Politics 2020

[Gfted1]

Green bell peppers cost .62 at Walmart. That robber baron Bezos!  

[Elerond]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I tend to agree with that, since there is no  control of some types of illegal immigration I dont think we should get too involved when illegal immigrants accept certain work conditions

In SA we are experiencing this, its called the informal sector where many people, not all, are illegal immigrants and work in small companies or day time labor  that dont follow labor law and the illegal immigrants  are fine with it as they cant get jobs in the formal sector because you must have papers and FICA ( Financial Intelligence Center Act ) documents to work in most countries legally

So the terrible suggestion raised by groups who represent the illegal\undocumented  immigrants  is  " give them papers so they can work legally and contribute towards the tax base like everyone else "....the problem with that well meaning but flawed suggestion is that would mean millions of foreigners can now compete for jobs with actual South African citizens in an economic environment that is terrible ...we have about a 35 % unemployment  rate normally and now  during the virus its 50 %

Imagine now you allow millions of non-South Africans to get jobs that should always be accessible to South Africans and people here with papers ...you will destroy our economic transformation and add to real, unfair but understandable  issues many people have with not controlling immigration or somehow thinking   " our immigration problem  can be fixed if we just allow citizenship to everyone who just arrives in your country  " 

If you have lots of illegal immigrants in country,  making their status legal helps to control their economical impact better. As it is easier to regulate how much companies need to pay them for their work. It easier to spot abuse and low wages. It make easier to see where there is need for additional services (schools, shops, etc. every day services).

Meaning that immigrants don't only take jobs, but create them by needing services and stuff.  Uncontrollable immigration is problem, because it puts stress on existing systems faster than those systems can answer to increasing demand. Even though there are limit how much immigration country can handle it is always better to make immigrants somehow legal if you aren't able to sent them back to their home country, because if you let them became gray invisible mass which size isn't know, they will cause invisible stress to existing systems which is much more difficult to handle, as many issues will keep themselves in shadows until it is too late. 

One of the best ways to prevent illegal immigration is to kill demand for such immigrants. 

[Elerond]

4 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

If you agree to that, who am I to block such an arrangement.

Allowing such agreements will lead to cheap labor import and lots of abuse. It is system which is used in Qatar and Saudi Arabia for example and it has lead both countries to have immigrant workforce who are quite close to slaves. And they also cause wages on those jobs drop so low that no domestic worker is able to do them an live with the wage.

[ComradeYellow]

4 minutes ago, Elerond said:

One of the best ways to prevent illegal immigration is to kill demand for such immigrants. 

Impossible considering 70% of the American-controlled economic sphere of influence is based off of consumerism which inevitably leads to people leaving what they perceive as their "poor" countries in search of more wealth, it's like gravity and sucks people in because it doesn't leave much room for alternatives.  Some people in Mexico actually love it there in the rural areas because even though they are technically "poor", they don't know that they're poor because they're all in the same boat.  Most, I think, however, would rather gravitate towards the U.S. to seek better income and quality of life (Which is a risky double-edged sword if you ask me).

Also speaking of Amazon and Bezo's, their business practices certainly "sounds good on paper" (to quote die-hard economic rightists) but herein lies the dangerous internal contradiction of what goes on with the nuts and bolts of Amazon employees. 

http://www.usforacle.com/2020/04/28/online-shoppers-should-be-aware-of-amazons-grueling-working-conditions/#:~:text=Amazon warehouses%2C for example%2C have,only two 15-minute breaks.&text=The 600 workers who signed,per 100 full-time employees.

[Orogun01]

50 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

That's been obvious for a while now, or else Wal-Mart would only sell products with a Wal-Mart label attached to them (to give a clear, concise example of said practices).

I'm actually thinking about moving to New Hampshire and seeing how a weapons manufacturer operates (Sig Sauer is hiring machinists there).  Even though I make decent money, not really digging the snow plow business here because the management is very strict and hypernationalistic (whilst buying all there parts from cheap labor overseas at the same time, they are truly loving Trump's tax cuts at the expense of the workers lol).

Good luck with your job hunt

[Hurlshort]

22 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

Green bell peppers cost .62 at Walmart. That robber baron Bezos!  

Ugh, green are the worst. I quoted a fancy red one. I think Amazon charges .99 cents for green.

[Zoraptor]

Fighting breaking out again between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Not much doubt that it's the Azeris starting it, as Turkey has been importing their Syrian cannon fodder/ jihadi child beheading rapist kidnapper cannibal ethnic cleansers there over the past 2 weeks just as they did in Libya. Tried it a few months earlier too, since they though Turkish drones would be a game changer but they failed utterly against an integrated defence.

