The Left: Robespierre did nothing wrong

Discussion in 'The Mainboard' started by bricktop, Jan 17, 2017.

  1. miles

    miles All I know is my gut says, maybe
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    demolition

     
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  2. Prospector

    Prospector I am not a new member
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    One way to help America's middle class? Redistribute wealth

    Growing inequality in the U.S. and labor automation could put a quarter of the U.S. workforce out of a job by the end of next decade, according to management consulting firm Bain & Co. That could put a chokehold on economic growth.

    To address that threat, the firm proposes the kind of solution not often heard from corporate advisers like Bain: Take from the rich and distribute some of those resources to the rest of the country.

    The analysis, laid out in the report Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality, examines the intersection of three major trends in the global economy: increasing reliance on automation, the aging workforce in most developed economies and the unprecedented levels of inequality in the world's largest economies.

    Demographics are the catalyst for eventual economic stagnation, Bain writes. As the world's population ages, the labor force will grow more slowly than businesses require to keep expanding. It expanded by just 0.7 percent a year this decade, just over half its growth rate in the 1990s. By the 2020s, it's projected to increase by just 0.4 percent annually.
    "In the short term, that should push up wages, and we're seeing it already in today's economy," said Karen Harris, a managing director of Bain's Macro Trends group. But it will also give incentives to businesses to invest in machinery over workers. By 2030, she projects, "about 80 percent of jobs are going to feel automation, either because their jobs go away or wages get suppressed."

    "What happens to that bottom group is you have to be, essentially, cheaper than a robot," she added.

    That in turn will feed existing inequalities, including eroding the middle class. The result will be "deeply unbalanced economies in which income is concentrated among those most likely to save and invest, not consume," according to the report. The imbalance will effectively cap demand, leaving the economy at a standstill.

    That seemingly paradoxical result occurs because higher-income people, on average, don't spend as much of their income as those who earn less. When wealthy people gets an income boost, they're more likely to save or invest that additional money, whereas a poorer person is more likely to spend it. Consider that the U.S. economic expansion during the last century, and more recent expansions in China and India, were driven largely by the growth of the middle class.

    [​IMG]

    "f income shifts toward the mid to lower end of the spectrum, then effective demand is increased," the report said, "because that group continues to consume if given access to more income."

    So what's to be done? Avoiding stagnation "means changing the pattern of income distribution somehow, shifting income toward those inclined to spend rather than save," Bain said.

    This shift could take several forms, according to Bain, such as taxing wealth and income at higher rates, or expanding existing social safety net programs. To encourage businesses to hire humans instead of robots, governments could impose a robot tax, or conversely, subsidize employment of humans.

    While it may be hard to imagine a more active government role under the current administration's hands-off approach to business, governments "can move quickly in response to economic crises," the report asserts. It cited history to prove its point: 15 years after the Great Depression, the U.S. government tripled its size to 15 percent of GDP and has never sunk below that level. After the global financial crisis in 2007, the Federal Reserve increased the size of its balance sheet fivefold, to its current level of $4.5 trillion.

    Whatever form it takes, government activity is inevitable, the report predicts: "If history is a guide, governments will not only discern a need to intervene, their societies will demand it."

    https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/portland-increases-taxes-on-businesses-with-income-inequality/
    This might sound unusual coming from Bain, whose private-equity spinoff, Bain Capital, has drawn fire for the kind of corporate buyouts that critics say extract value from companies and leave workers out in the cold. (Bain Capital, which was co-founded by Mitt Romney in 1984, is a separate company from Bain & Co.) But lately, even fervent capitalists have expressed serious concerns over the unprecedented inequality in the U.S.

    Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Capital -- the largest hedge fund in the world, with about $150 billion under management -- in October penned a treatise lamenting the growing level of economic concentration. "The increasing disparity in financial conditions is a major cause of the slowing of growth," he wrote, adding that some form of "productive wealth transfers appears inevitable."

    His message was echoed in December by Deutsche Bank economist Torsten Slok, who warned that "investors are making a mistake if they don't take inequality into account as a game changer."

    In the U.S., that inequality will almost certainly worsen in coming years as the recent $1.5 trillion tax cut reverberates through the economy. The legislation overwhelmingly benefits the wealthiest Americans as well as foreign investors while giving much smaller amounts to middle- and low-income earners.

    Bain avoids specific recommendations, but it mentions experiments with universal basic income in Finland and Switzerland while noting that, historically, governments faced with economic gaps have tended to intervene.

