Slashdot Mirror

on how rich you are. If you make over $1mil/yr then the last round of decisions has been great. Everyone else? Not so much.

Someone missed the opportunity for a headline: "Newsom Shoots Bullet Train."

More seriously, the first high-speed rail line in the world, the TÅkaidÅ Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka, began operation in 1964. It runs approximately the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A good analytical piece on the history and problems of the California project comes from David Dayen; you can read it here: https://prospect.org/article/c.... Does anyone else feel like they're living in a technological backwater?

Sears struggled for multiple obvious reasons - online competition, the hollowing out of the middle class, etc. - but Eddie Lampert sucked a lot of juice out of the body while Sears was still alive. And he stands to gain even more from its bankruptcy:

"As of now, Lampert’s ESL and a related fund called JPP own roughly $2.66 billion in Sears debt. The cash flow just on the interest on these notes is between $200 million and $225 million per year.

"This figure continues to grow—ESL announced on Monday another $300 million debtor-in-possession loan to support operations through the end of the year.

"Presumably, this debt would be significantly curtailed in bankruptcy. However, a fair bit of the debt is secured by Sears’s real-estate assets. For example, real-estate collateral on 46 Sears properties backs a $500 million loan ESL made in January 2017; the bankruptcy could lead to Lampert’s fund simply obtaining those property rights. In all, Lampert’s interests own around $1.5 billion in secured debt backed by real estate."

How Sears Was Gutted By Its Own CEO

Did you RTFA? It claims that much of the subsidy is in CASH. Other sources seem to support that assertion as well:

Wisconsin taxpayers will end up sending some $3 billion to the company. While state-level support is touted as tax relief, in fact Wisconsin has already waived almost all of the pertinent taxes for businesses. The taxpayer-funded $3 billion in incentives (the largest ever to a foreign company) will be paid largely in cash.

On top of that, the state will waive $150 million in sales taxes for Foxconn and pay the company up to $2.85 billion in tax credits — likely in cash

When looking a little further into it there are also bunch of projects that the state is doing to accommodate the factory. For example:

-State and local governments will also spend $400 million on road improvements, including adding two lanes to the nearby Interstate 94. And the federal government has committed to spend $160 million more in federal money to help pay for the interstate expansion.
-The local electric utility is upgrading its lines and adding substations to provide the necessary power that will be used by the plant, at a cost of $140 million. The cost of those projects will be paid by 5 million customers in the area.

Even if they provide the jobs they originally committed to, it'll cost around $400,000 per job. How long does someone making $50k a year need to pay taxes in Wisconsin to recoup that outlay?

It's a blatant corporate handout. Politicians can afford to be so brazen these days because they have so polarized the political environment that their "team" will vote for them, no matter what. We're watching the downfall of democracy in America and a large number of people are applauding.

Actually, that is literally the opposite of what the LGBTBBQ community believes. They believe that your gender identity and sexual orientation should not dictate every bit of life, which is why they think they should have the same rights as anyone else.

They say believe it, they don't do good job of living it. This is something that is pretty well-documented--go poke around some.

Here, since your search engine skills are not good enough to type in a phrase like 'biphobia in the lgbt community'--here are some of the top results (out of ~176,00) that I got when I did it, you can get more easily: HuffPo LGBT Sentinel Pride Bi Resource Center.. Switching to transphobia from biphobia, I get: The Independent (about the transphobic protest at the 2018 London Pride parade that got to lead the parade for a bit, I honestly wish I was making this up) Syracuse Peace Counsel The American Prospect; I will admit that the filtering on Google means I don't get quite as narrow a focus so some of the ~742,000 results it spit out are not necessarily relevant. Non-binary discrimination within the LGBT* community is primarily discussed in academic sources, though on occasion you will see things like this article from HuffPo.

You can also find out some really...ah...interesting stories by just listening to homosexual trans people talk about some of how they get treated. Some gays and lesbians only really out themselves as transphobic when they are dealing with non-straight trans people--which at one point caused me to drop a few friends because I'm not okay with this.

You work 40 hours. You trade that labor for things. You can get a limited amount of stuff in trade--that's purchasing power.

Food. Housing. Clothing. Your car. High-speed Internet. Healthcare. These are things for which you need buying power.

Lowering the cost of goods and services means your purchasing power extends further: instead of choosing between a car and healthcare, you can have both.

Literally nothing else is standard-of-living except what you can buy for your time worked.

You forgot to mention that while some goods can be bought more cheaply you also see your wages fail to keep pace as has been the case since the 70's. It's a race to the bottom wage wise so it's not nearly as rosy a picture as you paint. Moreover economists agree that they duped us and the impact was far worse than estimated. Opps, their bad but our loss.

