2018 Democrats thread

[Reddy]

Singapore is also one of the most socially restrictive countries in the world, with incredibly harsh laws and penalties for even simple offenses. So. Yeeeeah.

 

Side Note! For all y'all that can't stand my political perspectives, my professor at GW (a 30-year former Congressman and former chair of the DCCC) told me my strategy memo for how Dems can win back the House this fall was the best in the class full of prospective political operatives. So. Just sayin'.

[Balta1701]

Whatever. I mean you're really jumping ships. I'd rather take one topic at a time than obfuscate and bring up tangents when your preferred person/idea has a flaw. I just don't know why that would apply to me. It's not like you can't have an opinion on one side of the aisle because the other side of the aisle has a different problem on another issue. I've never voted for a Republican in the house, so again, not sure of the relevance here. Seems like you're just pivoting and defending your "team."

And you'd rather take on the topic that isn't going to happen rather than the one which actually passed. Makes you think.

[Balta1701]

Why has the price of college skyrocketed? That is really the important question. It's because of government intervention.

You're about 1/2 right here. It is because of government intervention. Because state funding of universities has declined by ~3% per year since the early 2000s, and with ~2% inflation on top of that, that is a cut of about 5% a year in state funding every single year. While federal funding has increased in total dollars, it has done so while basically keeping up with inflation, so the state level budget cuts are getting excised every year.

 

Start with 2% inflation as normal, then cut the state contribution, and right away the price of college has to go up well above the rate of inflation just to stay level.

[illinilaw08]

I didn't say that was a nuanced idea. I said the generalizations about the poor and rich deserve more nuance. Most educated people know how much they make and how much they take and can deduce whether they put more in or take more out.

 

But you made a statement that was a generalization, and completely without nuance.

 

As to the second sentence, disagree. That analysis doesn't account for use of public goods. For example, I make a decent living, but I probably "take" more than I "put in." Why? I use roads. I use parks (both state and national). I use bike lanes and paths. I fly places and use airports and the infrastructure that comes with that. I "take" more than I "put in" because it's not a simple calculation on my balance sheet.

[illinilaw08]

Why has the price of college skyrocketed? That is really the important question. It's because of government intervention. We have government guaranteed loans. It completely skews the supply and demand. If colleges know regardless of what they charge people will go there they can charge whatever they want. That is why tuition increases annually at more than twice the rate of inflation. That is why people are able to get 100k+ in student loans with a social work degree.

 

Plus, our society is acting as if everyone needs to go to college to be "successful." It's totally flawed rhetoric with harmful consequences. The number of people I knew that went to college just because their parents wanted them too or because they didn't want to be judged by their peers is incredible.

 

Don't let the government empower academia to charge whatever they want. Don't let people get loans that will ruin their lives. Don't act like college is the only way to go. Only then could they start to make a dent in that issue.

 

Balta jumped on this, but I'll chime in as well. Student loans have been around for a long time. The cost of law school at the University of Illinois (where I got my law degree) jumped exponentially after I graduated. Can you point to a policy in the last decade that would have led to the cost of education at a state school jumping as much as it has at Illinois, I'd be glad to hear it.

 

As to the point on the value of a college degree, it's a lot harder to find an entry level job without a college degree than it is with one. This chart shows unemployment rates by education levels. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/unemploym...anuary-2017.htm

 

Note that the chart does not get into the disparity in earning power associated with a degree versus without.

[illinilaw08]

There is no free market at play here. This is pretty simple supply and demand. The government is subsidizing the costs of education that keep increasing while the value of the degrees are decreasing. As a result, you have is people graduating with mortgages with few job prospects. When my father was in college, his parents didn't have any money but he was able to pay for it by selling shoes on the weekends and in the summers. Why has the price quadrupled since then?

 

Now the government just lets the students graduate with a boatload of debt regardless of whether their degree has any utility whatsoever. The government is making billions a year on their student loans. Academics are feeding lies that college is empowerment and every one should go but it is bulls***. College isn't worth the cost anymore unless you go to school for something that has future job prospects.

