News Stories

[germanturkey]

its always fun to see a liberal circle jerk. obama's foreign policy, healthcare overhaul, and even the immigration policy he's currently planning are all things the majority of americans don't want. i use majority loosely because often its like 47% to 40% with x amount undecided.

lets start with foreign policy. his desire to fulfill his campaign promise of get troops out and no more war etc. backfired horribly in the middle east. the power vacuum formed by rapidly withdrawing troops allowed ISIS to do its its thing, which is now a bigger problem than Iraq initially was. this is a failure of both obama and bush, but obama's desire to appease his (radially shrinking) fan base is what spurred ISIS' rising. one can speculate that the rebels would have been contained more, particularly out of Iraq and in Syria, had a military that didn't roll over remained there. not a direct comparison, but note how a force remaining in afghanistan has stopped any uprising or resurgence.

for healthcare: how many of you guys are actually signing up for it and experiencing it first hand? i'll tell you its not cheap. having graduated recently with an MS and looking for full time employment, i have no choice but to start looking at plans. though i'll say that paying the fine for one year seems like a great idea, considering the cheapest plan i currently qualify for is $200. good luck getting someone who is working part time or unemployed to pay for that. lets not forget that to pay for itself, around 14 million people need to sign up and they haven't come close to hitting that number. 14 million is ~5% of 300 million. we can't even get that many people to get on board. which leads me to a second question: how many people here would actively want to pay for someone else's medical care? like if you could individually sponsor someone else's medical needs, would you (on your current pay)? no? thought so. if people actually thought this way, we would have passed it with bipartisan support, instead of the way it passed. also, pretty much every GOP candidate that won this november ran on the premise of repealing obamacare. this stance is not without backing.

immigration: its a little too soon to pass final judgment, but anyone can see its already a bad idea. of course its a touchy issue because no one wants to tear families apart, but at the same time, you just shuffled 5 million people to the front of the immigration line. my parents immigrated here legally. millions of other people immigrated here legally. what this bill has effectively done is say "sure, you broke the law. there won't be reparations for it. in fact, you get beneficial treatment for it." that's not even touching on the economics of having 5 million new unskilled laborers enter the market. if they actually enter the system like they should, you can expect those unemployment numbers so carefully curated by the government to go crashing (up).

tl;dr: obama hates america. does wrong things.

also, lets play a game. guess the political affiliation of those who said these quotes! they're all from different people.

With the stroke of a pen, Obama rewards those who arrogantly mock our border laws while simultaneously telling those hopeful immigrants still waiting patiently to lawfully come to America that they are chumps.

Barack Obama really had the potential to be an iconic president. It’s a shame he’s now relegated to someone who will be remembered most for not only dividing a nation, but for circumventing Congress in order to push his personal agenda.

As a student of politics and history, I’ll unfortunately be able to tell my grandchildren that I lived through America’s early 21 century experiment with a lawlessness extremely left-wing president. This man — a self-professed constitutional scholar — is so brazen that he’s openly violating the Constitution he swore to protect. And he’s doing so just a few years after he said he didn’t have the authority to do what he just did on immigration.

[Urzu 7]

The Iraqis wanted us out of their country. You know, their country which we invaded...because WMDs. Only to find no WMDs there whatsoever. And a group like ISIS exists because the Bush administration's war on terror is failing. What they've managed to do with it and the two wars in the middle east is get many Muslims to want to join the jihadist cause. They put a lot of gasoline on that fire. Over the years, there have been many joining that cause that otherwise wouldn't have. We have suppressed terrorism, yes, but I don't think this war on terror can be won in the long term. I think that once we have started it, it will have to continually go on, and it might financially exhaust us. Oh btw, more than half of that 17-18 trillion debt we have is the fault of the republicans. When Clinton resigned, we had a surplus.

See, this is the kind of fuck ups from the Bush administration. But sure, Obama is terrible, just like George W. ...

Would you rather have had McCain? I don't think I would. He believes we should have had ground troops in Libya and Syria. Awesome, so if he was elected, maybe we would still be in Iraq in 2014, as well as still being in Afghanistan, and possibly being in Libya and Syria, too. U.S. troops in 4 countries. That'd be swell. Also, we are still in Afghanistan because the Bush administration had us go in there with no viable exit strategy.

And nothing has been getting done in Washington because the GOP has opposed everything Obama has been for. Lately tea partiers even tried to oppose net neutrality just because Obama supported it (and only started opposing it as soon as Obama voiced support for it).

Fun fact: A study showed that many Americans who opposed Obamacare because they are uninformed or are influenced by the GOP and their rhetoric...actually like many things about Obamacare. People were informed about healthcare policies (directly from Obamacare), and told to share their opinions and views on them...without being told it was from (specifically) "Obamacare". Like I said, many of these people liked what they were informed about. Then it was revealed to them that they are policies found in Obamacare. Funny, they hate Obamacare so much...tell them about some of the things actually found in it and omit the term "Obamacare" and many said people like it. Hmm...

[Triple_R]

I don't intend to discuss this Obama vs. Republicans debate much, because I think both major political parties in America have made some terrible decisions over the last decade or so. However, this little game does look like it could be fun/interesting.

My guesses - Quote 1 is conservative/Republican. Quote 2 is liberal/Democrat. Quote 3 is libertarian.

[Hiss13]

Forgive my earlier rhetoric. I try to stay away from politics but when I don't I usually get very fired up.

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

A study showed that many Americans who opposed Obamacare because they are uninformed or are influenced by the GOP and their rhetoric...actually like many things about Obamacare. People were informed about healthcare policies (directly from Obamacare), and told to share their opinions and views on them...without being told it was from (specifically) "Obamacare". Like I said, many of these people liked what they were informed about. Then it was revealed to them that they are policies found in Obamacare. Funny, they hate Obamacare so much...tell them about some of the things actually found in it and omit the term "Obamacare" and many said people like it. Hmm...

Obama Derangement Syndrome?

[Urzu 7]

Let's all move it to the U.S. Politics thread before mods freak out.

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthre...117906&page=68

[Bri]

Originally Posted by germanturkey

for healthcare: how many of you guys are actually signing up for it and experiencing it first hand? i'll tell you its not cheap. having graduated recently with an MS and looking for full time employment, i have no choice but to start looking at plans. though i'll say that paying the fine for one year seems like a great idea, considering the cheapest plan i currently qualify for is $200. good luck getting someone who is working part time or unemployed to pay for that. lets not forget that to pay for itself, around 14 million people need to sign up and they haven't come close to hitting that number. 14 million is ~5% of 300 million. we can't even get that many people to get on board. which leads me to a second question: how many people here would actively want to pay for someone else's medical care? like if you could individually sponsor someone else's medical needs, would you (on your current pay)? no? thought so. if people actually thought this way, we would have passed it with bipartisan support, instead of the way it passed. also, pretty much every GOP candidate that won this november ran on the premise of repealing obamacare. this stance is not without backing.

The taxpayer and the insured have always picked up the tab for other people's medical care though public hospitals and Emtala.

Regardless whether Obama care is effective or not, the situation where the uninsured and underinsured depend on ER care is extremely inefficient and raises the medical care costs for everyone. Health insurance premiums don't tell the entire story as much of the cost of uncompensated care remains hidden through public spending and higher prices by care providers.

The majority of voters always wants to have their cake and eat it.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by germanturkey

which leads me to a second question: how many people here would actively want to pay for someone else's medical care? like if you could individually sponsor someone else's medical needs, would you (on your current pay)? no? thought so.

Is that directed at Americans or anybody in general? Because lots people in my country kinda already do that anyway, and we don't exactly begrudge it either.

[maplehurry]

It's a general libertarian sentiment that can apply to alot of other things.

"How many people here would actively want to pay for someone else's education? "

It's framed from a Libertarian perspective that it's simply not the most convincing counterpoint to those who are not libertarian because they have a different set of belief/priority.

To a libertarian, it's them being forced to pay for someone's else expenses. To others, for example, it's "human right", or it's "estimated" to be more efficient for the well-being of the society as a whole etc.

So it's not as simple as just saying "so you support UHC but I also hear you ain't charitable... GotCha !! "

[SaintessHeart]

The End of China’s Economic Miracle?

On a trip to China in 2009, I climbed to the top of a 13-story pagoda in the industrial hub of Changzhou, not far from Shanghai, and scanned the surroundings. Construction cranes stretched across the smoggy horizon, which looked yellow in the sun. My son Daniel, who was teaching English at a local university, told me, “Yellow is the color of development.”

During my time in Beijing as a Journal reporter covering China’s economy, starting in 2011, China became the world’s No. 1 trader, surpassing the U.S., and the world’s No. 2 economy, topping Japan. Economists say it is just a matter of time until China’s GDP becomes the world’s largest.

This period also has seen China’s Communist Party name a powerful new general secretary, Xi Jinping , who pronounced himself a reformer, issued a 60-point plan to remake China’s economy and launched a campaign to cleanse the party of corruption. The purge, his admirers told me, would frighten bureaucrats, local politicians and executives of state-owned mega companies—the Holy Trinity of vested interests—into supporting Mr. Xi’s changes.

So why, on leaving China at the end of a nearly four-year assignment, am I pessimistic about the country’s economic future? When I arrived, China’s GDP was growing at nearly 10% a year, as it had been for almost 30 years—a feat unmatched in modern economic history. But growth is now decelerating toward 7%. Western business people and international economists in China warn that the government’s GDP statistics are accurate only as an indication of direction, and the direction of the Chinese economy is plainly downward. The big questions are how far and how fast.

My own reporting suggests that we are witnessing the end of the Chinese economic miracle. We are seeing just how much of China’s success depended on a debt-powered housing bubble and corruption-laced spending. The construction crane isn’t necessarily a symbol of economic vitality; it can also be a symbol of an economy run amok.

Most of the Chinese cities I visited are ringed by vast, empty apartment complexes whose outlines are visible at night only by the blinking lights on their top floors. I was particularly aware of this on trips to the so-called third- and fourth-tier cities—the 200 or so cities with populations ranging from 500,000 to several million, which Westerners rarely visit but which account for 70% of China’s residential property sales.

From my hotel window in the northeastern Chinese city of Yingkou, for example, I could see empty apartment buildings stretching for miles, with just a handful of cars driving by. It made me think of the aftermath of a neutron-bomb detonation—the structures left standing but no people in sight.

The situation has become so bad in Handan, a steel center about 300 miles south of Beijing, that a middle-aged investor, fearing that a local developer wouldn’t be able to make his promised interest payments, threatened to commit suicide in dramatic fashion last summer. After hearing similar stories of desperation, city officials reminded residents that it is illegal to jump off the tops of buildings, local investors said. Handan officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

For the past 20 years, real estate has been a major driver of Chinese economic growth. In the late 1990s, the party finally allowed urban Chinese to own their own homes, and the economy soared. People poured their life savings into real estate. Related industries like steel, glass and home electronics grew until real estate accounted for one-fourth of China’s GDP, maybe more.

Debt paid for the boom, including borrowing by governments, developers and all manner of industries. This summer, the International Monetary Fund noted that over the past 50 years, only four countries have experienced as rapid a buildup of debt as China during the past five years. All four—Brazil, Ireland, Spain and Sweden—faced banking crises within three years of their supercharged credit growth.

China followed Japan and South Korea in using exports to pull itself out of poverty. But China’s immense scale has now become a limitation. As the world’s largest exporter, how much more growth can it count on from trade with the U.S. and especially Europe? Shift the economy toward innovation? That is the mantra of every advanced economy, but China’s rivals have a big advantage: Their societies encourage free thought and idiosyncratic beliefs.

When I talked to Chinese college students, I would ask them about their plans. Why, I wondered, in an economy with seemingly limitless potential, did so few choose to become entrepreneurs? According to researchers in the U.S. and China, engineering students at Stanford were seven times as likely as those at the most elite Chinese universities to join startups.

One interview with an environmental engineering student at Tsinghua University stuck with me. His parents grew wealthy by building companies that made shoes and water pumps. But he had no desire to follow in their footsteps—and they didn’t want him to either. Better that he work for the state, they told him: The work was more secure, and perhaps he could wind up in a government position that could help the family business.

Will Mr. Xi’s campaign reverse China’s slowdown or at least limit it? Perhaps. It follows the standard recipe of Chinese reformers: remake the financial system so that it encourages risk-taking, break up monopolies to create a bigger role for private enterprise, rely more on domestic consumption.

But even powerful Chinese leaders have trouble enforcing their will. I reported earlier this year on the government’s plan to handle one straightforward problem: reducing excess steel production in Hebei, the province that surrounds Beijing. Hebei alone produces twice as much crude steel as the U.S., but China no longer needs so much steel, to say nothing of the emissions that darken the skies over Beijing. Mr. Xi weighed in by warning local officials that they would no longer be judged simply on increasing GDP; meeting environmental goals would count too.

In late 2013, Hebei staged an event called “Operation Sunday.” Officials sent demolition squads to destroy blast furnaces, and imploding mills made great TV on the 7 p.m. news. But it turned out that the destroyed mills had long been out of production, so blowing them up didn’t affect output. Indeed, China’s steel industry is on track for record production this year.

In China, I have learned, yellow isn’t just the color of development. It is also the color of a setting sun.

[Bri]

Originally Posted by maplehurry

It's a general libertarian sentiment that can apply to alot of other things.

Surprisingly libertarians never complain about other people paying for them. You never hear them say, "if my savings and credit don't cover my treatment please let me die".

[maplehurry]

Originally Posted by Bri

Surprisingly libertarians never complain about other people paying for them. You never hear them say, "if my savings and credit don't cover my treatment please let me die".

AIG/GM would be a better example.

And even then, they are obviously not true libertarians.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by germanturkey

i'll say that paying the fine for one year seems like a great idea, considering the cheapest plan i currently qualify for is $200. good luck getting someone who is working part time or unemployed to pay for that.

Let's look at some comparative figures. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that the average employer-based insurance plan cost the employer $16,800 per year of which the employee contributed $4,800. That works out to $400 per month for the employee contribution.

The best information on individual premiums in the private market comes from 2010, when the nationwide average was $215. The range across states was considerable, from $136 in Alabama to $437 in Massachusetts. That figure has surely increased over the past four years, and KFF notes that the rates for single individuals are usually higher than that average.

http://kff.org/health-costs/report/2...nefits-survey/
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator...dual-premiums/

Do you live in a state where the Republicans have not rejected Medicaid subsidies? Given your income and employment status, you may well be eligible. If your state doesn't offer subsidies, maybe you should consider blaming your state government rather than the Obama Administration.

[GuZidi]

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/893251.shtml

Markets have welcomed the central bank's latest interest rate cut, a move analysts said Sunday will help to stabilize economic growth in several areas, such as boosting home sales and reducing financing costs for businesses.

The People's Bank of China (PBC) cut the one-year benchmark lending rate by 40 basis points to 5.6 percent on Friday, and lowered the one-year benchmark deposit rate by 25 basis points to 2.75 percent. The interest rate cut was to take effect from Saturday, the PBC said in a statement Friday.

"The lending rate cut will bolster the property market in the short term," Zhang Hongwei, research director at Shanghai-based property consultancy ToSpur, told the Global Times via e-mail Sunday.

Zhang said home sales are likely to rebound in the next few months, because the reduced cost of housing loans will attract more homebuyers.

Jia Ningfang, a 30-year-old white-collar worker, who is planning to buy an apartment in Beijing with a budget of around 3 million yuan ($489,000), said the rate cut will help by reducing her borrowing costs.

Jia plans to buy an apartment with a 20-year adjustable-rate mortgage from a commercial bank for a total loan of 1 million yuan in January.

"The monthly mortgage payments for me will be about 230 yuan less than the amount before the interest rate cut," Jia said.

The interest rate on loans of more than five years for people who purchase apartments by using the public housing provident fund will be reduced by 0.25 percentage points to 4.25 percent, the Beijing housing provident fund management center said Saturday.

Despite the stimulus measures and the short-term boost for the property market, in the long term the issue of oversupply in the market, especially in second- and third-tier cities, "will still be a factor," said Zhang of ToSpur.

In addition to the property sector, "the stock market will benefit from the central bank's move," Li Daxiao, director of research with Shenzhen-based Yingda Securities Co, told the Global Times Sunday.

The move will also help "to ease the downward pressure on the economy, and reduce financing costs for firms," Liu Dongliang, a senior analyst at China Merchants Bank, told the Global Times via e-mail Sunday.

China has set a 7.5 percent growth target for the year, but the country's top leaders have also stressed publicly that they could tolerate slower growth as long as the job market is stable.

The country's GDP grew by 7.3 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, the weakest pace of growth in more than five years, official data showed.

In addition to the interest rate cut, the PBC said it would allow banks to pay depositors a maximum of 1.2 times the benchmark rate, up from the previous ceiling of 1.1 times, a move Liu said was part of the effort to offer more market-oriented interest rates.

To attract deposits, Chinese commercial banks on Saturday started to adjust their deposit and lending rates, according to analysis of their statements and announcements by the Xinhua News Agency.

Some mid-sized banks including Industrial Bank, China Minsheng Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank offered deposit rates of 3.025 percent, about 1.1 times the benchmark rate of 2.75 percent.

Deposit rates at smaller banks like Bank of Ningbo and Bank of Nanjing, which have fewer branches but face bigger pressure to attract deposits, are even higher at 3.3 percent, 1.2 times the benchmark, according to Xinhua.

Meanwhile, deposit rates at the nation's five biggest State-owned banks - Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications - are 3 percent, around 1.09 times the benchmark rate.

Although Chinese banks are expected to face shrinking net interest margins in the wake of the central bank's latest rate cut, they are still likely to benefit from the move in the long run, Wang Tao, head of China Economic Research at UBS Securities, said in a research note e-mailed to the Global Times late Friday.

"Interest rate cuts will reduce the debt servicing burden and improve corporate cash flow and balance sheets, which should help to slow the formation of nonperforming loans and reduce overall financial risk," Wang explained.

[Xellos-_^]

Australia and New Zealand are not among the usual suspects when it comes to state suppression of civil liberties. But both countries, stung by Edward J. Snowden’s revelations last year about their intelligence-gathering efforts, have been cracking down on the press: Australia has passed sweeping secrecy laws, while police officers in New Zealand recently raided the home of a reporter who had published information regarding a government scandal.
There has been little international outcry, and Washington is hardly likely to be upset: The two countries harbor the only major intelligence gathering facilities for the National Security Agency in the Southern Hemisphere, and, along with Britain, Canada and the United States, are members of the intelligence-sharing arrangement known as the “Five Eyes.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/op...f=opinion&_r=0

maybe the tinfoil hat ppl were right about the new world order that is coming. or is it already here?

[Xellos-_^]

TOKYO — Japan’s biggest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, has apologized to its readers for using the term “sex slaves” and “other inappropriate expressions” to describe the women forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.
The conservative paper instead used the more euphemistic term “comfort women” in its apology.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...047_story.html

japan is probably it is own worst enemy when trying to normalize relation with the rest of Aisa.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

japan is probably it is own worst enemy when trying to normalize relation with the rest of Aisa.

I interpret that more as a sign of their conservatism. They are not denying that certain things happened, but some words are still taboo in print.

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

I interpret that more as a sign of their conservatism. They are not denying that certain things happened, but some words are still taboo in print.

But the rest of Asia won't care about their petty "conservatism," and that's a problem. More importantly, the rest of Asia has a point. What the fuck are they apologizing about? Offending the sensitivities of arrogant old sexist racist Japanese men? What about the sensitivities of the surviving sex slaves? Or their countries? Because it is the biggest newspaper, and moreover the biggest conservative newspaper, the Yomiuri should have taken a stand and truly open up dialogue the way the Asahi Shimbun (even without the taint of scandal) could not. But nobody expects such things as courage from the corporate bureaucrats of Japan.

Too bad the Asahi's fuckup is being exploited by Japanese nationalists to maximum effect to the detriment of all. I don't expect Mr. Abe and his party to take progressive measures to improve Japan's social condition, whether for its minorities, its women, its young and elderly, its parents, or its salarymen, but he should really be spending his time in worthier pursuits like saving the economy and finding solutions to the nuclear power conundrum.

The LDP has always been a coalition between self-proclaimed "pragmatic" men of policy and the nationalist scum who often quite literally inherited the blood of war criminals. It seems every LDP prime minister must somehow appease its darker side at the cost of normalized relations with the rest of Asia, or worse, they believe it.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Why should Japan care about normalising relations with the rest of Asia? Korea doesn't care and China doesn't care, both benefit from the anger politically.

[Irenicus]

Why shouldn't they care? For starters they have very close trading relationships at very high volumes with these countries, which are impacted every time there's a conflagration of this sort. For another nobody needs more tensions in East Asia, despite what the nationalists in each of the three countries want -- and by nobody this applies to everyone who participates in the global economy in some form.

And then there's the decency thing. To be sure, that's not a very high priority for the power-brokers playing the geopolitical game, but Japan really is utterly terrible at convincing the world that it is able to come to terms with the war legacy, including the crimes against these women, who were most certainly sex slaves. There were many, many apologies made on the various issues of contention, some of which deeply heartfelt and genuine -- and just about every one of those were backtracked or screwed up by successors or other politicians who. just. couldn't. keep. their. filthy. mouths. shut. Diplomatic incompetence of the highest order, and in itself an ugly legacy of allowing Japan's nationalist faction to survive un-purged from the Second World War.

Finally, the Yomiuri Shimbun is a newspaper. If its journalists, though in this case more of its editorial board, believe in the notion of journalistic integrity, that the role of journalism is to bring about open civic dialogue, then they should have had nothing to apologize for just for using the *right* term to describe the nature of the crime inflicted upon those women, and everything to apologize for on behalf of this cowardly, muddled, pointless apology that seems almost aimed to escalate the "shame" of the Asahi Shimbun, its rival.

[TheForsaken]

Who are still angry with Japan other than China and Korea?
I doubt two countries can represent "the rest of Asia", much less "the world".