The Republicans are pushing a resentment politics take on the Biden American Families plan. Here’s turtle:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday responded to Biden’s pitch, made in a joint address to Congress, by declaring that the new administration “wants to jack up taxes in order to nudge families toward the kinds of jobs Democrats want them to have, in the kinds of industries Democrats want to exist, with the kinds of cars Democrats want them to drive, using the kinds of child-care arrangements that Democrats want them to pursue.”
Let’s look at the daycare part, specifically. Well-intentioned good-faith actors like JD Vance, Josh Hawley and David Brooks have all made very serious arguments that subsidizing daycare is taking away the sacred right of people to take care of their kids at home. Not linking to any of those assholes, but their argument is the usual “nobody can have nice things because it would take away precious freedumb.” (Side note: Republican condescension is always in the eyes of the beholder, because Brooks especially has zero idea or concern about why some rural poor mom would want to take care of her kids at home.)
There are a couple ways to address this. The first is to try to rebut it by pointing out all the logical reasons why subsidizing daycare is good for families, and especially good for women. Scott Lemieux did that, so I won’t repeat it here.
But I think that the better argument is just to subsidize taking care of kids at home and raising taxes on the rich and/or corporations a bit to pay for it. The best argument I could find for that comes from blog favorite Matt Breunig. There’s plenty of trolling in his piece, but he supports his argument pretty well, and I agree with his conclusion:
Rather than fighting the cultural mommy wars over whether stay-at-home parents are good or bad, the Democrats should instead simply craft a child care regime that supports parent care and center-based care. The most obvious way to do this is to provide free (or heavily subsidized) child care services for all who want them and to provide a home child care allowance for those who prefer to care for their young children (below the age of 3) in the home. This is what I proposed in my Family Fun Pack and this is how it is done in Finland and Norway.
The general rule of thumb in these stupid attempts to divide poor rural voters should be to make sure they get their share, couple getting their share to taxing Republican donors, and then make Republicans explain why they’re helping the rich to hurt their base.
The Dark Avenger
I just felt a disturbance in the Force, as if the souls of millions of Radical Centralists screamed in horror and agony.
Cheryl from Maryland
Agreed. Also, the home child care allowance should count as Social Security wages for the stay at home wages. One can’t count out widow/widower hood or divorce, and so those years don’t count as work. As my mother told me, always have a job, you need a record of work.
debbie
The kinds of jobs Republicans want to shove, not nudge, families toward are poverty-level jobs. Families have wised up since 1980, Mitch.
WereBear
By george, I think the Democrats have got it!
The Republicans have been busting a gut to make sure Democrats can’t keep any of their promises. Because they know that when that happens… people tend to like what they get.
MattF
Honestly, it’s the ‘tax the rich’ part that warms my heart. Yeah, perhaps it’s the liberal analogue of ‘own the libs’, but— is that such a bad thing? Who am I to disagree?
Nicole
Oh my God. You know what, rich white men? How about not offering opinions on what you think women want/need?
And yes, an allowance for stay-at-home child care is a f*cking brilliant idea and the Democrats should propose it, stat. Raising kids is work. It’s work. It’s work a lot of us love (ergo why so many of us do it for free), but there’s no law saying it only counts as work if you hate doing it.
debbie
I do not get the pro-life party’s opposition to child care. Freeing mothers to find work and pursue careers results in higher income and raises the family out of poverty. It does exactly what the Republicans have been demanding they do since Reagan took office.
WereBear
Definitely. Time to stop telling the ladies, “Sure, take care of your loved ones and DIE IN POVERTY.”
Peale
Man, they’re even out of touch with their own voters on this one. These days you don’t go with “single mothers who work are ruining the fabric of society”. You go with “Democrat Hillary Clinton wants to gather the children together to suck their blood” if you want to rally the faithful.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So for those of you who are far removed from child care because of age, no grandchildren or whatever, the cost of daycare is obscene, and dwarfs the ability of most working parents to pay for it. I’m constantly addressing issues of allocation of childcare, and costs I’m seeing here in the People’s’ Democratic Socialist Islamic Shariah Republic of Louisville are $250-$300 per week, per child. The childcare portion of support orders dwarfs the actual support number, and anyone making less than $60,000 (there are subsidies available under about 30K) will suffer serious diminution in lifestyle.
Interesting, the daycare workers themselves tend to make $10 an hour or less. The meritorious, intrepid entrepreneurs owning them make serious bank, which is why we’ve seen a surplus of accountants and business school types setting them up.
Ramalama
My mom did not have skills beyond brilliant office clerking and so figured out that it was cheaper for her to stay at home and care for us kids than to get a third-rate job paying shitzky and then paying someone questionable (for our area of mostly food stamp recipients) most of her pay to care for us. Poverty with love or poverty with strangers. That was her choice. My father was very ill for most of my young childhood. We survived but it was dicey. Generic food had just been introduced. The style of the packaging felt like Soviet era military green and black. Grim. Women at the supermarkets (they were always women minus the male manager) verbally scorned my mother for paying for food using food stamps. They called it out loud at the cash. Their aim was to humiliate.
The mindset never changes.
tom
The Republican motto could very well be “Kinder, Küche, Kirche”.
Mousebumples
Semi related, my independent leaning mom (who regularly talks with my conservative leaning dad), complained to me this morning about how they got another stimulus that they didn’t need.
Defused with a, “Great! I’m glad you don’t need the money, but other people do. Have you thought about donating the money to the food pantry, NAMI, etc.?”
