[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day.

Please let that get thrown out as an abuse of process.

Demosthenes wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

This might be the most depressing thing I've read in ages.

Profile of Milo Yiannopoulos

Probably belongs in the internet trolling thread... but yeah, that is depressing as hell (I'm down to the picture of him shaving and have no more desire to read). It sounds like he's only in it for the thrill and screw however many people's lives he ruins in the process.

Surprising though, is how openly he is disregarding the tenets of the alt-right... and how little they care about that.

Am I the only one who can imagine this conversation with our grandchildren?

Old me: Democracy and the Bill of Rights had a good run in the US until 2016.
Grandchild: What happened?
Old me: People became so afraid of being victims of violence that they handed their rights over to someone who promised they could fix the problem.
Grandchild: Oh - because of all the people killed and hurt by guns?
Old me: No. Crockpots.

More than 800 immigrants mistakenly granted citizenship

The U.S. government mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants who had pending deportation orders from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud.

Seriously could not imagine worse timing for this.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

More than 800 immigrants mistakenly granted citizenship

The U.S. government mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants who had pending deportation orders from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud.

Seriously could not imagine worse timing for this.

Meh.

The actual Office of Inspector General report paints a much more mundane picture of the DHS and FBI switching over to digital fingerprint systems and Congress not allocating enough funding for ICE to fully digitize all of its card-based fingerprint records. That and ICE not 100% uploading fingerprints taken during law enforcement encounters until 2010.

So the real scare factor is that around 900 people out of five and a half or six million people that have been naturalized since the DHS discovered the issue back in 2008 perhaps shouldn't be citizens.

ICE conducted limited investigations of those new citizens. It closed 90 investigations and has 32 still open. It's referred 28 cases to the US Attorney's Office for criminal prosecution and the USAO declined 26 of them. Two had fingerprint records "linked to terrorism," which could mean they're a terrorist mastermind or they're fourth cousins with one of the million plus people on the various watchlists our government keeps.

It maybe "meh," but I'm certain Trump will make it fit his narrative of Obama letting in thousands of criminal immigrants, and Hillary just being more of the same...

sometimesdee wrote:

It maybe "meh," but I'm certain Trump will make it fit his narrative of Obama letting in thousands of criminal immigrants, and Hillary just being more of the same...

exactly. Any other year this would have been meh, but it fits perfectly with Trump's current narrative.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

It maybe "meh," but I'm certain Trump will make it fit his narrative of Obama letting in thousands of criminal immigrants, and Hillary just being more of the same...

exactly. Any other year this would have been meh, but it fits perfectly with Trump's current narrative.

Except that none of Trump's policy proposals would have prevented something similar from happening under his watch, not that he's actually explained how the current immigrant vetting system is flawed and how his will be better.

This was an issue discovered by a customs agent back during the Bush Administration and (slowly) addressed by the system. It wasn't discovered because one of those naturalized citizens committed an act of terror. It was "discovered" because an internal watchdog group investigated it and proposed solutions to prevent anything like it from happening again.

You make the mistake of thinking that the facts will get in the way of Trump's narrative. The man lies on a daily / hourly basis. He will spin this to fit his spiel and push it out there repeatedly.

That's why OG needs to keep repeating what he's saying and we need to repeat his words.

I'm too full of book club ironic wine to brave starting a gun thread under the new nomenclature, though I'm sure one will arrive. Still, I thought this made an excellent point:

Gun Deaths this weekend = 70. Scary Muslim Terrorist Deaths this weekend = 0

Elizabeth Warren Hammers Wells Fargo CEO: ‘You Should Be Criminally Investigated

John Stumpf admitted no senior bank executives have been held accountable in the scam.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren grilled Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf on Tuesday for his role in a widespread scheme in which thousands of bankers opened more than 2 million accounts for customers without them knowing over at least five years.

“You should resign. You should give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated,” Warren told Stumpf, after he admitted under Warren’s grilling he hadn’t yet been held personally accountable for the actions of his employees.

The Democratic senator also forced Stumpf, who was under questioning from the Senate banking committee over his bank’s handling of the scam, to admit that no senior executives have been held accountable for the actions of the low-level bankers.

Some forged signatures and committed identify theft to open fraudulent bank accounts, while under pressure to meet sales targets or be fired. These employees, Stumpf explained earlier in the committee hearing, were “well-paid,” making between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. Stumpf made $19.3 million in 2015.
“This just isn’t right,” Warren said. “You squeezed employees to the breaking point” to drive up the stock price and your compensation, she said, referencing the bank’s fierce drive to “cross-sell” or make customers open up multiple accounts. “You went on television to blame thousands of $12-an-hour” workers.

