Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[pbrower2a]

(12-13-2018, 05:05 PM)David Horn Wrote: Lots to cover here, so this will be stripes galore.

(12-13-2018, 12:34 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Does entering illegally or staying illegally really matter when we're talking about legality and legal status? Does term honesty really apply to people who are guilty of stuff that most Americans would most likely view as being dishonest or associate with dishonesty?

Yet you, and almost every other person, wants their food sitting in the supermarket and ready to prepare.  Most of the people who make that possible are illegals planting and picking crops, working in poultry and meat packing plants and all aspects of the seafood industry.  Shall we kick them all out?  If so, who preps our food?  Then there's the other side: citizens who operate motor vehicles in less than legal manners, who cut corners (cheat) on their taxes, and a myriad of other laws we decide to let go.

Oh, the hypocrisy! C-Xer has surely not studied college-level economics. I'm not saying that he should plant and pick crops or work in a slaughterhouse to get knowledge of the reality behind the pre-packaged food in some hypermarket. As a rule we tell law enforcement, including the INS, to look the other way about people horribly overworked and underpaid whose absence would gut our delusion of a prosperous world of comparative ease.

 

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C-Xer Wrote:Dude, the politics has already been shifted to one side (you're side). If you haven't noticed, the Republican voters got rid of some opposition to Trump policies and some who were unable to work as Republicans  in the house. I can't blame the Trump supporters for not showing up and supporting a Republican candidate who is opposed to using tariffs or failed to deliver on a promise to replace Obamacare with a bill that's focused on lowering healthcare costs or not supporting a party who doesn't seem to be supportive of him. Nope, I'm going to blame them or label them as deplorable or make excuses for the Republican party and so forth.

A few comments:

• The political balance in this country has never been more tilted to the right -- even during the Gilded Age.
  
• Obamacare may be flawed (it is), but every option the Republicans have put forth make matters dramatically worse -- and voters know that.
  
• No one is deplorable unless they chose to be.

Liar and fool that Trump is -- and he is even more deluded about the commercial food chain than C-X'er is, Trump contradicts himself and cannot accept wthat even conservatives cannot justify. They may love Donald Trump's promises of tax cuts and regulatory relaxation on behalf of the Master Class of heirs and executives... but they also like imports as pressure upon the working people to work harder and longer for less and as a reward for compliance with a one of the purest plutocracies in the world.

The Master Class is cruel, as is reflected in the politicians that it supports. Its idea of appropriate healthcare is that whoever is no longer convenient to them can get sick and run out of funds and die. That elite want profits-first medicine just as it wants profits-first real estate, transportation, and food. It tolerates welfare in part because people with SNAP cards are more likely to make profitable purchases of foodstuffs (even if those are sodas and snacks) than to shoplift food from a store.

People can choose to believe what they want even if such beliefs are themselves deplorable. But reality sets in. I see white folks of the economic wreck that is the Mountain South as no better off than many of the black and Hispanic proletariat who have no illusion that the Master Class is their friend. Let's not forget that the poor white salt-of-the-earth of Appalachia and the Ozarks were among the most fervent supporters of the New Deal, and if they should get an offer of a 21st-century equivalent of the New Deal, then their politics will make a 180-degree turn that makes profits-first government impossible.

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C-Xer Wrote:So, if illegal immigration primarily benefits wealthy elites and wealthy corporations and proposes a threat to higher wage American workers who are more likely to vote Democratic based on what I've been told by liberals about the makeup of their political base these days. Why are blues opposed to cracking down on illegal immigrants and shoring up border security and tightening up/strengthening our rather lose immigration laws? You're a blue, do you think the money and tax dollars associated with those elites and corporations has something to with their hesitance.

No, illegal immigration has a lot of issues, but it doesn't harm the most highly skilled and educated.  That would be the LEGAL immigrants brought in on H-1B visas.  

