The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Aurelius]

This a pretty doomer poll

I don't really see what's bad about it.

Children with unmarried parents tend to have worse outcomes than those with married parents

This is a very important point that will be ignored in the name of “oWn ThE sOcCoNs”

Is there anything inherent about being legally married that leads to these outcomes, or is it that people who are unmarried with kids also tend to correlate with other stuff like lower income, etc?

It is very rare for people to be in a stable, longterm relationship but never actually marry. Not saying it never happens, but if you've been with someone for 3+ years, and you have kids with them, you're probably just going to get married.

I'm a "traditionalist" about this less from a Biblical SoCon perspective and more from an East Asian-inspired "Stability is important and responsible adults must attend to their duties and responsibilities to others" perspective.

I once had a coworker who had a baby with what was essentially a one night stand. As in, she had met this guy out at the club, maybe had a handful of casual encounters over the span of a few weeks, and got pregnant by him. They weren't even dating when she found out she was pregnant, and she had no interest in pursuing a relationship with him (nor he her). That is an objectively terrible way to bring a child into the world.

And part of the reason Republicans have made their peace with single parenthood is that the only way to avoid this situation (other than the highly unrealistic demand that unmarried people remain indefinitely chaste) would have been for this woman to have an abortion. They have decided that there is no greater evil than that, so this is what they've sown.

I also think it's really telling that the PMC liberals—who constantly trumpet the "There's more than one way to make a family" attitude and associate concerns about out-of-wedlock births and single parents with fundie concern trolling—are very Victorian in their own approach to marriage and family. They never have children out of wedlock. And when they get married, they stay married at least until after their children are grown ("gray divorces" of empty nest couples like the Gateses or the Gores being an example). I'm in my early 30s and the only people my age I know who have divorced or had out-of-wedlock kids are people from socially conservative backgrounds (regular churchgoing, etc) and/or people from working-class backgrounds who didn't go to college. The degreed people in white collar jobs have kept their families intact.

People often talk about how much people's modern economic woes are due to the demise of the days when "you could support a family on just one income." What they overlook is that many of these struggling people are supporting a family on just one income: when a couple with a child divorce or separate, they are each maintaining their own households on their income alone. The 1950s salad days of single-income families didn't just have one parent going out and working; they had the other parent at home doing housework and childcare. One thing single-income families in the 1950s never spent money on was daycare. That is now one of the biggest expenses for single parents because there is no other parent who can be at home watching the children.

And single parents face the unfavorable economics of duplicating the high fixed costs of living. Mom is paying rent on her apartment with her wages. Dad is paying rent on his apartment with his wages. If they were still together and paying for a single apartment with both of their wages, or even just with his wages, they might actually attain some modicum of financial stability.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Good substance-to-words ratio in this post.

For 70 years now, we have been pursuing an unsustainable Ponziesque model of development fueled by car dependency, local corruption, fraudulent city accounting, oil and auto industry bribes, opportunistic developers, and entitled boomers who expect city-quality services in rural-level density-- and now we wonder why wildfires are burning our precious suburban sprawl.

But also this:

crazy idea, if we stop using disaster funds to repeatedly rebuild people's homes that live in disaster areas, maybe we'd have fewer people living in disaster areas needing to be saved from disasters?

On the other hand, science has known that forests occasionally need fires since at least the 80s (I remember reading about it in middle school), why the hell are the Feds just now thinking about trying to look at that idea?

I don't even necessarily disagree with this, but the issue is far more widespread than mansions in the Hollywood hills. What happened in Colorado earlier this month is a good example--the fire started in the highly vulnerable hill areas you identified, but rapidly moved into suburbia. The places which were so devastated were relatively dense suburban areas in the cities of Superior and Louisville, where they essentially became urban fires. These are the exact sort of places which have traditionally been seen as 'safe' from wildfires. If this had happened further north it could have burned down Boulder.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

(img is public Domain).

Just a few years ago, much of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge were devastated by wildfires, in a region which is famous for receiving heavy rains--the Southern Appalachians get tons of water due to the rain shadow effect. The cities nearly burned down.

With Climate Change, we're all at risk of disaster. No place in the country has the kind of resources to prevent massive disaster in the event of record flooding or fire, and moralizing about where people live as a response ignores the ways in which we're all at risk from increasingly random and frequent extreme weather.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: What caused SJW/Woke culuture [sic]?

I don't think anything political "caused" this, even if it has become somewhat relevant in political discussions. I think its roots have more to do with education and parenting, specifically a shift toward being "softer" than has occurred over the past 10-20 years. A lot of young adults and teenagers have become increasingly "sheltered", and thus react extremely negatively when exposed to a viewpoint or idea that they don't like, since they haven't had that experience much before in life. Rather than seeing this as part of learning and education, many adults have decided that it is more important to "protect" young people than to educate them, and feel bad for making young people  feel uncomfortable, even though discomfort is a key part of learning.

While it is the case that some have lived trauma, attitudes about how to handle this have changed. The whole idea of a "trigger" was not always the punchline of a joke, and it used to be the case that young people would be slowly reintroduced to potentially traumatic material, with the goal being to build new associations with said material. Trauma never completely goes away, but it is possible to learn how to manage it and learn new reactions to material that was once "triggering", or not give in to negative and fearful thoughts when they pop up. However, now, "triggers" are seen increasingly as something to be avoided rather than something to slowly overcome with time, and thus young people are sheltered from the material, regardless of how severe their trauma might be, and thus the trauma remains, and they never learn how to overcome or cope with it. (I also hate how the word "cope" has come to be used.)

