437: Apr 20th 2018 at 5:38:32 AM

[up][up][up]A lot of political norms are built around the (naive) assumption no one will ever be so cruel and stupid while occupying the office. We might think There Should Be a Law, but there really isn't any predicting the depths of a society's depravity until it's seen firsthand.

edited 20th Apr '18 5:38:47 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#239438: Apr 20th 2018 at 6:03:29 AM

@Euo: Because when we copied the rule, the rule that the monarch does nothing independently hadn't fully solidified yet (it was less than a century after the last independent royal veto). Also, because it's meant to be part of the system of checks and balances - a Presidential power that can be used to fix judicial and Congressional errors.

edited 20th Apr '18 6:04:32 AM by Ramidel

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#239439: Apr 20th 2018 at 7:14:24 AM

The check on the presidential pardon power is the voters. It's meant to be used in edge cases where the justice system has failed and someone is facing punishment that they do not deserve. If a president goes around pardoning his political allies and personal friends regardless of the actual justness of their cases, it's expected that they'll face political backlash for it, which keeps such abuse to a minimum.

The issue with Trump, as always, is that so many people are willing to uncritically support everything he does just because he's the one doing it. If people aren't willing to call anyone out on their bullshit, then it's easy to get away with all kinds of bullshit.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Raptorslash Since: Oct, 2010
#239440: Apr 20th 2018 at 7:47:21 AM

Trump's ability to shrug off things that would provoke massive backlash from any other candidate, due to his uncritical base, is one of the most infuriating things about him.

Such as how such a huge deal was made of Hillary's emails! Uranium! Benghazi! when Trump's scandals (his business dealings, his bankruptcies, Trump U, his relationship with Russia, his social attitudes in general) were much more alarming and ominous.

Larkmarn Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#239441: Apr 20th 2018 at 8:12:45 AM

[up] Standard disclaimer: Yes, he's not as Teflon Don as he memetically is, but he still at the very least is much more resistant to controversy than other politicians.

Just saying, because this thread tends to launch into "well what do you expect/he's not getting impeached overnight/wait for Mueller" mode when someone makes the claim that he's a Karma Houdini.

edited 20th Apr '18 8:14:26 AM by Larkmarn

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#239442: Apr 20th 2018 at 8:23:07 AM

"Democratic Party files lawsuit targeting Russia, Trump campaign; alleges campaign 'gleefully welcomed Russia's help' in 2016 election - Get updates at Reuters.com

TroperOnAStickV2 Call me Stick from Redneck country Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: is commanded to— WANK!
Call me Stick
#239443: Apr 20th 2018 at 8:37:49 AM

[up][up]He's been a (relative) Karma Houdini so far. That said, the dominoes are seemingly starting to fall, so karma may very well catch up to him yet.

Yes I damn well know that that's not what karma actually is, and it's a very minor sticking point with me. I didn't make the trope.

edited 20th Apr '18 8:41:34 AM by TroperOnAStickV2

Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted.
FyodorDose Since: Mar, 2018
#239444: Apr 20th 2018 at 9:50:19 AM

I'll admit I'm quite pleased to see the pro trump part of the GOP finally begin to die. Maybe after this fiasco we can get a real conservative party

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#239445: Apr 20th 2018 at 9:57:38 AM

Dying out? If anything the Trump wing is gaining ground on the other factions.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Raptorslash Since: Oct, 2010
#239446: Apr 20th 2018 at 10:16:20 AM

My impression is that the pro-Trump faction is chasing out the more moderate conservative factions.

BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#239447: Apr 20th 2018 at 10:16:21 AM

Speaking of the GOP getting away with everything, Beto O'Rourke is not ahead in the polls, no matter what the media said, because apparently people who answer polls don't actually vote. Full article note 

It’s mid-April, and a reputable pollster is already declaring that the Senate race between Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas is “too close to call,” at 47 percent to 44 percent. It’s Quinnipiac’s first poll in Texas, and the first major poll of one of the most closely watched races in the country.

It’s also very hard to believe.