Citations:

http://prospect.org/article/de... https://www.economist.com/node...

Dont forget M. Sanger who loved to control the black population through abortion. Their plan is working well since that race has the highest abortion rate. Hillary loves Sangers work. :-)

You mean the same Margaret Sanger who wasn't even alive when Planned Parenthood first performed abortions, and whose cause was birth control, which was considered to be unlawful and highly stigmatized, but who believed such methods would actually reduce the number of abortions, and who actually began her campaign among her own neighborhood before being invited by the leaders of the Harlem community to expand birth control services to their population?

You know, that's the problem with the right-wing, they get so caught up in their lies, they don't realize people can actually check the facts.

I don't know what country you're in, but here in the US it took a god damned law for a woman to be allowed a trial rather than arbitration when her employer locked her in a shipping crate after she was gang raped at her place of employment by fellow employees. http://prospect.org/article/how-women-won-kbr-rape-case

Until Congress and the President stepped in, her employer had appealed all the way to SCOTUS to keep the case in arbitration ... and every court along the way agreed she had to go to arbitration to decide whether her employer had kidnapped her or facilitated her rape.

Even Steve Bannon says Nazis are Rubbish:

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: "Ethno-nationalismâ"it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."

"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.

What about Senate seats?

Impacted by turnout reduction due to gerrymandering, and voter restrictions.

Governorships?

Add above, plus off-year elections for more manipulation.

State legislatures?

You mean the groups doing the gerrymandering in all but a handful of states?

Even if you leave out the fact that Democrat-controlled states gerrymander Congressional districts just as much as Republican-controlled ones (as you have conveniently done),

That's actually not true.

I get it, you want to believe it is true, despite the facts not supporting it. However, even the most strident defenders have to admit that Republicans have obviously done it in more states. But so what if it were true? That means nothing, it is still immoral and a betrayal of principles.

Why don't you just get past your partisan biases? All they're doing is causing you to lie.

that doesn't explain why the Ds have been getting their asses kicked over and over in all the races I mention above.

Your premise is also flawed. Check out the elections.

But yes, voter discrimination and the effects of gerrymandering to depress turnout do have an impact.

Actual they have http://prospect.org/article/pr... it's called stopping profit shifting, and adopt “sales factor apportionment.”

Obama created the Consumer Finanical Protection Board (CFPB) and they are the agency that went after Well Fargo (after a banking employees union identified the problem).

Of course the republicans hate, hate, haaaaate the CFPB because congress can't neuter it like the way they neutered all other enforcement agencies - by starving them.

You're a moron aren't you. Look up profit shifting some time. As it was explained to you, corporations can setup subsidiaries where they shift profits from one unit to another. So you could show that the US business made no profits because it had to pay the Ireland business IP licenses, effectively wiping out all profits made in the US business. Over Apple can show profits because of what all business units do but the US business unit can show the IRS that the business unit made no profits. This might help you http://prospect.org/article/pr... So go educate yourself.

Well, why don't you educate yourself yourself, because your article doesn't actually support your claim.

You're a moron aren't you. Look up profit shifting some time. As it was explained to you, corporations can setup subsidiaries where they shift profits from one unit to another. So you could show that the US business made no profits because it had to pay the Ireland business IP licenses, effectively wiping out all profits made in the US business. Over Apple can show profits because of what all business units do but the US business unit can show the IRS that the business unit made no profits.

This might help you http://prospect.org/article/pr...

So go educate yourself.

Ok, if it is a known practice, cite it.

Originalism. It's not hard to find.

Find me some supreme court decisions that disregarded amendments in favor of what the Founders thought. Or appeals court decisions. Or circuit court. Or traffic court.

Oh, you want to see it in an American legal context? Most especially you'll want to look at the criticism of the Dred Scott decision for the most infamous example.

More recently, well, there other sources of information as to the patterns and practices of your average self-proclaimed originalists.

It's a bankrupt and destitute moral philosophy.

Ok, if it is a known practice, cite it.

Originalism. It's not hard to find.

Find me some supreme court decisions that disregarded amendments in favor of what the Founders thought. Or appeals court decisions. Or circuit court. Or traffic court.

Oh, you want to see it in an American legal context? Most especially you'll want to look at the criticism of the Dred Scott decision for the most infamous example.

More recently, well, there other sources of information as to the patterns and practices of your average self-proclaimed originalists.

It's a bankrupt and destitute moral philosophy.

No Apple does not pay their taxes. Apple is hold revenue off their books in order to not pay taxes. Apple also has elaborate shell business that hide their revenues. http://prospect.org/article/pr...

