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Post by impulse on Jul 20, 2017 9:24:49 GMT -5
So... in one of his recent harangues, the president stated that Obamacare was a BIG LIE. In comics, it would really be written like that, in all caps. A BIG LIE. The whole plan is somehow a lie because prior to its adoption, Obama said people who liked their doctors or their coverage could keep them, but that after the plan was adopted some people did lose their healthcare plan and had to change doctors. What happened? Apparently, Obamacare didn't anticipate that certain insurance companies would unilaterally cancel existing plans (5% of them, according to Politifacts). Does that make Obamacare a BIG LIE? Of course not, because it reached most of its goals, including the most important one: provide health insurance to the millions of Americans who had to do without under the old rules. At worst, this unfulfilled promise makes Obamacare a program with at least one flaw. Calling Obamacare as a whole a big lie is a big lie, however. "A flawed program that could be made more efficient and more economical while keeping everyone covered without resorting to massive tax cuts to the rich" would be more appropriate, but president Trump isn't interested in ay of that. What he wants is a win, just a win, and if he manages to make Obamacare sound bad enough, simply getting rid of it (even without any replacement plan) will make him happy. Not that he's made any secret that it's his favourite option, so in that regard he's being honest. Imagine how much better it could have been if over the last 7 years the Republicans, instead of actively thwarting it and refusing to use many of its provisions to allow it to work as intended and give people a chance, had actually said "okay, we'll give his a shot and see how it goes, and it it goes down in flames that's on you." When half the government is trying to break it to score political points instead of making a good faith effort to help people, of course it didn't work as well as it was intended. And it STILL did a lot.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 20, 2017 10:07:04 GMT -5
So... in one of his recent harangues, the president stated that Obamacare was a BIG LIE. In comics, it would really be written like that, in all caps. A BIG LIE. The whole plan is somehow a lie because prior to its adoption, Obama said people who liked their doctors or their coverage could keep them, but that after the plan was adopted some people did lose their healthcare plan and had to change doctors. What happened? Apparently, Obamacare didn't anticipate that certain insurance companies would unilaterally cancel existing plans (5% of them, according to Politifacts). Does that make Obamacare a BIG LIE? Of course not, because it reached most of its goals, including the most important one: provide health insurance to the millions of Americans who had to do without under the old rules. At worst, this unfulfilled promise makes Obamacare a program with at least one flaw. Calling Obamacare as a whole a big lie is a big lie, however. "A flawed program that could be made more efficient and more economical while keeping everyone covered without resorting to massive tax cuts to the rich" would be more appropriate, but president Trump isn't interested in ay of that. What he wants is a win, just a win, and if he manages to make Obamacare sound bad enough, simply getting rid of it (even without any replacement plan) will make him happy. Not that he's made any secret that it's his favourite option, so in that regard he's being honest. Imagine how much better it could have been if over the last 7 years the Republicans, instead of actively thwarting it and refusing to use many of its provisions to allow it to work as intended and give people a chance, had actually said "okay, we'll give his a shot and see how it goes, and it it goes down in flames that's on you." When half the government is trying to break it to score political points instead of making a good faith effort to help people, of course it didn't work as well as it was intended. And it STILL did a lot. The Republicans didn't do that because that type of action is playing the long game, and they (as well as the Democrats) have no concept of or interest in doing that in the least. It's all about generating enough resistance and counter-energy to fuel the next election cycle, which brings in lots of money and lets them keep their jobs in perpetuity, instead of actually doing what is best for all of the American citizens. As long as politicians are looking out for their own skins while ignoring the true needs of their constituents (and not wasting time on wedge issues like making sure gay folks don't get married and that women do what men tell them to do with their bodies), nothing is going to change.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 20, 2017 12:29:43 GMT -5
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 22, 2017 1:35:42 GMT -5
i wish we could vote for people like you, Rob
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 22, 2017 17:58:23 GMT -5
The Dems do have an idea: leave Obamacare in place, and make it better if possible. It's not their fault that the other party is unable to agree on an alternative. Props to the Republican representatives who voted against the new plan for being too evil.
