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2010 Election Results Are In
The election results are in, and there are one trillion web pages now up helping you find out what happened. The short story is that the Republicans cleaned up, although the Democrats maintain a one-seat majority in the Senate. The GOP now has 239 seats in the house, giving them a huge lead over the Dems' 183.
This DOES matter. It will directly impact laws and regulations that matter to nerds.
Living With a Nerd
Boehner has been quoted that he is more than willing to work with President Obama, as long as what they're working on is what he and the Republicans want
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.
It's a good thing that premiums haven't gone up a similar amount every other year, or that statement would seem suspect.
If you look at it... have salaries increased much since the 1990s? I saw what college students are being offered when they graduate, and it isn't that much more than what they were being offered in the mid 1990s. All the while, prices of cars have nearly doubled, and housing prices have skyrocketed.
Um, you do realize that this fiasco was YEARS in the making and the recession started in 2007, only months after the democrats actually took office. It's not like the democrats could just pass bills at will(as Bush had essentially done from 2002-2007). This whole "giving people houses they cannot afford" was actually the cornerstone of Bush's claims of economic progress in the 2004 election. He droned on and on about the "ownership society" and boasted about how under his presidency more people owned their own homes than ever before*. The republicans were also the ones that were really big on deregulation and repealing depression-era laws that were designed specificially to stop this kind of crash from happening. The democrats aren't angels, but they have a much better record than the Republicans do.
*for certain values of "own", namely you put your name down on a piece of paper and a loan, didn't matter if you could actually pay back that loan.
Monstar L
The Republicans couldn't have timed it better. Pillage the economy, let it fail just before the Democrats take office, and two years later when the Dems have halted and begun reversal of the worst economic disaster of all time, the Republicans come in, blaming the Democrats.
Err, the Democrats took over *4* years ago, not 2. They had complete control of the legislature (and hence the budget process) in 2006, only adding the executive in 2008.
Boehner? Are you kidding me? Boehner distributed campaign distributions from tobacco lobbyists to his fellow congresspeople. On the House floor. Right before a tobacco vote. I mean, there are a lot of people in Congress who are basically corporate shills, but Boehner is easily one of the worst. He's basically a lobbyist in congressional clothing.
This. Rick Boucher lost his seat in Congress. It seems like whenever I saw an article where a US politician really seemed to understand the issues that seem to matter to Slashdot readers like technology, telecoms and copyrights, Rick was in there somewhere. Even some prominent pro-Republican commentators have been saying that this is a loss.
Bets on any of the newcomers taking up the fight?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
And of course being an idiot I get the characters name wrong, it's Milo Minderbinder, not McWatt.
Monstar L
It's just a shell game.
Don't forget that the right wing mouthpieces had their part in affecting the debates. The whole "death panel" debacle was completely distorted rhetoric on something very sensible and important: end of life planning and counseling. Which was proposed by a Republican and accepted until it became too much of an albatross to carry.
IANACS but most of what was in the healthcare bill was suicidal for health insurance policies. Covering pre-existing conditions in children? Yeah it allowed you to insure little Timmy after he got Leukemia, but from an insurance company's perspective it let you get home insurance after your house is burning down or car insurance right after a wreck. Insurance only works when the costs of the ill are distributed among the well, if you have only sick people buying it then it gets very expensive very fast because the cost is slightly more than the average cost of treatment for policyholders. Covering children until they are 26 also drives cost up because it increases the number of people covered without increasing the number of policies held. We've already seen insurance companies refuse to accept child only policies because of the cost to them. You can argue all day long that the health care bill had the best intentions, but in reality it only drives the cost up for people who try to do the right thing and buy insurance before they get sick. It seems to me this whole thing was a plan to drive health care costs up even more so that the government would be in a better position to promote a single payer system.
Classic example. The Dems had 60% of the Senate (counting the Indies). The stimulus bill included about 40% of the tax cuts that Republicans wanted. They wanted a 50/50 solution with 40% of the vote and still voted it down. A stronger Senate leader would have stripped all of their provisions out when they indicated they weren't voting for ti anyway.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
There is no solution to be found in either major political party, unfortunately.
The answer is to restore the rule of law and prosecute the banksters.
Don't misunderstand me - the GOP will fix absolutely nothing, just like the Democrats fixed absolutely nothing.
