There are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. What exactly is your plan to deport them? To round them up? Where are you going to house and feed them while you do? Are you going to build some sort of colossal prison-city?
The AC wasn't talking about being for or against the decision. He/she was specifically talking about the legality of using an EO to change the law, which you pointedly ignored with a plea of "the ends justify the means".
For the life of me, I cannot see why the Republicans in the Senate would want to paint themselves as cynical, old-school politicians in this election year
You can't see why the Republicans would object to replacing the farthest right staunch conservative and strict originalist judge with a left-leaning moderate? Really? Particularly after the ACA rulings? And the gay marriage one? It seems pretty obvious to me.
I do agree that as a matter of general principle the court should not be thinking about the big picture when they are sensibly interpreting laws as they are written; that's what the legislature is for. I just disagree that Scalia was a good example of this ideal.
You've got to at least admit that Scalia was wayyyy better at it than his fellows on that court. I don't think the liberal judges on the court has ever gone against their personal feelings on an issue when making a ruling. Or at least I haven't seen it in my lifetime. One of the reasons you're seeing so much pushback again Obama's appointment has been the recent tendency to legislate from the bench. Some of the recent rulings have been egregiously poor from a Constitutional standpoint. Hell, Kennedy is actually on record saying one of his votes on ACA recently has nothing to do with law, instead over worry of the "damage to the law" that could be done by ruling the other way. That's unprecedentedly bad judicial law. The courts are supposed to be impartial.
But you're absolutely right, it's where the thresholds are set that makes all the difference. 250k individual income is very much in the 1% territory.
Lower even than that. 1% is ~425k. 250k is somewhere around the 3% income percentile: http://www.kiplinger.com/artic...
If you take cost of living into account as well (which you should), it becomes an even bigger problem. After all, 250k in NY/California isn't the same as 250k in Wyoming.
But when you say "60-70% taxes for "high-income taxpayers" without any thresholds or anything, that makes me think about people making $1M getting that level of taxation, and I don't have a problem with that at all.
Except it's not. If you look at Norway's tax brackets (which is the system you're commenting on), the 50+% tax rate occurs at a low level of income. Their _average_ personal tax rate is around ~42.25%. If that's the model you're saying Bernie is shooting for, people aren't going to accept it here. The US average is around 31.5%. You're basically talking about a ~40% hike in everyone's taxes, not just millionaires. And what most liberals don't understand (or don't want to) is that such a hike in everyone's taxes is necessary to achieve the model. You can't squeeze enough money out of rich people alone to achieve the kind of extravagant social programs you find in Europe.
I will say, however, I think that one really, really big problem in this country today is the cost of housing. It's gone way up in the last 15 years, largely thanks to the housing bubble. I'm not exactly sure about what can be done, but I do think the government has a responsibility to try to fix that somehow.
I think this one will fix itself. It's not a problem of housing costs so much as stagnant wages, which appear to finally be recovering. Basically, costs went up, but wages didn't go up to match.
Lets assume that is true. So what replaced the missing 6% of power? It wasn't wind and solar. They went up slightly, maybe half a percent each. So lets say 1% of the missing 6% is wind/solar. Where did the other 5% come from? Natural gas.
While it is true most of the replacement was natural gas, you're wrong on the solar/wind growth numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States).
In the last decade, non-hydro RE (which is primarily wind/solar) has increased its share of production by an additional 4% of the total mix. While still smaller than nat gas, it isn't the ~1% you're claiming. And the adoption slope remains upward for renewables. Some 60+% of all new energy capacity additions last year was renewables: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/...
In summary, as coal plants phase out due to age retirement, at least 50+% of the capacity pickup year-to-year will come in renewables. Frankly, if the cost dynamics continue to appreciate for solar (and I've seen no sign of them slowing down), renewable could conceivably get 100% of the annual capacity replacement.
Better than coal, but not really a solution if AGW is your concern.
I disagree. The total picture (worldwide in fact) for coal is pretty damning. And natural gas done right (i.e. without leaks) is a far sight better for the environment. Moreover, the "total energy picture" is very rosy for the future adoption of green energy atm. Even without government incentives. As is the fact energy consumption has been flat for over a decade. Frankly, I believe if they ever perfect the residential home battery, solar adoption will just go nuts. We're on the correct trajectory. Change just takes time.
