Ouze wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Ask and you shall receive. You might need to go back and forth a little to put the info into context.

http://www.justfactsdaily.com/illegal-immigrants-and-federal-income-taxes

Some facts one can learn from your first source:

The Bush Administration didn't lie about WMDs
Global Warming is mostly made up bs
George W Bush didn't sign a SOFA that required the withdrawal of troops from Iraq
The south isn't really that racist

This is a site run by a guy who wrote a book claiming you can scientifically prove the Bible is true and evolution is a lie

I didn't read the rest of your links because I realize now literally anything else I do with my time is a better use

 Peregrine wrote:

 Stevefamine wrote:
I only like Sessions because he is anti-drug

I'm rather horrified that you'd say this, given the complete failure of the war on drugs. And besides, isn't the republican party supposed to be big on personal responsibility? Why is it suddenly good to have nanny-state regulations about what drugs you're allowed to use?

 Ustrello wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
In Oklahoma City the trashman (at least when I talked to them a while ago) makes more than the medic on the ambulance.

But yeah, it's not like fruit is left rotting in the fields when migrant labor isn't around to pick them or anything like that.

- Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

- Right - so I really don't like the argument that migrants just do jobs that Americans don't want to do. Not only does it make Americans seem lazy and unwilling to do hard work - which I don't think is true. It tries to justify migrants taking jobs from American's by saying American's don't want to do this work - that's not true - Americans will do this work if the price is right.

Hope you enjoy your 15 dollar carton of OJ maybe then the party of small government will deem it worthy to raise minimum wage to 9.50 an hour

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
They're not talking about trash man jobs, Xeno. They're talking about jobs working the fields or digging ditches or working in sweatshops.

Working in fields and digging ditches is hard work. You should get paid over minimum wage to do them. If there weren't people walking around begging to work for less than minimum wage - these jobs would be filled by Americans on a legal wage. That is all I am saying. You don't just dig a ditch to dig a ditch - you dig a ditch to clear the way for a big construction project which almost certain has the budget to afford this labor.

Do you honestly believe this to be the case?

Those jobs have, here in the US, had a tradition of being done by poor immigrant labor.
The Irish on the East Coast in relation to the railroads and the Chinese on the West Coast for the railroads immediately spring to mind.
And that's not getting into the whole sharecropper thing post-Civil War.

The world was a lot different then. The US was a lot different then. Indentured servitude, slavery, no minimum wages. The US was also in dire need of laborers to do the works of building a nation from nothing.

This is a false equivalency. The US, as of the time of the Civil War and the shoddy treatment given to the Irish and Chinese railway workers was an established country.

How can you compare that time to now? There aren't enough jobs to go around. 109 million people on welfare (granted some of these people do work) with a terribly low labor participation rate.

There's a low labor participation rate because of the fact that companies are not creating jobs. Every single time this argument of "low labor participation rate" gets brought up, it's important to remember that there is a lot more to it than that.

More and more of the kinds of jobs that would have been done by the kinds of people on welfare? They're automated now. An assembly line now doesn't need fifty people with virtually no education beyond "Insert tab A into slot B, pass to next station"--it needs someone who can potentially spot issues with the programming or mechanics with specialized training to ensure that things flow smoothly.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
In Oklahoma City the trashman (at least when I talked to them a while ago) makes more than the medic on the ambulance.

But yeah, it's not like fruit is left rotting in the fields when migrant labor isn't around to pick them or anything like that.

- Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

- Right - so I really don't like the argument that migrants just do jobs that Americans don't want to do. Not only does it make Americans seem lazy and unwilling to do hard work - which I don't think is true. It tries to justify migrants taking jobs from American's by saying American's don't want to do this work - that's not true - Americans will do this work if the price is right.

And there's the statement I expected right frigging there.

Americans want to be paid a certain amount for what they consider a "menial" job, yet they also want to whine about foreigners(some of whom were doctors or scientists in the area that they came from) taking those exact jobs from them.
It's not an implication of "Americans being lazy", it comes down to the fact that for these kinds of people they complain and complain about >insert ethnicity here< taking jobs from them or suckling away at welfare programs--when they're on those exact welfare programs and receiving assistance that they don't realize where it comes from.

Look at how many Trumpers didn't even know that the Affordable Care Act is what was ensuring that they could get insurance. There is a very real disconnect between reality and the view of these people, skewed by the politicians that they follow and the media that they insist is "right" or "telling it like it is".

 Xenomancers wrote:
IMO this argument is weak but I at least ask you this question. So all these jobs that "people don't want to do" the jobs that undocumented people take. Would these jobs simply not get done if not for undocumented workers? Or would these jobs be done by citizens for a legal wage? I think the answer is pretty obvious but what do you think?

No one wants to be a trash man. However being a job working for a city usually - you are going to have to be a citizen on the books to get paid...guess what? Trash men get paid pretty well - because jobs people don't want to do should offer more pay than the ones that people want to do. Pretty simple market principles here.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Working in fields and digging ditches is hard work. You should get paid over minimum wage to do them. If there weren't people walking around begging to work for less than minimum wage - these jobs would be filled by Americans on a legal wage. That is all I am saying. You don't just dig a ditch to dig a ditch - you dig a ditch to clear the way for a big construction project which almost certain has the budget to afford this labor.