But yes, taxing the rich (especially corporations) more would be good. I love that I’ve been able to work (from home) and hire an nanny for my 20mo old daughter. I know that’s not an financial option for most, so we are lucky. I’d happy take more tax credits or deductions to help us pay for our nanny, too!
Cameron
For a taste of what a government appealing to RWNJs is like, there’s a really depressing front-page article in today’s Bradenton Herald about Governor DeCovid. He’s apparently checked off all the legislative boxes for this year; none of them are any good for Floridians (well, any Floridians who aren’t rich), but all are appealing to MAGA/Qanoners nationally. Nothing I hadn’t expected, but I didn’t know how heavily gerrymandered the state is until I read that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by 100,000 statewide. You’d never guess that looking at state government, which is overwhelmingly Republican.
Baud
You would think Republicans would want more women in the workforce due to the oppressive labor shortage, for the same reason they want more immigration. Weird.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Taxing the rich and giving money to the poor or to common needs really is always the answer.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Mousebumples: Make sure you don’t commit the error of failing to talk to an accountant about tax and withholding responsibility.
scav
@tom: Nothing Kind about them, let alone any additional measure of same, Küche they read as Kook-ee (damn furriners) and that’s MAGA-church y’all!
different-church-lady
And Republicans want American families to pound sand.
MomSense
There is so much I would like to say on this subject, but I find myself overwhelmed with emotions every time I try. Affordable, quality childcare would have changed my life.
rikyrah
@The Dark Avenger:
????
MomSense
Oh god. Matt Gaetz just tweeted a selfie with a group of teenage girls at a high school. Nope nopitynopenopenope.
Benw
I always hated how Robin Hood and Little John took away all those villagers’ freedoms.
#teamsirhiss
Cameron
@MomSense: Well, they’ve opened up the economy again, so he feels free to go shopping.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
There are folks who understand how revolutionary this would be.
And, how game changing- and THAT is why they despise it.
I consider this to be most GQP.
And, then, there are those without a phucking clue.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
??????
ThresherK
I’m in favor of any policy that reminds me of Ruben Bolling’s Super Fun Pak Comix.
sdhays
@Baud: It’s almost like the point is making sure everyone knows their “place”, from women to non-white people to just plain working people.
MomSense
@Cameron:
I just realized it’s an old photo but still super cringe.
Barbara
The Bruenigs seem to be softening — I read an op-ed by Elizabeth that I was prepared to hate but did not. It was about the pitfalls of aligning with corporations that have adopted “woke” positions.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
I realized talking with my son that part of why these GQP assholes bother me so much is because they are the people I came of age with. GenXers lost their minds for Reagan. It’s the same entitlement, racism, sexism, etc that I had to endure in high school. They’ve only gotten worse since then and obviously they didn’t mature.
eclare
@rikyrah: Exactly. Once people see that the government can work, they might expect it.
Baud
@Barbara:
Every alliance had pitfalls and risks.
Baud
@MomSense:
No one CANCELS Matt!*
*Except maybe the FBI, hopefully soon.
eclare
@MomSense: I’m also GenX, remember that grotesque book The Preppy Handbook? People I went to high school with took it seriously.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Benw:
Also, if them Duke boys would have just accepted Boss Hogg’s schemes to rip people off they’d have potentially become millionaires in the very free society of Hazzard. Plus, they should have cheerfully complied with Sheriff Roscoe.
Additionally, in the beloved song Convoy, those truckers demonstrated a lack of concern about safety, especially by crashing the gate doing 98….
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: I deeply loathe both Bruenigs, but they aren’t always wrong all the time. That’s what makes their dumb contrarianism so frustrating, IMO.
smith
As with abortion, the R opposition to government help with child care has much less to do with protecting life or supporting families than it does with maintaining patriarchal structures. Women now pay a high price for having children, unless they are dependent on a high-earning partner. If they have hopes for a career, those will be greatly diminished by having children, whether they stay home with them for a time or not. If they leave the workplace, the family will suffer if the one remaining income is not high. If they continue to work, most of their pay (scaled of course to about 80% of what they’d get if they were male) will go to child care. Either way, they basically work for free, and often the family just makes do with somewhat less than is needed.
And if the woman is foolish enough to go it alone, the burdens are multiplied to the point of being almost untenable. The only solution, in the Republican Utopia, is to marry an affluent man, and do whatever it takes to stay married. Subsidizing childcare just gives uppity women an out, and we can’t have that.
Percysowner
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yep. I am fully aware that my greatest gift to my kids is that I’m retired and can watch their daughter 4 days a week. My SIL’s mom felt guilty and takes her the other day. It has put them in a much more secure place financially. I don’t know how middle class families afford to put their kids in daycare with what it costs.
taumaturgo
This is part of a sordid GQP policy tradition, with lots of help from organized religion to keep women at the bottom of the patriarchal hierarchy. Anti-childcare, anti-choice, anti-contraceptives, anti-equal pay, anti-parental leave, anti-food assistance, anti-healthcare expansion. Anti-women, for sure.
Barbara
@smith:
I’m calling bullshit on two fronts. The first is that the cost of childcare is compared to the woman’s paycheck instead of to the overall family income that is generated by both parents in a two parent household. So, basically, it’s the woman’s salary that is paying for childcare. That is so fucking obnoxious.