 

Leaving aside the fact that some of the increase in education costs is just inflation (ie, my dad's tuition at U of I in the 1960s was less than $1,000, but so were some cars). IMO, government loans aren't the issue. Government loans are necessary to allow people whose parents are at any and all levels of income to go to college. We talk about upward mobility as a society... well, it's a lot easier to do that with a degree. College should not only be available to those whose families can afford it.

 

Until the last decade, state funding for colleges, at a minimum, kept in state tuition affordable. That funding dried up, and the cost of education has risen dramatically at state schools, for in state tuition.

 

But, as to loans, government is subsidizing ALL student loans. Just not in the way that you are discussing. Student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. That means that if you leave college with $65k in debt, and you can never earn enough to cover the loans, they can't ever go away (there are some federal programs that were put in place in recent years that create exceptions to those rules, but I'm not here to talk about the exceptions). There are very few other debts that receive the same treatment - certain IRS tax debt, and child support are the main ones. Simply put, Congress, through the Bankruptcy Code, made it impossible for people to shed student loan debt.

 

How would I fix that? Make it subject to discharge in a bankruptcy after 10 years. It's a long enough timeframe to discourage a large swath of people from trying to game the system (ie, take out loans and file for bankruptcy immediately after graduation).

 

This both allows the government to continue to get banks to fund student loans because they have decent prospects for repayment on the debt, and it eliminates the segment of college graduates who have no hope of ever getting out of debt. (ends rant)

[illinilaw08]

I am CPA. I know the basics about bankruptcy and inflation and time value of money. That's not really that important to my argument though. The supply and demand is skewed and colleges can and have charged whatever they want.

 

Imagine how many cars Tesla could sell if 18-year-olds could get one now and don't have to think about the loans until they're 22. Tesla could ratchet up their prices and still sell way more.

 

Also, you say loans are necessary. How many loans did your father have? What does that

 

While I, generally, agree that most 18 year olds are dumb - particularly about the long term impact of borrowing money (I certainly was - and I was still dumb at 22 when I was taking out law school loans), here's my response...

 

1) Tesla cars aren't a prerequisite to getting jobs, so it's apples and oranges.

 

2) If Tesla had that program, and 18 year olds made bad decisions, they could ultimately get rid of the debt (and, of course, the car) in a bankruptcy filing. So once again, apples to oranges.

 

3) My dad was fortunate enough to not need loans to get his degree. But here's CNBC with inflation adjusted tuition numbers over the last 30 years. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-co...88-to-2018.html - per the numbers in the article, we see a big jump in '07-'08.

 

4) According to this article, the direct loan program began in 1992. https://lendedu.com/blog/history-of-student-loans

 

Here's my point. College is a barrier to entry to a lot of jobs. If college is only something that the wealthy can afford, that just creates a greater wealth disparity in this country.

 

Most entry level jobs out of college pay, well, not a lot. Student loan debt is a massive problem. That cuts two ways - (1) how do we make tuition affordable without making college a luxury (or conversely, how do we shift the market back to creating a large labor pool for those without college degrees); and (2) how do we provide opportunities for people to get out of debt.

 

I'm not saying that availability of loans ISN'T a factor in tuition increases, but I don't think it is as critical of a factor as you propose. Particularly at state schools, the reduction in funding from the state plays a larger role than availability of loans. And even if availability of loans was the major factor, you have to balance that against access to college regardless of income level...

 

 

[Dam8610]

Singapore has the population of Wisconsin roughly. How you think they could be the blueprint for a country of ~350 million people from all over the world in a country where demographics, culture and level of education vary from state-to-state, region-to-region and so forth - I don't know.

 

Singapore isn't the only country that has improved their workforce in this manner. It's why US workers are having trouble competing in the global economy. Can "the rest of the industrialized world" be a blueprint for the US, in your opinion? If so, we can have things like free college, single payer healthcare, and reasonable gun control laws so that our workforce can compete in the global market rather than becoming frustrated, despondent, and homicidal with a gun being the easiest thing to acquire.

