Slashdot Mirror

Was not familiar, so I looked it up: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/1...

FTFA: http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-ce... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Let's start with the simple one! NYT is not a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. It also has a bit of a history of being a lousy place to get your science news.

The IARC thing is two pages and doesn't include a single reference, citation, or smidgen of data. I'd not be able to use it as a citation for anything other than for it being considered a probable carcinogen by the IARC--it's remarkably free of statistics, and citations which is actually rather concerning, especially given how cancer actually works & why we have had the admission that most cancers are caused by...well...failing to die.

If you're trying to support a claim of 'causes cancer,' there's no substitute for quality peer-reviewed research when it comes to supporting the claims, especially since there's been some rather long-term problems with the quality of the research and how it gets interpreted.

The IARC paper places Roundup in group 2A, which it defines as:

Group 2A means that the agent is probably carcinogenic to humans. This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. Limited evidence means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (called chance, bias, or confounding) could not be ruled out. This category is also used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and strong data on how the agent causes cancer.

The translation for those not familiar with cancer research: "We need money for more research." You don't really get funding if you are wanting to show that something probably doesn't cause cancer...which is not something I'm comfortable with, so I pretty quickly figured out I want nothing to do with this field of research if I could help it.

FTFA: http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-ce...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

I didn't RTFA but I'm gonna guess it has something to do with the wall and children in cages.

The "cages" are a product of feverish imagination. We are perfectly entitled to build a wall — nothing unethical about it.

The idea that they are raging SJWs who object to all immigration control is just silly

Abolish ICE is just that — because someone told them about the imaginary "children in cages", thousands of people call for the abolition of any and all efforts by the US to protect its borders. Communists are spear-heading the movement, as one might expect, and will even sally themselves with your money (the root of all evil) over it.

Surely you don't actually believe that.

Once again, you are shown to be in denial about the evil of the crowd you choose to affiliate with at best, or are willingly lying at worst...

If you look at the graphs of atmospheric CO2 vs global temperature (whatever that may be) there is not much correlation

Let me guess, you've looked at carefully cherry-picked time windows...

Well actually I looked at the graph with a time window of a few million years, or was it hundreds of millions?

let alone causation.

Helllo? The 1800s called. It's Tyndall and Arrhenius on the line. They want some words with you about the thing called 'greenhouse effect' they discovered.

You forget to mention Fourier.
And yes, a greenhouse effect exists... in a greenhouse.
Greenhouses are those boxes with a transparent lid on top.
The earth's atmosphere has no lid somewhere in the middle. Convection rules up to 10 km height where it ceases to exist due to the low pressure (less than 0.1 bar).

It really follows straightforwardly from basic physics.

I've never seen a reputable physics textbook, like Feynman, mentioning (and supporting and explaining) a greenhouse effect on earth's atmosphere.
On the contrary, thermodynamics (Feynman lectures, lecture 40), in the absence of convection, predicts a negative temperature gradient (with reference to height) caused by the difference in kinetic energy of the air's molecules. However, convection in the lower part (below 10 km) of the atmosphere makes the effect unmeasurable.

Even coal industry shill Richard Lindzen called people who dispute that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas 'a bit nutty'.

I don't need a group of miners decide for me what is physics and what is not, thank you very much.

So let's see, a recently created account by the name of "slazy Rio" that contributed little of value to this community starts executing a Gish gallop of complete bullshit denialist talking points. Are you even trying to not look like a shill/troll ?

I really don't mind whether you consider me a shill, troll or what not. I'm just giving you my formed opinion. I'm not a 'climate denier'. Climate warms up. It always does after an ice age when the sun gets active sun spots again. But after a period, determined by the solar cycles, not the CO2 that we produce, it cools down again, and if you watch the solar activity recently (barely there is) you'd realise that we're heading toward a cool period again.

