Lurker > Antifar

Saint-Saens' third is pretty grand

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How do you explain the significant reduction in the percent of people who smoke?
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HylianFox posted...

Antifar posted...

sauceje posted...

I am of the opinion that capitalism and democracy have both failed the people are large. Both systems favor a privileged minority while the majority gets to suck on their thumbs.

You're gonna have to explain the democracy part of this post

Gerrymandering, Donald Trump, etc

But these things are anti-democratic. Trump didn't even get a plurality of the vote. And other countries don't seem to have the gerrymandering issues we have (systems like proportional representation help).
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sauceje posted...

I am of the opinion that capitalism and democracy have both failed the people are large. Both systems favor a privileged minority while the majority gets to suck on their thumbs.

You're gonna have to explain the democracy part of this post
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Who are these people?
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/business/economy/wages-workers-profits.html

Corporate profits have rarely swept up a bigger share of the nations wealth, and workers have rarely shared a smaller one.

The lopsided split is especially pronounced given how low the official unemployment rate has sunk. Throughout the recession and much of its aftermath, when many Americans were grateful to receive a paycheck instead of a pink slip, jobs and raises were in short supply. Now, complaints of labor shortages are as common as tweets. For the first time in a long while, workers have some leverage to push for more.

Yet many are far from making up all the lost ground. Hourly earnings have moved forward at a crawl, with higher prices giving workers less buying power than they had last summer. Last-minute scheduling, no-poaching and noncompete clauses, and the use of independent contractors are popular tactics that put workers at a disadvantage. Threats to move operations overseas, where labor is cheaper, continue to loom.

And in the background, the nations central bankers stand poised to raise interest rates and deliberately rein in growth if wages climb too rapidly.

Workers, understandably, are asking whether they are getting a raw deal.

Sure, you can get a job slinging hamburgers somewhere or working in a warehouse, said Christina Jones, 53, of Mobile, Ala. Ms. Jones spent eight months searching for a job with living wages and benefits, after being laid off from a paper company where she had worked for nearly 13 years. Dozens of interviews later, she landed work last month at a concrete crushing company as an accounts payable clerk for $14 an hour two-thirds her previous salary.

You hear, Oh, the unemployment rate is as low as its ever been, Ms. Jones said, but it was discouraging.

Businesses have been more successful at regaining losses from the downturn. Since the recession ended in 2009, corporate profits have grown at an annualized rate of 6.5 percent. Several sectors have done much better. On Friday, for example, banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup reported outsize double-digit earnings in the second quarter.

Yearly wage growth has yet to hit 3 percent. And when it does, the Federal Reserve which has a mandate to keep inflation under control even as it is supposed to maximize employment can be expected to tap the brakes.

As Fed policymakers have explained, allowing the economy to run too hot could lead eventually to a significant economic downturn. And persistent wage increases, unlike growing profit margins, are considered a signal that the heat is on.

The banks primary method of cooling the economy is to dampen spending and investing by raising interest rates and making it more expensive to borrow money an antidote that could hurt profits in some sectors as well as trim payrolls. The thinking goes like this: Better to inflict some pain now, in the form of higher joblessness and sluggish wage growth, than to allow more pain later.

...

The conventional wisdom that higher wages inevitably lead to higher prices, however, is flimsy, some economists argue.

It theoretically makes sense, Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said of the link between wage increases and inflation, but empirically, its increasingly difficult to find a real strong link.

A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, for example, concluded that the connections among wages, prices, and economic activity are more akin to a tangled web than a straight line, and that the ability of wages to help predict future inflation is limited.

Regardless, there is plenty of evidence that workers have yet to receive their fair share of this most recent expansion or even the previous one.

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https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/7/13/17568448/sacha-baron-cohen-roy-moore-sarah-palin-who-is-america-fake-news
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Long Trail Ale for me
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I think they have to post the opportunity first. You can't just ask anyone
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s0nicfan posted...

pinky0926 posted...

This whole "left eating itself" nonsense really tickles me. Because democrats can make criticism of other democrats, that's a terrible thing. Better to blindly follow, no matter what. Party before integrity, that's the main thing.

