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[Max™]

Are you wealthy?

If the answer isn't "bahahaha, as if you have to ask, oh that's great, let me call Tiff, she'll love this" then voting republican is in fact against your best interests. and has been since thaat old shitbag Reagan was zombie-shuffling around the oval office.

Americans like the lie that we're all 'one big break from being rich' so you can be nice and call them lied to, but informed the poor [R] voter ain't.

Do you think the Democrats are 'for' the working class?

Did I present anywhere the idea that I did? Know who is for the average folks? The old dude trying to get a single-payer healthcare bill put up for a vote, though even then he could use a lot of work, and a makeover awesome enough to knock fourty years off of him.

[Frumple]

Do you think the Democrats are 'for' the working class? Their last candidate was heavily funded by Wall Street and Saudi Arabia.

At the absolute least they're certainly several orders of magnitude more for it than the republicans are. Funding matters less than policy, and there's only one major party in this country that has workers rights and protections, sustainable job creation, and all the things that keeps a person and their family alive and in decent shape while they're dealing with the challenges the present day economy presents the working class, as a platform and fairly persistently pursued legislative goal. And that damn sure ain't the GOP.

[WealthyRadish]

You can force everything to be manufactured locally, for example with massive tarifs on China.  I don't know what would happen if we do this, but I haven't heard anyone seriously espousing it, so... I dunno.

If we put up massive tariffs, by definition prices would spike and real wages would drop (real wages representing actual purchasing power). With higher prices will also come lower consumption of everything, and even as local industry slowly revives and becomes profitable it'll never be able to profitably produce and employ anywhere near what it can elsewhere (due both to decreased demand and the differences that led to other countries having a comparative advantage in the first place). The result is a lowered standard of living and a contraction of the market that reverberates though all sectors, while "recovering" few new jobs (and killing far more in the resulting slump) while not addressing any of the real factors that depress wages.

[smjjames]

The other problem with massive tariffs is that it risks starting a trade war, which just ends up hurting everybody.

Also, UrbanGiraffe, sounds like you're talking a bit about the Border Tax stuff? Which is a type of tariff, though those wouldn't be massive.

[Sergarr]

UPDATE: Nunes says he will not share his intelligence sources with other members of committee. http://reut.rs/2nJAG4J

An investigation chairman is having his own personal investigation, it seems.

[smjjames]

UPDATE: Nunes says he will not share his intelligence sources with other members of committee. http://reut.rs/2nJAG4J

An investigation chairman is having his own personal investigation, it seems.

Yeah, the whole House Intel investigation (the Republican side anyway, but it's still dragging down the committee as a whole) is imploding due to Nunes operating what is looking more and more like some sort of coverup by Nunes. The fact that he won't share with even Republican members looks bad on him as well.

Guy really just needs to be removed from the committee entirely

[Helgoland]

Do you think the Democrats are 'for' the working class? Their last candidate was heavily funded by Wall Street and Saudi Arabia.

How does being funded by Saudi Arabia imply being against the working class? Those seem like two completely unrelated issues to me.

[sluissa]

You can force everything to be manufactured locally, for example with massive tarifs on China.  I don't know what would happen if we do this, but I haven't heard anyone seriously espousing it, so... I dunno.

If we put up massive tariffs, by definition prices would spike and real wages would drop (real wages representing actual purchasing power). With higher prices will also come lower consumption of everything, and even as local industry slowly revives and becomes profitable it'll never be able to profitably produce and employ anywhere near what it can elsewhere (due both to decreased demand and the differences that led to other countries having a comparative advantage in the first place). The result is a lowered standard of living and a contraction of the market that reverberates though all sectors, while "recovering" few new jobs (and killing far more in the resulting slump) while not addressing any of the real factors that depress wages.

That's a nicely laid out scenario there, but I don't see how that has any sort of predictive power behind it.

[palsch]

Nunes must be deliberately trying to discredit the investigation.

He first scheduled a hearing with Sally Yates. The administration attempted to block her testimony, claiming it would be covered by executive privilege and disclosing certain details would need sign-off from the White House. When her lawyer replied that she intended to testify and asking for such permission the hearing was abruptly cancelled by Nunes. See also this.

Nunes said the cancellation was so the Committee could hold a closed session with Comey and Rodgers. This was then cancelled when the two couldn't attend. So he'd basically cancelled a hearing for another one without actually checking the required people could attend.

Meanwhile there are more questions about his random press conference last week. It seems that he went to the White House grounds (the NSC facilities specifically) to view undisclosed confidential material. He stated that this was simply the most convenient location for viewing such material, despite being the chair of a committee that itself has such facilities.

