figmentPez
Staff member
How the hell is he not a significant flight risk?
Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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He mail them a check from the airport, of course....
(i'm guessing they sieze some assest or something)
Why didn't they just do it as a regular bond? I'm sure he has the $250k, and if not, can't he borrow it from his father, or run up an account at the grocery store?
Either I'm watching a family friend broadcast their descent into madness and conspiracy theories over the Internet, or their twitter's been hacked. How else to explain their retweeting without comment the claim that 30% of the College of Cardinals are secretly mussslim (their spelling), or calls for Hilary to be killed. 
He took off the tinfoil hat? You should never take off your tinfoil hat.Either I'm watching a family friend broadcast their descent into madness and conspiracy theories over the Internet, or their twitter's been hacked. How else to explain their retweeting without comment the claim that 30% of the College of Cardinals are secretly mussslim (their spelling), or calls for Hilary to be killed.
This won't surprise anyone, but ...
It's like a fucking joke. EVERYTHING the Republicans accuse Democrats of doing is something the Republicans are already doing.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/02/10/politics/klobuchar-announcement-2020-president/index.html
I’m all for this. She doesn’t have the name recognition as others, but she’s always been good at pulling in votes from both sides.
I’m all for this. She doesn’t have the name recognition as others, but she’s always been good at pulling in votes from both sides.
GasBandit
Staff member
Female Yale Students: "We're fed up with being sexually assaulted at off-campus frat parties!"
Dean: "Well then, don't go to them."
Me: "Ha ha, ok, that's good advice and everything, but you can see that answer's not going to make anyone happy and appears to just trivialize the..."
Female Yale Students: "No, we want to force off-campus fraternities to admit female members!"
Me: ".... what."
Dean: "Well then, don't go to them."
Me: "Ha ha, ok, that's good advice and everything, but you can see that answer's not going to make anyone happy and appears to just trivialize the..."
Female Yale Students: "No, we want to force off-campus fraternities to admit female members!"
Me: ".... what."
This is a long time coming, really. If you're in an Ivy League institution, you kinda need to get involved in the Greek society if you wanna make connections that will get you through life. Back in the day, sororities were basically just match making institutions; Frat members knew that the girls there were "vetted" by the system and knew how to play ball. But now that women want to be CEOs and board members, they kind of lack the connections to do it. All of those connections are reliant on ether being in a frat or randomly getting to know someone before they hit it big. It's a fair point... and getting women into positions of authority in the frats would go a long way to curbing the sexual misconduct.
That said, unless those Greek houses are officially associated with the campus or are otherwise obligated to follow campus rules simply by being associated with the institution (which does happen, I know it's a thing at OSU), I'm not sure what their recourse is going to be. Clubs are still allowed to pick their own criteria for membership.
figmentPez
Staff member
An 11 year old boy was arrested in Florida after refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
He was charged with "disruption of a school facility and resisting an officer without violence," which translates to his teacher is a fucking asshole.
Also, bear in mind that this is based on the statement that the teacher gave to school administrators. This isn't the teacher looking like an asshole because of what students told the press, the teacher is just a fucking asshole.
He was charged with "disruption of a school facility and resisting an officer without violence," which translates to his teacher is a fucking asshole.
Didn't want to keep dealing with the student? Then just let them stay silent during the pledge, you fucking asshole! You're a goddamn substitute teacher. Don't force such a stupid issue.
Also, bear in mind that this is based on the statement that the teacher gave to school administrators. This isn't the teacher looking like an asshole because of what students told the press, the teacher is just a fucking asshole.
figmentPez
Staff member
I don't even question it these days, with the amount of police over-reach in this country. The police arrest people when they feel like it. That's what a fascist state does.
Also, other articles mentioned that the school's policy is that students are allowed to remain seated during the pledge, and the substitute will no longer be employed by the county because of this incident. That leaves me to wonder where the hell was the principal during all this? How does an eleven year old child get arrested on school property without the principal stepping in and telling the substitute teacher she's lost her goddamn mind?
Moving this from the Funny Pictures thread...
