ColoNoCoHusker

So what can we do? Honest absolutely non-cynical question - I'm calling my public officials, sending post cards and letters to my congress and senate members, marching in protest, donating to ACLU and PP as well as others locally - what are you all doing that I can join? What can we be doing better or more of? Find ways to create awareness. All the activities you mention are awesome and you are doing more than most. The only thing I could add is find a way to educate and recruit others. Help those that believe they have no voice to realize they can be heard. Whether this is volunteering for a political group or something else. In our current social & political climate, anyone that can be marginalized will be. Empowering people in one area of their life almost always flows to other areas. Any entity that needs money can probably also use your time. My passion is typically for education-related programs for the underprivileged & underrepresented. The state education dept, local schools, and colleges all typically some type of volunteers in this regard. Your interest may vary. It boils down to participation, education, and vigilance... You are doing great in this regard.

I think I caught part of that segment. A lower working class rural man mentioned something to the effect that the wealthy are so punished and overburdened by their tax liability in this country. It's astounding that working class folks actually think the wealthy have any interest other than continuing to exploit the bottom 80-85% of this country.

One tweet and over 8,620 followers. He's been adding about 3-4 followers per minute for most of the evening. He'll exceed 10k followers easy.

Just like Jedi could be singular/plural, "last" can be final OR most recent. I am going with latter interpretation for now (like last night, last year) as that's the safest until there's a trailer. ;-)

Whitehouse.gov has been running on Drupal forever. There are 3 or 4 ways to handle multiple languages without ever doing any coding or needing IT support. Same with tools for the impaired. They probably spent more effort/time undoing these changes on the site than it would have taken to maintain them moving forward... I actually had to double-check the tech stack. It's still running Drupal but Trump's staff downgraded the version for some reason. Typically this is a very bad idea with CMS' but especially the exploits in Drupal 7. It's almost like they want the website to be hacked.

FYI, I'm changing my title to #BeefRef this year. FIFY

Item 9 possibly... Not sure who to believe, the lying AP media or the trustworthy Russian government... https://www.apnews.com/42a8e9a31cbd48ef9213de19dd4e5d63/The-Latest:-US-denies-Russian-claim-of-Syria-coordination?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP

Great article from last summer comparing Trump to Taylor and the impact on the latter's party. Will be interesting to see how it plays out... http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/history-campaign-politics-zachary-taylor-killed-whigs-political-party-213935

Trump will not be impeached by a Republican Congress. The fallout & precedent created would equate to Politicide. This would be equally true if Dem's were in control of POTUS & Congress. Look at the Presidential corruption through the 1800s from any party, and it has ALWAYS taken an opposing party to even initiate impeachment. Short of Trump being a complete and true fascist, the Republican Congress has a path to come out on top in most any scenario without ever going down the impeachment path. Congress can check him, fight him, censure him, limit or suspend certain POTUS powers (there is a precedent), navigate around him, etc. I think this could facilitate the GOP's Congressional agenda as much impeachment without nearly as much risk or fallout. I think Trump makes a lot of the Republicans in Congress appear to be more reasonable/centrist without them moving at all. This aspect of Trump is, I think, horribly understated...

Thanks Knapplc! Not to draw it out, but one of the biggest factors was hyperinflation and a fragile economy backed by foreign loans creating a lot of boom/bust cycles in the 1920s/1930s for Germany. Before Hitler came to power, Hindenburg routinely disbanded the Reichstag. It was barely a republic to begin with and a very weak one at best. I think there are some fair comparisons between Trump and any fascist leaders rise to power. Hitler & Hitler's Germany, while the most sensational and well-studied, are not quite the most apt comparison. I would say Mussolini or Franco are more appropriate for comparison to this point...

