Politics is Stupid

general
546

New water issue predicted by everyone and their brother since the 70’s. And the CALPERS issue. State employee pension obligation is insane. And the calculations for determining the pension level are criminal.

When Ronald Reagan was governor, a massive dam project on the Eel River in Round Valley was canceled thanks to Reagan’s opposition. Reagan’s chief adviser on environmental issues was a man named Norman “Ike” Livermore who was a Republican conservationist in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt. Livermore and Reagan shared a love for the outdoors. But they both wanted to preserve California’s rich natural beauty so humans could enjoy it. Not only did their efforts help stop the potentially destructive Eel River project, but they also blocked the Trans-Sierra Highway from destroying the pristine John Muir Trail. Again, all of this was done with the idea of preserving nature for the benefit of the people of California.

Derpa derp. Everyone in power in California has been choosing the environment over people for the last 40 years.

The bottom line is that the California drought is more the result of conservationism gone mad than it is the result of poor rainfall. “Animal rights” cannot reign legally supreme when they threaten the human population. Ike Livermore and Ronald Reagan understood this and they used that knowledge to preserve water supplies and beautiful nature reserves for California’s humans and wildlife alike.

They are using Reagan’s opposition to this one dam as the exception that proves the rule, but it seems more to me it was the example that everyone followed, nuance or not.

This is actually some interesting reading. California State Water Project - Wikipedia

It appears that they only got about halfway, if that, before the wheels came off.

547

No this is a new water issue. A bunch of people just figured out that a lot of California water is being shipped out of state. Plus, a raid on marijuana farms this morning, in the name of protecting the watershed, chopped through several irrigation lines, spilling of 100K gallons of water.

Yeah, really nice about the conservation. However, I have a bigger axe to grind on Reagan.

For the first four years of my life, I had to wear special braces on my legs, because each foot pointed directly at the other. A very severe form of pigeon-toe (although the fault was more with the long bones of my legs).

My brother had to wear special shoes to allow the bones in his feet to finish developing. He could stand flat on the ground and touch his heel with his big toe - of the same foot.

My family being rather poor (we worked a farm at that point), we didn’t have money for expensive treatments. My braces and my brother’s shoes were paid for by a special fund for disabled children.

When Reagan took office, he and his cronies gutted that fund. If it weren’t for my maternal grandfather getting a union job in the auto industry in Michigan, just about the time I needed new braces, I would be walking on crutches right now.

And very few people remember the amount of corruption, graft, etc., that happened under Reagan. Several of his BFFR (best friend fundraisers) were arrested and forced to resign office, all in his first term as governor.

Blaming Brown for CALPERS makes no sense. It’s not like he started it - If I recall, CALPERS is simply one name among many the pension plan has been called.

I think it’s hilarious listening to people bitch about pensions. If you said the same thing 30 years ago, somebody would be parting your hair with a Buick. I don’t hear many folks addressing how the pension funds got gutted by the same politicians now whining about how unfair it is to have to pay these people pensions.

It’s not that the pension funds are unsustainable - they just don’t want to pay back what they “borrowed”.

548

Part of the water problem is lack of storage. The state tries to build new reservoirs but can’t because it gets blocked by environmentalists. So millions of gallons of perfectly good water is instead allowed to flow into the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

549

Public unions elect the people they negotiate with. Those pensions are ridiculous. Just poking through the numbers from 2011 some of them are making more money retired than they did while working. And while some businesses can do that, assuming greater profits later, how exactly did the government think they were ever going to be able to pay this?

And the answer is the people negotiating did not care. They wanted to get reelected and make sure their after politics job was secure. The concern that one day all these towns would be paying more for pensions than police cars and roads wasn’t even on their radar. If even Roosevelt saw that this was a bad idea, maybe it really is.

And most state and municipal pension funds are underfunded as low as they can go. Not much money to actually steal in these funds, since they knew someone would bail them out, except now no one has the cash to bail them out.

Hasn’t CA been taking more water from other states than they agreed to also? I know you couldn’t pay me to live in AZ, CA, NV, or a couple other states in the southwest now. I’m reading a lot on how the “drought” is more of a return to a standard weather condition and that the last few decades were mush wetter than history shows for the area.

I’ll just stay in Indiana, get hammered by tornadoes and 80 MPH straight line winds, snow in May, and September, and 70 degree days in January.

1 Like
550

Oh, Nevada is quite a different kettle of fish. I wonder if New Jersey is as much under the thumb of the casinos and their lap dog, the Gaming Commission, as Nevada is.

But Reno is very close to the border, and they never had problems with water, as far as I know. Yeah, we had water use restrictions, but very light. Things like, don’t water your grass during the day (which a lot of businesses ignored), which is just common sense.