As for 60-70% taxes for high-income taxpayers, what's the problem with that?
Maybe nothing, maybe everything?
Some (many/most?) people feel taxed enough already, at current rates.
60-70% would be a doubling of current taxes.
It also depends where they set the income threshold.
Bernie wants to set the 40-50% tax at around 250k joint income. That's hitting quite a few people (way more than a handful of uberrich CEOs)
It's working because he's tapped into two demographics Angry at Obama. Old white people who watch Fox News and think Obama is the second coming of Satan, and white supremacists. He's been endorsed by nearly every white supremacist political party. His rallies are FULL of white supremacist supporters. People yelling the N word and other racial slanders.
You are vastly understating his popularity. He's polling near 50% with Republicans, across almost _all_ demographics and _all_ states. ~25% of this country is not "old white people and white supremacists".
He gets the nomination and he's going to get absolutely stomped in the general election. What's funny is he's about as RINO as they come, he's always advocated NE liberal policies
These statements stand in stark contradiction. Once he doesn't have to pander to the base anymore, I see him as a strong general election candidate w/ across-the-aisle support. I also don't know why the Dems are so against him. Between Cruz and Trump, Trump has _far_ more liberal policies/tendencies. He'd actually raise taxes if they pushed for it.
Bernie is a democratic socialist. His ideal country is Denmark, or maybe Norway, and his plan is basically to copy those countries. Maybe you're an ignorant American who's never even looked at a map and probably thinks Sweden and Switzerland are the same country, but the Scandinavian nations have the highest standards of living in the world today, so they're doing just fine with their socialism.
It's unbelievable how many retards think Denmark is somehow akin to Cuba or Russia.
For one, I think most Americans aren't interested in turning America into "The worlds largest public sector (30% of the entire workforce on a full-time basis[24]) financed by the world's highest taxes". High income taxpayers there pay some 60-70% of their total income to the government. You don't have to view it as Cuba/Russia to find it very distasteful. For America, that's one hell of an extreme shift, whether you think it is or not.
For two, Norway is the second largest oil producer next to the Middle East. If you think America can support the kind of social excesses common to oil rich places like Dubai, you got another thing coming. And so do they: http://news.yahoo.com/oil-slum....
Kasich is staying in the game because he sees a contested convention in July, and the more delegates he can get, the more influence he'll have in the convention.
Kasich is staying in the game because he has a legitimate shot of beating Trump in Ohio. If he fails there, he will bail out, guaranteed. Frankly, the only reason he's polling behind Rubio is because his campaign lacks the resources that Rubio has access to. His numbers jumped in a big way after he finished second in New Hampshire. He's a longshot, but not out. If he wins Ohio, I guarantee he's in the dialogue as a legit contender again.
Kasich is smart enough to realize that he isn't going to win the general election in 2016. He also may be the only person on stage smart enough to realize that none of the GOP hopefuls will, either - hence there is no reason for him to negotiate with Rubio for a cabinet position that will never materialize. There has only been one national poll so far that has shown a GOP candidate beating Hillary, but it was within the margin of error
There are inaccuracies in these statements. The most recent polls show Kasich in the lead over Hillary and fairly head-to-head with Sanders: http://www.realclearpolitics.c... Rubio also has the edge over Hillary: http://www.realclearpolitics.c... Trump and Cruz are running close to 50-50 w/ Hillary.
Though you're correct that Sanders in very strong in the polls. Makes me wonder why the other Dems don't get behind him. The Republicans are at least smart enough to realize that a Trump win could cost them the election.
Ah, so he doesn't accomplish anything because you dislike anything he accomplishes and project your attitude on the rest of the country, so you discount it.
I said nothing of the sort. I said he (and congressional Democrats) forced through partisan legislation that had no support from the other side, nor did they even have a majority of Americans that supported it. Their "accomplishment" was an asserting of their will on the rest of the country. Regardless of what side you're on politically, or whether you believe their unilateral decision to force governance was good or bad, those are the facts.
I take it that the people of the US wanted the deficit maintained at its level when Obama took office, because he's reduced it a lot.