Meanwhile, regarding the Russian investigation, the best reaction from the White House should be "go ahead, look, you won't find anything" and not "journalists are criminals, their news is fake, and the president has the power to pardon anybody, even before they've been charged with anything".
Once more, the president is digging his own political grave one tweet at a time.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jul 24, 2017 21:22:43 GMT -5
Something I read today in regards to the President's argument for withdrawing from the Paris accords to protect and create more jobs for the "very important" coal industry really made my eye brows raise: there are only 76,572 people employed in the coal industry. I knew that the industry was small and shrinking, which made his argument weak in my mind but I had no idea it was THAT small.
For sake of comparison bowling allies through out the US employ 69,000 people, and yet I don't see him making policies to protect those people...and the only reason I can see why is that the owners of bowling allies aren't his billionaire buddies and the owners and ceos's of the coal industry are.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 25, 2017 0:42:59 GMT -5
or how many 'by hand' animators lost their jobs to digital.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 25, 2017 4:54:12 GMT -5
...or how many retail stores employees have been let go because of online shopping.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 25, 2017 5:43:25 GMT -5
Something I read today in regards to the President's argument for withdrawing from the Paris accords to protect and create more jobs for the "very important" coal industry really made my eye brows raise: there are only 76,572 people employed in the coal industry. I knew that the industry was small and shrinking, which made his argument weak in my mind but I had no idea it was THAT small. For sake of comparison bowling allies through out the US employ 69,000 people, and yet I don't see him making policies to protect those people...and the only reason I can see why is that the owners of bowling allies aren't his billionaire buddies and the owners and ceos's of the coal industry are. There's some truth to this, but I'd like to offer another thought re: bowling alleys versus coal mines. I live in a suburban area just outside of Pittsburgh. If I drive 6 minutes from my house, there's a bowling alley that emplys maybe seven people (my younger daughter loves bowling, so we go in there occasionally). If I head another 10 minutes up the road to the east, there's another similarly sized bowling alley, and if I head 10 minutes from the original point to the south, there's another bowling alley. Point is, you want to work in a bowling alley, you can find a bowling alley, but if you don't want to work there, you have Home Depot, Lowe's, as well as many other big box stores, not to mention any number of quality, high-paying professional jobs located in and around the city. Contrast that with coal mining. In many areas, particularly in Appalachia, that may be the only good-paying industry around. Tech firms or bio-medical reaearch companies don't put facilities in McDowell County, West Virginia, or Pike County, Kentucky, and because those are sparsely-populated areas, you don't even have companies like Wal-Mart or Home Depot setting up shop. There are places where it's an hour drive to a town big enough to support even a good-sized grocery store, let alone a big box store or restaurant that isn't family-owned and operated. I used to work in the natural gas industry and spent considerable time in places like that. There is almost literally nothing to do for employment there except work the gas fields or mine coal. One day in my company's office in Brenton, WV, an 18- or 19-year old kid came in looking for work, and when the district manager asked him why he wanted to work natural gas, the kid said because "he didn't want to go work underground". These remote areas are dependent on these industries for jobs, so if those jobs go away, we have more folks with nothing to do and who wind up on the government dole. It's fashionable to look down on coal miners and oil field workers, because they're typically undereducated and aren't trendy or hip; they like God, guns, country music. and NASCAR . Thing is, they're just people looking to make a living in the industries that are available in their native areas, trying to put food on their tables and roofs over their heads, because without those industries, their towns die and their children move away and their way of life, as meager and pathetic as it may seem to some, disappears forever. So yeah, saving industries like coal in areas like Brenton, WV is a little more important than making sure 3 bowling alleys within an 8 mile radius in Pittsburgh stay open.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 25, 2017 6:05:43 GMT -5