He's also on the record as being concerned that Newt Gingrich was too conciliatory back in the 1990's. Also, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the record as saying that the top priority of the Republican Senate delegation is to ensure that Obama doesn't get reelected. Something tells me the people's business isn't the top of their list.
I am officially gone from
It was laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act that encouraged banks to lend to low income consumers who were high credit risks to begin with.
You're a goddamn imbecile.
The CRA had nothing, period, at all to do with the collapse at all.
I love the idea that you can 'encourage' banks to make a bunch of failing loans, which were not made under the CRA, by forcing it to make other 'bad' loans. (Note: CRA loans generally outperform other loans, simply because banks pay more attention to who they give them out to.)
It's the same way that businesses are forced to collect sales tax, so they often collect even more money from customers and throw it out afterward. That's how businesses work, right?
The CRA 'covered' about 25% of all institutes making mortgages, and maybe 1-2% were actually 'required' under the CRA, a law which is essentially pointless at this point in history, because banks don't red-line anymore.
As has been pointed out repeated, the economy failure wasn't even caused by mortgages. It was caused by banksters suddenly realizing they'd built castles in the air on total nonsense and had no idea how to value any of it, so functionally had no money on their balance books.
That realization wasn't caused by mortgage failure, it was caused by failing home prices, which meant their assets went down. Even if the American people magically had enough money to keep paying the mortgage, the collapse still would have happened unless housing prices magically stayed absurdly high forever.
You have the bankers who were too short-sighted and optimistic about how those loans would play out in some cases, and openly deceitful in passing off packaged securities to investors while understating their risks in others.
By 'openly deceitful', of course,you mean 'committing fraud on a massive never-before-seen level'.
There is such a thing as personal responsibility. Americans shouldn't have tried so hard to get the best possible homes and realized when a something was simply more than they could afford. If there weren't any homes they could afford they should have stuck with renting.
Fuck. You.
Our real estate broker is legally our agent. It is criminal fraud for them to work against our best interest. They are not allowed to sell people property they can't afford, anymore than your investment banker could sell you an investment he knew was going to decrease in value.
It is also illegal for banks to make loans they know can't be paid off. It is illegal for them not to clearly explain the terms of any loans they are issuing.
But people were 'helped' through the process by people who, under law, were required to tell the truth, and under law were required not to give them loans they knew would fail, or even required to be on their side and instead told the people to lie or even just took blank applications, had the person sign it, and lied themselves.
Then there's all the people who made the situation worse by refusing to continue making mortgage payments they could easily afford simply because they owed more than the house was worth. I consider them every bit as greedy and immoral as most of the bankers we love to vilify.
Ah, the last Republican talking point. So, statically, the one out of ten thousand people who are doing this are important? Becuase no one's actually doing this.
And immoral? Corporations have no morality, I don't really see why anyone has any morality when dealing with them. Corporation kick people of their house all the time when moral people would not. When dealing with corporations, you do the terms of your agreement, nothing more.
Those people are agreeing with the terms of their loan agreement. Either they pay the money, or the bank gets the house. Those were the terms from the start. Perhaps I should quote you 'No matter how sleazy the salesman, you're at least partially to blame if you fall for a scam.'
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Since you are correctly blaming congress for the mess our economy is in, let's look at the exact cause. It was the passing of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 that law repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company.
When that bill passed the Republicans had both the house and senate, however only 7 out of 45 Democratic senators and 51 out of 206 Democratic house representatives voted against the bill. Leaving me with only one conclusion that BOTH PARTIES ARE TO BLAME.
This partisan blame game is counter-productive and is used to manipulate the populous into voting against "the other party". We need to keep an eye on our own elected representatives and make sure that their vote represents the views of their constituents. Quit drinking the party politics kool-aid and think for yourself. The other senators and representatives represents their voters not you! So regardless of your political leanings you need to encourage your senator to work together and create legislation that represents the best interest of the country and quit sabotaging the country in hopes of placing blame on the other party.
For example look at health care reform. The overwhelming majority of the nation feels that something needs to be done to improve accessibility to quality health care. The house democrats decided to allow themselves to be extorted into giving ridiculous concessions to fellow Democrats in order to win enough votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi's hubris we have a health care reform bill that may overwhelmingly be good for the nation, but the Republicans have no vested interested in it and will always use it as some political football.
