Casar: I'm standing here on the Republican side of the aisle not because I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, but I want the American people to see that there isn't any Republicans in the seats here behind me on the eve of our default. Where are the Republicans? pic.twitter.com/jKmQaEcJc1
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 25, 2023
House Republicans are sending Members home instead of doing their jobs and preventing a devastating default.
So, @HouseDemocrats are on the floor, standing up and speaking out.
We're not walking away from duty and the American people. https://t.co/v4WFFFfl7S
— Katherine Clark (@WhipKClark) May 25, 2023
Since this is entirely the GOP’s fault — they chose to skip town early, all the while meeping about the deadlines invented by the GOP to damage the Biden administration, global catastrophe be damned — our side might as well stockpile some social-media ammunition for the next election.
Because I trust the bias of the local paper where the company town’s industry is national politics, I’m mostly paying attention to the Washington Post. Gift link: “White House, GOP appear closer to deal to avert debt ceiling crisis”.
… Facing mounting pressure ahead of a potential June 1 deadline, negotiators are zeroing in on a deal to raise the debt ceiling for two years — through the 2024 presidential election — in exchange for two years of new spending limits mostly focused on domestic government programs, three people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect the private talks.
Buoying the optimism around an emerging agreement, the Biden administration agreed to long-standing GOP demands to pare back some of the $80 billion in new funding Congress approved last year for the Internal Revenue Service, the people said. The administration agreed to the GOP demands so officials could redirect as much as $10 billion from the IRS to shield other domestic programs from the steep cuts sought by Republicans.
But even as a deal came into focus, fierce new objections emerged from both the left and the right — with a stampede of conservatives throughout the day vowing to stop a deal they said would not cut federal spending by enough. Some people close to the talks emphasized that key issues remained unresolved, and it was possible a deal could fall apart before an agreement could be finalized.
Still, lawmakers and White House aides appeared to find the way to unlock what had become the biggest sticking point in the talks. Republicans had demanded that the government spend less money next year than it did this year on a portion of the budget covering domestic programs, while also insisting on substantial increases for the military and border security. Democrats balked at these demands, since they would lead to huge cuts to federal programs such as nutrition aid, housing assistance, education and scientific research.
To resolve this impasse, negotiators agreed to slightly decrease spending on these domestic programs — giving House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) a key victory — while redirecting money from other parts of the federal budget, such as the IRS funding, which would effectively keep domestic spending flat for next year, according to two of the people familiar with the matter. Spending on veterans and the military will rise in line with the increases sought by the president’s budget, one of the people said…
From what I can tell, ‘Dem frustration’ seems to be largely performative; the only (D) CNN could find to go on the record is Susan Wild, ‘one of the country’s most politically vulnerable Democrats’ in a heavily R-favored precinct:
Dems say WH taking their votes for granted in potential debt deal with GOP. “The White House needs to understand there are a lot of very frustrated members of the Democratic Caucus who are very concerned about the position that Democrats are being put in.” https://t.co/YX5ycWrfcn
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 26, 2023
On the other hand, the Freedumb Carcass and its enablers are presented as sweating bacon grease and Axe body wash…
House conservatives blanch at leaked details of McCarthy-Biden debt talks https://t.co/03SD490hYf
— POLITICO (@politico) May 25, 2023
To quote a much-missed commentor: F*ck ’em!
House Dems are fighting hard to prevent a dangerous default.
And stop right-wing extremists from crashing the economy.
We. Will. Win. pic.twitter.com/NqEmMFNLcb
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) May 25, 2023
Republicans don’t care about the deficit but they do care about serving their wealthy donors.
That’s what this is all about. https://t.co/ms2vURCAhm
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) May 26, 2023
Defaulting on the debt—including trillions incurred under Donald Trump—could mean seniors missing Social Security checks and millions of jobs lost.
It sounds like the head of the Republican Party thinks that’s a price worth paying to elect Republicans. pic.twitter.com/fHbRqviI9j
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 25, 2023
On The Road – Dextrous – Beaune, Burgundy
Baud
I don’t buy the universally accepted theory that a default would help the GOP, but my views on the debt ceiling have long been out of step with everyone else’s. But I hope we won’t have to find out.
lowtechcyclist
Anyone who thinks the Rethugs give a damn about the well-being of this country must have just woken up from a Rip van Winkle nap.
p.a.
@Baud:
Surprisingly given the “Rethugs always set the agenda” media climate, IIRC this game has usually hurt Rs with the public.
Betty Cracker
Biden’s social media team is sharp — McDaniel needs dragging!
@Baud: I don’t buy it in the sense that Americans will see Repubs as the hero of this story. But if a crash means the economy sucks for the remainder of Biden’s first term, I can definitely see how that helps their presidential prospects.
The emerging deal as outlined above suggests there probably won’t be a default, which is a relief. But I really hope Dems aren’t forced to take a vote on cuts while 95% of the party that insisted on them votes no.
p.a.
Reposting from Cole’s “Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists” post below:
My feeling mirrors the title of this post.
How long is the list of Republicans negotiating in good faith?
How long is the list of Republicans who don’t view compromise as weakness?
How long is the list of Republicans who won’t take this negotiation as a green light to invent reasons to blow up any other function of the federal gubmint?
Go 14th Amendment AND mint the coin AND invent some other fucking procedures (“we” do control the executive branch after all) to shut this shit down the way the “debt limit” was invented out of whole cloth. They’re going to try to gut the federal government anyway, somehow, they’re going to call Dems traitors anyway, they’re going to go on conservative media to rant and whine anyway, they’re going to call Biden an emperor anyway…
BellyCat
IRS demand is baldly serving GOP paymasters. No other interpretation to voters.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Nancy Pelosi would insist McCarthy do the heavy lifting on votes, and I’d imagine Jefferies will do the same.
If they finalize the deal, I expect they’ll try to pass a short term debt limit increase to give themselves time to hammer out the legislation.
Lapassionara
I am thinking the MSM is figuring out a way to blame Biden, no matter what happens.
the discharge petition only needs a few Republican votes to work. But I suppose getting those votes is not happening with this crowd.
JPL
@Lapassionara: MSM is awful and the negative polls are because of them
When Obama was president public sentiment pointed the finger at congress for not passing a clean bill. No longer though and they want spending cut.
Mai Naem mobile
First these people don’t care about the well being of the US. Even their donors know they can move their $$$ out of this country and get citizenship in NZ or Singapore. As an aside, if they make the deal there will be congress critters timing it so that the market takes a dump leading to bad economy headlines for Biden and at the same time their pals will make some $$$ off knowing about the timing.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
JPL
Is Kevin going to Mar a Logo for the long weekend?
p.a.
OK here’s Josh Marshall on the latest of what appears to be the outline of a deal. I’ll sign on to his thought that if the deal plays out as it currently appears it’s a bit of OK, as I have a sneaking hint of a suspicion of an idea that he’s smarter than I.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/pretty-big-news
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@p.a.:
I’m smarter than people but no one defers to me.
p.a.
@Baud: Obviously you need a bigger platform than a mere top 10,000 liberal blog. At least 8,500…
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I do. Oh, wait a minute, I’m a nobody.
RandomMonster
Trump ran on ‘American Carnage’ the first time around. A debt default would give him a lot to talk about in 2024.
