Commenter Archive

Comments by Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird*

On “Coates: Why the Media Didn’t Bother to Verify if Hillary Clinton’s Remark About Half of Donald Trump’s Supporters Being ‘Deplorable’ Was True

That includes the 44% of Trump supporters who answered affirmatively on that black people are “lazier” than whites:

From the graph, I'd say "40%".

And Hillary's supporters "only" have a 25%.

Similarly for the 40% who answered the same way about “rudeness”.

That's 44%, and here Hillary's supporters are at 30%.

Ignore Trump and his supporters entirely and just talk about Hillary. Her numbers are also shockingly high, everything you've said could just as easily be claimed against her supporters.

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Instead of what appears to be double-digit numbers of the GOP base.

Various people want to tell that story, some to drum up minority support for Hillary, others to keep the whole racism issue alive as a dragon which can be slain and which must be causing all sorts of other problems currently.

But when we dig into those numbers, what we find is not only Trump's base, but also plus a third of the GOP as a whole, and a third of Hillary's base. So something like 40% of the nation.

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@kazzy

I find it more useful to describe acts or thoughts. 40% of people hold racist opinions on these topics. That feels like a very different statement than saying 40% of America is racist.

We really should be able to examine what's going on in society, and especially disparate impacts, without having the "you're a racist" brick thrown.

My expectation is various "black" issues are fueled by the war on drugs and other gov policies which have backfired. But in order to have that discussion, we probably need to admit these issues exist.

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@j-r

If we are using the term in a descriptive manner and not as a moral reprobation, then that is a significant underestimation.

...when everyone's super no one will be.
-Syndrome from the Incredibles

We're lowering the bar on what it takes to be a racist to the point where it's no longer useful.

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j r: And the questions from the survey seem pretty good for sussing out who does and who does not do that.

That's asking a lot from a survey, especially one which excluded anyone who answered "don't know" to any of the questions. I think this is a link to the original findings. http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-ELECTION-RACE/010020H7174/USA-ELECTION-RACE.jpg

Looking at the numbers... a third of Hillary's supporters also agreed that Blacks are "more violent" than whites, roughly in line with the members of the GOP who voted for someone other than Trump.

So US, as a whole, is roughly 40% racist. And if all of Hillary's voters also voted for Obama, then a third of the base who voted him into office are racists.

Or maybe this survey wasn't a good way to measure racism.

On “Quartz: Chronic pain patients are suffering because of the US government’s ongoing War on Drugs

@jaybird

DarkMatter: I think we’re protecting jobs and entrenched interests. Lots of gov spending on the drug war means lots of other economic actors are dependent on that spending.

Jaybird: At least this makes sense to me. “We’re creating crime where, otherwise, crime wouldn’t exist to pay for cops/guards.”

Another, maybe better, example is China's One Child Policy. They're going to need people in the next generation (so even the direct effects are bad), the indirect effects are also bad (male imbalance, etc), but the state agency which runs this is really powerful (it needed to be in order to force sterilization on unwilling people).

State agencies & agents have a lot of influence on state policy, they don't vote for their own termination.

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@densityduck
@jaybird

If I have “taking drugs is bad” as a philosophy, and I let someone take drugs when I might have stopped them, then I have done something bad, and therefore I’m a bad person.

Philosophically, it's not just "drugs = bad" driving this. We also have "more state power = good" and "state power never has unintended side effects".

A large police force can be used for all sorts of things directly expands the power/budget of people who control/influence the gov.

The drug war is a way to express that ideal, if we didn't have that we'd have other "needs" which require the expansion of state power.

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@jaybird

What in the hell are we trying to do, here? I don’t even understand what we’re trying to accomplish anymore.

I think we're protecting jobs and entrenched interests.

Lots of gov spending on the drug war means lots of other economic actors are dependant on that spending.

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We get stories like this every few years. The next thing the drug warriors will do is take the licenses of any doctor who gives out "too many" (or "too long", or whatever) prescriptions, which instantly means really bad things for chronic pain sufferers.

On “The Republican Party and the Right After Trump

trizzlor:
I get that you’re saying this for the sake of the argument...

True.

For all the shit the Kardashians get, they far outclass Trump both in terms of branding and earnings.

Them I know less well, but...

The Kardashians are a group and can't all be President. Nor do I see massive management skill; Their income is bigger because they're bigger celebrities (especially collectively) but they're basically a group of small businesses rather than one large.

