3021

Do a google search - there was plenty written about it at the time. The biggest difference seems to be that Obama apologized, which seems to somewhat work in our society.

Though I suppose that wasn’t really the point. Instead of calling an asshole an asshole, we’d rather point out that other people are assholes as well, so our team member isn’t so bad.

3022

Actually, my point was that sometimes people say stupid things, or use a term that may be offensive to someone but wasn’t meant that way, but that doesn’t mean that they’re assholes. I was trying to say that both sides aren’t that bad, but clearly that goes against your idea that my side is bad. My mistake. I’ll try to burn more bridges* in the future.

*No offense meant to anyone in the bridge-building industry, who might be upset by my casual suggestion that people burn down actual bridges. And no offense intended to the brave and loyal firefighters of our country, who may be upset that I make casual jokes about arson, which actually claims 18,400 lives each year. And no offense intended to those who were injured in fire-related bridge-crossing incidents. And no offense to those who misread what I wrote as “bitches” instead of “bridges”, because it’s my fault for typing something that sounds so close to something that is offensive to millions of women across this great nation of ours. And no offense for using the term “women” instead of the more politically-correct term “womyn” to refer to people of the opposite gender. And no offense to the people who might object to my use of the term “opposite” or “gender” for some reason.

3023

The Guardian – Veterans’ bill voted down by GOP as Senate Democrats proclaim ‘new low’ -Republicans have voted down legislation that would have established a $1bn jobs programme to put unemployed veterans back to work as firefighters, police officers and in public work projects. They objected to the cost of the bill, which they said violates spending limits agreed to last year in Congress. Democrats and veterans groups say its cost are fully offset. The bill, which had bipartisan support in the Senate and would have given priority to post-9/11 veterans whose employment prospects are three points below the national average, fell two votes short of the majority of 60 needed to waive Republican objections.

Bill would have passed w/ 58 votes. It was filibustered. Now maybe Dems were stupid for not pulling this when Bush was president, but the majority party and president usually will pass their agenda with filibusters reserved for entrenched positions. Apparently after 2010 this was nearly every issue.
On Tax breaks specifically for oil/gas.

length

Oil and Gas Tax Breaks: $2.4 billion a year

Like the percentage depletion allowance just described, the oil depletion allowance lets certain companies deduct 15% of the gross income they derive from oil and gas wells from their taxable incomes, and continue to do that for as long as those wells are still producing. Some smaller companies get to increase the deduction by 1% for every dollar the price of oil falls below $20 a barrel.

This tax break, on which we lose about $1 billion a year, can add up to many times the cost of the original exploration and drilling. In fact, it formerly could amount to 100% of the company’s profits-in which case the company paid no taxes, no matter how much money it made. Presently this is capped at 65% of profits.

The rationale for this loophole is that it encourages exploration for new oil-presumably something no oil company would otherwise do. Oil industry executives argue that other businesses are allowed to depreciate the costs of their manufacturing investments. That’s true, but they’re only allowed to take off the actual cost of those assets, not deduct 15% of their gross income virtually forever.

Introduced in 1926, the oil depletion allowance was restricted in 1975 to independent oil companies that don’t refine or import oil. To make up for this, the larger, integrated companies were given the intangible drilling cost deduction, which in some ways is even better.

It lets them deduct 70% of the cost of setting up a drilling operation in the year those expenses occur, rather than having to depreciate them over the expected life of the well. The other 30% they can take off over the next five years. This boondoggle costs us about $500 million a year.

A third tax break is the enhanced oil recovery credit. It encourages oil companies to go after reserves that are more expensive to extract-like those that have nearly been depleted, or that contain especially thick crude oil. The net effect of this credit, which costs us $500 million a year, is that we pay almost twice as much for gasoline made from domestic oil as we do for gas made from foreign oil.

Together, these three loopholes sometimes exceed 100% of the value of the energy produced by that oil. In other words, it would be cheaper in some cases for the government to just buy gasoline from the companies and give it to taxpayers free of charge.

(Of course, without the tax breaks, the oil companies would charge more for gasoline, bringing our prices closer to other countries’. This would undoubtedly lower our per capita consumption of gasoline, which is currently the highest in the world.)

There’s a fourth tax break we can’t count because we can’t estimate its size; for details on it, see the section on “master limited partnerships” in the chapter called What we’ve left out. But miscellaneous smaller tax breaks and subsidies add an additional $400 million a year to the oil industry’s wealthfare, which brings the total to $2.4 billion.

