US Politics

RedChip said:
Pointless pontificating. That woman is just showing off her APR knowledge. Most people can't do that calculation without some primer or revision. Why didn't she just provide the data and then ask the question?
Click to expand...

Yes, most people can't. That's why predatory payday lenders are a problem.

It's a bigger problem when the Director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the government agency charged with oversight of these businesses, cannot do it. How can she have the consumers of America's best interest at heart when she doesn't even understand what sort of problems they're facing? This is basic stuff. I had a minor in Business Administration at school and this was stuff we covered the first week of my Corporate Finance class. This is like a contractor not knowing building codes. It's essential knowledge to do the job properly and she hasn't got it.
 
forevrared said:
Yes, most people can't. That's why predatory payday lenders are a problem.

It's a bigger problem when the Director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the government agency charged with oversight of these businesses, cannot do it. How can she have the consumers of America's best interest at heart when she doesn't even understand what sort of problems they're facing? This is basic stuff. I had a minor in Business Administration at school and this was stuff we covered the first week of my Corporate Finance class. This is like a contractor not knowing building codes. It's essential knowledge to do the job properly and she hasn't got it.
Click to expand...
It is grandstanding, because I'm a financial analyst and I can do all manner of effective rate calculations at my computer which is where I actually am when I'm doing work, but can't necessarily do it sitting around anywhere with just a calculator (for example, I did guesstimate that it was around 500%, but wouldn't have accurately calculated 521%).

I also would've said pretty much the same thing to her first question to define the APR. It's the interest rate annualized. Then she acted as if by not giving her the exact definition the director didn't know. It's like the difference in any profession between taking a written test and actually doing the job.
 
RedChip said:
Pointless pontificating. That woman is just showing off her APR knowledge. Most people can't do that calculation without some primer or revision. Why didn't she just provide the data and then ask the question?
Click to expand...
Context matters i.e who she's asking the questions.
 
MTF said:
It is grandstanding, because I'm a financial analyst and I can do all manner of effective rate calculations at my computer which is where I actually am when I'm doing work, but can't necessarily do it sitting around anywhere with just a calculator (for example, I did guesstimate that it was around 500%, but wouldn't have accurately calculated 521%).

I also would've said pretty much the same thing to her first question to define the APR. It's the interest rate annualized. Then she acted as if by not giving her the exact definition the director didn't know. It's like the difference in any profession between taking a written test and actually doing the job.
Click to expand...
Shouldn’t the director of consumer finance protection beareau explain an April intelligently? It’s such an important position that I think she should. It’s not just for any analyst.
 
Florida Man said:
Shouldn’t the director of consumer finance protection beareau explain an April intelligently? It’s such an important position that I think she should. It’s not just for any analyst.
Click to expand...
Isn't that a bit like asking the CEO of a company about any one aspect of the business, and he answers correctly but not the by the book definition that someone that dealt with that day-to-day might give, so you still ding him?
 
MTF said:
Isn't that a bit like asking the CEO of a company about any one aspect of the business, and he answers correctly but not the by the book definition that someone that dealt with that day-to-day might give, so you still ding him?
Click to expand...
Depends on what you ask them I suppose. If it was a question about what series C funding is, for example, I’d expect them to know and explain it intelligently.
 
roseguy64 said:
Context matters i.e who she's asking the questions.
Click to expand...
My point was, it isn't the sort of calculation we should be expecting even people in the loan business to crunch at the drop of a hat on a handheld calculator. Basically what @MTF said:

MTF said:
It is grandstanding, because I'm a financial analyst and I can do all manner of effective rate calculations at my computer which is where I actually am when I'm doing work, but can't necessarily do it sitting around anywhere with just a calculator (for example, I did guesstimate that it was around 500%, but wouldn't have accurately calculated 521%).

I also would've said pretty much the same thing to her first question to define the APR. It's the interest rate annualized. Then she acted as if by not giving her the exact definition the director didn't know. It's like the difference in any profession between taking a written test and actually doing the job.
Click to expand...
 
