Why is there No-vember LC thread yet? - Page 3 - Politics and Economics

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Why is there No-vember LC thread yet?

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11-05-2014 , 08:39 AM

#51

ChrisV

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Quote:

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Even cocaine and heroin???

Californians aren't that gullible, amirite?

11-05-2014 , 08:39 AM

#52

13ball

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Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

God ****ing damn it, we passed the soda tax in SF 53-47.

$0.02 tax per ounce. Awful.

Awesome. Should be higher, though.

11-05-2014 , 08:48 AM

#53

champstark

aka starkwired

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 14,838

Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

God ****ing damn it, we passed the soda tax in SF 53-47.

$0.02 tax per ounce. Awful.

Please. We have to deal with big sodas being banned here in NY and now de Blasio is saying he wants to bring that law back (after the courts rejected it). Get on our level. Plus you essentially can't legally smoke anywhere except inside your home in NY.

11-05-2014 , 11:53 AM

#54

Dids

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Quote:

Originally Posted by pvn

Why the **** do they still make milk duds and more importantly why do *******s still ****ing buy them???

I hadn't had any in years, but somebody in the office brought them in. They're basically just decent tasting things that try to affix themselves to your teeth for life. Pretty damn bad given you can get the same flavor in like 100 other candies.

11-05-2014 , 12:24 PM

#55

goofyballer

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Wait, I have fed you all poor information. The soda tax in SF required 2/3 to pass, so 53-47 was a failing margin.

Berkeley passed theirs ($0.01 per ounce), but **** them they're Berkeley.

Quote:

Originally Posted by champstark

Yo it's one thing for the city to institute something on its own, another for the populace to vote for it.

Get on our level. (well, almost)

11-05-2014 , 12:25 PM

#56

Anais

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Not sure I'd risk eating milk duds with all the dental work I've had done in my life.

Though, the only thing that ever broke a filling for me was a burrito id microwaved.

11-05-2014 , 01:04 PM

#57

zikzak

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Bernie Sanders making it sound like he's probably going to run in '16, either as a D or I.

http://wamc.org/post/congressional-c...nie-sanders-10

11-05-2014 , 01:52 PM

#58

bobman0330

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Very good essay about society

Also, very good comment to very good essay:

Quote:

Society is the framework of laws and bureaucracies we build atop tribes to make things work way, way beyond Dunbar’s number as well as they do. Society is corporations and governments and rules encoded in phone support call-trees. Society is still people, but it’s people acting in large numbers according to role scripts with the effect of simulating entities that optimize for things other than “what humans think is right to optimize for.”

We, as individuals and as tribes, owe nothing to we as a cellular automaton emulating rather stupid but sufficient overminds. The overminds owe us for emulating them.

11-05-2014 , 08:51 PM

#59

[Phill]

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Quote:

Gordon "Dr. Chaps" Klingenschmitt, a radical anti-gay Religious Right activist who brags of having once tried to rid of woman of the "foul spirit of lesbianism" through an exorcism and who openly proclaims that "American law needs to reflect God's law" and that our foreign policy must be based on the Bible, won election to the Colorado House of Representatives last night.

Klingenschmitt, who wrote a book about how President Obama is possessed by demons and once performed an exorcism of Obama, ran an utterly embarrassing campaign yet nonetheless managed to defeat his Democratic opponent by nearly 40 points.

Quote:

Gays, he says, have something inhuman and demonic inside of them, which is why he declares that teaching kids about gay marriage is mental rape and advocates for Christians to print anti-gay Bible verses on the backs of gay wedding photos

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conten....CA7pCJVR.dpuf

Lolmurica.

11-05-2014 , 09:02 PM

#60

adacan

old hand

Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 1,276

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobman0330

Very good essay about society

Also, very good comment to very good essay:

Thanks for sharing, I had similar thoughts but non nearly as well developed as this article. In the future as things get automated and increasingly the labor of people with low or average iqs is less and less needed we as a society should be looking to distribute wealth to those whose labor really isn't needed. Saying that people just need more education isn't really a solution, not everyone is academically inclined, and not everyone's labor is really needed.

11-05-2014 , 09:53 PM

#61

Anais

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Cross posting in atf, but just loaded politics and this popped up on an iPad:

11-05-2014 , 09:57 PM

#62

MidyMat

veteran

Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 3,453

CONGRATS!!!....also you need an "ad-blocker" bro

lol 2+2 censors "ad-blocker" without the "-"

11-05-2014 , 11:14 PM

#63

Anais

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I don't think iPads allow ad-blocking software, do they?