Instead of throwing $2.4 billion a year at the oil companies, we could encourage them to cut down on waste during production and transport. Each year, the equivalent of a thousand Exxon Valdez spills is lost due to inefficient refining, leaking wells and storage tanks, spills at oil fields and from tankers and pipelines, evaporative losses, un-recycled motor oil and the like.

The current oil and gas tax breaks encourage the use of fossil fuels at the expense of cleaner alternatives, reward drilling in environmentally sensitive areas like wetlands and estuaries, and artificially attract to the oil industry investment money that could be used more productively in other areas of the economy.

Sources:
http://democrats.senate.gov/2012/09/19/how-it’s-playing-republicans-block-veterans-jobs-bill/

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Oil_Tax_Breaks.html

For more in depth look at the oil tax breaks from investor POV, here.

3024

Democrats and veterans groups say its cost are fully offset.

And Republicans say the costs weren’t fully offset, but were supposedly paid for using budget trickery (specifically, making a “renewed effort” to collect back taxes and cutting off Medicare payments to those who owe back taxes, and using those funds for this bill). Is it written somewhere that if Democrats say one thing, and Republicans say another thing, then Democrats are automatically right and Republicans are lying? Or isn’t that the reason that we have votes on these things? In any case, the point remains: The Republicans opposed this bill because it wasn’t paid for, and it was redundant with six other bills that had already been passed…not because they just wanted to vote against it since it was a Democratic bill.

No, it was not filibustered: There was a point of order raised that the bill would violate the Budget Control Act that was previously passed by both parties, and it takes 60 votes to waive that point of order. Again, why is it the Republicans’ fault for sticking to the rules that Democrats previously agreed on?

Oh, and by the way, Republicans did offer an alternative bill that would comply with the Budget Control Act, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would not allow that bill to get a vote. It’s easy to accuse the Republicans of being obstructionist when you only give them Democratic bills to vote on, but you block Republican bills from even coming up for a vote so that Democrats don’t have to go on the record voting against it.

3025

Jon Stewart had some vets on his show a week or so ago, and they covered the issue that despite being easily qualified to be EMT’s, given that they had both served in a warzone as combat medics, they were not legally certified to operate as even school nurses in the civilian sector.

I don’t know much about the vets bill that got voted down, but did it cover that? Because it seems like, without much cost at all, and just some bureaucratic efforts, we could make some system to transfer the military certifications to the civilian sector, and that alone would help vets find jobs.

3026

I don’t think so, this one was to put vets back to work as firefighters, police officers and in public work projects.

Edit: To Andy, because governing involves compromise. The bill had 8 of 12 amendments offered by GOP. If the funds were accounted for, regardless of GOP skepticism, then it would not have violated the limits.

At any rate, we’re not going to agree, but thanks for the productive conversation (that’s not snark btw)

3027

I’m always in support of helping vets out, since they help us out by going around and killing the bad guys… but I really think they need to do something that lets them actually use their skills that they learned in the military. And really, the only thing preventing that now, is a bunch of stupid red tape.

It’s the kind of thing that everyone should agree on… it’d be cheap to do, since it doesn’t even really require training them any more. It’s just a matter of doing a mapping between civilian and military certifications. There’s already a huge crazy ass system of military certifications for all kinds of junk… so it’s not like they even have to make a new system.

They just need to say, “You have these certs? That means you have… THESE civilian certs. Now you can go get a job in the field that you have been extremely well trained in… just like the TV commercials promised you when you signed up.”

3028

Thanks to you too.

3029

That’s not entirely true. In some cases, especially with medics, there are short courses they’d need to take to be civilian qualified. And I mean short - several months, at best. There are good reasons not to try and hand-wave this either, things like ongoing professional development and internationally recognised skills depend on it being done properly.

Perhaps the military qualifications could change slightly to avoid these issues in future too, but that’s the current situation. (I have a friend who’s caught up in this, he was a radar technician for the Navy…)

3030

Absolutely. That that wasn’t already the case is surprising (reply to Timex)

3031

Not that you aren’t doing a fine job yourself, but I’ll rebut a thing or two.

Yes, extreme right wingers call Obama a socialist! And it is dumb! Just like Olberman calling Bush a fascist was dumb!

First, your “extreme right wingers” are the bread and butter hosts of Fox News, damned near every one of them. Second, they’ve done it dozens if not hundreds of times. To offset that you present a single fired employee on a single occasion. Do you see what’s different?

Calling someone a retard is not, as you say, “a slur against the mentally handicapped”. It’s exactly the same as calling someone an idiot. You are commenting that their intelligence is below normal. You are suggesting that they have the mental faculties of a retarded person. That’s what it means.

You’re laughably wrong about that, as you’ve seen from others’ posts. Just to put the nasty example back in front of you, “Hey, which one of those guys is Mark Smith?”

“The tall black guy in the hat.”

vs.

“The tall nigger in the hat.”

Hey, both mean an African-American, right?

Lastly,

But anyway, if you do not think that the left engages in demonization of the right, then I will not be able to convince you.

I don’t believe either. I have seen demonstrable evidence from the right, and if you can present sufficient evidence for the left, I will also consider them to be guilty. So far you are unable to do so.

3032

Yes, let’s give Ann Coulter the benefit of the doubt. It’s not like she’s made a career out of being insulting and offensive or anything.

3033

First, your “extreme right wingers” are the bread and butter hosts of Fox News, damned near every one of them. Second, they’ve done it dozens if not hundreds of times. To offset that you present a single fired employee on a single occasion. Do you see what’s different?

Err… but Olberman didn’t get fired from MSNBC for SAYING anything. He got fired for donating money to a political candidate.

And dude, like I said… I watch MSNBC. They constantly spew insults at the right. Start watching at the Ed show, and you will be treated to hours of explanations of how the republicans are gonna eat your babies.

You’re laughably wrong about that, as you’ve seen from others’ posts. Just to put the nasty example back in front of you, “Hey, which one of those guys is Mark Smith?”

“The tall black guy in the hat.”

vs.

“The tall nigger in the hat.”

Hey, both mean an African-American, right?

Er… but you’re using a racial slur… to describe a person who the racial slur is meant to describe.

“Retard” is not a racial slur. Perhaps it could be viewed as offensive to mentally handicapped people, but that’s not what you suggested. You suggested that it was somehow more offensive to the person being called a retard, then if they were called an idiot.

Are you just faulting Coulter for using the term, totally separate from her use to describe the president? Because that’s ok then… and, I already covered that. You can fault her for using a term you find offensive, and being insensitive toward mentally handicapped people. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she used it to describe Obama in that case.

Also, you yourself have used the term retarded, on these forums… it was in the same discussion where Brett got mad at me and put me on ignore. So, at some point in the recent past, you didn’t really think it was so bad. There are hundreds of pages of folks on these forums, who use the term exactly as I described it… to mean “stupid” and not really having anything to do with mentally handicapped people. Of course, the gaming community isn’t exactly the most PC and sensitive community around.

I do TRY not to use the term… certainly, I would never call another person retarded, so I really have no interest in defending Coulter at all. I find her statement offensive… But I apparently find it so for different reasons. I find her statement offensive because:

  1. It disregards the level of respect that I feel we should have for the office of our President
  2. It contributes to the kind of political polarization that hurts our political system

However, this difference in why her statement offends me compared to how other people describe it offending them, apparently leads to other folks not being offended by people calling the president an idiot. (which, again, was historically a psychological term for people with profound mental retardation)

3034

I haven’t seen so much shit in one place since I last saw a sewage digester.

3035

As Scuzz says, that term has become unacceptable over the last 20 years. And as the parent of a special needs child, anyone using the term in direct reference to my son would probably only get out of the hospital after my arraignment for a rap I am sure to beat.

That being said, I wince when I hear it used in jest but I don’t think of them as bigoted. I am sure that most references not directed at someone who could be defined as “special needs” are not hostile towards my son but just unthinking, particularly for people of certain age. It really is a term that over time became an unspecific reference, much like “idiot”, “psycho”, “geek”, etc. I don’t think of it as OK but I don’t think of it as hateful, either.

A what? That’s a piece of Brit terminology I haven’t heard before.

3036

3037

PAYGO was not implemented as part of the Budget Control Act. The most recent incarnation was passed in 2010 as the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, which passed on a party-line vote in the Senate (no Republicans voted for it) and had very few Republican supporters in the house.

In fact, the BCA is explicitly excluded from PAYGO. See https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/02/08/2012-1871/2011-statutory-pay-as-you-go-act-annual-report#h-9

3038

Eventually the term “special needs” will be perceived as insulting and derogatory and a new descriptive word or phrase will be used, until that in turn becomes unacceptable as well. It’s a never ending cycle, and a relatively stupid one. You people are smarter than this.

3039

What do you mean “you people”*?

*I said it a few pages back.

3040

You’re right, we should just move back to nigger. After all, African-American will just be as insulting eventually, right?

Is there any fucking sense of context or history around here? Am I Walter Sobchak trying to tell you I don’t fucking roll on Shabbas?