Even the relatively minor changes made at DOT under Mayor Pete’s leadership were too much for our corporate overlords:
The chief executive of Delta Air Lines says the incoming Trump administration will be a “breath of fresh air” for airlines after what he calls government “overreach” under President Joe Biden.
The airline industry has chafed under consumer-protection regulations imposed by the Biden administration. And Delta is facing a federal investigation into its slow recovery from a global technology outage this summer.
I don’t even know what people mean by “working class” anymore, but I’ll tell you who gets screwed the most by airlines: no (mileage) status, infrequent leisure travelers. They don’t know all the ways that the airlines will fuck them, and they book tickets in the classes most likely to get bumped or otherwise have their travel disrupted.
Delta is one of the better airlines in this regard (just as the one-eyed man rules the kingdom of the blind), so who knows what the budget carriers like Frontier will come up with in the next couple of years of government “under reach.”
Doug R
“fresh air”-is that the “breeze” from a missing Boeing MAX door plug?
RevRick
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it, but AOC did a masterful job of slashing Nancy Mace’s anti trans agenda by pointing out how, in practice, this would lead to a massive abuse of girls and women. It would require them to “drop trou “ for inspection by who, whenever there was any question about the girl/woman’s true identity.
Chat Noir
My niece graduated from the University of Georgia in May 2022 and the keynote speaker was the Delta Airlines CEO. He was AWFUL. His speech was a way too long PR pitch to “fly Delta.” He was boring and monotonous and didn’t say one meaningful thing. You could tell the crowd was restless after the first few minutes and when he finally ended, everyone erupted in applause. The palate cleanser followed, a young woman who played piano and sang “Georgia On My Mind.” She was amazing and everyone loved her rendition.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Golly gee, a CEO making a comment like that, so unpredictable. We have a winner of this week’s Claude Raines Memorial Gambling Awareness Award with the coveted 4-Claude rating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMIyDf3gBoY
Tumbrels. Lots and lots of tumbrels.
Oxygen on flights. You’ll hafta pay for that or prove you can hold your breath for hours and more hours because you’re on Frontier and there’s a delay.
Baud
Add it to the list.
RevRick
@Doug R: The public tends to severely punish safety screwups like this, which will push airlines to operate on the cautious side, but as far as regard for passengers’ comfort, schedule and baggage, well, that would definitely get worse.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
We need to script & build a Biden Era narrative that confronts the way the political media distorted reality. I would like to go at the voters for being stupid, but that isn’t going to win any votes.
Starfish (she/her)
Does anyone know what happened with H.R. 9495. It failed and then it passed? I think a lot of non-profits are spooked by this one. Can Planned Parenthood be declared a terrorist organization? What about Raices Texas?
Butch
A couple of years ago our Delta flight crashed during takeoff (technically it was called a “runway excursion”); I don’t even want to go into detail but it’s hard to imagine that Delta could have treated us any worse in the aftermath. I haven’t flown since.
mrmoshpotato
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
ROFLMAO!
Old Man Shadow
@Starfish (she/her): Heading to the Senate.
And yes, Sec Treasury could decide to strip Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, or any activist churches of their tax exempt status for “supporting terrorism.”
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
We don’t need to attack anyone personally to be proud and tell the truth.
Old Man Shadow
Going to the Senate where it will likely die. Until next year.
And yes, PP, the ACLU, and any tax exempt organization (maybe even churches?) can be stripped of their tax exempt status for supporting whatever the current Secretary of Treasury says is terrorism.
And ‘terrorism’ under a Trump admin will be anything conservatives don’t like.
mrmoshpotato
@Butch:
We all have so many questions.
Another Scott
I hear a distant roar of hundreds of thousands of government employees who have to fly on business and are always in the very last group permitted to board (and never have any overhead bins available).
Best wishes,
Scott.
Chief Oshkosh
@Chat Noir: I have to fly Delta with some frequency. I agree that they are the best of a very, very sorry lot.
Not the worst transgression, but having their fucking asshole CEO give the introduction to the safety video chaps my ass every time. Passengers are essentially forced to watch and listen to the arrogant son of a bitch gas on and on about high ideals and corporate responsibility, such bullshit, all while the passengers are strapped into a torture chamber created by the actual grubby, shitty corporate policies.
I think there ought to be a law that every corporate bigwig be forced to partake of their product. For Delta CEO, that means no more private jet travel, only a middle seat in coach on one of his magic carpets.
And I get to narrate the fucking intro to the safety video.
Chief Oshkosh
@Butch: Man, I am sorry to hear that. I hope you’re able to get through the trauma.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What about the purity left and the media that blamed him for falling short of perfection. Can we blame them for our current situation?
eclare
@Butch:
I am so sorry, how terrifying. And calling a crash on takeoff a “runway excursion” has to be the worst corporate bullshit I’ve ever heard. And I worked for a Fortune 100 company for eleven years, so I’ve heard a lot.
Gloria DryGarden
@Starfish (she/her): it passed? There are some churches inciting hate, we could nominate to be shut down…
Gloria DryGarden
@Melancholy Jaques: how can I help? Let’s get a team, and do this.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
You’re not going to win them over no matter what you say or do.
Starfish (she/her)
@Gloria DryGarden: At first it failed, and it seems like they tried it again, and it passed. I got an email from Indivisible. They were disappointed. And I got an email from a local Latino Chamber of Commerce that was also concerned.
Butch
To everyone who responded: we’re doing OK. Thank you! For some reason Delta confiscated our luggage and we didn’t see it again until we arrived at our destination, which finally happened a couple of days later. By that time and with no way to clean up even I wouldn’t have wanted to sit next to me on a plane. When we were finally assigned to another flight, we also got bumped from first class to way, way in the back of the plane with no compensation for the change. There’s a lot more…
Gloria DryGarden
@Starfish (she/her): so our beautiful president Biden could shut some down now?
Starfish (she/her)
@Gloria DryGarden: Well, there is the discussion that it won’t pass the Senate so it is not a done deal.
Gloria DryGarden
@Doug R: I just really like it when the doors and parts stay on the plane. As a passenger, I do sincerely prefer it.
Booger
@eclare: I don’t think that’s corpspeak; I think that a term of art, like controlled descent into terrain…it means a very specific set of circumstances to avoid ambiguity.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: True. What I am hoping is to get other people to come to that realization and ignore them as well. The toxic media still has a hold over our side (even the electeds) it seems. And we ignore them at our own peril.
PsiFighter37
The funny thing about the Frontier comment is they are much less likely to exist – assuming the Trump DoJ will not really care much about antitrust concerns except when it comes to Big Tech.
I fly United, but I am under no impression any of these airline people are saints. The ones in the U.S. are moneygrubbers and the rest (especially the Middle Eastern airlines) provide really nice service but are not economical without continued subsidization.
Hildebrand
@Gloria DryGarden: I’m guessing if they go after churches, it will be mostly Black congregations that get targeted.
Sister Golden Bear
@RevRick:
Given how prevalent sexual abusers are among Republicans, I’m sure they see this as a feature, not a bug. Not to mention, they’ll love forcing their will on women (trans or cis).
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Also, either credit card of flight miles for a working mask, no cash.
Starfish (she/her)
@PsiFighter37: It was interesting talking to coworkers from India. They said that they much preferred traveling home through the Middle East over through Europe because the food options are better.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Hildebrand: They’ll go after mosques, but it is highly unlikely they go after churches, even Black ones.
frosty
@Booger: controlled descent into terrain
According to Wikipedia, this was coined by Boeing engineers in the 1970s. It joins “rapid unplanned disassembly” in my list of great obfuscations.
I wonder what Boeing will come up with for losing a door in flight.
John S.
@Chief Oshkosh:
I feel the same way. After flying nearly 500k miles on Delta, I cannot stand seeing/hearing Ed Bastian. Even though I like flying Delta, fuck that guy.
Geminid
@Starfish (she/her): I think that bill has yet to pass the Senate. Its scope is potentially very wide. My understanding is that it would require the Treasury Department to revoke tax-exempt status for advocacy groups that have received financial support from groups or states deemed terrorist organizations.
The obvious targets are outfits like Students for Justice in Palestine, which is alleged to have received funding from “terrorist” entities. However, a politicized Director of National Intelligence like Tulsi Gabbard could “find” all sorts of “terrorist” groups donating to all kinds of organizations.
So there’s plenty of scope for abuse. For instance, some conservative activist could find a broker to hook them up with say, a Houthi official on the terror watch list, and offer a deal: in return for a transfer of $10,000, the Houthi official would donate $500 to each of 5 advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood or the Four Directions(?) outfit that WaterGirl helps us raise money for.
Targeted groups might seek redress in the courts, but that could be a long and costly process.
Starfish (she/her)
Meanwhile, the judges continue to get confirmed, but it is slowing down. I think that Democrats had to do some horse trading with Republicans to get agreement. Democrats would get to confirm some judges if they left other seats open for Republicans.
