The (ostensibly) Low Content Thread - Page 6 - Politics and Society -- Two Plus Two Poker Forums

Wow I can't believe well named closed the IDW thread right before we got into some real brave intellectual territory about vivisection. Fitting that it happened on the anniversary of D-Day, when the emotionally charged regressive left did violence to people over a political disagreement.

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06-06-2019 , 08:03 PM

#128

Huehuecoyotl

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After getting caught racially gerrymandering in 2017, the North Carolina lawmakers told the court late they didn’t use racial data when they drew the new maps. Lawmakers told the court in September 2017 that data regarding race of voters “was not even loaded into the computer used by the map drawer to construct the districts.”

But Hofeller’s files show he did consider racial data when drawing the maps, according to the filing. All of Hofeller’s draft maps include racial data, the lawyers said. State Rep. David Lewis, a Republican who played a lead role in drawing the new maps, strongly denied he and other lawmakers misled the court. He suggested Hofeller was drawing maps with racial data in his spare time.

Look we all need hobbies and this Republican's hobby was to hobble minority voting power in order to give Republicans plutocrats more power that just so happen to track with what Republican politicians do.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5...08cf7eb18fb?d2

Last edited by Huehuecoyotl; 06-06-2019 at 08:21 PM.

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06-07-2019 , 11:18 PM

#129

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

The Right's Grifter Problem

Often discussed on the left, but it's interesting to see this roundup of PAC fundraising vs. political donations in the National Review (irrelevant though NR may be these days :P)

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Back in 2013, Conservative StrikeForce PAC raised $2.2 million in funds vowing to support Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor in Virginia. Court filings and FEC records showed that the PAC only contributed $10,000 to Cuccinelli’s effort.

Back in 2014, Politico researched 33 political action committees that claimed to be affiliated with the Tea Party and courted small donors with email and direct-mail appeals and found that they “raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals, compared to $39.5 million on operating expenses, including $6 million to firms owned or managed by the operatives who run the PACs.”

Back in 2015, RightWingNews reviewed the financial filings of 21 prominent conservative PACs and found the ten 10 groups at the bottom of their list spent $54.3 million only paid out $3.6 million to help get Republicans elected.

...

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06-07-2019 , 11:27 PM

#130

Kelhus999

banned

Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 3,282

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Originally Posted by well named

It kinda seems this is just an accepted part of the culture in states associated with a certain very large, intelligent, social animal. Between all the televangelists, church organizations, Veterans organizations, police organizations, etc. it seems there is plenty of this going on that isn't even politically motivated.

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06-07-2019 , 11:34 PM

#131

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

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06-07-2019 , 11:46 PM

#132

MrWookie

Don't Call Me Meredith

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 94,159

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Originally Posted by Kelhus999

"Not politically motivated," but you just rattled off a string of organizations that target conservatives.

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06-08-2019 , 01:27 AM

#133

Trolly McTrollson

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Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 36,819

test

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06-10-2019 , 06:43 PM

#134

Kelhus999

banned

Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 3,282

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-...-weep-16484143

This article brings up an interesting philosophical point, in that a lot of elephant behavior (including grieving) indicates they are conscious/self-aware, which begs the question whether they should be treated more humane and given individual rights on this basis?

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06-10-2019 , 09:12 PM

#135

spanktehbadwookie

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https://youtu.be/IuBeJXTb1wE

Art is the LaLaLa part and the instruments, the rest is politics?

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06-11-2019 , 12:06 PM

#136

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

Secularism is on the rise, but Americans are still finding community and purpose in spirituality

I thought some of the charts in this were interesting

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Their answers revealed that most Americans organize their communities and sense of identity around their family unit, though religious institutions followed closely behind. Our survey also revealed that work, hobbies, or political affiliation matter on average much less to people than their spiritual beliefs or family.

Overall, most Americans still feel connected to a higher being or spiritual belief. Religious attendance may be dwindling, but people are still interested in finding community and purpose through faith of some kind.

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06-11-2019 , 12:25 PM

#137

DodgerIrish

Fraudulent Zodiac

Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 28,197

Anecdote: Guy picked me up when my car broke down and I was walking back to a gas station. He mentioned Jesus in some capacity along the way. Later, when I let a curse slip I apologized. "Ah hell man, I don't go to church or nothing. I just believe in God and wanted to help someone."

I live in Idaho so it's probably something of an epicenter for this mindset. We do have a large Mormon population tho, this guy was probably what's called a Jack Mormon in these parts.

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06-11-2019 , 08:44 PM

#138

Huskalator

adept

Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 775

Happy death-of-the-internet-aversary everyone!

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06-12-2019 , 02:32 AM

#139

CodythePATRIOT

adept

Join Date: Oct 2017 Posts: 1,048

What's up patriots. Donald Trump is putting the teeth back in our legal system. I am proud to announce that 1,700 pedos have been caught in the latest DOJ crackdown.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nearl...n-broken-heart

God Bless America and God Bless Donald Trump our president and commander in chief.

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06-12-2019 , 11:27 AM

#140

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

I moved the identity politics discussion to its own thread: What is "identity politics"

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06-12-2019 , 01:41 PM

#141

Huehuecoyotl

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Originally Posted by well named

I thought this explanation of how the prices of various goods/services change relative to each other was informative and interesting: The Baumol Effect. It's not something I was previously familiar with, and the explanation seems intuitive.