“It’s gutless leadership,” Warren said.

farley3k wrote:

Elizabeth Warren Hammers Wells Fargo CEO: ‘You Should Be Criminally Investigated

John Stumpf admitted no senior bank executives have been held accountable in the scam.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren grilled Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf on Tuesday for his role in a widespread scheme in which thousands of bankers opened more than 2 million accounts for customers without them knowing over at least five years.

“You should resign. You should give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated,” Warren told Stumpf, after he admitted under Warren’s grilling he hadn’t yet been held personally accountable for the actions of his employees.

The Democratic senator also forced Stumpf, who was under questioning from the Senate banking committee over his bank’s handling of the scam, to admit that no senior executives have been held accountable for the actions of the low-level bankers.

Some forged signatures and committed identify theft to open fraudulent bank accounts, while under pressure to meet sales targets or be fired. These employees, Stumpf explained earlier in the committee hearing, were “well-paid,” making between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. Stumpf made $19.3 million in 2015.
“This just isn’t right,” Warren said. “You squeezed employees to the breaking point” to drive up the stock price and your compensation, she said, referencing the bank’s fierce drive to “cross-sell” or make customers open up multiple accounts. “You went on television to blame thousands of $12-an-hour” workers.

“It’s gutless leadership,” Warren said.

The only way to fix this is with less regulation. /s

Can the Feds or States sue a company?

Nazi who originated Donald Trump Jr.’s Skittles metaphor was hanged at Nuremberg

The Intercept's Naomi LaChange presents the curious origins of Donald Trump Jr.'s tweet comparing Syrian refugees to poison Skittles. "The concept dates back at least to 1938 and a children’s book called Der Giftpilz, or The Toadstool, in which a mother explains to her son that it only takes one Jew to destroy an entire people."

His tweet

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CswRrhoW8AEo4Xy.jpg)

Fun note, image was stolen... from an immigrant.

Dezlen wrote:

The only way to fix this is with less regulation.

Well, it's not like there needs to be more regulation. What they were/are doing is obviously already illegal and immoral, and they've been doing it right in front of their so-called regulators. So ... you have to ask yourself why a U.S. Senator is saying they should be prosecuted while they aren't being prosecuted.

While you're at it, you might want to consider exactly where that regulation is coming from.

And it's at that point that you might consider that yes, indeed, Wells Fargo could do with a lot less government "regulation" and lot more market regulation.

Aetius wrote:

And it's at that point that you might consider that yes, indeed, Wells Fargo could do with a lot less government "regulation" and lot more market regulation.

Sorry, I stopped believing in faerie tales like the Easter Bunny, and "The Invisible Hand" a long time ago.

Aetius so your argument is that since past efforts were flawed we should just abandon regulation? That doesn't make any sense because we can easily look at history and see that when we had much less regulation we also had a flawed system.

Your ideas often seem compelling and then I pick up a 9th grade history book and I see how things worked when we had a laissez faire system of regulations and it worked just as poorly as the system we have now.

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his 2 million fictionalized bank accounts?

We Gave Four Good Pollsters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Different Results.

Polling results rely as much on the judgments of pollsters as on the science of survey methodology. Two good pollsters, both looking at the same underlying data, could come up with two very different results.

How so? Because pollsters make a series of decisions when designing their survey, from determining likely voters to adjusting their respondents to match the demographics of the electorate. These decisions are hard. They usually take place behind the scenes, and they can make a huge difference.

A good image in in the artictle but I can't embed the image however I found the next paragraph worth quoting.

A net five-point difference between the five measures, including our own, even though all are based on identical data. Remember: There are no sampling differences in this exercise. Everyone is coming up with a number based on the same interviews.

Their answers shouldn't be interpreted as an indication of what they would have found if they had conducted their own survey. They all would have designed the survey at least a little differently – some almost entirely differently.

But their answers illustrate just a few of the different ways that pollsters can handle the same data – and how those choices can affect the result.

farley3k wrote:

Aetius so your argument is that since past efforts were flawed we should just abandon regulation? That doesn't make any sense because we can easily look at history and see that when we had much less regulation we also had a flawed system.

No, my argument is that government is by the powerful and for the powerful, and always will be. As my links pointed out, Warren's "epic takedown" is nothing but kabuki theater. She is funded by the same people she is criticizing. The odds of Wells Fargo executives ever being prosecuted are slim to none, and she knows it. The bureaucrats running the banks and the bureaucrats running the "regulator" are, often as not, the same people just rotating in and out.

