Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Kapture1]

Bust out them wallets boys, up to 93,000,000,000,000 for 10 years for the Green New Deal

650,000 cost per household over 10 years

[Ghengis Jon]

Republican Sen.Thom Tillis will vote in favor of a resolution against declaration of a national emergency. He's the 2nd to announce this position before the vote, with at least half a dozen more publicly stating they're leaning that way as well.

"As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress," he wrote. "As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know [rogue Russian assets installed as] presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms."


https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/polit...ncy/index.html

[Ghengis Jon]

iiiii.JPG

[Jeff Buchanan]

Republican Sen.Thom Tillis will vote in favor of a resolution against .......]declaration of a national emergency. He's the 2nd to announce this position before the vote, with at least half a dozen more publicly stating they're leaning that way as well.

"As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress," he wrote. "As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know ..... presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms."

Aside from the media side show involving all the wall questions, the question of how much power should be vested in the executive to allow him to by-pass Congress's constitutional duty to decide on spending is the most important. I think the Executive should have some powers to decide on spending unilaterally but right now, it's probably too much power to do that and Congress is paying the price for having allowed it.

I linked up thread to an article whose central premise was that Congress, over the administrations of the last two decades, has granted the Executive too much power to spend. BO used that power to pay, in part, for the ACA and a Democratic Congress applauded his "leadership." I don't recall ever hearing a constitutional debate on this act. Now we have one.

Obviously, the Dems aren't going to allow Trump to declare victory by building a wall using money Congress has probably allowed him to use legally. The Rs recognizing this, now want to snatch some of that authority back..... and I think they are correct in doing so.

[iam416]

The Ds don't care about the Constitution and Constitutional structure. The Rs, ostensibly, do. So, the "hypocrisy" tag comes into play. But, this is what Hanni gets at when he says the Ds try to make the Rs adhere to their rules while the Ds ignore their own. In truth, of course, it's an equal opportunity political game that is issue dependent.

In this particular case, there's only one party that has any principled inclination to limit the continuing transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive. It may not amount to much inclination, but it's at least something.

But mostly this is for show. The real meaningful shit will come if the Supreme Court takes up and Administrative Law case that reworks the preposterous amount of deference Courts give agency determinations. At least, IMO.

[froot loops]

What part of the ACA did Obama use to pass?

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Dr. Strangelove]

Won't get much attention because there's so much else going on, but India bombed terrorist camps deep inside Pakistan during the night. And there's reports that the two armies are exchanging fire across the border

[Jeff Buchanan]

What part of the ACA did Obama use to pass?

I think you're asking did Obama use spending authority granted by Congress to the Executive to fund parts of the ACA? That's what I implied in my post.

He did.

How he did was much less well understood by the public than what Trump is proposing to do - and can do legally - to fund his wall. But what Obama did was mostly within his authority to do - except for stiffing the US Treasury for funds they were supposed to get from taxes insureres were to pay.

Obama diverted accumulating (recovering from the 2008 banking crisis) cash from FreddieMac and FannyMae - which he was authorized to do - to pay, in part, for the ACA - see the first link below.

He also devised a scheme to allow insurers, who were not enamored with the payment schedule implicit in the ACA, to get more money for services provided in the ACA - this process is complicated but basically he authorized the collection of less in taxes from health insurers (mostly off the Exchanges) than they were required to do under the Affordable Care Act. He then created a plan to pay insurers selling policies on the Exchange considerably more than originally projected, and stiffed the United States Treasury on the money it was supposed to receive from the taxes.

This is about a complex diversion that took place in spite of a statute that explicitly prohibited it. And the consequence of the diversion of funds was to enrich insurers and, probably, to keep more insurers selling policies on the Exchanges than would otherwise be the case. See the second link if you want other than the Cliff notes above.

http://capwealthgroup.com/3658/did-o...und-obamacare/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot.../#40a9d478164d

[froot loops]

Infowars - got it

[Jeff Buchanan]

Won't get much attention because there's so much else going on, but India bombed terrorist camps deep inside Pakistan during the night. And there's reports that the two armies are exchanging fire across the border

Yep ..... this is a pretty big deal.

For years, both the US and India have recognized but more or less left alone, other than voicing "concerns" about it, Pakistan's tolerance of terrorist training within it's boarders (why is a whole other conversation).

India's air strikes targeted a terrorist training camp in retaliation for a suicide attack carried out by this group that killed 40 Indian soldiers earlier this month. I have no doubt that the US is providing intelligence and targeting data to India ..... a convenient way for the US to pursue more aggressive anti-terrorist activity without committing any assets to do so or pissing off the Pakastanis, which IMO, are in league with terrorists at a similar level to which SA is.

[hack]

Infowars - got it

fucking centrists

[Jeff Buchanan]

Infowars - got it

Correct ...... nevertheless the data is there to support the info that's out there. Trump supporter's whataboutism purpose is to say Obama did it too so, back off my boy.

[Dr. Strangelove]

This is a member of Congress (a Trump clinger who's used Trump to rise to prominence on tv) threatening to release embarrassing information about a witness, arguably to prevent his testimony.

BTW, Gaetz isn't even on the Oversight Committee. So he's not stating his intention to raise this tomorrow. He's just outright warning Cohen.

[froot loops]

The MAGA mob in action.