And second, sure, you pay for daycare for a while. Not forever. And the four or five years where you might be paying for daycare but are staying at home means that you are not getting pay raises, promotions or even SS contributions. Now, how that affects you long term is a function of what your ultimate career trajectory might be. You might not care nearly as much if you are on a non-professional track with a fairly low ceiling for advancement. But still, the lazy assumptions that people make when they discuss this issue really infuriates me. Basically, it is premised on an acceptance of the patriarchal assumption that it is a woman’s role and duty to take care of children. Hence, only “her” salary is considered in relation to the cost of daycare. Ugh ugh ugh.
smith
deleted
Barbara
@smith: My point is that it isn’t just you, everyone talks like this. I have friends who talk like this about their own salaries being the only income that contributes to daycare. “Well, when you look at after taxes I am only making whatever amount more than the daycare payments.” Do people talk this way about car payments or mortgages? No, they don’t, because they see those things as shared family commitments. But, apparently, daycare only benefits women and therefore is “discretionary” in ways that other things aren’t. Its long term impact on the family or the woman in the family are considered unimportant. It’s enraging.
TS (the original)
@Barbara:
I have not known a two parent family where the cost of childcare is not measured against one of the family incomes (be it the man or woman – but usually the woman).
This is done to determine whether there is an economic option to the woman/lowest paid family member working & the children going to day care or whether it is a better economic proposition for one family member (again usually the woman) staying home to mind children & house.
Are you assuming families only have one child? Having non school age children usually lasts much longer than 4 or 5 years, And when they go to school – there is care needed before school, after school, or whatever time when both parents are working. Turn this into a single parent family and it becomes an absolute nightmare.
I have absolutely no idea why you are infuriated about the reality of the costs of childcare and or the format of the discussion.
OGLiberal
@eclare: Many of me fellow Gen Xers watched “Wall Street” and came away thinking Gekko was a hero. Mine is, perhaps, the worst generation.
Ohio Mom
MomSense @31:
A friend of mine insists that whoever is President when you are 10 is what shapes your politics. I’ve always considered it one of her less crackpot theories because it explains Gen X and Reagen.
On another note, I was a stay-at-home mom but I did leave Toddler Ohio Son with a woman who had a small inhome childcare business a couple of mornings a week so I could do things like get my hair cut, go to the dentist, and shop in peace.
When he was diagnosed with autism at three and a half, Rita said, “I thought there was something going on but I didn’t think it was my place to say anything.”
I always knew he was safe and happy (enough) at Rita’s but I would never have called it high-quality childcare. About ten percent of children have developmental delays/disorders, and a system of high-quality childcare would go a long way toward helping identify those who need a diagnosis and getting them the interventions they need to reach their potential.
(There is a federally supported program for identified children from birth to three — at which point, public preschool can take over — but children who aren’t identified, for whatever reasons, fall through the crack.)
Barbara
@TS (the original):
What I am infuriated about is the lazy assumption that it is totally fair and sensible to view relegating women to zero income status as the easiest solution to reducing the cost of childcare. That you don’t know anyone who doesn’t look at it like this more or less proves my point.
Another Scott
Relatedly, …
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@eclare:
I grew up in the town that was considered the preppy capital. I was also a PK so I couldn’t afford the wooden handled bags and belts with the fucking little whales. I did have a bright yellow tshirt with a large Izod Lacoste logo in a circle with a line through it.
Barbara
@Another Scott: Good for whom?
MagdaInBlack
@Barbara: I get you. I hadnt thought of it quite that way before, but I see your point and I agree: patriarchal thinking.
David Anderson
@Percysowner: there was a reason why I refereed so much when both my kids were in daycare.
Cameron
@Another Scott: Wow. Republicans just want everybody to look on the bright side of life. Mighty white of them.
Another Scott
@Barbara: Everyone, obviously. :-/
Empathy doesn’t exist for the GQP, so decisions are easy and life is simple – we just need to give them what they want.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Benw
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’d never heard Convoy, so thank you for that!
debbie
@Another Scott:
By its very definition, slavery is bad. These assholes!!!
Puddinhead
@taumaturgo: Yup, nothing makes a Republican angrier than people who work for a living actually making some money. They want workers with no benefits and no power, with no agency to expect financial reward for a job well done. In other words, replaceable without consequence (to the higher ups that is). I wish Democrats could effectively convey that message even despite the deck being stacked against them in the media.
West of the Rockies
@debbie:
Republicans love babies! They just want the little bastards to get to work and do as their told. No mollycoddling the miserable things. ” There, you were born, now get cracking! Chop-chop!”
jonas
The real Republican position is “If you want daycare, pay for it yourself. Not rich enough? Fuck you.” They can’t say that part out loud, of course, so all they have to fall back on is this bizarre argument that Biden wants to force you to put your kids in reeducation camps or something. It makes no sense. If you don’t want to put your kids in daycare, then, um, don’t. Whether someone gets a government subsidy to help with their choice shouldn’t be any of your damn business.
Citizen Alan
@debbie: I It’s very simple. The pro life people actually believe that children should be brought into the world for the sole purpose of punishing their mothers for having sex. I have never met someone who was stridently Anti-abortion and who, after no more than 5 minutes of questioning, did not eventually admit that they also want to destroy the social safety net because why should their tax dollars have to pay for someone else’s “mistake.”
Baud
@Another Scott:
Fixed to clarify the real debate.
cain
@debbie:
Isn’t it obvious? They want their women at home – being home makers and that’s it. That’s their traditional values. But because of their own policies nobody makes enough of a good living where one spouse (if they want to stay at home) can stay at home and take care of the kids. You have to have duo income to survive or live the life of the middle class.
This message only works for boomers and some older GenXers because they can actually remember such a time – Gen Y and Gen X don’t have any of that. Everyone had to work because everyone is in debt at the starting gate.