6 hours ago, Elerond said:

So company can bring immigrant workers, arrange them to live in some sort compound and feed them what they get affordable and then make those people work them to pay that housing and food. And then in order to ensure that said immigrants follow law company can keep them behind lock and key. Would that be good arrangement to  to you, which causes less problems in society than current immigration policies?

That is near exactly what actually happened here. Not just for agricultural workers either, the big scam is 'path to citizenship' stuff where you advertise a position with awful conditions/ reject all candidates/ hide the advertisement then claim that you cannot fill the position and need to bring someone in. That person literally pays for the privilege, since after 3 years they can apply for Permanent Residence and then citizenship. For most of that 3 years their employer holds their passport and pays them nearly nothing while charging them for accommodation etc. If they lose the job, complain, fall out with the employer they get deported; so they don't complain. 'Funny' thing is that the only reason it's stopped now is because of covid, though to be fair we've actually had a few 'slavery' type- one literally for slavery- convictions under the current government as well. Really though, if the workers were eastern european women working as prostitutes it'd be utterly obvious what was going on with forced accommodation and their passports being held, but because the employers are 'small business owners', themselves mostly immigrants- NZ born people just exploit agricultural workers the same way- and the employees are mostly east/ south asians if you complain about it it ends up in a racism debate (and, of course, most Chinese/ Indian immigrants loathe the exploiters because it's their community being exploited and they cop the backlash when it's exposed).

And you should hear the wails of despair from the agricultural sector about not being able to import indentured servants from the colonies (Samoa, Fiji, Tonga) to pick strawberries etc. My personal favourite was that 'islanders are strong and can work a full day', as if ~10% of our population isn't islander, double that if you count Maori as well. It's got nothing to do with strength and everything to do with you being able to completely asterisk imports over on pay and conditions without them being able to or knowing they can complain about it.

 

[Darkpriest]

1 hour ago, Elerond said:

Allowing such agreements will lead to cheap labor import and lots of abuse. It is system which is used in Qatar and Saudi Arabia for example and it has lead both countries to have immigrant workforce who are quite close to slaves. And they also cause wages on those jobs drop so low that no domestic worker is able to do them an live with the wage.

I do not see much difference than the slave wage in the US for example. 

I mean, who can live for a minmum wage from a single job in US? And a lot of services in US is for a minimum wage workers, or near the minimum. 

[ComradeYellow]

5 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

I mean, who can live for a minmum wage from a single job in US? And a lot of services in US is for a minimum wage workers, or near the minimum. 

You can't, which explains the growing divide amongst the U.S. population.  It's no longer just Democrat vs. Republican, oh no sir, there's now a class factor into play so now it's Democrat vs. Republican vs. a growing sector of the working population who is fed up with both parties and the system itself.

Nobody can predict the endgame here but it's sure get a little ugly.

Edited September 27, 2020 by ComradeMaster

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

Ugh, green are the worst. I quoted a fancy red one. I think Amazon charges .99 cents for green.

have mentioned this in the food thread, except for the southern cook's mirepoix (green bell pepper, celery, onion) for things such as red beans and rice, we never would use green bell pepper. the difference 'tween your fancy red pepper and a green bell pepper is that the green is not yet ripe. is not as if it is a different variety o' pepper from the red.  

green bell pepper tastes a bit like red wine which has turned. am not joking. pyrazines is a thing in green bell pepper which is one o' the components in bad wine. we don't drink wine and only use for cooking, but we nevertheless may recognize when the liquid has turned and the stink o' mushy green peppers is a dead give away. 

as to the weirdness regarding artistic displays, am suspecting there is some dishonesty going on, but we do not believe it is intentional. at the moment, portland is every republican's favorite metropolis punching bag, or mayhap chicago if you are a midwesterner. imagine portland city hall sponsors an art display to commemorate the current protests and the winning submission is a work entitled old glory-- is a dented and rusted metal trash can haphazard wrapped in a filthy and scorched american flag, with the trash can filled with what appears to be used condoms. 

three years from now, portland recognizes that old glory were a mistake and they wanna get rid o' it. whatever message it were meant to send were sent already and clearly if portland wants to remove, they learned another valuable lesson already. is portland and the people o' the city forced to endure old glory in perpetuity 'cause it were deemed to be art by some small group o' folks in 2020? why? would the folks demanding the integrity o' confederate memorials and too white for comfort murals see old glory as similar?