Geminid
@Lapassionara: The discharge petition tactic is still in play. McCarthy may not get a majority of his caucus to vote for this deal, and my guess is that if McCarthy can’t, Democratic House leadership won’t release the neccesary votes.
So this deal could still blow up next week. Then, the Democrats’ next step might be securing 5 Republic signatures for the discharge petition, then amending Rep. DeSaulnier’s bill to reflect a compromise similar to the McCarthy-Biden agreement.
Baud
@Geminid:
I don’t think they’ll incorporate the deal if they go the discharge route. The discharge route means all Dems and 5 Republicans. No reason to give McCarthy anything if we have to do that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@p.a.: That sounds unpleasant but tolerable. I especially like the thing Marshall mentions at the end: the Rs can’t come back for more cuts when the budget is negotiated in a few months. Assuming the deal is what Marshall thinks it is, of course.
Frankensteinbeck
So we keep all of Biden’s budget increases, except $80 billion to the IRS goes down to $70 billion? And negotiations are done until next congress?
That sounds to me like rolling McCarthy, not rolling over for him.
Geminid
@Baud: House Democrats certainly would have the leverage to get a better bill out of that chamber But there is the Senate to consider. McConnell can withhold his 9 votes unless the bill tracks the current compromise.
Baud
@Geminid:
Let him.
Honus
@Geminid: I hope you’re right, but at this point I also agree with p. a. At #5. Invoke 14th with executive power and and let the the republicans and and SCOTUS crash the economy and take the full blame.
Betty Cracker
My normie husband and I were discussing the DeSantis launch debacle and state of the GOP nomination last night, and he’s convinced Trump won’t get the nomination. He thinks it will be DeSantis or one of the other poisonous toads. I still think Trump is more likely than not, just because he has a die-hard plurality. We shall see.
p.a.
A terrorist base and feckless leadership; Joe should insist on a raise in this agreement for having to deal with these trash humans.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Under the rules, if the Republicans aren’t cowering in fear, we lost.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I got no predictions. Their voters are beyond irrational.
Soprano2
@BellyCat: Especially since it would make the debt worse!!! This really shows that this isn’t about the debt at all, but most of the press won’t report it that way.
Geminid
@Baud: That is an interesting scenario.
It’s possible, but seems like Biden is prioritizing economic certainty. He and Schumer may press House Democrats to extract only minimal concessions in order to get the deal done before an incipient default begins to damage the economy.
JPL
@Honus: MSM will blame the president, because….
Has anyone mentioned that the repubs skipped town?
Frankensteinbeck
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yeah, if this is a budget deal and a debt ceiling bill? When Republicans control the House? As solid a victory as you can get in that situation. So good it’s hard to believe.
Geminid
@Honus: If the economy is bad next year because of a crash, the Republicans certainly should get the blame. I think voters may still take it out on Biden , though.
Baud
@Geminid:
If Biden were going to do that, he would urge House Dems to vote for the deal when McCarthy places it on the floor. You only go the discharge route if McCarthy can’t pass his deal. And if you do that, I don’t see where you just pass the McCarthy deal or something close to it.
eversor
Matt Schlap fired from CPAC and the ACU.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: Bizarre as it seems to us, the president is the only politician some normies have heard of. Some of them can’t name the vice president, let alone the Speaker of the House
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Hmm. I seem to recall someone saying the default threat was a big nothing burger as repugs wouldn’t dare halt 10s of millions of Social Security checks and red state welfare.
Kay
Ugh. Vocational schools are included in student loan forgiveness if they’re accredited and people shouldn’t be going to unaccredited trade schools anyway, because they are a rip off.
I know she’s new but maybe she could read something before talking? And voting? She herself attended Reed- a private liberal arts college. I would think she could do her reading.
Ken
One scenario is that enough Republicans get angry at the deal that they start the process to remove McCarthy as speaker, and then enough vote against him that he’s removed. As I recall from the speaker election shitshow, “enough” is 1 to start it, and 6 to remove him, which seem easy numbers. Then how does a bill get passed?
I don’t recall if the agreed rules would allow Democrats to vote to retain McCarthy, or if it was purely a majority-party matter.
Kay
@eversor:
Desperate to distance themselves – lol
Every accusation is a confession.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@eversor:
and here I thought CPAC was vociferously against cancel culture
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Hell, if this really does settle budget negotiations too, pass it now, don’t bother with a separate debt ceiling bill! Republicans control the House. There is no feasible way to get a better budget than last year’s under those circumstances. That’s not how it works! $80 billion increase in the IRS drops to $70 billion is an astonishingly good budget result. Seriously, this can’t be real.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Kay:
Why can’t Reed read?
Betty Cracker
Speaking of economics, the recent conflict between our dogs indirectly hit the local economy, causing nearby pub revenue to plunge. But we’re confident enough that we’ve got the canines sorted that we may venture out this weekend, together and without the dogs. Woohoo!
Kay
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
I need one of these people to show me the person who wants to take skilled trades training and can’t get it. She needs to show me that person. Right now any low income person can get trades traning at our community and technical college with a Pell. Enrolling for summer courses!
They actually could have gone to trades training high school at the same facility. That has been true for 100 years.
Geminid
@Baud: Biden could urge Democrats to vote for the deal, but I think he knows his House leaders are not going to provide a majority to pass this bill. I suspect Jeffries and Clark will require McCarthy to match every Democratic vote and have a few extra to make it a Republican majority, something like 113 R, 105 D.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes, that’s true. If Biden has owned McCarthy, it might be worth passing.
JPL
@eversor: Whoa! Wonder if they’ll keep paying his lawyer fees?
Kay
@Geminid:
That’s wildly optimistic. McCarthy got something for the deal- maybe what he got is Democrats provide the majority and he’s off the hook with his far Right members.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
👍
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The first dozen or so responses to that dumb tweet are from people arguing as if what she says is true.
James E Powell
@Kay:
LOL. Spot on, Kay.
Right-wingers, as always, established the frame that everyone who struggles to repay student loans got a BFA in poetry or dance so it’s all their own fault!
Quite a few of my former students went to ITT Tech.
Chief Oshkosh
I like that the Democrats are punching, but even Biden’s sound bite is a mouthful:
How about just saying:
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I support vocational education! I love skilled trades! We don’t need this dope starting a fight between people who went to college and people who went to trade school because her personal “brand” is “body shop owner”.
I don’t know what’s wrong with white working class young men, but it isn’t a lack of opportunity. It’s true that they need to pass high school algebra to get into a trades program. If that’s what’s stopping them I don’t have that much sympathy. I have faith in them. They can do it. This kind of patronizing self serving meeping about the working class is just not helpful to them.
Scout211
These days I look for good news with my morning coffee. A SCOTUS ruling yesterday seems like good news to me. Unanimous.
Supreme Court sides with woman after county sold her condo over tax bill, keeping all the money
brendancalling
I don’t know guys. Atrios says this is all the Democrats’ fault and in fact they WANT these cuts actually, so I’m going with that. /s
Baud
@Scout211:
It’s one of those rare cases where the right and the left were in agreement.
ETA: not just justices but advocates.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Exactly. There’s a real misunderstanding about who student loans debtors are, and where they went. But I really can’t have members of congress contributing to it. She needs to get a better understanding of the student debtor picture and stop with these dumb “populist” slogans.