West of the Rockies
@OGLiberal:
No, the Boomers are the worst!
Wait… Murdock is 90, and he made Fox News possible. The pre-Boomers are the worst! Oh, but Shapiro and Milo and the Project Veritas guys are all under 40… they’re the worst! Wait…
How about 27% of all human beings truly and epically suck?
rikyrah
@Nicole:
Allowance and Social Security credit for stay at home mothers.And folks who help take care of family.
WaterGirl
@David Anderson: Do you miss refereeing? Guessing the answer might be yes and no, but I am curious. It was certainly an activity that isn’t easily replaced.
Citizen Alan
@Ramalama: I am astoundingly blessed that I had an aunt and later not 1 but 2 grandmothers who were able to take care of me and my sister during our childhoods while my mother and father each worked well paying Union jobs that required lots of travel, Which is why my sister and I were literally the 1st 2 people out of an extended family of 12 aunts and uncles and 20 something cousins to get a college degree. Perhaps relatedly, I and my sister’s middle child are the only members from our huge extended family who live outside the county where we were all born. And my sister would have moved to another state nearly 40 years ago had she not fallen In love with a local boy from a rich family who would probably have never looked at her had she not been college educated.
debbie
@Citizen Alan: @cain:
I’m sure you’re both right, up to a point. I know someone who resents having to pay for others, but I remind him each time how people stepped forward to help out his family after his father died in his mid-40s. Similarly, I remind him how he’s driven on roads and depended on water systems and sewers built by earlier generations. His insistence on not having to pay for their upkeep/replacement is really hastening the country’s failures and has broken the bonds of community.
He flings “Follow your bliss” at my generation; I fling back “Greed is good…and you’re the fucking problem.”
Pay it forward has become meaningless to these people.
Puddinhead
@Citizen Alan: the simple response is “somebody’s tax dollars helped pay for you.”
Eunicecycle
@Percysowner: I took care of my twin grandchildren until they were 18 months old and my daughter got a much better job and could afford day care for them. I know they appreciate that, in that it helped them get started financially. And of course I loved it ( most of the time!).
The Pale Scot
Imagine this guy pulling up to your house to do a plumbing job. I’m not sure whether that’s a Dump mannequin or a stickem on the window.
https://twitter.com/archer_rs/status/1388121080171270147
Baud
@The Pale Scot:
Indoor plumbing isn’t worth it.
Ksmiami
The answer is vote the fuckers out in every election in every county and tell everyone you know voting GOP is hazardous to your health.
Kay
The reaction to the child care subsidy I’m hearing is overwhelmingly positive. They knew about it before i did. Anecdotal of course, but this county went for Trump by 70% and all I hear is “when is it coming?”
I remain convinced Democrats could make inroads with white working class women. I frankly think they’re more progressive, more open to new ideas, and less attached to grievance-based cultural issues in favor of practicality.
What could it hurt? Take some portion of the giant wads of campaign cash that flush thru the system and assign some small portion to persuasion of them, and see if it succeeds, small scale. Don’t make a giant fucking deal about it and examine it to death. Just go try it. Run 3 fewer tv ads in expensive media markets- move some money around. Younger white working class women with children. It’s a big group.
Another Scott
@cain: I think they have various subschools of “thought”, but they’re all cartoonish and all have evil effects.
The bottom line is the same – making it hard for people below them for their own enrichment.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
cain
Didn’t work on me. I think I was 14 when Reagan was elected – I saw through his shit. I mostly ignored him though – I think I watched Miami Vice more. :D But the Iran Contra stuff I did pay attention to.
RaflW
Very much relatedly, I love this response to perennially pursed-lipped poltroon Susan Collins, after she laughably suggested D.C. merge with Maryland.
Whenever the GOP puts up a bullshit suggestion, be it child care or (dis)enfranchisement or whatever, don’t list facts as rebuttals. It buys their frame, and facts bounce off too many in the audience. Just assert a counter.
Sometimes, like the OP and Matt Bruening, the counter can be thoughtful and realistic. But let’s get busy with what we’re about, not just doing nerd-lists of why the GOP is wrong, stupid and venal (though they are all three!).
Kay
I generally believe benefits should be more universal – I think Democrats have done too much targeting and it’s basically backfired both for Democrats politically and the people they are attempting to help, but on this one I think I disagree. I think this is a base issue for Republicans- specifically, their fundy religious base, and I don’t see any sense in Democrats competing there. You won’t ever get them.
We don’t have to react to every appeal to their base they make. We can decide where and when we engage. “Broader” means “broader”, it doesn’t mean chasing after GOP base subsets.
RaflW
@Ohio Mom: Hmm. Gerald Ford would by my 10 y.o. potus.
I don’t think he was a multiculturalist or a redistributionist ‘class traitor’. But he and I both enjoy snow sports. ;)
Another Scott
@RaflW: I was in the retrocession camp about 20 years ago. “Hey, it was part of MD – just look at a map; it’s really just a city anyway; it makes sense to give it back.”
That totally ignores the political aspects of it. Statehood isn’t about land and maps. It’s about people. MD has its own politics. DC has its own politics. Mixing them would cause all sorts of chaos for no good reason. DC has its own identity. MD does not need it’s politics scrambled and diluted by DC.
DC should be a state, and should have been long ago.
Collins arguing for retrocession shows that she’s either willfully misinformed (as I was back then) or a lazy GQP hack.