Parents are also, on the whole, much more permissive than before, and thus more and more young people have very little experience in not eventually getting what they want or being forced into uncomfortable situations, and react in the way that they do. The school of thought that education and upbringing should be 100% positive has gained a lot of traction, as has the idea that discipline is "mean" or discriminatory, in part because it's difficult for adults to have to deal with disciplining young people and managing their often over-the-top reactions. It's perfectly normal for children to act whiny and butthurt when they don't get what they want, but after a certain amount of time passes, they calm down and start to learn why they can't have everything that they want and why certain behaviors are unacceptable. Being firm with boundaries and standing by previous statements ("this is your last warning") are both critical, but it takes discipline on the part of the adult, and many find it easier just to give in instead of putting their foot down.

In short, I don't think it has much to do with politics at all, it's just become politicized, like just about everything else.

On international undergraduate/graduate students:

The rise of advanced technology in China and the same happening to India eventually is posing perhaps the most important challenge to the Pax Americana that has governed the post WWII order, which I'm mostly fond of. Whereas 30 years ago maybe 80% of Chinese international students stayed in the US after graduation, that figure is likely below 20% now, given the proliferation of China's advanced economy.

The important thing is to retain foreign students and have them contribute to America, which these changes seem to partially attempt at least. Otherwise higher education will continue to develop into a degree farming cash cow for international students to attain "prestigious accreditation" while failing the needs of actually training young individuals to advance America's science and industry.

[Calthrina950]

This post by Blaritie perfectly captures my views, and the views of many, on the pandemic:

Alrighty, I'm going to do an overly-long text wall of a post articulating my thoughts about Covid and why I'm on the hard-reopen vanguard of the Democratic Party. Please ignore if this is all too self-indulgent...

You can't just make a virus go away by screaming "I'M GETTING ON WITH MY LIFE". The logic that just issuing a verbal decree that the pandemic is over will end it is exactly why this pandemic will not go away in reality. You can symbolically declare whatever you like, but in reality that won't stop surges in the future. COVID isn't a person, it is a virus that doesn't care about symbolism. My point is that you can be "done" with COVID restrictions, but you cannot be "done" with COVID itself. You can still get sick and no politician can save you from that.

Here's the thing. The ideal world is one without Covid in it. At one point, we thought mRNA vaccines would get us to that world. And in reality, they've gotten us close enough for people who want to protect themselves. People who don't want to protect themselves can deal with the fallout--and we don't need to make policy for them. Covid spread *does not matter* if vaccinated people aren't dying. Because the vaccines are pretty damn good.

But perhaps more importantly, the tradeoff between restrictions and freedom is very different than in 2020. In 2020, the deal was "we have restrictions until a vaccine is released to protect the vulnerable. Once the vaccine is out, everyone can go back to normal." The cost-benefit calculation is different now. In 2020, the rational choice was to wait a few months until vaccines came out to lift restrictions. We had an immediate, clear solution that would reduce Covid risk. There was a short-term payoff to delaying reopening. No such solution exists today. There is no particularly good reason to expect Covid circulation to be lower in 2024 than it is right now. There is no new vaccine coming--we already have the vaccine. Therefore, the abstract benefit of delaying stuff into the future has been eliminated. I think this is where your argument breaks down. There is no medium-term amount of time over which we can expect Covid risk to meaningfully fall. If this is as safe as things can be, it is not reasonable to expect people to make choices that will minimize spread and save lives. The cost, unlike in 2020, is simply not worth the benefit because you can promise no hard end date after which life will return to 2019. "Don’t do X for some defined period of time after which X will become dramatically safer" (i.e. March 2020-May 2021) is very different than “don’t do X indefinitely.” (i.e. any restriction after May 2021).

Therefore, the only rational choice--in decision making, in risk mitigation, in anything--is to treat Covid like it is, indeed, "done." If future surges cannot be stopped by the mRNA vaccines we all have today, there is no reason to make any effort to stop them.

"Get on with our lives" could mean any number of things.  I got the vaccine, and got on with my life.  Now the only way COVID impacts me is that I occasionally have to wear a mask, which I don't mind at all.

Bagdad GMAC's timeline:

Aug 2021: Afghanistan debacle isn't real!
Oct 2021: Inflation isn't real!
Jan 2022: Restrictions aren't real!

I mean, in the past couple of weeks I went to a football game, the new Matrix movie, a Broadway show, dinner with friends at several restaurants, and an eSports tournament. I literally can't think of anything I could do before COVID that I can't do now, and I live in the ~*liberal hellhole*~ of NYC.

What does "getting on with your life" equal if not the above?

Life is 90% of the way back to normal. Those on the right who think that it is still April 2020 in blue states are entirely detached from reality, but that also does not mean it is 100% of the way back to normal. And because--as I said above--risk mitigation against Covid is not rational, we need to be 100% of the way back to normal.