And, oh, by the way, did I already mention that human contribution to CO2 is undetectable?
Climatologist (99.7%? Yeah, right) Murray Lewis Salby pointed out this out in one of his lectures. If you look at the atmospheric CO2 graphs of the last century and correlate them with the anthropogenic CO2 emissions, you'll see that even in the 1920's-30's, where the global economy--and with that the carbon emissions--literally tanked, but the rate of rise of atmospheric CO2 didn't bulge. Also in the late 1900's, where emissions really took off, the rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 didn't bulge either.
This isn't really a confirmation of the AGW theory but can be explained with Henry's law, which edicts the vapor/liquid equilibrium of gases (CO2 is a gas) and liquids (like deep-sea water).
Due to our earth still coming out of the latest ice age, and the very slow,

Surprisingly, the statistics is suggestive: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/0...
"They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn't bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don't be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, "a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs."
    They are engineers.
    Farrell, of course, was kidding. He posted that comment on a blog shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (confessed Al Qaeda operative and engineering student) tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last winter. But the satire was rooted in a statistical fact: in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented. Maybe that's a numerological accident. The sociologist Diego Gambetta and the political scientist Steffen Hertog don't think so. ..."

And also: http://www.slate.com/articles/...
"It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers ..."

Alternatives: "The Ethical Engineer: An "Ethics Construction Kit" Places Engineering in a New Light" by Eugene Schlossberger
https://www.amazon.com/Ethical...
"On occasion, professionals need to use moral reasoning as well as engineering skills to function effectively in their occupation. Eugene Schlossberger has created a practical guide to ethical decision-making for engineers, students, and workers in business and industry. The Ethical Engineer sets out the tools and materials essential to dealing with whistle-blowing, environmental and safety concerns, bidding, confidentiality, conflict of interest, sales ethics, advertising, employer-employee relations, when to fight a battle, and when to break the rules. The author offers recommendations and techniques as well as rules, principles, and values that can guide the reader. Lively examples, engaging anecdotes, witty comments, and well-reasoned analysis prove his conviction that "ethics is good business.""

And also: "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://disciplinedminds.tripod...
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

After what Sinclair has done with it's other purchases I'm happy to see one fall through. It's pretty clear that the owners of Sinclair use their media empire to push a specific ideology; one I think it's pretty obvious I don't agree with. They seem to be buying up virtually all media. Having one group own virtually all major media outlets can't possibly be a good thing for Democracy.

They have so far.

Other than blowing up satellites with space weapons, you mean...

Oh wonderful, yet another post with a generous grab from the top-50 long-debunked climate myths. A bit like a Gish gallop by the looks of things, so I'm not going to give you a lot of my time. I'll just respond to a few of the more egregious talking points you bring up, and people can look up the rest at http://wikipedia.org/ and http://skepticalscience.com/ .

If you look at the graphs of atmospheric CO2 vs global temperature (whatever that may be) there is not much correlation

Let me guess, you've looked at carefully cherry-picked time windows in order to ignore the blatantly obvious fact that both are steadily going up.
Sure, there's no year-to-year correlation; the temperature data is so (inherently) noisy that only an idiot would expect to see that. But over a relevant time span, yes, yes, it's going up.

let alone causation.

Helllo? The 1800s called. It's Tyndall and Arrhenius on the line. They want some words with you about the thing called 'greenhouse effect' they discovered. It really follows straightforwardly from basic physics.

Even coal industry shill Richard Lindzen called people who dispute that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas 'a bit nutty'.
So let's see, a recently created account by the name of "slazy Rio" that contributed little of value to this community starts executing a Gish gallop of complete bullshit denialist talking points. Are you even trying to not look like a shill/troll ?

Of course the media would rather report that, as a drone flier, I could be spying on people, carrying high-explosives and trying to bring down airliners -- but then again we all know that what you read in the media is (these days) far from the truth.

Right, those things never happen.

Here they lament the legal status of government issued identification to a criminal alien.
It also handily lists many of the services the ID gives criminal aliens access to.
The IDs Were Meant to Protect Immigrants. Are They a Liability?
This lists the states that issue criminal aliens a drivers license
STATES OFFERING DRIVER’S LICENSES TO IMMIGRANTS

"That's 50,000 customers with money to spend."

LMOL you really are a moron aren't you. Corporation promise locate investment but don't follow through.

San Francisco Officials to Tech Workers: Buy Your Lunch https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

All those workers who are suppose to go out into the communities are being kept on campus. So no Potsy cities you should not give tax break on the promise of hordes of workers going to the community when there is no intention of that to happen.