Not true (http://www.davemanuel.com/history-of-deficits-and-surpluses-in-the-united-states.php). In every year of Obama's presidency, the deficit has been higher than his predecessor. The record levels came in 2009 when Obama went on a spending spree w/ the Stimulus bill (which was equivalent to about ~800 billion in spending).
Again, Obama can't declare anything with his executive power that hasn't been allowed by Congress. The judiciary will slap him down if he tries
This is true, and they have on certain things, such as EPA regs. It's also irrelevant. Your point was that he hasn't done anything presidents haven't done regularly in the past. THAT is the false statement. Legal or not, he's using executive power in a manner that previous presidents largely avoided because they deferred to the will of the legislature, and the people. Obama have shown he has no issue with forcing whatever he believes to be "best for America" on everybody, regardless of the will of the people or the Congress. Rather than finding compromise with the legislation, he's scrounged for every shred of power he can find within the Executive branch to bypass them. That entire mindset is not "business as usual" for previous presidents.
Also, the "gun show exemption" is small potatoes.
Again, the legislation is not what's relevant. The point is to show a difference between use of executive power by this president and past presidents, something you claim is not out of the ordinary. If you weren't so quick to jump to some ideological battle over whether his actions are "right" or "legal", you'd see that what he's doing is unprecedented/uncommon, whether you agree with the actions or not. Polls appear to agree (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/politics/poll-obama-gun-action/index.html), generally supportive of the action, but skeptical of the method through which it was accomplished.
The President has been trying to compromise with Republicans, but in the current bitter rivalry between the parties, that's not easy, particularly if Republicans decide to block all his initiatives on the grounds that they're his
He didn't make it easy by pretty much giving Republicans the big middle finger for the first 2 years of his presidency. Cramming partisan Obamacare down the throats of the country against the will of the people and of the Republicans pretty much alienated them for the full term of his presidency.
Presidents who scrupulously obey the law? (Maybe Carter.) Obama's doing nothing out of the ordinary there.
I disagree. The use of executive fiat here seems far more excessive. For instance, many presidents (and Congresses) wanted to close the "gun show loophole": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Federal "Gun show loophole" bills were introduced in seven consecutive Congresses: two in 2001,[11][12] two in 2004,[13][14] one in 2005,[15] one in 2007,[16] two in 2009,[17][18] two in 2011,[19][20] and one in 2013.[21] Specifically, seven gun show loophole bills were introduced in the U.S. House and four in the Senate between 2001 and 2013. None passed"
"During his campaign and presidency, President George W. Bush endorsed the idea of background checks at gun shows. Bush's position was that the gun show loophole should be closed by federal legislation since the gun show loophole was created by previous federal legislation."
Basically, the gist of it is that presidents to date didn't heavily bypass the legislature to the extent Obama appears to be. They wanted legislation passed through all branches of the government, via the democratic process, rather than just declaring it so through the use of executive power.
Not really. You can just carry or drive any number of guns from a pro gun state to a non-gun state. We have a tremendous number of guns in our country, altogether. That's why we have such tremendous gun violence. People point to Chicago where there are tight gun laws, but lots of gun violence, but it's trivial to get a gun elsewhere, and shoot people with it in Chicago. In countries with fewer guns, there's less gun violence. In countries with more, there's more.
That seems to be a short-sighted argument. Same argument taken to its conclusion: even if you banned all guns in the country, its trivial to get a gun in another country and use it here.
The other side of your argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny either. The Swiss have a very large number of guns per capita. Gun education, culture, and population density is the differentiator more than anything. That's why all the cities boast all the high gun crime statistics, typically in gang or impoverished areas.
Other prominent countries in the top 15 guns per capita (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country): Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Norway, France, Canada, Austria, Iceland, Germany, Finland.
Compare that list to firearm-related death (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate) and there's no correlation. The US is a big outlier, and it's not based on volume of guns. Honduras (most of South America actually) has a metric $%$-ton of gun violence, despite ranking #87 in guns per capita.
Apple is a great example of how this works, their tax avoidance did not maximize shareholder value, and was the incorrect business decision.
Apple stock is tanking right now. People did not invest in Apple because of their great tax avoidance, but because of growth opportunities. Holding that money overseas simply to avoid taxes was the worst thing to do.