 Xenomancers wrote:
- Right - so I really don't like the argument that migrants just do jobs that Americans don't want to do. Not only does it make Americans seem lazy and unwilling to do hard work - which I don't think is true. It tries to justify migrants taking jobs from American's by saying American's don't want to do this work - that's not true - Americans will do this work if the price is right.

 Xenomancers wrote:
How can you compare that time to now? There aren't enough jobs to go around. 109 million people on welfare (granted some of these people do work)

with a terribly low labor participation rate.

 sebster wrote:
I'm just wondering what everyone thinks the biggest story in US politics is right now?

Is it the absolute fail of the AHCA, which came after 6 years and 60 something pretend repeal attempts against ACA. I mean, I don't think it was that amazing that Republicans turned out to not actually have a plan for replacement, nor was it that much news that their plan failed, healthcare reform is hard. But Republicans giving up after three weeks was amazing.

Or is the actual AHCA bill itself a bigger story? The bill at its core was a trillion dollar tax cut for the rich, funded by cuts to medicaid and insurance subsidies. There was nothing done to mitigate this or even to conceal it, and as a result the bill was exactly as popular as you'd expect, with one poll at 17% approve. Despite this, Republicans still got about 200 representatives to agree to vote for this thing. About 85% of Republican House Reps saw a bill that worked to remove insurance coverage from 24 million people in order to fund a tax cut for the rich, saw it was horrifically unpopular, and agreed to sign on anyway. That is an incredibly brazen admission of what the Republican party is really about.

Or is the biggest story right now that after a bunch of Republicans attached to the Trump campaign/administration were caught lying about their contacts with Russian government officials, now there's more Republicans acting to distract, disrupt or delay inquiries in to the Trump campaign/administration's connections to Russia? I mean, while at this point we don't know exactly what the connections are, it would take an act of wilful delusion to pretend we aren't seeing an attempt at a cover up.

 reds8n wrote:
It's amazing quite how well you've learned from the Russians.

Yep. Trump takes repeated trips to one of his favourite golf clubs, and says it is to meet with important people, and that he won't be playing any golf. But he won't give the name of a single person he's meeting with. Then we find out that there's been $16k in golf buggies rented by the secret service to follow Trump around... as he sits in his meeting room meeting with people.

I mean, I get it, it's politics, people lie. But normally there is some kind of plausibility to those lies. Trump is very different, happy to tell blatant lies about the most petty things, believing there is just no political blowback to being caught telling an obvious lie. It is, as you say, much more in the Russian tradition of politics than the American.

Republican senators should change the filibuster back to what it was before 1970. The Senate’s coming confirmation of Neil Gorsuch will improve the Supreme Court, and Democrats’ incontinent opposition to him will inadvertently improve the Senate — if Republicans are provoked to thoroughly reform the filibuster. If eight Democrats will not join the 52 Republicans in providing 60 votes to end debate and bring Gorsuch’s nomination to a vote, Republicans should go beyond extending to Supreme Court nominees the prohibition of filibusters concerning other judicial nominees.

Senate rules should be changed to rectify a mistake made 47 years ago. There was no limit on Senate debate until adoption of the cloture rule empowering two-thirds of senators present and voting to limit debate. This occurred on March 8, 1917 — 29 days before Congress declared war on Germany — after a filibuster prevented a vote on a momentous matter, the Armed Ship Bill, which would have authorized President Woodrow Wilson to arm American merchant ships. (He armed them anyway.)

In 1975, imposing cloture was made easier by requiring a vote of three-fifths of the entire Senate, a change the importance of which derived from what Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D., Mont.) did in 1970: He created the “two-track” system whereby the Senate, by unanimous consent or the consent of the minority leader, can set aside a filibustered bill and move on to other matters. Hitherto, filibustering senators had to hold the floor, testing their stamina and inconveniencing everyone else to encourage the majority to compromise.

In the 52 years after 1917, there were only 58 cloture motions filed; in the 46 years since 1970 there have been 1,700. Wisdom about the filibuster comes today from the other side of the Capitol, where House rules make filibustering impossible. Representative Tom McClintock, a conservative California Republican, writing in Hillsdale College’s publication Imprimis, praises the Senate tradition that “a significant minority should be able to extend debate” in order to deepen deliberation. Post-1970 filibusters, however, are used to prevent debate.

As McClintock says, “the mere threat of a filibuster suffices to kill a bill as the Senate shrugs and goes on to other business.” McClintock urges the Senate to make a “motion to proceed” to consideration of a bill undebatable and hence immune to filibustering: “Great debates should be had on great matters — but not great debates on whether to debate.” And he says the Senate should abandon the two-track system. This would prevent the Senate from conducting other business during a filibuster but would require filibusterers to hold the floor. As he says, it was this mutual inconvenience that, between 1917 and 1970, made filibusters rare and that intensified the pressure to resolve the impasse by way of compromise. As a result of today’s Senate paralysis, McClintock says, “The atrophy of the legislative branch drives a corresponding hypertrophy of the executive branch.”