You are completely missing what I am trying to say. Let us pretend we are attending a conference on qualfonic energy, which is completely made up. Let us suppose that someone has just given an address with a serious criticism of this form of energy. Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more seriously given no other information.

Neither. They both have motivations to lie. I'd want to fact check the claims of either person because the first one might be inventing a criticism and the second one may be omitting other major problems. You're a fool if you think either of them is more trustworthy than the other. Furthermore, a proponent admitting a minor flaw, is a classic hustle technique to get you to buy into the product that they're pitching.

If this were not the case you would understand why a source pointing out all of the things that Trump has lied about or misrepresented is not sufficient proof of your claim. You need to compare it to other politicians and I am not convinced that Trump is significantly worse. He certainly is not a truthful politician, but few are and we tend to forget the myriad lies and cover-ups of controversies that surround past politicians. I suspect that if we were discussing some subject where you were not in agreement with the conclusion, you would be quick to employ the same arguments I have used here, but you dislike Trump so much that your emotions blind you to reason.

Trump's lies corrode democracy.
There's a long history of presidential untruths. Here's why Donald Trump is 'in a class by himself.
How Does Trump Stack Up Against the Best — and Worst — Presidents?
Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s
Donald Trump running the most dishonest White House ever, says historian
Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter
Are Clinton and Trump the Biggest Liars Ever to Run for President?

That is not to say you are a bad person, because everyone is that way about something that they take personally. My point is that in this particular area, you are not a good source absent significant and quality evidence.

How much evidence do you need? If you're really interested, there's a lot more stuff on Trump's lack of honesty and his place in the world of American politics in respect to that, but I think it's telling that presidential historians (who ought to know quite a bit about past presidents) have (spoilers) ranked him last place out of all of America's presidents. That's pretty unusual, most politicians get ranked in the middle somewhere during their terms, neither best nor worst.

You are completely missing what I am trying to say. Let us pretend we are attending a conference on qualfonic energy, which is completely made up. Let us suppose that someone has just given an address with a serious criticism of this form of energy. Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more seriously given no other information.

Neither. They both have motivations to lie. I'd want to fact check the claims of either person because the first one might be inventing a criticism and the second one may be omitting other major problems. You're a fool if you think either of them is more trustworthy than the other. Furthermore, a proponent admitting a minor flaw, is a classic hustle technique to get you to buy into the product that they're pitching.

If this were not the case you would understand why a source pointing out all of the things that Trump has lied about or misrepresented is not sufficient proof of your claim. You need to compare it to other politicians and I am not convinced that Trump is significantly worse. He certainly is not a truthful politician, but few are and we tend to forget the myriad lies and cover-ups of controversies that surround past politicians. I suspect that if we were discussing some subject where you were not in agreement with the conclusion, you would be quick to employ the same arguments I have used here, but you dislike Trump so much that your emotions blind you to reason.

Trump's lies corrode democracy.
There's a long history of presidential untruths. Here's why Donald Trump is 'in a class by himself.
How Does Trump Stack Up Against the Best — and Worst — Presidents?
Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s
Donald Trump running the most dishonest White House ever, says historian
Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter
Are Clinton and Trump the Biggest Liars Ever to Run for President?

That is not to say you are a bad person, because everyone is that way about something that they take personally. My point is that in this particular area, you are not a good source absent significant and quality evidence.

How much evidence do you need? If you're really interested, there's a lot more stuff on Trump's lack of honesty and his place in the world of American politics in respect to that, but I think it's telling that presidential historians (who ought to know quite a bit about past presidents) have (spoilers) ranked him last place out of all of America's presidents. That's pretty unusual, most politicians get ranked in the middle somewhere during their terms, neither best nor worst.

Yikes! So does Oregon! And a few others aren't far behind!. Someone needs to teach these people the terms "secret ballot" "voter coercion" and give them a history book.

baloney yourself idiot.
OCO2 is showing that China is emitting more than what they admit to. However, it is not possible to get absolute numbers on it. All that is seen is that it is much more than double what America is, and we are at 14.5% of global emissions.
This is no different than when China had to reverse their 50 year lie about coal and how they were caught just recently releasing 13,000 TONNES of CFCs into the atmosphere YEARLY. And it turned out that the Chinese gov KNEW that companies were doing it. Otherwise, they would not have been doing it all of the construction companies.