You're wrong on both counts. Cash hoarding is working for them as a business model, and has paid off shareholders in terms of growth. For the entire history of Apple, they've leaned towards a cash heavy strategy. In 2007, they had a record among Fortune 500 companies for cash reserves (http://www.last100.com/2007/12/07/poll-how-should-apple-spend-its-15-billion-cash-reserve/). And the company has quadrupled in size since then (150 billion market cap to 600 billion). In the same time period, their stock has gone from ~$20-$25 to $100+. By every measure, they've succeeded with a cash heavy policy.
Could they be even more effective with their money? Perhaps. But claiming their model is failing is clearly wrong. I know plenty of other companies that have pissed away cash reserves attempting to speculatively acquire other companies. There are some that aggressively borrow to pursue expansion and over-leverage themselves into bankruptcy. It's a mixed bag with cash expenditure.
Well that's simply horseshit. Paying their taxes increases their costs. Apple make a lot of profit, so paying taxes would reduce that profit.
That's a hell of an assumption. Businesses have a zillion different ways to respond to an increase in costs. The easiest is reduced workforce through layoffs. Others include worker benefit cuts. Yet another includes raising the cost of products to offset the additional costs. There's also dividend reductions to shareholders. Or less charitable contributions. There's literally an infinite number of ways to respond to an increase in costs. The fact you think they'd just take it out of profits and go about their business is considerably naive.
Sorry, but no. Obama recognized that US health care is the most expensive in the world, while inefficient and cutting off a large fraction of the population, then went ahead and tried to change it.
How quickly is the US realistically trying to get away from coal plants? I say realistically as a premeditated strike against the eventual posts that wind and solar will solve everything. The US corporations seem to have gone with natural gas as an alternative, with fracking, which has its own issues, but smog and clean air isn't really among them.
Surely you jest. Coal is a dead man walking in the US. Even before Obama's recent draconian EPA policy, coal plants were closing en masse for several years now. Most plants that can convert to natural gas have converted to natural gas. The others are closing down at record rates. All new energy capacity being added this year and the next are dominated by natural gas and wind plants. And that trend is supposed to continue for the foreseeable future as coal power continues to be phased out (the vast majority of the coal plants in existence are very old already, nearing end of life, and new ones aren't being built). It's not even close how dead coal is: https://www.washingtonpost.com...
You might want to double-check it. In my country, coal is only cheap because of hidden government subsidies
Citation? In all instances I'm aware of, coal is cheap because its plentiful and cheap/easy to dig out of the ground. Now that everyone is abandoning it, it's even cheaper because supply is still exceedingly high and demand has fallen substantially.
In 1980 there were as much men than women in universities. Now, after countless reforms to make schools and universities more appealing to girls, there's 50% more women than men. But this is ignored. Men's need are ignored, only women matter.
Yep, its a genuine problem. But its not the only problem. And its sort of inevitable.
Imagine a world where there was only mens clothing.and women had to wear it despite the poor fit. Then one day we realized that was wrong, and we started adding women's clothing. Suddenly there's clothing that's comfortable for women all over the shelves and its a poor fit for you. And when you go shopping there's less clothing available to you, because some of the shelf space that used to be for men is now not. (There's only finite shelf space after all... ) So you moan about how nobody cares about you, and every week there's less selection for you. Things have gotten worse for you. Its not your imagination. Every gain they make is at your expense. This "change" is an inevitable part of becoming equals.
But your counting down from 100% shelf space. Your fear is that we've traded places, that women are now on top, and men are the disadvantaged bottom; and that nobodies noticed yet.
But that's not the case, you've just lost 35% of your shelf space.
That's sort of where the world is right now, we're changing to accommodate them, and the mechanisms in use are blunt ugly; often ineffective, and grossly unfair. (And I agree we're doing it WRONG.) But at the end of the day, by practically all measures, we're still on top. Comfortably. We haven't traded places.
I DONT support these stupid feminist programs that are crude, ineffective, and unfair. But at the same time I do recognize that changes are necessary.
I do not understand this view at all. Wait 15 years and this problem will fix itself. It takes time for change to filter through the generations. For instance, white people will become a minority in 2043. It's going to happen, with or without programs encouraging more minority babies. We can see that based on existing data. Women are dominating college now -- that means that they have every opportunity to go as high as they'd like to, with or without additional programs forcing their acceptance into specific careers/positions.
