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[Neonivek]

Sounds like the Democrats got stuck in Liberal Arsehole mode there.  :/ No surprise that they lost their majorities. I can see the reason that the Dems lost this time all the way back where Pelosi said that, as that's the same 'smug eletist' behavior that helped them cost them the election this time around.

And as we know Trump is so humble.

[misko27]

The first half and the second half of that sentence don't match. You can have a reason, even if it isn't a good one.

Fixed! Causes without reason.

[smjjames]

That, right there, is why Republicans spent so much effort trying to block everything the Democrats wanted. 

There is no reason for blocking everything for eight goddamn years. There are causes, but I cannot imagine reasons.

I can imagine one, having a hate boner for Obama. At least that's the appearance they gave.

[Shadowlord]

Have you been to Detroit recently?  How about Chicago?  How about Flint?  All three, and many more hard-hit inner cities have been safely Democrat for the last 2 - 3 generations.  You could probably point out problems with large cities that have been reliably republican for similar time frames, but I don't think any exist.  No, you do not want a single party to hold the reigns for too long without competent competition.  Competition keeps the people in power sharp.

Flint's water problems arose as a direct result of republican Governor Rick Snyder and other state officials' actions. Citation is wall street journal.

Spoiler: Break glass in case of paywall (click to show/hide)

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and other state officials are “fundamentally accountable” for the lead contamination of Flint’s water supply, according to a report Wednesday from a panel appointed by the governor to investigate the crisis.

“The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice,” said Chris Kolb, a co-chairman of the task force and president of Michigan Environmental Council, a nonprofit coalition of environmental groups in the state.

The group, which was created last October and includes doctors and water-quality experts, called for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to undergo “comprehensive cultural change” to “refocus the department on its primary mission to protect human health and the environment.” Officials at the department unit that assesses water quality should work to help the unit become “a national leader” on drinking-water safety, instead of focusing on “minimum requirements to achieve technical compliance with regulatory requirements,” the report said.

The facts surrounding the crisis “lead us to the inescapable conclusion that this is a case of environmental injustice,” the panel concluded. “Flint residents, who are majority black or African-American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities.”

The crisis received national attention as a stark example of the problems facing the nation’s aging water infrastructure. The report—116 pages including footnotes and appendixes—listed 36 task force findings on how the crisis developed, as well as 44 recommendations on how to keep such a crisis from happening again.

Flint’s drinking water became contaminated after the financially troubled city began using water from the Flint River in April 2014 instead of from Detroit’s water system, as part of a cost-saving measure. The city failed to use a chemical additive to control corrosion inside aging pipes, which allowed lead from pipes to leach into the water.

At the time, the city was under the control of a state emergency manager appointed by Gov. Snyder, a Republican.

The task force was led by Mr. Kolb, a former Democratic state representative, and Ken Sikkema, a former Republican state senator.

The panel called on the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to include more input from health experts and scientists, and to set up a “Flint Toxic Exposure Registry” to track how many people in the city of about 100,000 might have health problems from the contamination. It urged the department to re-establish a Michigan Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and Control Commission, to track lead poisoning across the state.

The governor’s office relied too heavily on a few officials in those departments, and ignored the problem for too long, the task force said. Flint, under a series of state-appointed emergency managers, switched water sources even though its aging water-treatment plant was ill-equipped and understaffed, and workers lacked proper training, the group found.

The task force also criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not intervening in the crisis sooner, even though it had the authority to do so.

EPA officials have said repeatedly that Michigan Department of Environmental Quality staff weren’t straightforward with them about what was happening in Flint.

“The state slow-walked every commitment they made to EPA to fix the problem and made it extremely difficult for us to step in and take over,” spokeswoman Monica Lee wrote in an email Wednesday.

The task force called for changes in the state’s emergency-manager law, which allows the governor to appoint financial managers over economically distressed cities. It said the managers in Flint were too concerned with budgets and lacked expertise on health matters.