how 'bout a bronze statue o' jesus relieving himself on the Constitution?  bob can buy the statue and put it in his garden for a couple years before he realizes whatever shock value were intrinsic to it has worn off and then remove it to the basement... or even destroy it if he so wishes. nevertheless, the people o' portland don't have the same options as bob? am betting regardless that at least a few o' the evangelicals who see it as a yet another example o' the bankrupt morality o' the left that they wanna destroy a university o' ri mural would take less than a nanosecond to agree that our (not complete imagined) jesus statue could/should go from a public prominent display to the ash heap o' history.

we didn't attend school much as a kid. were literal a multi-hour bus ride each way and the school were criminal understaffed. we do recall one class which were an amalgam kindergarten - second grade grouping and we specific recall a lesson plan wherein students were tasked with completing an art project using popsicle sticks. students were provided two or three dozen popsicle sticks and told to use at least the popsicle sticks provided in the construction o' their art, though they could request more. 

is always that one kid. the one kid from our class made a veritable squadron of airplanes. were nothing more than crosses, though he took a stab at adding tail /rudders to his first couple attempts. regardless, d-bag kid, who is probable a state senator today, made a squadron o' planes as his art. how long is such art deemed worthy o' preservation? the kid's only real motivation were to as quick as possible finish a chore he were disinclined to voluntary participate... motivation as similar transparent as the builders o' o' the stone mountain carving in the 1920s, with their efforts supported by calvin coolidge, perhaps the most unabashed nativist President we ever had in office and stephen miller's personal jesus. 

call us suspicious when we is told that the veneration o' memorials in perpetuity is so we might learn from mistakes o' the past is being championed by crowds o' people waving confederate flags. should recognize a disconnect.

again, am thinking it is wrong to destroy the university o' ri mural. big talk from Gromnir who sure as hell wouldn't pay the shipping costs simple to have it moved cross country to some storage locker in norcal where it would be prominent displayed to spiders, crickets and mice for some number o' years or even decades until our eventual death. art wins the day?

HA! Good Fun!

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by Gromnir

[Elerond]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

"Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made."

Seem about right 

 

"Rather, there appears to be a closer-to-home explanation for at least some of the fees: Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.

The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii."

Draining the swamp seem to going well also

[Hurlshort]

It's not like he denied any of this.

People just don't seem to care. I guess we will see on election night. Or, err.....like a week or two after election night and possibly a few legal battles.

[Gromnir]

am not making excuses for trump, but we will note how real estate offers serious opportunities to minimize fed and state taxes. for example, you are able to carry a business loss forward for many years. during the recession, on paper, we lost millions o' dollars and our operating costs considerable exceeded our income. 'course the cost to buy property also dropped to improbable lows and with substantial cash at hand we were able to functional double our real estate investment in a couple years. if we had been so inclined, we coulda' bought homes in foreclosure on courthouse steps for pennies on the dollar, though such stuff weren't our mo. all those properties we owned previous to the recession has regained value and much o' the new stuff we purchased literal increased in value by a factor o' more than five. we carried forward the loss and we don't pay any new tax for increased value until we sell... and capital gains is already lower than almost the lowest tax brackets in the US. 

furthermore, 'cause our properties were rental properties, much like trump, we were able to use the current 3.63% annual depreciation to serious mitigate whatever tax bill we would have... in spite o' the fact our property values were near universal trending up in value as 'posed to down. 

as such, last year were the first year since 2009 we paid any fed taxes, and that is 'cause we retired and sold/donated a bunch o' property the previous year. 

is one reason we keep pointing out how important it is to address the current capital gains scheme for any property save personal residence. well, that and the hedge fund exception.

...

trump and the republicans boast 'bout the tax cut, trump's signature Congressional supported action during the past four years. the tax cut helped small business owners and the rich. the rich sure didn't need any help.

we don't have any excuses for the melania stuff. am suspecting trump did/has done all kinda borderline stuff which even if legal is gonna look dirty. don't know w/o seeing taxes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChd6QchaU

romney allegations were almost entire fabrications or misleading and harry reid were complete unapologetic 'bout the accusations. 'course the difference is romney did release his taxes. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps you don't need be smart to avoid paying taxes. being rich means you can afford to pay somebody knowledgeable 'bout state and fed tax codes to do your taxes for you. we took one tax class in school. we sure as hell ain't no expert and no matter how smart you are, you ain't gonna intuit tax law as it is frequent counter reason and counter intuitive.

 

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by Gromnir

[Orogun01]

2 hours ago, ComradeMaster said:

You can't, which explains the growing divide amongst the U.S. population.  It's no longer just Democrat vs. Republican, oh no sir, there's now a class factor into play so now it's Democrat vs. Republican vs. a growing sector of the working population who is fed up with both parties and the system itself.