Thats just a number you plucked out your backside

http://www.politico.com/story/...
http://prospect.org/article/ma...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

There you go. There's three references. One a university study, one from a polling company, and one from a government organisation. Those were just the first 3 links on Google in order. Let me know how far down you get before you find one that suits your agenda.

Probably not the article you're talking about, but same conclusion, and a good read: http://prospect.org/article/ac...

I've been waiting on AI to start disrupting Jobs for a decade now. As far as I know Amazon's Technical Turks are still profitable.

If you haven't seen AI disrupting jobs, you haven't been looking very hard. The average U.S. factory worker is responsible today for more than $180,000 of annual output, triple the $60,000 in 1972. "We're able to produce twice as much manufacturing output today as in the 1970's, with about seven million fewer workers. In many industries, the increase in productivity has exceeded Perry’s estimates. 'Thirty years ago, it took ten hours per worker to produce one ton of steel,' said U.S. Steel CEO John Surma in 2011. 'Today, it takes two hours.'"

Not all of this is AI, but a great deal of it is. Robotics and improved operations is the primary cause of this rise in productivity, and the industry isn't done improving yet.

Explain anti vaxxers

Anti-vaxxers are spread pretty evenly across the political spectrum. In fact a study published in December 2014 found that conservative Republicans are very slightly more likely to hold anti-vax views than liberal Democrats. You can see the pretty graph here.

Like Mike Huckabee promoting a "hidden Biblical cure" for cancer? This is anoher reason we need TYSON / NYE 2016, I'm sick and tired of living under some invisible sky-god that only talks to people that seem to really just hate, kill, want to control everything, and firmly believe they can legislate over biology.

You mean after a left wing piece of legislation was pushed down their throats without any actual negotiation, using parliamentary tricks? The only negotiation on Obamacare was with conservative democrats, and sometimes the straw republican in Obama's head. I'd give him some credit for the straw republican being based on things like something the heritage foundation wrote, except itwasn't actually similar to obamacare. The actual republicans then in office got nothing out of it. Why would they bother trying to work with someone who's public attempt to supposedly negotiate comes down to "I won"?

The democrats tried to have everything their way. Turning around and banning a practice they started because they didn't like the results didn't do them any favors in the long run.

Obamacare is the first major program to ever be passed on strict party lines, with a minimal majority, using whatever means available to bypass resistance from the opposition and ignoring generally unfavorable public opinion.

TFFY- http://prospect.org/article/no...
Good try though, try some other talking points...

Mozilla just ousted their chair over something that screws over far fewer people than this.

LK

There's not enough geeks who know what this means for it to be a "pat yourself on the back for your own moral superiority" moment.

Progressive outrage and political correctness are a positional good:

Examples of positional goods include high social status, exclusive real estate, a spot in the freshman class of a prestigious university, a reservation at the "hottest" new restaurant, and fame. The measure of satisfaction derived from a positional good depends on how much one has in relation to everyone else.

Competitions for positional goods are zero-sum games because such goods are inherently scarce, at least in the short run. Attempts to acquire them can only benefit one player at the expense of others. By definition, every person cannot be the most educated, the most skilled, or elite, in the same way that every person cannot be a star athlete: all of those terms imply a separation or superiority over other people.

In other words, "progressive outrage" or "political correctness" is really nothing more than an "I CARE MORE THAN YOU DO!!!" contest where the players are always trying to outdo all other players. When civil unions become acceptable, someone who "cares more" moves on to gay marriage and the crowd follows. When gay marriage becomes acceptable, someone starts to excoriate those who used to support only civil unions, and the crowd follows. (Dunno why Obama's not being subjected to this targeted outrage...)

Gay marriage is probably both the best and worst example of this process in action. The best because the process of evolving arguments happened in such a relatively short time that it's obvious. Hell, Mozilla fired a CEO for a social position that merely what? 10 years ago wasn't even on the radar?

It's also about the worst possible example because using it (in my mind at least) seems to imply gay marriage isn't a laudable goal but rather another random PC pronouncement. I'd guess though, that the reason mores have changed so rapidly regarding gay marriage is that is is a laudable goal that most people agree with.

But hey, don't expect common sense from progressives. Donald Sterling may be a vile racist who doesn't like minorities, but unlike progressive media, at least he hires them. Of The Nation's 24 employees, ONE isn't white. 61 employees at The Atlantic? FOUR are minorities. Mother Jones has 40 employees, just FIVE minorities. Slate? 75 employees, NINE minorities.