The promiscuous use of faux filibusters — requiring 60 votes to proceed with consideration of, or votes on, ordinary legislation — blurs the implicit constitutional principle that extraordinary majorities are required only for extraordinary matters, such as proposing constitutional amendments, overriding vetoes, and ratifying treaties. The trivialization of filibusters — no longer requiring them to be strenuous and disruptive events — has deprived them of dignity. Restoring them to what they were would affirm the principle that majoritarianism — simply counting numbers, government by adding machine — should be tempered by a reformed filibuster as a mechanism for measuring the intensity of a minority’s opposition to a majority position.

The Constitution affirms the power of each house of Congress to “determine the rules of its proceedings,” so any Senate procedures are compatible with the Constitution’s text. But the practices made possible by the post-1970 rules have contributed to institutional disequilibrium, destabilizing the Constitution’s design by inciting a dangerous expansion of presidential power. Hence Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett and The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost urge forbidding filibusters of appropriations bills: Democrats have discovered that if they block individual appropriations bills, the entire operation of government will inevitably be rolled into an omnibus appropriations bill, and the majority must either accept it in toto or face a partial shutdown of the government. This maneuver has largely eliminated Congress’s ability to discipline the executive via line-item spending cuts.

Certainly the filibuster fits a non-majoritarian institution in which 585,501 Wyomingites have as much representation as do 39,250,017 Californians. Besides, filibusters delay but do not defeat political processes: Can anyone name anything that a majority of Americans have desired, strongly and protractedly, that has been denied to them because of a filibuster?

 whembly wrote:


Now some conservative pundits want to not only nuke filibuster rules for SCoTUS picks... but for everthing!


When are they going to learn that they do NOT have the stranglehold of their Majority forever... I get that filibustering judges may be a thing of the past... but, for legislations? Ugh...

Sauce.

Republican senators should change the filibuster back to what it was before 1970. The Senate’s coming confirmation of Neil Gorsuch will improve the Supreme Court, and Democrats’ incontinent opposition to him will inadvertently improve the Senate — if Republicans are provoked to thoroughly reform the filibuster. If eight Democrats will not join the 52 Republicans in providing 60 votes to end debate and bring Gorsuch’s nomination to a vote, Republicans should go beyond extending to Supreme Court nominees the prohibition of filibusters concerning other judicial nominees.

Senate rules should be changed to rectify a mistake made 47 years ago. There was no limit on Senate debate until adoption of the cloture rule empowering two-thirds of senators present and voting to limit debate. This occurred on March 8, 1917 — 29 days before Congress declared war on Germany — after a filibuster prevented a vote on a momentous matter, the Armed Ship Bill, which would have authorized President Woodrow Wilson to arm American merchant ships. (He armed them anyway.)

In 1975, imposing cloture was made easier by requiring a vote of three-fifths of the entire Senate, a change the importance of which derived from what Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D., Mont.) did in 1970: He created the “two-track” system whereby the Senate, by unanimous consent or the consent of the minority leader, can set aside a filibustered bill and move on to other matters. Hitherto, filibustering senators had to hold the floor, testing their stamina and inconveniencing everyone else to encourage the majority to compromise.

In the 52 years after 1917, there were only 58 cloture motions filed; in the 46 years since 1970 there have been 1,700. Wisdom about the filibuster comes today from the other side of the Capitol, where House rules make filibustering impossible. Representative Tom McClintock, a conservative California Republican, writing in Hillsdale College’s publication Imprimis, praises the Senate tradition that “a significant minority should be able to extend debate” in order to deepen deliberation. Post-1970 filibusters, however, are used to prevent debate.

As McClintock says, “the mere threat of a filibuster suffices to kill a bill as the Senate shrugs and goes on to other business.” McClintock urges the Senate to make a “motion to proceed” to consideration of a bill undebatable and hence immune to filibustering: “Great debates should be had on great matters — but not great debates on whether to debate.” And he says the Senate should abandon the two-track system. This would prevent the Senate from conducting other business during a filibuster but would require filibusterers to hold the floor. As he says, it was this mutual inconvenience that, between 1917 and 1970, made filibusters rare and that intensified the pressure to resolve the impasse by way of compromise. As a result of today’s Senate paralysis, McClintock says, “The atrophy of the legislative branch drives a corresponding hypertrophy of the executive branch.”

The promiscuous use of faux filibusters — requiring 60 votes to proceed with consideration of, or votes on, ordinary legislation — blurs the implicit constitutional principle that extraordinary majorities are required only for extraordinary matters, such as proposing constitutional amendments, overriding vetoes, and ratifying treaties. The trivialization of filibusters — no longer requiring them to be strenuous and disruptive events — has deprived them of dignity. Restoring them to what they were would affirm the principle that majoritarianism — simply counting numbers, government by adding machine — should be tempered by a reformed filibuster as a mechanism for measuring the intensity of a minority’s opposition to a majority position.