Immigrants start 25% of all businesses in the US (it's only 5% in fly over states but almost 40% in places like New York, California, and New Jersey) but that doesn't necessarily ring true of immigrants to other countries. We'd have to do a metadata analysis of business start-ups in other countries to compare the rate in which immigrants start businesses in those countries to ours. For all we know, there could be a confound for why immigrants don't start businesses at the same rate in other countries (if that's true at all, we don't have data on hand for that). It could even be true that having low rates of acceptance is actually harming the economies of other countries.Forbes said:
figmentPez
Staff member
I don't even see the connection between deporting immigrants and implementing socialist programs. To me that's like a CEO in the 80's complaining about the computerization of business, and saying that they'd have to lay off the maintenance staff and factory workers in order to afford to buy computers. Not only is there no direct connection between the two, there's zero point to getting rid of essential personnel. Sure, the law firm in the next building has computers, and they don't have factory workers, but they didn't afford computers by not having factory workers. They have a fundamentally different business. The economy of the entire United States would go down the tubes if we tried to restrict immigration as severely as Norway does. We have a fundamentally different economic situation. Their policies worked because they, apparently, don't need immigrant workers. The US does, and you agreed that it does earlier.
And yes, the comparison of universal health care and other socialist programs to computers is deliberate. Because once upon a time people viewed computers as unnecessary expenses that really only worked in niche cases, and that computers would never be commonplace. However, in the long term computers proved to improve productivity and increase profits. I firmly believe that as technology improves, especially medical technology, the benefits of providing health care to all will result in more productivity and profit than is spent providing said care. Just as everyone benefits from an educated populace, so too will we reach the point where everyone benefits from a populace that has their needs taken care of.
Even now there are arguments to be made that providing low cost housing for the homeless is actually cheaper than leaving them on the streets, since a great deal of money is spent on emergency care when they end up in the ER with conditions caused by their homelessness. That's not even counting the loss of productivity and economic growth caused when someone who could work if they had an address to apply for jobs from, doesn't do that work because they don't have a stable living situation.
This is not a zero sum game, where money sunk into health care and other programs is just thrown into a pit and burned. No more than buying computers for a business is just paying a lot of money to let people play Zork and Solitare.
And yes, the comparison of universal health care and other socialist programs to computers is deliberate. Because once upon a time people viewed computers as unnecessary expenses that really only worked in niche cases, and that computers would never be commonplace. However, in the long term computers proved to improve productivity and increase profits. I firmly believe that as technology improves, especially medical technology, the benefits of providing health care to all will result in more productivity and profit than is spent providing said care. Just as everyone benefits from an educated populace, so too will we reach the point where everyone benefits from a populace that has their needs taken care of.
Even now there are arguments to be made that providing low cost housing for the homeless is actually cheaper than leaving them on the streets, since a great deal of money is spent on emergency care when they end up in the ER with conditions caused by their homelessness. That's not even counting the loss of productivity and economic growth caused when someone who could work if they had an address to apply for jobs from, doesn't do that work because they don't have a stable living situation.
This is not a zero sum game, where money sunk into health care and other programs is just thrown into a pit and burned. No more than buying computers for a business is just paying a lot of money to let people play Zork and Solitare.
There are those who would rather see it burned than one cent go towards social programs.
And by "the undeserving" I mean "anyone other than me."
We've had that shouting match in here too many times to count. And it's driven away who knows how many of us, and strained some of the relationships that remained to the breaking point.
Well, mainly what I mean is that the ones who hate welfare, the ones who would rather stuff it all into an incinerator rather than see any of it go to social programs, are the ones who believe that anyone with less money/property than what they have must be where they are due to sloth, apathy, and/or their own inaction, and as such are unworthy of "free" aid, especially when that aid is taken directly from the coffers of the ones complaining, the ones who feel like money is a thing that you can "own" rather than a measure of potential.
--Patrick
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Also transported from the Funny Political thread:
In the US, as a capitalist economy. You seem incapable of maintaining context. That's here. That's not the case in Norway, or other socialist economies.
If that were true that low acceptance was harming its economy, Norway should have been seeing a sudden upswell of new businesses, given that the number of foreigners in Norway has roughly doubled over the last 10 years. But despite this noteworthy increase, Norway's GDP (apart from the 2008 crash of course) seemed to maintain the same steadily shrinking growth it has for the last 50 years. But like you say, finding pertinent data to this exact line of questioning is a bit challenging - I couldn't find ready statistics on new businesses opened in Norway by year, so I had to fall back on the GDP, which admittedly has so many other factors in its makeup as to not be particularly useful. One thing I did pick up in reading through articles on the subject, though, is that Norway has extremely strict labor laws that mean that most businesses are empty after 4pm (though there is signs of that perhaps changing). I definitely envy their work-life balance, but I still assert we'd have to make decisions that would seem anathema to even begin to approach what they have.