 

No one here said anything about poor people's effort except those trying to put words in others' mouths. Do you actually know any poor people? It's remarkably easy to get aid from the government and you don't really need to be all that poor to get them. Poverty levels have been going down since the 60's but the amount of welfare spending per person keeps going up.

 

You said:

 

Most people in this country know whether they are going to be someone who gives to society or takes from society.

 

For that statement to be logically true, so must the following premises:

 

1) There are people who only give to society.

2) There are people who only take from society.

3) A person makes a conscious choice to be in the group that only gives to society or the group that only takes from society.

 

Putting aside the ridiculousness of the first two premises (all people contribute to and take from society in their own ways), all socioeconomic evidence soundly rejects your third premise. Therefore, the statement is false. Stated another way, "makers and takers" is a myth. Yay logic.

[caulfield12]

Singapore's not a great example because it's only around 5 million people, and roughly 3.5 million locals and the remainder are imported laborers from poorer countries who'll do the work that nobody else wants to do (sounds familiar)?

 

We always have these same debates...saying that Norway/Sweden/Finland aren't relevant/applicable to the US due to their lack of geographic diversity and small/er sizes, so that's basically a deflection that ends up with NOTHING changing.

 

For example, in Finland...they have a very simple philosophy. Only if you are in the Top 10% in your content or subject area can you become a teacher. If you do qualify, you're paid significantly more (in terms of purchasing power) than teachers are in the United States, especially in the "flyover territory" between the coasts.

 

Why can't we do THAT? Making teaching salaries MORE attractive...control the supply of teachers by limiting it to the very best students, and then you wouldn't have nearly so many issues with tenure and teachers' unions because the quality of the teaching corps would rise quite significantly.

 

Obviously, one barrier to that is the unions...the charter schools (they probably pay even less, certainly in terms of benefits, but admins pilfer/embezzle more)..."the system" because that's the way it has been and always will be, and of course there will be arguments that many minorities will be limited in terms of teaching opportunities (Asians, on the other hand, would be disproportionately selected with salary incentives, especially STEM subjects). The arguments will go around and around with no resolution because of the entrenched interests on both sides of the education debate.

Edited April 11, 2018 by caulfield12

[bmags]

Tribune staff unionizes, bravo considering the absurd behavior of tronc leadership

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/201...s-to-form-union

 

 

[Dam8610]

You're really misrepresenting my argument. If you make a million dollars a year you give more to the system than you take. If you make 10,000 a year and receive government aid you take more than you give. No wheedling mischaracterizations change that. Someone else brought up lazy. Not me. There are disabled people who take more than they give. That is fine by me and how it should be.

 

You're the one who stated:

 

Most people in this country know whether they are going to be someone who gives to society or takes from society.

 

And that wording means that you think people make conscious choices to be in one category or the other (a thought which data proves to be incorrect). Perhaps you should've worded the statement differently if you didn't want it interpreted that way.

 

Examples of people who make $1 million per year and take more from society than they give:

 

1) An injury attorney who takes needed money from families for contingency fees and clogs up courts with cases causing taxpayers to incur and pay more than $1 million in court costs.

 

2) A slumlord whose cheap, profit motivated policies cause his tenants and their children to get sick frequently, costing hospitals over $1 million in unpaid medical fees or burdening taxpayers with paying over $1 million in medical fees.

 

Examples of people who make $10,000 per year, receive government assistance, and contribute more to society than they take:

 

1) A scientist on a research fellowship who makes an important scientific breakthrough.

 

2) An executive director of a charity that does one of the many needed social service functions our government fails to provide that can't afford to pay a good salary and provide the necessary services.

 

Judging someone's worth or value to society by the amount of money they make misses so very much of a person's value (or cost) to society that it becomes unworkable as a measure.

 

Also, I never said lazy. Don't try to attribute other people's arguments to me. What I said was that your statement above doesn't hold up to logical scrutiny.