Here's some stuff that is still happening:

• Concerts, conventions, speaking events, and big gatherings are still being cancelled because organizations don't want to host during Covid.
• People--particularly kids in K12--who are exposed to Covid often have to isolate for a full week.
• Asymptomatic people with breakthrough cases have to isolate for five days.
• Millions of people are still working from home as big employers (and federal agencies, particularly in Washington) push back a return to the office by 2-3 months every 2-3 months. This is particularly decimating to all the businesses that rely on bustling downtowns and office workers to serve.
• Schools, universities, and most businesses still have mask mandates. Many schools also have weekly testing requirements.
• In-person Social Security offices have been 100% closed for two full years. For people without reliable internet access (usually poor and old), this is devastating--and erodes trust in our state capacity.
• You have to wear a mask on the train, on airplanes, and going grocery shopping.
• Service sector workers have to wear masks 8-10 hours per day, every day.
• Transpacific travel is still entirely shut down. (Not our fault, but still). Even where international travel is open, people have to get a PCR test before every flight.
• And crucially, RULES KEEP CHANGING. Back in 2017, I could plan 6-36 months ahead with some certainty. I knew what my life would look like. But two years of constant fluctuation from institutions breaks down the trust and the certainty people need for stability in their lives. And this breeds a constant, toxic feeling of precarity in everything we do.

None of these are individually a big deal, but collectively they add up. I think it has been reflected politically. Right now, Joe Biden should be very popular and Americans should be very happy. It's the roaring twenties 2.0. For most people alive today, 2020 was the worst year of their life. It was destabilizing, it was miserable, it was lonely, and it was desperate. Things are better. Even with inflation, most people are doing at least as well as they were in 2019. We can now do *most* of the things we could do in 2019. We have the fastest GDP growth of recent times anywhere in the world. Forget BBB for a moment--everyday voters should approve of Biden 60-40 on the merits of "life isn't like 2020" alone. More importantly, questions like "Is America getting better or worse?" should have 75-80 percent of people answering "better." But for some reason, that isn't happening. I believe it is because two years on, these constant, individually small but collectively immiserating vestiges of the pandemic are sapping the national spirit and making people feel like their lives aren't that great--even though materially, they are.

Biden and Harris have appropriately rejected the worst instincts of the lockdowners, but they haven't articulated a specific date at which life will be exactly like February 2019. A date where masks will not be required anywhere--even airplanes. A date where nobody will have to isolate for testing positive. A date where absolutely no services that were once offered in person are offered only virtually. I know that Covid-19 hawks feel that masks are a no-big-deal low-cost intervention. If we're being entirely rational, it's correct that they don't cost anything. But they offer us extraordinarily marginal protection compared to vaccines so they're frankly not worth bothering with. I was 100% on board with mask mandates right up until May 2021 when everyone had access to the vaccines. I was fine with a national law and fines for non-compliance. But today, they're an unceasing visual and tactile reminder of the misery of the pandemic. Everytime you don't see someone's face, it puts you back in that unpleasant bunker mentality. They don't allow you to look forward and feel optimistic about our current national state, even though there's a lot to be optimistic about. I do not believe most people will feel like we've put the pandemic behind us until we stop seeing (and wearing) masks everywhere we go. Especially on the faces of the President and Vice President.

It's interesting how behind the Democrats are on a lot of issues like this. Virtually everyone on the right and a supermajority of independents agree, but the Democrats are in a dead heat, and that's only the general population. Amongst Democratic politicians (and even primary voters) I bet that their numbers look more like an inverse of the independents.

The left has a similar delusion with cancel culture, where the popular opinion is plain for all to see, but Democrats simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge it.

You're probably right, but do we really have to treat the phrase "cancel culture" like an appropriate combination of words for adult political culture? It's a real pet peeve. We have a word from zoomer slang (cancel) and threw culture on the end (which isn't correct word choice) and now have boomer pundits uncritically repeating it ad nauseum. The whole thing feels surreal.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: NIMBY Dave Chappelle (and others) block affordable housing development.

I'm skeptical of how affordable this housing will actually end up being. Unless I'm misreading the article, it seems that the single-family houses will start in value at around 300,000 dollars, which is average for that rich little town but hardly affordable.

I'm always in favor of affordable housing, including single-family housing assuming we're not talking about the giant cities, but I suspect this development will just be the typical suburban homes with yards twice the size of the house's foundation. If you really want to solve the housing crisis, cut down the size of these lawns, and build starter homes. Nice little two- or three-bedroom houses with yards just big enough for the kids to run around in, that's what American communities need. No more McMansions, no more 5-bedroom houses (with football-field-sized backyards) for Karen and her husband and their one child to move into, because at least where I'm at, that's the kind of crap that is contributing to this housing catastrophe.

[MATTROSE94]

Putin is many terrible things, but calling him a ‘white supremacist’ is indicative of someone who doesn’t really understand how European politics actually works.

He’s a Russian supremacist who doesn’t really care about skin color or race, as long as it benefits him, his delusions of grandeur, and the Russian nation state. If you’re a Siberian tribesman or ethnic Kazakh who minds his own business, you are perfectly fine in his books, but if you are a rebellious Muslim in Chechnya, you’re as good as dead to him.

This worldview of his is made evident by the fact that he’s currently invading and oppressing one of the ‘whitest’ countries on the planet. But I’m absolutely sure he’d be as happy to invade some ‘non-White’ Central Asian country to recreate the borders of the old Russian empire, make no mistake.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Just want to comment around some of the narrative I've heard in some leftist spaces.  There is no doubt that the U.S. has done terrible things on the world stage.  The invasion of Iraq is particularly inexcusable, considering how much of its justification was built on pure lies.

But lets be clear, the invasion of Ukraine is different from anything the U.S. has done in recent decades not merely in degree, but in kind.  When the U.S. bombs Al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia, its bad because civilians are often killed in these attacks.  But this is not an attempt by the US to subjugate the local population, expand its territory, or to erase an ethnic heritage.  Even in Iraq, while certainly some of the motivations were exploitative in nature, this was not the intention.