On the point that regulation is the key driver of prices (in certain areas) and not cost disease

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In contrast, my friend Bryan Caplan is not happy. Bryan’s basic point is to argue, ‘look around at all the stupid ways in which the government prevents health care and education prices from falling. Of course, government is the explanation for higher prices.’ In point of fact, I agree with many of Bryan’s points. Bryan says, for example, that immigration would lower health care prices. Indeed it would. (Aside: it does seem odd for Bryan to argue that if K-12 education were privately funded schools would not continue their insane practice of requiring primary school teachers to have B.A.s when in fact, as Bryan knows, credentialism has occurred throughout the economy)

The problem with Bryan’s critiques is that they miss what we are trying to explain which is why some prices have risen while others have fallen. Immigration would indeed lower health care prices but it would also lower the price of automobiles leaving the net difference unexplained. Bryan, the armchair economist, has a simple syllogism, regulation increases prices, education is regulated, therefore regulation explains higher education prices. The problem is that most industries are regulated.

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So by all means let’s deregulate, but don’t expect 70+ year price trends to reverse until robots and AI start improving productivity in services faster than in manufacturing.

Let me close with this. What I found most convincing about the Baumol effect is consilience. Here, for example, are two figures which did not make the book. The first shows car prices versus car repair prices. The second shows shoe and clothing prices versus shoe repair, tailors, dry cleaners and hair styling. In both cases, the goods price is way down and the service price is up. The Baumol effect offers a unifying account of trends such as this across many different industries. Other theories tend to be ad hoc, false, or unfalsifiable.

the graphs in the post show that, when normalized to 1950's prices repair prices have risen while the cost of the actual good has gone down.

https://marginalrevolution.com/margi...-dmn-high.html

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06-14-2019 , 10:09 AM

#142

Huehuecoyotl

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The insights of this new data series are many, but for this post here I want to highlight a single eye-popping statistic. Between 1989 and 2018, the top 1 percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion. The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org...n-900-billion/

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06-14-2019 , 04:08 PM

#143

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

I moved some more posts over to the identity politics thread, since they fit there.

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06-14-2019 , 04:18 PM

#144

Huehuecoyotl

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Facebook says you have no expectation of privacy when you use Facebook

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Representing Facebook before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria was Orin Snyder of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, who claimed that the plaintiffs’ charges of privacy invasion were invalid because Facebook users have no expectation of privacy on Facebook. The simple act of using Facebook, Snyder claimed, negated any user’s expectation of privacy:

There is no privacy interest, because by sharing with a hundred friends on a social media platform, which is an affirmative social act to publish, to disclose, to share ostensibly private information with a hundred people, you have just, under centuries of common law, under the judgment of Congress, under the SCA, negated any reasonable expectation of privacy.

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At one point Chhabria asked, seemingly unable to believe Snyder’s argument himself, “If Facebook promises not to disseminate anything that you send to your hundred friends, and Facebook breaks that promise and disseminates your photographs to a thousand corporations, that would not be a serious privacy invasion?

Snyder didn’t blink: “Facebook does not consider that to be actionable, as a matter of law under California law.”

Facebook’s counsel did seem to concede one possibility for the existence of privacy on Facebook: someone who uses Facebook completely contrary to the way it’s designed and to the way it has always been marketed. “If you really want to be private,” Snyder proposed to the court, “there are people who have archival Facebook pages that are like their own private mausoleum. It’s only set to [be visible by] me, and it’s for the purpose of repository, you know, of your private information, and no one will ever see that.” So these are your possible valid legal statuses as a Facebook user: You’re either plugged into the 100,0000-person perpetual surveillance Coachella or living in a digital “mausoleum.” But if you ever decide to fling open the doors of your private data crypt and, say, share a little content on Facebook with friends, as the company has been pushing us for the past 13 years, Snyder says you’re out of luck

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/14/...-policy-court/

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06-14-2019 , 04:46 PM

#145

Huehuecoyotl

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This looks pretty bad

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06-14-2019 , 04:57 PM

#146

Luckbox Inc

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article here
In Phoenix currently but i don't follow local news very well and this is the first I'm hearing of this. Cops can be pretty bad here like everywhere though.

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06-14-2019 , 05:09 PM

#147

tomdemaine

Just tries harder

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 20,065

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl

This looks pretty bad

Man that ferguson effect really is something. Those police so afraid to do their jobs because of the PC brigade.

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06-14-2019 , 06:07 PM

#148

John21

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 3,558

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl

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https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org...n-900-billion/

hmmm...

source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/relea...7;units:levels

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06-14-2019 , 06:14 PM

#149

Original Position

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For those interested in Asian politics, the Asia Power Index put out by the Lowy Institute is a fun tool to play around with.

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06-14-2019 , 07:21 PM

#150

Willd

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Quote:

Originally Posted by John21

hmmm...

source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/relea...7;units:levels

I have no idea what point you're trying to make with this. If you look at specifically levels of consumer credit then all percentiles have grown pretty much exactly in proportion to each other over that period. I don't know what that has to do with Huehuecoyotl's post though. If you look at total wealth you see that it pretty much exactly tallies with his post:

Thanks for that link though, it's actually a very interesting set of data.

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