Understanding the US - Again

[drnayar]

Palki Sharma on why Trump should never get the Nobel Prize:
https://youtu.be/gO_OE5G-R_E?si=U7orT0_mjZzox7zd

When a clown moves into a palace he doesn't become a king the palace instead becomes a circus.

[KL Dubey]

AmberG and Vauytuvan,
I suggest not getting triggered by each others posts. Stop replying to each other.

It's getting tiring to see two PhDs on an ego fight.


Ramana

My Rs 200/- ...the above advice is ineffective. E.g., I have entirely blocked this poster and stopped replying to him 1 year ago, but he still sends a barrage of replies to my posts (many times pasting my posts into his reply box). In fact the number of useless replies to my posts from this poster has increased multifold AFTER I blocked him. The issue here is the continued slander and useless comments on other posters who are no longer replying. Plus the constant labeling of posters on US party lines.

Is this how a respected forum should be run ?

Those who do not listen to moderators should be banned, and have no place in this forum. I mean, this is a no-brainer right ? No PhD required of the moderator either.

[A_Gupta]

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 helped Blacks achieve political representation.

In 1965, there were only six Black members of the House and no Black members in the Senate. By the 118th Congress (2023-2025), that number had grown to 60 Black members in the House and four Black senators.....The share of Black representatives in the House of Representatives is approximately equal to the percentage of the US population that is Black (13%).....

The US Supreme Court has chipped away at this legislation over the years, and word on the street is that they are ready to essentially completely do away with it. This means that in principle, states in the US can revert to pre-1965 practices. Whatever the states actually do, the invalidation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 or significant parts of it will be a political earthquake in the US.

[bala]

Biden admin cut budget of the BLS.

These survey businesses are all BS in today's age. The US Govt can figure out actual numbers of employed, since businesses provide data to EDD and IRS on those who on their payroll. At any given time, there is data on actual employed in the US. Those who are being paid unofficially will not be accounted for, but big data processing will catch these discrepancies. US also has FINRA data which records all transactions on finance, nothing is left off. There is simply too much data by many govt agencies which provide the accurate picture. BLS can be axed completely without missing a beat. Laid off Statisticians can become data scientists for private companies, since most AI algos are statistics based, especially clustering algos.

I remember surveys predicting H. Clinton victory, but it turned out to be completely false. Surveys are silly and often times biased. People don't accurately tell you the real facts. Reading any survey result is laughable because there are too many assumptions in built. Companies do such surveys on their employees feeling mighty pleased. But employees don't reveal actuals and sometimes go along with the theme. There is the usual attrition in any company.

Claims by vendors like Apple that no one can get access to their records is also BS. The US NSA can break any encryption code. The NSA taps global data on the internet at the trunk level. All phone data, every click on every app is gathered by telecom (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc) providers, vendors like Apple, Motorola, Samsung, etc. They do big data analysis on such data.

[chetak]

U.S. markets lost over $1 trillion in value today amid India tariffs, weak Amazon earnings, and disappointing jobs data.

https://www.reuters.com/business/stocks ... 025-08-01/

[chetak]

"India has not been a great global actor. They are buying sanctioned Russian oil," says US Treasury Secy Scott Bessent.

So when Europe buys Russian gas, it’s strategy. When India buys cheaper oil for its poor, it’s BETRAYAL?

Clown


https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/bus ... 025903.cms

[A_Gupta]

IRS can tell who is employed, but not who is unemployed, and who is seeking work.
In any case, BLS trues up its statistical model with IRS data periodically.

[Vayutuvan]

Folks are still not answering the question as to why the budget was cut. We know who, i.e. Biden admin. It is a fact that DOL pulled up the person leading BLS.

It is a strawman that I am asking for an abolishment of BLS. I don't. I request esteemed BRF members to be careful and not presume.

[Vayutuvan]

My Rs 200/- ...the above advice is ineffective. E.g., I have entirely blocked this poster and stopped replying to him 1 year ago, but he still sends a barrage of replies to my posts (many times pasting my posts into his reply box). In fact the number of useless replies to my posts from this poster has increased multifold AFTER I blocked him. The issue here is the continued slander and useless comments on other posters who are no longer replying. Plus the constant labeling of posters on US party lines.

Is this how a respected forum should be run ?

Those who do not listen to moderators should be banned, and have no place in this forum. I mean, this is a no-brainer right ? No PhD required of the moderator either.

I am reporting this post. This post says that I am slandering. Irony is that this poster is slandering me. What anybody posts on BRF, a public forum, is not copyrighted by the poster, IIRC.

I am quoting the poster for context. Let the admins rule whether that is kosher. I will abide by their ruling.

[bala]

One of the reasons for high tech layoffs from Mickeysoft, AWS, Google, Meta, etc is due to R&D writeoff rules. The prev admin reduced the R&D writeoff from 100% to 20% yearly. This has caused hiring freezes and layoffs, and in general tis time to get rid of high paying salaried useless employees in companies (80:20 rule!). The US govt get tons of data from staffing agencies and others and they also use companies like Palantir for analysis. NSA has all data irrespective, btw. Actual accurate data is aplenty in the US. Even China has stolen some data from the US. It is the US Govt agencies who are siloed and don't share things, but DOGE is solving such problems. Half the Govt depts can be fired without much consequence on work output. Too much bloat in the system. DoD procurement is filled with excesses of all kinds, a simple tool would cost say $10 at home depot but DoD acquires a similar tool at $100 or more.