I have never met someone claiming to be a Ron Paul Libertarian (of whom I've seen many comments here on Slashdot from) express opinions that promote the military-industrial complex, the keeping of secrets of government action by force or the trampling of individual rights.

Ron Paul -- obviously the definitive "Ron Paul (so-called) Libertarian" -- is anti-choice, anti-religious freedom (believes "The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers."), pro-censorship (introduced a Constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning), anti-privacy, and supported the criminalization of homosexuality by state governments.

Paul is not libertarian in any meaningful sense of that word. He's anti-federalist, but fully authoritarian, happy to have government fsck you over if you step out of his vision of what a white Christian American should be...just so long as it's a state government. He's a terrible excuse for a human being and anyone supporting him should be deeply, deeply ashamed.

Snowden has offered to help Brazil investigate US intelligence. Is that the patriotism you were referring to?

Why, yes, Yes it is.
Any spying on Brazil was for economic reasons, probably at the behest of corporations, not due to any threat to the US.

Smug AND clueless. Nice. Nice.

THE NEW CHINA-BRAZIL AXIS
http://prospect.org/article/new-china-brazil-axis
"Last week, an interview at a Brazilian defense website revealed that China and Brazil had come to an agreement regarding the training of Chinese naval personnel on board the Sao Paulo, Brazil's only aircraft carrier. Brazil is one of the only four countries in the world to possess an aircraft carrier capable of launching and recovering conventional aircraft; the others are France, Russia, and the United States."

China Carrier Starts Second Round of Jet Tests
http://news.usni.org/2013/06/19/china-carrier-starts-second-round-of-jet-tests
"The People’s Liberation Army Navy has conducted a second round of jet tests aboard its aircraft carrier with its J-15 carrier-based fighter on Wednesday, according to a report from the Xinhua news agency.
The Chinese are being trained in carrier aviation —the most complicated military aviation operations — by a cadre of Brazilian carrier pilots."

Brazilian Nuclear Cooperation with the People's Republic of China
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/brazilian-nuclear-cooperation-the-peoples-republic-china

Brazil, China build military industry ties
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2009/11/17/Brazil-China-build-military-industry-ties/UPI-86341258474208/

Brazil builds Russian defense ties with missile plan
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/16/brazil-russia-idUSL1N0I61NC20131016

Brazil’s Iran Diplomacy Worries U.S. Officials
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/world/americas/15lula.html?_r=0

Proposed Russian-Cuba-Venezuela Space Cooperation Raises Many Questions
http://jasonpoblete.com/2008/09/22/proposed-russian-cuba-venezuela-space-cooperation-raises-many-questions/

Yep, nooooo reason at all to be interested there.

Here.. Also Here. You're welcome.

Quite the opposite, the CRA (of 1977!,) requires
CRA lending needed to be done "consistent with safe and sound operation." In 1999, banking regulators issued guidance concerning sub-prime lending and made the point that CRA lending needed to be responsible -- well underwritten, well priced, and understandable by the borrower.

Also

With respect to performance, Canner and Bhutta did three types of analysis. First, looking at mortgages originated between January 2006 and April 2008, they found that sub-prime and Alt-A loans originated in zip codes with incomes just below the level that "counts" for CRA purposes performed slightly better than those originated in zip codes with incomes just above the CRA level. They also looked at the performance of first mortgages originated under the affordable-lending programs of NeighborWorks America, most of which counted for CRA purposes, and found that these loans had delinquency rates lower than sub-prime or Federal Housing Administration loans, and foreclosure rates lower even than prime loans. Finally, they noted that only about 30 percent of foreclosure filings in 2006 took place in CRA-eligible zip codes. link

That's right, tightly regulated lenders making first mortgages under the CRA had a lower foreclosure rate than largely unregulated lenders making other types of mortgage loans including prime loans. Blaming the CRA for the foreclosure crisis is the reddest of red herrings and allows the true culprits (independent mortgage originators and their enablers in the securitization arms of the big banks and the credit rating agencies) to walk away scott free.

Wrong.

http://prospect.org/article/understanding-black-white-earnings-gap

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2012/01/31/capital-grille-charged-discrimination.html ...just off the top of my head.

But I have never seen a side by side comparison of recidivism rates, abuse complaints, etc. If the privately run facilities are really so bad, then why don't the critics show some real data instead of obfuscating.

Sometimes, a minute with Google can keep you from saying dumb things.

"...In 1998, when American prisons held 1.3 million prisoners, there were only 59 inmate-on-inmate homicides. That's a rate of one murder for every 22,000 prisoners. The homicide rate in Wackenhut's New Mexico facilities in those nine months was about one for every 400 prisoners--and that's not counting the death of Ralph Garcia, Wackenhut's guard....

