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#1227 Apr 30 2018 at 1:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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The Economist wrote:
Mr Rubio’s proposal, to double the tax credit to $2,000 per child and pay for it by making a small increase to the corporate rate his party wanted, was decried by some Republicans as socialism. The watered-down version they accepted, as the price of Mr Rubio’s support for the bill, excluded the poorest families. “There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” he says. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

What? You mean companies aren't taking all that sweet sweet tax saving money and showering it on the working and middle class?

Well, fuck. No one could have seen that happening.
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#1228 Apr 30 2018 at 1:28 PM Rating: Excellent
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I mean I'll still take it, even though it's not saving me a whole lot of money. Makes it a lot easier to figure out the deductions when they're returning basically everything to you.

Jophiel wrote:
What? You mean companies aren't taking all that sweet sweet tax saving money and showering it on the working and middle class?

Well, ****. No one could have seen that happening.
It just means you aren't important enough to be trickled down on. Try being less poor, or at least a hooker.
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#1229 Apr 30 2018 at 1:40 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I mean I'll still take it, even though it's not saving me a whole lot of money.

The issue isn't the modest direct gains for the average person, it's the major gains for corporations or the wealthy which will ultimately be paid for by cutting services for the working/middle class that can't be paid for with the extra $6 in your paycheck.
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#1230 Apr 30 2018 at 2:51 PM Rating: Good
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I wonder what all of those people who sold their shares back to the corporations are doing with their money now? Probably stuffing it into their mattresses is my guess.
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#1231 Apr 30 2018 at 4:36 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
The Economist wrote:
Mr Rubio’s proposal, to double the tax credit to $2,000 per child and pay for it by making a small increase to the corporate rate his party wanted, was decried by some Republicans as socialism. The watered-down version they accepted, as the price of Mr Rubio’s support for the bill, excluded the poorest families. “There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” he says. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

What? You mean companies aren't taking all that sweet sweet tax saving money and showering it on the working and middle class?

Well, fuck. No one could have seen that happening.

Oh, it'll work this time. Definitely. Or *next* time. For sure.
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#1232 Apr 30 2018 at 9:15 PM Rating: Good
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Debalic wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
The Economist wrote:
Mr Rubio’s proposal, to double the tax credit to $2,000 per child and pay for it by making a small increase to the corporate rate his party wanted, was decried by some Republicans as socialism. The watered-down version they accepted, as the price of Mr Rubio’s support for the bill, excluded the poorest families. “There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” he says. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

What? You mean companies aren't taking all that sweet sweet tax saving money and showering it on the working and middle class?

Well, fuck. No one could have seen that happening.

Oh, it'll work this time. Definitely. Or *next* time. For sure.


Oh, absolutely, what we should do next time is just eliminate taxes for all corporations above a certain net worth, and watch the benefits come pouring down to the poor and middle class like an avalance coming down the mountain

ETA Tense correction past -> present / future

Edited, Apr 30th 2018 8:16pm by stupidmonkey
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#1233 May 01 2018 at 7:31 AM Rating: Good
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Debalic wrote:
Oh, it'll work this time. Definitely. Or *next* time. For sure.
You don't have to actually succeed at anything so long as you can convince people that trying was good enough.
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#1234 May 01 2018 at 11:53 AM Rating: Excellent
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Uglysasquatch wrote:
I wonder what all of those people who sold their shares back to the corporations are doing with their money now? Probably stuffing it into their mattresses is my guess.
They're using it to poach endangered species, of course.
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#1235 May 01 2018 at 2:31 PM Rating: Excellent
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Uglysasquatch wrote:
I wonder what all of those people who sold their shares back to the corporations are doing with their money now? Probably stuffing it into their mattresses is my guess.

Not literally. But given the rate of wealth disparity over the last several decades, the answer isn't "showering it on the little people" and whether it's going into a mattress or just shifting around the upper economic echelons doesn't change the end result.

The people who had enough shares for it to be significant are already broadly in the upper brackets getting the most benefit from the tax law. The top 10% of households own 84% of the stocks (directly or through funds, etc). The top 1% owns 40% of it by themselves.