Something I read today in regards to the President's argument for withdrawing from the Paris accords to protect and create more jobs for the "very important" coal industry really made my eye brows raise: there are only 76,572 people employed in the coal industry. I knew that the industry was small and shrinking, which made his argument weak in my mind but I had no idea it was THAT small. For sake of comparison bowling allies through out the US employ 69,000 people, and yet I don't see him making policies to protect those people...and the only reason I can see why is that the owners of bowling allies aren't his billionaire buddies and the owners and ceos's of the coal industry are. There's some truth to this, but I'd like to offer another thought re: bowling alleys versus coal mines. I live in a suburban area just outside of Pittsburgh. If I drive 6 minutes from my house, there's a bowling alley that emplys maybe seven people (my younger daughter loves bowling, so we go in there occasionally). If I head another 10 minutes up the road to the east, there's another similarly sized bowling alley, and if I head 10 minutes from the original point to the south, there's another bowling alley. Point is, you want to work in a bowling alley, you can find a bowling alley, but if you don't want to work there, you have Home Depot, Lowe's, as well as many other big box stores, not to mention any number of quality, high-paying professional jobs located in and around the city. Contrast that with coal mining. In many areas, particularly in Appalachia, that may be the only good-paying industry around. Tech firms or bio-medical reaearch companies don't put facilities in McDowell County, West Virginia, or Pike County, Kentucky, and because those are sparsely-populated areas, you don't even have companies like Wal-Mart or Home Depot setting up shop. There are places where it's an hour drive to a town big enough to support even a good-sized grocery store, let alone a big box store or restaurant that isn't family-owned and operated. I used to work in the natural gas industry and spent considerable time in places like that. There is almost literally nothing to do for employment there except work the gas fields or mine coal. One day in my company's office in Brenton, WV, an 18- or 19-year old kid came in looking for work, and when the district manager asked him why he wanted to work natural gas, the kid said because "he didn't want to go work underground". These remote areas are dependent on these industries for jobs, so if those jobs go away, we have more folks with nothing to do and who wind up on the government dole. It's fashionable to look down on coal miners and oil field workers, because they're typically undereducated and aren't trendy or hip; they like God, guns, country music. and NASCAR . Thing is, they're just people looking to make a living in the industries that are available in their native areas, trying to put food on their tables and roofs over their heads, because without those industries, their towns die and their children move away and their way of life, as meager and pathetic as it may seem to some, disappears forever. So yeah, saving industries like coal in areas like Brenton, WV is a little more important than making sure 3 bowling alleys within an 8 mile radius in Pittsburgh stay open. That is an aspect we often overlook, you're right... The problem is that some regions are disproportionately afflicted by certain economic realities. I would then argue that those regions should receive commensurate help, rather than the obsolete and polluting industries that used to provide jobs there... especially when we consider the small number of people involved. Jobs in coal are not coming back in any significant numbers, no matter how many environmental rules are abandoned or how many tax breaks coal mines receive. The fault lies in simple economics: coal, which used to compensate for its horrible environmental cost by its low market price, is no longer competitive against the much cleaner natural gas. A serious retraining program in West Virginia and Kentucky, meant to help coal miners whose jobs disappeared, or ambitious programs to help businesses settle there, would probably do more for them than trying to maintain the coal industry on life support, I think.