The fact that so many claim it doesn't exist allows it to continue. What gets me most fired up is the father of girls who claim it's not an issue. I could point to many examples where a male colleague who has less tenure and experience than I is making more. It used to be openly discussed that this was happening because "he has a family to support". At least that insulting reasoning has stopped being spouted. But maybe that was part of the PC culture and it will be coming back. That to me is the most frustrating. When talking wage imbalance, so many men trot out the "this woman makes more than me" line. If you look at similar job/experience and compare pay on gender, the gap is there pretty clearly. What is interesting to me is we are not talking about taking money from men; we are talking about paying woman comparably. BB you are a good dad. I really appreciate the fact that you have kept an open mind, and are thinking ahead as to how the world can and will impact your girls in the future. They will certainly experience oppression as a woman - whether that's the subliminal "girls are no good at math and science" during their high school years or some of the indirect (and direct) offenses that we experience in the work place, sadly they'll face it. Hopefully it will continue to decrease in frequency, it certainly has during my lifetime, but having the confidence to speak up, and to know that they're loved and valued by you, and that they are deserving - they'll be ready to face adversity and not let it slow them down. In jr high/middle school/high school, it's way more than subliminal. I commonly run into this bias by male & female teachers... It is typically a situation where a male student struggles in math/science and is told he just needs to work harder; female student struggles and is told maybe math/science isn't her strong suit. Never mind the females' math/science achievement test scores are out of the park. It's not overtly explicit but it's closer to that than subliminal... In working for VC, we did a lot research into compensation demographics. We typically saw more equal pay overall in startups but the pay & opportunity imbalance was still striking. In IT, there were a couple areas where women were on par but that was about it. The items I found most interesting from these studies (beyond the obvious pay gap): In knowledge work positions, women were typically given their first management opportunity at a slightly earlier age than men. Women's first management opportunity typically lasted half as long as a man's First time male managers were offered extended training that first time female managers would typically have to formally request Women who "failed" in management were almost always fired Men who "failed" in management were most likely to be demoted and moved to another department instead of being fired Men in management typically were requested to meet with their leadership twice as often as women Women in management were almost as likely to have a meeting with HR as with their boss Of candidates who agreed to compensation packages PRIOR to an offer - Men were 3x as likely to ask for more $ after the offer and were 2x as likely to receive it. We compiled this data over thousands of companies encompassing tens of thousands of employees. Even grouping by company these tendencies stood out. I interpret the above as, in general, women are not just getting hosed when it comes to pay. Corporate America prefers to set women up to fail to reinforce its misogynistic bias.

I was looking at that on Reddit earlier. Found it interesting. In Denver, expected turnout was ~40k, actual was 108k+ and counting... Amazing turnout in Denver and extremely low arrests. Denver Post reported something like 3 or so... Here's the Reddit thread with discussion which is cool as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5pg8oy/percentage_of_each_states_population_that/

Freudian slip... It has been corrected!

Please, please, please won't you help?!? All it will take is a moment of your time... Do not let HuskerBoard down! JJ needs all of us! Petition and bring JJHusker1 back where he belongs... https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/free-jjhusker1-on-huskerboardcom

There was no poll! Cannot have a name change of this magnitude without a poll! Anarchy I tell ya, pure anarchy... Ah RIP JJHusker1, we hardly knew ye... EDIT: If you want to make HuskerBoard great again, please sign the petition to rollback this horrible, horrible change: https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/free-jjhusker1-on-huskerboardcom

I agree the majority of those that showed up for the protests voted in the national election. Last numbers I saw were ~53% of voting age population cast a ballot. That was about ~137 million with ~54% being women. Of the ~74 million women that voted, ~50 million voted non-Republican. The percentages may be off by 1-2%... Functionally Trump was elected by ~25% of the voting age population. This has been the unfortunate case for several decades. I really thought we could eclipse 60% VAP turnout but voter apathy has become very ingrained in this country.

While not a school shooting, the Aurora theater shooting involving the CU student is an interesting case. This person confided in psych staff/counselors with CU Medical School about some of his demented thoughts. He was kicked out of school and was identified as a direct threat to himself & the community. The school failed to properly warn authorities as was their legal obligation. Yet somehow, CU has escaped accountability while the theater has undergone numerous lawsuits. How CU Medical staff have not lost their license and CU Medical School has not been found criminally negligent is beyond me...

I posted in the comments while you were creating the thread... I more or less agree with your last comment TTRR and I wish I had a better answer overall. I think mental illness is poorly treated/accepted/identified in this country and is way behind physical medicine. Beyond that, I think it is a complex intersection of issues. Anyone that tries to dig deeper gets caught in a political fog. At a minimum there are sociological, psychological, physiological, and technological components. I think it is to our society's everlasting discredit that we do not expend more effort to actually remedy these types of situations. I have two neighbors that were staff at Columbine when that situation occurred. When I speak with them, I realize how little we have progressed since then. From the outside looking in, there is a stigma attached to many of the faculty/staff victims and community that is unwarranted. Thus my comments about blaming the local area rather than recognize this is a systemic and at least national issue...

Yes, with the cut the fund would have been completely solvent. The argument is nonsense as the math doesn't support it. Those arguing it are the same people that OK our federal government spending $30k on a hammer ;-) I think Obama was trying to do a number of things. Passing on the savings to these people; keeping the mortgage market competitive and honest; incentivizing home ownership among 18-32 age group which is at its lowest in the modern era. Home sales are necessary for our economy to thrive. As we remove restrictions to negative lending practices, we create a boom/bust cycle which hurts the bottom 85% of this country. Having the boom without the total bust is possible but only if predatory and exploitative lending practices are kept in check... By repealing this, Trump is enabling the lenders to make more money off of consumers if not completely take advantage of this segment. I do not know why the media is not focusing on this piece. Harder headline to sell maybe?