Gov. Snyder, at a news conference with task force members Wednesday, said the recommendations were “excellent” and that his office was implementing most of them. Mr. Snyder, who has been sharply criticized during the crisis, said he was committed to making changes, some of which he said would take years.

“We’re going to follow through,” he said.

Task-force members said most officials were cooperative, but stressed the panel didn’t have subpoena power to compel people to speak or provide all documents.

“This report is not going to answer every single question,” said Mr. Sikkema, the task force’s other co-chairman.

The report was released two days after the governor outlined a 75-point, $232 million plan to tackle the lead crisis in Flint. The EPA has determined that any amount of lead in a person’s blood system is unhealthy, especially for young children. Numerous lawsuits and investigations are under way into the crisis, and at recent congressional hearings Democrats and Republicans traded barbs over who was more responsible, the state or the EPA.

Also, these cities don't have less jobs and opportunity because their residents have elected Democrats. White flight and corporations leaving cities* resulted in majority black cities. The GOP has consistently supported racist policies since the civil rights era, whereas LBJ** sacrificed the democratic dominance of the country to do the right thing WRT passing the civil rights act, and successive Democrats have tried to build on that. So they elect Democrats. But there can be fatigue there when nobody seems to be doing anything to help them, or worse, when you have something like President Obama's water-drinking publicity stunt which convinced the national media that it was safe to drink the water in Flint... when it still wasn't, and still isn't.

* Reportedly, some corporations are coming back to them now
** LBJ was a pretty blatant racist, but he still did the right thing.

That, right there, is why Republicans spent so much effort trying to block everything the Democrats wanted. 

There is no reason for blocking everything for eight goddamn years. There are causes, but I cannot imagine reasons.

I can imagine one, having a hate boner for Obama. At least that's the appearance they gave.

"To deny President Obama a second term" (And then presumably when he got his second term, they chose to continue in the hopes that it would suffice to defeat his chosen successor)

[Rockphed]

Have you been to Detroit recently?  How about Chicago?  How about Flint?  All three, and many more hard-hit inner cities have been safely Democrat for the last 2 - 3 generations.  You could probably point out problems with large cities that have been reliably republican for similar time frames, but I don't think any exist.  No, you do not want a single party to hold the reigns for too long without competent competition.  Competition keeps the people in power sharp.

Flint's water problems arose as a direct result of republican Governor Rick Snyder and other state officials' actions. Citation is wall street journal.

Flint's water problems arose as a result of the city going bankrupt and the state stepping in to take over.  The guy assigned to fix the city's finances just happened to also be, apparently, incompetent when it came to public works (he tried to cut a corner that should not have been cut).  Why Flint and Detroit went bankrupt (and the state of Michigan had to step in to fix their finances), is a much more complicated problem with roots in the race riots of the 60s and factory movement of the NAFTA era.

And I maintain that the nanny-state mentality of many Democrats leads directly to job-movement and lost opportunity.  That, and the reluctance of some Democrats to call a riot a riot.  Consider Baltimore last summer.  There were what, 3 days of rioting?  They stopped the minute the governor sent in the National Guard.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I hate to say it, but I am probably one of the closest things to a conservative on this forum, and I am actually a moderate. (fiscally conservative, socially liberal)

I am both socially and fiscally conservative.  I am, in fact, probably the most conservative person you will ever meet.  For the record, I despise Trump almost as much as the most strident liberals, albeit for different reasons.

What do you want to conserve?

[wierd]

a social conservative wants to avoid radical, and untested changes to society, or societal norms.

a fiscal conservative wants to avoid reckless spending by government, and wants to assure that all spending is both necessary, and efficient at performing or furthering a task.

In both cases, it is to prevent enacting or enabling a situation where said changes cause catastrophic harm to the society.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

a social conservative wants to avoid radical, and untested changes to society, or societal norms.

a fiscal conservative wants to avoid reckless spending by government, and wants to assure that all spending is both necessary, and efficient at performing or furthering a task.

In both cases, it is to prevent enacting or enabling a situation where said changes cause catastrophic harm to the society.