I bet I could find accredited body shop programs. Perhaps she could look into those to staff her business.
Geminid
@Ken:I’m not sure the Speaker can be removed by a vote of 6 members. That may be the threshold to set up a floor vote to vacate the Speaker’s Chair. Then McCarthy would survive with 118 votes.
So long as the debt ceiling matter is resolved beforehand, I don’t think McCarthy losing that vote would be a bad thing for Democrats. The best Republicans could do is to elect Scalise in his place. They may not be able to pull that off, and their factions could deadlock on other choices.
That would open up my favorite scenario: a “caretaker” Speaker like retired Congressman Tom Reed,* elected with 113 Democratic votes and 5-10 Republican. That way, critical legislation could still make it to the floor for the rest of this Congress. I expect that Democrats will win the Speakership outright when the next Congress convenes in January, 2025.
*Reed retired from his upstate New York district last year. He was one of the ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
sab
@Kay: Jeez. And she is one of ours ( Dem)
ETA My dyslexic stepson went to welding school and is happily employed with other employers frantically trying to recruit him.
If the Ohio legislature outlawed non-compete clauses for low level employees that would help a lot in recruiting, but they will never do that.
Ken
@Geminid: I meant that it would take six (or thereabouts) Republicans voting against McCarthy, to keep him from getting the 118 he needs to retain the chair. Unless Democrats cross over, that is.
Geminid
@Kay: I don’t see how this is “wildly optimistic.” I think McCarthy will have to deliver half his caucus as his part of the deal. You don’t.
This time next week, we should know who is right.
Layer8Problem
@brendancalling: It’s been quite a while since I felt a compelling need to visit Eschaton and see what Atrios is thinking, possibly around when he stopped cat blogging years ago. He may have brought it back, I don’t know.
Omnes Omnibus
@brendancalling:
Jebus, they went to threaded comments.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: Threaded? He’s dead to me. Might as well be “Lawyers, Guns & Money” now.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Right. I understand that Dems in reddish areas feel like they have to shit on their own party occasionally to maintain “I’m no AOC!” street cred. But they should at least be fucking accurate in their critiques. This is either cynicism or ignorance, and it’s inexcusable in either case.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: It definitely seems to be a young white guy thing. Every POC I know who didn’t do college learns a trade.
Geminid
@Ken: Ah, now I see.
Personally, I think that once the debt ceiling is raised, Democrats will have no incentive to prop McCarthy up. They can let Republicans own their own turmoil, and pick up some pieces if the Republican caucus blows up.
Baud
@sab:
You know where non competes are illegal? Commie California.
Suzanne
@Kay:
No, it really is not. I honestly don’t know anyone who disrespects trades workers. I genuinely think this perceived disrespect is a fantasy.
Please note that I do not include “college girls don’t want to date me” as “disrespect”.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Republicans probably disrespect them.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I don’t see how Gluesenkamp Perez’s and Golden’s votes against the student loan relief differs much from the 6 “Squad” votes against the Infrastructure bill. Neither group’s votes altered the outcome, and members of both groups misrepresented the legislation they voted against.
Betty Cracker
Details are starting to trickle out about the Twitter Spaces debacle that (further) beclowned Ron DeSantis. Here’s The Daily Beast summarizing a Platformer article about Spaces:
This article from The Beeb makes it sound like a potential sacrificial lamb preemptively bolted the pen: chief engineer Foad Dabiri quit the day after the gov’s infamous failure to launch. Upon his exit, Mr. Dabiri engineered a hilariously passive-aggressive comment about Musk:
LOL!
Kay
@Suzanne:
I feel like the people who say this are really telling on themselves. In working class areas there is no disrespect for trades. The places where these young men are growing up- white, rurall, lower income, there is no disrespect for trades.
Our vocational high school is oversubscribed. To get in and stay in you have to pass 8th or 9th grade algebra and show up every day. There’s a school bus. You have to be on it. The people who “can’t take trades training- it’s impossible because the US is full of dance majors!” are not trying very hard to take trades training.
It’s amusing to me because these people are all trying to be working class credible but they sign onto all these dumb untrue slogans about training and work. Does she have a federally certified apprentice program in her body shop? Why not? They’re available. I think she has to get right on that.
Soprano2
@brendancalling: I read his blog just to get the contrarian Democratic position. He seems to be down on most Democrats, and thinks if only the most progressive wing were in charge there would be real fighters for the Democrats. He doesn’t say there’s no difference between the parties, but thinks Democrats are a lot closer to Republicans than they really are.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
oof. Smartest person in the room syndrome. He believes he is smarter than anyone prior.
I blame the parents of these people. They’re all poorly raised. The expensive private schools don’t seem to be raising them properly either, in the absence of parents. Maybe a training program for very wealthy parents- ” how not to raise such giant assholes”. Send a nurse to their homes after the birth.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: That is an odious bill, too, because it would retroactively charge debtors for all the interest that was suspended during Covid. It would cause people who got relief through PELF to owe more money! What Democrat would vote for that? I hope those two get raked over the coals for this. Jared Golden voted for it, too.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s good shade.
jonas
@Betty Cracker: I haven’t been paying much attention to it, but is Trump even really campaigning at all? Or just reeling in donations from the rubes knowing he’ll need it for his legal defense? It now appears that the Mar-a-Lago case has gone from “he tried to stash top secret documents in his Florida estate in violation of record preservation laws” to “Yep, he violated the Espionage Act.” As in, actually went around letting people w/o clearance look at TS/SCIF documents he stole.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think it’s a good deal. It’s such a good deal I think part of it might be Democrats provide all the votes. If so that is just insanely cynical by McCarthy so maybe not, but I don’t see what he got out of this other than “now I don’t have to do anything or be responsible for anything” :)
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: If the so-called Squad lied about or displayed ignorance of specific provisions in the infrastructure bill, that’s inexcusable too!
It’s one thing for a House leader to let members vote no or abstain on votes that might harm their standing with constituents — that’s politics. But anyone from any faction who flat-out misrepresents the specific terms of the legislation through ignorance or cynicism is harming the party, IMO.
Soprano2
@The Thin Black Duke: I think a lot of those young white guys are mad that everyone isn’t bowing down to them like they’re the Masters of the Universe anymore, so they’re pouting and refusing to better themselves. It’s a real problem.
Baud
@Soprano2:
In an age of fascism, I am less charitable to the type of people you describe in your comment.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I wholly supported PPP, I helped tens of small businesses get it and I’m sure she needed it but if you’re going to take 65k from the federal government and have it forgiven do not screw young people on their students loans. I mean, have some decency. She got 65k. That’s the bottom line. She won’t give them anything. It’s gross.
JaneE
The party of deadbeats. Never pay you bills, just like Trump.
The first expenditures I would stop are anything going to Republican districts, Republican states, and Republican supported subsidy programs.
Suzanne
@Kay:
I agree with you.
The vast majority of college grads are taking business, engineering of various types, English and history, education, nursing and health professions, psychology. (I will also note that I have a visual arts degree and I am gainfully employed.) Things that are useful and employable.
Joan Williams’ book “White Working Class” pointed out that the real disrespected jobs are the ones women do (cleaning, nursing, cosmetology, elementary education).