The Republicans are just as bad. They are willing to let this country go down the tubes in order to win the next election. They acted like a 5 year throwing a tantrum and obstructed every bill that came up for vote. Imagine what the health care bill would be like if the Democrats didn't need to overcome an expected filibuster. Too bad the Republicans will never vote for a bill that made the other party look good. Even bills that they themselves used to push when they had control of the house.
The only good thing that came from the election is that the Republicans control the House and the Democrats control the Senate, so now they have to actually make compromises in order to pass anything. Also Republicans are in the driver's seat in the House and can be held just as accountable as the Democrats for anything that happens from this point on.
I also won't be surprised that the economy will miraculously improve now that the Republicans have no reason to talk down the economy. Thanks to the corporations, we have a consumer based economy and as soon as people feel good about using their credit cards the faster the economy will "improve".
We need more national political parties. The picking the lessor of two evils is not working.
To recap: Both parties to blame. Two-party system sucks. The election ended yesterday so STFU and get back to tech news.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
That's not true; the mandate PROTECTS insurance companies.
If insurance companies can't deny coverage based on pre-existing problems, AND there's no mandate to have insurance, what's to stop people from waiting until they're sick to have insurance?
The entire idea of insurance is that you continually pay into it, and the risk is shared over many people, sick and well. Without the shared risk, only the sick will pay into it, and it quickly goes bankrupt.
Put down the partisan talking points for a second and think about it.
sig?
It happened. All you need for proof is the fact that Boehner apologized for doing it, years after the fact Unless you think Bloomberg is too lefty a news site for you.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
The Dems had 60% of the Senate (counting the Indies).
Only from July 7,2009 when Al Franken was sworn in, up until August 25, 2009, when Ted Kennedy died. And the month long senate recess began on August 7.
Links to prove the 7:1 claim? In any given race for which I saw figures, Democrats outspent Republicans 4 to 1.
An overall figure shows the Democrats spending $856 million total, while Republicans spent $677 million.
Democrats get money from a lot more sources, including plenty of companies, hollywood moguls, and overseas people with an interest in seeing the US take a certain slant.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yea, those rich pay so little in taxes - that's why the bottom 50% of the country pays 3% of taxes and the top 50% pays 97%. It only gets more unbalanced as you go up. The top 25% of the country pays 86% of taxes, the top 10% pays 70% of taxes, the top 5% pays 59% of taxes, the top 1% pays 38% of all taxes.
The "working class" already got their break in paying a whopping 3% of taxes spread over half the working population.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The Democrats had like fifty four, and one of those was an Independent who was Democrat in name only (he even caucused with the Republicans, for goodness sakes).
Uh, that's complete bullshit. Up until Kennedy died there were 58 Democrats in the senate and two Independants who caucused with the Democrats. There were only 40 Republicans, which is not enough to avoid cloture (you need 41). Democrats basically had a supermajority for two years, and still the Republicans somehow managed to stymie their efforts. Could it possibly be because it was the Democratic position that was unreasonable, and not the Republican? I mean, the Independants should have been a breeze to win over if the Democrats were, in fact, being fair and bi-partisan.
The truth is the Democrat leadership couldn't even count on all the Democrats to vote to end these filibusters. The healthcare in particular was unpopular within the more conservative segments of the democratic party. They eventually resorted to shenanigans to get around the filibuster and pass it with a simple majority.
The opposition to the bill and others at the time was by no means pure Republican. It was in fact far more bipartisan opposition than the support for the bill was.
Again, they couldn't even get everyone in their own party to support the bill. Why is it the Republican's fault that it wouldn't pass without trickery?
So what happens? The Republicans refuse to allow anything to come to a vote - there's nearly fifty of them in the Senate, and I believe they can all filibuster for several hours each if they want to.
Again, there were 40 Republicans until Scott Brown was elected at the beginning of 2010, which is not enough to maintain a filibuster. The Democrats were struggling for support for the bill well before that; if it were only the Republicans being obstructionists it would have been a piece of cake to break the filibuster. The Democrats had more than enough support for cloture in such a case. The fact is, the bill sucks, and the Democrats couldn't even get full partisan support for it, let alone bi-partisan.
