The Many Faces of US Politics...

[LeoMc]

Eastwood has long been vocal and involved in American politics. He had a successful term as Mayor of Carmel also. He'd have more of a clue about the issues than many posters on here. Sure, there's a bit of populism and celebrity to the national conventions but it's not the case of rolling out someone just for the sake of it.

Maybe he does, but he didn't demonstrate it in his, er, performance.

I don't worry that politics in America is being dumbed down. It bothers me that in a two-party system, one of the parties has been captured by a lunatic fringe that wouldn't be within the margin of error of existing in the rest of the developed world.

The National Front got a pretty good showing in French presidential elections and it wasn't long ago that Austria elected the neo-nazi president, so there's no shortage of 'lunacy' in Europe too.

When was this? The current Austrian president was elected on a Social Democrats ticket. And the guy before him could hardly be described as a Neo-Nazi either.
Maybe a mix-up with the FPO's performance at the turn of the century which led to EU sanctions?

Slightly earlier than that, Kurt Waldheim was president in the early 90's. He had served in the Wehrmacht and there were allegations he had been in the SS and was aware of war crimes in the balkans.
IIRC the US banned him from visiting.

[deiseach]

The National Front got a pretty good showing in French presidential elections and it wasn't long ago that Austria elected the neo-nazi president, so there's no shortage of 'lunacy' in Europe too.

Most European countries aren't two party systems, they consist of coalitions which tend to keep the nutters out of government.

[johnneycool]

If anything I'd have thought Coalitions were inclined to give the extreme fringe parties more of a chance of getting into a power of sorts along with a more central party.

I was thinking of Micheal McDowell and his PD party who were in coalition with FF back in the day.

[deiseach]

If anything I'd have thought Coalitions were inclined to give the extreme fringe parties more of a chance of getting into a power of sorts along with a more central party.

I was thinking of Micheal McDowell and his PD party who were in coalition with FF back in the day.

'Power of sorts' is very different to what the Republicans are going to have if they have the Presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress.

[heganboy]

this is a piece by a professor at Columbia in the NY Times.  Essentially this is an economists view of the actual detail of the Ryan plan budget, as opposed to what the campaigns are saying about it.  Whilst the overall aim of reducing the budget is noble- I'm not sure the voting public are aware of the price they will pay to implement such a plan without increasing taxes...


from http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/edsall-the-ryan-sinkhole/

Unlike the Republican platform, which has mostly been ignored outside of the abortion issue, the Paul Ryan budget is the core document of the 2012 campaign. It is the most explicit expression of the Republican agenda, endorsed by the party's presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, and backed by decisive majorities of House and Senate Republicans.

That much is known. What people have not been talking about enough is that the Ryan budget contains an $897 billion sinkhole: massive but unexplained cuts in such discretionary domestic programs as education, food and drug inspection, workplace safety, environmental protection and law enforcement.

The scope of the cuts – stunning in their breadth — is hidden. To find the numbers, turn to page 16 of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget – Fiscal Year 2013. In Table 2, Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Resolution Discretionary Spending, in the far right hand column, you'll see the nearly $897 billion figure, which appears on the line marked "BA" for Budget Authority under Allowances (920) as $896,884 (because these figures are listed in millions of dollars).

According to the House Budget Committee, of which Ryan is the chairman:

The federal budget is divided into approximately 20 categories known as budget functions. These functions include all spending for a given topic, regardless of the federal agency that oversees the individual federal program. Both the president's budget, submitted annually, and Congress' budget resolution, passed annually, comprise these approximately 20 functions.
Within the 20 "budget functions" lurks — at number 19 — "Function 920." In a masterpiece of bureaucratic obscurantism, the explanation provided by budget committee reads as follows:

FUNCTION 920: ALLOWANCES

Function 920 represents a category called "allowances" that captures the budgetary effects of cross-cutting proposals or contingencies that impact multiple functions rather than one specific area of the budget. It also represents a place-holder category for any budgetary impacts that the Congressional Budget Office has yet to assign to a specific budget function. C.B.O. typically reassigns the budgetary effects of any legislation enacted within Function 920 once a new baseline update is released.

Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
Paul Ryan t-shirt.
The importance of the nearly $1 trillion in unexplained and unspecified cuts that Ryan and the Republican party are proposing, under the catch-all rubric of "Function 920: Allowances," cannot be overestimated. These invisible cuts are crucial to the Republican claim that the Ryan budget proposal will drastically reduce the federal deficit (eliminating it entirely in the long run) and ultimately erase the national debt.

Ryan's plan was passed 228-191 by the House on March 29, 2012, with no Democrats voting yes. On May 16, the Senate rejected the plan by a vote of 58-41. The vote among Senate Republicans was 41-4 in favor.

While the Ryan budget does specify cuts in programs serving the poor, many of whom are Democratic constituents (Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits), it hides under the abstruse veil of "Function 920 allowances" the cuts in programs popular with many other voters.

This maneuver stands in stark contrast to Ryan's campaign rhetoric. At a rally last Tuesday in Westlake, Ohio, Ryan declared:

We will not duck the tough issues. We will not kick the can down the road.
Romney and Ryan have made their willingness to stand tall and to confront forthrightly the problems facing the nation a central theme of their campaign. In Ryan's words, again from Westlake:

We will lead. We will not blame others for four years; we will take responsibility and fix this country's problems.
The lack of detail in the Ryan budget applies mainly to programs of importance to the voters Republicans continue to angle for, including swing voters concerned about programs like education, environmental protection and food safety.

Interviews I conducted with New Hampshire voters last month reveal the political liabilities of telling potential Republican voters exactly what the Romney-Ryan ticket intends to cut. Two voters, both Republicans, told me they could not bring themselves to vote for their party this year because the Ryan budget cuts spending for veterans' benefits.

In an interview days after Romney announced on a Saturday that he had picked Ryan, George Lemieux said, "Based on what Romney did this weekend, I would not vote for him." Lemieux, a 67-year-old Vietnam War veteran who spent 26 years in the Army, declared that "Ryan wants to decimate Medicare; he wants to decimate the V.A. I have a brother who is dependent on V.A. disability, and he wants to cut it out entirely."

"The Ryan budget will kill everybody," said Aura-Lee Nicodemus, another woman I met, who works at the V.A. Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt. and is active in the advocacy organization, Disabled American Veterans. "I'm a registered Republican and I can't vote for Romney. His actions speak louder than words."

There is a clear rationale for their concerns.

Under the Ryan budget, "Mandatory and Defense and Nondefense Discretionary Spending" – which includes Function 920 Allowances, but excludes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — would fall from 12.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2011 to 6.75 percent in 2023, 5.75 percent in 2030, 4.75 percent in 2040 and 3.75 percent in 2050, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

The C.B.O. cautiously notes how difficult it would be to cut such spending to 3.75 percent of G.D.P.:

By comparison, spending in this category has exceeded 8 percent of G.D.P. in every year since World War II. Spending for defense alone has not been lower than 3 percent of G.D.P. in any year during that period.
Romney, in fact, has committed himself to keeping the Pentagon budget (Function 050) at 4 percent of G.D.P. By 2050, that would leave zilch under the Ryan plan for such separately funded programs as Veterans Benefits (Function 700); the administration of justice, including the F.B.I. (Function 750); Education, Train and Social Services (Function 500), and pretty much anything else.

The big question posed by the comments of the two defecting Republicans I interviewed in New Hampshire is: are Romney and Ryan so committed to the principle of deficit reduction that they are willing, in an election year, to take on veterans? That would be extraordinary. The answer is no.

I emailed the Romney campaign. Here's what I asked:

Talking to voters in New Hampshire, some veterans voiced strong concerns over the scope of likely cuts to the V.A. in the Ryan budget. Has Governor Romney said what will happen to veterans' benefits under his administration?
The campaign immediately disputed any suggestion that the ticket supported cuts in services for veterans. Here is the Romney campaign's emailed response:

That is false. Here are the facts:

- The House-passed Fiscal Year 2013 budget matches the President's discretionary request for veterans for fiscal year 2013: $61.3 billion. Over the ten-year window, the House-passed budget is actually above the President's request on both the mandatory and discretionary side of the ledger.