Goals matter, not just on a theoretical moral level, but practically.  Because you have to consider what will happen to the people in question when a great power achieves those goals.  The U.S. being unchallenged in the world and achieving all its strategic goals certainly wouldn't be good for everyone- after all the US has shown it can certainly act with greed, corruption, and paranoia.  But not only would that world be far better than a hypothetical Russia or China controlled one, but the U.S. political system actually allows for U.S. citizens to push it to be better.  Anyone rooting for the U.S. to fail should consider what that would actually mean for the world.  The far, far better course is to hope the U.S. succeeds while pushing for it to be better.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Don't I have an old post where I already answered this question for you?  lol

The myth of the "winners' streak" demonstrates a misunderstanding of conditional probabilities, somewhat akin to the famous Monty Hall problem. 

Basically, an incumbent only has two possible outcomes for his reelection:  he either increases his margin or not.  If he does increase his margin then he is always reelected, definitionally.  This conditionality creates the seemingly unusual probability for presidents to win second terms with better margins.

If you remove the conditionality (i.e., treat all incumbent reelections the same) then you're left with nothing spectacular at all.  17/28 incumbent presidents seeking reelection have had decreased margins.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I don't think the people who constantly demand public employees work for little to no money ("They should be doing it out of a sense of public service, not personal enrichment!" "Why should those hoity-toity bureaucrats make any more money than what the average American makes?") understand that their attitude basically ensures these positions are disproportionately wealthy or from "comfortable" backgrounds.

Contrary to popular assumptions, most government employees in Congress and the Executive Branch and federal departments are underpaid, not overpaid. Most of those people are white collar professionals. The relevant question isn't what they make relative to what "the average American" makes; it's what they make relative to what they would be making in the private sector. An antitrust lawyer at Commerce could make far more money at a corporate BigLaw job. A scientist at the EPA could make far more money as a scientist at Monsanto.

People get mad when they read about which congressman bought and sold millions of dollars worth of stocks this week and insist it's proof they're "getting rich off their political position." People don't go to Congress and then become rich in the job. They go to Congress because they are already rich. A normal politically-interested JD holder has to worry about things like paying their student loans and how they could possibly afford two houses (one in DC and one in their district) and juggling their job with their spouse's job and raising their children.

When I was in college, the norm was that most internships were unpaid except for some of the engineering majors I knew (this was the post-2008 job market). And the result was that I knew a lot of people who never did summer internships in college because they couldn't afford to do them. They had to go back home and spend the summer waiting tables or working retail. They couldn't pay for housing and living expenses in a high COL city like DC without any source of income. So what happened? When those kids graduated, they were at a considerable disadvantage on the job market because they had no relevant experience.

[Badger]

Putin is many terrible things, but calling him a ‘white supremacist’ is indicative of someone who doesn’t really understand how European politics actually works.

He’s a Russian supremacist who doesn’t really care about skin color or race, as long as it benefits him, his delusions of grandeur, and the Russian nation state. If you’re a Siberian tribesman or ethnic Kazakh who minds his own business, you are perfectly fine in his books, but if you are a rebellious Muslim in Chechnya, you’re as good as dead to him.

This worldview of his is made evident by the fact that he’s currently invading and oppressing one of the ‘whitest’ countries on the planet. But I’m absolutely sure he’d be as happy to invade some ‘non-White’ Central Asian country to recreate the borders of the old Russian empire, make no mistake.

Speaking as someone who is on record as not usually being a fan of THG, what is wrong with this post?

Yes, there's a tremendous amount of racism in Russia even by East European standards, and Putin being nearly 70 likely shares more than a little of that. But this post is fundamentally correct.

[Sir Mohamed]

In many ways it is Barack Obama which is ironic given how different they are personality wise but actually thinks about it .

- Both rose out of seemingly nowhere to defeat major establishment candidates on both sides of the isle

- Both rose out of major dissatisfaction of the neoliberal consensus and on an sentiment that the US should be more non interventionist and focus on America first

- Both had strong cult of personalities that enabled them to have a very enthusiastic base of support .

- Both relied heavily on non propensity voters which led them to outperform polling expectations

- Both had extremely efficient electoral coalitions that had the tipping point states always far more favorable to them then the national popular vote

- Both of them resulted in a previously loyal voters of their party leaving while bringing  in many loyal voters from the other party .


In fact I think without COVID 2020 would resemble 2012 and by 2024 Trump would have left the GOP decimated down ballot wise the same way Obama left the Democrats in 2016.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I think that blaming “latinx” for the Democrats’ midterm losses is a little silly inasmuch as fundamentally they were going to lose badly anyway. Of course, every cycle with a major loss is an opportunity for every little camp in the party to blame someone else. I could say that the reason Democrats will do poorly in November is because they didn’t embrace “latinx” enough, and I would have just as much as evidence as other people.

It is understandable why, though. Finding a scapegoat/whipping post/punching bag is much more reassuring than accepting the fact that many times parties cannot avoid losses, or that the Democratic Party is fundamentally unlikeable regardless of what it says or does — most of the public’s opinion is baked-in and not logically changeable. With the diversification of media sources nowadays it is incredibly difficult to control the narrative, especially with a media as odious as that of the United States.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

Republicans do know how to win votes and turn out their base so you can't necessarily blame them. If anything I think Democrats should concede these issues to them and simply maintain a economically liberal message. If Democrats can get socially conservative, but economically liberal candidates elected then they could get things like a minimum increase passed. After all I think there are more socially conservative voters than LGBTQ voters in this country, so majority rules.