    "We're going to see policy changes," said Harris. "It's not necessarily a bad thing -- public works programs, the space race and investments in that area fueled some of the technology we're still using today."

    But just as technology upends the workplace and society, containing it might also require a completely different response, she said. "Existing social programs are set up for a different population scheme, and I think expanding them is not going to solve the problems we see today."

    © 2018 CBS Interactive Inc


    :notobamanotbad:
     
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  3. colonel_forbin

    colonel_forbin Well-Known Member
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    Haven't kept up with the school shooting or gun control debate springing from it.

    But Remington just filed bakruptcy. So maybe the free market will dictate the availability of guns.

    Goddamn that's irony.
     
  4. Mister Me Too

    Mister Me Too Well-Known Member
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    I’m sure some subsidies will find their way into the budget the next few years or perhaps the additional military spending will be used to protect the only amendment that matters.
     
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  5. Name P. Redacted

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  6. VaxRule

    VaxRule Mmm ... Coconuts
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    I was with you up until the dog got it.
     
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  7. Name P. Redacted

    Name P. Redacted I have no money and I'm also gay
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    Four out of five ain’t bad
     
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  8. JGator1

    JGator1 I'm the Michael Jordan of the industry
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    The gop getting subsidies for more guns for the military in order to prevent sharia law from taking over the country sounds entirely plausible.
     
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  9. Can I Spliff it

    Can I Spliff it Is Butterbean okay?
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    Gamblers fallacy mixed with guns is bold


    edit:

     
    #11909 Can I Spliff it, Feb 15, 2018
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2018
  10. Prospector

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    A Kansas candidate for Congress is continuing his AR-15 giveaway, despite backlash
    By Kaitlyn Schwers
    February 15, 2018 10:33 AM



    A Leavenworth Republican looking to replace U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins in Kansas’ second congressional district is giving away an AR-15 rifle for his campaign — and he has no plans to stop it despite social media pushback in light of Wednesday’s Florida mass school shooting.

    Tyler Tannahill, a Marine veteran, on Tuesday posted on his campaign Facebook and Twitter pages: “As an avid sportsman, I’m excited to announce our first AR-15 Giveaway! You can earn multiple entries and no purchase is necessary to win! Enter today: http://tylertannahill.com/giveaway.php.”

    [​IMG]
    Tyler Tannahill, a Kansas Congressional candidate, posted this on his campaign Facebook page on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, one day before a 19-year-old former student shot down 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The gunman used his own AR-15 to carry out the mass shooting.

    That was one day before a 19-year-old former student killed 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The gunman used his own AR-15 to carry out the mass shooting.

    “No individual is for school shootings. It’s heartbreaking ... being a parent, our thoughts on that, for me personally, I am a strong believer in the Second Amendment,” Tannahill said in an interview with The Star. “I think we need to have a discussion of what can be done and throwing out comments of displeasure isn’t going to solve it.”

    Tannahill said his campaign was giving away the gun in support of the Second Amendment. He also said the contest was planned a month ago to coincide with the Kansas Republican Convention this weekend in Wichita.





    AR-15: The Gun Behind So Many Mass Shootings

    More Videos
    [​IMG] 1:07
    Kansas candidate for Congress is continuing his AR-15 giveaway, despite backlash

    The AR-15 assault rifle is commonly used in mass shootings in the United States. Here's a closer look at likely reasons why. The New York Times

    Hours after the Florida shooting, Tannahill posted to social media that he and his wife were “heartbroken to learn of the tragedy” and shared a link to a nonprofit program by the Buckeye Firearms Foundation called FASTER.

    According to the nonprofit’s website, the program gives teachers and staff “practical violence response training” in the event of an armed threat to students.

    Tannahill said he supports the idea of the training program for educators, adding “I don’t think more laws could have prevented this (the Florida shooting).”


    “We’re not trying to raise money off the school shooting,” Tannahill said. “We do want to find a solution and I think this FASTER program is something we can look into implementing.”

    But Facebook and Twitter users weren’t having it.

    Commenters on Tannahill’s social media accounts called the contest “tone deaf,” “ridiculous” and described it as “part of the problem.

    The Facebook post promoting the AR-15 giveaway has more than 450 comments and has been shared more than 700 times since it was posted Tuesday.

    Contest rules on the campaign website state participants must be 18 or older and must “meet all legal requirements to purchase and own a firearm.”