Or both.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tern
Back in the early 90’s, my then-husband packed up our house, took the car, and left me with two small boys still in pre-school/daycare. After he left, the childcare expenses were just over 50% of my take-home income each month. I remember when I finally bit the bullet and went to apply for assistance, food & childcare were my main goals. I told the lady I was working with that I knew it wouldn’t be long-term, at the most it would be about 3 more years. I remember my stomach turning over when she informed me that I made $5 to much per pay period to qualify for assistance based on 3 people in our family. Her suggestions were: 1) Sell your car – “But then I can’t get to work as we don’t have public transportation around here”; or 2) Quit working – “But I need to work – both to support us and for my mental health – and because I want my boys to see their mom working to make things better for us”.
Maybe because I’m hard headed, but I chose neither option, nicely told her how f’d up the system was, and continued to work. I remember being so grateful that my kids got good meals and snacks at daycare, because food was more than scare. If one of the boys needed new clothes or sneakers (cheapest ones), there were almost no groceries for those two weeks, after I covered daycare, rent, utilities, and gas/insurance. On pay day, I would pay all the required/essential bills, get a few groceries, and then look at my check book balance and think “Oh, there’s those 5 dollars. Good thing I got that or my balance would be 0!”
When my oldest son started kindergarten, I ended up having him attended the program at the daycare since they provided before/after childcare and with the workhours I had, it was the only place available that could accommodate my job. One day his teacher reached out to me and said that she had asked him why he only had stubs for pencils (we were supposed to supply basic essentials and I had at the beginning of the school year). He told her “We don’t have money to buy them.” I told her that I was sure I could afford new pencils, but she told me not to worry about it. The daycare would cover his basic supplies. I told them how much I appreciated it, but was just sick for days after she told me about the conversations.
Eventually I started making more money in my career, met a man who didn’t mind dating a woman with 2 small boys, then didn’t mind being a dad to those same boys, and things eventually got better.
I will say though that what I went through back then is why I now sponsor scholarships, donate to programs supporting low income families, domestic shelters, different professional women’s organizations, etc. Every once in awhile when my husband comments about supporting these different organizations as we get closer to retirement, I just give him “The Look” and remind him of how things were when we met. Both my boys are now grown up and doing well, but so many people have no idea of the impact that subsidized child care would have on so many families. I was stubborn, persistent, and very, very lucky.
frosty
@Barbara: My experience was that once the second kid comes along, day care is equivalent to the wife’s salary and she has to make the choice whether to work or stay home. I’m fine with saying it’s equivalent to the salary of the lower paid parent. Occasionally that’s the husband and he should be making the choice.
In any case, raising kids is a financial burden and it would be nice if the 0.01% could be taxed to help with that. They don’t need another house.
Baud
@RaflW:
The senator from Northern Maine is being silly.
Kay
I’ve told this story before but we tried it here with a public school levy. My job was to look at the voter list from the board of elections and bring out lower income white working class women to support the schools their kids attend. It was easy to cull the list and “free” if you donate the labor, which we did. All the info you need is in the voter list at the Bd of Elections, if you know home values and addresses, and I do. We got that specific group out and we won. They’re hard to reach because they’re really fucking busy and stressed and they have all the frequent moves and chaos brought on by being low income but they will absolutely come out for their kids.
Sure Lurkalot
I am a childless product of a stay at home mom so my opinion may not bear weight…but I also think it’s costly and stressful to have misaligned schedules…half day pre-school and kindergarten, classes starting at 7 am and done at 3 pm, 3 month summer vacations, etc. vs. the predominant (but yes fading) 9 to 5, 50 weeks per year work world in addition to all of the financial issues surrounding child care.
Baud
As a reminder, Baud! 20XX! will pay for your dog care too.
JMG
@RaflW: When the Constitution was ratified, Maine was part of Massachusetts. Tell Collins that.
Mel
@rikyrah: This!!! Caregiving isn’t limited to caring for young children. There are far too many people going bankrupt or having to make devastating choices because there is so little financial support available for those caring for seriously ill or disabled spouses, parents, etc.
Kay
@Sure Lurkalot:
The summer school vacation is interesting because the reaction we get here is perhaps counterintuitive. They want to keep summer vacation for kids. While it is less convenient I think parents enjoy some time off from the herding and nagging and schedule of the school year. Every time it’s raised at our public school it goes down in flames. They want the break. It really is the time of the year where you get to enjoy your own kids instead of riding herd on them and all the daycares have summer schedules.
OGLiberal
@cain: I was 10 and didn’t work on me. But it didn’t work on my boomer parents so that may have been a factor. A lot of my friends’ boomer parents fell for it, as did my FDR/JFK loving maternal grandparents. And a lot of my childhood x-gen friends in my very blue state are Trump nuts. But then, even when my hometown was mostly voting for Dems the folks there were very racist.
Kay
I don’t hate him, I sometimes read his Twitter, but there’s something really preciously Lefty about him that IMO means I would not turn to him first for political advice. I feel like they’re people who think everyone will start progressive home school cooperatives, that sort of thing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it just isn’t a blueprint for a national “working persons” plan :)
BROAD. HUGE group of people using this. That can include Lefty opinion journalists! It just can’t be designed around them.
Ask someone else.
TS (the original)
@Barbara:
I didn’t say women – i said one of the family members – and more often than not it is the women. I know some family members where the father became the house husband – I don’t know any who didn’t consider the wage that could be earned as unrelated to childcare.
I still don’t understand your anger and I have yet to find a solution to child care that doesn’t involve a family member (being mother father grandparent or aunt) providing unpaid child care.