This is the judge that got confirmed yesterday.
https://vettingroom.org/2024/10/14/sharad-desai/
Oh, that link is interesting because it said nice things about Sinema. It said that she was able to get some judges that had a considerable amount of support.
Ruckus
@Chief Oshkosh:
I think there ought to be a law that every corporate bigwig be forced to partake of their product. For Delta CEO, that means no more private jet travel, only a middle seat in coach on one of his magic carpets.
I do like your style.
And you are 100000% correct.
I used to fly for my job in professional sport, every week for 8 months a year. Once had a Hertz rep tell me I was in the top 5% of Hertz customers. Flying is fun! I use to tell myself that on a regular basis but the lie never took hold. I have slept on the floor of Atlanta Hartsfield airport on a few occasions when my flight was canceled. I also took them up on their hotel offer – ONCE. About an hour and a half till the bus arrived and then drove all the way west across Atlanta to a rather crappy/cheap hotel and then picked up all the people that took up their offer at 5 am, so I got about 1 1/2 hrs sleep. The terminal floor was better. A lot better. All that said, I still liked flying. It was the job I held that became less than fun.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Sure, but you’re spoiling the most fun part of the internet.
Booger
@frosty: But what that says is ‘the plane was fine and under pilot’s control until it hit the ground.’ That helps define the problem space.
Argiope
@frosty: obviously it’s a bonus exit.
RaflW
As I said the other day about the Spirit bankruptcy: Enshittification of travel, piling on confusing and predatory fees, punishingly small leg room, reliance on awful red eyes and weird schedules … and it still doesn’t make money. That’s capitalism. A race to the bottom that immiserates and fails to earn money.
(To be clear, someone made money, but not the shareholders. Spirit was trading at $35-37 in spring of 2021, which was of course a pandemic ago, but it’s 13 cents now in wishful thinking land.)
Another Scott
@frosty:
… a door plug departed from a Boeing 737-9 MAX passenger jet during flight.
“Dearly departed, we are gathered here today…”
Best wishes,
Scott.
UncleEbeneezer
Trying to find a therapist nearby that takes my insurance and has in-person sessions is much more challenging than I had hoped. Found one cool lady but she only offers virtual sessions, which is possible but not ideal since our place is tiny and my wife works from home, our walls are thin etc. I know my wife would never purposefully listen in but knowing how much sound bleeds between our living room and her office (I can always hear her work calls unless I have music on) would make me feel always a bit uncomfortable to really open up with therapist the way I may need to :(
Bokonon
And the sound that it makes when the door plug blows out? That’s a noise a lot like “shareholder valuuuuuuue … !”
Miss Bianca
@Old Man Shadow: How about churches?
ETA: I see I’m not the first to get there…
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: It could really be weaponized against anyone they define as “terrorists.” They could add Ukraine to that list for Daddy Putin. They could add
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
That guy in Portland was sure surprised to find it in his yard (and lucky it didn’t instead appear in the house).
Ever since learning “door plugs” exist as possible door placeholders at the customer’s discretion, have wondered why are they not beveled such that the edge angles assure they cannot, uh, exit the plane in flight. Billy-Bob clearly didn’t bolt the thing correctly on install and a fastener failure should not have led to the thing being blown out from the pressure difference.
“But, that would cost more!” is a thing Old Boeing would not have tolerated.
CarolPW
@UncleEbeneezer:
Maybe she could listen to something on headphones? Or go out to lunch or shopping during that time? I think a therapist you think is cool is worth a lot of rearranging to keep.
RevRick
@Sister Golden Bear: without a doubt
scav
@Bokonon: But, if the CEO level types have already packed their bonuses and gilded the parachutes, even the holy shareholders may find something of theirs falling rapidly before disassembly.
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: Good luck, it took me awhile to find what I needed too. So much of therapy is online these days, and I didn’t want that.
Scamp Dog
@frosty: I’ll disagree with you on this as a piece of obfuscation. It’s the engineering term for flying a perfectly good airplane into the ground. It used to happen a lot more frequently, but aviation safety people put a lot of effort into training, procedures, and design to reduce it.
Is it clunky engineer-speak? Yes, but it’s the term used by the people who make flying safer.
…and I see Booger beat me to it at 41.
Jackie
O/T Good news:
And DeStupid has no intention of giving Rubio’s seat to him, either. I think it’ll go to TCFG’s beloved DIL.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: I think all that would be required to target a particular group would be the Treasury Secretary accepting a “finding” from the Director of National Intelligence that one of the group’s donors is a terrorist organization.
UncleEbeneezer
@CarolPW: We may try something like that. It would just be so much easier if I could find a therapist with in-person sessions, because I also like going to a dedicated space that isn’t our home for it. But if I can’t find one, then yeah, I will probably go with the one I did the phone consultation with the other day. She seemed great.
trollhattan
Attention Florida teens: Locate and avoid the Gaetz perch. Repeat, avoid the Gaetz perch!
Steve LaBonne
@trollhattan: Don’t stand under it unless you want to be shat on.
AM in NC
I missed the thread last night about housing policy, and I wanted to respond to both you, Mister Mix, and Suzanne – so I’m putting this here, thinking maybe one or both of you might see it (and it does relate to transportation policy, so not totally off topic here, I hope!).
The most interesting non-fiction book I’ve read in a long time is: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. It was an amazing education.
I had NO idea that parking zoning rules are so responsible for why our cities are they are and why they continue to be the way they are. It is insane how we let cars and housing for cars (parking spaces) rule everything. Low income housing, in particular, gets KILLED by these regulations.
I am not a housing geek or a planning nerd and this book was really interesting. A friend recommended it and my husband and I both devoured it. Shocking. Eye-opening.
Captain C
@Jackie: That (suppressed) ethics report must be really bad.
Kay
Putting in policy that benefits the working class hasn’t helped Democrats at all. It pains me to say it, but it’s true.
Sherrod Brown has been a champion of the working class in Ohio for his entire career. He almost single-handedly saved their pensions and they jeered at him and voted for a sleazy used car salesman.
You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. Joe Biden was the best working class President since FDR. They hated him.
frosty
@Scamp Dog: Got it. It still sounds strange to me.
Old School
Chief Oshkosh
@Ruckus: I wonder if Trump is going to allow this level of interference in Ed Bastian’s God-given right to scam his customers?
https://youtube.com/shorts/1pdc20rjqSo?si=6PiOq01ak7ARah5z
Ruckus
@RaflW:
When I traveled for work that 8 months a year I was supposed to do so for the least amount possible. Now if you fly once, maybe twice a year you don’t notice so much doing it as cheaply as possible. When you fly twice a week for 8 months a year you NOTICE doing it as cheaply as possible. They hired a new accounting person who was supposed to arrange flights/hotels to lower spending. I disagreed with that because she had zero idea how to do it in any way reasonably. Fly me to a different city and then I’d have to drive an extra 100 miles a weekend, often when I actually needed to be at the event location, to save less than the gas money, and not to mention the increase in my attitude. Good times……
Kay
IMO, progressives (I am one) have to seriously and honestly grapple with the fact that “the working class” hates liberal policy (and liberals) and worships rich people. Ask anyone who interacts with them in any capacity on a daily basis.
Baud
@Kay:
100%
cain
@Kay: They love rich people so much they made additions to Christianity.
They are in love with their own hero image fed to them by right wingers. Getting over challenges on their own power! No govt!
They think liberal policy is what is causing all this chaff.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: The thing is, Joe helped the working class, and his definition admits Black people to be workers.
That’s the problem– they need to be catered to as the WHITE working class; and anything anyone else gets just must be at their expense.
White people. We gotta be clear on just what “people” we’re talking about.
Kay
Have any of the progressive thinkers who said all we had to do was offer real benefits to the working class in the rust belt weighed in on the fact that Biden and Democrats POURED federal resources into the rust belt leading directly to a booming manufacturing economy yet the working class told them to fuck off anyway?
Because that’s what happened. I live here. I watched it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Kay:
If you say the *white* working class, like Baud, I agree 100%.
chopper
@Miss Bianca:
very small rocks
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Another reason to ALWAYS wear your seatbelt. A tad bit more difficult to fall out of a plane. Because if the hole is next to your seat you are likely the one being pulled out of the plane if you aren’t.
Kelly
@Jackie: If I understand the rules correctly Gaetz seat will need to be filled be special election. This will leave the Rs one seat less for a while.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: I know I’m a broken record, but it’s the WHITE working class.
It’s just white people, like it always is.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@Professor Bigfoot:
I think that’s why “the working class” was in quotes.
trollhattan
@Kelly: Whoever gets his old office, I hope they powerclean the hell out of it first.
Kay
They can’t accept the improvements in consumer fairness because those improvements were made by a gay, college educated liberal who is extremely well spoken.
So you’ll forgive me if I don’t cry any tears over them getting ripped off. They chose it. Signed right up ” “please, Mr CEO, rob me”
I didn’t tell them to behave like serfs. They prefer it.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Can’t bevel the edge because then the door would have to open inwards and that would lose seat/cargo space. Airplanes have doors that are a few inches thick and several pins in each side, which the handle pushes into the fuselage lock bar ports between the inner/outer wall to hold it in securely. So they don’t fly out/off.