The Constitution affirms the power of each house of Congress to “determine the rules of its proceedings,” so any Senate procedures are compatible with the Constitution’s text. But the practices made possible by the post-1970 rules have contributed to institutional disequilibrium, destabilizing the Constitution’s design by inciting a dangerous expansion of presidential power. Hence Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett and The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost urge forbidding filibusters of appropriations bills: Democrats have discovered that if they block individual appropriations bills, the entire operation of government will inevitably be rolled into an omnibus appropriations bill, and the majority must either accept it in toto or face a partial shutdown of the government. This maneuver has largely eliminated Congress’s ability to discipline the executive via line-item spending cuts.

Certainly the filibuster fits a non-majoritarian institution in which 585,501 Wyomingites have as much representation as do 39,250,017 Californians. Besides, filibusters delay but do not defeat political processes: Can anyone name anything that a majority of Americans have desired, strongly and protractedly, that has been denied to them because of a filibuster?

lonestarr777 wrote:
Whembly, did you really try to justify Trumps administration being caught by 'incidental surveillance' as a potentially bad thing? I may be misunderstanding but isn't this trying to ague that when your mom comes in to the kitchen to make sure sister is washing the dishes that you shouldn't be in trouble for getting in the cookie jar cause your mom wasn't there to check that.

I mean it just boggles my mind that you'd try to make this arguement. I get it Obama bad grrr but come on, Putin worse ragh!

Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Adam Schiff have both castigated Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for his handling of the inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. They should think twice. The issue that has recently seized Nunes is of vital importance to anyone who cares about fundamental civil liberties.

The trail that Nunes is following will inevitably lead back to a particularly significant leak. On Jan. 12, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that “according to a senior U.S. government official, (General Mike) Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29.”

From Nunes’s statements, it’s clear that he suspects that this information came from NSA intercepts of Kislyak’s phone. An Obama official, probably in the White House, “unmasked” Flynn’s name and passed it on to Ignatius.


Regardless of how the government collected on Flynn, the leak was a felony and a violation of his civil rights. But it was also a severe breach of the public trust. When I worked as an NSC staffer in the White House, 2005-2007, I read dozens of NSA surveillance reports every day. On the basis of my familiarity with this system, I strongly suspect that someone in the Obama White House blew a hole in the thin wall that prevents the government from using information collected from surveillance to destroy the lives of the citizens whose privacy it is pledged to protect.

The leaking of Flynn’s name was part of what can only be described as a White House campaign to hype the Russian threat and, at the same time, to depict Trump as Vladimir Putin’s Manchurian candidate. On Dec. 29, Obama announced sanctions against Russia as retribution for its hacking activities. From that date until Trump’s inauguration, the White House aggressively pumped into the media two streams of information: one about Russian hacking; the other about Trump’s Russia connection. In the hands of sympathetic reporters, the two streams blended into one.

A report that appeared the day after Obama announced the sanctions shows how. On Dec. 30, the Washington Post reported on a Russian effort to penetrate the electricity grid by hacking into a Vermont utility, Burlington Electric Department. After noting the breach, the reporters offered a senior administration official to speculate on the Russians’ motives. Did they seek to crash the system, or just to probe it?

This infrastructure hack, the story continued, was part of a broader hacking campaign that included intervention in the election. The story then moved to Trump: “He…has spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite President Obama’s suggestion that the approval for hacking came from the highest levels of the Kremlin.”

The national media mimicked the Post’s reporting. But there was a problem: the hack never happened. It was a false alarm — triggered, it eventually became clear, by Obama’s hype.

On Dec. 29, the DHS and FBI published a report on Russian hacking, which showed the telltale signs of having been rushed to publication. “At every level this report is a failure,” said cyber security expert Robert M. Lee. “It didn’t do what it set out to do, and it didn’t provide useful data. They’re handing out bad information.”

Especially damaging were the hundreds of Internet addresses, supposedly linked to Russian hacking, that the report contained. The FBI and DHS urged network administrators to load the addresses into their system defenses. Some of the addresses, however, belong to platforms that are widely used by the public, including Yahoo servers. At Burlington Electric, an unsuspecting network administrator dutifully loaded the addresses into the monitoring system of the utility’s network. When an employee checked his email, it registered on the system as if Russian hackers were trying to break in.

While the White House was hyping the Russia threat, elements of the press showed a sudden interest in the infamous Steele dossier, which claimed that Russian intelligence services had caught Trump in Moscow in highly compromising situations. The dossier was opposition research paid for by Trump’s political opponents, and it had circulated for months among reporters covering the election. Because it was based on anonymous sources and entirely unverifiable, however, no reputable news organization had dared to touch it.

With a little help from the Obama White House, the dossier became fair game for reporters. A government leak let it be known that the intelligence community had briefed Trump on the dossier. If the president-elect was discussing it with his intelligence briefers, so the reasoning went, perhaps there was something to it after all.

By turning the dossier into hard news, that leak weaponized malicious gossip. The same is true of the Flynn-Kislyak leak. Ignatius used the leak to deepen speculation about collusion between Putin and Trump: “What did Flynn say (to Kislyak),” Ignatius asked, “and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?” The mere fact that Flynn’s conversations were being monitored deepened his appearance of guilt. If he was innocent, why was the government monitoring him?