In fact, the share of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies has more than doubled in the past five years (from ~2% to more than 4%). The reason it's not higher now is likely because the people at the very top are also the oldest people in the organization. Namely, there's still a large segment of the upper crust of the working class that's from the last generation of women who were family-focused instead of career-focused. Although it's changing, Gen X and Boomers still dominate the workforce (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/11/millennials-surpass-gen-xers-as-the-largest-generation-in-u-s-labor-force/), and most Millenials are still in the early stages of their career. You don't get to be the heads of the largest companies overnight. When I hear these complaints that bitch about the lack of equal results vs equal opportunity, I roll my eyes. The writing is on the wall, but they want it now. It's unreasonable to expect drastic workforce demographic changes overnight.
Men have every right to be upset, because the future of younger male Millennials is potentially being robbed because of imbalances exhibited in Gen X/Boomers big picture demographics. By stacking the deck at the bottom (college/opportunities/etc) in favor of women, all they're doing is strangling the future of young males today. 30 or 40 years from now the ratio could very well be 70-30 in favor of women, and all you accomplished was torpedoing the chances/dreams of a generation of men. No one deserves special privileges. It should be a level playing field, with everyone given the same opportunities to succeed. If THAT is broken, fix it. But if equal opportunity is already there, men of this generation should not be intentionally disadvantaged merely because of existing demographics in the workforce or because generational change takes a long time.
I don't think Solar could have gotten the critical mass without the incentives. Even with incentives, it took several decades to be a meaningful contributor
And you're basing this on what? The government offers incentives for lots of things that haven't gained traction (geothermal comes to mind). There's literally no metric to relate/tie one dollar of incentive to one dollar of influence. And I've seen no study showing a causation effect. Or even a correlation effect. The government yanked a ton of money out of the space industry, and private industry has reacted with enormous strides forward in innovation (e.g. SpaceX). The government dumped tons of innovation dollars into the military complex (continues to every year in fact...), and I don't exactly see us getting bang-for-buck there from an innovation standpoint.
It general, it seems to me that greedy humans in industry do a fantastic job of pursuing innovations that could make them a fortune and/or solves some societal need, whether the government intervenes or not. We've always had a need for cheaper energy (with energy costs rising every year), and the idea that inventors would somehow ignore it without the government giving them money is silly.
Quite honestly, the R&D incentive money is best spent on the challenge that follows, not the first-mover challenge: energy storage
Now there's the rub. And the big elephant in the room that has been holding up solar for decades (and will continue to hold up solar for some time). It's the problem that should have been solved first. The rest would have followed through natural progression.
Granted, not all $$ are spent with the same efficacy. That is the nature of R&D though.
Except that in reality, when the government offers dollars for vague things (ala R&D), it typically results in waste. Because everyone is willing to offer a bunch of wacky ideas in exchange for a million dollar check with no strings attached. When it's their money, on the other hand, they tend to put a bit more thought into it.
Slashdot Mirror
The AC wasn't talking about being for or against the decision. He/she was specifically talking about the legality of using an EO to change the law, which you pointedly ignored with a plea of "the ends justify the means".
You can't see why the Republicans would object to replacing the farthest right staunch conservative and strict originalist judge with a left-leaning moderate? Really? Particularly after the ACA rulings? And the gay marriage one? It seems pretty obvious to me.
You've got to at least admit that Scalia was wayyyy better at it than his fellows on that court. I don't think the liberal judges on the court has ever gone against their personal feelings on an issue when making a ruling. Or at least I haven't seen it in my lifetime. One of the reasons you're seeing so much pushback again Obama's appointment has been the recent tendency to legislate from the bench. Some of the recent rulings have been egregiously poor from a Constitutional standpoint. Hell, Kennedy is actually on record saying one of his votes on ACA recently has nothing to do with law, instead over worry of the "damage to the law" that could be done by ruling the other way. That's unprecedentedly bad judicial law. The courts are supposed to be impartial.
Lower even than that. 1% is ~425k. 250k is somewhere around the 3% income percentile: http://www.kiplinger.com/artic... If you take cost of living into account as well (which you should), it becomes an even bigger problem. After all, 250k in NY/California isn't the same as 250k in Wyoming.