Kay
Provide improvements for the working class because of Black working class voters or the 35% of white working class voters who vote for those improvements but stop thinking it will pay off politically or expand our voter pool. It won’t. If Bernie Sanders were running anywhere outside a deep blue state he would lose, like Sherrod Brown did. Democrats have absolutely no incentive to promote worker-centered policy. It was a political loser for them.
Another Scott
@Geminid: How it would work in practice is anyone’s guess, but there do seem to be some safeguards. HR-9495:
IANAL.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kay
@Geminid:
Well, that and also the fact that everything the student protestors alleged regarding the United States and Israel’s policy in Gaza turned out to be true.
Bombing hospitals? Check. Deliberately starving Palestinians? Check. Targeting aid workers and journalists? Check. Ethnic cleansing cleansing to clear Gaza for settlements? Check.
They were right and the Biden Administration and the US foreign policy apparatus were wrong. That should matter. You would think we would know by now that student protestors have an exellent track record for being on the right side of US warmaking policy. They’ve never missed.
Steve LaBonne
@Another Scott: Imagine the disruption and ruinous expense to a small nonprofit trying to defend itself. That’s the real plan. In better days I would have said this is blatantly unconstitutional but we all know how much that means now.
p.a.
Brazilian police indict former President Bolsonaro and aides over alleged 2022 coup attempt
Well… they take democratic governance seriously SOMEWHERE.
Melancholy Jaques
@Kay:
I agree with every comment you’ve made on this thread on this subject. I share your frustration bordering on rage.
But I still want Democrats to promote worker-centered policies. I want that to be central to our brand. I am at a loss as to how to make it pay off in elections. But we have smart people on our team. We can work on that.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Thanks. I haven’t gotten so deep into the legislation itself. I think I may know something about the political aspect because I’ve seen people agitating about Students for Justice in Palestine and its funding sources for the last ten months. I’m assuming that was the politics behind this bill.
p.a.
If Dems passed a bill with the Fed gvt buying guns for the WWC it still wouldn’t get their vote. They’d just say wrong guns, wrong caliber, yadda yadda
Steve LaBonne
@p.a.:
It took them 2 years. They're just as bad as Biden and Garland!Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I don’t know the right answer for what would win elections. I just know what I’d like to see. I would like more of a focus on urban and suburb voters. I would also like to see a focus on reform for our screwed up institutions.
We need reform in the court system. Rich people should not be able to slow down investigations and court proceedings to the point that they get elected president or the statute of limitations is exceeded. People shouldn’t be allowed to drag out and abuse civil court proceedings to the point that people are forced to settle because they can’t afford to keep defending themselves or get justice for being ripped off.
We need criminal justice reform, and it needs to be sensible. In St. Louis, we went through the horrible experience of having progressive Kim Gartner (who had good intentions, but was completely incompetent) drive the district attorneys office into a ditch. We also have criminal justice reformers push to have cops stop pulling over poor people for minor violations. The result of that is now people are boldly and shamelessly driving around without a license plate or with tags that expired years ago. Its not rare. Its every 10th car. Basically, its tax evasion. You have no idea if a car is stolen now. Incidents of reckless driving have greatly increased and its more dangerous to be on the roadways. I don’t want poor people punished for being poor or black people pulled over and threatened because they are black, but I also want people to have a current and legal license and registration for their vehicles. I want moving violations enforced for safety reasons.
I want better policy, including limits on how long investors can just sit on decaying urban property without allowing it to be used for development. I want limits on AirBnB. I want barriers to competition for rent, such as the use of algorithms for rent pricing to be considered price fixing and prosecuted.
I want better transportation policy.
I want us to figure out how to balance the needs of the urban poor with the need to grow the middle class in cities and to not alienate those that will invest and create businesses. I want businesses to thrive in urban environments, but with worker protections, so that businesses aren’t taking advantage of their workers.
I want a zeal to fight corruption.
I also want a magical unicorn pony. However, as complex and difficult as it is to do the above, I think coming together to focus on those problems, instead of arguing online about big national policies we definitely aren’t getting in the next 4+ years has value.
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I want voters to vote on policy. Unfortunately they don’t and never have.
Kelly
I’m currently on hold with Wells Fargo. Trying to report a suspicious email. Hold is expected to take 20 minutes. Only reason I’m dealing with them is the account is Mom’s. She died in July. I’m planning to keep it open for a year. The voice gave me a email address to forward it to but it was way to fast and never repeated.
Geminid
@Kay: SJIP also advocates for the dismantling of Israel as state and claims that since the entire nation is occupied territory Hamas’s massacre on October 7 was justified. I think they are wrong on those basic issues, and thst this is one reason the protests never grew beyond a small, insular movement.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Steve LaBonne: So you also want a magical unicorn pony!
They vote on vibes and identity. I want that identity to be proud, urban/suburban, successful, and dynamic. I want the people selling urban danger and decay to look like idiots.
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I would settle for living out my remaining years in a reasonably sane and stable country. Sigh.
p.a.
I’ve noted before, there was a brief period (New Deal and a bit more) where American #1 would look at American #2 (union member) and say: hmmm he’s doing ok. I’d like what he’s getting, and I’ll fight for it too.
Then, up to the present, it’s become: hmmmm, he’s doing better than me. Fuck him, take it away! Unionists included! Accident that this coincides with the success of the Civil Rights Movement(s)? (Rhetorical question)
Baud
@Geminid:
I believe it’s provide support, not receive support.
Geminid
@Baud: Like I said above, I haven’t looked into the bill itself, and am drawing conclusions from the political agitation against Students for Justice in Palestine. Critics claimed that some nefarious foreign entities funded them.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Correct. Heinous things like supporting health care for children in Gaza, no doubt.
Steve LaBonne
@Geminid: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9495/text
Jackie
@Kelly: Yes. TWO special elections; TCFG poached two FL house members – Miller? is the other one. I don’t know how quickly DeStupid has to hold the elections. Can he start before the seats are officially open? Johnson will want them held ASAP, plus Stefanik’s seat in NY.
Fun times, if Dems can steal one or more!
Geminid
@Steve LaBonne: Great. Let us know what you find out.
Baud
Bokonon
Would the Russian government be considered to be a terrorist organization?
Just asking. Innocent question.
Fair Economist
@Kay: I think the issue is more that we need to figure out how to get credit for what we do for working class people. Part of it is branding. We give these vague bipartisan names for programs and then Republicans take credit for them.
I think it would have helped if the Inflation Reduction Act had been called “Biden’s Restoring American Jobs Act”. Or maybe put out under several names including ” Biden’s Food for Schoolchildren Act”.
...now I try to be amused
@Chief Oshkosh:
The Eat Your Own Dog Food Act.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: That was an interesting article. Thanks for linking.
Geminid
@Fair Economist: Also, Democrats emphasize their support for the middle class, not the working class. I think this a sound approach even if it leaves them open to bad-faith attacks by so-called “Progressives” who are almost all middle class themselves.
Suzanne
@AM in NC:
Parking is one of my least-favorite parts of every project I have worked on. It’s maddening. Eats up horrifying amounts of space and money, and it basically dominates most other concerns.
One municipality I worked in mandated that every parking spot be sized to 10’x20’ (standard is 9’x18’) because so many people drive big trucks. Just a total waste of space.
Old School
Jackie
@trollhattan: And remove all upholstered furniture in Vance’s office!
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: Manchin killed Build Back Better at least in part because it had too many B‘s and Biden‘s name starts with B.
Biden tried. But he knew how to cut his losses and bring it back is the Inflation Reduction Act.
Politics is weird.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Sure Lurkalot
In re getting credit for the good things Democrats do, Chris Murphy has turned to the inane side:
Good policy that benefits workers and helps them be more productive = handouts people don’t want? If Biden had only unrigged the rules!
Tell me, I’d really love to know…what industries refuse subsidies? What corporate accountants say…no, I’m not booking that depreciation allowance, that’s a handout! Please, sir, no more tax cuts!
Soprano2
Oh yeah, I see at least one car a day with expired temp tags. I read a story where they interviewed one of these people; he said it was cheaper to pay the fine than to pay the sales tax. I’m not sure what he’s going to do when he needs to sell the car or has an accident.
Soprano2
@Geminid: The thing is, we already have laws against terrorist organizations funding non-profits. It sounds like they want an end run around all of that.
Kay
@Geminid:
The protests were enormous internationally. The critics of the protestors were wrong on the merits of US policy in Gaza. Not that any of them will ever admit it. Hillary Clinton, especially, should apologize to them. She denied every single one of their (now proven) absolutely valid criticisms of US policy in Israel. They were right and she was wrong. The approach she endorsed was an utter and complete failure. Biden too of course, but Biden wasn’t as critical of the protestors as Clinton was. I know she’s defensive on the issue and I know WHY she’s defensive on the issue (war crimes and violating US law) but hey, that’s life in the big leagues. She owes them an apology.
different-church-lady
America: this is what you just elected because you thought Joe Biden was too old.