I see a lot of male entitlement in this idea that trades are “disrespected”. There’s a reason that you hear it now that women are outnumbering and out-graduating men at college, and as educational assortative mating is on the rise.
Women having an array of choices about with whom they spend their time is not disrespect.
Geminid
@Soprano2: Washigton 5th CD Democrats and Maine 2nd CD Democrats can always field primary challengers against Perez and Golden if they care about this vote. It may take more than that to motivate them though. This matter will more likely be forgotten by next year, and probably by next week.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Agreed.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think it’s sadder than that. They really seem to think they can all be social media influencers or something Their parents are just frantic and a certain portion of them will blame “liberalism” or black people ot immigrants. That’s what I see here. Their parents are hard working and functioning – I don’t know what happened to the boys. And it is “the boys”. The girls seem to do better.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: FWIW, I think that’s exactly what’s happening with McCarthy. The Freedom Caucus loons are actually the speaker.
@jonas: There was the CNN townhall thing and Waco rally, but I don’t recall any other events either.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I actually think trades could do more to respect trades. They need to make the jobs more fulfilling, sell them as “building” and “creating” rather than all “you make 40 an hour after 5 years and we plug you into a job like plugging in a machine”.
Instead of looking outside, and demanding college people “show respect” (whatever that means) figure out how to get existing trades workers to have pride in the work they do. The rest will take care of itself.
Baud
@Kay:
From your comment, it sounds like the parents are what happened to the boys.
p.a.
@Soprano2:
Quite possibly their problem is the working class they supposedly aspire to isn’t exclusively white anymore? “I won’t/can’t compete with those people…”
Soprano2
@Kay: I “third” this sentiment. Our local community college is wildly successful; they have branches in several outlying communities as far as 50 miles away. They just built a huge new manufacturing training center. You know one area where they need more slots – dental hygienist! I’ve got a friend whose husband retired from being a police officer and became a dental hygienist. He had to go to St. Louis to get his education because there were no slots at our local community college.
Also, all this butt hurt stuff about the trades not being respected is bullshit. It’s part of their picture of themselves as perpetual victims.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I could see it as politically beneficial to Dems, if you squint a little. They solved the debt crisis and trimmed spending w/out Republicans. The ridiculous “swing voters” and “independents” think it’s a family budget so they’ll like the (vague) idea of trimming and let’s face it – none of them knew where the benefits they receive came from so they won’t know who to blame if they’re trimmed.
mrmoshpotato
Hehe
Fuck ’em!
stinger
@Suzanne:
I’d add home health care. For many people, “nursing” implies a hospital setting, and not only are there increasing numbers of male nurses in hospitals, a hospital is a more “respected” job site than an elder apartment.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I completely sympathize with older people who have to “retrain” – I see people in my office where it honestly doesn’t make any sense to do it- they won’t be able to recoup in the working time they have left but for young people? They can call me up. I’ll find them a trades program and if they’re low income I’ll get it for them free. I respect them if they follow thru.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I agree. The narrative that Rs win and Ds lose no matter what the issue is, is tired and old.
Tony G
Putting aside for a moment the fact that the GOP has become a fascist movement, the “work” habits of Congress — especially but not exclusively the Republicans — are a disgrace. All of these goddamn breaks and vacations. I worked in software development and support for forty years. For all of those years I was on call 24×7 – first by pager and then by cell phone — in case a system crashed or had other major problems. When a crisis occurred I was expected to do whatever it took to fix the crisis — work through the night, work through the weekend, work on Christmas Day, whatever — and if I had not fulfilled those expectations I would have been fired. The Republicans are a couple of orders of magnitude worse than the Democrats, but it’s an entitled, cavalier attitude among members of Congress in general. Their priority is kissing the asses of their donors instead of doing their goddamn jobs.
Baud
@Tony G:
Always happens. GOP led Congresses always have more recesses than Dem led Congresses
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
Not arguing with you on this, but I’m not sure the “If I shit on my own party, I will be re-elected” plan actually works, especially for house members. If hating AOC matters to voters, they will vote for the real AOC hater.
Baud
@James E Powell:
My guess is that these reps believe that their constituents resent student loan relief so this is they’re way of virtue signaling to the resentarati.
Geminid
Jared Golden was also the lone Democratic vote against the Build Back Better bill in fall of 2021. The bill passed the House but not the Senate.
Golden gave as his reason the BBB’s renewal of the SALT deduction. It was pretty liberal in scope, but Senators Sanders and Menendez promised to pare it back in the Senate verdion.
The enhanced SALT deduction would in fact have helped Golden’s Maine constituents very little. But I think his strategy was one of “triangulation,” showing independence to his constituents in a 50-50 district. I think that is what Perez is doing in her fairly similar district.
Whether they are right or wrong to do so is debatable, obviously. Their Democratic and Independent constituents will likely judge them on the totality of their work though, and not just single votes that get national Democrats bent out of shape.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: I think using an AOC as a foil can work in some places. “I am a common sense Democrat. I am against those weird GOP freaks who want to follow your kid into the bathroom (WTF is wrong with them anyway?), but I am not one of those socialists that they talk about on CNN. It is safe to vote for me.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
He was at CPAC and a couple of other candidates’ rallies – events he doesn’t have to pay for and is guaranteed a bigger audience than he can draw by himself. My best guess is that he’s running away from the truth that he can’t get big crowds. There’s just not that frothing enthusiasm for him anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony G: The fact that Congress isn’t in session does not necessarily mean that the Representatives aren’t working. The recesses are meant to be a chance to be back in their districts meeting with people. To me, this complaint is similar to the complaint that teachers work short days and have summers off, a complaint that cannot stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.
Anyway
@Betty Cracker:
She’s a “showy newbie” — not impressed so far.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
True of Dems. I don’t think the Republicans work. They schmooze.
Shalimar
@Ken: I am sure someone else has mentioned it by now, but it takes 50% + 1 votes of the entire House to vote McCarthy out as Speaker, so 218 assuming all seats are currently filled and everyone votes.
What this means is that as part of the compromise, Democrats can protect McCarthy’s seat by giving him however many votes he needs to make up for Freedom Caucus defections. He may be horrible, but if he agrees to a deal that takes all of this off the table until 2025 then he is better than any Republican who would replace him.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: I do. They’re the kids of GenXers and early Millennials. They have parents and grandparents who treat everything with sneering contempt and never taught their kids any kids of work ethic or ambition, if they’re even around. The divorce/single parent percentage of that cohort is off the charts.
Just plain good old-fashioned shitty parenting. We’ve seen this “cycle of poverty” thing in America before. It’s only getting attention now because it’s happening to whites.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I respect them! Our plumber is the most brilliant man I know. Wish he wouldn’t retire, dammit.
Anyway
@Soprano2:
Yep, the Vo-tech here is very popular and does a great job. I know people who’ve gone from there to 4-yr college and others that have good careers after graduating from there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Probably to our benefit if the GOPers don’t work.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed.
Geminid
@Anyway: Are you saying that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is the “showy newbie,” or is Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez?
Actually, I think they both are, although Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is not so much of a newbie now.
