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General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)

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Comments

  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
  • edited 2018-05-07 06:49:47
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    lol, i guess that ban backfired with a heavy dose of irony.

    Anyhow I've heard of how crazy a few fandom folks can get, so this doesn't surprise me too much. If anything I should probably be thankful that the cons I've been to have been run smoothly and professionally.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Around here, a big fuss was when a certain infamous politician went to a major con. The orgs said he paid for the ticket like everyone else, but clearly he wasn't there just to ogle the cosplayers (though that too). Nerds make most of his fanvoterbase, though unfortunately they aren't numerous enough to give him that 5%.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I don't think we're too far off from seeing people dig up embarrassing anime/gaming/othergeekystuff convention photos of candidates for public elected offices.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Like flashing the Vulcan salute when in Star Wars costume, amirite?
  • edited 2018-05-08 22:40:43
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Two interesting political things out of Florida:


    1. http://mcimaps.com/congress_rankings/

    A rundown of the geography, political leanings, past election results, and prominent candidates in each of Florida's 27 congressional districts, and making some light predictions of outcomes.


    2. https://www.tcpalm.com/story/opinion/columnists/gil-smart/2018/05/08/could-metoo-take-down-everglades-foundation/589512002/

    This is a Treasure Coast Newspapers editorial column. Summary:
    • The #MeToo advocacy group
    • "Women United Now" is targeting a hedge-fund billionaire/philanthropist named Paul Tudor Jones II, and the organizations he supports, due to Jones's reported support for Harvey Weinstein, and (I think?) also having served on the board of the Weinstein Company.
    • One of WUN's demands has been that the Everglades Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization supporting environmental protections/restoration for the Florida Everglades, donate (or "give back") the millions of dollars it's received from Jones (such as the $3.5M Jones gave the Everglades Foundation in the past two years).
    • While WUN has campaigned against other people before (including the infamous former Alabama judge and U.S. senate candidate Roy Moore, as well as "other former Weinstein Co. board members" James Dolan and Marc Lasry), and has also pressed the University of Virginia to remove Jones's name from buildings, WUN's demands here may have problematic consequences for environmental issues in south Florida, as Jones's philanthropy are a significant chunk of the Everglades Foundation's funding and what allow it to operate as a major player in advocating environmental policies. (You can view the Everglades Foundation's financial reports here.)
    • WUN is registered as a 501(c)4 organization, which means that, while nonprofit, they don't have to disclose their donors (unlike a 501(c)3 organization). Curiously, they also lack a donation page, despite also showing evidence of strong funding and/or connections (being able to run a TV ad campaign in Virginia, and holding a press conference at the National Press Club).
    • As a result, the columnist raises the question whether Florida agricultural interests (such as "big sugar") that have a motive to weaken/slow Everglades protections and restoration efforts may be funding WUN's efforts in Florida.

    My opinion: What about simply keeping the money and taking Jones off the board of the Everglades Foundation? Seems like the most obvious compromise solution.
  • edited 2018-05-09 04:59:07
    There is love everywhere, I already know
    Jones is/was a friend of disgraced Hollywood mogul and accused sexual predator Harvey Weinstein

    Harvey Weinstein did some extremely terrible things, but it is beyond unfair to try and make sure somebody has no friends at all. Especially when that involves threatening said friends.

    I'm not sure exactly what this guy did aside from reassuring a friend (a terrible friend). The controversy is bad PR, so it's totally logical he step down, but this still feels like a lot of misplaced anger. He never enabled Harvey Weinstein's actions, and neither did those two other guys. There should be a lot more board members and, more importantly, others who actually knew about the things Harvey did, where's the anger towards them?

    What's next? Boycotting Marchesa because Georgina Chapman committed the terrible crime of finding out her husband was the worst?
  • edited 2018-05-22 15:21:13
    There is love everywhere, I already know
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    Trump pulls out of summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un

    Well, that was almost a good thing.
  • edited 2018-05-24 16:27:53
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Well, good thing I'm not in Alaska but in Florida right now.

    My drinking water is still screwed if he bombs Mar-a-Lago though.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Not directly related to politics, but very related to public policy:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-walmart-crime/
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    Man I miss journalism like this.
  • Reminds me of this:

  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    The trope name is "fridge horror" for when you see something that takes you a while to comprehend how scary it is. It's supposed to be for fiction, but that sequence of emotional experiences, well...

    First, enjoy this video about problems in the credit reporting and background check industries, courtesy of John Oliver's show Last Week Tonight.



    ...now, now that you've watched it, remember that they talked about the CFPB, and that they had someone who worked for the government interviewed on there talking about how unprepared they are to manage the industry and rein in everything that's wrong with it, and look at the timestamp. April 10, 2016.