I don't know **** about macs

11-06-2014 , 01:37 AM

#64

Huehuecoyotl

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An interesting article on how identity politics and Progressive and Radical politization are "dooming" the Humanities

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles...-to-lose--7989

Quote:

The former Secretary of Labor and vocal progressivist Robert Reich clarified the opposition in a blog post that signals the future of the humanities under progressivist banners. The topic is charity and the tax code, which Reich deplores because

a large portion of the charitable deductions now claimed by America’s wealthy are for donations to culture palaces—operas, art museums, symphonies, and theaters—where they spend their leisure time hobnobbing with other wealthy benefactors.
The sneer you can hear in the last five words continues as he describes donations as

investments in the lifestyles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have as well. Increasingly, being rich in America means not having to come across anyone who’s not.
Given that “Poor New Yorkers rarely attend concerts at Lincoln Center,” Reich concludes, let’s end this deduction for “fancy museums” and devote the revenues to welfare, school lunches, and Head Start.

It’s a crude argument, but consistent with progressive outlooks. Reich states that the poor don’t frequent arts centers, but interprets that fact as a static class barrier, not a financial circumstance. Maybe they would go, however, if access were cheap and easy, in which case the better proposal would be not to discourage donations, but to ask donors to earmark monies for outreach, for instance, field trips for Title I schools and ticket distribution in low-income neighborhoods. This would break down the elite-only status of Lincoln Center and enhance the lives of citizens at the bottom, just as working-class Americans for decades have enjoyed weekly broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera since 1931.

But Reich doesn’t even notice the contents of those “palaces” and the spiritual nourishment they provide. Museums and concert halls maintain paintings, manuscripts, ballets, and folk music, but Reich registers only a “lifestyle.” To him, arts institutions have no humanistic meaning, only a social meaning. Nothing inside the buildings would interest the poor, he implies, even if they had the chance to enter. Many artists inside were themselves poor and marginal, while artworks portray domestic scenes or impart religious content which the poor revere, but that makes no difference. People in East Harlem want food, Reich would say, not inspiration. Reich’s policy proposal makes perfect sense given his class-based impression of the art space—a pure and simple redirection of money is in order.

Quote:

Among twenty-first-century progressives, though, literary tradition as an independent descent is a quaint notion. At this point, to subordinate literature to socio-political stuff is basic disciplinary etiquette. But the minute professors started speaking of literary works as second to race and queerness, they set the fields on a path of material decline. They had Marxist theories of social struggle informing all cultural things behind them, but the structure of the curriculum worked against them. Picture how it unfolds in faculty deliberations over gen-ed requirements. The physical sciences clamor for representation, and so do the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts, each arguing for its distinctive contribution to a well-formed undergraduate. As long as language and literature professors insist that they instill something valuable that no other areas instill, language/literature requirements have a claim. No scientist will rise in a college meeting and say, “C’mon, do our students really need to study another language that much?” as long as the humanists stand vigorously for it. But if their commitment falls more on race-class-gender-sexuality than on Virgil-Dante-Shakespeare-Milton, what can the humanities demand? In the faculty meeting, the English professor who says, “I think all students should have a course on gender” evokes a speedy reply from the sociologist: “Yes, and we have many courses to provide. We really don’t see English doing that job.” It is hard to imagine the first retorting, “No, we should do it. We’ve got some brilliant theorists over here, and their readings of gender in Jane Austen are crucial!”

The humanities lose. Their brash turn to group identity neglects the humanistic side of the curriculum that is theirs to hold, and they can’t annex studies of identity from the social sciences. They win only if they retain conservative values that espouse a limited canon, honor literary-historical tradition, and approach art works in aesthetic terms (minding social and political themes, of course, but in a secondary position). If they don’t believe in a humanistic realm that registers beauty, excellence, genius, and wit, if they maintain the prevalence of ideology and identity everywhere and always, they cannot defend their own discipline, and when it comes time for the distribution of resources, the professors who can defend their domain will not share.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles...-to-lose--7989

11-06-2014 , 01:56 AM

#65

Anais

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The rules of the Internet say that you should never write something longer than five sentences without a line break. Past that and it's unreadable.

Bill Maher aped on about this once iirc. How charitable donations just go back to the people making the donations since they're for operas and whatnot.

I'm of two minds. I think it's important to have avenues for creative people to make beautiful art and earn a living. But it's also ****ty that people are able to avoid taxes by propping up what amount to a bunch of exclusive clubs.

11-06-2014 , 02:47 AM

#66

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dids

I hadn't had any in years, but somebody in the office brought them in. They're basically just decent tasting things that try to affix themselves to your teeth for life.

Which is why they only make sense in movie theaters where you have nothing better to do for the next 1.5+ hours but pick caramel out of your teeth.

