Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

When I was out of work, I took a job as a salesman in a bookstore. Then I became a census enumerator, driving all over north Alabama. An income is an income.

 

p.s. Rolling Stone seems to be blocked here!

[Steve]

Good point. I think many of us have taken jobs we deemed 'beneath' us a temporary stop gap while we waited for something better. I recall inbetween jobs, coming back from a stint overseas, savings dwindling and applying to blockbuster video and fast food restaurants because I couldn't get a "real job" and had rent to pay. Surprisingly, I didn't get those jobs and was shocked why. I had to 'dumb down' my resume. I took out the part saying I was a college graduate and said I was currently in junior college. I was taking a japanese class before and technically still enrolled.

Walmart brought me in for an interview and a better job, not my ideal but paying well enough, came in. I've also lived on my brothers sofa once for a month or two so that I could save enough for my own apartment.

 

Still though, there are some genuine poor folks out there. Even if she (and others) did take a McDonalds job you're living paycheck to paycheck...not even that. Can't afford even a studio apartment on those wages. Its where friends and family come in I guess. In the old days you relied on each other. I don't see that as much these days. Where is her family? Friends?

[Flashermac]

One of the big differences that has been pointed out between nowadays and the 1930s depression is that 70 years ago, the US was still largely a nation of farmers. People lost their job in the city, but they could still go back and live with mom and dad on the farm. Not many farms to go to today.

 

 

 

 

 

[TheCorinthian]

One of the big differences that has been pointed out between nowadays and the 1930s depression is that 70 years ago, the US was still largely a nation of farmers. People lost their job in the city, but they could still go back and live with mom and dad on the farm. Not many farms to go to today.

 

 

True but hundreds of jobs. When I read that item the only thing that came to my mind was "loser." I am a firm believer through experience that the world is what you make of it. But when it is "easier to kill yourself than to pick something up".... well... something else is wrong and most likely it is YOU!

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

I was a civilian instructor for the US Army in the early 1990s. I had the job of trying to teach senior NCOs, warrant officers and junior commissioned officers how to write understandably - short, simple, and to the point! (Actually, I loved the job and only left it because Clinton eliminated my position.) I would always have the ANOC students write something for me in the first class to see what I had to work with. Since they were all volunteers, I'd ask why they had enlisted and decided to make the military their career. In every class there would be a few E-6's who would tell how they had lost their job, been unable to find another, and had a wife and child to support. The military was the logical answer. They were trained in an MOS, paid fairly decently, had wonderful family support, and had a job they could be proud of with a nice pension and benefits at the end.

 

I often wonder about the young "occupy" guys, who are demanding things be handed to them. Why don't they enlist and earn them? Or is that only for real men (and women)?

[Flashermac]

Online threat — but SWAT team raids wrong house

 

 

Imagine you're sitting at home, comfortable on the couch, watching the Food Network, when all of a sudden a heavily armed SWAT team breaks down your door and storms into your living room.

 

That's what happened to 18-year-old Stephanie Milan, who was watching TV in her family's Evansville, Ind., home last Thursday (June 22), when a team of police officers broke down her storm door — the front door was already open — and tossed a flash-bang stun grenade into the room.

 

"The front door was open," Ira Milan, Stephanie's grandfather and the property owner, told the Evansvile Courier & Press. "To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive."

Turns out, however, that the SWAT team had the address wrong.

 

The Courier & Press said the police had been investigating "anonymous and specific online threats made against police and their families on the website topix.com," and had obtained a search warrant for the Milan house. An Evansville police officer said one of the threats that came from the Milan household mentioned explosives and said, "Evansville is going to feel the pain."

 

Whoever made these threats, the Courier & Press said, likely remotely routed them through the Milan's open Wi-Fi connection, which means it could have been used from an outside location. It's possible the Milans, or specifically Stephanie, were targets of "swatting," a particularly nasty prank by which the perpetrator — often through hoax 911 calls — tricks a SWAT team into raiding a house of his choosing.

 

Last July, Parry Aftab, a prominent Internet security advocate, became the victim of such an attack. Police swarmed her northern New Jersey home after pranksters placed a 911 call through a computer that cloned her number and said a man had killed four people and was holding another hostage in her house.

 

My link

[kamui]

What amazes me is that Republicans as well as Dems MUST be part of that 2/3 that have gone through that brutal bankruptcy process due to medical bills but are fighting any changes tooth and nail. That's a head scratcher to me. I have many conservative friends, who I know are one paycheck away from the street if they were to get sick but their only view about health care is that Obamacare is somewhere between Mao and Stalin. They don't demand that the health care system changes. They don't demand the Republican proposed changes. They only say 'Obamacare is socialist' parrotting Rush and Glen Beck. My own family members who are conservative. Its utterly amazing to me.

 

We as a people need to get our collective heads out of our asses and stop seeing the party affiliation as the country and the opposition party as the enemy. They are your fellow citizens, fellow Americans and in many cases your friends and family.

 

 

It took me a long time to understand the difference between European and US elections.

 

In Europe people _mainly_ vote with their standard of living in mind. The party which promises the most stable living condtions (job, health care, education, e.g.), or even better, increasing living conditions, gets the majority of the votes. Of course ideology, religion, nationalism play a factor as well, but in a smaller part.