And even if I'm totally wrong and they have tens of thousands of employees in their vast corp empire, so what? Their accomplishments do no lessen his.

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Damon:
I’m more interested in what happens to the Republican and Democratic parties if Trump wins

For the GOP Best Case:
Trump "leads" by signing whatever Congress puts in front of him and claiming credit.
He does something for immigration reform in a Nixon-goes-to-China way.
He drops his economic messages and proves that he really does know management.

Worse Case:
Basically the opposite of that. He does for the national GOP what Wilson did for California on immigration, i.e. proves to an entire generation or three of hispanics that the GOP can't be trusted with power. He tries to implement economic insanity and gets the predictable results. He pulls us out of NATO and lets Russia/China become global cop(s).

what will the Dems do to gain it back?

Hopefully nominate someone who isn't openly corrupt. Maybe they decide they need a celebrity, but getting one would be easy enough.

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@Stillwater

DarkMatter: Those give him serious street cred. He knows about money, business, and management.

Stillwater: Strange comment coming from you Dark. Usually you’re the cynical one…

I see no way that he doesn't know about money, or business, or management. He's shown this over the decades multiple times and multiple ways, everything from his divorces to his management show to him being a real estate guy who lived through the crash. That's separate from his PR act which is also impressive. We can measure him by his accomplishments and they're extensive enough that making him President isn't unreasonable.

However there's this amazing disconnect between all that and what comes out of his mouth on the campaign trail. If he were running on economic sanity rather than economic insanity I'd vote for him, as it is I take him at his word... even though given who and what he is, he *must* know what he's saying is nuts.

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@don-zeko

I’d say something about how poorly it reflects upon Conservatives that they can listen to Trump and hear someone “who sounds like he knows what he’s doing,”

Trump has a mostly self made Billion dollars and this vast corporate empire. Those give him serious street cred. He knows about money, business, and management.

Of course his arguments are totally at odds with how he built his empire and what he knows(?) to be true, but to understand that you have to have some knowledge of economics and policy.

On “ITV: Plans to deny surgery to obese and smokers ‘put on hold’

@Stillwater

Stillwater:
You also didn’t respond to what I viewed as the most important point of that comment: that the pre-ACA healthcare delivery system had no transparent “market based” mechanism by which price is determined.

My solution, i.e. what the ACA should have done, is that it should have made pricing transparent.

That, by itself, is probably pretty hard but imho it's a lot more likely to do something than command and control. There are insurance structures which let consumers capture the results of savings, which put downward pressure on prices.

On “The Republican Party and the Right After Trump

@saul-degraw

I dissent on the idea that Trump sounds like he knows what he is doing. He sounds like someone who does everything on the fly. Sometimes it works, often it does not.

For me the anti-economic arguments are another big clue. But both of us are probably a lot more informed than the typical Trump voter.

Imagine that you know literally nothing about economics, or history, or technology, and you think the elites have structured things so they win at your expense. All we need to do is break the lock that the elites have had on policy and America of the 1950's comes back.

That mindset doesn't make you "racist", but I think it's one of Trump's core demographics.

On “ITV: Plans to deny surgery to obese and smokers ‘put on hold’

@stillwater

Stillwater:
DarkMatter: The pre-ACA market system was also a heavily government regulated system.

Stillwater: Dark, I gotta say I’ve lost my patience with this argument. All the conceptually based ideologically motivated idealizations in the world won’t effect how the world actually is tho it does, conventiently, effect how certain types of people judge the world and its actors.

Pot, meet Kettle. After the ACA fails to contain costs, will you want to see more market, or more government?

DarkMatter: If we’re serious about using the gov to reducing medical expenses, then we need to have a long discussion on the benefits of death panels

Stillwater: Obama actually wanted to have that discussion, which led to Palinistas to coin the term you neutrally use to refer to it: “death panels”.

It's a good, descriptive, term. I am trying to use it neutrally, and I fully support the idea as long as we're going to have the gov deeply involved in paying for things.

Stillwater: Look, if you/we want to limit health care costs a part of that discussion is end of life care and rationing. And I mean that as a matter of logic, one which applies to the private insurance model just as much as any particular gummint program.

Agreed... but imho insurance is mechanically better suited towards dealing with this. Do you want to pay for that last year or not? If the answer is yes, then your insurance rate is 'this'. If the answer is no, then your insurance bill is a fraction of that.