It should not have been. He had the right to talk to in private — even to a Russian ambassador. Regardless of what one thinks about him or Trump or Putin, this leak should concern anyone who believes that we must erect a firewall between the national security state and our domestic politics. The system that allowed it to happen must be reformed. At stake is a core principle of our democracy: that elected representatives control the government, and not vice versa.

 d-usa wrote:
Filibusters should be required to actually be held in person on the floor, shutting down everything until it is handled. If they can't keep it up in person it shouldn't be a filibuster and get a vote.

 whembly wrote:
Not really... it's more that the GOP were elected to repeal the ACA... not shuffle the chairs on the deck of the sinking Titanic.

Or, the bigger story could be the fact that the previous administration sought out 'incidential survallience' (which in itself is legal)... and the US identities were 'unmasked' (seems legal, but massive potential for abuse) and were illegally disseminated

I think it's because large segments of the population want their happy warrior to fight for their interests, knowing that all politicians lie over just about anything.

Par for the course sadly.

 d-usa wrote:
Filibusters should be required to actually be held in person on the floor, shutting down everything until it is handled. If they can't keep it up in person it shouldn't be a filibuster and get a vote.

 whembly wrote:


Now some conservative pundits want to not only nuke filibuster rules for SCoTUS picks... but for everthing!

 whembly wrote:
Simply asking "what would it take to bring you to the table?".

 Zywus wrote:

 whembly wrote:


Now some conservative pundits want to not only nuke filibuster rules for SCoTUS picks... but for everthing!

So they're in the same situation as Reid now?

Thankfully it's easy enough to fix. They just need to do what you claim Reid should have done

 whembly wrote:
Simply asking "what would it take to bring you to the table?".

 d-usa wrote:
Filibusters should be required to actually be held in person on the floor, shutting down everything until it is handled. If they can't keep it up in person it shouldn't be a filibuster and get a vote.

 Xenomancers wrote:
@sebster -
That's a lot of replying for me to do while at work. Hopfully later I'll be able to respond more directly to your posts.

One thing that I have to respond to now though is this.

Immigration is a huge driving factor in labor participation rate. Undocumented work is essentially a job that an american can't have. It's a job that doesn't exist. 300,000 illegals enter the workforce per year - most of them work - lets just say 50% of the 11 million undocumented migrants have a job here. Some rough quick math suggests to me that illegal immigration is responsible for about a 6% increase in Americans not working. Doesn't seem like nonsense to me.

EU could BREAK UP the US: Juncker in jaw-dropping threat to Trump over support for Brexit

EUROPEAN Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker this afternoon issued a jaw-dropping threat to the United States, saying he could campaign to break up the country in revenge for Donald Trump’s supportive comments about Brexit.

In an extraordinary speech the EU Commission president said he would push for Ohio and Texas to split from the rest of America if the Republican president does not change his tune and become more supportive of the EU. 

The remarks are diplomatic dynamite at a time when relations between Washington and Brussels are already strained over Europe’s meagre contributions to NATO and the US leader’s open preference for dealing with national governments. 

They are by far the most outspoken intervention any senior EU figure has made about Mr Trump and are likely to dismay some European leaders who were hoping to seek a policy of rapprochement with their most important ally. 

Speaking at the centre-right European People Party’s (EPP) annual conference in Malta this afternoon, the EU Commission boss did not hold back in his disdain for the White House chief’s eurosceptic views. 



He said: “Brexit isn’t the end. A lot of people would like it that way, even people on another continent where the newly elected US President was happy that the Brexit was taking place and has asked other countries to do the same. 

“If he goes on like that I am going to promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas in the US.” 

Mr Juncker's comments did not appear to be made in jest and were delivered in a serious tone, although one journalist did report some "chuckles" in the audience and hinted the EU boss may have been joking. The remarks came in the middle of an angry speech in which the top eurocrat railed widely against critics of the EU Commission. 

They will be seen as totally inexplicable at a time when EU-US relations appeared to be on the mend, with Vice-President Mike Pence having completed a largely successful trip to Brussels and the commander-in-chief himself significantly softening his tone towards the EU project. 

Mr Juncker did not criticise Britain at all during his speech, and only made reference to Brexit in relation to Mr Trump and the opportunities it presents for Europe to reform itself. 

He told the audience in Malta: “Brexit isn’t the end of everything. We must consider it to be a new beginning, something that is stronger, something that is better.” 

Speaking before him, EU Council president Donald Tusk was less reserved in his remarks about the UK vote as he tore into the populist politics which led to Brexit. 

The Polish eurocrat said the argument over sovereignty - epitomised by the Vote Leave slogan ‘take back control’ - was “a view that is both foolish and dangerous” and that the EU guaranteed countries’ strength of the world stage.

He also accused populist politicians, such as the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen, of promoting “organised hatred” with their views on immigration.

However his conservative colleague Antonio Tajani, the EU Parliament president, received a rapturous ovation as he launched an impassioned defence of Europe’s “Christian values”. 

In a series of thinly veiled comments about immigration, a major political issue in his homeland and Malta, the Italian official said Europe should do more to defend its historic identity. 

He said: “We shouldn’t be ashamed of saying we’re Christian. We’re Christian, it is our history. 

