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zoux posted:Yeah they don't have any counter numbers or anything they are just saying "-not, Wayne's World". "That 7 million is only 2% of the US population. It is nothing."
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Apr 10, 2014 19:26
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JT Jag posted:That had not occurred to me. He pushes Viacom's boundaries regularly. MTV, Spike, Comedy Central, that Viacom. I don't know how he's going to cope with the boundaries of network. He'd almost certainly have to abandon his Stephen Colbert: In-your-face fake conservative persona and just become Stephen Colbert, funny person. I kind of hope it's another Conan-like ratings fiasco and he has to fall back into political satire, but at the same time I like him too much to wish him ill 
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Apr 10, 2014 19:27
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Since TANF is just straight cash assistance can you buy anything with it, or are EBT cards restricted from certain purchases?
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Apr 10, 2014 19:29
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^^^: It's a little confusing because a lot of places combine programs. So in Massachusetts you get an EBT card that actually combines both your SNAP (food stamps) and TANF (welfare) into one thing, although their usage is still restricted. You can use your cash benefits for a lot of things, but it's not unrestricted - in MA you can't buy alcohol, lotto tickets, jewelry, or some other random extravagances with in (including court fees!). The SNAP portion can only be spent on foodstuffs (usually excluding 'hot' foods) and, interestingly, seeds and plants to grow your own food. So you can't buy a rotisserie chicken, but you can buy a tomato plant. WIC is much more restrictive than EBT; if you want to you can buy soad and pretzels with EBT (OH NO) but WIC is often restricted down to a specific product, so that one size/type of orange juice might be WIC approved and another might not. That's why it's usually flagged on the shelves, otherwise people would forever be grabbing the wrong type of unsliced wheat bread. Ashcans fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 19:29
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Conan's comedy was always too absurdist for a mainstream talk show driven by viewers who are going to bed as the monologue finishes. I had irrational hopes he could succeed there, but wasn't surprised when he didn't (especially given that NBC was and is run by lizard people). Colbert's flair for satire gives him a wider opportunity, I think. He could pivot reasonably well but it's always going to come down to writing.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:32
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Swan Oat posted:Since TANF is just straight cash assistance can you buy anything with it, or are EBT cards restricted from certain purchases? Don't worry, they thought of that too, which is why we have H.R. 4137: the Preserving Welfare for Needs Not Weed Act of 2014.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:33
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Ashcans posted:WIC is much more restrictive than EBT; if you want to you can buy soad and pretzels with EBT (OH NO) but WIC is often restricted down to a specific product, so that one size/type of orange juice might be WIC approved and another might not. That's why it's usually flagged on the shelves, otherwise people would forever be grabbing the wrong type of unsliced wheat bread. I know that the compatible list for WIC is like a paragraph long and is only staples like bread, milk, cereal and baby formula. poo poo, while we're talking about it: Item 7 is a general list for WIC and The blurb on the right if you click on "What is EBT?" is a generalized list for EBT.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:36
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I love how they're almost identical, though one is 2 years after the act and the other is one. Oh, and a change to the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008. Extra comedy from the use of both Marijuana and Marihuana.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:37
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Joementum posted:Don't worry, they thought of that too, which is why we have H.R. 4137: the Preserving Welfare for Needs Not Weed Act of 2014.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:48
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mdemone posted:Can we elaborate on how this is so, in small words that people can remember? The older folks on my Facebook (goddamn they have a lot of free time!) should probably be agitating about this but they haven't been exposed to any clarity yet. The average senior gets $14,800 in healthcare dollars every year, and Ryan's budget sets a cap of $8,000 on that amount. Fried Chicken posted:I assume this is assuming an average tax rate, or did you weigh sectors by tax burden, figure out their growth, and then aggregate that for the average growth figure? Don't write any papers based on this, it's back-of-the-envelope math. It is assuming an average tax rate that remains roughly constant, and that projected annual tax revenue would have to increase from $30 trillion over the next 10 years to $37.3 trillion to balance the budget of Ryan's plan. I turned this into an equation to solve: 0∫10 3((1+g)^x) dx = 37.3, where g is growth and x is time in years. This gives roughly .043 for growth, or 4.3%. That's just a ballpark figure that's useful for showing the problem with Ryan's plan - even Reagan couldn't achieve that kind of growth rate - but it's not what I'd bring to a serious policy discussion.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:48
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Phone posted:Someone equated Bush's paintings with Zimmerman's, and the concept is the same but the execution is way different.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:58
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loquacius posted:I actually kinda don't like this. Colbert's persona works really well in a context where he's always only talking about politics, but maybe not if he's on a generic Late Show where he also has to devote time to pop culture or celebrity gossip or whatever else. So either he abandons the character or it loses its focus. The article says he's dropping the character. It's going to be interesting to see how people respond to the real Stephen Colbert every night.