We just told the Chinese that we weren't allowing lead in most products solder here any more, and they stopped using lead in those products and manufacturing processes.

There wasn't supposed to be any lead in the paint used for the Thomas the Tank Engine wooden toys, and yet there was.

RC2's Train Wreck

This won't end well. Based on the news stories of how well most facial recognition works on African Americans it will probably only allow one black person to vote and ID the rest as the same person.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

> The university adds to, it doesn't take away from, such a person

Some do by encouraging studies that are not merely impractical but fraudulent or dangerous. In case you think I'm kidding, check out this "historian of medicine" claiming there is no such thing as biological gender, despite all the actual *biology* that show its existence.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And this professor, Melissas Click, who was finally fired for calling on her fellow protesters to physically eject a peaceful student reporter because he was a conservative white male.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

I am, in general, happy with professors and universities leading people to political activism. But it needs to be *aimed*, and sometimes it gets nutty out there.

I thought this news article was interesting about the Clintons and Russia. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0... Interesting thing about the Dems is typically they point fingers at others and place blame for their own misconduct. #HillaryforPrison2020

The reason they are doing it now is because they are raked through the coals for this kind of abuse:

• Banks Fail to Comply With Parts of Mortgage Settlement, Report Says
• Oops, Wells Fargo Did It Again
• Wells Fargo Is Accused of Making Improper Changes to Mortgages
• Banks That Failed to Fix Mortgage Services Face Restrictions

The reason they are doing it now is because they are raked through the coals for this kind of abuse:

• Banks Fail to Comply With Parts of Mortgage Settlement, Report Says
• Oops, Wells Fargo Did It Again
• Wells Fargo Is Accused of Making Improper Changes to Mortgages
• Banks That Failed to Fix Mortgage Services Face Restrictions

The reason they are doing it now is because they are raked through the coals for this kind of abuse:

• Banks Fail to Comply With Parts of Mortgage Settlement, Report Says
• Oops, Wells Fargo Did It Again
• Wells Fargo Is Accused of Making Improper Changes to Mortgages
• Banks That Failed to Fix Mortgage Services Face Restrictions

The reason they are doing it now is because they are raked through the coals for this kind of abuse:

• Banks Fail to Comply With Parts of Mortgage Settlement, Report Says
• Oops, Wells Fargo Did It Again
• Wells Fargo Is Accused of Making Improper Changes to Mortgages
• Banks That Failed to Fix Mortgage Services Face Restrictions

The original linked article from the New York Times in 1964 is actually far more interesting.

I know slashdot is a little behind sometimes, but 1964? That's pushing it.

Nobody ever dared to talk about this problem.

Except the dozens of people on record for the various complaints about Chinese practices including specifically on the dumping of solar panels.

Your blind, effusive Praise for Trump whose screaming has accomplished nothing betrays you.

Obama did it first.

PS, the EU isn't the enemy and Russia isn't the friend of the US.

Much as I like The Atlantic, I will not click on this obvious clickbait bullshit slashvertisement.

TFA had exactly 1 paragraph out of 17 related to its own title:

Their longevity was another matter. As early as May 17, 1964, as reported in The New York Times, microfilm appeared to degrade, with “microfilm rashes” consisting of “small spots tinged with red, orange or yellow” appearing on the surface. An anonymous executive in the microfilm market was quoted as saying they had “found no trace of measles in our film but saw it in the film of others and they reported the same thing about us.” The acetate in the film stock was decaying after decades of use and improper storage, and the decay also created a vinegar smell—librarians and researchers sometimes joked about salad being made in the periodical rooms. The problem was solved by the early 1990s, when Kodak introduced polyester-based microfilm, which promised to resist decay for at least 500 years.

The original linked article from the New York Times in 1964 is actually far more interesting.

Yeah, your nation is really worried about the planet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/...

I hope you can tell the difference. Bypassing congress bad. Working within Constitutional Executive authority good.