“If we leave our identity we will have in Europe all identities but not European identities. For this we need to strengthen our identity. 

“It is impossible to win without identity, without our values. Of course we are different, many languages, many ideas, but we are united on the values and this is the most important content.” 

 whembly wrote:
When are they going to learn that they do NOT have the stranglehold of their Majority forever... I get that filibustering judges may be a thing of the past... but, for legislations? Ugh...

 Ouze wrote:
I totally agree. I think the biggest problem with the filibuster is actually that just saying you're gonna do it is functionally the same as doing it. I don't know how to codify this, exactly, but if you feel strongly enough about filibustering something you should be required to actually not yield the floor for however long, reading the phone book, etc etc.

 sebster wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
@sebster -
That's a lot of replying for me to do while at work. Hopfully later I'll be able to respond more directly to your posts.

I do that, yeah

One thing that I have to respond to now though is this.

Immigration is a huge driving factor in labor participation rate. Undocumented work is essentially a job that an american can't have. It's a job that doesn't exist. 300,000 illegals enter the workforce per year - most of them work - lets just say 50% of the 11 million undocumented migrants have a job here. Some rough quick math suggests to me that illegal immigration is responsible for about a 6% increase in Americans not working. Doesn't seem like nonsense to me.

No, because that isn't how the economy works. There isn't a finite amount of jobs, and so if someone takes one then there's one less job left for everyone else. Think about 10,000 immigrants coming in and working 10,000 jobs. They'll earn let's say 20,000 each, for a total of $200 million. They will then spend that $200m, which creates another 10,000 jobs, plus or minus.

And many of those 10,000 jobs simply won't exist at all without the migrant labour. To be able to export in a cost competitive way, industries like fruit need cheap, productive labour. If you force them to employ Americans, then many of the businesses will actually just stop producing export goods entirely, and maybe even lose much of their domestic production to foreign imports. This would mean no-one is paid to pick the fruit, the company has less profits to spread across the economy, and wealth and therefore overall employment is reduced.

Also, participation rate is primarily a demographic measure. It is driven mostly by the number of people who are too young to work, or too old to work. It has steadily decline in the last decade because the ranks of retired people have increased markedly. It's been used by the right wing a lot in the last 8 years because they didn't want to use the unemployment rate, because the unemployment rate improved dramatically.

 Breotan wrote:
I came across this and just began to laugh at the absurdity of it. Apparently there's this guy in the UN named Jean-Claude Juncker who wants to push for Texas and Ohio to cede from the USA because he thinks President Trump isn't supportive enough of the EU (iirc, President Trump supports brexit).

Anyway, this guy's passive-aggressive hissy-fit had me giggling so I thought I'd share.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/785813/European-Union-EU-boss-threatens-break-up-US-retaliation-Trump-Brexit-support

EU could BREAK UP the US: Juncker in jaw-dropping threat to Trump over support for Brexit

EUROPEAN Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker this afternoon issued a jaw-dropping threat to the United States, saying he could campaign to break up the country in revenge for Donald Trump’s supportive comments about Brexit.

In an extraordinary speech the EU Commission president said he would push for Ohio and Texas to split from the rest of America if the Republican president does not change his tune and become more supportive of the EU. 

The remarks are diplomatic dynamite at a time when relations between Washington and Brussels are already strained over Europe’s meagre contributions to NATO and the US leader’s open preference for dealing with national governments. 

They are by far the most outspoken intervention any senior EU figure has made about Mr Trump and are likely to dismay some European leaders who were hoping to seek a policy of rapprochement with their most important ally. 

Speaking at the centre-right European People Party’s (EPP) annual conference in Malta this afternoon, the EU Commission boss did not hold back in his disdain for the White House chief’s eurosceptic views. 



He said: “Brexit isn’t the end. A lot of people would like it that way, even people on another continent where the newly elected US President was happy that the Brexit was taking place and has asked other countries to do the same. 

“If he goes on like that I am going to promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas in the US.” 

Mr Juncker's comments did not appear to be made in jest and were delivered in a serious tone, although one journalist did report some "chuckles" in the audience and hinted the EU boss may have been joking. The remarks came in the middle of an angry speech in which the top eurocrat railed widely against critics of the EU Commission. 

They will be seen as totally inexplicable at a time when EU-US relations appeared to be on the mend, with Vice-President Mike Pence having completed a largely successful trip to Brussels and the commander-in-chief himself significantly softening his tone towards the EU project. 

Mr Juncker did not criticise Britain at all during his speech, and only made reference to Brexit in relation to Mr Trump and the opportunities it presents for Europe to reform itself. 

He told the audience in Malta: “Brexit isn’t the end of everything. We must consider it to be a new beginning, something that is stronger, something that is better.” 

Speaking before him, EU Council president Donald Tusk was less reserved in his remarks about the UK vote as he tore into the populist politics which led to Brexit. 

The Polish eurocrat said the argument over sovereignty - epitomised by the Vote Leave slogan ‘take back control’ - was “a view that is both foolish and dangerous” and that the EU guaranteed countries’ strength of the world stage.

He also accused populist politicians, such as the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen, of promoting “organised hatred” with their views on immigration.