- On the mandatory side, the House Republican budget calls for $270 million more than President's request. On the discretionary side, the House Republican budget calls for $16.4 billion more than President's request, increasing America's funding for services and benefits earned by veterans.
In an accompanying statement, Andrea Saul, the Romney campaign spokeswoman, said:

Gov. Romney opposes President Obama's plan of drastic cuts to veterans' benefits and the military while exploding the federal budget elsewhere. President Obama's own V.A. Secretary has admitted that Obama's devastating defense budget cuts put veterans' funding at risk for an arbitrary across-the-board cut. Gov. Romney and Paul Ryan are committed to keeping faith with our veterans and providing the care they so richly deserve.
Hmm. How does this fit with the deficit-reducing claims of the Ryan budget and with Ryan's boast that "We will not duck the tough issues? We will not kick the can down the road?"

It turns out that a reading of the Ryan budget — if you don't parse Function 920 — is deceptive. In the case of veterans' benefits, for example, Andrea Saul's claim that the Romney-Ryan ticket is "committed to keeping faith with our veterans" appears, on the surface, to be legitimate, because none of the mysterious Function 920 cuts show up in her computations.

If veterans' benefits are to be protected, what programs will be on the chopping block to achieve the $897 billion in cuts listed under the mysterious "Function 920 allowances" category? Will it be education or food inspectors, air traffic controllers or homeland security?

The Ryan budget does, in fact, "duck the tough issues." Ryan claims to be proposing major steps toward a balanced budget and long-term debt reduction, but he doesn't really tell voters how he is going to get there.

Interestingly, the budget proposed by President Obama does specify where cuts would be made, including those called for in the Budget Control Act, the measure approved by Congress and signed into law on August 2, 2011, as part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling and to avoid default on government debt.

A statement in the Obama administration budget claims credit for making explicit the "difficult trade offs" to reach spending reduction goals:

In the Budget Control Act, both parties in Congress and the President agreed to tight spending caps that reduce discretionary spending by $1 trillion over 10 years. This budget reflects that decision. Thus, for all the priority areas we are investing in, difficult trade-offs had to be made to meet these very tight caps. Discretionary spending is reduced from 8.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2011 to 5.0 percent in 2022.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the omissions in the Ryan budget is the failure of Obama and other Democrats to capitalize on it.

Leading Democrats I spoke to, who refused to be identified because they did not want to be quoted faulting their own party, cited two factors limiting their ability to mount a counter-attack. First, the complexity of the issue makes it difficult for reporters to understand and write about the subject. After wading my way through all of this, I know what they mean. Second, the Ryan tactic of obscuring the cuts successfully plays to a fundamental ambivalence that amounts to an internal contradiction in public opinion: strong support for spending cuts in the abstract, but opposition to many specific cuts in programs that have popular support.

In a speech on April 3 at the Associated Press luncheon in Washington, Obama tried to make the case against Ryan well before he was picked to run for vice president. Applying the $897 billion in cuts under "Function 920 Allowances" to domestic spending programs, Obama projected a future scenario:

The year after next, nearly 10 million college students would see their financial aid cut by an average of more than $1,000 each.  There would be 1,600 fewer medical grants, research grants for things like Alzheimer's and cancer and AIDS.  There would be 4,000 fewer scientific research grants, eliminating support for 48,000 researchers, students, and teachers.  Investments in clean energy technologies that are helping us reduce our dependence on foreign oil would be cut by nearly a fifth.

If this budget becomes law and the cuts were applied evenly, starting in 2014, over 200,000 children would lose their chance to get an early education in the Head Start program.  Two million mothers and young children would be cut from a program that gives them access to healthy food.  There would be 4,500 fewer federal grants at the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. to combat violent crime, financial crime, and help secure our borders.  Hundreds of national parks would be forced to close for part or all of the year.  We wouldn't have the capacity to enforce the laws that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food that we eat.

Cuts to the F.A.A. would likely result in more flight cancellations, delays, and the complete elimination of air traffic control services in parts of the country. Over time, our weather forecasts would become less accurate because we wouldn't be able to afford to launch new satellites. And that means governors and mayors would have to wait longer to order evacuations in the event of a hurricane.
Ryan, in the meantime, remains consistent. Two days after his speech in Westlake, on Sept. 6, he reiterated his claims at a rally in Colorado Springs:

So here is our commitment. We are not going to duck the tough issues and kick the can down the road. We are going to lead and fix this mess in Washington. And we are not going to spend the next four years blaming people from the last four years. We're going to take responsibility and get the job done, reach across the aisle and fix this problem, get people back to work, create jobs, growth.
In an interview, Christopher Van Hollen Jr. of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told me that the Ryan budget "is a shell game designed to hide the damage to the country." Van Hollen is frustrated that the damage to which he alludes has not become a campaign issue: "The magnitude of this budget gimmick takes your breath away."