Anomalous Cowherd
@MattF:
I’m just an old curmudgeon, but by golly I like the idea of going back to the tax rates of the 1950s. What was the top rate back then, 90%? Funny how conservatives gloss over that when waxing nostalgic.
Mike in NC
I’m old enough to remember when some woman complained to Dubya that she was working three jobs just to make ends meet, he congratulated her on “living the American Dream”.
Cameron
@Anomalous Cowherd: What? Return to Eisenhower Socialism?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It could be argued that with his scandal Gaetz is bodily presenting the Republican vision of how to pay for collage tuition. However that makes my mind recoil at what the Republican solution to the cost of child care would be.
I think everyone is overthinking the GOP on this one; look at Trump, oh yes, sure Trump is married and has five kids, but Trump has no emotional attachment to any of his wives or children. Heck, he’s is such a failure at being a patriarch he’s got an unnatural interest in his own daughter. The man is effectively single and I wouldn’t be to surprised if that’s normal for a Republican. They simply are unable to understand the issues with child care, since most likely the women in their lives are basically sex workers or mother substitutes.
Stupid useless fail sons will be stupid useless fail sons
J R in WV
@debbie:
Fixed that for you… ;~)
Sister Golden Bear
@debbie: Easy. They’re not really pro-life, they’re pro controlling women’s bodies.
Villago Delenda Est
I see what you did there, Mistermix.
trollhattan
@cain: I’ll see your Reagan and raise you one Nixon. Both should have been impeached and I can say that for my voting life I’ve reliably been “the opposite of that guy” and Republicans have been very dependable in running “that guy” since.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sister Golden Bear: This, THIS, a million times this. Opposition to abortion has never been about “saving babies”.
rikyrah
@Mel:
I spent five years taking care of my mother, because we had promised that she would not go into a nursing home. I was lucky that an employer took a chance on me after I re-entered the job market after she died.
trollhattan
@Sister Golden Bear:
They’re all Duggars at heart.
Ken
@Baud: “Mr. Baud wishes to clarify that by ‘dog care’ he of course meant ‘pet care’, so would the cat owners besieging his home please extinguish the torches and go home…”
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
Uhhh. That descended into talk of “marxists” and “precious babies” pretty rapidly.
trollhattan
@Ken:
Heh, you said “cat owners,” heh.
MagdaInBlack
@Sister Golden Bear: I’ll be 63 this month. I was 14 when I figured out they didn’t give a damn about the baby or the mother, just making sure the baby is born, then you’re on your own. If you didn’t want a baby you shouldn’t have had sex, was/is the line of thought.
Kay
Can I just say how lazy and stupid this faux sophistication is?
What Republicans are doing in Arizona is they are taking the state apparatus – the government- and using it to promote a conspiracy theory. The State. They’re validating the same people who attempted to overturn an election. They’re giving them all the authority of state action.
I am genuinely baffled on what it would take for these people to figure out that they mean it.
They no longer accept election results. The one and only question is how far they will take that. What will be the actions they will take to overturn elections. There’s no longer any debate about whether they accept results- they don’t.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: Classic whataboutism to distract from the matter at hand. Old KGB trick.
Kay
If a mob had invaded the 911 commission, taken some part of the state authority to conduct that investigation and hired a bunch of fucking freaks to run an alternate state investigation THAT would be the same as what Republicans are doing in Arizona.
If they want to do the lazy “this is like THIS” compare/contrast they could at least out a tiny bit of work into it.
Sister Golden Bear
@MagdaInBlack: This too. Or one reason why I prefer to refer to them as being pro forced birth,
Barbara
@frosty: I don’t really care what you are “fine” with. Here is what your framing results in: That many, many people including those whose support we need see daycare as a discretionary expense, not a necessity, and therefore it isn’t society’s issue to deal with. At one time many people could get by by living in an apartment that is 1/2 the cost of their monthly mortgage but society decided that it wanted to encourage home ownership. You have to make it society’s problem. You certainly are never going to make it rich people’s problem. How you characterize it makes a big difference in how it is perceived.
Skepticat
@MomSense:
My father often wore a polo shirt, but he always very carefully removed any embroidered logo first.
Barbara
@Kay: Matt Yglesias is nothing if not banal. That his banalities spew forth under a cover of “but I know better” still doesn’t make them any less inane.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yep. I’d ask that person, who doubtless has a passel of kids, which kid he’d like to sell me, because I could REALLY use some help with chores around this house. We’d love one another, natch.
Ohio Mom
Tern:
That $5 too much income story is infuriating, even this many years later. I am in awe of what you managed.
I don’t know if it is still true but a while ago I read that most people on government aid programs stay on them for an average of three years — your story fits that pattern.
Needless to say, in direct contradiction to the oft-repeated myth of the multi-generational welfare family.
SFBayAreaGal
@Ohio Mom: For me 1966 was Lyndon Johnson. Yup, been voting Democratic party since I could vote. I was accused of being a radical when I was in high school. I told that person thank you.
NoraLenderbee
@Kay:
*sigh* I wish my parents had felt the way you do, instead of sending me off to summer camp for the entire summer from age 8 to 14. I was completely miserable. It was like the worst of boarding school, except every class was gym. There’s nothing quite like the feeling that your own mother doesn’t want you around.
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
Quivverfull child molesters like Josh Duggan and his classmates, Matt Gaetz, Josh Greenberg, etc. All sexually perverted in some way.
I think I hate that the most of all, grown men attacking children for the adult’s sexual pleasure, and ruining the sex lives of the children when they grow up and realize what was done to them.
Kay
@Barbara:
“Whistling in the dark”. It’s the phase I always think of because they are too scared to think it might be real so they continue to dismiss it as a threat.