However his conservative colleague Antonio Tajani, the EU Parliament president, received a rapturous ovation as he launched an impassioned defence of Europe’s “Christian values”. 

In a series of thinly veiled comments about immigration, a major political issue in his homeland and Malta, the Italian official said Europe should do more to defend its historic identity. 

He said: “We shouldn’t be ashamed of saying we’re Christian. We’re Christian, it is our history. 

“If we leave our identity we will have in Europe all identities but not European identities. For this we need to strengthen our identity. 

“It is impossible to win without identity, without our values. Of course we are different, many languages, many ideas, but we are united on the values and this is the most important content.” 

 sebster wrote:

Steelmage99 wrote:
I seem to hear and read that the hearings concerning the Trump/Russia connection are cancelled/put on hold.

Does anybody know anything about this?

Devin Nunes, Republican and chair of the House Investigative Committee, abruptly cancelled his meeting with former acting AG Sally Yates. She's the one that Bush fired after she said she wouldn't enforce his travel ban. But she's also the person that was briefed about Michael Flynn's conversations with Russia, and who will state that the official Whitehouse line given about what they knew and when was not true. Obviously the Trump administration and the Republican party can't have that, so they're doing what they can to delay testimony. First the Whitehouse, through Jeff Sessions heading up the Dept of Justice, argued that Yates couldn't testify as she was under client confidence, without Whitehouse permission. Yates and her lawyer disagree, saying it is inconsistent with past congressional inquiries, particularly on matters where many other officials have already made public statements to the committee.

Thing is though, the Trump admin doesn't want the PR hit of actually forbidding Yates from testifying, that would make it obvious they're silencing her because she will show Pence and the others who went on the record about what the Whitehouse knew about Flynn and when were lying. So they're instead decided to not say yes or no. Yates can't testify until she gets a yes, it will be another obvious part of the cover up if Trump says no, and so they just didn't answer.

Obviously you can't do that forever, so they hatched a plan with their man Nunes in the investigative committee, that he would cancel the hearing with Yates, and then just not schedule a new one. That way the Trump admin won't ever have to pick between letting Yates testify and prove them liars, or prevent her and show once again that they're engaged in a cover up.

It would look suss, and wouldn't actually be within Nunes power to block only Yates from testifying, but what he has absolute power over is the scheduling of future committee hearings. So Nunes plan at this point is to just not call another committee hearing.

It's still a dumb plan, obviously, the whole thing is absolutely transparent and is still nothing more than a stalling plan that kicks the problem down the road for another month or so. But it's like that great line from "All The President's Men";
"The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
When are they going to learn that they do NOT have the stranglehold of their Majority forever... I get that filibustering judges may be a thing of the past... but, for legislations? Ugh...

I was thinking about the point I was making earlier re the filibuster of judicial nominees. I said at the time that it was the result of the Republican decision to use the filibuster on most Obama nominees, purely as a political strategy, and not because many of the judges were unqualified. I was saying it was that decision that caused Reid to make his call to cut veto power on all but SC nominations.

But I've been thinking about that a little more, and there's probably a step before that which action from Republicans. Partisanship. Once the parties line up as two armed camps absolutely divided on all issues, then the minority party is going to make excessive use of powers like filibuster, and the majority party is going to strip those powers away.

If this kind of thing makes you uneasy, the idea of the US moving to what would be something a lot more like a parliamentary system, then you have to find a way to move back to the old bi-partisan style of US politics.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:
I totally agree. I think the biggest problem with the filibuster is actually that just saying you're gonna do it is functionally the same as doing it. I don't know how to codify this, exactly, but if you feel strongly enough about filibustering something you should be required to actually not yield the floor for however long, reading the phone book, etc etc.

The thing about the filibuster is that it isn't meant to block a bill, it's meant to continue debate on that bill. The problem with cloture is that people don't actually continue debating the bill, they just stop talking about it all together.

The point is not for a minority to be able to block a bill indefinitely. The point is that the minority is allowed to stop a majority just ramming a bill through without debate. If the minority had to maintain debate on the bill for months, then either they will start to gain public awareness and approval and force concessions from the majority, or they will fail to do that, and then every day they block government to stop a popular bill they pay an electoral toll.

I used to like the cloture rules because it allowed government to get on with other work. But there's other ways to manage that, you could have a fixed two hour window for other procedural matters like passing bi-partisan appropriations, and congratulating little league teams. But the rest of the time you have to there, maintaining your debate until you either sway public opinion and cause the majority to surrender the issue, or you give up.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
@sebster -
That's a lot of replying for me to do while at work. Hopfully later I'll be able to respond more directly to your posts.

I do that, yeah

One thing that I have to respond to now though is this.

Immigration is a huge driving factor in labor participation rate. Undocumented work is essentially a job that an american can't have. It's a job that doesn't exist. 300,000 illegals enter the workforce per year - most of them work - lets just say 50% of the 11 million undocumented migrants have a job here. Some rough quick math suggests to me that illegal immigration is responsible for about a 6% increase in Americans not working. Doesn't seem like nonsense to me.