    According to Tannahill, the winner of the contest is required to go into a gun store where the gun is being held on layaway. The winner must pass federal background checks before the gun can be released, he said. The campaign website also said the giveaway includes “a Bushmaster Model 91048 with MSRP $739.00 or similar.”

    This is the second local congressional candidate who has used an AR-15 giveaway as part of a campaign. In September, Austin Petersen, running for U.S. Senate in Missouri, got himself barred from Facebook for 30 days after livestreaming a raffle to give away the popular rifle to his fans.

    Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article200255734.html#storylink=cpy
    http://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/national/article200236599.html
    pile of poop gif
     
  11. Taques

    Taques sometimes maybe good sometimes maybe shit
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    interesting gaggle of social democrats in front of boston south station tonight

    flags in attendance:
    - veterans for peace
    - trans rights
    - ussr
    - north korea
    - syria
    - rojava I think?
    - antifa
    - yugoslavia
    - a couple random anarchisms
    - catalonia
    - generic hammer and sickle
     
  12. Prospector

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    The Rural Higher-Education Crisis
    When it comes to college enrollment, students in Middle America—many of them white—face an uphill battle against economic and cultural deterrents.
    [​IMG]
    The University of Iowa campus Ben Smith / The Hechinger Report


    When Dustin Gordon’s high school invited juniors and seniors to meet with recruiters from colleges and universities, a handful of students showed up.

    A few were serious about the prospect of continuing their educations, he said. “But I think some of them went just to get out of class.”

    In his sparsely settled community in the agricultural countryside of southern Iowa, “There’s just no motivation for people to go” to college, Gordon said.

    More From The Hechinger Report
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    “When they’re ready to be done with high school, they think, ‘That’s all the school I need, and I’m just going to go and find a job’” on the family farm or at the egg-packaging plant or the factory that makes pulleys and conveyor belts, or driving trucks that haul grain.

    Variations of this mindset, among many other reasons, have given rise to a reality that’s gotten lost in the impassioned debate over who gets to go to college, which often focuses on low-income people of color: The high-school graduates who head off to campus in the lowest proportions in America are the ones from rural places.

    Understanding and addressing this “is critical to our future, not just for employment but for civil discourse and kids feeling like they can contribute and achieve and not feeling lost and ignored,” said Jeff Hawkins, the executive director of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative, which works to encourage students in that state’s coal-mining southeast corner to go on to college.

    It’s not that rural students aren’t academically prepared. They score better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress than urban students and graduate from high school at a higher percentage than the national average, the U.S. Department of Education reports. At the regional high school Gordon attended in Lenox, Iowa, the graduation rate is typically at or near an impressive 100 percent.

    Yet even the highest-income white students from rural areas are less likely to go to college right from high school than their well-off white city and suburban counterparts, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this data: 61 percent, compared to 72 percent from urban schools and 74 percent from suburban ones.

    When Dustin Gordon arrived at the University of Iowa, he found himself taking lecture classes with more people in them than his entire hometown of Sharpsburg, Iowa, population 89. (Ben Smith / The Hechinger Report)
    Overall, 59 percent of rural high-school grads—white and nonwhite, at every income level—go to college the subsequent fall, a lower proportion than the 62 percent of urban and 67 percent of suburban graduates who do, the clearinghouse says. Forty-two percent of people ages 18 to 24 are enrolled in all of higher education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but only 29 percent come from rural areas, compared to nearly 48 percent from cities.

    The reasons for this are as myriad as they are consequential, affecting everything from regional economic competitiveness to widening political division.

    Many are historic. Rural students live in places where it once was possible to make a decent living from farming, mining, and timber-harvesting, said Charles Fluharty, the president and CEO of the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Iowa. None of those required college educations.

    “You could go to ag[ricultural] school, but you didn’t have to,” said Fluharty, who was raised on a farm in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio that has been in his family for five generations. “You could get those jobs, so why should you go to college?”

    Then manufacturing began to leave, agriculture became increasingly automated, and mines closed.

    a survey by the Pew Research Center found.

    This disaffection has been widely cited as a reason the anti-establishment candidate Donald Trump won 62 percent of the rural vote in last year’s presidential election, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 34 percent—a much wider margin than in suburbs. In cities, Trump lost to Clinton by a wide margin.