Edited, May 1st 2018 3:36pm by Jophiel
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#1236 May 01 2018 at 3:15 PM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
But given the rate of wealth disparity over the last several decades, the answer isn't "showering it on the little people"
Yes they have, well... globally at least. The majority of the world has seen their income rise significantly over the last 30 years due to globalization and the worldwide investment of money from the rich western nations. There's still large wealth disparity of course, but it's not like these things aren't benefiting people. They just aren't benefiting us here in America, which is one of those things anti-globalist Trump supporters were all irked about. That and a fear of brown people, for reasons that escape me... Smiley: rolleyes

But many of us are 1%-ers here in the USA anyway, so it's probably worth asking if we really should be holding onto that money, or redistributing it to those who are more in need of it.

Edited, May 1st 2018 3:08pm by someproteinguy
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#1237 May 01 2018 at 4:29 PM Rating: Excellent
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"And how can anyone in America REALLY be poor if they have a refrigerator and AM radio???"

Given that Ryan's remarks were directly about American workers, it should be obvious from context that we're talking about benefits for the sub-upper class in the United States. If anyone in the GOP wants to sell the idea that the new tax law is great because someone in Sierra Leone might make a few extra bucks even if someone in Cedar Rapids didn't, I'll leave that up to them.

Edited, May 1st 2018 5:30pm by Jophiel
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#1238 May 01 2018 at 4:50 PM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
"And how can anyone in America REALLY be poor if they have a refrigerator and AM radio???"
I mean, if push comes to shove I'm happy with it taking 10 years longer to get myself into a house than my parents, carrying more debt, etc if in return there's a larger percentage of the world with food security, electricity, indoor plumbing, and other basic needs being met. Doesn't sound like a terrible deal.

Jophiel wrote:
Given that Ryan's remarks were directly about American workers, it should be obvious from context that we're talking about benefits for the sub-upper class in the United States. If anyone in the GOP wants to sell the idea that the new tax law is great because someone in Sierra Leone might make a few extra bucks even if someone in Cedar Rapids didn't, I'll leave that up to them.
Which, of course, they won't. That's the other half of the irony. Speaking of Republicans lying and shafting their supporters and all... Smiley: rolleyes

But that's why I'm not too up in arms about the tax plan, that "money for the rich" money will likely be invested oversees, going into economies that need it more than we do. Yes, I'm aware that there are rich people in other countries too that will get richer, corruption, etc etc... I'll happily take my share of the tax cut and use it help pay the growing pile of medical bills on my desk, since that problem still hasn't been fixed yet.

Win/win.

Edited, May 1st 2018 4:05pm by someproteinguy
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#1239 May 01 2018 at 5:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I'll happily take my share of the tax cut and use it help pay the growing pile of medical bills on my desk, since that problem still hasn't been fixed yet.

Oh yeah
WaPo wrote:
President Trump's former top health official on Tuesday said the Republican tax law would raise the cost of health insurance for some Americans because it repealed a core provision of the Affordable Care Act.

Tom Price, Trump's first secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said people buying insurance on government-run marketplaces will face higher prices because the tax law repealed the ACA's individual mandate. The mandate had forced most Americans to have health coverage or face a financial penalty.
[...]
Price's comments are in line with predictions from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which in November projected 13 million fewer Americans would have health insurance by 2027 as a result of the elimination of the individual mandate. The CBO also said average premiums in the exchanges would increase by about 10 percent in most years over the next decade, compared with a scenario in which the mandate had been left in place.

But they'll have $12 more in their paycheck so it all works out.

Obviously Job One for the tax law was to give the wealthy a large tax break. It was also designed to give a pretext for slashing entitlements; cutting food stamps, Medicaid and other social safety net programs.

Edited, May 1st 2018 7:12pm by Jophiel
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#1240 May 01 2018 at 8:15 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
Well, no. Because Cohen's payments (and this wasn't just about those payments) may have violated campaign finance laws. See? An actual, real, crime being investigated.