I know the general outline; I don't know Rockphed's culture. My culture's definition may be different.

[Egan_BW]

From everything I've seen, fiscal conservatism is about refusing to spend any money on necessary things, not spending money efficiently, but that's perspective for you.

[wierd]

There is fiscal conservative, and there is neocon. A neocon is a "new conservative", who is really just a robber baron industrialist disguised as a conservative.

A neocon wants to enact legislation that will personally line his pockets with gold, and likes to CAUSE problems so that he can propose such solutions.

A fiscal conservative accepts that there is a problem, but wants to spend the least amount of money on it as possible/have it be as money-efficient as possible, so that the government retains a surplus in the event that it encounters an emergency that needs immediate expenditure.

[Egan_BW]

Well your version sounds totally reasonable, so it's too bad that I've never seen it in practice ever before.

[wierd]

A person who is both socially and fiscally conservative may assert that there is not actually a real problem, especially if it is for a social cause.

For example, giving money to single mothers is not something a social+fiscal conservative will really want to do. They would rather see that there are no single mothers, rather than give them social acceptance as a normal thing. As such, they would be more inclined to see that single mothers get temporary support, while they find another husband, etc-- and that such temporary support is indeed just temporary, with finite, fixed limits, and that it is exactly just barely enough to support them until they do so. They would be very concerned about changes in the incidence rate of this issue, as they would view it as a serious social ill in society that there are children not being raised in classic nuclear families. If the incidence rate goes up, they would be in a serious tizzy over it, not be looking for ways to hemorrhage more money to support them.

I am a moderate, who is fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. I dont see a problem with single mothers, as long as they are able to properly provide for their children. Everyone falls on hard times, and having a social safety net is a good thing, but having people subsist entirely out of it is not acceptable. (For one, it takes money away from people who are just in a rough patch of road, which leads them to persistent poverty if they are not helped in a timely manner-- and two, enabling persistent populations supported by the state creates a persistent underclass which is deleterious to the society.) People getting government assistance should receive just enough to get by, and only for limited periods, and only recieve permanent assistance for VERY VERY special conditions, with strict requirements.

A social+fiscal liberal wants to accept every social choice as being valid, and wants to assure that everyone gets everything they want or need in a comfortable setting, regardless of price of impact to the rest of society.

[Shadowlord]

By weird's definition I would be a fiscal conservative, or something close. :V

I don't want to slash everything, though. If I had absolute dictatorial power, I would want to improve things to improve outcomes (e.g. better education, prisons that rehabilitate, etc), which likely would require both larger budgets for those things as well as better systems so said budgets weren't squandered. I'm not allergic to taxes (I would want some form of carbon tax especially). I wouldn't want to be wasting money unnecessarily, however. Where money spent can do good, I'm for that. I'm also for finding a way to have a persistent budget surplus to pay off the national debt (slowly but surely), but wouldn't let that stop me from throwing money at emergencies (hurricane cleanup etc). I'd want to take actions which save money in the long run, not the short run. For instance, instead of subsidizing flood insurance for more and more people, or leaving them without it because the oceans are rising and it's not safe to stay where they are, I'd rather ban new homes and selling homes in areas which are at more and more risk due to sea level rise, and compensate homeowners already there sufficiently to allow them to buy a new home even though they cannot sell theirs. Then demolish the homes (or recycle their components) that are in danger so they don't end up being washed out to sea at some point in the future. (Flint residents would get a similar offer, since fixing the problem there requires replacing all the pipes, and doing so releases more metal into them temporarily iirc)

But I recognize that none of this will happen because I don't have absolute power and our actual federal government doesn't tend to have anything resembling foresight or sense.

P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap is a real problem and cutting people off from assistance isn't a real solution to it, imho

[wierd]

you need to incentivize employment, via an effective and rational minimum wage.

By necessity, government assistance needs to be below this amount, or the perverse anti-incentive manifests.

[Shadowlord]

http://theconversation.com/how-majority-voting-betrayed-voters-again-in-2016-69206