[caulfield12]

So let’s hear the examples of those taking from society...knowing the answer will come back in nothing but code words, allusions, intimations, etc.

 

Identity politics can unite a political base...can even win an election, but nobody has ever seriously considered it as being a long-term force to bring America together, rather than dividing us against each other.

 

It’s merely a distraction to allow politicians cover from dealing with the most pressing, solvable issues and fill up airtime on Fox News, Info Wars, Limbaugh.

 

 

The fact of the matter is that states voting for Hillary Clinton contribute something like 2-3rd’s of the GDP.

Trump states soak up a disproportionate share of government funds, on the other hand. Yet those states cant afford to pay for health insurance (many opted out of ObamaCare/Medicaid expansion and now want back in), fully fund schools or deal adequately with the opioid crisis. They are good at building for-profit prisons, though.

Edited April 11, 2018 by caulfield12

[Dam8610]

You're conflating here and claiming logical scrutiny. I was talking about the tax pool. I understand people can contribute to society without making a lot of money. I don't need a condescending lecture to understand that.

 

All I did was logically analyze your statement. "The tax pool" is not "society", so say what you mean. Further, as a fellow accountant, I know you're not stupid enough to believe that the person making $1 million is going to pay taxes on $1 million. In fact, if we go with a slightly higher figure, say $40,000, there's a good chance that the person making $1 million has a lower effective tax rate, and a small chance that the person making $1 million has a lower tax liability. So even if you were conflating "society" to mean tax pool (words work better when they're used correctly), you're still wrong.

[caulfield12]

And the poor/middle class donate a much higher percentage of their incomes to churches and non-profits.

 

How much of his actual money has Trump ever given away? Loads of promises, but not much follow through unless someone calls him out in order to hold him accountable in front of the media/public.

Edited April 11, 2018 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

Makers and Takers...The Tragedy of Paul Ryan

 

 

Ryan’s second act was his most compelling. As a young rank-and-file member of the House, Ryan had earned a reputation for being studious and sincere—but also ideologically charged. This was the story of his Obama-era budgets, and also his talk of dividing the electorate into “makers and takers,” those who help the economy and those who leech off it. It was Ryan’s experience on the national stage with Romney—escaping the comfortable confines of Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district—that exposed him to widespread perceptions of Republican callousness and indifference, scaring Ryan straight and prompting him to write a book in which he apologized for the “makers and takers” rhetoric.

 

If this transformation seemed all too convenient, well, Bob Woodson thought so too. Woodson, a longtime community organizer and civil rights advocate, met Ryan at the tail end of the 2012 campaign at a poverty event in Cleveland. Ryan kept in touch, and some months after the campaign ended he reached out to Woodson asking for a tour of facilities around the country that help struggling people to get back on their feet. It struck Woodson as a publicity stunt, but Ryan said he wanted no media present. Woodson was still skeptical. ”And then every month, for about the next four years, we went to a different city, we met different groups, and he deepened his understanding of these people,” Woodson told me. “I witnessed a transformation in him. He’s traveled to more low-income black neighborhoods than any member of the Black Caucus that I know of.”

 

These experiences, in concert with the harsh lessons learned from 2012, were the catalyst for Ryan’s reinvention. He was a unrecognizable when he returned to Congress after the defeat. Ryan talked differently, thought differently and voted differently, conspicuously breaking from the party’s right flank and speaking—often lecturing—about the need for the party to modulate its positions expand its appeal among non-traditional Republican voters. He voted to raise the debt ceiling, break the sequester and reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. He also lampooned Ted Cruz and the other conservatives who shut down the government in the hopeless pursuit of defunding the Affordable Care Act.

 

All of this informed Ryan’s approach to taking over for Boehner in the fall of 2015. He had come to understand that the Republican Party was widely perceived to be not just cruel, but clueless. The new speaker aimed to address both vulnerabilities with a sweeping series of policy proposals, known as the “Better Way” agenda, which would articulate legislative solutions and wrap them in the sort of aspirational, inclusive messaging Kemp had once steeped Ryan in.