Politicians who even try to suggest this instantly have attack ads with them throwing little old women in wheelchairs off cliffs. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/08/12/liberal-group-throws-granny-off-cliff-again/#31518908420f

Granted, we need to have that discussion, and badly, but I don't expect it from the politicians.

On “The Republican Party and the Right After Trump

@saul-degraw

A person can win the GOP nomination for President by appealing to 35 percent of the Party that is very into openly bigoted appeals.

I think this is lumping together the anti-Islam, nativist, racist, anti-immigration, no-insiders, anti-free-trade, and enforce-the-laws sections of the party. This is also underestimating the power of being a celebrity and of raw Charisma.

Some of these groups overlap, but Trump does actually have a coalition of sorts. You don't have to be a racist to reach for the "elect a strong man who sounds like he knows what he's doing" solution.

On “ITV: Plans to deny surgery to obese and smokers ‘put on hold’

@stillwater

From where I sit, the main complaint – correctly – is that our pre-ACA market system was wholly inequiped to deal with reducing medical costs. In fact, it was “designed” to inflate ’em, among other problems. Hence the ACA.

The pre-ACA market system was also a heavily government regulated system. So we have the gov deciding that because the gov messed things up, we need more government.

If we're serious about using the gov to reducing medical expenses, then we need to have a long discussion on the benefits of death panels (or whatever you want to call 'intelligent rationing'), why they're a good thing, and how they'd work in practice.

What we're doing instead is pretending that we can write a blank check to everyone for all medical expenses.

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But the good news is millions of new people, most of them poor and working class, have health insurance. And their using it.

Any and every entitlement is a good thing as long as we only look at the benefits side.

Paying for it is an issue, whether we get value for our dollar is another issue, and paying for all entitlements collectively (long term, meaning 50+ years) is a huge issue.

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@murali

Murali:
Dark Matter: I think “rationing” is probably a good word to describe it.
Murali: You mean we shouldn’t be cost conscious when we are spending the public dime?

"Cost conscious" would be death panels. Half your lifetime use of medicine happens in your last year of life. What we're looking at is restriction of medicine on the politically powerless or unpopular.

This is a good example of medicine-by-politics and the political system showing it's poorly equipped to deal with reducing medical costs.

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@will-truman

But that’s not what’s going on here.

I think "rationing" is probably a good word to describe it.

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Wow. Is it more expensive to operate on the heavy? ...Ignoring that extreme athletes can have high BMIs.

On “Tim Cook: A Message to the Apple Community in Europe

@mo

The money that was taxed at the 0.05% is money that they claimed were exempt from taxes because they were set aside to be repatriated and pay taxes. Apple’s statement about waiting until a tax holiday or comprehensive tax reform likely read to the EU as “never” and therefore meant that they could go after them for it.

Apple is playing the long game, waiting 10 or 20 years for a tax holiday makes a lot of sense from their standpoint. That this is much longer than the election cycle makes it politically painful for politicians, but that seems self inflicted.

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It is a matter of public record that Apple Inc. is the single largest taxpayer to the Department of the Treasury of the United States of America with an effective tax rate of approximately of 26% as of the Second Quarter of the Apple Fiscal Year 2016.[392]

In 2015, Reuters reported that Apple had earnings abroad of $54.4 billion which were untaxed by the IRS of the United States. Under U.S. tax law governed by the IRC, corporations don't pay income tax on overseas profits unless the profits are repatriated into the United States and as such Apple argues that to benefit its shareholders it will leave it overseas until a repatriation holiday or comprehensive tax reform takes place in the United States.[393][394]

On August 30, 2016, after a three-year investigation by the EU's competition commissioner that concluded that Apple received "illegal state aid" from Ireland, the EU ordered Apple to pay 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion), plus interest, in unpaid taxes.[13] Specifically, the commissioner found that Apple had benefitted from Irish Department of Revenue tax rulings that allowed it to split the profits recorded by Apple Sales International internally between its Irish branch and a stateless "head office" entity lacking employees or premises (permitted under Irish law until 2013).[395]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Tax_practices

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc.#Tax_practices

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So basically the Commission is trying to say what the law should have been before 2013. I suspect we're looking at a "spirit of the law" vs "letter of the law" sort of thing. Multinationals who have lots of intellectual property have HUGE amounts of choice in terms of where to pay taxes on their stuff. Given that country's tax rates are more than high enough to justify these sorts of games, these games are played.

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