Tony G
@Kay: I think an important question is who is expected to bear the burden of retraining. For example: My father had worked as a maintenance electrician for New York Bell Telephone in the fifties, sixties and seventies. This was the era before labor unions had been crippled, and he was represented by a strong union (CWA). When he was in his mid-fifties his particular job had been rendered obsolete due to a replacement of analog systems by digital systems. Without the union, he would have been booted out the door and invited to fend for himself — but because of the power of the union he was re-trained in a newer technology and he was able to continue working for the next ten years until his retirement. The point is: Technological change is inevitable, and it will inevitable render certain Jobs obsolete. But how society reacts to that change is a choice, and since the planned decline of labor unions began more than forty years ago, the choice has been to treat workers like disposable commodities.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know:
Wow.
Anyway
@Baud:
I don’t give a rat’s ass about the narrative but a default would disrupt low-income workers’ livelihood and those already on the margins. I believe it would disproportionately hurt the people Ds care about.
Anyway
@Geminid:
Gluesenkamp. AOC is no longer a noob …
Baud
@Anyway:
I agree.
Mike in NC
Thanks to all who posted ideas about exploring the Asheville NC area. A fine day today, so we might do a trolley tour and visit a brewery. Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, so possibly something indoors. Looking at a stack of brochures for inspiration.
Another Scott
@Kay: From a day earlier:
She’s establishing her brand, and she wants to be re-elected.
As long as she votes for Democratic leadership and with them on important bills where her vote is needed, I say let her have her lane. If she is outside what her district wants, she won’t be re-elected.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Tony G:
Thanks. Good point. My middle son is an electrician. The IBEW has training or college available as a benefit (which of course means it was negotiated so they’re all paying for it ). I encourage my son to take courses because he doesn’t have a spouse or children to take advantage of the benefit. There’s an instrumentation cert he is taking that will bump him up now and be useful for alternative energy (nuclear) later. He’s doing a huge solar field in Ohio right now and he’s next committed to a bridge project in the UP for the summer. There’s a lot of work. The bridge project will be 7 days. The 6th day at time and a half and the 7th as double time. He’ll clear 100k this year, easy. But it’s hard, dirty work. It’s nice it will be in the UP- not too hot.
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: Musk was quoted recently saying something like 80% or 90% of Twitter employees were doing nothing but getting in the way of progress and it was necessary to pare everything down to become efficient. Having worked for large corporations and for state government, I think he’s wildly exaggerating but that there is also a kernel of truth to that. He probably could have cut 50% of Twitter employees and still operated on the same level. The biggest problem is that you have to keep all of your best workers and he was not there long enough to have any idea who those people were. Evidence suggests most of them left.
Tony G
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, with rare exceptions, they’re “meeting with people” in the sense that they’re “meeting to solicit legal bribes from wealthy donors”. That’s their real job — what they do on Capitol Hill is mostly for show. Republicans are much worse, but some of the Democrats are almost as bad. (I regret the fact that I am “represented” by Josh Gottheimer in New Jersey — a right wing Democrat in the mold of Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin.) But — regardless — members of Congress should make exemptions when there is a true crisis — and with the strong possibility of the U.S. defaulting in less than a week I call that a crisis. I was never expected to work 24 hours a day under normal circumstances, but I was expected to do that when a critical hospital system was down, and I fulfilled those expectations to the detriment of my health. And my sister — a public school teacher — worked many nights and weekends grading papers and preparing classes. Teachers work long hours for low pay. Members of Congress — with rare exceptions — not so much.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t know. I think about it a lot because I run into it a lot. Some of them are really kind of innocents. The girls just seem much savvier and more world-wise. They function. Our local judge puts it as “have something on the ball”. She means some kind of plan- work or college or buying a house or an Etsy store – something.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony G: We disagree. I will also note that the Dems are still there. It’s the GOP who have gone home.
Kay
@Another Scott:
I’m fine with it. I buy the big tent. But I think she should dive into the issue and learn something about it. It’s complicated and the slogans really don’t do it justice. I just want them to work hard.
MazeDancer
How to store bread – link is gift from a gluten-free person for whom great bread is the only thing I miss.
Things I did not know here.
Gift link. Apologies, formatting no longer works on my iPad.
https://wapo.st/3WCScWW
John S.
@Another Scott:
MGP’s district is pretty conservative, and it was a bit of a shock that she won. It’s important for representatives to actually represent the people in their district. All politics are local.
lowtechcyclist
@JPL:
I’d heard that. What’s a quorum in the House? The Dems ought to take the floor, whoever has the gavel should say, “looks to me like we’ve got a quorum,” vote for putting some random bill on the floor for debate, amend it to be a clean debt ceiling increase, pass it, and send it to the Senate.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s not technically possible. But a guy can dream.
Suzanne
@Kay:
On the topic of working class young men and why they are struggling, I just read an interesting paper that suggests that conscientiousness (“which includes being hardworking, reliable, organized, ambitious, self-disciplined, and persevering”) explains the gap between women’s and men’s academic achievement. Apparently women, as a cohort, exhibit more conscientiousness than the cohort of men. I have read anecdotes from employers who require college degrees for jobs that don’t really need it because they struggle with employees who are unreliable and they see a degree as a way of sorting out unreliable people.
kindness
If the debt ceiling is breeched, and I suspect it will be, it will be due to Republican’s being happy to shoot the hostages. Republicans think blowing up the economy will help them in the ’24 elections and the MSM assists Republicans daily by making the issue one that only Democrats can solve by caving to Republicans. Now, if the shoe was on the other foot and Democrats where holding the debt ceiling hostage during a Republican presidency, I have no doubt the MSM would be blaming Democrats every step of the way. Why? My guess is the owners of the MSM are Republican/Republican lite and it’s their way of helping their team. It isn’t fair but it is what it is. Democrats have to overcome the facade the media paints.
John S.
@Suzanne:
That’s a pretty wrongheaded notion. I worked for a Fortune 100 company for 10 years. Everyone had a degree. The biggest morons all had MBAs.
There is zero correlation between a degree and competence.
rikyrah
Disney not wasting any time 👏🏾
They are not leaving any money on the table
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRE7acqF/?t=1
Tony G
@Shalimar: Actually, when Musk’s toxic arrogance and incompetence became obvious six months ago, the best employees at Twitter did start to leave. So now that idiot has the worst of both worlds — a pared–down staff where most of the good people are already gone. Actions have consequences. One of my tasks during my “career” was capacity planning — i.e., guesstimating the magnitude of the workload during a spike in usage — such as, for example, a Twitter Spaces presentation of a fascist from Florida — and then doubling the guesstimate and making sure that there is adequate excess server capacity to handle anticipated spike. It’s not rocket science. Companies and organizations have been doing this for at least sixty years. Musk is too dumb to realize this, but he made a decision to cause this humiliating failure when he made the decision six months ago to get ride of the best people at Twitter.
Suzanne
I will also note that conscientiousness and its associated behaviors are critical for success in most white-collar work environments. I often see disaffected men complaining about society being “feminized” and it seems to me that this is what they’re talking about…. the norms around showing up on time, professional dress and grooming, quick and thorough responses to questions, not offending your colleagues.