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Apr 10, 2014 19:59
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Does he make up his own rate of growth based on some nonsense model that his office has produced, or has the plan been rated by the CBO presumably using the same model and assumptions that White House budget proposals use? It's definitely an asspull. Ryan doesn't give numbers for the growth rate, he just says that between closing loopholes and growth there'll be enough revenue to make up for his budget's shortfall, which is even higher than Obama's budget. I calculated that growth rate with a lot of assumptions and some integral calculus, but it's still more work than Ryan put into demonstrating the kind of growth that would be necessary. If I had the resources for an in-depth study, I'd account for the following: 1. Automatic decreases in welfare spending due to lower unemployment with economic growth 2. Higher marginal tax rates paid under economic growth 3. Reduced demand due to the cuts to social spending 4. Increased capital investment due to corporate tax cuts 5. The stimulus to the funeral industry from additional thousands of dead seniors This is why it's possible to be a Republican budget wonk - Ryan can claim that reduced demand won't be an issue, that seniors will figure out how to survive massive Medicaid cuts with the same quality of care, and that the economy can sustain the same kind of growth it did fifty years ago. Because the typical voter doesn't look at the multiplier effect or a senior's hospital bill or graphs of GDP growth they nod along to Ryan's plan. The cuts to Medicare alone should get a lot of attention because that's something people can understand, and economically the plan is garbage.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:03
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He's legitimately a funny person beyond that persona, but it works so drat well that it is a shame to see him move on.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:04
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:I calculated that growth rate with a lot of assumptions and some integral calculus, but it's still more work than Ryan put into demonstrating the kind of growth that would be necessary. If I had the resources for an in-depth study, I'd account for the following: Wow that sounds a lot harder than copy+pasting the budget he's put forward for the last few years and writing the new date at the top. Also work sounds hard when all you need to do really is cut taxes and stupid poor people stuff and everything will work out because ~~The Market~~
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Apr 10, 2014 20:06
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Mineaiki posted:Wow that sounds a lot harder than copy+pasting the budget he's put forward for the last few years and writing the new date at the top. Also work sounds hard when all you need to do really is cut taxes and stupid poor people stuff and everything will work out because ~~The Market~~ Yup. Ryan's budget has a huge hole where he wrote "AND THEN THE MARKET WILL SOLVE IT." The current budget has a slightly smaller hole but Obama doesn't claim we can let growth close it. Ryan's ideology is based on the idea that if you cut government services you can force them into providing the same level of service for lower cost, but at this point things have been cut so far that increasingly essential spending is being gutted. The average Medicare recipient is projected to need $14,800 of health care money by 2022, the year that Ryan's block grants phase in and every senior gets $8,000 in healthcare food stamps in lieu of Medicare.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:12
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Fried Chicken posted:Think equal pay for men and women is a good thing? Well silly lib, the Wall Street Journal is here to correct your so dumb and god damned crazy opinions. It turns out equal pay will trigger the MARRIAGE PENALTY on your taxes This made me cry with such blatant misrepresentation of the tax bracket system.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:27
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Well, here's yer problem. 
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Apr 10, 2014 20:31
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Have we ever gone through a period like this in our short history where we just had total deadlock like this? What broke us out of it?
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Apr 10, 2014 20:35
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The Civil War.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:37
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Monkey Fracas posted:Have we ever gone through a period like this in our short history where we just had total deadlock like this? What broke us out of it? There was a war, that changed things.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:38
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I mean the standard half-second kneejerk reaction I have to this is GOP GO HOME FUCKERS GODDAMN  but realistically that is going to take a very long time and may never actually happen.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:41
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Of course, the reason that the pattern is mirrored in the Senate is because the polarization was not (chiefly) caused by redistricting.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:43
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:It's definitely an asspull. Ryan doesn't give numbers for the growth rate, he just says that between closing loopholes and growth there'll be enough revenue to make up for his budget's shortfall, which is even higher than Obama's budget. I calculated that growth rate with a lot of assumptions and some integral calculus, but it's still more work than Ryan put into demonstrating the kind of growth that would be necessary. If I had the resources for an in-depth study, I'd account for the following: To add to this, the ignoring the impact of demand shortfalls is a key part to why these budgets don't work and modern conservative ideology. The recognition of the impact of demand on the economic cycle was the key insight of Keyenes, even more than his policy recommendations to offset it. I've seen trying to explain the economic cycle without recognizing the role of aggregate demand compared to trying to understand modern medicine without recognizing the role of evolution. It isn't the whole story, but without it you have no explanation for a massive chunk of it. And as an ideological point, the schools of economic though the conservatives draw upon ignore the role of demand. Their solutions aren't just supply side focused (and we do need supply solutions because that has a major role as well) the problem is they reject the idea that demand shortfalls can cause downturns. The major insight the is part of the models undergirding the economy is completely off the table. It is hard to understand why they do this. Picking ideology over evidence is anthesis to the traditional Burke concept of being "conservative" and is more a hallmark of radicals and reactionaries. Charitably, they are trying to use Say's Law on a macro scale when it doesn't scale like that but we don't know why (making it akin to trying to use quantum theory to explain the behavior of macro objects). Less charitably it reflects that those with the supply have the power and want answers that play to their beliefs (making it akin to soviet biologists following Lysenko because it played to the ideological beliefs of the party) As long as they hew to a school of thought that rejects a major part of understanding the economic cycle their projections are going to be off.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:43