 

 

The culmination of these efforts, appropriately, was in January 2016—the month before Trump officially began his conquest of the GOP. In South Carolina, Ryan teamed with Senator Tim Scott to host a forum on poverty and upward mobility, using the high-profile event to highlight how Republicans were advancing ideas on how to address everything from minority unemployment to criminal justice reform.“Where did the party of Jack Kemp go? Is it still out there?” Senator Lindsey Graham wondered aloud to the audience. The answer, that day, appeared to be yes. The event was a hit. Many of the GOP presidential contenders joined Ryan and Scott on stage, speaking to a diverse crowd the likes of which I’ve never seen at a Republican event. Ryan told me the night before that Trump had been invited. But the future president didn’t show up.

 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...ns-plans-217989

Edited April 12, 2018 by caulfield12

[Kyyle23]

f*** Paul Ryan. It’s not a tragedy, he made the decisions, he made the choices. Nothing tragic happened to him

[caulfield12]

It?€™s only a tragedy insomuch the impulses to address poverty issues were never followed up on...no compromises were made with Dems, or olive branches extended. Just a legacy of hyperpartisanship, and especially an inability to corral members of the House by either Boehner or Ryan to work across the aisle OR at least work together with each other.

 

He’s mostly going to be known as “cute” Eddie Munster, for his workout pics, his powerpoints and spreadsheets, attacking public sector unions and threatening to gut Social Security and health care safety nets (aka “starving the government”).

Edited April 12, 2018 by caulfield12

[Kyyle23]

He is gonna be known as a coward who never took the lead, never challenged anyone on any side, who spoke about reducing debt and exploded it, then stepped out the side door

[caulfield12]

He is gonna be known as a coward who never took the lead, never challenged anyone on any side, who spoke about reducing debt and exploded it, then stepped out the side door

 

Except he’s the best candidate for the GOP to gain back the presidency after 2020...he has at least one more act left. Who else? Rubio? Kasich? Will Hurd?

 

Leaving now leaves him less tainted than Pence, at the very least.

 

 

 

https://www.marketwatch.com/Story/paul-ryan...&yptr=yahoo

Ryan leaves behind an unfixable mess

 

So here’s Ryan’s legacy. To support his tax cuts and the rest, you don’t have to trim domestic spending. You have to eliminate it — all of it. And then, you have to take your pick of eliminating essentially all of Social Security, or all of Medicare and most of Medicaid (or vice versa). Or you can whack all of the disability and SSI program, all of Medicaid, and all of domestic discretionary.

 

And you still wouldn’t balance the budget.

 

So good luck. Hope you enjoy paying your Mom’s hospital bills out of pocket, right after helping your father-in-law with mortgage payments. Say toodles to low-rate student loans you use to supplement your kids’ college fund, and the monthly unemployment reports and other economic data that guide your investing.

 

If you have an autistic child or two who will never meaningfully work, hope you have a trust fund that will replace their SSI when you’re gone. And enjoy watching poor kids on TV die from lack of insurance, because it would happen — would have to happen — for anything like the nonsense vision Ryan has sold to come true.

 

The best part is that all this would not even deliver the growth Ryan has promised for years, like the shoe salesman he richly deserves to be.

 

According to CBO, even with just the cake-and-candy policies Ryan and Trump have passed already will produce relative stagnation by 2020, with monthly job gains slowing to just 62,000 on average, though unemployment will still be low. Growth will revert back to about 1.5% to 1.7% a year, CBO says.

 

So there will be no payoff to the middle class, in the form of new jobs, for all the succor thrown at the richest. It only gets worse if there’s a recession, as there eventually will be. And it would get much worse if you really whacked the whole non-defense, non-entitlement parts of the federal government, plus most of Social Security, and then headed into a recession.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 2018 by caulfield12

[Dam8610]

Makers and Takers...The Tragedy of Paul Ryan

 

 

Ryan’s second act was his most compelling. As a young rank-and-file member of the House, Ryan had earned a reputation for being studious and sincere—but also ideologically charged. This was the story of his Obama-era budgets, and also his talk of dividing the electorate into “makers and takers,” those who help the economy and those who leech off it. It was Ryan’s experience on the national stage with Romney—escaping the comfortable confines of Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district—that exposed him to widespread perceptions of Republican callousness and indifference, scaring Ryan straight and prompting him to write a book in which he apologized for the “makers and takers” rhetoric.