The labor market will pay a premium for those things.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: So cute!!!!
raven
@Suzanne: Similar to the military enlistment criteria. After Vietnam they studied dropouts, GED grads and traditional high school grads and found the traditional grads were twice as likely to complete their enlistment as the other two groups. It was an easy call to require a traditional diploma or two years of college for a GED grad. When bullets started flying in the gulf they had to back off that requirement to fill their quotas.
Frankensteinbeck
@Shalimar:
If the deal is as described, both debt ceiling and budget until 2025 while only cutting $10 billion from the $80 billion IRS increase in the IRA, yeah, give him those votes. He rolled over on the toughest negotiations we would face and who cares if he stays Speaker after that?
EDIT – BIG IF.
brantl
This is stone-brained, cutting the IRS, they could generate money. JFCOAC.
lowtechcyclist
@brendancalling:
Yeah, I used to be a big fan of Atrios, but I stopped reading him awhile back. I checked in at his blog a week or two ago, and he was talking about how the Dems could have raised the debt ceiling on their own last year, but didn’t.
And sure, “the Dems” could have done it if all 50 Senate Dems had been in agreement that they should do it with zero Republican votes, and were OK with whatever procedural maneuvers it would have taken to get an up-or-down vote without the help of 10 Republicans. But Manchin was on record that it needed to be done in a bipartisan manner, and Sinema would have killed it just because that’s who she is.
So ISTM that Atrios has moved into the realm of magical thinking, which is a bummer.
Tony G
@John S.: MBAs! A philosophical question whether people get MBA degrees because they’re morons, or whether the process of getting an MBA turns normal people into morons!
Suzanne
@John S.:
That’s bullshit. I’m an architect and I work with other designers and engineers all the time. There is a reason that all the engineers I work with have degrees in engineering. They are better at engineering than some random person off the street.
Now, if you said that a degree was no guarantee of competence, I would agree with you. But I want my doctor to have gone to medical school, my attorney to go to law school, etc.
But also, we’re not talking about competence. The personality trait is conscientiousness, which is not competence.
PST
@Betty Cracker:
Most of my friends think Trump has the nomination locked up unless he’s dead or the legal process has progressed toward finality against him more than is likely in the next year or so. Only a few think it will be DeSantis, but every one of those is a Floridian. Floridians (including those who hate him) seem to believe that there is a there there that the rest of us can’t see.
brendancalling
@Tony G: ”
“they’re “meeting to solicit legal bribes from wealthy donors”. That’s their real job — what they do on Capitol Hill is mostly for show. ”
YAWWWWWWWN. That line is so old and banged up they featured it on “Antiques Roadshow” and said it wasn’t worth a dollar.
Omnes Omnibus
@PST:
A lot of Dems in Wisconsin were overly impressed by Scott Walker. He beat them, so they built him up on their minds to be something other than a guy who was selling the right bullshit at the right time.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@PST:
I give you Alexandra Petri on the subject of the Musk/DeSantis event.
She always brings a laugh, but in this case a somewhat more pointed review.
Tony G
@kindness: The problem of the Mainstream Media is that, by definition, all of the MSM outlets are owned by very wealthy corporations and that they will serve the interests of their owners. The right wing likes to dazzle the rubes with shiny objects — Critical Race Theory! School Teachers Grooming Kids! Target had a Pride Flag! — but the real agenda of the right has always been to increase the wealth and power of corporations and billionaires. All of them — including NPR — are doing their job.
Betty Cracker
@PST: Understandable — living through an actual fascist takeover of your home state is traumatic.
Tony G
@lowtechcyclist: I’ve been reading Atrios for about as long as I’ve been reading This Fine Blog — about 20 years. Atrios enjoys being a contrarian, and enjoys annoying people. There’s a place for people like that in the world.
brendancalling
@Omnes Omnibus: “To me, this complaint is similar to the complaint that teachers work short days and have summers off, a complaint that cannot stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.”
I’m a teacher, and damned straight it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. We only have summers “off” because we have money deducted from our paychecks during the rest of the year to cover it. As for short days, we work 7.5 hours a day in my district (7:30-2:34) with a half hour for lunch. I usually spend my lunchbreak grading or catching up on overdue assignments. Also, i’m expected to be in the building at least 10 minutes before classes start. And I’m supposed to be pursuing a masters in my content area (and I get reimbursed only 60% of that money). People who criticize teachers like that can kiss my ass.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
Would be nice if the Dems passed something like that at the Federal level, the next time they win the House.
lowtechcyclist
@Tony G:
I’d been reading Atrios a few years longer than I’ve been reading this blog. And I’ve got nothing against contrarianism – I’ve got nothing against any well-supported argument from any quarter.
But this was magical thinking, pure and simple.
Suzanne
An anecdote:
I used to have this (man) coworker who was technically very proficient but very bad at all the “soft skills” stuff. One day, I got a nicely calligraphed written thank-you note in the mail from a (woman) student I had met at a college recruiting event. I made the offhand comment, “Way to go, that’s the kind of thing that will get you far!”. My colleague was like, “What? You’d hire her because she sent you a card?! That’s not fair.” And another colleague of ours, also a woman, totally backed me up. I noted that this student was equally qualified and talented as most of the others I had met, but that kind of extra effort is the kind of thing that demonstrates something really important in a client-facing role…. sensitivity, grace, and respect, a willingness to do more than the bare minimum, she took the opportunity to show off her hand-lettering skills.
Anecdata: I will note that, in all of my many campus recruiting efforts that I have done in my career, I have never, not one time, received a thank-you email or note from a man.
zhena gogolia
@Mr. Bemused Senior: That’s great. I appreciate her blow-by-blow description.
brendancalling
@lowtechcyclist: He’s been like that for a very very very very long time (I know him personally, from the Philly Drinking Liberally years, which was ground zero for for 2000s-era bloggers). He never has anything positive or constructive to say. Just a lot of whining about stuff, often too opaquely to even get an idea of what the topic is.
A lot of his thinking falls under Green Lanternism, which was something he used to criticize. Never any proposed solutions, never any admission/retraction when he gets something wrong (which is often enough), and he promotes the same ideas that Tony G is repeating here: all they care about is their donors, they actually WANT the cuts the GOP is demanding, etc. etc. It’s as if it’s always 2003, and the DLC and Blue Dogs are still calling the shots. Which, you know, they’re not.
Tony G
@Kay: That’s great about the IBEW. A good union will do a lot for its members. My father and I had our generational squabbles when I was a kid (“cut your goddamn hair”, etc.) but as an adult I gained a lot of respect for him. He actually maintained dues-paying membership in the IBEW (from an earlier railroad job) long after he had switched to the CWA. As someone who had grown up during the Depression, he was a cheapskate in general, but he believed in maintaining union solidarity by continuing to support his former union long after he was no longer represented by them. My own opinion (for what it’s worth) is that one of the goals of degradation of labor unions that started in the eighties had been to teach the peasants that all of us are on our own.
PST
@Suzanne:
And we can’t forget political assortative mating. Between the gender left-right divide and the educational left-right divide I can see why many men in the trades get rejected for reasons having nothing to do with their work as such. This is obviously not true for everyone in the white-male-blue collar demographic — I know plenty of solid Democrats in that group, and have met many more knocking on doors — but the group skews hard not just to the right but to the Trumpy MAGA right, and who doesn’t look down on that.
