Not Exactly News: Jeff Sessions Says Something Dumb (Again) (1 Viewer)

[NCCommish]

Oh and on purity tests. I don't have a purity test I have a what have you done for the poor, the working class and the middle class lately policy test. Have you voted for those folks or for your donors? It's a really easy test to pass and it doesn't matter what letter is behind your name you can pass it. If you have mainly voted for the donors you fail. Most politicians on both sides fail.

On the pundits side do you hold everyone to the same standard or do you attack one for the same things your team has done? Again real easy test to pass if you have some intellectual consistency.

 

[urbanhack]

Irony off the charts with this post.  Accusing others of marginalizing while in the exact same sentence suggesting that some of the most powerful and successful liberal voices aren't real liberals.  

Make no mistake, you're the one ostracizing and refusing to support liberals who don't meet your purity test. I know your heart is in the right place, but it's a horrible strategy and I'm tired of losing.   

So why did you back Hillary?

 

[tommyGunZ]

So why did you back Hillary?

Same reason I backed Gore in '00, Kerry in '04, Obama in '08, and Obama in '12 - she was the best candidate.  Unfortunately, the best candidate doesn't always win, even if they get the most votes.

 

[tommyGunZ]

Oh and on purity tests. I don't have a purity test I have a what have you done for the poor, the working class and the middle class lately policy test. Have you voted for those folks or for your donors? It's a really easy test to pass and it doesn't matter what letter is behind your name you can pass it. If you have mainly voted for the donors you fail. Most politicians on both sides fail.

On the pundits side do you hold everyone to the same standard or do you attack one for the same things your team has done? Again real easy test to pass if you have some intellectual consistency.

On that basis, you should have been (and still be) all in for Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, etc.  They've done far more for all those groups than Dennis Kucinch and Bernie Sanders.  

 

[Zow]

“It’s either lawful or it’s not,” Sessions continued. “I think that it will be real important for America to have judges in the model of Judge Gorsuch and Scalia, people who serve under the law, under the Constitution, not above it, and they are faithful to the law. They honor it and don’t try to remake it as they'd like it to be.”

The above nearly made me throw up in my mouth. 

 

[tommyGunZ]

To be clear, I would have been happy to support Bernie or whomever the Democratic nominee had been last fall.  I would not have spent any time demonizing him, suggesting he wasn't meeting some personal character bar or repeating right wing talking points in an effort to suggest he was more of the same.  

That's where NCC and I differ.  

 

[tommyGunZ]

Nancy Pelosi is not on your side. Obama made sure to protect your precious elites by making the Bush tax cuts permanent so yeah that's some real liberal policy there.. As to Gates yeah he is giving away a lot of money but let's not pretend MS hasn't paid for more than.one break. As to Warren exceptions tend to prove the rule.

Just happened to be listening to Peter Singer's TED talk from 2013, where he points out that Bill and Melinda Gates are the most effective altruistic philanthropists in history. He quotes a report that suggests they have save almost 6 million lives themselves.

Still not good enough for NCC though. Maybe Bill and Melinda will get there someday.

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

 So who are the parasites in this analogy? 

A$$hole billionaires and near billionaires who lobby for the creation of loopholes to avoid even more taxes, despite already favorable treatment of capital gains

The tax avoidance industry

Most K Street Lobbyists

The defense industry

A large portion of government contractors

Agency bureaucrats who suck off the public teat doing pointless jobs

Public employee unions

Welfare and disability cheats and other scammers who rip off taxpayer dollars

The current First Family

Most career politicians

Law firms that manufacture mass torts for the simple goal of getting paid, even when no real consumer harm has occurred, thanks to stupid Federal regs

Patent trolls

The for-profit prison industry

I am probably leaving off several categories, these were just off the top of my head.

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

 So who are the parasites in this analogy? 

Also any company or other private person or entity who lobbies for or receives subsidies, price supports, or other goodies from the Federal Government

 

[rockaction]

Also any company or other private person or entity who lobbies for or receives subsidies, price supports, or other goodies from the Federal Government

I have a question, Redmond. Do WIC cheats count? In other words, those who sell WIC for cash to small grocers (we know in what areas) to buy drugs, liquor, etc. How about the stores? Is this efficient, acually?

What about payday loans and check cashing places? The lower-class "financial services?"

 

[msommer]

What about payday loans and check cashing places? The lower-class "financial services?"

I would definitely count the first as parasites.

Don't know enough about the ins and outs of check cashing places. Is it "we give you money today against this check due two weeks from now, we deduct a vig that is completely unreasonable but since you are up the creek we can get away with it"?

If so they are parasites, too. 

It would, however, seem that competition should be able to lower the vig assuming the vig is not based on real risk.

If only there were some of the 1% ers looking to smash into that market...

 

[rockaction]

I would definitely count the first as parasites.

Don't know enough about the ins and outs of check cashing places. Is it "we give you money today against this check due two weeks from now, we deduct a vig that is completely unreasonable but since you are up the creek we can get away with it"?

If so they are parasites, too. 

It would, however, seem that competition should be able to lower the vig assuming the vig is not based on real risk.

If only there were some of the 1% ers looking to smash into that market...

You're describing the same thing with payday loans and your conception of check cashing places if I'm not mistaking you. That's what payday loans are. You bring in certification of a pay stub, sign over some collateral (in case you get fired or just spend it), and voila! Money. 

Check cashing places simply charge a certain percentage of your check to cash it against them. Usually it's a higher rate than either free checking or your banks. And I think you're right: I think these places popped up to serve the migrants and indigents, banks saw this model because their own services were scaled back, removing people from the real financial services market, and starting charging everyone for their checking accounts, just like you used to actually have an interest section in your bank book, showing you how much you'd made it savings that month. If you had a decent amount, that wasn't insignificant. (Maybe a meal or two for a solid middle-class family). Now they just hold your money and charge you for ATM fees and minimum violations. Anyway, that's how I remember the history of it my consumer protection class, though checks have always been loss leaders and always carried fees.  .  