    The horrifying thing is when you realize there's probably been no progress, and quite possibly there's been regress, in the oversight of these industries, in the past two years.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    In case it wasn't obvious that right-wingers aren't actually interested in the right to free speech but merely wanting to abuse it in order to flamebait:

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/1/17417042/niall-ferguson-stanford-emails
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    The dude wrote some interesting articles on geopolitics, but I'm gonna say "sinister" is a good way to call this stuff.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    I don't know if you know much about this sort of trend GMH but Virginia has a Democrat governor and two Democrat senators but it's house delegation is skewed heavily Republican. What type of demographic nonsense is this?
  • edited 2018-06-08 19:17:13
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I don't know if you know much about this sort of trend GMH but Virginia has a Democrat governor and two Democrat senators but it's house delegation is skewed heavily Republican. What type of demographic nonsense is this?

    TL;DR Republicans got in charge of redistricting by winning state-level posts in 2009 and 2010, in the "Tea Party" backlash against Obama, while Kaine got elected senator in 2012 which was a reasonably good year for Democrats and Warner got elected senator in 2008 which was a very good year for Democrats then barely survived re-election in 2014.

    1. Political partisanship has gradually undergone changes in the state. Virginia had been a "red state" (i.e. Republican-leaning) at the presidential level, going for the R candidate from 1964 to 2004, but in recent years it's transitioned to being a "purple" or "swing" state that, at this point in history, may even lean slightly "blue" (as in Democratic-leaning). A significant factor influencing this is the growth of Northern Virginia, which is basically like a giant suburb of Washington DC, containing all manner of workers and industries relating to the federal government. This means a number of higher-education and typically higher-income people, as well as a smaller contingent of immigrants of racial minorities who may have found political asylum here at some point (e.g. I noticed there's a decent number of Vietnamese-Americans). Of course, this isn't the only change/grow; there's also a big navy base in southeast Virginia which I think has had some growth, and in general there's been growth on the eastern side of the state, on the coast. Meanwhile, western parts of Virginia, especially southwest Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains has seen a gradual decrease in population, between the mechanization of and overall decline of the coal industry. Recent political partisanship "realignments" have seen wealthier higher-ed types move toward the Democratic Party (as the Republicans increasingly reject everything from social diversity to scientific reason), while down-on-their-luck rural areas experiencing economic stagnation have trended toward the Republican Party (which has sought to appeal to them by inflaming cultural tensions).

    2. Republicans controlled redistricting following the 2010 census. The House delegation is skewed heavily Republican because when the redistricting process for the state's legislative districts rolled around, following the 2010 census, the Republicans were in control. So they could (and did) do gerrymandering to make the districts favor them, such as packing African-American voters (who are overwhelmingly Democratic) into one district in southeast Virginia in order to make nearby districts more Republican-leaning. There was a lawsuit over this that got resolved by some new district lines before the 2016 election, but other district lines still favor the Republicans. (As does the tendency for Dem-leaning voters to be geographically concentrated in cities.) The 2010 elections were famously bad for Democrats -- they lost over 60 seats in the U.S. House, as well as countless more in state legislatures, which are arguably the more important seats because they get to enact state policies, such as...redistricting. (Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) was also elected in 2009. Virginia's governorship is elected on odd years following presidential election years, and governors may not serve consecutive terms.)

    3. Virginia's governor and other statewide elected posts were last elected in 2017. This is of course the era of backlash against Trump, as well as against the killing of an anti-racism protester in the city of Charlottesville.

    4. Virginia's two U.S. senators are:
    * junior senator: former governor Tim Kaine (D), first elected in 2012 (when Obama was re-elected); he defeated former U.S. senator George Allen (R), who had earlier been unseated in 2006 (which you may recall is when there was a backlash against George W. Bush) by Jim Webb (D), Kaine's immediate predecessor. One notable catalyst for Allen's defeat was his identifying an Indian-American young man (who had been following and videotaping the Allen campaign's events) as "macaca". (He boastfully welcomed said young man to "real Virginia", by which he basically meant stereotypical "small-town America", but clearly it was Allen who did not realize that Virginia itself had changed.) Kaine will stand for re-election this year.
    * senior senator: former governor Mark Warner (D), first elected in 2008 (when Obama was first elected). Warner was elected governor in 2001 (and was followed by Kaine), and left office with very high approval ratings, and he got elected governor in 2008 by a huge margin, being able to win much support both from areas transitioning toward the Democrats (such as northern Virginia) as well as more Republican rural areas. However, his re-election in 2014 was a different story -- Warner barely won a surprisingly close contest, losing support in many rural areas he had won before, in a year that was nationally quite favorable to the Republicans. Warner will stand for re-election again in 2020.
  • edited 2018-06-09 16:09:30
    There is love everywhere, I already know
    Thank you so much.

    I mean, I guessed there was some gerrymandering in there, but this is genuinely fascinating all around.
  • Sometimes I wonder, given that I'm likely to end up emigrating, if I should have strong opinions on immigration policies, especially the US's since that's the one everyone talks about.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    I don't think every immigrant has to be particularly up on how stringent the policy is, that's the governments job.