Again, people holding H-1B visas are at the mercy of exploitative employers. I would like to see such visas turn into citizenship so that those here on such a visa can participate fully in the American consumer society and -- yes -- the gene pool. Being overworked and underpaid is one definition of exploitation.

It is up to our economic elites to decide whether what Marx says of capitalism is true or whether such is false when democracy is gone or at least gutted. The problem is that our politicians all too often heed campaign contributions and hence corporate lobbyists instead of their constituents that include people who do the picking and packing or tun the cash register.

OK, so maybe those elites are wise enough to give us a taste of liberal democracy so that things don't go so bad that we have a Fidel Castro in the wings.

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C-Xer Wrote:As far as my hyper patriotism as you say, my support of the American military and American law enforcement, where would you be without them? Would you be living in America and enjoying your liberties and all the modern comforts associated with American life and the Constitutional protections that you have now and often display here?

The GOP  uses the military as a political wedge to get money for military spending we don't need and even the Pentagon doesn't want.  Again, law enforcement is used for political purposes more than crime-fighting ones. Crime is down but prisons, more often than not PRIVATE prisons, are bursting at the seams.  None of this make any sense, unless you see it as a wedge issue to beat you opponents.

Precisely. Military spending is largely about procurement of military weapons, and all that is needed to force some more purchases of expensive tools of war is a war itself, ideally a war for profits. I think of what Donald Trump wants for Cuba -- a place safe for Trump resorts.

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C-Xer Wrote:Back in the day, we had two types of teachers. We had teachers who were there to teach and make a living teaching and we had teachers who were there to work as teachers. The teachers who were there to teach were often recognized and often viewed in high regard and remembered as important contributors  to our  lives and careers. The teachers who there to work and go through the motions associated with their job  weren't recognized, weren't viewed in very high regard and most were eventually forgotten. So, I understand why most teachers don't feel they get the recognition and the pay they feel they deserve and so forth. I also understand why most people view most teachers as workers instead of teachers and view them as workers who have rather cozy jobs, a few weeks off for holidays during the school year, several other days off and the entire summer off as well.

Obviously, you don't know any teachers, nor have you taught yourself.  Those summer's off are used to work at their third or fourth job to pay the bills.  Almost all teachers have side jobs while they teach.  And their supposedly short hours are about half the time they actually put in during the school year.  Find a few teachers and ask them.

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The full-time teachers spend time not in the classroom grading papers, and that has to be disconcerting. The teachers find out the hard way whether the kids are paying attention. I've had a taste of it in teaching some "Sweathogs". In a course on consumer habits I excoriated rent-to-own ripoffs as horrible places in which to get stuff. I suggested that people either go to used-goods places or ask downsizing relatives to let them have obsolete stuff that those relatives (typically people going from large suburban houses to smaller apartments while retired) for things that those people would likely cast off. Yes, you can get a VHS player and recorded videotapes dirt-cheap. Or perhaps you can scrimp and save and get cash to buy stuff in "Wally World" after brown-bagging lunch instead of going to a fast-food place for a couple of months. I got to see how these kids received my lesson. One said roughly "Get it now at 'Pay Too Much For Too Long'", using an advertising slogan from a rent-to-own place that advertises on schlock TV. I will not name names.

Then there is bad grammar and sloppy math. A teacher gets to learn how receptive his students are. Maybe had I taken education as a college course I would have been lucky to end up with students whose parents saw education as their sole means of escape from poverty. Maybe I would have ended up in California's Central Valley, which is an economic and cultural cesspool much like the Mountain South.

Yes, much of the success of students depends upon how parents see education. Parents who had a poor attitude toward education when they were kids are likely to show perverse sympathy with a child who complains that "The mean teacher criticized my grammar, and I don't need no stinkin' grammar". (Note the double negative and the dropped "g". Those who say such things might as well paste a paper on their backs that reads "KICK ME" because that is what figuratively happens to them). This is even more important than race, ethnicity, or current economics in deciding who gets to live sort-of-OK lives in our plutocratic order.