"A research project I directed in 1999 compared the quality of correctional services in a medium-security private prison run by CCA in Minnesota with the three medium-security prisons run by the state. We found many more operational problems in the CCA prison--from program deficiencies and unreliable methods of classifying prisoners for security purposes to high rates of staff turnover that resulted in inadequate numbers of experienced, well-trained personnel. And this was in a private prison that was not notoriously troubled--a facility that the company, in fact, considered to be exemplary." -- http://prospect.org/article/bailing-out-private-jails

"First, the number of staff assigned to private facilities is approximately 15 percent lower than the number of staff assigned to public facilities (28 per 100 inmates in private facilities versus 32 per 100 inmates in public). Sec- ond, management information system (MIS) capabilities appear to be lacking in private facilities. Third, the rate of major incidents is higher at private facilities than at public facilities....

"The re- sults are similar to the original analysis with one major exception: in this comparison, the privately operated facilities have a much higher rate of inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults and other disturbances. These differences may be related to other factors such as reporting stan- dards or the fact that correctional facilities often experience management difficulties when they are newly opened. The CCA Youngstown facility is a good example of such difficulties (Clark, 1998). However, insufficient training for and lack of qualified staff in key positions may also be a valid explanation for these differences. This would be consistent with the claims of critics of privatization who charge that private prisons are inadequately staffed by inexperienced and poorly trained correctional officers. Coupled with a lack of programs and work assignments, higher rates of misconduct from inmates predictably occur. Nevertheless, the notion that privately operated prisons are safer or better managed than public facilities is not supported by these results." -- http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf

That court date happened already -- and she lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Leigh_Jones
---------------
"On July 8, the jury returned a verdict that rejected all of Jones's claims, finding that the sex between Jones and the employee was consensual and therefore no rape had occurred, and that KBR did not defraud her."
---------------

But still, even though she personally lost her case, the precedent the case itself set seems a good one in general:

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_women_won_the_kbr_rape_case
---------------
"Whether Jones was assaulted or not, letting the very company she accused resolve the case seems problematic, to say the least.

The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court thought so too, finding that the binding arbitration clause did not apply to Jones' sexual-assault charges; her contract covered work-related disputes but "stopped at her bedroom door." In other words, rape is not a work-related injury."
---------------

At least in America, it's far worse than that. The people who raise the chickens for market make about 5c / pound. The rest is profit for the meat company and the market http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_serfs_of_arkansas

the very first question that should be asked of people proposing legal changes of this kind is, "Where are the data to show that this new and harsher law will result in a reduction in the penalized behaviour sufficient to justify the change?"

You assume that reducing the behavior in question is the goal of the criminal justice system. More and more, I doubt this is the case.

For the prison-industrial complex, it's all about money; there's money to be had building and running prisons, and prison guard groups like CCPOA have clout and want to keep their members employed. For the masses, it's all about satisfying an irrational, almost ritual, need for revenge -- right up to the ritual human sacrifice that is capital punishment. (Just look at how many comments here are calling for tougher treatment of prisoners, without any rational argument involved.) For politicians, it's about pandering to all these groups with "tough on crime" rhetoric.

Actually reducing violent or fraudulent behavior is a pretty low priority.

There are a small handful of votes where Ron Paul has voted in a way that would be upsetting to left-liberals (gay adoption in DC comes to mind), but aside from that, I don't think there is anyone in DC more passionately committed to personal freedom than Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is anti-science, anti-choice, anti-separation of church and state, a liar (in that he's given two contradictory stories about the controversial racist statements that appeared in his newsletter), and either a racist or incompetent to run a 'zine.

A great deal of his faux-libertarianism is about removing federal safeguards against state governments and big business fscking you over. Ron Paul wouldn't know personal freedom if it bit him in the ass.

The fact that he still makes more sense than most of the G.O.P. is an indictment of the conservative movement, not an endorsement of Paul.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers put average federal wages at $68,740, while private-sector wages averaged out at $42,270. The disparity is still there, in part because the nation's overall work force skews more toward blue-collar jobs than does the federal government. But $68,000 sounds less "lavish" than "respectable." Whether a worker makes more or less in the public sphere depends a lot on what job he or she is doing: Nurses make more, and petroleum engineers make less. Cashiers in government jobs make a lot more, $34,000, than the $18,000 of their private-sector counterparts.

But where can anyone easily live on $18,000 a year? It's below the federal poverty line for a family of three, and even a two-wage-earner household, with both adults making that salary, would be struggling well below the national median household income of $50,000.