    Dustin Gordon bucked the trend. Though neither of his parents finished college, they insisted that he go. “That’s why I did it, I guess. They kind of pushed it,” he said. “When I think of my [high-school] classmates, the kids that went to college, their parents had better jobs or had gone to college.”

    But because of their histories, rural places have fewer such people than urban and suburban areas. Fewer than one in five rural adults aged 25 and older have college degrees, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. That compares to the national average of nearly half, according to the Lumina Foundation, which is pushing for an increase in the proportion of the population with higher educations. (Lumina is among the funders of The Hechinger Report, which produced this story in partnership with The Atlantic.)

    Pew found; 71 percent think they do, compared to 82 percent of urban and 84 percent of suburban white men.

    “This has become a cultural phenomenon. It’s not an educational phenomenon,” Fluharty said. Encouraging a rural student to go to college instead of doing the same work as the adults in a community, he said, is like “suggesting that that child should not do what I have done, should not be where I have been, should not value all that I have raised them to honor, whether that’s going to the mill or turning on the tractor at 6 a.m.”

    Hawkins’s program to encourage college-going tries to overcome this by connecting its students with people who are already enrolled in college. Some come to serve as judges of a multi-district entrepreneurship competition, which also brings together college-bound kids from different schools. “They strike up a relationship that could extend online and they begin to create a future support group for when they get to college,” he said.

    Such a support system is important because those rural students who do get that far are more likely to drop out between the first and second year on campus than their urban and suburban classmates, the National Student Clearinghouse reports.

    Of the 618 high-school graduates who went to college in the fall of 2015 from Pike County, which is part of his cooperative, said Hawkins, only 350 went back for the spring semester and, of those, 281 for a second year. “So basically we lost more than half those kids.”

    Disdain toward rural people ...“is the last acceptable prejudice in America.”

    One reason is cost. For others, the problem is culture shock. “They go from 80 or 90 kids in their entire graduating class and now they’re on campus with 20,000 kids,” said Hawkins. In rural towns, “We grow up knowing our neighbors, going to church with them, shopping at the Dollar General store. There is more of a familiarity.”

    It was a jolt to Gordon when, after first enrolling at the community college where his mother works, he transferred to the University of Iowa and found himself in lecture classes with more people in them than his entire hometown of Sharpsburg, population 89. The regional school he attended houses all 12 grades in the same building. There were 29 students in his graduating class.

    “Coming from a rural community, everybody knows who you are,” said Gordon, who quarterbacked his high-school football team, played baseball, and ran track and field. When he got to the University of Iowa, “I literally knew nobody on campus. Going to the other side of the state with people from the Chicago area and bigger places, it’s just kind of intimidating. It’s tough to connect with people, coming from a small, rural community” to an institution with 33,334 students from 114 countries and all 50 states.

    It’s not only their size that makes coming to some colleges particularly tough adjustments for students from small towns. There is the less tangible issue of stereotypes, Fluharty said. Disdain toward rural people, which he called commonplace on campus, “is the last acceptable prejudice in America,” Fluharty said. “Rural kids aren’t stupid. And they’re not lacking in perception. They see it.”

    Related Story
    [​IMG]
    Salvaging Education in Rural America


    There are practical reasons to raise rural college-going rates. Economies in states including Iowa are shifting toward such industries as information technology, wind energy, and healthcare, which require postsecondary educations.

    In California, the largely rural San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire produce 27 percent of the state’s high-school graduates but only 12 percent of its bachelor’s degrees, the Public Policy Institute of California points out in a new report.

    That’s getting new attention as the state falls behind in its projected need for 1.1 million more college-educated workers by 2030 than it’s producing now.

    “The regional differences are striking,” said Hans Johnson, the report’s lead author. Boosting the number of college students from its rural areas, he said, is “critical for California.”

    Back in southern Iowa, one of Gordon’s high-school friends now works on farms; another, at his father’s feed lot. Openings also come up now and then in Lenox at the egg-packaging plant and at the factory that manufactures fertilizer spreaders.

    Those aren’t terrible occupations, he said, “as long as those things stay around there. It’s not something I would want to do. Those are labor-intensive jobs, and long hours. And the pay just isn’t worth it.”

    Yet most of his high-school classmates and teammates “are going to stay in rural Iowa and not really get out to see much of the world.”

    As for him, said Gordon, he’s hoping to become a financial planner when he graduates in May, and he has his eye on moving to Des Moines.