If she's a Trump appointee I'm sure she's terrible and doing nothing to actually protect consumers. But these gotcha questions are so easy to set up.
 
RedChip said:
My point was, it isn't the sort of calculation we should be expecting even people in the loan business to crunch at the drop of a hat on a handheld calculator. Basically what @MTF said:
Click to expand...
Yeah but one of the other congresspeople worked it out without a calculator. Also, once I saw it explained in the comments, someone who's in that line should know. That's why she used simple numbers divisible by each other in her example. If you understand the concept then you should be able to work it out in quick time.
 
Also, that's why Obama appointed people who worked in the field as heads of the various departments. A nuclear physicist was head of the department that dealt with nuclear energy.
 
The first gamer-representative is a socialist with some decent physics knowledge, who decided to name his astronaut Jeb :lol:



Edit - oh no, Jeb crashed on his first launch, parachute failed I think :lol: "Jeb is a mess", says State Rep Carter as his astronaut crashes into the ocean.
 
Last edited:
roseguy64 said:
Also, that's why Obama appointed people who worked in the field as heads of the various departments. A nuclear physicist was head of the department that dealt with nuclear energy.
Click to expand...

yeah like when nominated a wall street lawyer to attorney general. or a healthcare lobbyist to HHS. or an heir to hyatt hotels as secretary of commerce
 
berbatrick said:
https://m.facebook.com/KingforCongress/photos/a.169008886506462/2552012808206046/?type=3
Click to expand...
Joke's on them. Blue states have all the technology experts and money. Amazon, Facebook and Google have all the data on everyone. Boston Dynamics has robots on wheels that can do backflips. Nevada has Area 51 technology. Fox News in New York will be shut down. Twitter can block all right wingers. Red state are fecked before they even leave their houses.

Other side: 1
One side: 0
 
Aspiring Trumpster, Governor Ron DeSantis repeals the part of the medical marijuana bill that bans the sale of flower and the act smoking. Patients can buy up to 2.5 ounces too. Fair play there, fecker. Fair play.
 
Wisconsin judge blocks Scott Walker-backed laws curbing Democratic governor’s powers

A Wisconsin judge on Thursday blocked legislation passed by Republican lawmakers during a December lame-duck session intended to curb the powers of newly elected Democratic Governor Tony Evers, calling the measures unconstitutionally approved.


The governor immediately moved to withdraw Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit that seeks to overturn the Obamacare healthcare law, the signature domestic achievement of former Democratic President Barack Obama and a longtime target of Republicans, including President Donald Trump.



One of the statutes passed in December prevented Evers from pulling out of the lawsuit absent legislative approval, until Thursday’s decision set the law aside.


Democrats had criticized the legislation as a last-minute power grab. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina and Michigan pursued similar lame-duck moves after Democratic victories in November.


“The legislature overplayed its hand by using an unlawful process to accumulate more power for itself and override the will of the people,” Evers said in a statement.


Wisconsin Republican legislative leaders vowed to appeal the ruling from Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess, who issued a temporary injunction stopping the laws from taking effect.



“For decades the legislature has used extraordinary sessions that have been widely supported by members of both parties,” Robin Vos, the state Assembly speaker, and Scott Fitzgerald, the state Senate majority leader, said in a joint statement.


“Today’s ruling only creates chaos and will surely raise questions about items passed during previous extraordinary sessions, including stronger laws against child sexual predators and drunk drivers,” the statement added.


In his decision, Niess said the legislature’s use of an “extraordinary session” was not explicitly permitted under the state constitution.


“The bottom line in this case is that the legislature did not lawfully meet during its December 2018 ‘extraordinary session,’” he wrote.


Lawyers for the legislature had argued that an injunction would cause disruption by making thousands of statutes vulnerable to legal challenges, but Niess rejected that claim.


“Is there anything more destructive to Wisconsin’s constitutional democracy than for courts to abdicate their constitutional responsibilities by knowingly enforcing unconstitutional, and therefore, non-existent laws?” he concluded.
Click to expand...
 
entropy said:
Click to expand...