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book "The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics," which was published earlier this year.

[tyssam5]

Eastwood has long been vocal and involved in American politics. He had a successful term as Mayor of Carmel also. He'd have more of a clue about the issues than many posters on here. Sure, there's a bit of populism and celebrity to the national conventions but it's not the case of rolling out someone just for the sake of it.

Maybe he does, but he didn't demonstrate it in his, er, performance.

I don't worry that politics in America is being dumbed down. It bothers me that in a two-party system, one of the parties has been captured by a lunatic fringe that wouldn't be within the margin of error of existing in the rest of the developed world.

The National Front got a pretty good showing in French presidential elections and it wasn't long ago that Austria elected the neo-nazi president, so there's no shortage of 'lunacy' in Europe too.

When was this? The current Austrian president was elected on a Social Democrats ticket. And the guy before him could hardly be described as a Neo-Nazi either.
Maybe a mix-up with the FPO's performance at the turn of the century which led to EU sanctions?

Yes, that's what I was thinking of, sorry he wasn't President.

[stew]

You may have a point, but these conventions where celebs are wheeled out for a few lovely words just reek of populist bullshit to me.

What makes people think the Clint Eastwood would have a clue about the US economy or foreign policy? What has he and his ilk on the Democrats side got to offer?

Eastwood has long been vocal and involved in American politics. He had a successful term as Mayor of Carmel also. He'd have more of a clue about the issues than many posters on here. Sure, there's a bit of populism and celebrity to the national conventions but it's not the case of rolling out someone just for the sake of it.

The juxtaposition of Carmel/Pebble Beach and the nearby agricultural areas around Salinas is very striking. Carmel is filthy rich whilst a few miles down the road mexicans pick salad leaves for a pittance

So to be rich is wrong and bad and all Mexicans pick salad leaves for a living and earn feck all? does that cover it?

Maybe they could stick to earning a pittance in their own country or maybe they could apply for visas and upon getting one, create a better life for themselves by getting better paying work.

The democrats are going to bankrupt this country once and for all, the republicans are going to continue protecting the rich and you could not make a decent cabinet from the lot of them never mind a president.

Special interest groups and lobbyists are killing this country alongside the fact that Obama has doubled the level of national debt.

9/11 came and went without a word on here..............

Mad Muslims wrecking around the american embassy in Yemen and not a word.

Finally for that tyrone tit, the only time I shout at the TV is when Armagh are playing, just because I disagree with 99% of you politically does not make me a lunatic.

[heganboy]

maybe they could apply for visas and upon getting one, create a better life for themselves by getting better paying work

What visa would you suggest they apply for?

[stew]

maybe they could apply for visas and upon getting one, create a better life for themselves by getting better paying work

What visa would you suggest they apply for?

Off the top of my head they could apply for a J 1 visa, a H1 or H2 Visa, they can get a visa if they are engaged to a yank or call me old fashioned but I believe they are entitled to apply for a Green Card.


I am sure there are a lot more, those are the one's I know about.

By the way, one of these even allows for migrant workers to work in the US of A, yet many choose not to do the right thing and apply, why is that? surely it is not because of taxation!

[heganboy]

What visa would you suggest they apply for?

Off the top of my head they could apply for a J 1 visa, a H1 or H2 Visa, they can get a visa if they are engaged to a yank or call me old fashioned but I believe they are entitled to apply for a Green Card.

none of the work visas you mention can be applied for by a person, they are applied for by a sponsoring company on behalf of someone they wish to train (J-1) or someone they wish to employ (H1&H2). In order to employ them they must meet a certain qualification criteria, get Labor certification and also make sure that they apply in time. Those visas are issued twice a year, and come into effect 6 months later. For example H1 has a quota and matching criteria when applications are opened in March for the September release. So your employer would have to apply by registered delivery in the first couple of days of the window (so that the quota isn't filled) and be prepared to wait until September for you to enter the country legally. For a H1, the quota has been filled in the first week of the release being opened for the last 4 years. On some occasions in the first day. For a sponsoring employer, the H1 runs about $13,000 per application including lawyers fees and you must as an employer prove you cant find similar applicants willing to do the work for the same money in the US. So you must also advertise the post in a suitable forum, local newspaper and the web.