I have to admit though that I don't like the way a filibuster works these days. In the old days, when you filibustered it was basically a senator demanding their right to be heard. As such they would stand up and speak, and the rest of the Senate had to listen. It was an active process - if you quit talking, the filibuster was over. Now they've changed the Senate rules and all you have to say is "filibuster" and you can stall the Senate for as long as you want. You can thank the Democratic senate majority (majority sets procedural rules, like filibusters) in 1964 for changing the procedural rules for filibuster, which allowed the current state of affairs (prior to this the Senate averaged 1 filibuster a year, after it was closer to 20). No longer did you need to stand up and speak, instead you needed 34 supporters to enact filibuster, stalling the debate. The Dems did reduce the cloture vote to 60 from 67 in 1975, which was a slight correction to the "Tyranny of the Minority" caused by the rules change.
The nuclear option to get around this is especially dirty, though, and it was pretty bi-partisan (initially interpreted as a possibility by VP Nixon in '57, made official by Democrat majority in '75).
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
That's the slashdot server telling you to stuff it already, we've had enough.
Yes, and instead of the $30 Billion that the whole fiasco is going to cost us, the FDIC would have to pay out EVERYONE'S BANK ACCOUNTS. I honestly don't know how much that is, but I imagine that it's more then $30B.
Health care reform in general was a "deal killer" for many republicans. I am disgusted with both parties right now but when it comes to at least trying to compromise the democrats at least make an attempt. The republicans (or, more accurately, the right wingers who came into power in the 90's) decided they were entitled to a permanent majority for the rest of American history. Whenever they lose power their main goal is to get it back, whatever the cost. It seeps into every single thing they do. If you look back on American political history, this is actually a new thing, it used to be that both parties realized they wouldn't always be in power, and acted accordingly.
Maybe for some people. Personally, I get hung up on the claims that the quote makes. First, that the average age of great civilizations was 200 years. This seems to be a carefully chosen date to correlate with the democratic revolutions that took place in France, the U.S., Mexico, and many other countries at the end of the last major colonial/imperial age. That is, chosen to be particularly relevant right about when the quotation is published. Any of my attempts at verifying that figure independently have used that quote as a primary source (that is, it cannot be verified independently and is likely bunk).
I say "is" because this quotation has been re-used several times in history (from 1951 to 2000) particularly around election times and other politically important events.
Also, the quote treats this pattern as a proven and established pattern, even though democracy in it's modern form and the way we have it (with a constitution and checks of power) is relatively recent.
That is, the author makes an unsupported argument and uses careful weasel-wording and timing to appeal to his audience.
If you've read Frank Herbert's Dune, it's very similar to the Missionary Protectiva concept: slight of hand with careful timing to spur action.
It is a great quote for sure, but one to be skeptical of and to carefully examine, not to take at face value.
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"Worst case scenario - foreign treasury holders start dumping large amounts of US debt into the open market, and possibly severely devalue the dollar."
Putting politics aside, I don't see how this is avoidable. Federal debt is around $13x10^12. Depending upon what you include in your arithmetic, unfunded liabilities (such as SS) are between $50x10^12 and $10^13. Meanwhile, the US GDP is around $14x10^12. Yet deficit spending is not contracting, but accelerating.
On the subject of SS, the earliest baby boomers are drawing now on SS. There is no "lock box" holding SS funds - they were rolled into the general pool and spent a long time ago. The inflows were supposed to have exceeded outflows up to around 2017. They didn't - break-even was hit this year.
Short of a miracle invention tripling or quadrupling productivity (not impossible, but definitely in the class of "hail Mary"), there is no way I see around the problem short of dollar devaluation. How fast and how deep I don't think anyone can say. But it will be painful, both to those who have saved for their retirement and to those who live on the SS payments indexed to the obviously unrealistic CPI.
They could have. That was pretty much the approach used in 1929 and it worked great, except for the whole Great Depression thing. Say what you will about the administration, at least they know when big business has the country by the balls.
I read the internet for the articles.
It also appears that wikipedia and snopes disagrees with you:
"The following unverified quotation has been attributed to Tytler, most notably as part of a longer piece which began circulating on the Internet shortly after the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election[9]:
[quotation follows]
There is no reliable record of Alexander Tytler's having made the statement.[9] "
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wirestory?id=12040758&page=4 is one of the many pages that reference his 1996 apology. Just google "boehner 1996 apology tobacco" and pick your website.