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Post by Pharozonk on Jul 25, 2017 16:53:42 GMT -5
The problem is that it's still going to take time for clean energy jobs to become cost-effective on a wide scale to fully employ all those left without jobs with the fall of fossil fuels. In addition to retraining, we need to institute a UBI (universal basic income) to tide them over. That would actually be cheaper than the massive welfare programs we currently have and would allow affected workers more freedom with how to spend their money than the various government stipulations they currently face. Furthermore, it reduces the massive bureaucracy involved in welfare administration, probably lowering government spending as a whole.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 25, 2017 18:23:24 GMT -5
There's some truth to this, but I'd like to offer another thought re: bowling alleys versus coal mines. I live in a suburban area just outside of Pittsburgh. If I drive 6 minutes from my house, there's a bowling alley that emplys maybe seven people (my younger daughter loves bowling, so we go in there occasionally). If I head another 10 minutes up the road to the east, there's another similarly sized bowling alley, and if I head 10 minutes from the original point to the south, there's another bowling alley. Point is, you want to work in a bowling alley, you can find a bowling alley, but if you don't want to work there, you have Home Depot, Lowe's, as well as many other big box stores, not to mention any number of quality, high-paying professional jobs located in and around the city. Contrast that with coal mining. In many areas, particularly in Appalachia, that may be the only good-paying industry around. Tech firms or bio-medical reaearch companies don't put facilities in McDowell County, West Virginia, or Pike County, Kentucky, and because those are sparsely-populated areas, you don't even have companies like Wal-Mart or Home Depot setting up shop. There are places where it's an hour drive to a town big enough to support even a good-sized grocery store, let alone a big box store or restaurant that isn't family-owned and operated. I used to work in the natural gas industry and spent considerable time in places like that. There is almost literally nothing to do for employment there except work the gas fields or mine coal. One day in my company's office in Brenton, WV, an 18- or 19-year old kid came in looking for work, and when the district manager asked him why he wanted to work natural gas, the kid said because "he didn't want to go work underground". These remote areas are dependent on these industries for jobs, so if those jobs go away, we have more folks with nothing to do and who wind up on the government dole. It's fashionable to look down on coal miners and oil field workers, because they're typically undereducated and aren't trendy or hip; they like God, guns, country music. and NASCAR . Thing is, they're just people looking to make a living in the industries that are available in their native areas, trying to put food on their tables and roofs over their heads, because without those industries, their towns die and their children move away and their way of life, as meager and pathetic as it may seem to some, disappears forever. So yeah, saving industries like coal in areas like Brenton, WV is a little more important than making sure 3 bowling alleys within an 8 mile radius in Pittsburgh stay open. That is an aspect we often overlook, you're right... The problem is that some regions are disproportionately afflicted by certain economic realities. I would then argue that those regions should receive commensurate help, rather than the obsolete and polluting industries that used to provide jobs there... especially when we consider the small number of people involved. Jobs in coal are not coming back in any significant numbers, no matter how many environmental rules are abandoned or how many tax breaks coal mines receive. The fault lies in simple economics: coal, which used to compensate for its horrible environmental cost by its low market price, is no longer competitive against the much cleaner natural gas. A serious retraining program in West Virginia and Kentucky, meant to help coal miners whose jobs disappeared, or ambitious programs to help businesses settle there, would probably do more for them than trying to maintain the coal industry on life support, I think. Those are nice thoughts, but the fact remains that there are still no other industries there, so no amount of retraining is going to help anyone if there aren't jobs to fill. And as for "ambitious programs", do you mean things like tax breaks and credits and other incentives for businesses to locate/relocate there, saying the very things that progressives decry as "corporate welfare" when conservatives want to do them will be the answer to saving these regions? The other issue is that, regardless of what is offered to them, businesses would have a tough time making a go of it in that region. South of Charleston, WV, down in the "hills and hollers", there's mountains, forests, and a whole lot of nothing. The area lacks infrastructure, ease of access, and any kind of reasonable amenities that the management team would want to have to relocate to that area. It would be a logistical nightmare moving raw materials in and finished product out, so good luck convincing a company that is used to a city or even suburban environment to pack up and move into Mingo or Wyoming County, WV, where the nearest airport is a couple of hours away and there are no major highways in or out.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 25, 2017 19:23:47 GMT -5