Herbert Hoover is largely considered an embarrassment these days, because his response to a depression was to try to reduce spending. These days, economists (you know, the people who study economic functioning in order to try and learn) -- economists understand that when some whack-ass Republican president crashes your economy, you've got to spend money to get yourself out of it.
In a way, though, such a crisis and the deficit-spending that it demands provides an opportunity, because as long as there's still a drop of money to be squeezed out of failing or counter-productive technologies, Corporations and their Republican Toadies will not want to rock the boat. But once the boat is already rocked, there's more willingness to invest in industries that have a chance of producing things of value in the deeper biological sense (which I would argue underlies any economy), strengthening the economy in the longer-term. We're talking new technologies like solar power, smart grids, etc, as well as basic R&D, not to mention developing a functional health care system, and getting a muzzle onto rabid investment houses and insurance companies. Luckily for the CaRTs, sucking money out of the economy can protect you from renovators.

I'm not sure about this, but I'd consider adding the amount paid directly ($35 million, as you state) to the amount collected in tax revenues from the sales of the drug as well. Not the sales taxes, or the income taxes from the jobs created, but the corporate taxes paid, as they directly relate to those sales. That's a more accurate figure of what BMS gave the government.

Those sells were world wide not just in the US, and businesses don't pay income tax on all of that. And what jobs? The jobs at the NCI? They did the research not BMS. All BMS did was research on how to lower its own costs. And manufacturing costs don't count either, as stated before in 2000 BMS made more than a billion dollars in profit. And guess who paid some of that? Taxpayers, Medicare pays for treatment too.

Falcon

That's funny because I see small community banks all over the country that have never had to merge with another bank, acquire a non bank business, or grow beyond their two or three small branches. Some have been in business for decades. And even though they don't need to abide by the CRA, they do, because it is the right thing to do for the communities those banks serve.

No, banks do NOT have to abide by the CRA. But all this is besides the point, at least if the point we are arguing is whether the CRA had anything to do with the financial collapse.

From here: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis

Rhetoric aside, the argument turns on a simple question: In the current mortgage meltdown, did lenders approve bad loans to comply with CRA, or to make money?

The evidence strongly suggests the latter. First, consider timing. CRA was enacted in 1977. The sub-prime lending at the heart of the current crisis exploded a full quarter century later. In the mid-1990s, new CRA regulations and a wave of mergers led to a flurry of CRA activity, but, as noted by the New America Foundation's Ellen Seidman (and by Harvard's Joint Center), that activity "largely came to an end by 2001." In late 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to sharply weaken CRA regulations, pulling small and mid-sized banks out from under the law's toughest standards. Yet sub-prime lending continued, and even intensified -- at the very time when activity under CRA had slowed and the law had weakened.

Second, it is hard to blame CRA for the mortgage meltdown when CRA doesn't even apply to most of the loans that are behind it. As the University of Michigan's Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA. A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.

Most important, the lenders subject to CRA have engaged in less, not more, of the most dangerous lending. Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts. With this in mind, Yellen specifically rejects the "tendency to conflate the current problems in the sub-prime market with CRA-motivated lending.? CRA, Yellen says, "has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."

Sorry, the CRA is a red herring that has nothing to do with the financial collapse, it is just another dirty trick the right uses to absolve itself of blame and lay it at the feet of liberals.

No, they aren't. My little community bank (not a credit union, a bank) does not do mergers, acquisitions, or expansion. They serve one community and have for the last fifty years. They still follow the CRA, even though not following it would cost them nothing. And they are still in business.

That's nice that your little community bank has done so well. And I'm sure there are plenty of other community banks that have done well, and there are certainly plenty that have not. What happens to the ones that didn't do well? For the most part, they are acquired by solvent banks -- who had to comply with the CRA.

From the first article that comes up:

Oh, please. that's The American Prospect, whose subtitle right in the banner at the top of the page is "Liberal Intelligence"

I'll offer an alternative: Here's How The Community Reinvestment Act Led To The Housing Bubble's Lax Lending. It's from the "Business Insider", which is hardly non-partisan -- but no more (or less) so than the "American Prospect".

The author admits to changing his mind (he previously agreed with you). The article addresses various defenses of the CRA, point-by-point. You probably won't agree with any of them, and frankly I find some of his conclusions a bit lacking in evidence. However, if you take the time to follow some of the linked evidence, there's a lot of interesting information.

No, they aren't. My little community bank (not a credit union, a bank) does not do mergers, acquisitions, or expansion. They serve one community and have for the last fifty years. They still follow the CRA, even though not following it would cost them nothing. And they are still in business.

