***Official Political Discussion Thread***

1250 companies and counting pulling out of advertising with Breibart. Apparently someone is listing the companies advertising on the site and shaming them.
 
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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-immigrants-economic-impact-20170223-story.html

Trump's promise to ramp up deportations spreads fear — among California businesses


The news that President Trump ordered an aggressive crackdown on 11 million undocumented people sent a chill through immigrant communities. California businesses that employ lots of immigrants are shivering too.

Two memos released by Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly on Tuesday directed immigration officers to broaden the scope of their enforcement, conduct more raids of immigrant communities, and detain people living here illegally regardless of whether they had a criminal record.

Those marching orders could hit the California economy particularly hard. Many of the industries that depend heavily on immigrants already were experiencing a labor shortage.

Undocumented workers make up 10% of the labor force in California, USC researchers have estimated, and form a large chunk of the employment that drives massive industries such as agriculture and construction.

Undocumented people account for 45% of agriculture employment in California and 21% of construction workers, according to the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. Smaller but significant portions of the workforce in food service, manufacturing, hospitality and entertainment are undocumented.

California is particularly dependent on immigrants and on undocumented workers not only because of its southern border but also because the state is such an expensive place to live and do business in, economists say.

“In the urban, rich economies of California, the high-end jobs are for U.S. born [workers] and the service, low-end jobs are for immigrants. Immigrants have adjusted to the high-cost environment, and that’s a way for them to absorb this cost,” said Giovanni Peri, an economist at UC Irvine.

Immigrants tend to live in tight quarters and move around a lot in order to cushion the blow of expensive real estate in California’s biggest cities, something that native-born Americans may be less willing to do, Peri said.

“Americans won’t live three people to a room in San Diego,” Peri added.

There are an estimated 2.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the state, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Kicking them all out would “decimate” California farms, construction sites and hospitality businesses, Peri said. He estimated that could reduce California’s economic output by 9%.

Jesse Sandoval, a labor contractor based in Stockton who supplies nearly 500 workers to farmers in the Central Valley, said Trump’s policies are already putting growers on edge. California growers have been dealing with a persistent lack of qualified laborers for years, he said, partly because of President Obama’s tough immigration policies and the recession of 2008, which appears to have prompted a wave of Mexicans to return home for good.

There’s also a dwindling supply of field hands in Mexico. The birth rate has dropped to just over two children per mother — about the same rate as in the U.S., and about a third of Mexico’s rate in 1970. A recent study found that the country produced 150,000 fewer farmworkers every year from 1980 through 2010.

“We aren’t getting the influx of people like we have in the past. Now, on top of that, it’s going to get even smaller,” Sandoval said.

Sandoval, who insisted that all of his employees have shown proper documentation, said agriculture workers are generally terrified about Trump’s new approach.

“People won’t even go out. They want to work and get back and stay home. People are afraid to be out in the streets,” Sandoval said. “One day into this and they are already changing their lives.”

There’s also a lot of confusion among immigrants, Sandoval said. People have begun to assume that any police checkpoint is a Customs and Border Protection checkpoint designed to detain undocumented workers. Others have begun carrying around their tax documents to “prove that they are working and being productive,” Sandoval said.

Under federal law, employers are required to ask people they have hired to present identification that shows they are authorized to work in the United States, including a passport, green card or Social Security card. After that identification is presented, the employer only has to verify to the federal government that they believe the documents are legitimate.

"If it’s a really good fake green card, it’s a really good fake green card," said Richard Green, a partner at Carothers DiSante & Freudenberger in Orange County. "Employers aren’t immigration officers."

Sandoval, the contractor, predicted that growers are going to face an even tighter labor market because some immigrant workers will voluntarily head for home.

“People just aren’t going to want to deal with it, and are going to want to go back to Mexico,” he said.

Restaurants in Southern California also are grappling with a labor shortage, and owners say the new immigration policies may make things even tighter.

George Abou-Daoud, who owns seven restaurants in Los Angeles, including Farida and Bowery Bungalow, said that about every month since the start of 2016 one of his line cooks has gotten a new job offer. He has had to either raise their pay to keep them or scramble to find a replacement, he said.

That’s good for the chefs of Los Angeles, but it is putting a lot of pressure on their bosses.

“There is a massive shortage of talent from immigrant communities in the Los Angeles restaurant industry,” he said. “People are competing…. Ask anyone in Los Angeles, and they will tell you it’s more difficult to find a good cook.”

The restaurant industry depends on Latino workers to fill open positions, and the new deportation rules could make it “more challenging” to find qualified employees, said Selwyn Yosslowitz, co-founder of Marmalade Café, which operates seven restaurants in the Southland and an outlet at LAX.

“We rely on the Hispanic employment force, and we are definitely a huge employer,” Yosslowitz said. The rules have “created a sense of fear in the economy, which is not really healthy.”