    “Since I’ve started going to the University of Iowa,” he said, “I almost don’t like going home. I’ve kind of changed. I probably won’t end up back in Lenox, Iowa.”
     

    Attached Files:

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  13. Fran Tarkenton

    Fran Tarkenton Hilton Honors VIP
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    fyi

    Tonight 9pm est on PBS - "Tell them We are Rising"

    good documentary on HBCUs
     
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  14. Fran Tarkenton

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    new congressional districts in Pennsylvania
     
  15. NCHusker

    NCHusker We named our yam Pam. It rhymed.
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    Today's Chapo is fire
     
  16. Name P. Redacted

    Name P. Redacted I have no money and I'm also gay
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    Definitely a new entry to the must-listens for their serious episodes.
     
  17. Taques

    Taques sometimes maybe good sometimes maybe shit
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    "feat. richard wolff"

    [​IMG]
     
  18. NCHusker

    NCHusker We named our yam Pam. It rhymed.
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    I don't know anything about him but he's making pretty great arguments. What's your issue with him?
     
  19. Taques

    Taques sometimes maybe good sometimes maybe shit
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    hes a utopian social democrat who pretends to be a marxist - hes obsessed with co-ops and thinks they are better for workers and are also a path to communism
     
  20. Joe_Pesci

    Joe_Pesci lying dog-faced pony soldier
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    Wolfsburg

    the way he talks annoys me but i like some of the things he says
     
  21. Fran Tarkenton

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  22. Prospector

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    U.S. Rep. Hill weighs in on gun violence, NRA, Russia
    Talk PoliticsVideo / Podcasts
    [​IMG]
    Following a horrific school shooting in Florida last week that left 17 students and teachers dead, U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, thinks the national background check system for gun purchasers must be improved to prevent further tragedies from occurring.

    In an interview with Talk Business & Politics, Hill repeatedly pointed to failures in the current background check system, mental health loopholes and obstacles, and the need for improvements to whistleblower pathways to lower the escalating gun violence in America.

    [​IMG]
    “These are tough things and my attitude about it is we’ve been let down by our background check system this year,” he said. “We saw the Las Vegas shooter was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force, he should have been blocked from buying guns and ammunition and be in the background system. We saw this instance where this young man in Florida had been turned in to an FBI tip line and yet the FBI didn’t pursue it. I just think all of us, as parents worried about our kids, we protect our government buildings, we protect our airports, why can we not come together and find a way to adequately protect our kids at school? This should be fundamental.”

    Hill said that beyond improvements in the background check system, communications lines for whistleblowers to alert authorities to potential trouble must also be strengthened. He has been supportive of more funding for mental health and restricting sales of bump stocks, a device used in the Las Vegas shooting that turned a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic one.

    “I was one of the 70 members of Congress that wrote the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) administration to reconsider their regulation about the bump stock issue. I thought that was something that should be really looked at. The Obama administration had approved it and said it did not comply and we’ve asked for it to be reassessed and that, to my understanding, is still being looked at by ATF,” Hill said.

    Hill also said that around the central Arkansas district he represents, he has heard from law enforcement and community leaders that more investment must be made in young adults prone to street violence.

    “I would say what I’ve learned here in Little Rock is that we have to have opportunities for these young men, principally young men between 18 and 25, and get them in school, and with a job, and with an education, with hope for the future and not turn to the despair they see on the streets of Arkansas where they use a firearm to commit a drug offense,” Hill said.

    “It’s going to take both our education system, our family system, the sense of morality and civility in our society to make that better. We need to enforce our laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and out of the hands of the mentally ill,” he added.

    Hill addressed criticism from a recent New York Times report that he was the largest recipient among Arkansas House members of National Rifle Association money. While the NRA has only directly contributed $3,000 to Hill’s two runs for Congress, according to his campaign, it has made more than $1 million in independent expenditures for his candidacy and against his opponent in 2014.

    The Second District Republican said his opponent in 2014, former North Little Rock Mayor and Democrat Pat Hays, claimed he was supported by the NRA. That claim led to the NRA’s insertion in the race, according to Hill.

    He says that despite their big expenditure that boosted his candidacy, he is not influenced to vote for their agenda.

    “Well, it just doesn’t. I have people who contribute to me from all over all walks of life and I do my best job representing the people of Arkansas and take my 35 years of business experience and government experience and try to make the best decisions I can on behalf of the Second Congressional District,” Hill said.