Now he is refusing to disclose the material even to his committee, stating that he won't ever reveal, "those sources and methods". Which would be reasonable if he were an intelligence agency and not oversight for such agencies. Anything he has legal access to his committee also have access to. Sources and methods refer to how classified intelligence is collected, now how it is legally shared among US officials. They should never be revealed as they can put agents at risk of exposure. However, if he was shown material containing such information then it would be perfectly fine to show it to the rest of the group.

Unless the sources and methods he is talking about are his own. The only reason he would have for hiding his sources and methods is if he were conducing surveillance himself, meeting directly with active agents for briefings from the field. Or just acting illegally and trying not to get caught in a really crap way.

Or talking utter crap and trying to dress it in intelligence terms. That's another option.

He is now rescheduling another hearing with Comey.


Meanwhile the USA Today has just published a detailed look at Trump's business ties to Russia while Foreign Policy has outlined the various contacts between the campaign and Russia, highlighting Trump's son-in-law Kushner, recently placed in an official White House role as the news broke. No idea if any of this has relevant to the above...

[smjjames]

Do you think the Democrats are 'for' the working class? Their last candidate was heavily funded by Wall Street and Saudi Arabia.

How does being funded by Saudi Arabia imply being against the working class? Those seem like two completely unrelated issues to me.

I think that was a jab at the Clinton Foundation taking money from Arab states.

@Palsch: A few politicians have commented that it's starting to look like a coverup attempt by Nunes. Either way, he's going rogue when he is supposed to work with the rest of the committee and not look like he's trying to cover something up.

[palsch]

@Palsch: A few politicians have commented that it's starting to look like a coverup attempt by Nunes. Either way, he's going rogue when he is supposed to work with the rest of the committee and not look like he's trying to cover something up.

If it is a cover-up its the least competent ever in the US government. His tradecraft is awful, the optics of his actions are terrible, he misuses terminology and neither he nor the White House have pretended to not be coordinating and politically aligned. He just ends up looking suspicious, politicly motivated, bumblingly incompetent and a White House stooge.

He could have easily derailed the hearings - he's the committee chair - but what he has done is push his committee into irrelevancy and made himself a laughingstock. The only real explanation I've seen is that he is deliberately making a mess of things as a further distraction from the substantive issues, trying to provide a smoke screen for the (competent) Senate hearings while destroying his own.

Sadly the only person who can directly remove him is Paul Ryan, who won't.


EDIT: Again, I'm sure this isn't relevant.

LIMASSOL, Cyprus — A bank in Cyprus investigated accounts associated with President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for possible money-laundering, two banking sources with direct knowledge of his businesses here told NBC News.

Manafort — whose ties to a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin are under scrutiny — was associated with at least 15 bank accounts and 10 companies on Cyprus, dating back to 2007, the sources said. At least one of those companies was used to receive millions of dollars from a billionaire Putin ally, according to court documents.
...
 One of the companies linked to Manafort, PEM Advisors Limited, was involved in a multimillion-dollar deal with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, according to court documents filed in the Cayman Islands.

Deripaska — described in U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 as "one of 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis" — once was denied entry to the United States because of alleged organized crime ties, current and former officials have told NBC News.

He paid PEM $18.9 million to buy a television and media network in Ukraine, according to the Cayman Island court documents. But the deal fell through and the money was never accounted for, the documents say.
...
 The bulk of the accounts associated with Manafort were held at the Cyprus Popular Bank. In 2012, under an anti-money-laundering procedure called Know Your Customer, the bank asked for more information on the accounts' activities, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the request. Those sources said that Manafort chose to close the accounts instead.

Also noted at the end of the article is that Manafort is due in front of the House Intelligence Committee. I wonder if that will now change.

[smjjames]

It's more accusing Nunes of the appearance of trying to cover up than an actual cover up. Basically it's 'What the heck are you doing? This isn't even anywhere close to normal procedure.'.

[WealthyRadish]

You can force everything to be manufactured locally, for example with massive tarifs on China.  I don't know what would happen if we do this, but I haven't heard anyone seriously espousing it, so... I dunno.

If we put up massive tariffs, by definition prices would spike and real wages would drop (real wages representing actual purchasing power). With higher prices will also come lower consumption of everything, and even as local industry slowly revives and becomes profitable it'll never be able to profitably produce and employ anywhere near what it can elsewhere (due both to decreased demand and the differences that led to other countries having a comparative advantage in the first place). The result is a lowered standard of living and a contraction of the market that reverberates though all sectors, while "recovering" few new jobs (and killing far more in the resulting slump) while not addressing any of the real factors that depress wages.

That's a nicely laid out scenario there, but I don't see how that has any sort of predictive power behind it.