The Fair Housing Act made it illegal, but the CRA added regulatory teeth and oversight. Of course some people think the CRA 'contributed' to the crisis, these are people who are against any government regulation. But the facts show they are wrong, the CRA did not contribute to the financial mess we are in now. Simply do a google search on "defaults on CRA mortgages" and you will find that CRA mortgages were less likely to default than non CRA mortgages.

From the first article that comes up:

Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts. With this in mind, Yellen specifically rejects the "tendency to conflate the current problems in the sub-prime market with CRA-motivated lending.? CRA, Yellen says, "has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."

Also, only 1 in 4 sub prime loans were made under the CRA:

Second, it is hard to blame CRA for the mortgage meltdown when CRA doesn't even apply to most of the loans that are behind it. As the University of Michigan's Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA. A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.

Finally, even with the CRA, were loans made to comply with it, or just to make money?

Rhetoric aside, the argument turns on a simple question: In the current mortgage meltdown, did lenders approve bad loans to comply with CRA, or to make money?

The evidence strongly suggests the latter. First, consider timing. CRA was enacted in 1977. The sub-prime lending at the heart of the current crisis exploded a full quarter century later. In the mid-1990s, new CRA regulations and a wave of mergers led to a flurry of CRA activity, but, as noted by the New America Foundation's Ellen Seidman (and by Harvard's Joint Center), that activity "largely came to an end by 2001." In late 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to sharply weaken CRA regulations, pulling small and mid-sized banks out from under the law's toughest standards. Yet sub-prime lending continued, and even intensified -- at the very time when activity under CRA had slowed and the law had weakened.

The problem on our side is that as a member of the WTO, we can't impose tariffs on imports - including importing work that takes place overseas.

I've heard here and there that the WTO will allow for certain tariffs to exist (such as Value Added Taxes) for certain externalities. I'm running around Google looking for examples... Here's a short example. Here's another.

The financial meltdown of 2008 was caused by the subprime mortgage disaster, which was directly *encouraged* by the Federal government through Fanny Mae and the "community reinvestment" requirements.

Why won't this myth die? CRA was not the cause of the sub-prime mortgage disaster.

As the University of Michigan's Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA. A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.

Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.

You're right about Fannie and Freddie. They did contribute to the problem, although the problems there were actually due to poor policies: investments in sub-prime mortgages should have been regulated, HUD's affordable housing goal increases ignored reality, etc.

No, we're in the shitter because our constitution grants a minority party veto power over the majority of people who want government to work and actually accomplish things. Raise taxes on the very wealthy, lower taxes for average people, reduce sales tax, give more funding to K-12 and higher education, improve the health care system's quality and availability, fix our crumbling infrastructure; these are all things that the majority of Californians want, but our nearsighted attempts at expanding democracy (ballot initiatives and requiring super majorities to accomplish basic tasks) have paralyzed our government.

The money is there, we could balance the budget tomorrow, but a handful of Republicans who hate the government, hate taxes, and hate the middle class are perpetuating the crisis while at the same time running on a platform that claims government doesn't work. So guess what they make sure happens when they get into office; they make sure government doesn't work, just like they say it doesn't.

Here is the problem with your theory: I am a megacorp, I can hire an American, where I will have to pay decent wages, maybe health benefits, etc, or I can offshore to a place where I can dump my factory's toxic waste straight into the river, treat my workers like dogs and pay them pennies, while cutting myself a big fat bonus for doing so.

Or if I want to stay in the USA I can just use this instructional video as a guide to allow me to bring over an indentured servant, who again I can pay peanuts and treat like shit, and use what would have been the decent pay the Americans would have gotten to cut myself a nice bonus check. See the problem yet? Kinda smell the fail?

They pushed everyone to get tech jobs last time this happened remember? what happened to all those magic tech jobs that was gonna save us? Well they were either sent off shore or were given in large numbers to indentured servants but hey! Surely after education worked so well for all the tech workers, drowning in debt with little job prospects, it'll work again, right?

Wake up and smell the fail pal. Here is the truth-FREE TRADE IS A LIE. There is NO free trade with countries like India and China, because they don't want YOU, or your goods, just your money. Yet the globalists, who are making out better than Goldman Sachs on this scam, will keep blowing smoke up your ass telling you that education will magically fix it. Just recently (sorry I don't have time to find yet another link, Google it) they were setting up law firms in India specializing in American law to be off shore law banks. So what EXACTLY is the "skills they need to get the jobs that are available"...hmmm? Because short of flipping burgers or fixing your pipes or digging your ditches (many of those jobs BTW are being increasingly filled by illegals) pretty much ANY job that requires an education can be done cheaper in a third world country like India.