The state of Arizona has decided to let a bunch of loonies paw through ballots- a state record- because they are intimidated by the loonies and refuse to be the grown ups and tell them “no, that’s not how this works”.
It’s as if Hawaii gave birthers the state birth records and said “here- do whatever you want with these”.
They get worse every year. Measurably, and in specific concrete ways that now extend to “state action”.
karen marie
Wait, what?
This makes no sense at all. How do they not get laughed out of the room?
Baud
@Kay:
Even without the state, he’s conflating “people” with high ranking officials.
MagdaInBlack
@Sister Golden Bear: I’ve been calling it that for a long time myself.
randy khan
When someone like McConnell complains that Democrats are proposing policies to do the things they want in our country, my first response is simply to say, “Yes, of course they are. That’s what a real political party does.”
My second response is to point out that, as it happens, those also are things that most Americans want, so it’s really just the will of the people at work. Maybe the Republicans should try that for once.
RaflW
@Kay: Yes!
I get that Dem grassroots were eager to go after Mitch last cycle, but imagine just 1/3 of what McGrath vacuumed up going to broadbased campaign outreach to women in ‘red’ congressional districts on issues like child care, decent wages for their work, etc.
Its one of the reasons I support Run for Something and their more local-scale individual candidates. A Dem contesting a state house seat in a race against an incumbent R can get meaningful messaging directly to voters and skip all the pricy TV ads that I think people quickly blank out on due to saturation.
Ken
@trollhattan: “Mr. Ken wishes to clarify that by ‘cat owners’ he meant ‘those honored by the presence of the gods among us’, so would the cats besieging his home please stop sharpening their claws in the siding and return to their worshipful servants….”
J R in WV
@TS (the original):
How about the Federal Government tax the rich and provide every small child with care payments. Their parents can then decide if they prefer to use those care payments for day care, or for a parent to stay home with the kids and take that care payment as their salary, with Social Security payments taken out of the monthly check.
Then the Caregiver gets paid, gets Social Security months marked off for their eventual pension, etc. Right beside children’s health care benefits. This isn’t hard. I don’t know why anyone can’t figure out this will benefit everyone in the nation.
And Public TV [ which used to be called Educational TV ] should be helping teach kids to read, write and do simple math from 7 am until 3 or 4 pm.
Actually, it wouldn’t hurt for all the TV networks to be educating people. Imagine … the History Channel could be broadcasting real Historical Facts, instead of Aliens built the Pyramids. Nope, that’s top famtastical!
Kay
@Baud:
We don’t have to panic and run around screaming but I think it would be nice if there could be a kind of sober consensus that this is “not good, and getting worse”. We can’t even get that.
Just look at the thing – this elaborate labored effort to shoehorn it into “context” is just bullshit.
dmsilev
@Kay: The lunatics are running the party. If you really want to despair, check out the article that the Post put up earlier today:
For Republicans, fealty to Trump’s election falsehood becomes defining loyalty test
That’s a dominant mindset in the GOP. Where do we even start?
Ruckus
@debbie:
mitch not so much…..
He has made a tidy sum not learning though.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Since this is an Open Thread, I’d like to bring the obits of a couple of interesting ladies to the attention of the jackal-tariat.
Arlene Pieper Stine, first woman to run an authorized marathon (running to the top of Pike’s Peak and down again). She did it in 1959. Did not know she’d made history till somebody tracked her down in 2009, after which for the last 12 years of her life she was a celebrity in the marathon world.
Olympia Dukakis, one of our favorite actors, and cousin to Dem presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. Biggest highlights for us: “Moonstruck” and “Tales of the City”. An all around cool lady.
trollhattan
@Ken:
I hope they see this in time to save you. (was going to type “save your bacon” but bacon complicates things)
debbie
@Kay:
Most appalling about AZ is that those same conspiracy theorists are the ones doing the recount.
(my bold)
sab
@NoraLenderbee: That is the best description of summer camp that I have ever read!
trollhattan
Nice to know water is still wet.
Joe can make up for it by sending Little Kim all the world’s King Louis XIII cognac. Then Kim will send Joe a letter on comedy-size stationary.
James E Powell
@Kay:
I’ve long suspected you’re right about this. I’ve never quite understood why they went so big for Trump.
James E Powell
@Kay:
Is he saying that the January 6th insurrection and what’s going on in Arizona are the same as the comment section at DailyKos?
WaterGirl
@Ken: hahahahaha
schrodingers_cat
BJP lost in the three of the five states where elections were held last month. West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Someone with mad editing skills did this.
https://twitter.com/ManyWorlds1Cat/status/1388919769244516356?s=19
JMG
When he writes on public policy, Yglesias is a serious person. When he talks politics on Twitter, he’s just a shitposter and he’s pretty much admitted it.
MaryLou
@Another Scott: I know we’re supposed to avoid condescension and not call the GQP’ers out as ignorant knuckleheads, but damn, they make it hard.
karensky
@Cheryl from Maryland: Excellent!
The Pale Scot
@Another Scott:
If I thought she’d understand I could explain to her the differences between “biblical” and capitalist slavery. Three thousand years ago the average age of death was 21 years. Useful labour was valuable not to the ledger, but to survival. At night the livestock were herded into a walled compound and everybody, masters, slaves, cattle and goats sleep near each other for safety. Getting a full rice bowl was a big thing. Only the well fed can bitch about freedum. It could be different for slaves of royalty, but as they say today, good help was hard to find.