Raiding his office and seizing all of his documents is a pretty extreme act if you just suspect that one action by him "may have violated campaign finance laws". You might first go through the bother of determining whether such an act by a private attorney in this situation would actually constitute a violation. I suspect that it would not, given that attorneys like this are commonly retained by wealthy prominent people to do exactly what he did: Deal with nuisance lawsuits that would be more embarrassing to deal with in court than the cost of simply paying a settlement. BTW, the simple test for such a thing as to whether it would violate campaign finance laws would be whether an attorney working for a client in that same capacity would have made the same sort of deal with someone making a similar claim if his client was *not* running for office.

I'm reasonably certain the obvious answer most of us (and most judges) would come to is: Yes. Ergo, the act had nothing specifically to do with the campaign going on at the time. Ergo, it's not a violation of campaign finance laws.

What they did was use an incredibly thin excuse to go raid his office and home and seize everything he had. Which smells a lot more like casting a super wide fishing net than anything else.

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How on earth is Cohen related to the theory of collusion with the Russians then?

Ah, ok. You were unaware that this was a separate FBI investigation. This must be one of your "I'm so much better because I talk without knowing anything about the topic" moments.


I am aware that it's technically a separate investigation. But I'm also making a meta observation that it's incredibly unlikely they would have taken such an extreme action if there wasn't already an existing investigation going on. Your own post (which is what introduced this line of posts) suggests the relation:

Jophiel wrote:
Actually, after a year we have a bunch of new, previously unknown links between Trump allies and Russian sources and a bunch of new information about previous lies and misdirection about how well people knew one another, when they met, who they met with, etc. A number of indictments (those we know of) for relatively minor crimes as a pretext for people flipping and working with the investigation to avoid greater charges. I can agree with "Let's keep looking" though.

Oh, and there's the fact that Cohen likely has a ton of illegal stuff to hit him on and Trump allies believe that Cohen is going to flip like a Pog the moment he's squeezed. Meanwhile, New York is working to amend its double jeopardy laws to allow for prosecuting state cases against crimes that received a presidential pardon at the federal level. So that should be fun. Currently, the method is just to hold back indictments that could be prosecuted at the state level for additional leverage.


This was in direct response to my post about how after a year they haven't found any evidence of Russian collusion, but they'll just keep on looking anyway.

Given your repeated posts about how people are going to flip on Trump "like any day now. Ok, any day... NOW. Hmmm... Ok, maybe this time?", you'll have to forgive me for lumping this in to your usual wishful thinking on this. I'm sure you're wishfully speculating that maybe there's some other illegal stuff in there that's totally unrelated to the Russian collusion claim, but that's somewhat the point I'm making. One investigation spurs on others, in unrelated directions, for unrelated reasons. Because at some point it becomes less about the starting claim "Preventing foreign influence in our election process", and becomes "GET TRUMP!".

We've veered far far into targeted investigation here, where the target we want to "get" is more important than following evidence. That's kinda my point here. The whole Cohen thing supports it.
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#1241 May 01 2018 at 8:34 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
It's not about investigating a crime at all. If it were, they'd have, you know, started with a crime and moved from there. Instead, they've started with a target and looked for a crime.

Which is, as you should know, completely backwards to how our legal system is supposed to work.


Given that no-knock warrants to homes where no crime is being committed has led to numerous deaths of said homeowners on the strength of a freakin' anonymous phone call and you never had a problem with it but do with this is...confusing.


I have never said I had no problem with those situations. Ever. I understand the concept of no-knock warrants, and understand that there are some situations where they may be needed, however I have repeatedly stated that prior to initiating one the police should make absolutely certain of some basic things like, you know, that they're at the right freaking address, and certainly never as a result purely of an anonymous source.

I have no clue where you got this impression. I'll also point out that these are completely different things. This is not a case of accidentally seizing a lawyers papers, which just happens to contain confidential client information, one of which just happens to be the President of the United States, because you meant to go into the law office next door or something. But that they intentionally did exactly this, with what I consider to be an incredibly weak rationale.