It's less about democrats making criticisms or party integrity. The "left eating the left" meme stems from people who enjoy watching highly judgmental people come under the same unreasonable scrutiny as they hold against others, and watching them get crushed using the tools of their creation. Like having someone who thinks that someone having a right-wing opinion on twitter should get them fired... being fired for something they posted on twitter after a mob goes off on them for saying it.

Would you prefer they weren't held to that standard simply because we agree with them on other issues? Because that's how you get the Clintons.
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Prestoff posted...

pinky0926 posted...
Apparently you gotta be a hivemind and a circle jerk to not eat each other out.

Smh you gotta be willing to go down
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Isner vs. Anderson, on ESPN right now

You might recall that Isner, an American, played in the longest match in tennis history, which had a 70-68 fifth set
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UnfairRepresent posted...

His point is that people don't say "England" much anymore, It's all The UK. Great Britan. Brexit.

It would be the same as if The USA was always refered to as North America because of Canada

North America and the UK are not comparable; we don't share a government with Canada.
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CyricZ posted...

I wish I got paid by the American taxpayer to stand on a podium and say whatever crap popped into my head.

He was sitting down for this
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I thought his problem was illegal immigration.
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BWLurker posted...

ledbowman posted...

White House: "Todays charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along."

lol

We're back to" Trump is too stupid to collude"

Occam's razor.
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Hi, leftist here: we already think this investigation is, at best, just adjacent to the material problems Trump and his administration poses to the American public. Like, if you end up finding wrongdoing on Trump's behalf through this, that's fine and would be good, but
- I don't think anything will result in Republicans voting to impeach, and you're going to need Republicans for impeachment
- In the meantime, focusing on the vagaries of the investigation over the more concrete ways in which Trump is screwing the average person feels misguided, as a political tactic. To be fair, it's mostly MSNBC with that; most Democratic politicians I've seen have been good about not going single-minded about Russia.
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Who would win?

A tabloid monster that constantly lies

or

The Sun
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Prokofiev's First is neat; written in 1916 but in the style of a piece from the 1700s


Also it's short, if you're into the whole brevity thing
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Bias in law enforcement is a massive problem, but I assure you conservatives are not the primary victims of that.
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"Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes and ears?"
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Coffeebeanz posted...

The article is basically stating that pension funds themselves are to blame.

But that would imply that public sector unions are a problem, and we can't say that.

The article says the funds have been mismanaged, which is not the fault of unions
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Listened to Ralph Vaughan Williams' third symphony for the first time last night and really enjoyed it


Sibelius' first has been one of my favorites:


Schumann's third is really catchy:


I welcome you to post favorites of your own
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https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/13/politics/trump-sun-uk-interview-intl/index.html

During the Trump strayed from the subject of politics to ruminate about the use of the word "England."

"You don't hear the word 'England' as much as you should. I miss the name England," he said.

"I think England is a beautiful name. And you don't hear it very much anymore. But (the football team at the World Cup is) playing as 'England.' That's very interesting. That's good," Trump said.

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The connective thread that holds all the Trump administration's policies together is cruelty. Whenever possible they will do the thing that hurts the most possible people.
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One of the funniest things is watching conservatives try to hold the separate thoughts that
- Bias in the FBI is a huge problem that primarily impacts conservatives and needs to be dealt with
- The rest of our law enforcement is just fine, actually
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The norms are almost wholly the construction of liberals, and much of the liberal objection to Trump is about his violation of those norms. Liberals aren't much for subversion; you're thinking of progressives and leftists.

Alternatively, it's possible that some norms are held in higher regard than others.
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Who are you going to believe on the subject of women getting harassed?

A woman
Or
CE
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Talk about a murderer's row
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The topic title and the content of the first post do not match. The Senate hasn't passed anything in that article, which is about the Senate being undemocratic as much as anything
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She somehow has two first names and two last names.
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What, did he paint a tunnel on the side of a canyon?
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Good talk
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Obama was really bad on surveillance issues.
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Rimmer_Dall posted...

Antifar posted...

Here's where I post like 7 articles about voter suppression efforts currently underway.

You mean wanting people to present ID when voting? Like every other first-world country requires you to do?

That, and the restrictions on those IDs, and...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/11/17448742/ohio-voter-purge-supreme-court-ruling
and
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/02/582600802/voting-rights-process-for-florida-felons-unconstitutional-say-judge
and
https://www.brennancenter.org/criminal-disenfranchisement-laws-across-united-states
and
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/wisconsin-voters.html
and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/
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Time posted...