When technology developed that invading far off lands was profitable, things changed. The Romans and other civilizations had access to a supply of non citizens that was increased by Roman infrastructure. Life got cheap and slaves were segregated into artisans, servants, expendable hard labour.
 Slavery in new world was shaped by “financial innovation” Slave holders could borrow on the value of future commodity production and their slaves to buy more slaves and increase production. This all would have collapsed on itself if it wasn’t for the cotton gin. Tobacco and sugar were being produced world wide and the south couldn’t compete, but they had a market hold on long hair cotton which Europe aristocracy was gaga for which trickled down to everyone else.Â
 From functional workers being valued and part of society to just being cogs in a ruthless system of extraction, that’s the course of modern slavery. Masta wasn’t sleeping with the help inside walls to keep out the wolves, slaves were just numbers on a ledger.
Extremely rough draft, I’m just trying to point out the economic imperatives. Rape, brutality etc was just part of the human condition in the iron age. Christ was suppose to change this, but the ledger rules and we all still waiting
JaneE
Democrats could always throw in a (small) tax credit for employers who provide child care services on site for their employees – male or female of course. There may already be some somewhere in the tax code.
When I was born my dad had a job that allowed my mother to stop working and stay at home, which she did until I was in school. Then she worked and stayed at one job until it closed down. With a good income, she had a choice of work or not. That was 70 years ago. The jobs my mother did work at don’t exist any more. They don’t wrap individual oranges before they put them in boxes for shipment. I would be surprised if they gathered, checked and packed eggs by hand either.
Today many households have more than one earner. I knew lots of women who would have preferred to stay home and take care of their kids and homes. None of them felt that they could afford to do that. The really lucky ones could earmark most of their income for the kids’ college funds. Few could.
Professional and highly skilled women workers have had access to employer funded child care help or on site child care centers as a benefit. We need to bring those benefits to all women workers.
sdhays
@Another Scott: If we’re going to decide that DC should be part of another state instead of its own state (because that would make too much sense), who says it needs to be a part of a state that it is next to? Let’s just merge it with Wyoming and maybe Wyoming can start to pull its own weight in this country.
It makes just as much sense.
WhatsMyNym
@sdhays:
West Virginia??
ETA: make a connecting corridor down the middle of the Potomac River.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@MomSense: This GenXer had the same high school experience you did. And, yeah, they’re all GQP now.
Frankensteinbeck
@dmsilev:
Republicans have believed that Democrats engage in heavy voting fraud for at least forty years. It is tightly tied to the white supremacist and white grievance mindsets, the belief that it is impossible for the Other to beat them without cheating. It has been the justification for round after round of voter suppression for decades. Trump’s narcissist bullshit had a fertile field waiting for it.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
Even as they themselves are cheating!
JAFD
@Barbara: During WWII, we passed the GI Bill of Rights, one provision was that anyone who was draften or enlisted had the right to his old job back when the war ended – same pay, same seniority, same prospects for promotion.
Someone (whose name I’ve forgotten) suggested ‘twould be good idea if we adopted this for mothers taking off from workforce to care for children.
brantl
… up their asses with a sharp knife. FTFY.
Another Scott
@sdhays: Looks like Pennsylvania should be able to claim D.C, and Connecticut should be able to claim Chicago and Cleveland…
Cheers,
Scott.
Captain C
@Citizen Alan: They want all people not in their in-group to suffer (preferably in a profitable way) and they want to be praised for wanting this.
David Anderson
@WaterGirl: Both — I miss the time on the field and the very different type of thinking it demanded as well as the reason to run (putting down the whistle led me to gain 10 pounds pretty quickly). I don’t miss not having weekends and I like that I have the ability to have enough time and headspace to coach U-10 soccer. Over the long run, I know that I have already locked in chronic ankle problems with the damage that I have done to my joints from age 10-39 so avoiding even more damage from age 40-50 is probably not a bad thing. I would like to avoid surgery that is likely to only stabilize the decline instead of reverse it for as long as possible.
WaterGirl
@David Anderson: Yeah, I imagine there is something grounding about being outside with kids and families in a (mostly) positive environment, and getting to move around and being in a completely different head space than any other time. It’s also easy to imagine the downsides, but the upside (more free time with family) is hard to beat.
Just Chuck
@debbie:
Nothing to get when they’re all liars and hypocrites who make slogan-like noises with no connection to their actual meaning.
eclare
@JaneE: Skilled women have had access to employer funded child care? Not at the Fortune 100 company where I worked. But hey, women did get six weeks disability for a baby. New dad’s, nada. Take vacation if you want to see your baby
And even though the campus had thousands of employees, no on site child care.
J R in WV
@The Pale Scot:
Rape and brutality was just part of the human condition right here in America up until January 1, 1863 — thank you Abraham…
And lots of people — Rascist Republicans, all — want to return to that era ASAP, just look at that they’re doing to democracy right now!
Uncle Cosmo
That’s interesting. When future Dad came home from the Pacific he worked for about a year on the local Fisher Body assembly line before Western Electric rehired him.
(As he told the story years later, when he got his draft notice with a reporting date a month hence, Western said if he gave two weeks’ notice they’d hold his job til he came back. He’d had so many lousy breaks in his life that he was convinced he’d be killed in combat, so he left immediately & spent what he thought would be the last month of his civilian life with the people he cared about. And counted himself lucky on all counts – surviving the war, getting the assembly line job when he came back, then reconncting with WE, from which he retired >30 years later.)
grandpa john
@RaflW: mine would have been FDR a selection I can still agree with. andpretty well reflects my present thinking