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Joementum posted:Of course, the reason that the pattern is mirrored in the Senate is because the polarization was not (chiefly) caused by redistricting. Yeah I don't see how they could look at those numbers and conclude redistricting did it. I didn't post it for the analysis, but rather the demonstration of how partisan Congress is.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:45
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Fried Chicken posted:By the way I've been meaning to post this for a month but keep forgetting.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:48
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I think you could more or less objectively prove that the GOP has become more radical (or at least has more radical elements present in it) than in recent times but I tend to dismiss any notions that the Democratic party has also become more radical as truth-in-the-middle horseshit. I attribute the lack of conservative voting among D lawmakers to an unwillingness to compromise due to a history of the R side just being extremely untrustworthy during almost any and all negotiations.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:51
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I figured that they meant the more conservative Democrats (such as blue dogs) lost their seats to Republicans. Of course this doesn't really factor into the current Clintonian Democrats that are totally down with slashing public education in favor of charter schools and giving Wall Street money while gutting pensions for instance.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:53
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Monkey Fracas posted:I think you could more or less objectively prove that the GOP has become more radical (or at least has more radical elements present in it) than in recent times but I tend to dismiss any notions that the Democratic party has also become more radical as truth-in-the-middle horseshit. I attribute the lack of conservative voting among D lawmakers to an unwillingness to compromise due to a history of the R side just being extremely untrustworthy during almost any and all negotiations. The effect is the same. The Republicans would say they are only radicalizing in response to the leftward movements of the Democrats. Which ever side is correct, or both or neither, the data show that both sides are increasingly partisan.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:54
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Mineaiki posted:The article says he's dropping the character. It's going to be interesting to see how people respond to the real Stephen Colbert every night. It'll probably end conservatives screaming that Colbert isn't a parody he really is saying all that stuff and is meta-trolling liberals or whatever the hell their argument was.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:56
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axeil posted:It'll probably end conservatives screaming that Colbert isn't a parody he really is saying all that stuff and is meta-trolling liberals or whatever the hell their argument was. He really did lead them on for a long time though.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:58
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Man I just want a government that can pass a motion to flush the toilet in the men's bathroom without shutting the country down for two weeks. Just kind of trying to do a sanity check here- is anything really all that likely to change in the next couple of years? Are we just doomed to an eternally dysfunctional legislature?
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Apr 10, 2014 21:01
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Monkey Fracas posted:Man I just want a government that can pass a motion to flush the toilet in the men's bathroom without shutting the country down for two weeks. We're hosed for the next 6 years though.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:06
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The vote ratings do not show whether the Dems or Republicans themselves have shifted right or left in ideology over time, simply that they are more polarized over time.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:07
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I highly doubt it. Half the country has totally bought into their idea that the government is inherently worse than the private sector for anything so there's no push from the populace to solve this deadlock one way or the other. It feels to me that the future of the country is coasting on whatever we can drag out of congress while social programs are slowly starved and replaced with whatever scam someone who wants to earn a quick buck creates in its absence. Congress doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon and the senate seems like a 50-50 coin flip as well.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:07
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Monkey Fracas posted:Man I just want a government that can pass a motion to flush the toilet in the men's bathroom without shutting the country down for two weeks. Eventually demographic changes will force the GOP to move left or to be completely marginalized. At least I hope so. In the near term though, nah we're hosed.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:07
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:The average senior gets $14,800 in healthcare dollars every year, and Ryan's budget sets a cap of $8,000 on that amount. I always wonder if Ryan or anyone else uses real or nominal figures. Surely it starts to make a difference around year 4.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:08
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zoux posted:Eventually demographic changes will force the GOP to move left or to be completely marginalized. At least I hope so. In the near term though, nah we're hosed. I figure by the time the Republicans shift left on social issues due to their base not being worth pandering to, the Democrats will have shifted economically so far right in order to appeal to rich backers it wont really matter.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:09
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MaxxBot posted:The vote ratings do not show whether the Dems or Republicans themselves have shifted right or left in ideology over time, simply that they are more polarized over time. Here's a chart for that:  By the way, the Senate is currently having a squabble because Republicans are refusing to waive the 30 hour post-cloture delay on a judicial confirmation vote that would occur tomorrow at 5pm with the delay and everyone wants to leave for a two week recess.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:10
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Radish posted:I figure by the time the Republicans shift left on social issues due to their base not being worth pandering to, the Democrats will have shifted economically so far right in order to appeal to rich backers it wont really matter. Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia are reading this post and laughing diabolically somewhere right now.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:10
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