Tony G
@brendancalling: I have several teachers in my extended family and I have a lot of respect for teachers. I don’t view teachers as being in any way similar to members of Congress. All of the Republicans in Congress are effectively pursuing bribes from the wealthy and, unfortunately, some of the Democrats (including my own guy Gottheimer) are almost as bad. The two professionals are not comparable in any way, from my point of view.
Geminid
@Geminid: Correction: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez represents Washington’s 3rd CD, not its 5th.
Her district is in some respects similar to Jared Golden’s Maine 2nd CD. Demographically both are very White, 94% in the case of the Golden’s, 88% in the case of Perez’s.
Another significant similarity: Cook’s rates the Maine 2nd CD’s PVI as R+6, and the Washigton 3rd’s as R+5.
Golden’s district is the 2nd most rural district in the country though., while Perez’s district includes Clark County, a part of the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area with a population of 500,000 residents. The rest is mostly rural, including a large piece of the Gifford Pinchot National forest.
Golden’s district has a median household income of $55,000, and Perez’s has a median household income of $79,000.
Golden flipped the 2nd CD in the Blue Wave of 2018. He’s had two tight elections since.
In 2020, he won the 2nd while Trump won its Electoral vote. The opposite occurred in Nebraska’s 3rd(?) CD, where Republican Don Bscon eked out a narrow win while Joe Biden carried the district and won its Electoral vote.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just not aware that it has ever really worked.
Tim Ryan is a recent example of the strategy doing no good at all. Even the areas that had been voting for him for several years rejected him because they do not like Democrats. Even the ones who say they are not “one of those” Democrats.
I’d also note that we never see Rs doing this and they truly are crazy & radical. But they still win in D+ districts.
topclimber
@Anyway: What’s with these Spanish sounding Congresswomen, anyway?
Tony G
@brendancalling: Two words: “Josh Gottheimer”. The sad thing, however, is that I continue voting for Gottheimer every two years because whoever the Republican Party belches up every two years is a couple of orders of magnitude worse than that guy. That’s the sad reality. My real point though, which I guess I did a lousy job of communicating, is that NONE of these people should be leaving Washington, DC when there is a crisis. If nothing happens within the next few days, the United States will default on its financial obligations. That is a crisis.
James E Powell
@brendancalling:
In addition to the being at school 7-3:30, I average about 10 hours a week working at home. Planning, grading, calling parents to find out why their child is not coming to school, not coming to class, or not doing anything when they do.
Geminid
@Suzanne: The men might have been disappointed that you did not send them a thank-you email or note.
Kay
@James E Powell:
I think people don’t realize how little down time teachers have during a day, and how down time is built in to every other profession. I was surprised when I got on a school council and saw their schedule. They talk about how they need time to go to the bathroom and it’s true!
You can’t jam anything else into a teacher day.
Tony G
@brendancalling: And, yeah, campaign donations are legal bribes, and the politicians who accept them — that is, all politicians — are inevitably affected by those bribes. That’s an old line because “with rare exceptions” it has always been true. Having said that, I have almost always voted Democrat in my 49 years of voting because (with one exception in 1980 when there was an actual liberal Republican congresswoman on the ballot in Rhode Island) the Democratic candidates have always been the lesser of two evils. But I have no illusions about any of them. Their jobs are to collect money and get re-elected. Period.
Kay
@Tony G:
I agree. And it’s a complaint I have with modern Leftists. They don’t know how to work with others. They don’t seem to have any inkling of “solidarity”. They’re REALLY individualistic, which doesn’t really gibe with labor unions.
One thing my son’s local does which is kind of cool is they don’t take dues out of wages. You’re supposed to pay your dues voluntarily, because you’re a part of the organization and own it. That gets closer to my idea of “solidarity”.
Tony G
@James E Powell: That’s been my sister’s experience as an elementary school teacher. One of the many repulsive features of right-wing ideology in recent decades has been the absolute contempt for teachers. Now, in addition to insulting teachers as “lazy” and “greedy”, teachers are being accused of being “pedophiles” and “groomers”. What a sick country this is.
Sure Lurkalot
@Geminid:
I happened on Gluesenkamp Perez’s tweet last evening. The “college=elite vs. trades=salt of the earth is so worn and tired. I get she’s an outlier in her district but she chose to step in the culture war b.s. and thus pissed on part of her constituency.
prostratedragon
@Betty Cracker: Can’t lay a glove on Mr. Dabiri!
Kay
I don’t have any problem with Blue Dogs. Democrats are ideologically diverse. I wish they wouldn’t imply that the rest of the caucus who support student loan relief disrespect working people though. Can’t she just expound her center Right views without trashing her colleagues?
“I don’t support student loan relief but I’m working hard to double trades training subsidies!”
We already have a dumb culture war slogans side. We don’t need that on our side.
Tony G
@Kay: That’s great about your son’s local! That might be true about present-day leftists; I don’t know enough to comment. This tendency might have something to do with the way a lot of communication — maybe most communication — is electronic these days. (The words that I’m typing right now, for example.). A lot is lost when people are not communicating face to face — it’s just easier to be unyielding or even rude when the communications are just words on a screen. (I remember working in I.T. when, in the late eighties, email was a “brand new thing”. Some people — including me — got themselves in trouble by using angry language that they would never have used in person.). But, from my perspective, society in general has become a lot more atomized. Many people (including me in my later jobs) are treated as “individual contractors” not as employees, then they function as individual consumers, etc. This is the culmination of trends that go back many decades, but the effect is that everyone feels like they’re on their own — and that makes it easier for people to be exploited.
lowtechcyclist
@Tony G:
The donors pay for Republicans’ election and re-election campaigns.
That’s certainly true for many Democratic Congresspersons as well, but I would think the combination of safe districts and ActBlue would be making a dent in Dems’ need to spend their afternoons dialing for dollars.
But fuck Citizens United, and fuck the SCROTUS Six.
Geminid
@Sure Lurkalot: I have not read Perez’s controversial Tweet yet, but now I am interested so I will look it up today. It’s out there now though, and I wonder how it will go over with 3rd district Democrats, and whether any of them feel “pissed on.”
Local media might do some reporting on this. That is the best way to get a feel for who Perez is anyway, I think. National media will tend to dwell on her more provocative aspects.
brendancalling
@Tony G: I yawned at you once, and I’m yawning at you again.
brendancalling
@James E Powell: I refuse to work outside of paid hours. I do that stuff during planning periods when I get done planning.
Eunicecycle
@Kay: Nurses also find it hard to get time to eat or go to the bathroom, especially bedside nurses. They are supposed to have a break but often don’t get it.
catclub
@lowtechcyclist:
 
and the last GOP president they know about is Eisenhower.
UncleEbeneezer
I don’t know how you ever fix this problem in a world where the market is made up of racist buyers and where resources are disproportionately allocated away from Communities-of-Color and toward White ones.