Madelyn Alfano, president of Maria's Italian Kitchen, which operates nine restaurants and employs 400 workers, said anxiety about deportation had spread throughout her workforce.

Alfano, who emphasized that she hired documented workers, said her employees still worry about family members who are in the country illegally.

People wonder “‘what’s going to happen if my wife or my child or someone else in my family is taken away?’” Alfano said.

Alfano supports a road to legalization for immigrants already in the country, including a route for people to get work visas. She said she helped many of her workers obtain proper documents during the 1980s, after President Reagan passed a sweeping immigration reform bill that made immigrants who came to the U.S. before 1982 eligible for amnesty.

“The system should allow for people to get documented and document everyone in their family so that they can continue to live and work legitimately,” she said.
 
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats...eet-with-trump.html?via=mobile&source=copyurl

1000
 
One of my favorite Oliver segments ever.

What the GOP is doing with the ACA is straight up evil. It can be easily patched by going a little left wing (which is the only sensible way forward).

They are pretty much brainstorming how the hell they are gonna trick voters into being ok with them dooming thousands of people to death.

**** these dudes. And **** everyone of the "wait and see" what they so crowd. Next time learn the about the issue and stop letting the GOP finesse the situation.
 
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Just watched the Oliver ACA vid. A+

Those buzzword talking points sound like "temporary refund adjustment" from the Simpsons episode where Lisa is the president.

People are finally wising up to their BS and showing at town halls, years too late though. The lady that is alive from Obamacare but hates that "it's called" Obamacare should just go ahead and let her dumbass racist self die. And yes, I'm still very peddy.
 
I was watching the ACA segment, keeping in mind @Osh Kosh Bosh's description of Paul Ryan being the Paul Ryan of politics.

The more I see Paul Ryan the more I'm imagining as the White Stringer Bell. The more I watch old Wire clips, the more I think of "now how would Paul Ryan word whatever BS Stringer is doing right now."

By withholding your pay, we are creating a corner boy centric compensation system. You deserve more than the indignity of receiving money for work performed. You can are now free to imagine a dynamic set of solutions and exciting, self starting economic and entrepreneurial opportunities for you and your family or those half dozen homeless children that you're trying to feed.
 
Erik Prince is Back: Former CEO of Blackwater Offering Services to the Trump Administration



Mountains of Uninvested Corporate Cash, Not Mexico, Most Responsible for Job Loss


 
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And you know what they say, equality to the privileged feels like oppression. So these people felt Obama was giving the marginalized too much attention.

i think this is definitely true, but i have also realized that much of the time people are blind to their privilege such that it doesn't register as advantage...so to them its seems like getting the short end of the stick, it just appears that all the rhetoric for diversity & policies aimed at helping 'minorities' are at the expense of the 'white men' and not the result of some economic decisions made by business sometimes in conjunction with haphazard competition between state governments, as well as choices made in federal policies...and i honestly feel that the language of diversity never really addresses the possibility that there will be a varying amount of difficulty/pain that comes with diversity and broadening opportunity beyond white males; instead it has largely been the promise of keeping the status quo...

and on diversity, this country isn't nearly as diverse as i had always assumed, especially once outside of the largest cities...i wonder how much national discussions around 'race' register in those parts of the country where it really isn't a factor in people's day to day?
 
And you know what they say, equality to the privileged feels like oppression. So these people felt Obama was giving the marginalized too much attention.

i think this is definitely true, but i have also realized that much of the time people are blind to their privilege such that it doesn't register as advantage...so to them its seems like getting the short end of the stick, it just appears that all the rhetoric for diversity & policies aimed at helping 'minorities' are at the expense of the 'white men' and not the result of some economic decisions made by business sometimes in conjunction with haphazard competition between state governments, as well as choices made in federal policies...and i honestly feel that the language of diversity never really addresses the possibility that there will be a varying amount of difficulty/pain that comes with diversity and broadening opportunity beyond white males; instead it has largely been the promise of keeping the status quo...

and on diversity, this country isn't nearly as diverse as i had always assumed, especially once outside of the largest cities...i wonder how much national discussions around 'race' register in those parts of the country where it really isn't a factor in people's day to day?

It depends on whether those areas attract a diverse population or not. In general, it doesn't.

Outside of the cities, things are rather homogeneous economically and socially, and people live so far apart that what is happening 5 miles from your little subdivision might as well be a world away. Everybody goes to Applebees and church on sundays, HS football games on saturday mornings, the big box store in the afternoon, and work (for the large local employer) during the week. Most people here either don't understand city life and the state of constant change that's involved in it, or they've run away from it for a more predictable existence.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/26/netherlands-election-geert-wilders-populism
 
The Dutch will vote in parliamentary elections on 15 March and, whatever the outcome, will set the stage for key elections across Europe this year – starting with the first round of the French presidential election on 23 April. Seldom has Europe followed Dutch elections so closely, and seldom have they been so unpredictable. So what can Europe expect from the Netherlands  and what can we learn?