So why exactly would that change? You've given no reasoning as to why or how that would change. You also claimed that it was magical that immigrants created jobs and then you shifted to this baseless claim that you were always talking about how immigrants in Norway are a drain on their economy without any kind of evidence.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-la-homeless-housing-money.html
Recent studies have demonstrated that. LA and Philadelphia in particular have saved large amounts of money by housing the homeless instead of leaving them on the streets. And it's long term successful, as well - Pathways to Housing PA has found that 85% of the chronically homeless that are given housing are able to stay in it for more than five years. Housing not only reduces medical and police expenses, but helps those people find employment, meaning they can contribute to the economy, rather than drain it.
In Central Florida, it was found that each homeless person costs them $31,000 a year in medical and emergency services, but providing housing and a caseworker would only cost $10,000 per person per year. In other words, leaving them homeless was more than three times as expensive as helping them into housing and social services.
Weird, right? Helping people actually helps people AND the bottom line.
Yes but it'd save even more money to just stop providing them with those services and letting them die on the street. #TaxationIsTheft
GasBandit
Staff member
It's demonstrably different, as shown in the real world examples of the exact nations we're talking about.
Which was a disparaging way of pointing out that it's not the immigrants in and of themselves but the capitalist system they are entering into that is enabling that.
I said norway considers them to be a drain on their economy, and makes policy accordingly. I mean, if we're holding up norway as the example of how to do socialism right, then it stands to reason we should listen to the parts we don't like, as well as the parts we like, doesn't it?
Exactly they are different countries. Different cultures different histories. Why would anything change in America?
Ah I forgot how a central part of your belief is that nobody has any personal responsibility and have no claim to what they made with their hard work.GasBandit said:
GasBandit
Staff member
Because what is being advocated is a systemic, and yes, cultural transformation away from everything that's made the nation work for the last couple hundred years.
Ha ha, that's cute. You think the freedom afforded by capitalism is comperable to public infrastructure. It's good to see the left is as intellectually bankrupt as it has always been.
Ah yes the horrors of a living wage and people being able to support themselves on a full time job or people not dieing in the streets from hunger and lack of healthcare. Truly would cause a true cultural transformation away from everything that has made the US work for the last hundred years.
Of course you have provided no proof of this or why in a country that already has laws that try to make that happen a fundamental cultural shift like that would take place. Or even that it would cause immigrants to stop being one of the biggest groups of entrepreneurs which has according to you always been your fundamental claim.
You're the one who said that you would trade those economic freedoms to keep out immigrants. Intellectually bankrupt isn't a term I would be tossing around if I were you.
You're making an assumption not based on any data you've presented. There could be other reasons why immigrants in the US start so many businesses that are unrelated to the capitalist system; it could be that the US is simply more attractive to immigrants with capitalistic values, while other nations are more attractive to refugees looking for safety and security (something we don't provide, what with our trigger happy cops and aggressive state governments). It could simply be a question of access; most immigrants to the US come from Mexico... is there something about Mexican culture that encourages them to start their own businesses? Are they starting their own businesses because of discrimination in hiring practices and this is just easier than finding the same work they did back home? Are these businesses fulfilling a need in their communities that aren't being filled by American businesses?
There could be dozens of reasons this is happening outside of Capitalism. You gotta give some data if you're gonna make a claim like that.
I really only know about why Chinese immigrants have such high rates of business ownership and that dates back to the Yellow panic where the US government put restrictions on anybody trying to hire a Chinese immigrant. Since it was so hard the Chinese started their own businesses namely Chinese restaurants where they then hire other immigrants to cook and run the restaurant until they've learned enough to start their own business at which point the association will help them pick out a new town and set up a new restaurant. It's both the reason why Chinese food is largely ubiquitous nationwide as well as why you can largely know what you're getting when you order sesame chicken.
GasBandit
Staff member
That's not the cultural transformation, and you know it. You're trying to obfuscate again by using the tired old strawman that "what I want is beneficent, therefor anyone who opposes me - in any way -is malignant."
Er, you do know that 25% is a *minority*, right? As in, 75% of new businesses, by virtue of your own sources, are NOT started by immigrants? If you need remedial math lessons, though, you'll need to find them elsewhere.
I didn't say I would, I presented the consequences of what would be necessary - ie, the whole package of the deal. I specifically chose a distasteful aspect, to counter the cherry-picked perspective of "Norway is socialist, so we can be too."
None of your other suggested causes would have any affect if applied outside of the context of free market capitalism. It's the first prerequisite - even if you're a motivated entrepreneur, you aren't going to get anywhere if you're trapped in a system that is hostile to the entrepreneurial endeavor.
As for the claim itself, it's the Norweigan (junior) ruling party making that claim -