No, because that isn't how the economy works. There isn't a finite amount of jobs, and so if someone takes one then there's one less job left for everyone else. Think about 10,000 immigrants coming in and working 10,000 jobs. They'll earn let's say 20,000 each, for a total of $200 million. They will then spend that $200m, which creates another 10,000 jobs, plus or minus.

And many of those 10,000 jobs simply won't exist at all without the migrant labour. To be able to export in a cost competitive way, industries like fruit need cheap, productive labour. If you force them to employ Americans, then many of the businesses will actually just stop producing export goods entirely, and maybe even lose much of their domestic production to foreign imports. This would mean no-one is paid to pick the fruit, the company has less profits to spread across the economy, and wealth and therefore overall employment is reduced.

Also, participation rate is primarily a demographic measure. It is driven mostly by the number of people who are too young to work, or too old to work. It has steadily decline in the last decade because the ranks of retired people have increased markedly. It's been used by the right wing a lot in the last 8 years because they didn't want to use the unemployment rate, because the unemployment rate improved dramatically.

https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm

Federal government statistics show the labor participation rate for people 55 years and older and the labor participation rate for people 65 years and older was greater in 2014 than it was in 2004 or 1994. If the percentage of the labor force that is old is growing then you can't blame the overall shrinking of the labor force participation rate on retirement. The data says we have more employed old people than previously while the participation rate for people aged 25-54 is decreasing.

 Xenomancers wrote:

IMO this argument is weak but I at least ask you this question. So all these jobs that "people don't want to do" the jobs that undocumented people take. Would these jobs simply not get done if not for undocumented workers? Or would these jobs be done by citizens for a legal wage? I think the answer is pretty obvious but what do you think?

No one wants to be a trash man. However being a job working for a city usually - you are going to have to be a citizen on the books to get paid...guess what? Trash men get paid pretty well - because jobs people don't want to do should offer more pay than the ones that people want to do. Pretty simple market principles here.

Steelmage99 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

Steelmage99 wrote:
I seem to hear and read that the hearings concerning the Trump/Russia connection are cancelled/put on hold.

Does anybody know anything about this?

Devin Nunes, Republican and chair of the House Investigative Committee, abruptly cancelled his meeting with former acting AG Sally Yates. She's the one that Bush fired after she said she wouldn't enforce his travel ban. But she's also the person that was briefed about Michael Flynn's conversations with Russia, and who will state that the official Whitehouse line given about what they knew and when was not true. Obviously the Trump administration and the Republican party can't have that, so they're doing what they can to delay testimony. First the Whitehouse, through Jeff Sessions heading up the Dept of Justice, argued that Yates couldn't testify as she was under client confidence, without Whitehouse permission. Yates and her lawyer disagree, saying it is inconsistent with past congressional inquiries, particularly on matters where many other officials have already made public statements to the committee.

Thing is though, the Trump admin doesn't want the PR hit of actually forbidding Yates from testifying, that would make it obvious they're silencing her because she will show Pence and the others who went on the record about what the Whitehouse knew about Flynn and when were lying. So they're instead decided to not say yes or no. Yates can't testify until she gets a yes, it will be another obvious part of the cover up if Trump says no, and so they just didn't answer.

Obviously you can't do that forever, so they hatched a plan with their man Nunes in the investigative committee, that he would cancel the hearing with Yates, and then just not schedule a new one. That way the Trump admin won't ever have to pick between letting Yates testify and prove them liars, or prevent her and show once again that they're engaged in a cover up.

It would look suss, and wouldn't actually be within Nunes power to block only Yates from testifying, but what he has absolute power over is the scheduling of future committee hearings. So Nunes plan at this point is to just not call another committee hearing.

It's still a dumb plan, obviously, the whole thing is absolutely transparent and is still nothing more than a stalling plan that kicks the problem down the road for another month or so. But it's like that great line from "All The President's Men";
"The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

Why is Devin Nunes in a position to decide anything?

Wasn't he the guy that provided Trump with information regarding the investigation into Trump/Russia connections before he informed members of his own committee?

Wouldn't such a person have been found unfit (or willingly have stepped down due to obvious demonstrable conflicts of interest) to be in such a committee, much less the chair?

 whembly wrote:

Wasn't he the guy that provided Trump with information regarding the investigation into Trump/Russia connections before he informed members of his own committee?

Yup. Evidently it's someone from the intelligence depts seeking whistleblower protection who *claims* of having evidence of "unmasked" Trump campaign/transition peeps from incidential surveillance.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Even a blind Squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Let me look at my clock. Yeah, it's broken, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. So, it's 3PM.

 infinite_array wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Wasn't he the guy that provided Trump with information regarding the investigation into Trump/Russia connections before he informed members of his own committee?

Yup. Evidently it's someone from the intelligence depts seeking whistleblower protection who *claims* of having evidence of "unmasked" Trump campaign/transition peeps from incidential surveillance.

Apparently Nunes' sources may have been Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and also a former Nunes staffer who now works at the White House.

As per the New York Times.

So, the WH told Nunes what to say to the WH... and it was a ex-staff member of Nunes, who was himself a member of Trump's transition team.

Man, that doesn't seem suspicious at all.