In November, a supermajority of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to former felons who’ve completed their sentences. On Tuesday, Florida Republicans advanced a bill that will strip hundreds of thousands of these individuals of the franchise once again.


That measure, which GOP lawmakers voted out of committee along party lines, is a direct assault on Amendment 4, which altered the state constitution to reinstate felons’ right to vote. It is an astonishing rejection of Floridians’ overwhelming support for the amendment and a flagrant power-grab designed to suppress potential Democratic votes. And because the Florida Legislature, governorship, and Supreme Court are dominated by Republicans, the bill stands an excellent chance of becoming law, reversing the biggest voting rights victory of the 21st century so far.

Shortly after the 2018 election, it became clear that Republican lawmakers would attempt to undermine Amendment 4. By its own terms, the law is self-executing; it requires no implementation by the Legislature. Floridians who have completed a sentence for a felony conviction should now be permitted to vote, so long as they did not commit homicide or a sex offense. Yet GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis (who opposed the amendment) and his allies in the Legislature quickly asserted that it is not self-executing and requires “implementing language.” That’s not true, but it allowed Republicans to curtail the amendment’s impact under the guise of “implementing” it. Since November, the key question was how brazenly GOP lawmakers would seek to subvert the amendment: Would they tinker around the edges, or gut the law entirely?


We learned the answer on Tuesday, when the House of Representatives’ Criminal Justice Subcommittee passed a bill designed to sabotage Amendment 4. The amendment unambiguously declares that “voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of sentence including parole or probation.” But the new bill adds a new hurdle: Felons may not register to vote until they’ve paid all court costs, fines, and fees associated with their sentences.

To understand why this provision is a poison pill, it’s important to understand the system of “cash-register justice” practiced by Florida and many other states. To finance its criminal justice system, Florida imposes both fines and “user fees” on defendants upon conviction. Individuals may be fined up to $500,000 for their crime, then saddled with a mind-boggling array of administrative fees. Defendants must pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to fund court costs, “crime prevention” programs, and local jails. They must pay a fee to apply for a public defender, to receive medical treatment in prison, to reinstate a suspended driver’s license, and to participate in drug abuse treatment. Those who receive probation must pay “surcharges” to fund their supervision or room-and-board at a halfway house, as well as electronic monitoring and urinalysis.


Florida calls some of these fines “restitution,” but they’re a far cry from the standard definition of that concept. Typically, restitution requires defendants to compensate their victims and constitutes part of their criminal sentence. But Florida stretches restitution to encompass fines paid to the state to subsidize courts, county governments, police departments, and investigators. Meanwhile, the Florida Constitution compels county clerks of the court to finance their offices through “user fees.” These assessments are separate from a defendant’s criminal sentence—they’re a budgetary mandate, a tax on defendants to keep the courts running.

Here’s the unspoken but well-documented truth about these fines and fees: Almost no one ever pays them in full. Former felons already struggle to find employment upon completion of their prison terms, and few can afford to tithe a large portion of their salary to the state. According to WLRN, Florida courts levied $1 billion in felony fines between 2013 and 2018; each year, only 19 percent of that money was paid back. The Florida Court Clerks and Comptrollers (FCCC), an association that releases annual summaries of assessments, labeled 83 percent of court fines levied between 2014 and 2018 as having “minimal collections expectations.” That indicates that there is little chance that the money will ever be paid.
Click to expand...
 
roseguy64 said:
Click to expand...


What do Trump and Trump supporters mean by the 'deep state' exactly? Is it just the ties between the private millitary complex and the government, WS and the government, or is it something more conspiratory? Because if it is the two former he isn't exactly wrong.

Not heard about him trying to do anything about it though. Carlyle Group would be a great place to start for example.
 
SwansonsTache said:
What do Trump and Trump supporters mean by the 'deep state' exactly? Is it just the ties between the private millitary complex and the government, WS and the government, or is it something more conspiratory? Because if it is the two former he isn't exactly wrong.

Not heard about him trying to do anything about it though. Carlyle Group would be a great place to start for example.
Click to expand...
These people reduce anything that threatens their world view to that of the "deep state".
 