(Warning: do not click on a sensitive stomach)
Kay
@Soprano2:
The worse the Biden policy in Israel goes the more the blank check for Israel caucus tries to shut down any criticism of it. It’s blatantly an effort to shut down critics of US policy in Israel and the worse that policy looks the more they clamp down on political speech opposing it. It won’t work. The US can continue to gaslight their own citizens but no one outside the US buys any of it. Warrants are still going to issue and at some point there will be a reckoning on what we backed.
Another Scott
@Baud: +1
(Emphasis added.)
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kay
I think Democrats could still back working class policy for labor unions. They stuck with Dems for the most part this cycle – there just aren’t enough of them.
Geminid
@Kay: Yes, the protests were very large in Europe and other places. I was struck by the difference here.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Kelly: That is one of my pet peeves: people who leave a phone number in a recorded message, but because it is their phone number and they are so familiar with it and say it all the time, they say it quickly, not always clearly, and don’t repeat it. Extra points for burying the number in the middle of the message so if you listen to the message more than once in order to get the number correct, you have to listen to a bunch of throat clearing first.
Kay
@Sure Lurkalot:
Inane is right. Americans LOVE a handout. They just want it structured so they can pretend they earned it.
This is why I could no longer run for anything. I think the time for this sort of coddling of the electorate has passed. Tell the truth. Countering Trump’s delusions with our own in order to flatter coddled, spoiled Americans is not what will survive this period.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Punching?
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
Many, many decades ago I was a mental health counselor at a city mental health center. One day a week and a management session with a like group of counselors to discuss our clients and process resolutions for our clients. We did in person and phone appointments. I had one client that I still, decades later would never want to be alone with ever again. Every other in person and phone client was fine and so either in person or phone was fine. One phone client was a 13-14 yr old girl who could do voices and stories that were amazing. For some reason my ear could recognize her voice no matter how she changed it. Never understood that but it helped immensely because most people could not, so they would never actually know who they were talking to. She’d been calling for quite some time and the report book on her was wild, especially on how many could not tell it was her.
My point was that I’ve done counseling in person and on the phone and in person is almost always better, because you can watch the client, and you always know if it’s the same person and you can see their face and that can help immensely because most of us communicate with voice and facial expressions. But if you are not trying to do as that 14 yr old girl was – have fun, but getting help, of whatever type, the phone is fine.
Because what you can do for a person is really about the same either way, you just have to work at it a bit differently. And many clients had the same idea as you because they could see the counselor’s facial expressions – the non verbal communication side. My advice is to talk – and listen, because in the end the most important thing is talking and listening, which brings about learning whatever it is that YOU need.
I will say, just as an aside, most of my clients in the 4 years I did this were just in need of a bit of light on the subject and basically just didn’t know where the light switch was. And my point here is that no matter what the reasoning is, verbal communication is the most important issue, we are just more used to doing high level communication in person. Talk AND Listen, a good person can work remotely or in person effectively.
different-church-lady
@Sure Lurkalot:
Then WHY THE FUCK DO THEY KEEP ELECTING THE GUYS WHO RIG THE RULES??:
Baud
@different-church-lady:
They’ll believe the system is unrigged when they see members of their cohort consistently beat members of other cohorts.
Steve LaBonne
@different-church-lady: Except in a dire emergency like the Depression, to most Americans “we’re all in this together” has always been an alien and somewhat offensive concept. It’s a national personality disorder, exacerbated by the zero-sum mentality promoted by the ever-richer plutocrats.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus:
CORPORATE AMERICA: “Let’s have ChatGPT do it instead!”
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Like they used to in the 50s when if you were white (and a man), you were all right.
p.a.
@Baud: I think of a marathon race where a few runners are required to carry 50lb bags of rock. 20 miles into the race the organizers finally decide maybe that’s a bit unfair and take away the rocks. A good majority of the unencumbered racers start whinging that now they are being cheated.
How the f do you deal with that kind of person?
Chief Oshkosh
@Steve LaBonne: So you’re saying Trump should’ve been indicted in 2023 for leading a self-coup.
2021 + 2 = 2023
Hey, I’m right there with you on that.
Steve LaBonne
@Chief Oshkosh: And reality is right there with us: his DC indictment for 1/6 was handed down on August 1, 2023. (I don’t mean this as snark because I assume you know it.)
zhena gogolia
@Sure Lurkalot: God, if I weren’t so demoralized and exhausted I would be sending him a strongly worded letter. But I’m kind of done. What an asshole he turned out to be when the chips were down.
Kay
My niece, who is in her early twenties and lives in Brooklyn, told me smoking anything other than illegal “dirt weed” is uncool. I completely understand this.
Steve LaBonne
Josh Marshall has some well-considered words on the dilemma Democrats face, as unavoidably the party of important aspects of the status quo in a particularly low-trust era.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Hell yeah! I don’t want any policies that are punitive to rural, small-town, or exurban voters, but we’ve gone way out of our way to help those people, and they keep voting GOP. So at whatever time we’re once again in a position to do so, we should at least stop gearing policies towards helping them, and focus instead on helping people who live in the cities and inner suburbs. They’re our voters, let’s reward them.
Dave
@Starfish (she/her): I noticed that myself when on military chartered flights to the sparkling military actions in the Middle East and SW Asia the food on th European leg was leaps and bounds better than what originated in the US.
Captain C
@Kay: I mean, if you’re so determined to be ‘cool’ that you smoke crappy, overpriced weed rather than the stronger, better stuff just because it came from a dispensary, well, that’s a choice.
Personally, I like high quality stuff that helps pay for education and whatnot but I guess I place less value being cool because of my bad consumer choices.
(I read that right, yes? Smoking bad ditchweed from an unscrupulous dealer is what’s supposedly cool?)
Kay
@Geminid:
Well, people in other countries didn’t have a foreign policy apparatus coming out weekly and telling them they were this close to a deal. Which wasn’t true. And they knew it when they said it.
Biden was great on domestic policy but his foreign policy was a goddamned tragedy. Trump’s will be too but I expected better of such an experienced Democrat. He has a kneejerk pro Israel and anti Arab blind spot a mile wide. It will stain his legacy, and it should.
TBone
Was pointed to this article on nominee for Pentagon Pete Hegseth, his beliefs, his tattoos, and his book ‘American Crusade.’ He needs to get gaetzed. Fucking fruitloop wants to (and will) use our military against U.S. citizens.
There is much more at the link:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/22/trump-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-book
Jackie
A little promise of retaliation?
The embedded link goes to X.
zhena gogolia
Haven’t heard a peep on campus about Palestine since Nov. 5. Funny that.
Soprano2
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I always make sure I say my phone # slowly, and I try to say it at least twice, because that’s a pet peeve of mine too.
Soprano2
@Kay: If a politician tells the voters the truth they run away screaming. When they say “I like TCFG because he tells it like it is”, what they mean is “He says things I agree with”.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Didn’t think about that….
In person really, really, really would be better…..
For a while there was a woman, about mom’s age and for a while we were the only 2 in the office on my shift and she had an outlook as a counselor that amazed me. I’ve only met a few people in my life that could easily see a life different from her’s that was perfectly acceptable. Most of us either can’t or don’t want to see that. And she liked her life. She helped me as a counselor with that concept more than anyone else ever did. Helped me see that while we are all human, there are many ways to be a decent one, and more than a few ways to totally screw it up.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: I agree.
TBone
@Old School: goddamn, the Judge pre-obeyed. WTF.
Dave
@UncleEbeneezer: Feel you on that really not a fan of the virtual appointments. More power to those it works for but it’s not conducive for my own headspace.
Dave
@Kay: Or more importantly they often love liberal policy but hate liberals and the world liberal so much that they will never accept that liberal policy is what they like and that it’s liberals put that policy into place.
Though in practice it amounts to the same thing. The only plus of it is that good policy isn’t a negative it’s just not the positive it should be (with very important and frustrating exceptions that are probably worth figuring out).
Unfortunately what really seems to work is extreme simple lowest common denominator constantly repeated infotainment which is not ideal to say the least.
TBone
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: 👍
TBone
@Jackie: Kevin McCarthy springs back to mind.
tam1MI
They’re Donald Trump’s problem now.
TBone
@Old School: that’s a lovely tribute he wrote.
lowtechcyclist
@Jackie:
I daresay that if Republicans put a bill on the floor of either house of Congress that banned stock trading by members of Congress, that you couldn’t cast a single vote until you’d sold all your stocks in specific companies, and that the only way you could invest in the market was through a broad-based index fund, they’d get overwhelming support from Democrats.
So if Gaetz wants to tell stories about Dems who’ve traded stocks while in Congress, maybe when his new term begins on January 3rd, he should submit such a bill as an expression of his outrage against such practices.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: A group of them encamped at my congressional rep’s house (he’s Jewish) and they were getting so abusive he had to call Cincinnati police to escort him and his family to and from the house. I don’t know if they’re still there.