So let's here a SPECIFIC LIST of these "jobs" they should be educated for, okay? And remember your average factory line worker isn't a nuclear physicist just needing a degree, many are just very basic folks with a sub par public education. So let's here it, we're all ears. Otherwise you're just blowing the same smoke they did over tech jobs. BTW, do you support erasing all the debt of those that took your advice last time and now have worthless tech degrees?

He is funded because he makes money, that's why. If you want to see just sad come down to the south where you will see signs for Bush and McCain in front of tar paper shacks. There is a theory that the dirt poor vote as if they are rich, but I don't think that is it. I personally think so many have been brainwashed by their churches (where the preacher is driving a Lexus) that as long as republicans thump that bible once in a while it doesn't matter what they do, the dirt poor will still jump on board.

Sadly we here in the USA are going nowhere but down. Voting is completely broken, with one rich corporate suckup VS another, with both sides only agreeing on wanting more power and more of a police state, one to "protect us from terrorists" and the other to "protect intellectual property" but either way the outcome is the same. How sad is it that Bill Hicks has been gone nearly 20 years and his words are even more true than when he first uttered them. Short of a revolt I just don't see things getting better here, I honestly don't. The game is just too rigged now for anyone who hasn't completely sold their souls to have a shot at anything meaningful anymore.

What you're talking about is called a Strategic Deficit

The parent is correct, but a bit terse. I thought I'd elaborate a bit:

"Federal Reserve Board data shows that:

* More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
* Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
* Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."

- http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

The stats don't back up the idea that any public institution or law bears the brunt of the responsibility for problematic lending.

It also doesn't make much sense. Take the fingers pointed at the CRA. It didn't force banks to make risky loans. They could deny an application based on income, credit rating, or any other relevant factors. What it *did* force them to avoid was "red-lining": denying loans based on the current living location (used as a proxy for the applicant's race). A person's race and living location might have some correlation with risk of defaulting, but as we all know here on slashdot, correlation is not causation, and a responsible financial institution would deal with the more directly relevant information: an individual's income/asset information and their credit history.

Here's some other links:

http://www.ptmortgage.com/blog/2008/10/01/pointing-fingers-was-it-cra-and-minority-lending-that-caused-the-mortgage-mess/
http://debatebothsides.com/showthread.php?t=73500
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis
http://www.frbsf.org/news/speeches/2008/0331.html
http://www.ccc.unc.edu/news/news.021809.php
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/Commentary/2000/1100.htm
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/ls564.htm

Wikipedia also has a summary.

The mechanisms for most CAM modalities (such as say, homeopathy) are usually highly implausible and often would require a complete reworking of the Standard Model.

Homeopathy would require something weird, but one can construct plausible theories about some effects of herbs, acupuncture and acupressure, chiropractic, massage, and osteopathy, as well as health cultivation practices such as yoga and qi gong, without stepping outside (or with only minor tweaks to) the "Standard Model". Even various "energy healing" modalities can be understood psychosomaticly. (And I guess homeopathy could be too, at that.)

Then throw in the fact that rarely is there even good scientific evidence that shows CAM modalities do anything at all and where are you left?

Rarely is there good scientific evidence that shows conventional modalities do anything. Very little medicine is evidence-based.

Moreover, there is a perfectly good reason why there is not nor will there be double-blind placebo controlled trials for vaccines.

Bullshit, as demonstrated by this controlled study of an HIV vaccine candidate: "The study had two (blinded) groups, one control group (receiving placebo injections) and one experimental group (receiving four 'prime' doses of ALVAC HIV and two boost doses of AIDSVAX gp120 B/E), with over 8,000 volunteers in each group, lasting from 2003 until now."

You are basically accusing most physicians of being corporate shills.

Have you been in a fscking doctor's office lately? Notice all the freebies with the names of drugs on them that pharmaceutical sales reps give out to doctors? Are you aware of the way that big pharma spends over $20 billion a year to essentially bribe doctors to use their products? Did you not hear about that recent fraud case against Pfizer?

Many doctors are corporate shills, yes. Many others have simply declined to engage their critical thinking skills, and believed whatever bullshit Big Pharma spoon-fed them as they were plied with gifts. (I dread the day my physician -- honest, hardworking, intelligent, compentent, and kind -- retires,

The fact that things like herbal supplements are more or less highly unregulated.

In point of fact, the FDA has basically the same regulatory power over supplements it has over food. It has the power to make supplement manufactures provide a complete list of ingredients, and to remove supplements from the marketplace if a danger is found. This is certainly a preferable state of affairs to the days of federal paramilitary law enforcement raids on people selling herbs and vitamins, don't you think?