    When asked if he has ever voted against an NRA-backed bill in Congress, Hill replied, “I don’t know that we’ve had that many NRA related bills while we’ve been in Congress. My view would be if I agreed with the policy, I support it and if I don’t, I don’t support it.

    RUSSIA, NATIONAL SECURITY

    On Friday (Feb. 16), Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller leveled a detailed indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian firms that are accused of meddling in the 2016 Presidential election. Hill said Mueller made a forceful case, but that Russian tampering in U.S. and overseas elections is nothing new.

    He does advocate enforcement of existing sanctions against Russia and is open to expanding them.

    “I think we’ll certainly take into account now what we’ve learned from the Special Counsel’s indictment to see if we need to go in a different direction. Cyber was certainly included in the sanction regime that we passed in August and that was referenced obviously in the indictment, the activities political and cyber related, but we could add more. I think we’ll study what’s happened politically in the indictment and see if there’s another direction that we can go in economic sanctions,” Hill said.

    President Donald Trump’s administration has faced criticism for not acting more swiftly to enact sanctions against Russia that Congress overwhelmingly passed last year. Hill said he is seeing progress on Russian sanctions and expects them to be fully implemented.

    “[Treasury] Secretary [Steve] Mnuchin came to our committee last week and I asked him about that. He said that they named the 200 oligarchs and senior officials required by the act by January 29th and that he expected rolling sanctions to be brought out in the next few weeks on that,” Hill said. “He said our team is the same team working on Venezuelan sanctions, North Korean sanctions, and Iran sanctions so, but he didn’t make any excuses, he says they’re at work.”

    In the last week, new reporting has also highlighted the lack of security clearances at the White House with as many as 130 workers not having appropriate approval to handle classified information. Hill, who does have national security clearance, said it’s inappropriate for those Trump officials to be reviewing data.

    “I’ve had concerns about the clearance process since I’ve been in Congress the past three years. There are over a million people with a top secret clearance that goes through. Some of them are approved by contractors, some of them are approved directly by the FBI or Secret Service process,” he said. “I think it’s inappropriate for people in the White House not to have their clearance completed before they get in the information flow. Naturally, I would argue, having been a White House staffer before, that if they don’t have clearance then they’re not seeing the material, that’s just not possible.”

    He’s for Congressional oversight and inquiry into the matter.

    “I think the committee should look into that process and see what’s being done about it, and also find out what was the delay? Is it a contractor delay, an FBI delay? Let’s get to the bottom of why those people do not have the adequate security clearance to do their job.”

    You can watch Rep. Hill’s full interview in the video below.
    He is a 2 or 3 term congressman from a banking background. NRA money baby.
    He is being challenged by a 1st term young state rep with a pretty deep local network
     
  23. DaveGrohl

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    what happened to the trumpocalypse thread?
     
  24. VaxRule

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    What do you mean?
     
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  25. DaveGrohl

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    did it get renamed? slow down? not on the front page anymore
     
  26. BWC

    BWC It was the BOAT times, it was the WOAT times
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  27. DaveGrohl

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  28. Prospector

    Prospector I am not a new member
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    eh lots of engagement with idiots most, including me, have on ignored, so you likely didn't miss anything
     
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  29. Prospector

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    How New Leadership Has Affected The Democratic National Committee
    4:37
    February 20, 20184:27 PM ET
    Heard on All Things Considered
    The Democratic National Committee elected new leadership one year ago, with many major problems to solve in the wake of a disastrous 2016 campaign for the party. Now, party leaders look at what success they have had.

    ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

    It's been nearly a year since the Democratic National Committee got new leadership. After a disastrous 2016 election, the party chose former Labor Secretary Tom Perez to turn around an organization on the ropes. To judge how that's been going, NPR's Scott Detrow checked in with several people who have experience as party chairs.

    SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: All year, Tom Perez has repeated the same mantra.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

    TOM PEREZ: We are about electing people from the school board to the Senate. The old DNC was about simply helping to elect the president every four years.

    DETROW: Howard Dean took over the Democratic National Committee in 2005, so he knows about Democratic low points. Dean says Perez is facing much bigger problems than he had.

    HOWARD DEAN: He had a lot of debt. There's a lot of infighting in the party, and things have changed dramatically. A whole - there's a whole new generation of young people who are fueling the revolution against Trump and the resistance movement who are not Democrats.