Except it's not. If you look at Norway's tax brackets (which is the system you're commenting on), the 50+% tax rate occurs at a low level of income. Their _average_ personal tax rate is around ~42.25%. If that's the model you're saying Bernie is shooting for, people aren't going to accept it here. The US average is around 31.5%. You're basically talking about a ~40% hike in everyone's taxes, not just millionaires. And what most liberals don't understand (or don't want to) is that such a hike in everyone's taxes is necessary to achieve the model. You can't squeeze enough money out of rich people alone to achieve the kind of extravagant social programs you find in Europe.
I think this one will fix itself. It's not a problem of housing costs so much as stagnant wages, which appear to finally be recovering. Basically, costs went up, but wages didn't go up to match.
While it is true most of the replacement was natural gas, you're wrong on the solar/wind growth numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States). In the last decade, non-hydro RE (which is primarily wind/solar) has increased its share of production by an additional 4% of the total mix. While still smaller than nat gas, it isn't the ~1% you're claiming. And the adoption slope remains upward for renewables. Some 60+% of all new energy capacity additions last year was renewables: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/...
In summary, as coal plants phase out due to age retirement, at least 50+% of the capacity pickup year-to-year will come in renewables. Frankly, if the cost dynamics continue to appreciate for solar (and I've seen no sign of them slowing down), renewable could conceivably get 100% of the annual capacity replacement.
I disagree. The total picture (worldwide in fact) for coal is pretty damning. And natural gas done right (i.e. without leaks) is a far sight better for the environment. Moreover, the "total energy picture" is very rosy for the future adoption of green energy atm. Even without government incentives. As is the fact energy consumption has been flat for over a decade. Frankly, I believe if they ever perfect the residential home battery, solar adoption will just go nuts. We're on the correct trajectory. Change just takes time.
Coal hasn't been over 40% of our electric in nearly half a decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Current estimates (~November 2015) has coal around 33.6% of US electricity generation (and dropping quickly).
Maybe nothing, maybe everything? Some (many/most?) people feel taxed enough already, at current rates. 60-70% would be a doubling of current taxes. It also depends where they set the income threshold. Bernie wants to set the 40-50% tax at around 250k joint income. That's hitting quite a few people (way more than a handful of uberrich CEOs)
You are vastly understating his popularity. He's polling near 50% with Republicans, across almost _all_ demographics and _all_ states. ~25% of this country is not "old white people and white supremacists".
These statements stand in stark contradiction. Once he doesn't have to pander to the base anymore, I see him as a strong general election candidate w/ across-the-aisle support. I also don't know why the Dems are so against him. Between Cruz and Trump, Trump has _far_ more liberal policies/tendencies. He'd actually raise taxes if they pushed for it.
"Significantly less than" and "astoundingly accurate" don't seem to be in the same category to me...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
For one, I think most Americans aren't interested in turning America into "The worlds largest public sector (30% of the entire workforce on a full-time basis[24]) financed by the world's highest taxes". High income taxpayers there pay some 60-70% of their total income to the government. You don't have to view it as Cuba/Russia to find it very distasteful. For America, that's one hell of an extreme shift, whether you think it is or not.
For two, Norway is the second largest oil producer next to the Middle East. If you think America can support the kind of social excesses common to oil rich places like Dubai, you got another thing coming. And so do they: http://news.yahoo.com/oil-slum....
Kasich is staying in the game because he has a legitimate shot of beating Trump in Ohio. If he fails there, he will bail out, guaranteed. Frankly, the only reason he's polling behind Rubio is because his campaign lacks the resources that Rubio has access to. His numbers jumped in a big way after he finished second in New Hampshire. He's a longshot, but not out. If he wins Ohio, I guarantee he's in the dialogue as a legit contender again.
There are inaccuracies in these statements.
The most recent polls show Kasich in the lead over Hillary and fairly head-to-head with Sanders:
http://www.realclearpolitics.c...
Rubio also has the edge over Hillary:
http://www.realclearpolitics.c...
Trump and Cruz are running close to 50-50 w/ Hillary.
Though you're correct that Sanders in very strong in the polls. Makes me wonder why the other Dems don't get behind him. The Republicans are at least smart enough to realize that a Trump win could cost them the election.