TBone
@different-church-lady: Elno looks like he’s back to his emo teenager stage only with more dope, and Donold looks like he has been burnt to a crisp!
Chief Oshkosh
@Steve LaBonne: Yep
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne: It’s not a party of institutions. It’s a party of function.
different-church-lady
@tam1MI: Trump to Bibi: “Do what you have to.”
That ought to make the whole thing better, don’t you think?
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: So disgusting, so unnecessary.
I’m pretty stoic, when things are hard because they have to be. But they were presented with a beautiful, brilliant, kind goddess, and they chose this. They chose this. And I have to live through it.
different-church-lady
@Jackie: I find his proposal acceptable.
Hoodie
@Kay: Do you think this may have something to do with “working class” as used by liberal pols giving an impression that liberals think “working class” are academically-failed meatheads working in a factory, i.e., may contribute to such folks’ impression that liberals look down on and patronize them, which turns an economic issue into a cultural one that Republicans exploit? A lot of the working class works in offices and labs. A lot of factory jobs require a good bit of technical training. In fact, a lot of the working class has college degrees. Maybe Dems should stop using the media-created framing of “working class vs. college-educated,” stop worrying about specifically targeting working class voters and instead think about targeting voters using other categorizations, e.g., “people who will probably need Social Security” or “people who have 401(k)s.”
different-church-lady
@Soprano2:
lowtechcyclist
@lowtechcyclist:
Missed the part where he said he wouldn’t be taking part in the new Congress.
Baud
@Hoodie:
That’d be great. As long as we prepare how to deal with the “Dems abandon the working class” memes from inside and outside the party.
We never seem to want to preplan how to deal with negative talking points.
tam1MI
That statement might have been true if Biden had been re-elected or Harris had been elected, but Trump entering the White House has changed that calculus.
And frankly, the fact that Trump won the election shows it already worked.
Martin
My gut tells me that corporations are the things Democrats need to be fighting, more than Trump voters. My gut also tells me this will never happen.
Baud
Speaking of unions
lowtechcyclist
@AM in NC:
It’s been awhile since I read Atrios with any regularity, but one thing I appreciate about him was that he hammered this point home on a regular basis, about the appalling amount of space that is required to be set aside for parking.
Baud
@Martin:
Correct. Corporations are loved by too many Americans.
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: Protests are still going on at Columbia University. Last night they marched on the Hillel Center where Israeli Axios reporter Barak Ravid was giving a talk. They demanded that Columbia revoke the Hillel Center’s right to exist on the Columbia campus because it is a Zionist organization.
Martin
@Another Scott: Won’t matter. This is going to be a vehicle to shut down grass roots non-profits that won’t be able to fight bullshit charges. Remember ACORN? They did nothing wrong – a mob led by the government went after them, and they vanished because they couldn’t afford to fight that.
Martin
@AM in NC: Welcome to the war on cars.
Baud
@Martin:
Also, for those interested.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Martin: They could always do what corporations do: dissolve when the trouble starts and before it gets too far, re-form, and re-brand.
Soprano2
@different-church-lady: Sure, that’s true too, but it’s not about him “talking straight”, it’s about them believing the things they believe are “straight talk”.
gvg
@Jackie: 2 more Florida House members (Salzman & Rudman) have to resign because they intend to run for Gaetz’s seat. The democrat who lost badly against him also intends to run. She is involved in Moms for Gun sense. There is also a former Green Beret who had to leave because he refused the Covid vaccine and a no Party guy. So far.
different-church-lady
@Geminid: Gosh, you’d think that’d be in the news or something…
Baud
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne: All Saints Episcopal parish in Pasadena had some time in the IRS barrel back in 2006 over an antiwar sermon. Took till 2007 for them to clear themselves in court. But the Episcopalians do have a little money …
(Trying to get archive.■ articles is going slowly today for some reason.)
Geminid
@Hoodie: The Democratic officeholders I follow know all this and message accordingly. They don’t accept pundit or Republican framing.
An exception would be a few Democratic Representatives who misrepresented the Infrastructure bill as benefitting white working men only. The head of a New York Construction Laborers local called Rep. Jamaal Bowman on that bit of gaslighting. The union leader was especially mad because he had hosted Bowman at their apprentice training facility and Bowman knew how diverse the apprentices were.
But Bowman catered to a national following not a local one, and he paid for that in this Spring’s primary.
Martin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: That works so long as this is a civil effort. If the AG want to make it a criminal effort – you were still a member of a terrorist organization and it doesn’t matter what you call yourself now.
But even then, it destroys your branding, your recognition with the people you are trying to serve, and so on. Maybe you can hold onto your internal organizing work, but it destroys pretty much everything else.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
They’re our voters, let’s reward them.
That’s very right wing of you…….
OK so maybe I went too far. Part of the problem is that many on the right wing want to do exactly that, which is one reason that they suck donkey balls at governing. Take away everything from our enemies and reward our supporters. This is a country, with a 330+ million population. Nothing any political party is going to do is going to support all the people. But we have a large cohort that has more than enough money and doesn’t actually need a lot of or any help living rather comfortably. And more than a few who would have a hard time spending all they have. They could lose it through stupidity but they have far more than enough to live very comfortably and never run out and they often seem to think that they need much more. As it goes with many humans. This seems to me to be an important point of contention that we should always be aware of. For one reason many of them think that they can never fail. And likely they won’t. They sell something that people want/need to buy. Food, clothing, transportation, etc. And if they do that reasonably they will make money, often a hell of a lot of it, so going broke is unlikely unless they piss off their customers. And if they are big there are always customers who will shop their stores.
Geminid
@different-church-lady: The protest march was covered by Columbia’s newspaper. I bet the New York Post had a writeup too, and probably the Daily News as well.
But you have to look for this type of story. I ran into it on Barak Ravid’s social media account while searching for news on Israeli politics.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Jeez. If any chain should have unionized workers, I’d say it should be Whole Paycheck. Share the wealth!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
There’s a big difference between wanting safer streets and hating cars. The same white folks who hate cars exaggerate the dangers of the streets, alienate most people with their idiosyncratic car hatred, and obscure the valid part of their safety message.
A very good piece on the racial implications behind the (overwhelmingly) white people’s war on cars:
https://twitter.com/damienISgoodmon/status/1654675072077172737
Finally, at least here in Denver, guess who builds parking for residents in new builds? Developers. After years of shrieking for a reduction in parking minimums, they discovered that nobody wanted to pay local, market-level rents for a shitbox apartment that also didn’t have a parking space. Now, they don’t build unless they can get a 1:1 parking ratio.
lowtechcyclist
@prostratedragon:
One of my favorite light-bulb jokes: “How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?”
A. Two: One to call the electrician, and the other to mix the martinis.
Martin
I think Hank Green and I are on the same wavelength right now.
He’s better at recalling sources than I am (I organize information I’ve _read_ in my brain in extremely weird ways), and gives recommendations on some new reads.
Mart
Judge ruling for the working man rolled back Biden overtime pay for 4M folks. Media does not care.
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
You notice I was very specific about NOT doing anything punitive to rural and small-town voters, just not going out of our way (like we’ve been doing) to try to help them specifically. We’d save that last for our own supporters.
Pretty much every governing party everywhere tries to do right by the people who voted for it. The Dems do far less of it than most other parties. And given that the big fall-off in Dem support a few weeks ago was in the cities, maybe that was a mistake.
ETA:
I hardly think that everyone who lives in the cities or inner ‘burbs is comfortably well off. We could do a lot to help people in those areas that are just getting by. Like better public transportation so they don’t have to own a car.
prostratedragon
@Baud: Good article. One must learn to keep that dragon chillin’.
different-church-lady
@Geminid: I guess what I mean is gosh you’d think this would be all over the news. You know, like back when it was the thing an old pudding-brained guy was solely responsible for.
Martin
@lowtechcyclist: Here’s my prediction: the union will never become effective because the process to getting to a contract won’t be enforced – particularly under a Trump admin – and the turnover in retail will be high enough to undermine continuity toward that goal.
I haven’t seen any of the recent unions actually become effective and I think it’s disillusioning that this thing we advocate doesn’t actually work at that scale. I wonder if CAs approach might work better where the state semi-unionized all fast food workers in one go, did a kind of collective bargaining for all workers, and then wrote the contract into law.
One problem from that effort is that promises by the state to improve pay for health care workers, including those in unions, has been delayed due to budget issues, so right now McDonalds workers make more than some nurses and many EMTs – and they are understandably unhappy about that. Many of my wife’s public school administration colleagues are also upset that minimum wage for fast food is $4/hr higher than for them.
sab
@Chief Oshkosh: That makes me laugh. On the rare times I fly I prefer Delta because I have such bad memories of the others.
On the other hand, when I was in law school I had an on campus recruiting interview with them that I thought went well. Then a few weeks later I got a letter excoriating me for having failed to show up for my scheduled interview. Made me wonder about the quality of the management side of their company.