I thought I read NM was doing that as well (respect)!. I agree this is great on so many levels and so many different ways! I do hope we (our populace) can keep up the focus and participation as things go the direction it appears they will. Hopefully these activities will expand to encompass fighting the entirety of the disenfranchisement agenda of DJT's alt-right administration. People participating like this is the necessary first step to ensuring the Bill of Rights and Constitutional equality applies everyone, imo.

Not a DJT fan but if he was going to roll it back, it had to be done right away. It was undoing Obama's last cut in FHA mortgage insurance. FHA loans are most popularly used to facilitate purchasing a home with less than 20% down. The insurance is a percentage of the interest rate. When rates went up, Obama implemented a cut so that insurance wouldn't increase. By removing the insurance decrease, it makes traditional mortgages more competitive in this space. Traditional mortgages are way more profitable for lenders than FHA loans; also a lot more risk. A large component of the last housing recession was exploitative lending practices specifically of those who did not have 20% but did not qualify for FHA/other subsidized loans or those who bought too much house. Keeping FHA interest low creates mortgage competition and help keep lenders in check. When FHA interest is high, it facilitates lenders to engage in exploitative lending practices. This has been the cycle since FHA subsidies were introduced in the 1930s...

I am not saying ALL blame goes on the insurance companies. I would say out of all the factors/parties involved, this is the single largest individual contributor that can be changed. Conservatively on the order of 30% of the whole, imo. There is definitely an issue with the actual rising costs of healthcare. However premium increases have outpaced healthcare cost increases for a long time. We have done a number of projects for the largest healthcare insurance providers the past couple years. One thing we found was for every 1.2% increase in healthcare costs, premiums were raised over 3%. This is on the conservative side. The corollary would be for a car manufacturer to build the sales commission into the vehicle price delivered to the car lot. The car lot then adds sales commission into the price of the vehicle on top their margin after delivery. Once the vehicle is sold, they charge commission a third time on top of the price of the vehicle. However, only the first commission calculation is paid to the sales person. No other industry can double to triple stack cost margins the way healthcare insurance does. These insurance providers routinely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save tens of thousands of dollars or less. One of the largest healthcare providers in this country automatically placed 10% of the incoming claims into research status for revenue deferment. This required several hundred staff to handle the call volume created plus numerous additional people to actually research the claim. Given that most claims were small, this was far from cost effective. We could have implemented a software solution for ~$230k that would have attained better revenue deferment with a cost savings to the company on the order of ~$30mil annually. The client could not get past their internal politics to move on it. The waste in the largest healthcare insurance companies is brazen at best and criminal at worst. These companies functionally establish the market premium prices. I have never seen the largest healthcare provider raise premiums without the next 20+ companies doing the same, like dominoes. I could go on with more stories and these examples are the tamest of the bunch. Don't get me wrong, healthcare providers, pharma companies, insured, insurance providers, government, employers, etc all have plenty of blame to share in this. From my perspective though, insurance providers are the least incentivized to improve efficiency and control costs out of all parties involved and it's not even close.

ColoradoHusk forced me to go down memory lane talking about the old days of hitting concerts. In Omaha, I used to hit Ranch Bowl, Lift Ticket, Peony Park, Cog Factory, Sokol, few others I cannot remember. In Lincoln, Duffy's and Drumstick Bar had good music scenes though I do not remember much (alcohol). The shows that I recal vividly: Seeing Nirvana for free at the Lift Ticket with less than 100 people. Showed up by accident. Never liked the band but awesome show. Red Hot Chili Pepper's at the Ranch Bowl. Also at the Ranch Bowl, had a beverage with Mike Watt after Firehose show. Years later, I worked with Ed from Ohio's (lead singer) cousin who happen to be at the same show. He didn't remember me but he recalled an underage kid drinking with the band ;-) Fugazi at Peony Park and hung out with Ian Mackaye afterwards. Straight edge so nothing illegal What's your memory of concerts and/or venues in the area? Hard to believe so many are no longer around...

Good link, thanks for posting it. I had access to referenced Tuft's research data previously and it was interesting to dig through... There was an update on that Tufts report that came out in April (I think) of 2016 that you should take a look at if all you saw was the 2014 version. I believe that was more in-depth analysis on the 2014 data? 2014 release - http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014_cost_study 2016 release - http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/tufts_csdd_rd_cost_study_now_published To put the costs into perspective, there are only ~750 companies on the Fortune 1000 list with gross annual revenue in excess of the per compound cost. Absolutely staggering. "The $2.558 billion figure per approved compound is based on estimated average out-of-pocket costs of $1.395 billion and time costs (expected returns that investors forego while a drug is in development) of $1.163 billion. When post-approval R&D costs of $312 million are included, the full, product lifecycle cost per approved drug, on average, rises to $2.870 billion"