In fact, the NV side of the mountains seems to get more of the run-off than the CA side. Hell, Reno remodeled a fucking river to make it more fun for water sports (they have a big kayaking tournament every year).

551

Donald Trump is a trivial personality wrapped in money. He is desperately trying to buy his way into relevance, without bothering to figure out what is relevant in this day and age.

The Peter Principle got him into reality TV, and that glass ceiling won’t get him anywhere in politics.

1 Like
552

I don’t think Trump has a personality. He might be one, but I don’t think he has one.

I do like to watch him fight with people. In general the Republican crowd is showing a dislike for getting “When did you stop beating your wife” questions this cycle. Which is refreshing, see how Romney rolled over and took it at the Presidential debates.

“I like Mexico. I love the Mexican people. I do business with the Mexican people, but you have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they’re bad. They’re really bad,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “You have people coming in, and I’m not just saying Mexicans, I’m talking about people that are from all over that are killers and rapists and they’re coming into this country,” he maintained.

That is the super evil quote of evilness. There are rapists and killers coming into our country, and some of them are coming from Mexico as well as other countries. If you look at the crime rate in border states, I don’t think that’s very arguable. He didn’t say they were all rapists, he didn’t say they were especially rapists, but we are letting criminals come into our country illegally.

So, because Trump said something that was demonstrably true, everybody is dropping the boom on him.

I think there is plenty of shit to get him on, mostly the fact that he’s filthy rich because he’s declared bankruptcy so many times, not despite it. He’s pompous, he arrogant, he’s Jeremy Clarkson with no positive side. Punching Piers Morgan might redeem Trump for me. But saying criminals are coming into the US shouldn’t be actionable.

Am I missing something or is this manufactured outrage?

553

The original quote was harsher. Not only did he claim that Mexico was sending them, he also said that they were all criminals.

554

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best; they’re not sending you,” Trump said in his announcement speech. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

I think this is the original, and frankly while it’s baldly stated, I’m not sure that it’s not true. There are a lot of bad people coming from Mexico lately. It’s not like it was 20 years ago when they were coming over the border for the American Dream. Part of the American Dream for some of the recent crop includes continuing a life of crime.

What I found interesting trying to find something to refute or back up his statement is that prisons don’t check the immigration status of prisoners.

I think his largest mistake was not emphasizing that the vast majority of people aren’t criminals besides breaking immigration laws. Saying that Mexico is sending criminals is a true statement. I think he stumbled on the “some” are good assessment. Obviously if most of them were bad then the southwest would look like Beyond Thunderdome, not the no man’s land some of it is.

555

Oh, and Fuck you Turkey for talking about attacking the Kurds. You are going to lose Kurdistan one way or another eventually, being an asshole in the short term isn’t going to help you.

And why the hell are we blocking Middle Eastern nations from sending the Kurds weapons. As far as I can tell those fuckers are the best ones over there.

1 Like
556

By the time they get to prison, the police and the courts have already checked immigration status, or at least they are supposed to. Expecting the prisons to do it is like expecting the shooting range to do the background check for getting a gun license.

I know in Arizona, it’s one of the first thing checked - before being arrested. I’m pretty sure that New Mexico and Texas check every person arrested. Other states may not, if they are not thinking that it’s a problem (even while ranting about immigration) - which is different than thinking that it is not a problem.

I seriously doubt that Mexico is sending their criminals north. If they are, that is not an immigration problem, that’s a diplomatic and international law problem.

There are a few conspiracy nuts claiming that Al Qaeda and ISIS are smuggling people into the US through Mexico and Canada.

557

No reason for that when they can just fly right in. And really, for a non dirt poor person, “smuggling” yourself from Mexico to the US is a trivial action.

Since arrest records don’t tell the crime story, and the courts don’t report to the FBI reliably, the only way to tell that immigrants commit more crime than locals would be to see how many end up in jail.

Not too many people are ranting about immigration. Plenty of people are ranting about illegal immigration.

558

No, politics isn’t about division at all. It’s about multiplying hostilities.

559

  1. People seen as immigrants are more likely to be arrested than “natural citizens”, and for some reason that includes Native Americans.

  2. Non-whites still get a disproportionate sentence in courts.

  3. Police are required to note the immigration status of an arrestee, which is why we have a federal database.

560

Some fact-checking:

561

Yeah, and economics is a science.

1 Like
562

[Ouch.][1]


[1]: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3794

2 Likes
563

He said sarcastically. Anyone that says they fully understands economics needs to be walked away from quietly and quickly.

564

BTW, anyone read some of the crazy crap Barry Sanders has written or said in the last 40 years?

Wow. The clock called, they want their coo-coo back.

565

Barry Sanders? The Hall of Fame running back? :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like