I find that troubling because it's a case where it certainly looks like the desire to get someone on "something, anything" is more important than some of the most basic legal protections in our system. There were numerous courses they could have pursued in this instead. They chose the one that maximally weakens our legal protections. Not just his, not just Trumps, but all of ours, because it sets a precedent which certainly will be used to justify similar raids in the future.

Again. They haven't even yet gotten a determination that if what they believe he did actually would qualify as a campaign finance violation. It's a massive overreaction to the facts of the case.

And, lest I repeat myself, there's a jarring sense of the difference of how Trump has been dealt with by the FBI and DoJ (and others) versus Clinton. Clinton was nicely asked to provide documents at her own pace, and allowed to pick and choose which she turned over, and to delete anything she wanted along the way, without any consequences for this. And this was in a case where we absolutely knew that the law had been violated (we knew she had work related email on her server, in violation of the law, that she had not turned all of it over when she left the State Department, in violation of the law, and that she had lied about it in her exit paper work, in violation of the law. And on top of that, there was a strong possibility that said server contained current classified information on it, such that every single day the server wasn't seized could constitute a risk to national security. Yet... despite this, no one thought that justified a warrant and immediate seizure of the server?

But the possibility that a hush payment by a lawyer does? It's hard not to see a massive double standard in our legal system going on here. It's almost like some people are on the "inside" and are protected by the system, and some are on the "outside" and are targeted. And no, it's not about my personal likes or dislikes of either/any of the people involved. I believe that the law should be applied equally to everyone. It's clear that this isn't happening though.
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#1242 May 01 2018 at 9:03 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
I have never said I had no problem with those situations.
You just go ahead and link a post here proving that, or own it.

Despite the possibility of being dragged into a Cthulu-like dimension by doing so...I READ ALL YOUR POSTS.
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#1243 May 01 2018 at 11:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
I have never said I had no problem with those situations.
You just go ahead and link a post here proving that, or own it.

Despite the possibility of being dragged into a Cthulu-like dimension by doing so...I READ ALL YOUR POSTS.


What software do you use to read it out loud for you? Asking for a friend.
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#1244 May 02 2018 at 12:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
I have never said I had no problem with those situations.
You just go ahead and link a post here proving that, or own it.

Despite the possibility of being dragged into a Cthulu-like dimension by doing so...I READ ALL YOUR POSTS.


What software do you use to read it out loud for you? Asking for a friend.
#HATESTUPIDMONKEY Smiley: mad
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#1245 May 02 2018 at 7:06 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
I suspect that it would not,
Guess centuries of legal precedence must be wrong since you suspect otherwise.

Anyway, as fun as watching Quixote half-recall episodes of Law & Order is, it seems the new thing is that a comedian making fun of someone's make up is too far and the worst thing you can possibly say about someone. It's only a joke if a politician does it, repeatedly, apparently.

Oh, and "Chinaperson" is totally not racist.

Edited, May 2nd 2018 9:56am by lolgaxe
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#1246 May 02 2018 at 8:33 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Given your repeated posts about how people are going to flip on Trump "like any day now. Ok, any day... NOW. Hmmm... Ok, maybe this time?"

Uh, we know of multiple people who have flipped (Gates, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Pinedo). The only US indictment who hasn't flipped so far is Manafort. But you generally don't find out that they've flipped until the prosecutor has gotten what they need from them. That's kind of Flipping 101.

Honestly, I know you revel in your ignorance and stuff but maybe buy a newspaper.
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#1247 May 02 2018 at 10:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
Price's comments are in line with predictions from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which in November projected 13 million fewer Americans would have health insurance by 2027 as a result of the elimination of the individual mandate. The CBO also said average premiums in the exchanges would increase by about 10 percent in most years over the next decade, compared with a scenario in which the mandate had been left in place.
So the increases would be 10% higher than they would be otherwise? I know it's a long shot but do you happen to know if I can find that projection data anywhere? The link you provided didn't have a primary source anywhere I could find.