I said nothing of the sort. I said he (and congressional Democrats) forced through partisan legislation that had no support from the other side, nor did they even have a majority of Americans that supported it. Their "accomplishment" was an asserting of their will on the rest of the country. Regardless of what side you're on politically, or whether you believe their unilateral decision to force governance was good or bad, those are the facts.
Not true (http://www.davemanuel.com/history-of-deficits-and-surpluses-in-the-united-states.php). In every year of Obama's presidency, the deficit has been higher than his predecessor. The record levels came in 2009 when Obama went on a spending spree w/ the Stimulus bill (which was equivalent to about ~800 billion in spending).
This is true, and they have on certain things, such as EPA regs. It's also irrelevant. Your point was that he hasn't done anything presidents haven't done regularly in the past. THAT is the false statement. Legal or not, he's using executive power in a manner that previous presidents largely avoided because they deferred to the will of the legislature, and the people. Obama have shown he has no issue with forcing whatever he believes to be "best for America" on everybody, regardless of the will of the people or the Congress. Rather than finding compromise with the legislation, he's scrounged for every shred of power he can find within the Executive branch to bypass them. That entire mindset is not "business as usual" for previous presidents.
Again, the legislation is not what's relevant. The point is to show a difference between use of executive power by this president and past presidents, something you claim is not out of the ordinary. If you weren't so quick to jump to some ideological battle over whether his actions are "right" or "legal", you'd see that what he's doing is unprecedented/uncommon, whether you agree with the actions or not. Polls appear to agree (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/politics/poll-obama-gun-action/index.html), generally supportive of the action, but skeptical of the method through which it was accomplished.
He didn't make it easy by pretty much giving Republicans the big middle finger for the first 2 years of his presidency. Cramming partisan Obamacare down the throats of the country against the will of the people and of the Republicans pretty much alienated them for the full term of his presidency.
I disagree. The use of executive fiat here seems far more excessive. For instance, many presidents (and Congresses) wanted to close the "gun show loophole": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Federal "Gun show loophole" bills were introduced in seven consecutive Congresses: two in 2001,[11][12] two in 2004,[13][14] one in 2005,[15] one in 2007,[16] two in 2009,[17][18] two in 2011,[19][20] and one in 2013.[21] Specifically, seven gun show loophole bills were introduced in the U.S. House and four in the Senate between 2001 and 2013. None passed"
"During his campaign and presidency, President George W. Bush endorsed the idea of background checks at gun shows. Bush's position was that the gun show loophole should be closed by federal legislation since the gun show loophole was created by previous federal legislation."
Basically, the gist of it is that presidents to date didn't heavily bypass the legislature to the extent Obama appears to be. They wanted legislation passed through all branches of the government, via the democratic process, rather than just declaring it so through the use of executive power.
That seems to be a short-sighted argument. Same argument taken to its conclusion: even if you banned all guns in the country, its trivial to get a gun in another country and use it here.
The other side of your argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny either. The Swiss have a very large number of guns per capita. Gun education, culture, and population density is the differentiator more than anything. That's why all the cities boast all the high gun crime statistics, typically in gang or impoverished areas.
Other prominent countries in the top 15 guns per capita (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country): Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Norway, France, Canada, Austria, Iceland, Germany, Finland. Compare that list to firearm-related death (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate) and there's no correlation. The US is a big outlier, and it's not based on volume of guns. Honduras (most of South America actually) has a metric $%$-ton of gun violence, despite ranking #87 in guns per capita.
You're wrong on both counts. Cash hoarding is working for them as a business model, and has paid off shareholders in terms of growth. For the entire history of Apple, they've leaned towards a cash heavy strategy. In 2007, they had a record among Fortune 500 companies for cash reserves (http://www.last100.com/2007/12/07/poll-how-should-apple-spend-its-15-billion-cash-reserve/). And the company has quadrupled in size since then (150 billion market cap to 600 billion). In the same time period, their stock has gone from ~$20-$25 to $100+. By every measure, they've succeeded with a cash heavy policy.
Could they be even more effective with their money? Perhaps. But claiming their model is failing is clearly wrong. I know plenty of other companies that have pissed away cash reserves attempting to speculatively acquire other companies. There are some that aggressively borrow to pursue expansion and over-leverage themselves into bankruptcy. It's a mixed bag with cash expenditure.