[A_Gupta]

One of the reasons for high tech layoffs from Mickeysoft, AWS, Google, Meta, etc is due to R&D writeoff rules. The prev admin reduced the R&D writeoff from 100% to 20% yearly.

Let us be clear -- "The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, passed by Congress, reduced the R&D write-off to 20% a year, starting in 2022. This legislation eliminated the ability of businesses to immediately deduct their R&D expenses in the year they were incurred."

This was done by Trump and the Republican Congress in the first year of Trump's first term.

During the Biden administration the Democrats tried to fix the R&D write-off of 20% in the TCJA Act of 2017 in the "Build Back Better Act of 2021", the "American Jobs and Innovation Act of 2022" and the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" but failed.

So @Bala, if you knew this, you should not be gaslighting us. If you did not know this, you should not be pretending to know what you actually have no clue about.

Moderator - I suggest a thread with a title of "American Politics for Indian-Americans and NRIs" on which all this crappy Republican-Democratic nonsense can be fought with zero regard for facts and truth as the case may be, and "Understanding the US - Again" be exclusively for an India-centric and not NRI- or Indian-American- centric view of the United States.

I don't want anyone banned or suspended from the forum; I just want the various topics to have a reliable quality that promotes understanding and discussion, and not this party-line BS that pervades this post-Truth America.

As far as India is concerned, "Satyameva Jayate" -- that which IS is of prime importance and to which India is devoted. Maybe India can go post-Truth in 2047 after it is a developed country. I think post-Truth might be mostly a First World affliction infecting also its Indian acolytes.

[bala]

So @Bala, if you knew this, you should not be gaslighting us. If you did not know this, you should not be pretending to know what you actually have no clue about.

Sorry who is gaslighting whom and what is this "us" you keep talking about. Mods this is uncalled for language by a member.

There are other factors for layoff besides R&D writeoffs. The interest rate is another factor which since 23-24 has steadily increased by the Feds. These high tech companies borrow cash for their growth. Then there is the AI hype too. So the companies waited awhile and then the layoffs started.

[Jay]

This is what I call ati telivi.

[chetak]

trumpwa is getting repeatedly dumped and pumped by the canucks, and he has no comeback to counter them, Several huge US food conglomerates have taken major hits, causing them to scale down operations, lose customers because of raised prices, cut back on staff due to declining sales and inventory

no more snide talk of the 51st state and trumpwa is being geopolitically violated (there is another very much more expressive word for it but one refrains from adventurous and descriptive lexicology, because this is a family forum onlee) by mexicano tomatoes, US dairy products, specially cheese and and multiple blunt objects by the vengeful canucks. BTW, this new canuck PM seems to have more testicular presence than the entire turdeau dynasty put together

the latest is the 25% tariff that the canucks have slapped onto the canuck electricity that is flowing into the US


MAGA anyone ............

[Vayutuvan]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/eli ... 00822.html

Indian-American Liz Warren's rant in Rolling Stones magazine.

Elizabeth Warren on Why Billionaires Are Doing All They Can to Stop Zohran Mamdani
Elizabeth Warren
Mon, August 4, 2025 at 6:00 AM CDT·4 min read
...
Cuomo and Adams are tripping over themselves to haul in millions of campaign dollars from billionaire donors. Adams raised $1 million in a single night from donors with ties to big law firms, commercial brokerages, and big real estate developers who could lose their iron-fisted grip on New York in a Mamdani administration. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman held private auditions for his support, inviting Adams and Cuomo to back-to-back meetings to tap dance for the “hundreds of millions of dollars” he has said he will spend to keep Mamdani out of office.
...
Take the cost of housing. Mamdani has plans to build 200,000 new affordable units over the next 10 years, he intends to freeze the rent for units controlled by the city, and he is committed to cutting the red tape that drives up costs for home owners. Mamdani also has the courage to write plans — including rent control — that crack down on the city’s worst landlords and push back against billionaire real estate moguls. It’s no surprise then that this month, the CEO of a New York-based real-estate investment trust held a $2,000-a-ticket fundraiser for Adams to stop Mamdani.

After housing, the biggest squeeze on New York families is the cost of child care. In the wealthiest city on Earth, access to affordable, high-quality child care and early education should be automatic. Mamdani’s plan for no-cost child care would make child care a right, not a privilege reserved for the rich.
...

She does make some valid points. But the cure being proposed by Mamdani is worse then the disease. I have no doubt in my mind that Dems are not good for India and its aspirations in the coming years. India is wants to follow the capitalistic path to improve the lives of all Indians where as Dems, if they come into power come 2026 and 2028, would certainly put pressure on India to toe the EU line. Trump is here today gone tomorrow.

I hope our esteemed BRF members are taking note and do not blindly vote for Democrats at any level - locally (especially CA, IL, NY, NJ) and nationally. We need to hedge our bets and spend our sparse resources - time and money - very carefully.