If I'm estimating based on past increases from this report here that's about $700 a year in increases average over the last 10 years (of the report). So that's (generally speaking estimate) a loss of about $70/year for myself based on the removal of the individual mandate. Which is about 5%-10% of what I'll be saving with the tax cut, so I still come out way ahead as far as paying medical bills.

We'll obviously have to see what my state does in response, of course, as Oregon has been pretty proactive about making sure people have care. Perhaps they'll find a way to keep coverage and get cost inflation under control, not really holding my breath on that one though.

Jophiel wrote:
Obviously Job One for the tax law was to give the wealthy a large tax break. It was also designed to give a pretext for slashing entitlements; cutting food stamps, Medicaid and other social safety net programs.
Republicans going to Republican I guess? I'd imagine everyone saw that coming. Since it's speculation about the future, I'll just leave that on the side until I see what proposal they come up with. It's hard to have too much of an opinion over something that's still fairly hypothetical. They do have a bit of a history of talking big on cutting entitlement programs, only to back away once the details come out and people realize they don't want to lose their support programs.

Edited, May 2nd 2018 9:39am by someproteinguy
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#1248 May 02 2018 at 11:11 AM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Republicans going to Republican I guess?

You didn't think I was surprised, did you? The only surprise I felt was when Ryan admitted that the tax law wasn't doing anything for working class as the GOP promised.

I don't think there's much disagreement between us about the effects of the law, just that you don't especially care.

Edited, May 2nd 2018 12:12pm by Jophiel
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#1249 May 02 2018 at 11:48 AM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
I don't think there's much disagreement between us about the effects of the law, just that you don't especially care.
Smiley: tongue

I just seem to have different weight on different things I guess.

Nearly 50% of investment money these days goes into developing nations, and given we withdrew from both The TPP and the Paris Agreement over concerns about giving money to developing nations (or at least that's what Trump's rhetoric was) this is the kind of thing we need to swing that needle back the other direction if we want to undo that damage a bit. Not an ideal way of doing it, business investment is not without its potential downsides (i.e. nobody really likes sweatshops), but I'll take that over completely withdrawing from the world stage. Not that we don't have problems here too, but with the anti-globalist rhetoric being such a large force right now I simply see that as the greater of the evils at this point, so anything that goes against that is a win in my book.

Edited, May 2nd 2018 12:40pm by someproteinguy
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#1250 May 02 2018 at 12:02 PM Rating: Excellent
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Mind you, no one is pointing at some major upswing in international investment in developing nations as a result of the tax law yet either. I'll be the first to say that it's only been a few months but if that's the rationale for "The domestic consequences are fine" then I'd want to see some evidence before getting on that train (to be honest, it'd have to be some pretty dramatic upswing to weigh against the domestic consequences on my personal scales).

someproteinguy wrote:
I just seem to have different weight on different things I guess.

That's cool and even if we disagree on that, "Helps some dudes in Cambodia so sucks to be you" is certainly more respectable than just "No way, this is totally helping the US working class because Reaganomics magic"


Edited, May 2nd 2018 1:07pm by Jophiel
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#1251 May 02 2018 at 12:17 PM Rating: Excellent
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Even if we were to suspend disbelief and grant the assumption it was true, what good would it do anyone to point it out? That kind of narrative isn't beneficial to either party. Republicans would get thrown under the bus by the anti-globalist crowd, and Democrats would be appear to be supporting sweatshops and other predatory trade injustices that aren't popular with their core. Granted the globalist mindset is a bit more popular with the Democratic party recently, but I'd wager the average democratic voter would rather see that money funneled through NGOs and other charitable aid rather than business investments (and honestly I would as well to some degree, but I'm picking my battles here).

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That's cool and even if we disagree on that, "Helps some dudes in Cambodia so sucks to be you" is certainly more respectable than just "No way, this is totally helping the US working class because Reaganomics magic"
I mean, I haven't stopped being liberal-ish. I'm just a loose cannon at times. Smiley: wink

Edited, May 2nd 2018 11:30am by someproteinguy
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