2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

The measure, poised to pass the House and Senate as soon as this week, would break Congress' habit of extending lapsed tax breaks retroactively and then setting the next expiration date just weeks or months ahead.

But there are plenty of winners, including large manufacturers, small businesses, restaurants and labor unions, which would all get tax breaks they have been seeking for years. Lawmakers plan to combine the tax bill with a $1.15 trillion spending bill, creating a giant end-of-year fiscal deal that will create certainty for businesses and taxpayers--as long as it doesn't collapse under its own weight.

I've read a welter of confusing material about this omnibus bill. The NYT this morning said labor unions are pissed at the delay of some of those Obamacare taxes.

I saw a shorthand summary that read - Dems got the spending budget bill they wanted, and Republicans got the tax bill they wanted

Actually seems almost reasonable, since the deficit is pretend.

yeah, but in a few years everyone will suddenly get concerned about it again as old white guys in revolutionary war uniforms stand beneath traffic lights by shuttered blockbuster video stores begging the true patriots to force the government to tighten the nation's collective belt, and then somehow the only way out of it will be to implement spending cuts to try to match the tax cuts. it's the circle of life

Republicans apparently dropped most of their environmental riders in exchange for Dems agreeing to the oil industry/Republican request drop 40 year ban on oil exports, plus a few other little things

The deal would lift the ban, a priority for Republicans and the oil industry, and at the same time adopt environmental and renewable measures that Democrats sought. These include extending and then phasing down wind and solar-tax credits; reauthorizing for three years a conservation fund; and excluding any measures that block major Obama administration environmental regulations

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/deal-to-lift-oilexport-ban-comes-with-environmental-concessions-20151216-00548#ixzz3uVRFh1Fm

Republican strategy: propose lots and lots of extreme things, drop a few of them, and then say they compromised

any decent country wd stop this particular thing

http://fortune.com/2015/12/12/dow-dupont-corporate-research-america/

please feel free to ask me questions about that particular cluster on 77

any decent country wd stop this particular thing

http://fortune.com/2015/12/12/dow-dupont-corporate-research-america/

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, December 16, 2015 3:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not impossible that this country will. It happens from time to time with mergers.

short version would be that there will be three companies, the stockholders who demand year-over-year profit gains in businesses that are cyclical or rely on long-term research pipelines (you don't have the best returns this year, they cut your budget on a project that could be groundbreaking but takes 5 - 10 years) will be appeased as the risk will be shunted into one of the three companies

afaik both current companies have problems that aren't R&D-related in that they have several unrelated fields under the same umbrella, and any one of the fields in their portfolio faring poorly during the year means they punish everyone

but yeah, large corporate R&D in the chemical and material science field from publicly held companies is getting screwed in the market at large

thx; didn't catch on in 77!

I will say no more, corporate overlords, etc etc

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/business/shkreli-fraud-charges.html?action=click&contentCollection=Books&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager who has been widely criticized for drug price gouging, was arrested Thursday morning by the federal authorities.

The investigation, in which Mr. Shkreli has been charged with securities fraud, is related to his time as a hedge fund manager and running the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin — not the price-gouging controversy that has swirled around him

@Reuters
BREAKING: San Bernardino shooters did not post support for jihad on social media: FBI

@ggreenwald
Reminder that believing whatever the government claims, laundered by the media, is bad for your intellectual health

yeah it wasn't social media it was just private messaging (why does anyone think this matters)

because if it was on public social media rather than in private messages, it would be much more likely to be discovered when processing her visa paperwork

i thought the claim was that she pledged allegiance to ISIS on social media while the attack was ongoing, which would be long after her visa paperwork was approved

handling assault weapons and your iPhone simultaneously is pretty adroit

Oh, was it? I honestly have not been closely following the details of all of this due to fatigue.

yeah I get that. I'm just generally not interested in the particulars of the backgrounds of these types of attacks, feeding into mythical "if only" scenarios. There's no real way to 100% predict and prevent these kind of attacks. There's basic things that can be done to minimize them (limiting availability of weapons, primarily) but I feel like any retroactive fingerpointing is largely pointless.

xxp

Monday's LA Times:

"San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, two top federal law enforcement officials said Monday.

The new details indicate U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed warnings on social media that Malik was a potential threat before she entered the United States on a K-1 fiancee visa in July 2014."

we should've drone bombed her for thought crime

if we are going to start targeting people based on Facebook posts a whole lot of people are going to jail

kind of amazing we have the NSA and PRISM and vast overreach of our privacy and yet Homeland Security forgot to look at Facebook, perhaps the single largest public database of information

adam i feel like these two impulses of yours: targeting ppl based on fb posts is wrong and why isn't the NSA better at targeting ppl based on fb posts, are mutually exclusive complaints.

raising taxes on the rich fucks would flush our security coffers with cash. if a ragtag chump group like ISIS is a threat then we need 90% on the top bracket at least to catch up

"San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, two top federal law enforcement officials said Monday.

The new details indicate U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed warnings on social media that Malik was a potential threat before she entered the United States on a K-1 fiancee visa in July 2014."

this isn't talking about facebook "posts", it's talking about private messages. so i don't understand...is there outrage that NSA didn't read their private messages??

just trying to reconcile an all-encompassing surveillance state targeting life threatening terrorist that forgets to check the most basic thing that gets looked at if you apply for a job.

private messages?

xxp: essentially yes, because initial reporting made it seem like these were sent as public posts rather than private messages

it's one thing to criticize them for not combing through publicly shared facebook posts, but...they were private (according to the LA times thing morbs posted. I haven't been following this closely so sorry if they were actually public facebook posts or I'm missing something blindingly obvious). and if they did read their private messages, before Malik entered on a Visa, that would also mean that they would have to read EVERYONE's private messages. so...uh, no outrage from me.

I don't think the NSA should be allowed to read everyone's private FB messages but they should be allowed to read the private FB messages of people who are going to do terrorism, sorry that's just how I feel.

sir, you have my vote

anyone can do terrorism, it's very democratic that way

the presidential huoynhms instantly converted it to "they were announcing jihad on Facebook"

(or however Swift spelled it)

xpost
but the criticism is that they didn't catch her private messages sent BEFORE they granted the visa, right? so the thought process would have to be "OK, we have a visa application...let me go ahead and read her private messages to check for terrorism" unless they had another reason to believe that she could be involved in terrorism.

Why didn't they read Malik's diary entry from 2007 before giving her a Visa? She laid out her evil intentions in there, as well as which boys are supercute

do they still ask "are u gonna do a terrorism?" on the visa form? we should double check

do you swear you're not a terrorist?
do you swear that you're not crossing your fingers behind your back as you complete this form?
AND YOUR TOES!?!??!

yeah it wasn't social media it was just private messaging (why does anyone think this matters)

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 17, 2015 12:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is going to be used as an argument for government access to encrypted communication

http://i.imgur.com/03P6ZV5.jpg

i answered all their riddles

and ironically i posted a screenshot of my answers on facebook

this is going to be used as an argument for government access to encrypted communication

Obama and Clinton leading the pack

looking forward to the gov't demanding access to plans scribbled on cocktail napkins

But what about the things that people just think about scribbling on cocktail napkins? There has to be a way for them to tap into those thoughts, as well, or we'll never be safe.

do they still ask "are u gonna do a terrorism?" on the visa form? we should double check

you joke but El-Al asks questions like that all the time

that screenshot i posted is from USCIS form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker