What's crazy is that since Reagan the GOP is also fine with increased gov spending, among a host of other increasingly authoritarian policies.*

So no longer can they even claim to be anti government corruption & spending, and pro business & 'freedom.' They just appear to be 'anti people.'

But please don't pretend the Dems are a whole lot better on most of these issues... I really hope our generation can work together and do something about this failing two-party system.

*a short list: domestic surveillance, police militarization, civil forfeiture, anti net netruality, military expansion, pro Wall St, hand outs to healthcare lobbysits, etc..

> But please don't pretend the Dems are a whole lot better on most of these issues... I really hope our generation can work together and do something about this failing two-party system.

Paying attention and voting accordingly is a pretty good solution. Unfortunately, almost no one does that (and it tends to be even worse at the local level).

Thanks for reminding me to go vote today ;)

> They are just anti people.

Correction: anti-poor people.

> Correction: anti-poor people.

Correction: anti-middle class people. They can't extract any money from the poor, and clearly not from the rich, so guess who's left?

Actually, exploiting the poor is a rather lucrative business for the rich: check cashing, rent-to-own furniture, trailer parks, etc. https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2013/09/17/maki...

Don't forget about using collection agencies to collect local government fines. Like, how a $30 parking ticket eventually turns into $1000 and ruined credit.

Oh for sure. That’s where the intersection with the court system comes in. Harsh laws and court minutiae are extremely harmful to the poor and help keep people in the cycle of poverty.

You are both right. They exploit the poor by extracting from the middle. Meanwhile, the rich have moved their assets offshore or into anonymous properties.

> But please don't pretend the Dems are a whole lot better on most of these issues

They are, and people can demand they be better still.

> these clauses preventing class action lawsuits seem baseless to me.

I'd go even further and say corrupt and evil. Yet these baseless clauses have been around long before the modern GOP, so while I agree with your sentiment, I'd broaden it from "GOP" to "greedy corporates and their government puppets from any political party."

While you're right, Dems recieve a lot of Wall Street cash and do their bidding often, here all D's voted against it.[0] Both are "corrupted" to use your words but I'd say one is "worse" at least on this one issue.

[0] And yes, most did it for political reasons I imagine.

To expound on your [0], remember that Republicans voted on repealing Obamacare when they knew it was going to be vetoed, but once they were actually in control, suddenly they didn't have enough votes.

Except the democrats were the ones who put in these rules in the first place.

… and that’s true on almost every issue of importance (climate change, healthcare, etc.). The main exception is deference to national security agencies on things like encryption or detention.

Nitpick: my word was "corrupt", not "corrupted".

This easily could have been an issue raised during a Democratic majority congress and passed with the same story. After all, everybody hates lawyers that get rich while class members get a coupon.

It's not about the issue.

You may complain that class-action lawyers get much more money than the plaintiffs, but that's the nature of class actions. They are meant for situations where many indiviuals are harmed, but each harm is too small to justify the cost of a court case. So naturally the plaintiffs get small payouts: each of them suffered a small damage. And the lawyers get big payouts: they handled the paperwork of thousands of clients.

> They are meant for situations where many indiviuals are harmed, but each harm is too small to justify the cost of a court case.

Don't they also get used for cases where (spitballing here) half a town gets cancer because the chemical plant in the area has been illegal dumping their effluents next door?

Those cancer victims aren't getting coupons

I wasn't actually saying class actions are bad, but that it makes a workable political excuse.

Democrats passed the law that created the agency Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

And yet, this particular law was opposed by all Democrats in the Senate and was supported by every Republican except two. It passed due to Mike Pence's tie-breaking vote.

Take a look at how many YC backed companies have arb clauses in consumer contracts. It's not just a GOP problem.

You missed the point. It's a GOP problem because of the legislation. Companies will do what they can to strengthen their bottom line, and no one is claiming they are morally bankrupt because of it.

I've argued before, though, that I can't fault companies for using them. When someone hands you a get-out-of-jail-free card, you take that thing and hold on to it. It would be a special kind of lunatic who wouldn't.

The logic is this: "Look, you just need to add this handful of lines to your agreement, and you've instantly got protection against money-grubbing, ambulance-chasing lawyers who would come after you because you misplaced a parenthesis. The cost is nearly zero, because nobody reads those contracts anyway, and anybody who makes a stink about it is probably one of those money-grubbing, sue-happy customers you don't want, anyway."

So, yeah. I get it. I hate it, but I get it. To change it is going to require a consumer backlash large enough to impact congress -- not just the CFPB. But consumers aren't making enough noise, because of course, nobody reads those contracts anyway...

Why can't I fault them for using a decidedly evil clause? These companies are run by people, who are fully capable of knowing right from wrong.

You're a customer, then, and as a customer I completely agree with you.

But as an investor in the same company, I would fault them for not taking a simple step to protect their profits. Just because you include the clause doesn't mean that you're going to do evil and exercise it. Again, I can't fault you for taking the get-out-of-jail-free card that's offered. But I fault you mightily for doing something that would require flashing that card.

The fact that the card exists at all seems like the root problem to be fixed.

Again, I'm not buying it. Investors are also people, who are also capable of knowing right from wrong. I absolutely will fault them for taking evil steps to make profit at the expense of others.

And I disagree. Including the clause indicates your willingness to be evil in exercising it.

The fact that the card exists is absolutely a problem that exists and needs to be fixed. But you had the option to take it or not, and you chose to take it. That in itself is an evil step.

This idea that you can shield companies from any and all morality by crying about investors needs to die. It's absurd.

> I've argued before, though, that I can't fault companies for using them.

You can and should. So should I. If consumers refused to sign they wouldn't put them in.

Unfortunately we don't live in a world that allows us to easily do that (unless you want to live without a phone, internet, a car, etc...). So that's why the government needs to step in. It doesn't make these companies any less scummy for using the clause.

Even if you argue that both sides are bad, the GOP is still seems clearly worse given that the they are rolling back the (little) things the democrats did.

>This only highlights the moral emptiness and naked corruption of the modern GOP.

So surely you're just as angry about the Democrats deregulating the telecoms in 1996 and allowing companies to own entire vertical chains. (Comcast owns everything from the News, to the pipe you get it from. Ever notice how they never mention "big corporations are killing America" anymore?)

The GOP hates you. The Democrats _pretend_ not to. If that weren't the case, you'd think 8 years under Obama and near-universal public support behind him... things would have actually you know... gotten better.

Too bad they were too busy letting Wall Street destroy the economy without jailtime, giving guns to Mexican cartels, spying on and threatening journalists, drone strikes on US citizens, unprecedented exponential growth in classified documents (cover my ass, anyone?), using the IRS as a political wing, and hunting down and smearing both Snowden and Julian Assange. (Props for the ACA, though. Except that also had no provision to stop healthcare insurance companies rapidly increasing, insane prices that make even ACA plans unaffordable to poor people--I would know. Minimum of $350 a month isn't a viable healthcare plan, as it continues to rise ~10% a year. But fixing pre-existing conditions was About Damn Time(TM), so again, props to them.)

p.s. I voted for Obama, so yeah, I do get to bitch about the disparity between what he said, and what he did.

The attempt to equivocate the two parties - particularly Obama and the modern GOP - is so unreasonable that it's barely worth rebutting. The fact that Democrats take actions that are inappropriate or sponsored by lobbyists doesn't automatically make them the same.

Things did get better under Obama, in many ways. To pretend otherwise by focusing on areas that didn't get better is again unreasonable. Things are getting dramatically, markedly worse under a president who is essentially pushing standard-issue GOP agenda items. This article alone is evidence of that. Little effort need be expended for more examples.

And, for what it's worth, I'm not a straight-ticket voter.

*Edited for tone.

> So surely you're just as angry about the Democrats deregulating the telecoms in 1996 and allowing companies to own entire vertical chains.

Looks like that was a bi-partisan effort, but with more Democrats opposing it than Republicans. Senators who voted for the act: 51 Republicans, 30 Democrats. Senators opposed: 2 Republicans, 16 Democrats (one Republican senator didn't vote).[1]

House members who voted for the act: 236 Republicans, 178 Democrats. House members opposed: 0 Republicans, 15 Democrats (four Democratic house members didn't vote).[2]

[1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/104-1995/s268 [2] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/104-1996/h25

178 House democrats vote for it and you're acting like they opposed it? While Bill Clinton signed it into law?

HK: When logic and facts fail and you completely lose an argument, use the downvote button.

> letting Wall Street destroy the economy without jailtime

The 2007-8 crash was somewhat before Obama's time.

> giving guns to Mexican cartels

Started under Bush.

> spying on and threatening journalists

Started decades before Obama.

> unprecendented exponetial growth in classified documents

That needs a citation.

> using the IRS as a political wing

Unless I'm reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy wrong, this was a natural (and requested) response to Citizens United and Republicans abusing 501(c)(4) entities.

> hunting down and smearing [...] Julian Assange

It is extremely difficult to smear a neo-nazi misogynist more than he already does by his own words.

> It is extremely difficult to smear a neo-nazi misogynist more than he already does by his own words.

I think Assange is a self-serving hypocrite, but calling him that seems pretty extreme.

Well, to be fair, "neo-nazi" is less by his own words and more by the people he pals around with and supports. But "misogynist" is a trivial proof if you look at his Twitter output.

>The 2007-8 crash was somewhat before Obama's time.

Not the jailtime, and not the Obama negotiations with Wall Street. Do you ever watch Frontline... or Google?

>Started under Bush.

Misnomer. It started under bush, and a second, LARGER program started under Obama. Google it.

>Started decades before Obama.

Wrong. Look up the unprecedented demands of Obama for news companies to reveal their anon sources.

>That needs a citation.

God damn, have you ever heard of Google? Or are you just afraid of finding out something?

https://nsarchive.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/classified.png

> neo-nazi misogynist

As usual, use a character attack when you don't have the logic to win.

You can really tell when someone's ego is on the line when they refuse to even check your facts before attempting to refute them with "I haven't seen it, so it must be wrong."

>p.s. I voted for Obama, so yeah, I do get to bitch about the disparity between what he said, and what he did.

While I understand this sentiment, you have to understand that it is also necessary to try and inspire people even if you know that you probably won't get everything you want to get done. You can hope that people will act intelligently in their own self-interest and know that you are the best candidate for them, but in reality I don't think that is enough, you have to inspire people and work their emotions. It is manipulative but also, unfortunately, necessary. Given what Obama had on his plate and a totally oppositional congress for the most part, we can't really complain. He tried to be bipartisan and it was a waste of effort for the most part, yeah he could have been better in theory but in reality I'm not so sure.