Russman posted...

The general election in 2 years

If he went all Hitler the election would be rigged.

Here's where I post like 7 articles about voter suppression efforts currently underway.
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Its refusal to live up to its stated ideals
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Reviewers/critics/journalists, etc. Asking for a me.
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What pieces is Bach best known for?
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Awesome posted...

so if hillary beats trump in 2020 then its proof that russia did help in 2016

I'm not sure that logic checks out
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I'm sure this will be the topic that ends that finally proves all the people you don't like wrong
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frozenshock posted...

It's fascinating how americans can be so hostile to their own quality of life.

We have negative solidarity, where most people's response to suffering is not "no one should have to go through this, " but instead "I had to go through it, so now you do too."
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Our admins cosplay as schoolgirls, so
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-managers-cost-americans-600-billion-past-decade-134658282.html

Over the last decade, fund managers who oversee the pensions of the nations teachers, firefighters, police and other government workers have doubled down on an investment strategy that has cost U.S. taxpayers at least $600 billion, possibly more than $1 trillion, investment data and calculations by Yahoo Finance found.

Seeking higher gains, pension fund managers have upped their investment in so-called alternative strategies that are costly and weigh down returns, data shows.

We find that some of the worst-performing plans are those that went into alternatives late in the last decade, said Jean-Pierre Aubry, a research director at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College who studied the impact of investing in alternatives on public pension funds.

Alternative funds invest in things like hedge funds, private equity, real estate or commodities, rather than traditional stocks and bonds. Because pensions are guaranteed, the underperformance has hit taxpayers in the form of budget cuts for schools, hospitals and libraries and decreased spending on infrastructure, health care and other public projects.

Aubrys studies show that across the board, public pension fund managers have thrown increasingly more money at these complex and pricey alternative funds, despite the fact that they consistently underperform simple index funds available for a fraction of the fee cost.

Fund managers have moved to alternative investments, in part, because when competing for the contracts to manage pensions, they sold pension boards on expected high returns that have not materialized. They are now trying to provide a jolt to the plans, which are largely underfunded, said Scott Kubie, chief investment officer at financial management firm Carson Group.

Those high assumptions allowed [the employees] to make not as high contributions, Kubie told Yahoo Finance. Theyre trying to find a way to catch up because they havent covered the liabilities. I dont know if that ends particularly well.

Several studies have shown that pension fund managers are unable to consistently beat the market. And the growing popularity of alternative investments has only exacerbated the trend.

Data from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College shows that state and local pension plans steadily increased their holdings of alternative investments, rising from 9% in 2005 to 24% in 2015. A 2017 study from Coller Capital found that a net 23% of investors plan to increase their allocations to private equity over the next 12 months.

With the nations pension liabilities having risen to $6 trillion, Jeff Hooke, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, recently conducted a report for the Maryland Public Policy Institute that found the state had lost billions in retiree income on account of the fees and lost revenue.
...
The nations pension fund returns have also been hit by fees. Hookes study found that state pension funds paid, on average, fees totaling 0.56% of assets held to fund managers during the 10-year period. Had the nations collective pension fund managers invested in the 60/40 Vanguard Balanced Index Fund, for example, which carries a 0.07% fee, they would have saved $150 billion over 10 years.

In fact, the total amount pension funds could have saved by simply investing in index funds could be more than $1 trillion. In addition to the lower returns and higher fees that add up to $624 billion, data for 17 states were not disclosed, and the calculations dont include funds contributed by workers and employers during the 10-year period.

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Coffeebeanz posted...

You mean the DNC literally supported him for Mayor even after two prior sexting scandals.

The DNC did no such thing; it doesn't intervene in local races, and Weiner finished fifth in the Democratic primary. Please stop making up bullshit on GameFAQs dot com.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandals#2013_mayoral_race_and_second_scandal
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https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1017298433563136000
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Are we just allowed to post porn site names now?
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Because two decades of the Daily Show have made quite clear that being accused of hypocrisy will not slow your political goals in the slightest. Nobody cares that Mitch McConnell is a hypocrite. Nobody cares that Orrin Hatch is a hypocrite.
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