That's a hell of an assumption. Businesses have a zillion different ways to respond to an increase in costs. The easiest is reduced workforce through layoffs. Others include worker benefit cuts. Yet another includes raising the cost of products to offset the additional costs. There's also dividend reductions to shareholders. Or less charitable contributions. There's literally an infinite number of ways to respond to an increase in costs. The fact you think they'd just take it out of profits and go about their business is considerably naive.
By making it more expensive? Strange plan.
Surely you jest. Coal is a dead man walking in the US. Even before Obama's recent draconian EPA policy, coal plants were closing en masse for several years now. Most plants that can convert to natural gas have converted to natural gas. The others are closing down at record rates. All new energy capacity being added this year and the next are dominated by natural gas and wind plants. And that trend is supposed to continue for the foreseeable future as coal power continues to be phased out (the vast majority of the coal plants in existence are very old already, nearing end of life, and new ones aren't being built). It's not even close how dead coal is: https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Why is this marked troll? It's literally exactly the truth.
Citation? In all instances I'm aware of, coal is cheap because its plentiful and cheap/easy to dig out of the ground. Now that everyone is abandoning it, it's even cheaper because supply is still exceedingly high and demand has fallen substantially.
Of course there is. It's called "votes in Congress". Pay better attention.
I do not understand this view at all. Wait 15 years and this problem will fix itself. It takes time for change to filter through the generations. For instance, white people will become a minority in 2043. It's going to happen, with or without programs encouraging more minority babies. We can see that based on existing data. Women are dominating college now -- that means that they have every opportunity to go as high as they'd like to, with or without additional programs forcing their acceptance into specific careers/positions.
In fact, the share of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies has more than doubled in the past five years (from ~2% to more than 4%). The reason it's not higher now is likely because the people at the very top are also the oldest people in the organization. Namely, there's still a large segment of the upper crust of the working class that's from the last generation of women who were family-focused instead of career-focused. Although it's changing, Gen X and Boomers still dominate the workforce (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/11/millennials-surpass-gen-xers-as-the-largest-generation-in-u-s-labor-force/), and most Millenials are still in the early stages of their career. You don't get to be the heads of the largest companies overnight. When I hear these complaints that bitch about the lack of equal results vs equal opportunity, I roll my eyes. The writing is on the wall, but they want it now. It's unreasonable to expect drastic workforce demographic changes overnight.
Men have every right to be upset, because the future of younger male Millennials is potentially being robbed because of imbalances exhibited in Gen X/Boomers big picture demographics. By stacking the deck at the bottom (college/opportunities/etc) in favor of women, all they're doing is strangling the future of young males today. 30 or 40 years from now the ratio could very well be 70-30 in favor of women, and all you accomplished was torpedoing the chances/dreams of a generation of men. No one deserves special privileges. It should be a level playing field, with everyone given the same opportunities to succeed. If THAT is broken, fix it. But if equal opportunity is already there, men of this generation should not be intentionally disadvantaged merely because of existing demographics in the workforce or because generational change takes a long time.
They recently fixed that with Band 12. You need a phone (and service area) that supports it though.
And you're basing this on what? The government offers incentives for lots of things that haven't gained traction (geothermal comes to mind). There's literally no metric to relate/tie one dollar of incentive to one dollar of influence. And I've seen no study showing a causation effect. Or even a correlation effect. The government yanked a ton of money out of the space industry, and private industry has reacted with enormous strides forward in innovation (e.g. SpaceX). The government dumped tons of innovation dollars into the military complex (continues to every year in fact...), and I don't exactly see us getting bang-for-buck there from an innovation standpoint.
It general, it seems to me that greedy humans in industry do a fantastic job of pursuing innovations that could make them a fortune and/or solves some societal need, whether the government intervenes or not. We've always had a need for cheaper energy (with energy costs rising every year), and the idea that inventors would somehow ignore it without the government giving them money is silly.
Now there's the rub. And the big elephant in the room that has been holding up solar for decades (and will continue to hold up solar for some time). It's the problem that should have been solved first. The rest would have followed through natural progression.
Except that in reality, when the government offers dollars for vague things (ala R&D), it typically results in waste. Because everyone is willing to offer a bunch of wacky ideas in exchange for a million dollar check with no strings attached. When it's their money, on the other hand, they tend to put a bit more thought into it.