Utter genius!  And from DR. SCHOLL, no less!

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Republicans do know how to win votes and turn out their base so you can't necessarily blame them. If anything I think Democrats should concede these issues to them and simply maintain a economically liberal message. If Democrats can get socially conservative, but economically liberal candidates elected then they could get things like a minimum increase passed. After all I think there are more socially conservative voters than LGBTQ voters in this country, so majority rules.

Utter genius!  And from DR. SCHOLL, no less!

Throwing queer people under the bus for the sake of winning over bigots isn't praiseworthy, its sickening.

[Make America Grumpy Again]

I've said before that Psaki is the epitome of the limousine white liberal, who is college-educated, lives in a nice upper-middle class to upper class suburban area, probably shops at Whole Foods or some other higher-end store, and sends their children to private or elite schools.

This is bizarrely specific, and I feel like this rant isn't really about Psaki.

It seems more like you're just projecting your frustration that "cringe wine moms" are a more influential voting bloc than you'd like them to be.

I've been critical of Psaki before, as I've explained above. But yes, I will say that I don't think the absorption of wealthy suburbanites into the Democratic coalition is necessarily a good thing for the Party or for its policy development.

What you mention is what Thomas Frank in What's The Matter With Kansasl describes as the Democratic Party's response to their declining fortunes.  Those devising this strategy figured that the working class had nowhere else to go; that the Democratic Party would always be marginally better on economics than the GOP.

The problem with this take is that, over time, the Democratic Party's working class (who are, indeed, more socially conservative, more likely to be churchgoers and hold at least some socially conservative views) saw that Democratic Party go whole hog on social radicalism to the point of sending out dog whistles against THEM.  Over the course of 8 years, Obama's "clinging to guns and religion" became Hillary's "basket of deplorables", and her campaign reflected that attitude toward THEM.  

Once upon a time, there was room for disagreement on the social issues, but it was agreement on the issues important to WORKERS that defined you as an acceptable national Democrat.  The idea that a state such as Virginia could enjoy a trifecta and NOT repeal Right-To-Work laws was unconscionable.  (I'm talking about today's liberal Virginia, and not Harry Byrd's Dixiecrat Virginia.)  Today, it's reversed; there is all sorts of wiggle room on the economic issues for Democrats, but the hard lines on LGBTQ, religious freedom, the 2nd Amendment, etc. are now lines of cleavage for the Democratic Party.  Conformity to the party line on these issues is mandatory.  And while support for consensus Civil Rights legislation has been something that made you a NATIONAL Democrat since 1964, conformity to radical racial agendas (CRT, etc.) are the new Hills To Die On.  The final kick is that the party of "workers" actively slashes jobs in the energy industry which are UNIONIZED jobs, all in the name of "Climate Change".  Their party expects those workers to shoulder the sacrifice.  John Kerry telling Keystone Pipeline workers that they can "better jobs" manufacturing solar panels (which pay less than half that their pipeline jobs earned them) was kind of a "Last Straw" moment that encapsulated the whole shift away of the Democratic Party from the needs of the working class.

Ordinary working people who have seen the Democratic Party compromise on their economics while shoving a social agenda down their throats that causes them to gag have been left without a party.  They will often vote Republican, in that the Democratic Party's offer to them is pretty much offering them a bowl of porridge in exchange for their birthright, but they also recognize that the GOP is not a real opposition to what they oppose and have not significantly changed their postures on issues on WORKPLACE issues.  They're at the point of choosing the party that will maintain their autonomy in their personal lives if they are going to be economically sold out by the Democratic Party that said they were the Working Person's Party.

The working class voters who now support Donald Trump aren't fooled about who he is.  They recognize him as one who hasn't sold them out and one who has at least not supported the elimination of their jobs.  And he's one who has, long before it was fashionable, pointed out the destructive nature of sending our industrial base abroad.  If they can't have Utopia, perhaps they could have a President who at least got it right on what destroyed their livelihoods.  The Democratic Party of today has not offered them better.

Folks like Tim Ryan ACT like they get it, but they've sold out workers on the Keystone Pipeline.  Folks like Grace Meng assume the worst of them, while ignoring the actual people who are doing the violence against Asian Americans.  When it was pointed out that it was African Americans committing a disproportionate number of attacks against Asian Americans, this issue quietly became a non-issue in the broader scheme of things.  The working class notes that Meng criticizes Tim Ryan, but doesn't criticize the individual perpetrators of the anti-Asian violence, because the demographics involve one of the mass constituencies of the Democratic Party (African Americans) who are disproportionately responsible for these attacks.  This is what happens when EVERYTHING is racialized and when an identified "victim" group is "victimizing" another "victim" group; it produces the intellectual dishonesty of Grace Meng's response to Tim Ryan to enable her to avoid the issues between African Americans and Asian Americana (a have vs. have not issue in part).  If Grace Meng could have blamed the WWC voters exclusively for the inexcusable attacks on Asian Americans, there would have been no criticism
of Tim Ryan, period, but "White Supremacy" (the new "wolf-crying) isn't the problem here.