 

In the USA it seems that elections are mostly decided by ideological and religious interests. It seems to be clear that on long term the majority of the US citizens are doing better under a democrat government, nevertheless they frequently vote for the party which promises to cut their standard of living (health care, local and national infrastructure, education, while spending a major part on military and wars). The reason is that the ideology/religion behind the destruction of the individual standard of living has a much stronger pull than the reality of their living condition...

 

And of course, there are is major ideological difference in how Europeans and the US Americans are seing the role of their government. In Europe in most countries the government is partly responsible for the weak (unemployed, ill, old) and all people are paying for it via taxes. While the USA seems to have a more Darwinist approach and for many the government seems to be the enemy of the people...

 

PS: Every European government which supported GWB's wars went down. Surprisingly, the two ongoing wars don't seem to play any role in the current public debate in the USA.

[Steve]

The religious right and by religious right, we're talking about white, fundmental protestants. Mostly baptist or closely related, started out as a one issue group. Pro life. They went with the party that was most likely to support their cause. No way the Democrats were going to pro life.

These days they are mainly a two issue group. Pro life and anti gay marriage, which wasn't an issue 20 or 30 years ago. There are many catholics who are mainly Democrats but will vote for candidates who are strongly pro life.

Just about all Christians believe abortion is wrong. Black churches do and preach its wrong but in the black churches they place jobs and other 'dinner table' issues above abortion. Abortion is secondary because so many of the members are poor and indigent. So housing, jobs, etc. are far more important. Jews or those religious ones view abortion as wrong as well but its a personal choice to them, so other issues are more important (Israel, jobs, etc.).

 

America has a deep, deep history of mistrust of the government. The country was founded on it, the founding fathers, who ran the country, spoke out against and wrote laws limiting the scope of government in our lives. American culture for decades since its founding was all about personal responsibility and that you are responsible for your own success or failure. So, when you say that they vote against bettering their own standard of living, its really about voting against the government trying to better their standard of living. Culturally we have a history of seeing anything the government does in trying to better ourselves as a sereptious way of controling our lives. The thinking is the government will give you things to improve your life in return for your personal liberties and freedom. Maybe an example of this is the social welfare system. If you want food stamps, public housing, etc. the government gets to know all your personal and financial business. Its their home so they can send inspectors. Its their food stamps so they can demand the last 3 years of your tax return and ask you all kinds of personal things. They can tell a woman she can't even have an adult male over 18 living "her" (really the government's) home. To some folks, letting the government do things comes with a price and that price will be your privacy.

Of course there is a line. The government should perform certain functions (build and maintain roads, etc.). What those functions are and the scope is what people differ on.

[Flashermac]

WSJ Chief Economist: 75% of Obamacare Costs Will Fall on Backs of Those Making Less Than $120K a Year

 

My link

 

 

[Flashermac]

Roberts switched views to uphold health care law

 

 

(CBS News) Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

 

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.

 

"He was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very engaged in this."

 

But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're on your own."

 

The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.

 

Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.

 

The inner-workings of the Supreme Court are almost impossible to penetrate. The Court's private conferences, when the justices discuss cases and cast their initial votes, include only the nine members - no law clerks or secretaries are permitted. The justices are notoriously close-lipped, and their law clerks must agree to keep matters completely confidential.

 

But in this closely-watched case, word of Roberts' unusual shift has spread widely within the Court, and is known among law clerks, chambers' aides and secretaries. It also has stirred the ire of the conservative justices, who believed Roberts was standing with them.

 

After the historic oral arguments in March, the two knowledgeable sources said, Roberts and the four conservatives were poised to strike down at least the individual mandate. There were other issues being argued - severability and the Medicaid extension - but the mandate was the ballgame.

 

It required individuals to buy insurance or pay a penalty. Congress had never before in the history of the nation ordered Americans to buy a product from a private company as part of its broad powers to regulate commerce.

 

Opponents argued that the law exceeded Congress' power under the Constitution, and an Atlanta-based federal appeals court agreed.

 

The Atlanta-based federal appeals court said Congress didn't have that kind of expansive power, and it struck down the mandate as unconstitutional.

 

On this point - Congress' commerce power - Roberts agreed. In the Court's private conference immediately after the arguments, he was aligned with the four conservatives to strike down the mandate.

Roberts was less clear on whether that also meant the rest of the law must fall, the source said. The other four conservatives believed that the mandate could not be lopped off from the rest of the law and that, since one key part was unconstitutional, the entire law must be struck down.

Because Roberts was the most senior justice in the majority to strike down the mandate, he got to choose which justice would write the Court's historic decision. He kept it for himself.

 

Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the Court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They've explained that they don't want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.

But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As Chief Justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the Court, and he also is sensitive to how the Court is perceived by the public.

There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the Court - and to Roberts' reputation - if the Court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the President himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld.

Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint.

It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, "wobbly," the sources said.

It is not known why Roberts changed his view on the mandate and decided to uphold the law. At least one conservative justice tried to get him to explain it, but was unsatisfied with the response, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation.

 

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