There is of course the Diversity Lottery, where 14 million people worldwide apply for 50,000 visas a year?

[stew]

What visa would you suggest they apply for?

Off the top of my head they could apply for a J 1 visa, a H1 or H2 Visa, they can get a visa if they are engaged to a yank or call me old fashioned but I believe they are entitled to apply for a Green Card.

none of the work visas you mention can be applied for by a person, they are applied for by a sponsoring company on behalf of someone they wish to train (J-1) or someone they wish to employ (H1&H2). In order to employ them they must meet a certain qualification criteria, get Labor certification and also make sure that they apply in time. Those visas are issued twice a year, and come into effect 6 months later. For example H1 has a quota and matching criteria when applications are opened in March for the September release. So your employer would have to apply by registered delivery in the first couple of days of the window (so that the quota isn't filled) and be prepared to wait until September for you to enter the country legally. For a H1, the quota has been filled in the first week of the release being opened for the last 4 years. On some occasions in the first day. For a sponsoring employer, the H1 runs about $13,000 per application including lawyers fees and you must as an employer prove you cant find similar applicants willing to do the work for the same money in the US. So you must also advertise the post in a suitable forum, local newspaper and the web.

There is of course the Diversity Lottery, where 14 million people worldwide apply for 50,000 visas.

There are also bills from time to time like the Donnelly Visa's that help people to get here.

Migrant workers should get first crack at coming on a permanent basis since they already work in the States and they cant seem to get unemployed yanks to do the work in the fields.

Why should the Government be responsible to pay for unemployed Americans to sit on their hole when there are jobs to be had?

[Eamonnca1]

What visa would you suggest they apply for?

Off the top of my head they could apply for a J 1 visa, a H1 or H2 Visa, they can get a visa if they are engaged to a yank or call me old fashioned but I believe they are entitled to apply for a Green Card.

none of the work visas you mention can be applied for by a person, they are applied for by a sponsoring company on behalf of someone they wish to train (J-1) or someone they wish to employ (H1&H2). In order to employ them they must meet a certain qualification criteria, get Labor certification and also make sure that they apply in time. Those visas are issued twice a year, and come into effect 6 months later. For example H1 has a quota and matching criteria when applications are opened in March for the September release. So your employer would have to apply by registered delivery in the first couple of days of the window (so that the quota isn't filled) and be prepared to wait until September for you to enter the country legally. For a H1, the quota has been filled in the first week of the release being opened for the last 4 years. On some occasions in the first day. For a sponsoring employer, the H1 runs about $13,000 per application including lawyers fees and you must as an employer prove you cant find similar applicants willing to do the work for the same money in the US. So you must also advertise the post in a suitable forum, local newspaper and the web.

There is of course the Diversity Lottery, where 14 million people worldwide apply for 50,000 visas a year?

Spot on.  I went through the H1-B palaver and then had to jump through another marathon of legal hoops and wait six years for my green card. Cost me about $5000 in lawyers' fees.  The people who use the magic "just" and say "just" enter the country legally have obviously never had to do so themselves unless they were born here or got in via some convenient route like the DV lottery back in the days when any Irishman that applied for it got it. I shudder to think what the government's immigration bureaucracy is costing the taxpayer. A Mexican manual laborer doesn't stand a chance against a system like that, no wonder they're streaming in illegally.

[Keyser soze]

Reminds me of a joke they used to tell in CA.

Why didn't Mexico win any medals at the olympics?



Cos anyone who can run jump or swim has already legged it across the border.

[The Iceman]

I was able to manage the paperwork myself and didn't have to hire lawyers but there are fees at various stages to be paid that a lot of people would struggle with. All the examples explained would prove that immigration into this country is extremely difficult. Even for the lads who have the means and do it the right way.

[heganboy]

Iceman,
you came in through family though right?

For the work related visas, most firms (in my experience) won't let you handle your own applications or Labor certifications.