11-06-2014 , 05:10 AM

#67

[Phill]

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Anais

Given finite resources propping up galleries and museums that would survive fine should be at the bottom of the list of things to do with public funds (which is what tax breaks are).

11-06-2014 , 08:13 AM

#68

bobman0330

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I think Reich has a good point. What we currently call charitable giving can be divided into two categories: community spending and true charity. True charity is giving that benefits total strangers who are different from you in some way and that is motivated by generosity (or a desire for status). Community spending is financing community amenities that benefit you and your neighbors (broadly construed). It's essentially an alternative to financing those amenities through market transactions.

11-06-2014 , 01:22 PM

#69

pvn

Guest

Posts: n/a

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anais

I'm of two minds. I think it's important to have avenues for creative people to make beautiful art and earn a living. But it's also ****ty that people are able to avoid taxes by propping up what amount to a bunch of exclusive clubs.

Meh, I donate a lot to a local art museum. They do have a lot of exclusive events, but they're essentially opportunities for the staff to pump rich people for more money. Then they use that money to fund programs for school kids, mostly for inner city public school students who otherwise wouldn't have any exposure to serious art at all.

11-06-2014 , 02:00 PM

#70

Anais

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On the topic of high society, any wine drinkers try this out yet?

Tasting Room does a short flavor profile for you, sends 6 sample bottles, then recalculates your preferences based off which you liked. Money back guarantees, wine, and computer science all rolled into one.

11-06-2014 , 03:52 PM

#71

Huehuecoyotl

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Matt Taibbi's piece since leaving First Look

Quote:

In today's America, someone like Fleischmann – an honest person caught for a little while in the wrong place at the wrong time – has to be willing to live through an epic ordeal just to get to the point of being able to open her mouth and tell a truth or two. And when she finally gets there, she still has to risk everything to take that last step. "The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it," Fleischmann says. "But they're wrong about that."

Good for her, and great for her that it's finally out. But the big-picture ending still stings. She hopes otherwise, but the likely final verdict is a Pyrrhic victory.

Because after all this activity, all these court actions, all these penalties (both real and abortive), even after a fair amount of noise in the press, the target companies remain more ascendant than ever. The people who stole all those billions are still in place. And the bank is more untouchable than ever – former Debevoise & Plimpton hotshots Mary Jo White and Andrew Ceresny, who represented Chase for some of this case, have since been named to the two top jobs at the SEC. As for the bank itself, its stock price has gone up since the settlement and flirts weekly with five-year highs. They may lose the odd battle, but the markets clearly believe the banks won the war. Truth is one thing, and if the right people fight hard enough, you might get to hear it from time to time. But justice is different, and still far enough away.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz3IJtPk3OY

11-06-2014 , 04:13 PM

#72

Dids

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MASSIVE LOLS

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/06/whit..._of_texas_too/

Quote:

You’ll hear that Greg Abbott “carried” women voters in Texas. Anyone who says that is also saying this: that Black women and Latinas are not “women,” and that carrying white women is enough to make the blanket statement that Abbott carried all women. That women generally failed to vote for Wendy Davis. As if women of color are some separate entity, some mysterious other, some bizarre demographic of not-women. [...]

Once more, with feeling: Greg Abbott and the Republican Party did not win women. They won white women. Time and time again, people of color have stood up for reproductive rights, for affordable health care, for immigrant communities while white folks vote a straight “I got mine” party ticket—even when they haven’t, really, gotten theirs.

Salon used to be decent too

11-06-2014 , 04:31 PM

#73

bobman0330

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl

Matt Taibbi's piece since leaving First Look

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz3IJtPk3OY

It's a little confusing how this person hasn't been disbarred already? Like at one point, she gets a call out of the blue from the SEC, and she immediately starts trying to convince the SEC investigator that her former client committed securities fraud.

11-06-2014 , 04:40 PM

#74

ikestoys

banned

Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 94,424

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dids

MASSIVE LOLS

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/06/whit..._of_texas_too/

Salon used to be decent too

DAMN MATH! It's racist for awhile.

11-06-2014 , 04:41 PM

#75

Huehuecoyotl

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bobman0330

Honestly I don't know when attorney client privilege kicks in but this job

Quote:

As a transaction manager, Fleischmann functioned as a kind of quality-control officer. Her main job was to help make sure the bank didn't buy spoiled merchandise before it got tossed into the meat grinder and sold out the other end.

Don't sound like a job where attorney client privilege would apply. But if it didn't, why would she be worried about being disbarred? Plus she's from Canada, she may not be part of the bar in the US. Who knows?

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