Martin
@Geminid: So, here’s the thing – there are always protests on college campuses when classes are in session. In fairness there is a scale to them that the administration largely ignores as well, and a scale that the administration mobilizes for. That is particularly true when they are growing and spreading and it’s unclear how far that will go.
sab
@Booger: You must be a lawyer. I remember my art historian sister laughing the first time I ever used “term of art.”
” OMG! You guys even have jargon words for jargon words.”
sab
@Hildebrand: Instead of the megachurches that deserve to be targeted.
tam1MI
@Geminid: The protest march was covered by Columbia’s newspaper.
Just returned here from reading the article. What struck me were 2 things: 1.) The university released a statement almost immediately condemning the protesters. They seem to have learned a lesson from the Stefanik show trials, and 2.) Police were on the scene almost from the jump. Another lesson learned?
Old School
@Mart:
Still trying to frame it right to blame Biden for trying to do something clearly illegal.
rikyrah
Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) posted at 2:15 PM on Thu, Nov 21, 2024:
Pete Hegseth explicitly mentions Admiral Lisa Franchetti in his book as someone he thinks is unqualified. His primary gripe is that she’s the first woman on the joint chiefs. She was confirmed 95-1. https://t.co/r4ffKxptOV
(https://x.com/JoePerticone/status/1859692018706022851?s=03)
sab
@Jackie: Can House seats be appointed? I thought that, unlike Senate seats, they stay empty until there is a special election to replace the prior Congresscritter.
rikyrah
Mollie Katzen (@MollieKatzen) posted at 7:47 AM on Fri, Nov 22, 2024:
Good morning.
The state of Georgia has fired its entire Maternal Mortality Committee.
Now they won’t have to deal with those pesky statistics of, you know, dead women.
(https://x.com/MollieKatzen/status/1859956827632579044?t=hg08oQLJHlwAzv67D8SVXQ&s=03)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@lowtechcyclist:
Yes! The GOP will fight any resources for our voters, but that’s fine. They don’t get what they want unless they share the tax wealth on urban/suburban priorities. One big benefit, we no longer get to watch them taking credit for Dem politicians helping their voters. Instead, our politicians get to take credit for what they bring to their districts. The GOP already accuses us of only helping our own voters, and rural voters already believe that. That means there won’t be a penalty for actually prioritizing our voters. I get that Senators have to be more careful about that as does a Democratic president (if we get that option again).
Princess
@Kay: This is so depressing and so completely true.
I remember talking to a professor friend of mine who couldn’t name one single positive thing Biden had done. She thinks of herself as a leftist/progressive. I said he was the most progressive president of my lifetime. She said she liked Jimmy Carter – Carter who had that big spiel about how government wasn’t there to fix your problems, Carter the first real “neo-liberal” Democratic president. She should know better but she’s completely ignorant.
Martin
I would reframe that further. Because of the electoral college we have created a system where political cultures are developed at the state level in support or opposition to policies that apply nationally. So we collect taxes from everyone, in unequal amounts due to the strength of various economies, and then spend them in unequal amounts for various reasons. This creates a moral hazard because Florida can develop a culture to refuse to pay for climate change prep knowing that California tax dollars will buy them a new truck when it gets washed away, or Alabama can refuse to pay for K-12 because they know federal Department of Education dollars will do that for them.
It’s not about supporters as about the system building a set of incentives that the more selfish you are, the more you can oppose the system and still benefit from it. And the more community focused you are the more you are punished for that generosity because it never flows back in your direction. CA plows enormous amounts of state tax money into Medicaid, in part because so much of our federal tax dollar get steered to other states and we only get back about $0.40 on the dollar for Medicaid. So Californias tax dollars get spent in Alabama and then Alabama creates an anti-tax, anti-California culture for electoral politics reason, so yeah, fuck them.
I think Democrats should, not as a doctrinaire policy, embrace sending school funding, disaster recovery funding, maybe Medicaid? back to the states on the basis that this redistribution has, when combined with the electoral college broken the system. Be open to restoring the federal system in the future but only if there is broad support. In fact, maybe tie restoration of these systems to eliminating the EC as a constitutional amendment (so you’d need ¾ of states to sign off).
The effect would be that with Florida cut off from federal dollars from the other states, they’d have to have the internal political fight for how to pay for disaster support, and might conclude that prevention is the better way to do so. But it would shift the fight from Florida vs California to Florida vs Florida.
Democrats are going to have to come to terms with the losses that would be taken – people in these states would be harmed as funding for disaster recovery is cut off, school funding, etc. But they get harmed every time Republicans win. I’d rather Democrats be in charge and laying out a clear strategy to fix this, ‘this’ including the red vs blue state conflict that is purely a product of the electoral college, something we really wouldn’t have nearly as strong a concept of if not for the EC.
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: 😆😆! I remember one about the different denominations in Hell, doing various bobs and bubbles in the muck, when some forlorn Presbyterian exclaims, “Look out! Here come the Episcopalians in their speedboat!”
Regarding the All Saints church affair, here’s the archived article from LA Times about the original IRS citation, in late 2005, and here’s an NPR transcript of an interview in 2007 with the parsh rector and their lead lawyer in the matter, on the occasion of IRS withdrawing the complaint.
sab
@Kay: You were in Michigan this summer and you didn’t see Sherrod Brown’s ads. I did. Tim Ryan redux.
The younger voters probably didn’t even realize that he is a Democrat until Bernie Moreno’s PAC friends pointed out that he was a liberal.
AM in NC
@Martin: Thank you for that link. We all need to be fighting this in dense urban areas. Just far better quality of life the fewer cars there are.
Martin
Given that liberal policies won pretty much everywhere in this election – whether abortion, or minimum wage increases, etc., I think this is completely, utterly wrong.
I don’t think they worship rich people so much as they are resigned to the idea that the only people who can affect change are the billionaires. Democrats haven’t done much to disavow them of that because democrats suck up to billionaires, just in a different way.
Soprano2
@different-church-lady: It is funny how those protests have suddenly become invisible to most of the press, isn’t it. I guess they’re not useful to beat up on the Biden administration anymore. Just wait until TCFG’s people want to shoot them.
Chris Johnson
@Jackie: That’s not new: MTG also threatened her fellow Republicans very directly, saying that Epstein wasn’t the only asset and saying ‘we’ to include herself in the cadre that also had Epstein in it gathering kompromat.
To me the interesting part isn’t that, because I knew she was one of the Putin cadre already. Same with Gaetz. To me the interesting part is that they now have to publically threaten, rather than get by with private threats and pressure. Very interesting that suddenly they have to own what they are in desperate attempts to get their way. Implies there’s a problem with that now.
Martin
@AM in NC: If we went from 2 cars per household to 1, that’d pretty much solve all problems. You need some flexibility in terms of alternative forms of getting around, but still have access to a car for the times they’re the only viable solution.
This is largely how Europe operates. People have cars, they use them sparingly.
Chris Johnson
@lowtechcyclist: Oh God no. He’s threatening Republicans. That’s what he would know. He along with MTG are publically threatening Republicans now. None of that is about pressuring Dems at all.
Baud
@Martin:
Abortion has nothing to do with corporations or billionaires.
Minimum wage increase are pretty small potatoes for putting corporations and billionaires in their place.
Voters prefer the current economic system to anything we could possibly offer them.
Kay
The Sarah McBride interview is making me tear up. “I would like my grace to contrast with the grandstanding”
Mace is such a tacky sleaze in comparison.
AM in NC
@Martin: Yep. Good compromise. And if you’re not using your car all the time to run immediate errands/commute, you don’t need parking space within 2 feet of your home. And the zoning where even low-income-housing, where most residents aren’t expected to own their own cars, must build out 1-1.5 parking spaces per resident, is one reason for the lack of this housing.
tam1MI
@Martin: This is largely how Europe operates.
The problem with trying to ape Europe in this is that Europe everywhere has large, well developed mass transit and we have nowhere near that. So we end up in this death spiral where if we got rid of cars, people would use more mass transit, but we need more mass transit before we can get rid of cars.
Jackie
@lowtechcyclist: Gaetz isn’t returning to congress, so who knows what his method of exposure(s) will be.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
So say we all. (OK a good sized portion of us say it….)
Martin
@Soprano2: Can we please stop this. The media aren’t covering the protests because they’re out to get Biden (I mean, they are, but for different reasons). The students knew what they were doing. The protests were almost entirely an effort to put pressure on Biden to change policy and he refused. The students invited the media in. They had media operations, places set up for interviews, etc. One reason why Columbia did so much better than my UC is because Columbia has a journalism school where students part of the protest could work their contacts and skills and my UC doesn’t – so the students didn’t know how to get LAT inside.
It’s more accurate to say that the protesters were more politically driven than the media were. Give the students some credit here.