For decades Dutch elections were the most boring in western Europe, with the vast majority of people voting for the same party their whole life, creating only small electoral shifts. This changed in 2002, because of the shock effect of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the rise of the populist Pim Fortuyn, cut short by his murder nine days before the 2002 general election.

Although the political party that Fortuyn founded, the LPF, existed for less than six years, it fundamentally changed the political system. Dutch elections are now more volatile, the tone is harsher, and the issues broader – with immigration and Islam now dominating most campaigns.

While unconnected to the LPF, Geert Wilders  has in many ways taken Fortuyn’s role of enfant terrible, transforming himself from a conservative backbencher into a populist radical-right leader. Today, no article on Dutch politics is written without at least a mention of “the firebrand MP with the peroxide-blond hair” who has been in a neck-and-neck struggle for first place with his former party, the conservative VVD of prime minister Mark Rutte, for months now. The former political allies – Wilders supported the minority government of Rutte from 2010 to 2012 – have become political enemies. Wilders has been attacking Rutte and his policies for years now, while Rutte has categorically excluded Wilders from a future coalition government.

The Economist  recently wrote that Dutch politics are a bellwether for Europe, arguing that developments in the Netherlands tend to be followed in other European countries a few years later. In a similar way, Politico described Wilders as “the man who invented Trumpism”. Both claims hold some kernel of truth.

Wilders is a relative latecomer to the European radical right; Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ) and France’s Front National (FN) are decades older and their first electoral successes date back to the 1990s, years before Wilders split from the VVD and founded his Party for Freedom (PVV). At the same time, Wilders is literally a one-man show who was dominating Dutch politics through Twitter well before Donald Trump even considered running for president.

And while the Netherlands has set some trends in European politics, most notably in mainstreaming Euroscepticism and Islamophobia, it was not always alone – Denmark has undergone a fairly similar development – and still has specific Dutch features.

Across Europe, we can see three trends in elections, which can be described in the famous terms of the German-American economist Albert Hirschman: exit, voice and loyalty. In two of these the Dutch lead the way, but one bucks the broader trend.

To start with exit (non-voting), throughout Europe turnout in national and European elections  has been dropping. Although the trend is not universal, the past 10 years has seen a sharp drop in several countries. Perhaps most shocking is the situation in Greece, a country that has compulsory voting, although it is not really enforced. In 1985 the abstention rate in national elections was “just” 16.2%, in 2004 it was 23.4%, and in the last elections, in September 2015, it was a staggering 44%. In other words, in a country with compulsory voting a modest majority of 56% turned out. Compared with that, the decrease in turnout in Dutch national elections is modest: in 1986 turnout was 86% and in the last two elections it was still a commendable 75%. Expectations are that turnout might actually go up in this year’s elections.

With regard to loyalty (the vote for established parties), the Netherlands is very much in line with the European trend. Most European countries have seen a sharp decline in electoral support for established parties. While this development is related to societal changes that date back to the 1960s and 1970s, such as secularisation and a shrinking working class, the decline of the established parties only became a broader issue in the 1990s, and has significantly increased during the great recession.

The process has been particularly pronounced in the Netherlands. Throughout the 1980s the three established parties – the Christian democratic CDA, the social democratic PvdA, and the conservative VVD – received around 80% of the vote. In 2002 that dropped to about 60% as a consequence of the rise of Fortuyn’s LPF, and it stayed like that until 2012 – although Rutte’s VVD is now bigger than the CDA and the PvdA. However, in the most recent polls the three parties only have some 40% of the vote, half of what they had in the 1980s.

At the same time, voice (the support for populist parties) has increased significantly. In the 1980s populist parties barely got more than a few seats in parliament, whereas in 2002 the left populist SP and Fortuyn’s right populist LPF together gained more than 20%. In the latest polls Wilders’s PVV is the largest party, or at least running neck-and-neck with the Rutte’s VVD, while the SP is struggling a bit – and has become less populist. Together they are close to 30% of the vote, of which the PVV would get almost two-thirds.

The combination of decreasing loyalty and increasing voice leads to fragmented and polarised party systems, which make it more difficult to form coalition governments – as we have seen in Greece and Spain, where new elections were necessary to break the deadlock. This is certainly a possibility in the Netherlands, where forming a coalition is almost impossible.

The two most likely outcomes of the Dutch elections are either a very broad coalition of four or five parties, with or without Wilders’s PVV, or a minority government, dependent upon temporary coalitions to get some policies through. Whatever the outcome, it will only strengthen political dissatisfaction, creating more fragmentation and polarisation, leading to even less loyalty and even more voice.

That is the main European lesson of the Dutch elections.
 
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