    Then again if we talk about the US (and a good chunk of Europe's*) policy, the government seems to go about it in a "Catch and maybe deport but mostly keep in places that are Not Prisons or Totally Not Refugee Camps".

    There's been this trend lately to portray African immigrants to Europe as people who have stuff going for them (at least that's what I pick up from stuff that airs on CNN and their ilk) and options aside from "I guess I could be content being just slightly above the poverty line" or "Maybe the local warlords will calm down for some unknown reason?"

    They regularly fail to mention how the biggest refugee camps are in Africa, and how extremely desperate people are capable of putting together a gigantic number of loans (I mean, if you stay, you'll actually have to come up with ridiculously fast ways of repaying those sorts of debts, whilst if you leave you have the prospect of being able to pay them back by being a porter in a backwater hospital in a random corner of Europe).

    Anyways, this is mostly the human cost and not policy. I mean, you specifically are a skilled worker who should have a pretty easy way in. But, as far as I know, actually trying to be a proper immigrant from anywhere that isn't also a Perfect Country involves so many sunk cost fees and labyrinths of questioning that I am beyond respectful of the people who currently manage to pull it off.

    So yeah, the systems are pretty broken, and it should really be the governments in question who try to fix that stuff and make them easier, but they really don't want to (probably entirely because of some sort of implicit racism that I can't really tackle properly as I'm not a social studies major).

    *I used to really want to move to Italy, or Europe in general, but over the last few years I've become oddly concerned about extreme racism. Probably because everywhere is suddenly more racist.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Sometimes I wonder, given that I'm likely to end up emigrating, if I should have strong opinions on immigration policies, especially the US's since that's the one everyone talks about.
    If you're emigrating, knowing the details of where you're immigrating to would be more helpful than having strong opinions on immigration.

    Depending on where you go, there may be non-governmental organizations in your prospective new country that can help you through the process.

    ----

    Local news:

    http://miami.cbslocal.com/2018/06/12/rick-scott-rookie-mistake-cost-millions/

    TL;DR Florida governor Rick Scott (R), currently running for U.S. Senate, overcharged taxpayers by at least $28 million, by what seems damn like intentionally circumventing existing debris removal contracts for cleanup after Hurricane-Irma, and going with a much more expensive pair of companies.

    A couple choice quotes:
    For example, MCM charged taxpayers $913 a mile for every curb and gutter they swept. Ceres would have charged $123 a mile, AshBritt $32, and Bergeron just $12.

    To haul rock, sand, soil and sediment MCM charged the state $77.50 a cubic yard. AshBritt would have charged $11, while Ceres and Bergeron would have charged between $6.50 and $15.95.

    So-called “White Goods” is another costly area. To remove a washing machine, a dryer or a stove, MCM charged the state $969 for each and every appliance. AshBritt would have charged $75 per item, Ceres $48.15 and Bergeron $60.
    The Florida Department of Transportation seemed ready, as well. They had six companies on standby, under their own pre-storm contracts, ready to go into the Keys to clear US1. Three of those companies – Ceres Environmental, Bergeron Emergency Services, and AshBritt – had crews pre-positioned on the border between Monroe and Miami-Dade expecting to be called in to help.

    Yet all of this planning was ignored.

    Rather than using Ceres, Bergeron or AshBritt – state officials quietly sent notices to a handful of companies, inviting them to bid on a new emergency contract. The emails went out late in the afternoon of September 12 and the responses were due by 11 the next morning.

    By the afternoon of the September 13, the state decided on two firms: MCM and Community Asphalt.

    The article mentions that MCM and Community Asphalt "are major campaign contributors to the Republican Party of Florida, as well as Governor Scott." Meanwhile (and not mentioned), AshBritt's CEO, Randy Perkins, ran for Congress in 2016 as a Democrat, in the 18th district (which is further up Florida's east coast -- St. Lucie, Martin, and Palm Beach counties), so I wonder if there was some degree of political influence in this decision.

    (MCM, meanwhile, is also "under scrutiny" for its role in the recent collapse of a brand-new pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami.)
  • If you're emigrating, knowing the details of where you're immigrating to would be more helpful than having strong opinions on immigration.

    Well, yeah, I wasn't going to go anywhere I didn't know the details of, regardless of my opinions on the matter.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    MCM, meanwhile, is also "under scrutiny" for its role in the recent collapse of a brand-new pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami.

    This is said quite often, I think: Are these companies actively trying to play the part of terrible corrupt evil megacorp?
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Watch, as the Staten Island Republicans claim that a party is hotter than it actually is.


  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    ^ standard for here.

    Also: Alex visits the States
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    The following is an ad from a candidate runnning for U.S. senate in Minnesota:

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mRzpV95oMsIBPzXa_1v9vkITBa99_iDP/view

    ...no comment.
  • ^^^ standard for here
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