One can acknowledge that an April poll of registered voters, weighted under certain conditions, shows a close race. And there’s no reason for the Cruz campaign to love this number. But such an early poll, along with all of the glowing tributes to O’Rourke, have built up expectations that will be extremely difficult for O’Rourke to meet in November. Though O’Rourke is positioned to post the best statewide showing for a Texas Democrat in years and could conceivably win, the task is far more uphill than national fascination with the El Paso progressive suggests.

The gap between potential and likely voters in Texas is vast, and it’s particularly vast for the voters O’Rourke is relying on. Quinnipiac’s poll is weighted to the demographics in the state’s Census count, as is “protocol” for these early polls of registered voters, James Henson, director of the University of Texas–Austin’s Texas Politics Project, told me on Wednesday. That likely means that it over-counts Hispanic voters. Henson has seen this story before. “In Texas, Hispanic turnout—and therefore Democratic turnout—is always lower than the weighted sample,” he said in an email. “It’s a standard dynamic here.”

The poll also showed noticeably liberal preferences among independents, even though Texas independents tend to be more right-leaning. Independents in Texas supported Trump over Clinton by 14 percentage points in 2016, according to exit polling, but the Quinnipiac poll found only 28 percent of independents in Texas approve of Trump compared to 64 percent who disapprove. Either that group is re-aligning fast, or a demographically weighted sample of registered voters isn’t giving a crisp preview of likely voter turnout in November.

“The particular confluence of voter turnout, state demographics, and party identification in Texas in recent history meant that Democrats at the top of the state ticket generally poll much better in April than they do in the vote count in November,” Henson said.

Texas political experts with whom I’ve discussed the race over the last few months—regardless of their position on the political spectrum—all express exasperation at the breathless coverage of O’Rourke’s bid, which treats his grass-roots campaign against Cruz almost as prophecy awaiting certain fulfillment.

The hype reached its first crescendo ahead of the March 6 primary. Early voting for Democrats had surged, especially in major metropolitan areas. In the top 10 most populous counties, early Democratic voting more than doubled while Republicans’ share increased only marginally.

But then Election Day came, and Republicans showed up. More than 1.5 million Republicans, or 10.12 percent of registered voters, voted in the Republican Senate primary, while just over 1 million, or 6.8 percent of registered voters, voted in the Democratic Senate primary. That’s a vast improvement on Democratic turnout from the 2014 Senate primary, when just over a half-million Democrats showed up compared to Republicans’ 1.3 million. But to double one’s primary turnout and still only comprise about 40 percent of total votes should have been a cooler of ice water on the regurgitated narrative about how Texas is ready to turn blue any minute now. Democrats made progress. There are still more Republicans.

“At the end of the day, yesterday was more or less a regular Texas election,” Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith told Vox the day after the primary. “More Republicans turned out than Democrats.”

While Cruz received 1.3 million, or 85 percent, of the vote in his primary, O’Rourke, who represents El Paso in the state’s westernmost district, picked up just over 641,000 votes, or 62 percent of primary votes. More worrisomely, he lost dozens of border counties to a virtual unknown, Sema Hernandez. That’s not necessarily a sign of antipathy from Democratic primary voters, but it does raise questions about whether O’Rourke can break the cycle of underwhelming Latino turnout. O’Rourke’s campaign noted that some voters who may support him in the general election might have voted in the Republican primary, because they may live in red-enough areas where down-ballot primary races are, effectively, the general election.

The Quinnipiac poll reinforces how much work remains in O’Rourke’s long quest to introduce himself to voters statewide, let alone persuade them. Even after a year of campaigning, he survey showed that 53 percent of registered voters hadn’t heard enough about O’Rourke to form an opinion. The good news for O’Rourke is that he has raised the oceans of cash necessary to make that introduction. The bad news is that the Cruz campaign and its super PAC allies will surely be spending substantial sums, too, to define O’Rourke in a much different light.

The overhyped media coverage leading into the primary obscured the real gains Democrats might be making in the state. “If you strip away the unrealistic expectations, this will probably be a good cycle for the Democrats, one of the best they’ve had in a long time,” Henson said. “But it’s kind of hard to write a headline, to build a narrative, whether you’re a reporter or a Democratic fundraiser or candidate recruiter that says, ‘Democrats: Inching Back from Near Death.’