The solution for all of this, of course, would be for the Democratic Party to be honest brokers for ordinary working people of ALL backgrounds, to abhor violence against ALL groups, to balance the very legitimate problems of its mass constituencies regarding racism and how it's impacted lives for the worse with the very legitimate problems of working people and how globalism has trashed their livelihoods.  Perhaps there's not a lot of "soft money" in that, but THIS would be a Democratic Party worth supporting; a party that actually helped working people truly see other working people in the boat with them.  I once imagined a Democratic Party that could actually reduce racial resentment and make the lives of ordinary working people more secure and less vulnerable to economic calamities that cause people to be unable to plan in any way.  The people at the top of today's Democratic Party care for none of this.  While I have no illusions about a GOP utopia swept in by the trouncing the Democrats will likely receive at the polls this year, the rejection of THIS Democratic Party ought to be thorough and complete so that a real Democratic Party that actually advances the well-being of working people can happen.

Jen Psaki's existence is, in many ways, the formal ratification of the ascendency of the kind of Democratic Party that we have today.  A Party that is incapable of recognizing the needs and aspirations of the people who's support once made the Democratic Party "the party of the people".  Jen Psaki conveys contempt for those people, and it's not merely because they voted for Trump; it's because she views herself as better than them and obliged to rub that in, along with telling them that they really don't know what's good for them.  Her existence is grotesque in many ways, in that she typifies someone who's oblivious to the struggles of others.  And she clearly projects that she doesn't care about the America that didn't vote for Biden and the Democrats.  Perhaps Mr. Biden's new appointee can be an improvement in that regard.  Joe Biden promised to be a "uniter".  He's been anything but that, and his Press Secretary bears some responsibility for that, given that she's his mouthpiece.

[S019]

If public infrastructure projects are being used to stimulate the American economy, it makes sense to invest domestically even if it's a little more expensive to do so. It's not like Americans are going to suddenly stop getting their cheap crap from China or other countries.

Frankly this should have been policy for the Recovery Act projects.

We barely import any steel from China. It mostly comes from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Europe, and Korea.


Anyway, the issue with this is that--to support development of *literally every other sector* of the economy--you want infrastructure to be as cheap as possible.

I'm a committed free trader so obviously I'm going to want to import, but people who want the U.S. government to play a more activist role in developing industrial capacity should also prioritize building infrastructure *as cheaply as possible,* no matter the trade off.

Let's say we have a fixed $200 billion budget to build rail lines. We can either build them for $100 million per mile with imported materials or $150 million per mile with domestic materials. If we import, we can build 2,000 miles of rail. If we don't, we can only build 1,300 miles of rail. So the question is whether buying American steel will bring more manufacturing to the United States than 700 extra miles of rail. And because infrastructure has such a high economic multiplier effect, it almost certainly isn't worth the tradeoff.

700 extra miles of rail means trillions in domestic investment--that would not happen in the absence of that rail. It means thousands new factories, offices, and labs are suddenly economically viable because the cost of moving people and things around becomes so much cheaper. You want to bring back Detroit? Lower the marginal cost of making things in Detroit. That means building as much infrastructure as possible with as few public dollars as possible...which means importing stuff.

Even if you're a protectionist in other ways, infrastructure is somewhere where you want to cost cut, because every dollar you don't spend on one project is a dollar you can allocate towards another project that otherwise wouldn't be built.

It should be noted that the great economic dilemma of 2022 is not one of insufficient demand, but insufficient supply. After the 2008 financial crisis, the watchword was jobs, jobs, jobs. This made sense. We had a sluggish employment recovery, aggregate demand was underwhelming, and economic growth was mediocre. No more. Nowadays, we have plenty of jobs and plenty of aggregate demand. The issue is people are wanting to consume things faster than the economy can deliver them--hence inflation. A big part of this is a general underinvestment in infrastructure since the 1980s, and another part of this is that we aren't being capital-intensive enough in production. The people don't want more work, they want more stuff with less work. To fix this, the government should try and construct as much as possible--and create as *few* jobs in the process as they possibly can. Bringing down costs is priority #1. Simply put--the economic problems of the 2020s are different from the economic problems of the 2010s.

I think the political line "public dollars should go towards American manufacturing" sounds nice to people. It's common sense, right? Even if you like free trade, it's fine to focus American public spending on American companies. The thing is...common sense is generally dead wrong. If anything, the prioritization should be flipped. When you step back and think about it, a private dollar spent on U.S. steel is consequentially identical to a public dollar spent on U.S. steel. Keeping tax dollars--specifically--inside the United States doesn't actually *mean* anything. And when you force the government to spend domestically but don't force anyone else to, you give government spending the lowest possible bang for its buck when it should have the highest. If we value infrastructure, our top priority is delivering it cheaply--not creating first-order economic spillover by overpaying.

Finally, domestic steel manufacturers are just going to exploit the government here. Nobody else is required to buy U.S. steel. U.S. steel usually has to compete on the international market. But when the government is buying, they have no incentive to charge fair prices. American manufacturers will price gouge the federal government and extract all surplus value from a project. They will overcharge, and the government is legally obligated to pay. Does that surplus value go to workers? Of course not. It goes straight into corporate profits.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

For reference, these are their recent voting histories:

YUMA
2020: R+6.2
2016: R+1.1
2012: R+12.6
2008: R+13.7
2004: R+16.0

The rightward trend in 2020, as well as the GOP margin, makes it unlikely this county will be selected.

ADA
2020: R+3.9
2016: R+9.2
2012: R+11.2
2008: R+6.1
2004: R+23.3

Yeah, given that it swung hard to the left in 2020 while Yuma swing hard right, and that it was in terms of margin much closer than Yuma in 2020, I'd bet Ada is likelier than Yuma, at least.