Barack Obama signed over 275 executive orders. Nine of them got overturned. So, it looks like he was good at Constitutional Executive Authority.

I have to ask though, do you believe a president has the "Constitutional Executive authority" to declare a $100 billion tax cut?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

"It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it"

I'm sure, some of the drop really is due to legitimate alternatives appearing. Yet, those alternatives still cost some money, so the criminal and civil prosecutions of the illegal downloaders and download-facilitators must've helped too.

Must it? Do you have evidence?

How much of the observed drop is due to those, law-based measures?

An excellent question. Do you have an answer? Since the next question kind of depends on the answer to this one.

"It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it"

I'm sure, some of the drop really is due to legitimate alternatives appearing. Yet, those alternatives still cost some money, so the criminal and civil prosecutions of the illegal downloaders and download-facilitators must've helped too.

How much of the observed drop is due to those, law-based measures?

And, if these measures' really did prove a significant deterrent, thus contributing to what we now seem to agree is a good thing, maybe, Slashdot ought to collectively apologize to the MPAA, RIAA and the like organizations collectively denounced here as "MAFIAA" for years?

Over 50 yrs is recent? https://www.nytimes.com/2001/0...

The NYT article clearly states this if you had bothered to read it instead of just bashing. From the New York Times
"In San Francisco, the East Cut name originated from a neighborhood nonprofit group that residents voted to create in 2015 to clean and secure the area. The nonprofit paid $68,000 to a “brand experience design company” to rebrand the district."

Just like CD prices came down after all the music companies recouped the cost of switching from making cassettes?

Why CDs are expensive Hint: the cost of the actual CD technology always was a small fraction of the record company costs.

Also, cars are not the same as CDs. Honda, Nissan, and Ford might all be selling a similar car at a similar price; but if you want the latest music by $ARTIST you don't have a choice of multiple companies selling that music. Only if music consumers said "I'm not loyal to $ARTIST but rather to $GENRE" and shopped on price would the two be comparable. I don't even pay attention to what company makes the CDs of my favorite artists; I buy the specific music I like.

There are some people who are very brand loyal and will buy a particular car brand no matter what, but those are IMHO few when we are talking about the low end of the car market. (It's different with prestige brands like BMW, Mercedes, etc.)

The cost of computers has come down over the years, and cars are more like computers than they are like CDs in terms of competition based on price.

Fending off bad actors like the Russians

The "Russians" needed fending off for decades. The stoked America's racial strife, and sponsored the "peace" movement. Yes, the butchers of Budapest and Prague, the destroyers of Afghanistan were arguing for "peace" and the American Left where lapping it all up! Quite possibly, these efforts cost us victory in Vietnam — the war was no less justified than the earlier Korean one, but met much higher internal opposition...

Only back then the same NYTimes — and all the rest of the Left-thinking Americans — mocked any attempts at the fending off as "Red scare" and denounced it as "evil McCarthyism". And now the same people are trying to convince us, the President is illegitimate, because his son once met with a Russian lawyer.

So that the main champions of thwarting and reversing attempts to combat greenhouse gas based global warming can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court in the future?

Many legal tests are based on "what a reasonable person should have known" and "what action a reasonable person would take, given this knowledge."

Criminal negligence, fraud (in communication about the issue), criminal conspiricy (between fossil fuel industry and corrupt politicians acting on their behalf). etc. etc.

Let's start this effort, please. The current policy insanity cannot continue.

There is no excuse of ignorance at this late date.
Read https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
for a good history of "when we knew".

2 possibilities: Conservatives are afraid social programs will let the poor improve their lot so they structure them for failure or Conservatives fear someone will cheat the system better than they do

Interesting ideas, too bad they're demonstrably false. Conservatives on average donate considerably more money to charity than liberals, both as a whole and as a percentage of income. They also volunteer for charities more and give more blood. If everyone in the US would give as much blood as conservatives, the national supply would go up 45%.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/1...

My takeaway message isn't that conservatives want people to die in the street without food/healthcare/whatever, they just prefer smaller governments and prefer to let a combination of free market, local communities and/or charities to pick up the slack.