And inching back from near death is a far cry from beating Ted Cruz.

Cruz is often mocked for—how shall we put it?—his lack of charisma or spontaneous charm. But that’s not the worst trait when you’re a Republican running for re-election in a red state. He is a formidable campaigner with a formidable team. I’m not sure Cruz has ever said a word that wasn’t carefully considered, and that’s a problem for O’Rourke: Cruz does not make the sort of boneheaded errors that can open the door to a long-shot candidate.

The Cruz campaign sees Texas as rigidly red with few persuadables among likely voters.

“Basically every quarter, we score the voter file … using predictive analytics and a series of algorithms we built out over the state of Texas going back to 2012,” Cruz’s pollster, Chris Wilson, told me in an interview shortly after the primary. “And every quarter, the file is more Republican than it was the prior quarter.”

To give you a sense of the granularity through which the Cruz campaign is looking at the data and targeting voters accordingly, Wilson, who’s also the pollster for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, shared a figure with me.

“I’ve already built out the models for the fall, the general election,” he said. “And I can tell you that as of today, there are exactly 2,068,746 voters in Texas that do not currently plan to vote, but if they did vote, would vote for Greg Abbott. And they’d vote Republican.”

In order to win, O’Rourke needs to accelerate one aspect of very recent Texas political history—Republicans’ weakening in major metropolitan areas—and defy the low-turnout trends that have doomed other recent, initially optimistic efforts to “turn Texas blue.”

For the former, as Henson put it, O’Rourke needs to “hasten the decay” in the “inner suburban rings where there are some signs of the decay of previous Republican advantages.” That decay, he says, is probably “slightly more prosperous minority voters that you want to get to vote,” along with swaying “upper-middle-class Latinos that are voting Republican.”

I asked him about another demographic that Democrats are always eager to predict as a just-around-the-corner en masse defection from Donald Trump’s GOP: Republican women. Henson shared with me some recent polling results of Republican women that showed only 29 percent of them had a favorable opinion of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and that a plurality felt the recent attention towards sexual harassment was leading to the unfair treatment of men. Similarly, only 17 percent viewed the #Me Too! movement favorably.

“Republican women are not very persuadable,” Henson said.

If O’Rourke can turn out the purpling inner suburbs of cities like Dallas and Houston, then it’s a matter of turning out the rest of the state’s dormant Democratic populace in a way that hasn’t been done anytime recently. Texans are cynical that this will happen.

“I believe there are probably enough people who identify as Democrats or progressives in Texas that if they all turned out to vote, you’d have competitive elections,” Evan Smith said in the Vox interview. “And if I were 6 foot, 8 inches, I’d be playing basketball for the New York Knicks.”

I’m inclined to believe those whose full-time job is to study Texas politics and who are mystified at why O’Rourke is given a credible chance to beat Cruz. But sometimes, when you’re so deep in the weeds of recent evidence, and so jaded from previous overhyped efforts, you find yourself looking at a paradigm shift only after it’s happened. Five Thirty Eight’s Nate Silver made a useful comparison to another recent election where the pros who’d managed the turf for decades thought they had the voting patterns nailed, down to a person.

“I think I’m on team Cruz-could-actually-lose,” Silver tweeted. “The arguments to the contrary remind me a little too much of the arguments that Democrats could never lose a presidential election in Pennsylvania.”

"Republican women are not very persuadable." Because they're Republican for a reason. And that reason is hatred.

Also, did anyone even know that the GOP was writing an alternative to the FAMILY Act? And in typical Republican fashion, it's built as a way to destroy Social Security and drive millions more Americans into poverty. Full article text 

In 2016, for the first time in history, both parties’ presidential candidates called for paid parental leave. Recently, in consultation with Ivanka Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio put together a Republican alternative to the Democrats’ long-existing but stalled plan, the FAMILY Act. Sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Rosa De Lauro, the FAMILY Act would set up a national insurance fund into which employers and employees would contribute (only about the cost of a cup of coffee per week), which people can access at the birth or adoption of a child or personal or family illness. The competing Republican plan would, in contrast, allow individuals to borrow from Social Security to replace around half of their usual income while they take leave. A study by the Urban Institute out Thursday analyzes the costs of such a plan. Its finding: The plan isn’t cost-neutral, as Republicans claim, and would cut or withhold Social Security benefits from future generations of parents—from a 3 percent reduction in retirement benefits for parents of one child to a 10 percent for parents of four children.