Biden handled the protests poorly. It cost Democrats some votes. Notably, focus groups suggest that Jewish Democrats turned away from Harris because they felt that college campuses were no longer safe for their kids. They say this despite Biden/Harris not backing down on their support for Israel – something that Jewish voters almost certainly care less about than whether their kids might be safe in college. Domestic concerns always beats foreign concerns.
tobie
@Geminid: Hillel also organizes services, Talmud study, space for morning prayers, etc. Calling to banish Hillel is calling to banish Jewish life on campus. At any other time this action would be said to cross a line. We used to have a word for this kind of targeted harassment.
Kay
@sab:
You know what? Maybe voters have a duty to know something. Sherrod Briwn is in every county in the state at least once a year. Maybe they could read something about their senator?
If they’re too lazy to figure out who saved THEIR PENSIONS then they deserve to get screwed. They need to grow up and this patronizing romanticizing of the “working class” isn’t helping.
My grandmother was in the ILGWU. My grandfather was a coalminer. Neither of them completed 8th grade. Somehow they managed to figure out which politicians had their backs. You mean to tell me “working class” who hold a computer in their hand 24/7 can’t figure out what people who could barely read did 100 years ago?
sab
@rikyrah: I just heard the other day on a local program on NPR here in Ohio that we rank (and have ranked for the last 10 years) 45th among 50 states for maternal mortality (i.e only 5 states do worse than us.) As a midwesterner I was shocked. And more shocked that I had not known this.
UncleEbeneezer
@Ruckus: Thanks. I had a great in-person therapist years ago that really helped with my depression at the time. Then in 2012 after my Mom passed I tried a couple but one was a bad fit and the other retired just after our first session. I ended up saying fuck it and just managing without. But this time around I definitely want to stick with it.
Geminid
@Martin: The protest movement seems to be static or in decline. But the Columbia administration is very wary of them now.
sab
@Kay: Where are they supposed to read about their senator? Why did he run DLC type ads saying he was so good at crossing the aisle? What ever happened to the canary in the coal mine pin?
He used to run as a proud progressive. No sign of that this time.
Steve LaBonne
@sab: On the boiling a frog principle, year by year we have slid down a little further each year into shithole state territory by all kinds of criteria. Thanks, Republicans (and their idiot voters)!
AWOL
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, I’m starting to miss those “Think Higher than a Black Female President Committing Genocide” scrawls and posters in my hood. Don’t think they really cared much for the fate of the Palestinians.
catclub
@PsiFighter37: I find it fascinating that if you went back to 1920 and said: “Wow, I should invest in car companies and air travel, that’s the future!” You would be right and wrong. yes they are the future, but there has never been a Car or airline company that made huge money for its investors. Philip Morris Tobacco on the other hand….
Steve LaBonne
@sab: Ohio is a very different (worse) state with a very different electorate than it was even 6 years ago. He is the last person I will ever presume to lecture about how to win elections as a Democrat in Ohio. All these years he has been the only one who could.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: I was going to joke that the one upside of that bill to declare groups “terrorist” is that we will finally get the BDS so many have dreamt about, when Trump’s administration decides to add “Terrorism” to the laundry list of: Racism, Colonialism, Imperialism, Apartheid etc., that are ascribed to Zionism. What these protest groups are trying to do to Hillel Centers really isn’t much different than what Trump will likely try do to Muslim orgs.
rikyrah
Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼
@DrewPavlou
BREAKING: Tucker Carlson reveals that he tried to set up a meeting between Speaker Mike Johnson and Putin prior to the House vote on Ukraine aid. “I told him – why don’t you just check with Putin?”
Tucker wanted the Speaker of the House to run major decisions past Putin before voting
https://x.com/DrewPavlou/status/1859750548314128604
eclare
@sab:
We all know the saying: if voters have a choice between Republican and Republican-lite, they choose Republican.
That’s disappointing about Sherrod’s ads. I think a lot of consultants need to be fired and never hired again.
Steve LaBonne
@rikyrah: I mean, you are supposed to keep your boss in the loop.
sab
@Steve LaBonne: I sort of agree with you that Brown does know us. I just wish he had tried to defend and publicize who he is and what he does. It always used to work. He was our magic unicorn. This time he was just another horse in the race
ETA You are in Medina County. I am in Summit County and almost all our guys and issues won at the local level.
Baud
@eclare:
I wish we could retire that saying. Obviously, some blue dogs and conservative Dems win their elections because people are always complaining about them. Are they not considered Republican-lite? Are you only Republican-lite if you lose? It just seems like a false proverb.
UncleEbeneezer
@tobie: With 80-90% of Jewish People being some manner of Zionist, attempts to make spaces Zionist-free is de facto antisemitic discrimination. It’s as obvious as when bans of baggie pants and natural hair styles (afros, dreads, braids etc.) are used to discriminate against Black People.
The Audacity of Krope
@Kay: This is your periodic reminder that you supported the defenestration of a President who was making at least some moves to make our Israel policy more even-handed, resulting in a pro-Israel maximalist getting elected.
Fair Economist
@tam1MI: LA has pointed the way out of the car trap. Allow high densities, and the traffic makes people demand mass transit. In the 20th century LA voters blocked the subways; in the 21st they demand them.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Eh, that analogy seems off to me. Those black characteristics are associated with a race, but aren’t a political or social philosophy.
Jackie
Gaetz’s new gig ala George Santos 😂
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is recording short videos on Cameofor $500 apiece.
Redshift
@Starfish (she/her):
It failed the first time because they tried to pass it under a fast-track procedure that required a 2/3 majority. It later passed the House in a normal vote, but it won’t pass the Senate as a standalone bill. The effort backed by Indivisible (who told us we didn’t have the votes to stop it in a simple majority vote in the House) was to flip enough Dem votes that it passed narrowly, so they’ll be less likely to try to roll it into some must-pass bill they send to the Senate. And our calls accomplished that.
rikyrah
@eclare:
They gave up Brown for a used car salesman.
PA gave up Casey for what? Who is that lowlife muthaphucka?
tobie
@UncleEbeneezer: That is true. Many Jewish organizations align with Israel as many Moslem organizations align with Palestine. There’s no mystery there, and the student protestors know it. They’ve taken a page from the Republican playbook. Accuse your enemy of what you do. Being Jewish and identifying with Israel is a moral failing but being Muslim and identifying with Palestine is a-okay. Complain about genocide but in the same breath call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews camouflaged under some version of the phrase “free Palestine of settler colonists.” I’m beyond disconsolate about all this.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They worship rich WHITE people
They don’t worship rich Non=Whites.
rikyrah
@Geminid:
Read about that and went
WTF???
Redshift
@catclub:
I would say you just needed to pay attention to the razors/razor blades analogy — investing in the oil industry certainly would have gotten you huge money.
Martin
@Baud: I disagree. I think voters hate the current economic system, and Democrats promise no material change, and Democrats signaled that Trump would make radical changes, and they want radical changes.
That Trump would change them radically in the wrong way is not a message that Democrats advanced, nor did Democrats provide a sufficiently serious alternative. A majority of voters support increased taxes on the rich and even wealth taxes. The problem is they don’t believe it will actually change the economic system because the mechanism being offered by Democrats is to take those tax benefits and plow them into welfare programs.
I think what people are concerned about is that there is too much corporate control and tax measures and minimum wage don’t change that. They don’t change the fact that they have no alternative for shopping to Walmart or Kroger. They don’t change how much of the cost of a can of corn is kept as profits.
I’m unclear on how rural areas would view a particular policy idea. If rural farmers felt they could get out from under the consolidated supply chain for crops, would they diversify what they grow, which might allow for jobs to return to their towns, them growing higher revenue crops, etc. Or would they reject that idea. But nobody is entertaining this idea (RFK kind of is).
I think we pay too little attention to the HUGE share of voters that feel the political parties are the same. We argue they aren’t but in some really, really meaningful ways, they are, in that if this implementation of democracy that is completely unequipped to deal with mega corporations and the internet and social media and AI and all that isn’t working for them – both Democrats and traditional Republicans are in agreement that the current implementation should be preserved. And when Democrats say Trump isn’t like those Republicans that is an attractive feature to them. Because maybe Trump will change it in meaningful ways, because he’s not trying to preserve the status quo. If they never get to your larger warnings or they think you’re just making it up (because Democrats behavior makes it look like they are making it up) then you’ve just given an endorsement for Trump.
And while it’s unclear if these things would happen, and if they did happen they would be trivial relative to the greater harms being caused, Musk wants to move IRS filing to an app. That was a democratic idea for 30 years that Democrats couldn’t get done because even too many Democrats (like Biden) were lobbied by tax filing companies to oppose it. RFK says he wants to go after big ag and big Pharma. Those are things that Democratic voters support, yet Democrats never actually do for similar reasons.
Yes, I agree we will forever fall into the trap of ‘the billionaire is immune to lobbying because they’re too rich, therefore they’re the only one who can do it’ which is objectively bullshit if you think for just a minute about how they got rich, but voters fall into that trap constantly. But you cannot fault them for wanting the system to change in meaningful ways.