Well, we did go into Iraq for (Bush's) thrill of blowing stuff up.

Iraq had not even a thread of a connection to 9/11. This was known prior to the invasion and was communicated to Bush by Richard Clarke immediately after the 9/11 attacks. In response, Bush told him to find a link.

It was known prior to the invasion, and prior to 9/11 that Iraq had no WMD program. To quote Colin Powell, speaking of Iraq's WMD program and sanctions on February 24, 2001 in Cairo:

"Frankly, they have worked. He [Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

And then the Downing Street Memo:

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

And then Bush's little slip revealing his hate for Saddam - again pre-invasion. I watched him say it on live TV, so yeah, it happened:

"There's no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us. There's no doubt he can't stand us. After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time."

Inconvenient facts are inconvenient. There was no intelligence failure.

the rest is potentially a way to get sued if you demonstrably dropped profit and/or shareholder suffered through it

Stop repeating stuff you've heard stupid grown-ups say.

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfo...

https://medium.com/bull-market...

Worker pay and benefits climbing at fastest pace in 10 years, ECI finds

Does anyone have any idea what could have happened 10 years ago that caused worker pay and benefits to stagnate for a whole damn decade?

Anyone?

Bueller?

I'll bite, but the problem started about 20 years ago... With the creation of the "subprime mortgage" which was needed to loan money to unqualified borrowers, backed by two Federally backed mortgage companies. A pile of money got loaned to people who couldn't pay it back and real estate prices shot though the roof as the market was awash in cheap money loaned by banks, converted into questionable securities backed by the fed. Why did banks do this in the first place? Anybody have a clue how this could take place, banks loaning money that would never get paid back?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Here's a hint.... WHO demanded that subprime borrowers be given loans and why?

Here's a statement: What happened at the end of Bush's administration is the house of cards finally fell, but the building of that structure took YEARS so the cause of the problem wasn't the economy and wasn't really Bush's fault (except in that he didn't see and avoid it). The REAL reason happened years before when banks started loaning money to unqualified people and why do you suppose they did that?

DEMOCRATS

Barney Frank stating Fannie Mae isn't going to fail:

'These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

And, umm, yeah, Bush et al did see it coming:

2003:

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

And another attempt in 2005:

S. 190 (109th): Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005

Worker pay and benefits climbing at fastest pace in 10 years, ECI finds

Does anyone have any idea what could have happened 10 years ago that caused worker pay and benefits to stagnate for a whole damn decade?

Anyone?

Bueller?

I'll bite, but the problem started about 20 years ago... With the creation of the "subprime mortgage" which was needed to loan money to unqualified borrowers, backed by two Federally backed mortgage companies. A pile of money got loaned to people who couldn't pay it back and real estate prices shot though the roof as the market was awash in cheap money loaned by banks, converted into questionable securities backed by the fed. Why did banks do this in the first place? Anybody have a clue how this could take place, banks loaning money that would never get paid back?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Here's a hint.... WHO demanded that subprime borrowers be given loans and why?

Here's a statement: What happened at the end of Bush's administration is the house of cards finally fell, but the building of that structure took YEARS so the cause of the problem wasn't the economy and wasn't really Bush's fault (except in that he didn't see and avoid it). The REAL reason happened years before when banks started loaning money to unqualified people and why do you suppose they did that?

DEMOCRATS

Barney Frank stating Fannie Mae isn't going to fail:

'These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

And, umm, yeah, Bush et al did see it coming:

2003:

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

And another attempt in 2005:

S. 190 (109th): Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005

Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany

Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

This has to be one of the most inane useless responses I've ever seen on Slashdot that wasn't supplied by an AC like myself.

Meanwhile, in 1916, Shuman was doing this.

What have you done?

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

The European Commission has long attempted to justify its strict health and environmental regulations as necessary to protect the public from uncertain risk associated with genetically modified crops. The World Bank report debunks this myth and offers empirical evidence of the commission's true motives.

What is really behind the commission's stringent regulations is European industry's comparative disadvantage in the use of genetically modified, or GM, crop technology. In drawing this conclusion, the study points to the significant role played by European industry in lobbying for protectionist barriers.