Urban Institute’s projections suggest that allowing people to borrow from Social Security would delay retirement benefits 20 to 25 weeks and would reduce future benefits by 3 to 10 percent. But more dramatically, borrowing against the future without creating additional revenue streams would fundamentally “undermine social security.” The Urban Institute finding is not at all surprising, given where the plan came from. The idea for using Social Security to fund paid leave originated with the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. IWF President Carrie Lukas has said publicly that she’d like to see Social Security as we know it become more of a personal (and private) insurance program, which she sees as the best thing conservatives can hope for, since “Americans are not going to accept the wholesale elimination of Social Security—at least not any time soon.”

And, unlike the FAMILY Act, the Rubio plan is limited to providing paid leave to new parents. (Under the U.S.’s current unpaid leave plan, the Family and Medical Leave Act, most people use leave for a personal or family illness.) Since discriminatory wages between men and women emerge when women have children, only applying the law to new parents might justify discriminatory hiring of people of childbearing age. And by forcing people to delay taking Social Security, those who most need it, such as workers who have sustained injuries or disabilities over the course of their lifetimes (think: intensive domestic work or other physical labor), will be unable to take it when they need it. For these workers, simply delaying retirement to earn back what they took out earlier in life is much easier said than done.

The appeal of the Rubio proposal is that it wouldn’t impose costs on employers, wouldn’t require new taxes, and would provide meaningful paid leave. It almost sounds too good to be true. And it really is. The way Social Security works is that you pay taxes into it when you’re young and working. Those cover benefits for people retiring today. But by allowing people to borrow against the program, it turns it into a forced retirement savings plan. Under this plan, according to Richard W. Johnson, an Urban Institute senior fellow and co-author of the study, the taxes working people are paying now would be split into other pots, or double-dipped: “Your taxes are going to pay for your [Social Security] benefit, but also your parental leave benefit, and also retiree benefits for someone else. That creates a burden on the system that’s not trivial.” And if you were to become disabled or die before “repaying” the parental leave Social Security “loan” you took out to have a baby, the government is on the hook for the cost. Ultimately, this is how the Republican plan could threaten Social Security as we know it, and it’s precisely why having a publicly funded retirement plan that pools workers’ contributions rather than individualizing them is so important in the first place.

If Republicans are genuinely interested in providing Americans paid leave at last, why not just hop on board with a similar but better-thought-out policy suggestion like the FAMILY Act? Though still not as much time as infants, mothers, and parents ultimately need, the 12 weeks of inclusive paid family and medical leave it would provide would set an important floor for the country. And we need to find a way to pay for that without overburdening individual families or the system so many families are relying on for their retirement. According to Johnson, this decision is ultimately about what we value. “What people need to consider is who should pay for the cost of raising children. Given that the next generation is vital to economic growth and the health of the Social Security system, does it make sense for the costs of raising a family to be shared more broadly across society than just be the private cost of parents?”

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#239448: Apr 20th 2018 at 10:24:14 AM

Frankly I'm not impressed by their logic, singular polls obviously should not be seen as the Gospel truth but outliers can be right and to outright reject it is rather myopic. It's something worth noting and paying attention to.

edited 20th Apr '18 10:25:29 AM by Fourthspartan56

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#239449: Apr 20th 2018 at 10:34:33 AM

"I'll admit I'm quite pleased to see the pro trump part of the GOP finally begin to die. Maybe after this fiasco we can get a real conservative party"

Look, I know it's 4/20, and everything, but surely you've realized that the opposite is happening? That establishment Republicans are being chased out by Trump's henchmen? That an unprecedented number are retiring ahead of the elections? What are you talking about, my dude? Trump's solidifying his control over the GOP.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
FyodorDose Since: Mar, 2018
#239450: Apr 20th 2018 at 10:41:11 AM

That's the thing- if trump goes down, he takes the republican party with him. All the moderates are jumping ship because they see the writing on the wall. Might as well kill em all at once.


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