Donald Trump is one symptom of a wider problem that’s making the United States weaker on the international stage.

"Instead of fulfilling his campaign promise to “drain the swamp,” Trump dug it wider and filled it deeper. Small wonder that the United States has fallen out of the ranks of the top 20 “least corrupt” nations—according tothe watchdog group Transparency International—and is now considered a “country to watch” by that nonpartisan organization.

But the problem is in fact far more serious than Trump and his entourage. Consider some other recent scandals.

Example #1: The 2008 Financial Crisis. To some extent, the 2008 financial crisis is a case study of hubris, where self-styled “masters of the universe” convinced themselves they had devised financial instruments that had reduced the risk of a panic to miniscule levels. But the crisis also exposed systemic corruption inside key financial institutions. It wasn’t just a few crooked mortgage brokers offering lots of bad loans; it also involved serious abuses by ratings agencies, investment banks, government-backed lenders like Fannie Mae, and even some academic economists. At least we can take comfort in the fact that the people responsible for cratering the world economy were held accountable and got punished, right? Er, nope.

Example #2: The Boeing 737 Max. The more we learn about the second recent crash of a Boeing 737 Max aircraft, the more disturbing the tale becomes. While a final determination of the causes of the two recent crashes has yet to be made, it seems increasingly clear that Boeing rushed the new plane to market, downplayed the need for additional pilot training, and used an increasingly cozy relationship with Federal Aviation Administration regulators to win approval for the plane. The world seems to have woken up to the conflicts of interest here: The United States was the last country to ground the plane after this month’s crash, and Ethiopian authorities chose to send the black boxes for analysis in France rather than in the United States.

Example #3: The (Latest) College Admissions Scandal. It’s no secret that admission to elite institutions of higher education isn’t the pure meritocracy that universities try to convey. Being part of an alumni family (a “legacy”) is a big plus, and it seems to help a lot if a parent gives the school a big donation at just the right time. But last week’s revelationsthat wealthy parents and celebrities were colluding with William Singer(a professional “admissions counselor”) and a bunch of corrupt coaches and administrators to get their less-than-fully-qualified kids into elite schools by falsifying test results or passing them off as gifted athletes was still an eye-opener. It was also more evidence—as if any were needed—of the corrupting role big-time athletics play in the life of American universities. Don’t even get me started on that subject."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/19/americas-corruption-problem-is-a-national-security-threat/
 
Good article on Mitch:
Nihilist-in-chief
https://newrepublic.com/article/153275/mitch-mcconnell-profile-nihilist-chief
McConnell has built a GOP machine that is as immune as it can be to the ballot box, because he is smart enough to know that Republicans cannot, as currently constituted, win fair elections often enough to retain power.

But by choosing incredibly canny battles—his relentless attempts to first upend even the possibility of campaign finance regulation and enforcement, and then to pack the judiciary with right-wing ideologues—McConnell has enabled the conservative movement to dominate American politics long after its tenets are fully rejected by the majority of the electorate.

All that time with McConnell did give Homans one special insight: McConnell hasn’t just “broken” the Senate by smashing its norms, or by making it dysfunctional. He’s essentially worked to make it irrelevant. For the foreseeable future, America’s regulatory policy will be written by the judiciary. Its ability to prosecute white-collar crime and bribery, to levy taxes, and create social welfare programs—all of these powers will be stripped from the Senate and put in the hands of the men (it’s almost all men) McConnell has placed on the courts. But he’ll probably go to his grave chuckling that Harry Reid started it, and get his name on that damn building too. America doesn’t really remember why it hated its political villains for very long, especially when they win.

And the beautiful thing here is that Mitch McConnell already won. Even with Republicans losing the House, McConnell has another two years to complete his life’s work: a pipeline, sucking donor money out of the plutocracy and refining it into a judiciary that will someday declare it unconstitutional to levy property taxes on a billionaire’s climate change-adaptation bunker.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:


Mark Kelly to get clear-ish run at McSally's senate seat.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.