When talking about tariffs and the effect of price on consumer demand, this is about as controversial as claiming that DNA is hereditary or plate tectonics creates mountains. There's a much more complicated and less well-understood question of the trade deficit, but this aspect at least is much simpler. A tariff increases prices, higher prices decreases consumer demand and purchasing power, and in a consumer economy an abrupt plummeting of consumer spending (as would happen in the hypothetical here of suddenly imposing massive tariffs either as a blanket or specifically on China) is one of the principal forces that creates and prolongs recessions and depressions.

[Rolepgeek]

[snip]

Interesting tidbit: People in china tend to be happier than people in america. Probably due to the fact that their situation is continuously improving (and communal culture instead of individualist means the whole authoritarian corrupt government thing isn't quite as upsetting or burdensome), whereas that's not true for america.

Sidenote: There's reasons and means to oppose globalisation/globalism other than those, and to desire a domestic manufacturing base. Further, there's really only so many high-tech jobs available. And the more people who go into the, the worse those jobs will be for the people in them, barring some seriously drastic shifts in either corporate mindset (to 'treat your workers well and they'll do well', which is in fact accurate) or policy (which could cause them to pull out, aka they can hold countries hostage for economic benefits). There's the whole worry that rather than enable everyone to have enough and not have to work all the time in order to eat, that automation will instead leave all the wealth in the hands of the few who can work it/own it, while they have no need for the poor, and therefore leave them to rot.

Plus, in some cases, local manufacturing is better for the environment. Significantly better, sometimes, depending on where it's shipped from and their rules about how okay it is to fuck over the environment. There's ways for most everyone to win here. People just don't look at them because they're distasteful in other ways (tariffs, for example; everyone seems to hate the idea of tariffs and any reduction in trade whatsoever, because it would hurt quarterly GDP growth. But I think a progressive tariff, based on how many labor, safety, health, and environmental standards are not met or enforced compared to the U.S. would help a lot in several ways. And if they levy a tariff back on us, so be it. I've seen it a few times now that no nation has successfully industrialized without hefty protective tariffs. We'll still have trade with other highly developed countries, too, and it helps make up for the difference in labor price in terms of allowing our manufacturers to compete with foreign ones. World peace through free trade sounds great, and mostly works, but I doubt China would start a shooting war over it.

If you're worried about prices rising for the poor, the solution is the same as ever: tax the rich, use it to help the poor. Wealth gap is growing, income gap is growing, and taxes on the wealthy are still very low. I would personally make a new tax bracket where, past 1 million dollars, ~80% of your income is taxed(still not the highest we've had though to be fair we're not in wartime). We've had upwards of 70% taxes on the upper class for several decades after WWI. It was cut by Reagan, and never went back that high again. Wealth gap and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased since, rather than decreasing as it was previously.

@UrbanGiraffe: Comparative advantage based on a lower regulatory burden is a shell of an advantage, not one based in resources or ability. Although you're right that a sudden shift would be bad for just about everyone. Gradual increases, though, that's not gonna have the same shock effect. But again, no country has successfully industrialized without a tax base, and if we've done alright previously without China to make all our shit, we would be able to do it again, given time.

[Frumple]

Eh. There's reason to develop a domestic manufacturing industry more (though, do note, the US output in terms of raw goods has barely stagnated at best, and for most things have maintained or increased. We have a domestic manufacturing industry, it's just steadily employing less people even as it grows), but what there isn't is a way to do it without losing any number of things on the net. Price increases, job loss, political and trade repercussions, so on, so forth. If you're demanding companies produce in a specific place they're going to lose out to companies that aren't so fettered, and that's going to cost one way or another. And what we don't have right now is an administration willing to pay that cost, which means the population supposedly trying to be helped with that industry gets screwed over by the attempt. Even if we did it would still be a pretty bad idea. Trying to get more jobs out of an industry that has been steadily needing less of them for the same output is a fool's errand.

As for the "so be it" to getting into a trade war. I'm among the people that actually have to live with the consequences of that instead of just be inconvenienced by it, and it's a position that can frankly go fuck itself. Too much of my family and too many of my neighbors are close enough to the edge the bullshit that would come out of that would start putting them in graves. If that's what it takes to give manufacturing folks more work they can go screw themselves, never mind anyone claiming it would, particularly to a degree that would save areas that were dependent on it and didn't start transitioning when it left, is lying out of their ass. If "just tax the rich" was an actual bloody option we wouldn't be having the problems we are.

You seem to be willfully ignoring what that "given time" at the end of your spiel means, rp. It's not happy fun times. Some of us actually have to live with it, and if there's other options -- and there are -- I'd really rather friggin' not.