Nobody can predict the endgame here but it's sure get a little ugly.

That growing sector can be categorized as Socialist vs Libertarian.

[Guard Dog]

All this talk about bell peppers.... that's it I'm making stuffed peppers for dinner tomorrow night

[ComradeYellow]

 

1 hour ago, Orogun01 said:

That growing sector can be categorized as Socialist vs Libertarian.

And I'm blessed in the fact that I've always been a proponent of both and that they do not have to be mutually exclusive.

[Orogun01]

8 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

 

And I'm blessed in the fact that I've always been a proponent of both and that they do not have to be mutually exclusive.

IDK, a state controlled economy vs a free market seems to be a big difference.

[ComradeYellow]

2 minutes ago, Orogun01 said:

IDK, a state controlled economy vs a free market seems to be a big difference.

Why can't the state control some sectors of the economy and leave others completely alone?

[Orogun01]

56 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

Why can't the state control some sectors of the economy and leave others completely alone?

Define "some", the biggest economic problems in the US in the past 10 years have been caused by government control. Whenever there's a guarantee from the state to dump money into a sector then the sector grows without any thought to sustainability. Is why we had a housing bubble and why we now have a student loan bubble.
I'm curious why you think that state control is better than the state merely enforcing anti trust laws that already exist.

This is the biggest problem I have with government, both federal and state: It is always run by someone that doesn't know what laws are in the book and whose biggest effort go into reintroducing a already existing law to fix an issue rather than enforcing what's already there. You really want those effete government to run the economy?

[ComradeYellow]

Providing state enterprises that offer employment to those who want it is completely different than government bailouts and regulations.  I believe in completely free and utterly unfettered non-interventionist by the government markets but government itself can hold a slice of the action as well to offer more robust competition.  Call it "free market competition" but with a wild card.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, Guard Dog said:

All this talk about bell peppers.... that's it I'm making stuffed peppers for dinner tomorrow night

as an alternative, am gonna suggest gołąbki. maybe takes a tiny bit more effort but is a superior culinary experience using similar basic ingredients... and no bell pepper. absence o' bell pepper is kinda key. however, for those individuals who ordinarily is a bit heavy-handed with spices and herbs, authentic gołąbki may be a bit on the tame side. consider use o' spicier varieties o' your pork-based meat, and it might be worth adding a bit o' bacon. even if is not called for in a recipe, marjoram is worthy o' consideration. so too is thyme and/or parsley. perhaps a bit o' chicken stock too. ordinarily, salt, pepper and garlic is kinda the totality o' the flavor enhancers used in the dish, and is more than enough w/o adding to the spice table. am recommending first time making, look for a recipe with only the salt, pepper and garlic options. 

to stay more topic relevant, am gonna say the nyt article regarding trump taxes does suggest a kinda ponzi scheme for the trump organization. the individual businesses is almost all losers, which is good for taxes, but to sustain the scheme, new cash must be constant injected into the organization, which were ez during the apprentice years but that source dried up and thus the need for soon-to-be-due extravagant loans followed by the run for President to boost the sales o' the trump name. 

am not in any way shocked or surprised, but there needs be a whole lotta people complicit in sustaining the trump organization in spite o' the fact it doesn't sell anything other than trump, and nothing 'bout the trump image is real. not his charitable works. not his education. not his business success. not even his hair.

"I called his plane Hair Force One, for good reason. Trump doesn’t have a simple combover, as it would appear. The operation was much more involved than a simple throw-over of what was left of his hair: the three-step procedure required a flop up of the hair from the back of his head, followed by the flip of the resulting overhang on his face back on his pate, and then the flap of his combover on the right side, providing three layers of thinly disguised balding-male insecurity. The concoction was held in place by a fog of TREsemme TRES Two, not a high-end salon product. Flip, flop, flap, and there was the most famous combover in the world.