LEWIS&CLARK
2020: R+3.9
2016: R+6.8
2012: R+3.6
2008: D+6.6
2004: R+12.7

Lewis & Clark seems kind of elastic and isn't trending clearly Democratic. Given that it trended just barely to the left in 2020, and its general inelasticity (except for 2008/2012), I'm not sure it's very likely to flip at all. Ada is certainly more likely (interestingly, the two counties had the same margin for Trump in 2020). It's also worth noting that it actually swung and trended to the right from 2012-2020 slightly (Ada in contrast swung solidly to the left). Now it's Ada vs Spokane...

SPOKANE
2020: R+4.3
2016: R+8.3
2012: R+5.8
2008: R+1.1
2004: R+11.9

Got to give it to Ada. While Spokane barely trended to the left from 2012 to 2020, Ada swung a lot to the left in that time. Also Spokane's 2020 Trump margin was slightly bigger than Ada's.

If I had to rank them, then

1. Ada
2. Spokane
3. L&C
4. Yuma

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Just feel like reminding everyone that Joe Manchin killed the Child Tax Credit, directly condemning tens of millions of American children to poverty, with West Virginians being among the hardest hit places proportionally because he thought a staffer was rude to him and a few people kayaked with signs outside his yatch.

Just because everyone seems to have forgotten that. No it had jack all to do with inflation. Go back and check the articles, it’s about him wanting work requirements on literally everything (including, hilariously, paid leave from work) because he’s a rich person scared of welfare queens, and no it’s not about West Virginians. He explicitly worked to kill the stuff that benefited West Virginia (CTC, the Black Lung fund) and he wants to compromise on Green Energy that West Virginians hate.
He represents no one but himself.  And himself is an incredibly vile and completely incoherent constituency.

The point being that any ‘revived bill’ is just going to be ‘funnel money to Joe Manchin and call that a win’

It doesn’t make a difference politically and is sh**tty, non-consequential policy.

[Schiff for Senate]

Well firstly, it seems that we have fundamentally differing views on how the criminal justice system should operate. Whereas you seem to hold a punitive view of justice, I hold a rehabilitative view of justice. I don't think that prison should be a "punishment", I think that it should be focused on making sure that someone can become a functioning, contributing member of society.

We segregate those who are convicted from the rest of society because of the idea that they would present a danger to society if they were free. And they remain there until they have completed their sentence and can prove to the parole board that they have changed.

But we don't ban them from doing everything. We don't ban prisoners from making reading or exercising or writing letters, because no reasonable person would believe that this could bring harm to society - and in fact, allowing them this privilege arguably helps with their rehabilitation. And many would agree that these privileges actually allow them to improve themselves while in prison, which hopefully we can agree is a good thing in and of itself.

Allowing a prisoner to vote allows them to improve themselves and participate in society without bringing any harm to anyone else.

I'd also add that the size of the prison population is large enough that it should be justified on those grounds alone. If the US prison population were its own state, it would be tied with New Mexico for the 37th most populated state in the country. I'd have a hard time being convinced that such a significant adult population shouldn't have a say in the country that they're living in.

Disenfranchising the prison population also removes them from our lawmaker's consideration, which contributes to the dehumanization of the incarcerated. Allowing the prison population to vote would give incentive to lawmakers to acknowledge their humanity, and improve prison conditions - which is beneficial to everyone. Better prison conditions make more well-behaved prisoners, which in turn will make them less likely to re-offend.

It's already been established that allowing felons to vote after completing their sentence reduces recidivism rates. I see no reason to think that this wouldn't be true for allowing them to vote while incarcerated as well.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I can't believe I'm quoting an Alben Barkley post.

What is in the water in Illinois?

Jesus Christ YES raising unfounded doubts about the outcome of our elections and undermining our democracy in the process IS the problem with what Trump did. And it wasn’t better when Abrams did it, as I said even at the time. There is no more evidence of voting machines switching votes from her to Kemp than there was from Trump to Biden, or evidence that her alleged voter roll purges could have been decisive anyway given the margin she lost by. And her claims looked especially ridiculous after Biden won GA anyway and, to their credit, Kemp and his Republican administration defended that result against immense pressure from Trump.

This country is absolutely f—ked if BOTH sides start to refuse to accept any electoral defeat as legitimate. I have been wary about Abrams for a while for a reason. This kind of crap cannot stand in the Democratic Party, not if we want to have a leg to stand on as literally THE  “democratic” party against a party trying to undermine democracy anyway.

[Schiff for Senate]

This is from really long ago and the context isn't really there anymore, but it was a great, great and very convincing post that I was reminded of recently. If it's not been inducted to this thread already, I think it's better done late than never, because it certainly meets the criteria to be on here. It was such a great post, and had I known about this thread when I first came across it, it'd have been put in here a while ago.

I disagree with the Dems on this.  End the eviction moratorium.  It's not justifiable anymore.  Most jobs have returned, and places are begging for employees.

Not only that, but we passed major unemployment benefits so people could pay their bills.  Why are we protecting them from the consequences of not paying those bills?  Regardless of whether or not you have a job, there's no excuse any more.

What's really happening here is that a whole bunch of crooked renters saw the eviction moratorium and said "I can't get evicted no matter what, so I'm not gonna pay my rent."  And they just kept the money that was supposed to go towards rent and used it on other stuff.  Now the bill is finally coming due, and lo and behold, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions.  The only way to avoid those consequences is to extend the eviction moratorium, and maybe get rent forgiveness.  Thus the political pressure.  Although if I was a landlord, I would still evict a bum who didn't pay his rent, even if he got that rent "forgiven" by the government.