In short, expecting the powerful to police themselves is an exercise in futility, and expecting a government made up of the same people to do it is naive. Instead, we should focus on things that actually have an impact on the bad actors, like taking away their business.

Aetius wrote:

Instead, we should focus on things that actually have an impact on the bad actors, like taking away their business.

That sounds suspiciously like an action that can only be taken by a powerful entity that sits above the bad actors, with authority to take action against them.

You know, like a government.

Jonman wrote:

That sounds suspiciously like an action that can only be taken by a powerful entity that sits above the bad actors, with authority to take action against them.

Quite the contrary - anyone can decide to stop doing business with Wells Fargo right now. No vote is required, no majority opinion, no debate or discussion or study committee, no legislation, no prosecution. If enough people do that, the company ceases to exist.

Remember Borders? Eastern Airlines? Montgomery Ward? Even with the government's protection, the market has killed off far more companies than the government, and for far lesser reasons than fraud and bilking their customers.

Aetius wrote:
Jonman wrote:

That sounds suspiciously like an action that can only be taken by a powerful entity that sits above the bad actors, with authority to take action against them.

Quite the contrary - anyone can decide to stop doing business with Wells Fargo right now. No vote is required, no majority opinion, no debate or discussion or study committee, no legislation, no prosecution. If enough people do that, the company ceases to exist.

Remember Borders? Eastern Airlines? Montgomery Ward? Even with the government's protection, the market has killed off far more companies than the government, and for far lesser reasons than fraud and bilking their customers.

isn't there a principal-agent problem here though? The ones affected by what Wells Fargo did were not its customers, and therefore have no power to affect its market place? Conversely, if I'm a customer, and Wells Fargo continues to offer me great service, why would I leave them over this incident? Situation 3, if Wells Fargo owns my loan, how do I stop doing business with them at no cost? I.e. why should I have to pay to refinance when Wells Fargo is at fault for losing my trust? Seems like exactly the place where government should step in, whether it is willing to or not.

Aetius wrote:
farley3k wrote:

Aetius so your argument is that since past efforts were flawed we should just abandon regulation? That doesn't make any sense because we can easily look at history and see that when we had much less regulation we also had a flawed system.

No, my argument is that government is by the powerful and for the powerful, and always will be. As my links pointed out, Warren's "epic takedown" is nothing but kabuki theater. She is funded by the same people she is criticizing.

Can you show me how your links point that out?

This one - https://www.opensecrets.org/politici...

Where is the Wells Fargo contribution? If anything this makes her look good, for this particular case.

This one - http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/20/wells...

and among Democrats, only Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has not been the recipient of any PAC cash.

This one - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-ou...

What is the point here? I don't even get it.

Edit: Is it just that Ropes and Gray donated money and he used to work at Ropes and Gray? That seems like a stretch given that Ropes and Gray isn't even a financial institution and he hasn't worked there in 12 years. They also donated less than 3% of her total funds in that link. I'm hardly convinced that $50k towards her campaign funds really makes her a puppet for life.

At best, you can make the statement "she's slightly funded by a company that used to employ the person she's criticizing." Hardly damning.

We've seen soooo many examples of companies abusing their customers and the market not punishing them that it's clearly a fantasy to think that "market forces" will change bad behaviors to good. What works well in a small town of a few thousand people often fails in a giant, highly connected and stratified world.

Aetius wrote:
Jonman wrote:

That sounds suspiciously like an action that can only be taken by a powerful entity that sits above the bad actors, with authority to take action against them.

Quite the contrary - anyone can decide to stop doing business with Wells Fargo right now. No vote is required, no majority opinion, no debate or discussion or study committee, no legislation, no prosecution. If enough people do that, the company ceases to exist.

Remember Borders? Eastern Airlines? Montgomery Ward? Even with the government's protection, the market has killed off far more companies than the government, and for far lesser reasons than fraud and bilking their customers.

Even if that does work, how does that help the people that have already been bilked out of their money?

Let alone the fact that being able to cite a measly three examples in which this has worked pales into insignificance against the looming mass of the *rest* of the fraudulent activities that didn't lead to companies going out of business.

Here's a really neat thing

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/21...

The comic book community is coming together to help the victims of the Orlando shooting. In December, DC Comics and IDW Publishing will publish “Love Is Love,” a 144-page comic book whose proceeds will benefit Equality Florida and its fund for those affected by the June 12 attack at the Pulse nightclub in Florida.

I imagine it's difficult to simply cut ties with Wells Fargo if they hold your mortgage...

Oh, and Eastern Arilines was sold to Continental, which subsequently merged with United. So you're saying that we should just let Wells Fargo become a subsidiary of Bank of America, Citi, or Chase?