    DETROW: None of that is easily solvable, especially after just one year. So what's the best way to judge a party chair?

    MICHAEL STEELE: They have two responsibilities - raise money and win elections.

    DETROW: Michael Steele ran the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011. Like Perez, he had to try and raise money at a point when his party was out of power at all levels of government.

    STEELE: It's hard as hell.

    DETROW: The numbers bear that out. Last year, the RNC raised about twice as much as the DNC did. The Democratic Party went through 2017 with relatively little cash on hand, leading to a steady stream of negative headlines.

    STEELE: It's just a heck of a lot easier when you've got a president sitting down the hill from you to help you with that.

    DETROW: Other factors have hurt fundraising efforts, too. There has been an explosion of new Democratic political action committees and organizing groups. In the long run, that could be good for Democrats, but right now, they're all competing for the same donors. Plus, the Russian hacking of DNC emails left donors feeling angry and betrayed. Donna Brazile took charge of the party as interim chair at the height of the 2016 WikiLeaks crisis.

    DONNA BRAZILE: I spent more than a month of my life calling all of those donors, apologizing for having their, quote, unquote, "personal information stolen." I mean, there was nothing else I could do but to say I'm sorry.

    DETROW: So fundraising has been a work in progress. What about winning elections? One of Perez's main goals at the DNC has been healing the internal wounds of 2016. He's tried to bring Bernie Sanders and his supporters into the fold. Over the past year, representatives from the Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns worked with the DNC to rewrite the rules for future presidential primaries. Brazile thinks it's working.

    BRAZILE: The good news is that everyone is at the table. They have agreed on a set of priorities and reform initiatives that will strengthen the Democratic Party, that will make the party more competitive at the state and local levels.

    DETROW: Of course, Brazile threw a big wrench into that effort when she published a book revealing financial deals between the DNC and the Clinton campaign that predated the 2016 primaries. Still, DNC leaders are confident they're slowly turning the page on 2016. If they aren't winning the admiration of a still-skeptical progressive wing, they seem to at least be getting grudging acceptance. Most Democratic incumbents aren't fighting off primary challengers this year, and Howard Dean points out that in Democrats' two biggest 2017 wins, voters turned out for moderates - Doug Jones in Alabama's Senate special election and Ralph Northam in Virginia's gubernatorial campaign.

    DEAN: Sixty-nine percent of people under 30 voted for Ralph Northam. Now, Ralph Northam is a very good guy, and he's going to be a great governor, but he's no Bernie Sanders. He's a - what I would call a boring centrist.

    DETROW: Over the past year, Democrats have flipped nearly 40 statehouse seats from Republican to Democrat. They've cut into Republican margins in special House races and feel confident about the odds of winning back the House this fall. Perez explains why.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

    PEREZ: When we are competing at every level of elected office, you get energy that way. And we've been able because of the - really, the reaction to Donald Trump - so many people stepping up, and we saw it in Virginia. We see it elsewhere.

    DETROW: But former party chairs like Howard Dean say special elections don't really matter compared to the main goal - midterm and presidential elections.

    DEAN: At the end of the day, if you win, you've done a great job. And if you don't, you haven't, no matter how good you are. This may not be fair, but that's how you get judged.

    DETROW: In other words, a Democratic senator in Alabama won't matter quite as much if Republicans still control Congress after November. Scott Detrow, NPR News.

    (SOUNDBITE OF FREELANCE WHALES SONG, "LOCATION")
     
  30. Can I Spliff it

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  31. Taques

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    every public school in west virginia has been shut down due to a massive 2-day teacher strike

    [​IMG]
     
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  32. LuPoor

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    It rules so hard. And for some insane reason they can all be jailed over it too.
     
  33. Taques

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    i can only assume prison in west virginia is like a medieval torture chamber
     
  34. VaxRule

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    So an appreciable step up over coal mining?
     
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  35. Teflon Queen

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    Hillary being lovey dovey with Kissinger is easily and by far the worst thing about her
     
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  36. Can I Spliff it

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    Diane Feinstein got primaried by a more-left challenger
     
  37. BWC

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    Nah, she just didn't receive the party's endorsement.
     
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    oh word my b
     
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  39. AIOLICOCK

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    Would there be enough interest to support a leftist gun thread? Any SRA's?
     
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  41. Name P. Redacted

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  42. Taques

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    leftism was a mistake
     
  43. LuPoor

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    I feel personally attacked over the Gorka impersonation one