All the wannabe-Maoists love to attack landlords and say "lol imagine sympathizing with landlords" and other similar dumb s--t, but I do have tremendous sympathy for all the landlords suffering through this eviction moratorium.  So your tenants don't have to pay their rent, but you still have to pay your mortgage, utilities, maintenance, the dozens of fees heaped upon you by the government, and so on.  So you're just burning through your bank account while your tenants screw you over.  And that's not even going into the many, many cases of abuse that are happening, where people are just openly violating the rules, trashing their apartments, inviting tons of people in, etc. secure in the knowledge that they can never be evicted so they're basically above the law.

I'm happy to help out and protect people who got screwed over by the pandemic and put in a really rough spot that nobody could have anticipated.  That's a very good thing and that was the intent of a lot of these COVID aid measures the Dems passed.  But now, those measures have been successful, we were able to keep the economy afloat and avert socioeconomic disaster as we weathered the storm.  There's no justification for continuing these expensive measures now that the crisis is mostly over.  At this point a lot of this stuff is just being abused, and the eviction moratorium is a particularly easy example to point to, because there's a direct victim of that abuse -- landlords.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I've tried to stay away from this site over the past few days, and the toxicity in this thread is a good reason why. I'll make my point here, then go back to my sabbatical from this forum and the absolute dumpster fire that is American politics.

The legality of Roe vs. Wade, or a repeal, for that matter, is beside the point, since this decision is so obviously judicial activism. And it's also perfectly emblematic of why America is not a democracy, and is, if anything, trending away from being one. At least half of the justices who are in favor of this were nominated by a president who got fewer votes than his opponent. They were confirmed by a Senate that does not come close to representing the actual make-up of the American population, and by a party that won a majority despite receiving significantly fewer votes. And they will serve for life, continue making decisions which, like this one, do not at all represent what the majority of Americans think or want.

It's almost funny how complacent or even happy people are with an increasingly small minority of the population calling all the shots. While humanity has always had its hierarchies, which tend toward a pyramid shape, this country is losing any pretense of even caring about its citizens. Make no mistake, this is not the endgame, and we're going to see many more decisions based purely out of activism and "owning" the other side, which is pretty much all politics amounts to these days. I can't even get myself to be mad at conservatives who seem to cheer anything that means that liberals will be unhappy, since I don't have the energy for anger anymore. Instead, I'm just disheartened, and it makes me that much more convinced that this country is going to continue to backslide and fall further behind other countries. And many people here aren't even going to care, so long as they believe that their side is "winning" (or, more importantly, people they're taught are the bad guys are unhappy.)

[Badger]

Proof positive that not all contributions to this thread need to be ponderous walls of text no matter how well written.

To keep with the emerging theme of others' posts here, I'll also make another argument against the existence of the court in present day: when was the last time any landmark policy (left or right, that was reliant upon one of them alone) got implemented in this country?

It's pretty easy for anybody left-of-center to answer this: 1968. CRA, VRA, FHA, etc: that's the last time any transformative policy actually passed via elected branches of government. Everything else has either been bipartisan in spirit (ACA) or actuality ("welfare reform"), or done by the courts. It's a scapegoat, and it's pretty sad when a regressive institution is still more proactive on social and cultural matters than the combined elected body of the so-called greatest representative democracy on the planet. I posit it's because we're reliant upon some arcane body to either protect these rights or advance them, rather than making the electeds actually act.

Elected government hasn't done a damn thing transformative for society or the economy (without it benefiting the rich) in 60 years. Make them.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

SNIP

Progressive Pessimist, your post is really pessimistic. Women will never give up. We have been making inroads into equality and women's rights in incremental steps down through history. Some forward, some backward. Yes we often do feel powerless and resigned, but we bounce back. We are used to this. That's why nobody will ever be able to tell a female not to have an abortion because we will find a way. And not only that, our numbers are growing and our voices are getting louder.

I believe there will be a net benefit for Democrats in the coming election. In fact, I believe that because of this latest abortion revelation, women are going to come out in droves to vote against the GOP. Against repression and against going backwards in time.

You'll see.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: How is Critical Race Theory specifically anti American ? from a S-AUS poster

Plenty of people view their country and its history as a reflection or extension of themselves. To take a critical view of a country, its government or its history is, to those people, to do the same to them.

Sometimes these people just can't blind themselves to the worst of the evils that occurred in their country's history - slavery and colonisation for the US, colonisation and the Stolen Generations (and some slavery) in Australia. Often as a defensive mechanism these people will insulate themselves in their current timeline and the idea that everything is a level playing field now - as if momentous events of history never leave legacies for the future. So "white privilege" (a much misused and misunderstood term) is nonsense because in some way the problems were all "fixed" by the 70s or 80s and the attitudes and actions of people still living now couldn't have left some lingering effects in society that are worth learning about.

I don't hold your average German responsible in any way for the Holocaust, and I don't want them to flagellate themselves as a nation for it. That'd be ridiculous. But I want German people to learn about the Holocaust, its context, its causes, the attitudes and actions involved, how all those events have shaped German society and Germans' lives today. And to be aware that German Jews and their families might have very different experiences to theirs, and be determined to continue to work for a Germany where it's safe to be Jewish or any other minority.

And, to return to the idea of country as an extension of self, that work is never complete, just how one never completely masters a skill or becomes a perfect version of themselves. There is always more work to do.