Luckily, we have that data, and it shows that not only is this year setting records for high temperatures, so did the previous three years in a row. And the longer term data shows a clear trend.

You applied the term "mess" to the entire field, and one of the specific examples (one that you're clearly biased against) was of someone challenging an incumbent, and winning. That is exactly what you praised the up and coming Republicans for doing just two sentences prior.

You seem to be claiming that the incumbent was overconfident because he expected to win (in large part due to flawed polls) and you don't feel he put enough effort into the race. You're cherry picking one case from one side and criticizing it for the specifics while comparing it to the platonic ideal you've presented for the other side without giving any concrete examples.

So here's one counter-example. Four years ago the Republican House majority leader was unexpectedly defeated in the primaries by a new and more radical challenger in an almost identical scenario. "Republicans were so sure that Mr. Cantor would win that most party leaders had been watching for how broad his victory would be."

If your logic that a single such high-profile case represents a fundamental weakness in the party was true then the Republicans should have performed dismally in the 2014 midterms, but instead they made huge gains.

Unexpected upsets are a regular occurrence in politics (and sports, and pretty much everything else.) Attributing some meaningful significance to a single such event seems problematic and doesn't really align with previous cases.

Also, your attempt to communicate was rather poor, please write and proofread more slowly.

You are unfamiliar with trains in Japan then. It's an issue when they leave 20 or 25 seconds early. Lateness is inexcusable. If there is a change to the tickets that causes any confusion, it's going to be a madhouse.

In most other countries, no big deal.

Again, you make the mistake of not considering the base rate to begin with.

What does that even mean? The article was quite clear, the guy got in to medical school, with lower grades than his Asian American friend who was denied entry, because he pretended to be African American. What does "base rate" have to do with this?

You rant against "minority quota", but how many straight white males also should have flunked out but stayed in?

Listen, facts don't care about your feelings. If you have data that straight white males have been allowed to stay in college even after failing to meet requirements then I'd like to see it.

It's been widely reported that medical schools have been discriminating on race for a long time now. Here's a few articles on it that I found with Google.
https://www.nationalreview.com...
http://www.aei.org/publication...
http://www.aei.org/publication...
http://www.savvypremed.com/sav...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Kind of stupid of you to assume that everything was all hunky-dory until the minorities got in.

It's kind of stupid to assume everything is "hunky dory" now by letting in students based on race rather than their test scores and other measures of academic achievement. Racial discrimination is illegal in the USA, even if it's to the benefit of minorities. Maybe this tactic of having racial quotas was necessary at some point but it's not helpful any more.

If minorities want to be respected in their fields then their peers need to know that they met the same level of rigor to get where they are as anyone else.

What is horrifying is that this racist tactic of having differing levels on admittance to medical schools is that these people are treating patients when there were others more qualified for the job. This means more mistakes, and it means more people die. I like the idea of computerized diagnostics, but for it to work it takes people with proper knowledge of medicine to enter the right data, interpret the recommendations, and know when the computer is making a mistake. We see this with airline pilots leaning on the automatic pilot too much, they don't realize when the computer has screwed up and/or don't know how to fly the plane when the computer fails. This means people die.

This tactic of taking race of university applicants into account to determine fitness for entry is, by definition, racism. I thought we were trying to do away with racism in America.

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfo...

FTA: The leading statement of the law's view on corporate social responsibility goes back to Dodge v. Ford Motor Co, a 1919 decision that held that "a business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders." That case — in which Henry Ford was challenged by shareholders when he tried to reduce car prices at their expense — also established that "it is not within the lawful powers of a board of directors to shape and conduct the affairs of a corporation for the merely incidental benefit of shareholders and for the primary purpose of benefiting others."

Despite contrary claims by some academics and Occupy Wall Street-type partisans, this remains the law today. A 2010 decision, for example, eBay Domestic Holdings Inc. v. Newmark, held that corporate directors are bound by "fiduciary duties and standards" which include "acting to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of its stockholders."

The other important factor with libraries is that books don't suddenly disappear en-masse like they can with a virtual/centrally-controlled commercial entity... People should remember the particularly ironic case of Amazon removing copies of 1984 from everyone's Kindle, as reported in the New York Times and The Guardian.