StringOnAStick
@Kay: Dental hygiene is another career with zero down time. I recall them telling us in school that anytime you had a few minutes to go pee, do it even if you don’t think you need to because you never know how long it will be until the next time you get a chance. I used to work in an office that took no lunch breaks, just 8 hours straight and that went to 9 during Covid so the other office they shared space with wouldn’t be there on the same days. Well, the hygienists got no breaks for lunch but of course the dentist and the front desk staff could always find 15 minutes to grab lunch. I had patients scheduled every hour I was there, I that meant it was rare to find enough time to inhale something to eat; no wonder I was always so exhausted from that job and that it has a high burnout rate. Either do it well and burnout after 10 years, or do it half assed and make a full working career of it. I sure don’t miss that job, at all. Every other hygienist I’ve known has said they can’t recommend it as a career choice, and I agree; maybe as the last 10 years of your working life but not as a 35 year time horizon because it destroys your body.
Now I’m going to my volunteer job at a wildlife rehab center.
Geminid
@Geminid: Among the ~34 new Democratic Representatives, Perez ranks low in elective office experience. Most were mayors, state reps or senators. Perez served on her local Soil and Water Conservation district’s board.
At 34, Perez is the second-youngest member of the class, after Maxwell Frost. Summer Lee (35), Emilia Sykes (37) Gabe Vasquez (38) and Chris Deluzio (38) are the next youngest.
Tony G
@Eunicecycle: By sheer, amazing coincidence, both nursing and teaching are professions whose members are majority women, and professions whose members get little respect. An amazing coincidence.
Tony G
@brendancalling: I’m so boring, I bore myself.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t think it will be little ronnie. He got elected in FL because I’d bet a lot of the retires there want the minimal style of government that he offers because of TAXES. He has the personality of cold 2 day old toast, which is to say none to throw that away right now. He has all the charm of an infected boil and for most actual humans it only gets worse when he speaks. SFB has a history. It is a shitty history – because it is his history but at least he has one at a national level. Sure he only gets the racists, the hard core ones, (and the idiots) but then this country has more than it’s share of those. And he’s proven that he can steal a lot of money so that’s a plus in their tiny minds.
Soprano2
@Kay: Unions tell their workers to have pride in their work. I wonder if some of the “degradation ” of the trades happened when union membership declined?
John S.
@Suzanne:
That’s bullshit. My father and brother are both engineers, and neither has a “proper” degree in engineering. My father spent 25 years at Motorola, and was one of their most innovative engineers. A degree can make competent people more competent perhaps, but it will never make incompetent people become competent. The “random person off the street” is a strawman.
Doctors and lawyers are very different because the degree isn’t enough for them to do their job. They actually have to have professional certification, and in the case of doctors, hands-on training to prove some modicum of competence before they are allowed to practice.
Chief Oshkosh
@Mike in NC:
????
“a” brewery? Such an underachiever. Do at least 6! There are so many good ones in Asheville.
James E Powell
@brendancalling:
I’m working in the Los Angeles school district. Three out of five days a week I am covering other classes during my conference period because there are no substitutes available. Yesterday, it was PhysEd. (But I’m 68! I have plantar fasciitis!) Ah well, it was nice to get outdoors.
Suzanne
@John S.:
I work with structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and civil engineers every day. Many of them are my direct colleagues. Every one of them has a degree. Many of them go on to get their P.E. or S.E. license. Some of them are better engineers than others, of course, as they are people. The degree alone doesn’t make them competent engineers, but it is the foundation of their competence as engineers.
I’ll put it this way: I’ll take 100 dentists and 100 non-dentists and see who’s better at drilling your teeth. 100 CPAs and 100 people who did well in math in high school and see who’s better at doing your business’s books.
Suzanne
@James E Powell: Mr. Suzanne is a school-based SLP. He is busy, like, nonstop throughout the day. And the zillions of meetings he has around IEPs is unreal. Before and after the normal workday, too.
Jackie
@Betty Cracker: I saw *somewhere*this morning Faux is giving TFG a town hall – but prerecorded lol – sometime in June. Since I won’t be watching I didn’t peruse the fine print.
Jackie
@Anyway: MAGA Joe Kent is again running for her seat. She’s not in my district, but if she was, I’d hold my bile back and vote for her. Meanwhile, she has time to hone her democratic credentials – but she’ll never be a Progressive. Her district has voted GQP for years.
Chris Johnson
@Suzanne: I literally got a job when I was a kid by interviewing, and then sending a thank-you note :)
cain
@Geminid: They might have Scalise but then he’s in the hot seat. He could do the ‘burn shit down’ but I think the oligarchs will be putting pressure on him. It’s all great to do the performative bullshit – but there are 6 people on freedom caucus who don’t give a shit – they want it all go down.
Geminid
@cain: There are probably more than 6 Freedom Caucus members who would burn it all down if they could. It’s a pretty homogeneous group policy’wise, and I think there are at least 30 of them.
That’s one reason I think electing Scalise Speaker is the best Republicans would be able to do. The Freedom Caucus might be satisfied with bringing down McCarthy, but I don’t think the rest of the caucus would agree to a Freedom Caucus Speaker. And knockinhg out McCarthy
Geminid
@Geminid: …knocking out McCarthy without being able to elect a consensus candidate like Scalise could lead to unintended consequences, like a caretaker Speaker agreed to by the Democrats and five or more Republicans fed up with their radical colleagues.
John S.
@Suzanne:
Again, you’re mixing apples and oranges. Both dentists and CPAs have additional standards to perform their jobs beyond simply having a degree. Engineers do not.
Sister Golden Bear
Least surprising thing ever… Freedom Caucus Threatens Debt Ceiling Compromise.
In other news, my company gives people an extra holiday weekend day off today, so I’m in SF to see the Ansel Adams exhibit at the DeYoung.
Suzanne
@John S.:
Um…. what are you talking about? Actual engineers — the kind who design things that can kill you if things go wrong — absolutely have professional certification. Here’s some info about it. And to get that licensure, you have to have a college degree. Not only a college degree — the degree is no guarantee of competence as an engineer on its own — but also training under a professional engineer.
Your argument is that degrees are entirely unrelated to competence in a field. Considering that you literally cannot become a professional engineer without a degree, that argument is ludicrous.
Manyakitty
@sab: that was a major deal for Tim Ryan. He meant it, too. We are suffering from a lack of skilled tradespeople.
Seefleur
@Betty Cracker: I’m in Jared Golden’s district and I honestly can’t figure him out. He seems like a smart enough person, but I have to wonder why he’s a Democrat – he really hasn’t presented as one to me. He’s smarter than Susan-of-the-furrowed-brow Collins, but he might as well be her imo. I feel like we (the collective Dems around me) are being snookered. But there’s no way I’d vote for anyone with an R after their name, and I can’t do the third-party thing.
Seefleur
@John S.:
@Suzanne: Thank you – I was going to point out that if an engineer wants to actually work in the field after having gotten their BS in Engineering, they have to at minimum have what used to be called an EIT (Engineer in Training certification – which was/is an 8 hour practicum exam – one can only take it after having X number of hours of supervised work time, like an apprenticeship). That gets a foot in the door. And then after a requisite minimum number of years, one can for the Professional Engineer test. It’s like the Bar exam – a lot of people don’t get it on the first try. (See Mr. Fleur – who took it after the birth of our third child who was still in the NICU as a preemie – Mr. Fleur was a little distracted, and it showed.) After passing the PE, one has to maintain their professional training hours in order to maintain the PE status. The training is on-going throughout an engineers’ career. Just like doctors, lawyers, teachers etc. The technology is always changing, and engineers have to be able to adapt to those changes.