I linked to the Hank Green video above. He makes a good observation – when people have questions about health policy, nobody in the federal government will go to where the people are. Eventually they might release a report on a website somewhere, meanwhile RFK shows up on Joe Rogan and immediately provides an answer to 50 million people, or Rogan just makes some shit up himself. That answer might be 100% wrong, but where the fuck is the government here? Why aren’t they on Rogan giving the correct information? One reason why I like Pete is that he does this.
If you are serving the public, you need to serve them where they are. That’s why changes to voting are popular – vote my mail, drop boxes, etc serve voters where they are because they may not be able to go to the polling place on that day. My dad got his ballot forwarded to France and he voted from France.
One of the responses to AOCs call to voters that also voted for Trump was a guy working 3 jobs who was upset that the government was giving support to asylum seekers that were being located in NYC. We focus too much on the asylum seeker being what he was upset about and not enough about the 3 jobs, because if you fix that, he probably wouldn’t care about the asylum seekers given that he was an immigrant himself. He’s struggling and being ignored. he’s also in a blue state, with a democratic governor and legislature and a democratic senate lead by his senator and a democratic president – and he’s struggling. Maybe it’s housing costs – and fuckall is being done about that apart from relatively indirect policy ideas that in 5-10 years will steer the market. The ideas help, but a lot these people want landlords to be illegal, or rents to be a function of costs, or something vastly more radical than what any Democrat or normal Republican is proposing. The provision in the constitution that land ownership is inviolable and over 250 years that has turned into a monopoly in quite a few places is the problem. The constitution constrains the solutions too much because James Madison couldn’t anticipate REITs and private equity. A lot of people need much more fundamental change. Democrats accusing them of wanting fascism isn’t helping. Democrats offering much more fundamental change might help.
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
They played themselves and know that they did.
There will be no Palestine this time, next year.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Then use: Critical Race Theory, Intersectional Feminism, anything related to Black Power/Pride/Liberation. Which, notably, Nazis are already trying to ban.
Martin
@Geminid: Mission accomplished I would say then. If Columbia students feel they have the administration on uneven ground, I would expect them to press their advantage. Good for them.
I will also note that Columbia students got a LOT of billionaires to pull their support for Columbia which was another win. It used to be those gifts had more benefit to students, but that has changed over the last 20 or so years.
Jackie
After chasing off Gaetz, Senate GQPers are switching their attention to Gabbard:
Democrats don’t have to be the bad guys; they can just sit back and watch TCFG’s Party go after his Cabinet nominees. He didn’t expect this pushback, I’m sure!🤭
cain
@Suzanne:
But with land being a premium, cities have started to kill off parking lots and street parking. Certainly it’s happening here in Portland.
Baud
@Martin:
Yeah, we disagree. I think it’s dogma that we tell ourselves. We listen to people complain about things they should complain about and we think they will be receptive to our message if only it was said correctly by the correct person. I don’t think that’s where people are or have been. In the future, who knows? But not now.
ETA: Trump 2.0 will likely fundamentally change society in ways we can’t foresee. Who knows then?
cain
@Kay:
You and I are on the same wavelength.
Imagine voting for the orange diaper man when the economy is doing well because of “woke” policy.
I hope they get everything they voted for as hard as possible. I hope they don’t look to us to save them.
frosty
@Suzanne: Stormwater runoff from parking lots has blown out streams for years. Engineers have been working on mitigation techniques for the last 50 years (detention ponds, water quality ponds, small-scale treatment (swales, bioretention) and it’s helped. Reducing the asphalt would help a lot more.
Part of the problem is the municipal / zoning requirements for the amount of parking. The Wal-Mart shopping center near me is a sea of asphalt, never fully used. I feel like the specs were written to accomodate Black Friday crowds.
sab
@The Audacity of Krope: I know Kay is well able to speak for herself, but I believe her point back then was that Biden’s polling results were so awful that we wre looking at losimg by a landslide. I didn’t agree but I am also not active in party politics and privy to inside polling as she is.
Biden has been the best president of my lifetime but he is old with the toughest job in the world. It did seem that he was no longer up to doing the job of three people at once.
Everyone knows the American elecrorate is never grateful for good deeds or a job well done. We mostly want entertainment until we feel we need rescuing. Biden rescued us. Job well done.
I don’t think switching to Harris hurt us. I was against it at the time (the switch, not the switch to her) but she ran a great campaign. But Biden saved the economy so we are moving back to entertainment mode.
sab
@rikyrah: He sells new luxury cars not used cars. I can’t stand him but let’s stay accurate.
Geminid
@tam1MI: Atlanta’s MARTA system has a good combination of subway and bus service that serves that city’s residents well.
At least, that’s what my friend tells me. Back when his family had one car he moved all around the city by bus and train. He brought a bicycle along for one of his destinations.
But he’s a man. A commenter here who moved to Albuquerque from the countryside said she won’t use the city’s bus system because she does not feel safe. That’s a dimension of mass transit I had not considered before, but its a very important one. What good is a transit system if as many as half the population does not feel secure using it?
I hope we have post or two about mass transit next year and examine this along with the many other aspects.
Tamara might write one, but she might not because every time she does a climate post some idiot jumps in to explain that nothing really works and if it does, it’s too little too late. Makes me want to reach through my phone and slap ’em. I can’t do that, but I can cuss them out and that’s what I’m gonna do if Tamara ever posts on this subject again
Kay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Yup. I thought he was too old.
He also was doing absolutely nothing to “make our policy more evenhanded”. He has supported this human rights catastrophe every step of the way.
Jon Ossof, who is Jewish, gave a passionate speech where he begged Biden to start considering Palestinians as people. The mighty United States can’t even muster the courage to get some goddamned food aid into Gaza. It’s embarrassing. We let Bibi Netanyahu tell us who we’re allowed to feed.
Ksmiami
@Kay: at this point, I want Dems to concentrate on cities and suburbs and building a durable majority. WWC men are basically assholes
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Martin: Voters want much more radical change in theory. As soon as actual radical change happens, they freak the F out. Obamacare wasn’t radical. It was what the public was demanding. Then it was bashed incessantly for being either too radical or not radical enough. Americans want their lives to be better without having to change anything they benefit from. Except all change produces winners and losers, and sometimes the losses come from unexpected directions. All Americans, whether they acknowledge it or not and to one degree or another are both benefiting from and suffering from the current system. Which means any change is going to take away some of those benefits along with some of the pain.
Geminid
@Martin: Columbia’s administration is wary because the protesters deliberately intimidate Columbia’s Jewish students. That’s not a mission I want to see accomplished.
Another Scott
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: +1
Life is change. Modern life is rapid change.
Humans don’t like change.
It’s a big problem.
Best wishes,
Scott.
cain
@Ksmiami: and state legislatures. We need to win those red states regardless. It will be harder for Trump to do things if we also capture as these states if we can.
Martin
@Baud: But I’m not arguing it’s a messaging problem. I’m not arguing we need the right people to say the right thing. I’m arguing that the problems most of the public want to see solved the current small-d democratic structure are incapable of solving. And nobody on the left is willing to admit to this except for guys like Bernie – who a lot of Trump voters like.
I think the problem mostly stems from 2008 when a bunch of billionaires and financial corporation destroyed the global economy, were never punished for it, and could move so much faster than the government tasked with regulating them that they simply pivoted in a way that allowed them to profit a second time on the recovery. Democrats were pissed with the solution, but so was the Tea Party. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party were in agreement on the problem, just disagreed on the cause of the problem or the solution. Democrats are afraid to even acknowledge the problem – because it’s hard to do so in that specific instance without being critical of Obama and his administration. They were the ones tasked with holding bankers accountable and they didn’t do it – and they told us why they didn’t want to do it. It was a conscious decision.
I think some pretty convincing arguments have been made that the current crypto culture derives directly from that moment. If government is unable to make the economic system fair for its citizens, then it’s not irrational for citizens to decide they need to operate outside of it to get a fair shot. The problem isn’t that these people are wrong about crypto, the problem is they’re right about government having lost the capacity to regulate at least that part of the economy – and that’s not just a valid criticism of the current implementation of democracy, it’s a a HUGE problem. And pretending it isn’t, or saying that some oblique passive regulation will address is will only result in more electoral losses, particularly as these problems grow in scale because they can only grown in scale if they aren’t being addressed.
Martin
@Geminid: I agree. I’m not saying I agree with the protestors here, I would prefer that administrations would be more responsive to reasonable criticism and protest, but that’t not where we are.
Chris T.
Someone should challenge Nancy Mace every day: “You might have had a sex change overnight, so drop those trousers now!”
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
Been gone for a while so just getting to this.
I agree absolutely that not everyone who live in cities or inner ‘burbs is comfortably well off. Many in big cities like say Los Angeles are not in any way well off. Now at least in LA a lot of transportation issues are being at least somewhat answered. LA transit is not unreasonable, a local electric transit train system and a number of reasonable bus systems exist and do well. They don’t work for every one of course but they do lessen the traffic a bit. And every little bit helps.