"The real reason for the extravagant and obvious overcompensation for his baldness was vanity, and the desire to appear younger and more vigorous than he was. But there was another unknown reason: he was hiding unsightly scars on his scalp from a failed hair-implant operation in the 1980s. That was the disfiguring operation that resulted in his furious “emotional rape” of his first wife Ivana, as she documented in a lawsuit in the early ’90s; like Samson, Trump believed his virility and image were harmed if he was seen to be losing his hair, or, even worse, injuring himself in an attempt to disguise male-pattern balding." -from cohen's tell-all book.

it is disappointing that a third-rate version o' pt barnum managed to con folks into electing him... sold 'em nostalgia and fear. ye good old days for rust belt factory workers. fear o muslims and immigrants. never produced anything worth mentioning save a tax cut which requires improbable sustained 4% growth which were never gonna happen.

such stoopid may have even got him re-elected, but then the pandemic hit and trump did less than anybody thought possible... save the china travel ban which didn't actual ban travel from china. 40k americans were allowed to travel from china w/o any real testing, contact tracing or quarantine measures. all the travel ban did was caused a mad dash o' infected americans to return home to the US from asia... and then europe. regardless, with the bumbling incompetence o' his handling o' the pandemic being particular troublesome for his base (old people dying and working class americans unable to benefit from telecommuting) trump repackaged what worked in 2016, but this time he sold fear o' fellow americans like blm and radical democrats such as joe biden. joe biden?

we laugh when it is a movie.

we laugh when is somebody else.

when is 1/3 of the US population...

not so funny.

HA! Good Fun!

[Guard Dog]

My response to snake oil salesmen

 

[ComradeYellow]

What happened to 60's-90's Clint Eastwood anyway?  He's become too much of a dementia addled bootlicker lately.  I guess even the best of the best can't conquer old age.  Another harsh reality of life.

Edited September 28, 2020 by ComradeMaster

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Orogun01 said:

Is why we had a housing bubble and why we now have a student loan bubble.

You had a housing bubble because of speculation largely caused by the repeal of government regulations, not the regulations themselves. It tanked the economy because banks expected house prices to never stop rising and thus did a whole bunch of predatory NINJA loaning which was designed to bankrupt the person taking the loan- but since the house was collateral and appreciating the bank still got the interest over the first few years and its costs could be recovered from the appreciation- which they then bundled up into aggregate future trading schemes on the basis of them saying they were AAA standard and made derivative schemes to eke out more profit betting on their AAA status.

If anything the cause was lack of regulation and private entities being 'too big to fail'- with a healthy dollop of scenario fulfilment and wishful thinking from 'experts' who thought they'd discovered a perpetual money machine. You can blame the government for repealing the regulations, and for not doing anything concrete to punish the speculators nor prevent it happening again; but the primary cause was free market greed and stupidity.

The US student loan system is obviously stupid, but it's stupid because fees are too high for many to have any realistic chance of paying them back whatever they do. Doesn't happen most places because... government intervention. The problem isn't government intervention in the US, it's that government intervention way too often (always?) gets co-opted into crony capitalism, corporate welfare and porkbarelling. Then there's US agricultural subsidies, sold as being to help keep mom & pop farmers in business but which have actually resulted in massive consolidation via corporate farms designed specifically to milk/ corn/ alcohol/ beef/ ham/ chicken the system. At least EU and the CAP actually does subsidise the mom & pop types properly.

[Orogun01]

3 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

You had a housing bubble because of speculation largely caused by the repeal of government regulations, not the regulations themselves. It tanked the economy because banks expected house prices to never stop rising and thus did a whole bunch of predatory NINJA loaning which was designed to bankrupt the person taking the loan- but since the house was collateral and appreciating the bank still got the interest over the first few years and its costs could be recovered from the appreciation- which they then bundled up into aggregate future trading schemes on the basis of them saying they were AAA standard and made derivative schemes to eke out more profit betting on their AAA status.

If anything the cause was lack of regulation and private entities being 'too big to fail'- with a healthy dollop of scenario fulfilment and wishful thinking from 'experts' who thought they'd discovered a perpetual money machine. You can blame the government for repealing the regulations, and for not doing anything concrete to punish the speculators nor prevent it happening again; but the primary cause was free market greed and stupidity.

The government backed those assets instead of regulating and punishing the organizations selling toxic assets. That government assurance meant that it was safe to invest even it failed because the Federal government would honor the debt

 

7 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

The US student loan system is obviously stupid, but it's stupid because fees are too high for many to have any realistic chance of paying them back whatever they do. Doesn't happen most places because... government intervention. The problem isn't government intervention in the US, it's that government intervention way too often (always?) gets co-opted into crony capitalism, corporate welfare and porkbarelling. Then there's US agricultural subsidies, sold as being to help keep mom & pop farmers in business but which have actually resulted in massive consolidation via corporate farms designed specifically to milk/ corn/ alcohol/ beef/ ham/ chicken the system. At least EU and the CAP actually does subsidise the mom & pop types properly.

Which is spurred by the fact that student loans can't be defaulted by law and that the Federal government is a major lender. Student loans might as well be a massive citizen tax on higher education.