Those are nice thoughts, but the fact remains that there are still no other industries there, so no amount of retraining is going to help anyone if there aren't jobs to fill. True, but I can't believe that everyone in West Virginia is a coal miner. There are more than 100,000 of them, after all. I was more thinking of things like the great infrastructure program that Trump promised, in the tradition of Roosevelt, or things that the government controls directly, like defence installations, official paperwork-handling and the like. Our own government did that here a few decades ago, putting a major tax form processing centre in a disadvantaged region far from the big cities. The problem with corporate welfare is that corporations do not have the greater good in mind. They are not evil either, but they are definitely amoral: their sole responsibility is to their owners and shareholders, and profit is the utlimate goal. When a low-level public investment can result in a company staying in a disadvantaged region the matter deserves to be studied, but not when every job saved ends up costing the public twice what the workers end up making. There we go! Let's build airports and highways. That will cost a ton of money, but on top of creating jobs during the building, the region will have a competitive infrastructure that will help stimulate the economy for decades after that. I don't know if it's possible, mind you; I'm no economist. I know the public debt is currently too high because of the Great Recession. However, things like the extra 15 billion dollars given to defence in the latest budget could probably help in developing West Virginia and Kentucky. Open a DARPA lab ove there or something, an F-22 maintenance base, or whatever can be done as well there as in more affluent regions.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 25, 2017 19:33:10 GMT -5
Roquefort Raider1. No, not everyone in WV is a coal miner, but there are a lot of them south of Charleston, between that city and the borders with KY and VA. North of Charleston, there is a lot of natural gas, so that industry has a foothold there, and there are some chemical plants along the Ohio River on the western border. Senator Robert Byrd was instrumental in getting some pork projects brought to the state (there is an FBI facility in the middle of nowhere between Morgantown and Charleston, IIRC, and the roads in WV were some of the finest I've ever driven on, certainly better than my home state). 2. Infrastructure projects are great, I agree, but does it make sense to pour money into an area that has little to offer? Southern WV's greatest assets are its natural resources, such as coal, natural gas, and timber, but the environmental folks hate the idea of doing any damage to the environment, so there would be no real reason to build there. Better to put the limited financial resources to use in areas that have more options for the greater good long term.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jul 25, 2017 19:44:16 GMT -5
Those are nice thoughts, but the fact remains that there are still no other industries there, so no amount of retraining is going to help anyone if there aren't jobs to fill. True, but I can't believe that everyone in West Virginia is a coal miner. There are more than 100,000 of them, after all. I was more thinking of things like the great infrastructure program that Trump promised, in the tradition of Roosevelt, or things that the government controls directly, like defence installations, official paperwork-handling and the like. Our own government did that here a few decades ago, putting a major tax form processing centre in a disadvantaged region far from the big cities. The problem with corporate welfare is that corporations do not have the greater good in mind. They are not evil either, but they are definitely amoral: their sole responsibility is to their owners and shareholders, and profit is the utlimate goal. When a low-level public investment can result in a company staying in a disadvantaged region the matter deserves to be studied, but not when every job saved ends up costing the public twice what the workers end up making. There we go! Let's build airports and highways. That will cost a ton of money, but on top of creating jobs during the building, the region will have a competitive infrastructure that will help stimulate the economy for decades after that. I don't know if it's possible, mind you; I'm no economist. I know the public debt is currently too high because of the Great Recession. However, things like the extra 15 billion dollars given to defence in the latest budget could probably help in developing West Virginia and Kentucky. Open a DARPA lab ove there or something, an F-22 maintenance base, or whatever can be done as well there as in more affluent regions. I think a mix of programs like RR suggests and simply moving to where there is work is the answer. I know that second option isn't popular but it's a hard truth many face whether it's popular to say or not. I taught high school History and creative writing at a small school up in northern Maine for two years after college but after that they decided to merge a couple school systems together I found that I no longer had a job. I loved living up in the big woods, it's the most beautiful place in the whole United States in my fine opinion, and I didn't want to leave and neither did my girlfriend but it just wasn't economically viable to stay there after I lost my job so we moved down to Massachusetts where the jobs were more plentiful. We didn't want to go, and it was very difficult decision but it made the most sense. And I'm hardly alone, people move for job opportunities all the time and sometimes in areas where a certain industry dries up that means some populations of people may be disproportionately affected and that is terrible for those areas...but it happens all the time and with out the associatef push the coal industry has so I'm not convinced the efforts to help the coal industry have anything to do with the plight of the little people and everything to do with the wealth of the people on top of it.
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