 

If this transformation seemed all too convenient, well, Bob Woodson thought so too. Woodson, a longtime community organizer and civil rights advocate, met Ryan at the tail end of the 2012 campaign at a poverty event in Cleveland. Ryan kept in touch, and some months after the campaign ended he reached out to Woodson asking for a tour of facilities around the country that help struggling people to get back on their feet. It struck Woodson as a publicity stunt, but Ryan said he wanted no media present. Woodson was still skeptical. ”And then every month, for about the next four years, we went to a different city, we met different groups, and he deepened his understanding of these people,” Woodson told me. “I witnessed a transformation in him. He’s traveled to more low-income black neighborhoods than any member of the Black Caucus that I know of.”

 

These experiences, in concert with the harsh lessons learned from 2012, were the catalyst for Ryan’s reinvention. He was a unrecognizable when he returned to Congress after the defeat. Ryan talked differently, thought differently and voted differently, conspicuously breaking from the party’s right flank and speaking—often lecturing—about the need for the party to modulate its positions expand its appeal among non-traditional Republican voters. He voted to raise the debt ceiling, break the sequester and reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. He also lampooned Ted Cruz and the other conservatives who shut down the government in the hopeless pursuit of defunding the Affordable Care Act.

 

All of this informed Ryan’s approach to taking over for Boehner in the fall of 2015. He had come to understand that the Republican Party was widely perceived to be not just cruel, but clueless. The new speaker aimed to address both vulnerabilities with a sweeping series of policy proposals, known as the “Better Way” agenda, which would articulate legislative solutions and wrap them in the sort of aspirational, inclusive messaging Kemp had once steeped Ryan in.

 

 

The culmination of these efforts, appropriately, was in January 2016—the month before Trump officially began his conquest of the GOP. In South Carolina, Ryan teamed with Senator Tim Scott to host a forum on poverty and upward mobility, using the high-profile event to highlight how Republicans were advancing ideas on how to address everything from minority unemployment to criminal justice reform.“Where did the party of Jack Kemp go? Is it still out there?” Senator Lindsey Graham wondered aloud to the audience. The answer, that day, appeared to be yes. The event was a hit. Many of the GOP presidential contenders joined Ryan and Scott on stage, speaking to a diverse crowd the likes of which I’ve never seen at a Republican event. Ryan told me the night before that Trump had been invited. But the future president didn’t show up.

 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...ns-plans-217989

 

Then why is he pushing slashing our paid-in benefits? Clearly he learned nothing.

[Dam8610]

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/03/politic...ive-republican/

 

Thought this was relevant reading for some here.

[Reddy]

Except he’s the best candidate for the GOP to gain back the presidency after 2020...he has at least one more act left. Who else? Rubio? Kasich? Will Hurd?

 

Leaving now leaves him less tainted than Pence, at the very least.

Yes, this is the real reason he's leaving. Why this in the Dems thread tho?

[StrangeSox]

His national approval rating is something like 16%. Nobody likes him.

 

He's leaving because he got his massive tax cut for the wealthy through and will now go make many millions of dollars selling influence and access with far less stress than he currently has.

[Reddy]

His national approval rating is something like 16%. Nobody likes him.

 

He's leaving because he got his massive tax cut for the wealthy through and will now go make many millions of dollars selling influence and access with far less stress than he currently has.

No one will care about that approval rating by 2024. He's 48. He's got all the time in the world. He's just getting out before the real s*** hits the fan with Trump and the GOP.

[caulfield12]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/opinions/mor...artz/index.html

If Pruitt is a “man of faith,” he should start acting like one