 

[James Daulton]

Back to the topic at hand, Sessions is a rat faced, racist idiot who belongs nowhere near the AG slot but there he is.

 

[Johnnymac]

Back to the topic at hand, Sessions is a rat faced, racist idiot who belongs nowhere near the AG slot but there he is.

I dont know how anyone can listen to this guy talk and then vote him in to public office.  I mean, who in the #### did he run against in his political career, Hitler??

 

[NCCommish]

On that basis, you should have been (and still be) all in for Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, etc.  They've done far more for all those groups than Dennis Kucinch and Bernie Sanders.  

Yeah block granting 25%+ of eligible people off welfare has been a huge help for the poor just to cite one problem with your post.

 

[NCCommish]

A$$hole billionaires and near billionaires who lobby for the creation of loopholes to avoid even more taxes, despite already favorable treatment of capital gains

The tax avoidance industry

Most K Street Lobbyists

The defense industry

A large portion of government contractors

Agency bureaucrats who suck off the public teat doing pointless jobs

Public employee unions

Welfare and disability cheats and other scammers who rip off taxpayer dollars

The current First Family

Most career politicians

Law firms that manufacture mass torts for the simple goal of getting paid, even when no real consumer harm has occurred, thanks to stupid Federal regs

Patent trolls

The for-profit prison industry

I am probably leaving off several categories, these were just off the top of my head.

I can go along with this list.

I might quibble on the union thing but certainly some fit that description.

 

[wikkidpissah]

I can go along with this list.

I might quibble on the union thing but certainly some fit that description.

I was a steward for AFSCME and helped start a muni health employee local for CWA waybackwhen and even I now look upon public employee unions as being about as necessary as those for major league sports.

RL's list was so concise & insightful that i would love to read a specific list of his good guys

 

[RBM]

OMG OUTRAGEOUS!!!

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

I now look upon public employee unions as being about as necessary as those for major league sports.

Exactly. The only difference is that one exists solely to rip off taxpayers.

 

[wikkidpissah]

Exactly. The only difference is that one exists solely to rip off taxpayers.

I can and will never forget, however, that virtually every union began as an absolute necessity, and a lot of the good barons you've alluded to or confabulated made that so. That does not create instant license for those who don't add to the process to get what they want because they can, but it sets the conditions for doing so and every businessman must bear the burden of employee value the same way white people who never owned another must carry burdens of racism.

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

I can and will never forget, however, that virtually every union began as an absolute necessity, and a lot of the good barons you've alluded to or confabulated made that so. That does not create instant license for those who don't add to the process to get what they want because they can, but it sets the conditions for doing so and every businessman must bear the burden of employee value the same way white people who never owned another must carry burdens of racism.

Public employee unions are fundamentally different from regular unions.

 

[wikkidpissah]

Public employee unions are fundamentally different from regular unions.

Yes, they're different and probably superfluous now, but i was involved in a quasi-violent strike to get decent pay and conditions (i worked in an insane asylum built in the 1840s for 300 patients that had 2600 - 100-bed open wards of zombified loonies - when i got there. David Caruso made a horror movie there it was so gothicly creepy) for hospital workers from even the gameshowgiveaway State of Massachusetts back in '75 and got blackballed for helping bring CWA to Bernalillo County Medical Center (now UNM hospital) because hospital employee rights in '81 were much the same as when Albuquerque's largest revenue stream was private tuberculosis sanitariums (from which each of the city's hospital systems grew) in the 1920s. Necessity is necessity.

As cost is cost.  Powerful institutions - from private business to govts to religions - have fleeced the working man for 10,000 years, so have made the bed in which they lie. Bill Gates, as with Carnegies & Rockefellers before him, would have done the world far more good by employing fair business practices than he ever will by charitable endeavour after-the-fact and virtually every entity which can is still putting dollars before people. As long as that happens, laborers and the legacy of their oppression is going to cost business more than it wants and, though i wish both sides to stop the idiocy and partner up, that's as it should be.

 

[bigbottom]

Second installment in RL's continuing series?

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

Public employee unions are fundamentally different from regular unions.

They are different, but what do you mean by "fundamentally different?"

*disclosure- I am a member of a public employee union.

 

[tommyGunZ]

Second installment in RL's continuing series?

Would love for someone to drill down on exactly what data he has that supports his comment that it's "mostly Mexicans".  Because they're no way he just made that jump himself, right?  

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

They are different, but what do you mean by "fundamentally different?"

*disclosure- I am a member of a public employee union.

I'm not avoiding this, but I am crushed with work.

I will follow up when I have time, but one fundamental difference is that there is no profit motive for management to exploit workers in a government setting. Another one is that the dollars that are up for grabs in negotiations between management and employees are taxpayer funds.

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

I'm not avoiding this, but I am crushed with work.

I will follow up when I have time, but one fundamental difference is that there is no profit motive for management to exploit workers in a government setting. Another one is that the dollars that are up for grabs in negotiations between management and employees are taxpayer funds.

Thanks.  Looking forward to the follow up.

With respect to your first point, managers in state and federal governments are often under pressure to reduce their budgets.  It is beneficial to their careers if they can be seen as successfully running their agency at  a lower cost.  So even though there isn't a profit motive like in the private sector, there's still a motive.

With respect to your second point, the taxpayers own the government.  Managers are supposed to be representing taxpayer interests, just like managers at a private company represent the interests of their ownership.

I don't mean to argue that public sector and private sector labor issues are exactly the same.  But I think public sector employees should receive the benefit of unions for the same reason that private sector employees should.