ellasmith posted:

I think I've been pretty clear that what we need to do is go on the offensive more.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

you want more people who align with your politics in power. this is why Joe Kennedy the Third was treated as an enemy by progressives, despite his being considerably younger than his opponent

FLIPADELPHIA posted:

Someone DO SOMETHING

Epicurius posted:

Weren't Kennedy and Markey's positions pretty much the same? Markey just had a l9t more experience and allies.

quote:

For the last 12 months, voters and reporters have pressed Kennedy to explain why he was running in the first place, since his policy positions largely mirror Markey’s and Democrats are under great pressure to focus energy — and cash — on reclaiming the White House and Senate. His answer largely boiled to the idea that he felt he could “leverage” a Senate seat better than the incumbent, that there’s more to being in the upper chamber than bills you sponsor and the votes you cast.

Epicurius posted:

Weren't Kennedy and Markey's positions pretty much the same? Markey just had a l9t more experience and allies.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

which subset of we, and against who

Epicurius posted:

Weren't Kennedy and Markey's positions pretty much the same? Markey just had a l9t more experience and allies.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

they were relatively similar, but where they differed Kennedy decided to flank Markey from the right for what no doubt were well focus-tested reasons.

https://twitter.com/joekennedy/status/1258900004623835136?lang=en
is a fairly good example. six hours later, after having gone viral for the astonishing tone-deafness of "we can't stop insurance companies from stripping you to the bone, but i dream that one day government mandates that you have a lawyer during the process," Kennedy's people deployed a round of rear end-covering.

there is something in the water in Massachusetts that makes people pretend that no, really, if we fiddle with the levers on the peasant-flensing machine that'll fix the problems, and to his credit, Markey was not dumb enough to run on that.

cat botherer posted:

Joe Kennedy is legitimately a very stupid person, and that's not something I say about many politicians. The inbreeding is really taking its toll at this point. It mystifies me why Dem establishment tried to replace Markey with this tool - Markey is an incumbent, which is normally a third rail for them, and its debatable whether calling him a "progressive" even makes sense.

cat botherer posted:

Joe Kennedy is legitimately a very stupid person, and that's not something I say about many politicians. The inbreeding is really taking its toll at this point. It mystifies me why Dem establishment tried to replace Markey with this tool - Markey is an incumbent, which is normally a third rail for them, and its debatable whether calling him a "progressive" even makes sense.

quote:

Pelosi’s move shocked many on Capitol Hill and puts her at direct odds with her close ally, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), whose Senate campaign arm is designed to protect vulnerable incumbents like Markey. The speaker rarely weighs in on Democratic primary contests, particularly in favor of the challenger.

A Pelosi aide said Kennedy did not ask for the endorsement. But Pelosi felt compelled to weigh in on the race given Kennedy’s efforts in 2018, “which was essential to Democrats’ successful efforts winning back the majority,” the aide said.

Pelosi was also concerned after the Markey campaign started ramping up its attacks on the Kennedy name, going after “Joe, his family, his supporters and the Kennedy family policy legacy,” the aide added.

cat botherer posted:

Joe Kennedy is legitimately a very stupid person, and that's not something I say about many politicians. The inbreeding is really taking its toll at this point. It mystifies me why Dem establishment tried to replace Markey with this tool - Markey is an incumbent, which is normally a third rail for them, and its debatable whether calling him a "progressive" even makes sense.

selec posted:

She’s also a former stripper, and strippers are reporting on social media that we’re in a recession.

https://www.indy100.com/amp/stripper-recession-empty-clubs-2657381850

AsInHowe posted:

Isn't that something that got decimated by OnlyFans or whatever? Seems more like a work from home thing.

PT6A posted:

If you ever create a law that involves adults examining children’s genitals for anything other than a legitimate medical purpose in the least invasive way necessary, you’ve seriously, seriously hosed up.

Jaxyon posted:

In other news, the party of calling people "groomers" literally wants to sexually assault children as part of it's trans panic:

https://twitter.com/MorganTrau/status/1532417493658177536

It is always always projection.

quote:

“A Systematic Assault”: GOP Rushes to Change Election Rules to Block Medicaid in South Dakota

When South Dakota organizers began gathering signatures to put Medicaid expansion on the ballot in 2022, their goal seemed very achievable—they needed to win just 50 percent of the vote in the next general election. Since 2018, ballot measures to expand Medicaid met that threshold in conservative Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah—victories that qualified hundreds of thousands of people for public health insurance.

Healthcare advocates pursued a ballot initiative to get around their Republican-run legislature, which has refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act for the past decade. But state Republicans have responded by rushing to change the election’s rules.

The legislature placed a constitutional amendment on the state’s June 7 primary ballot that would make it far harder for future ballot initiatives to succeed, starting with the Medicaid measure that is scheduled on Nov. 8.

Amendment C, if adopted next week by the smaller pool of voters who decide primaries, would set a higher threshold for future ballot measures that involve spending more than $10 million over a period of five years—something that expanding Medicaid would inevitably do. Such ballot measures would need to gain the approval of 60 percent of voters, up from 50 percent.

The GOP’s bid to thwart the Medicaid initiative in South Dakota adds to a series of moves by the party to weaken direct democracy. In many states that Republicans dominate, progressive organizers have successfully appealed to voters with measures like Medicaid expansion that conservative legislatures have blocked, triggering intense backlash by Republican politicians against procedures of direct democracy that they are failing to control. In Idaho and Utah, the GOP’s new restrictions on ballot initiatives also closely followed Medicaid referendums.

The erosion of direct democracy resonates deeply in South Dakota, which was the first state in the nation to set-up a popular initiative process. Inspired by populist demands for new checks on politicians, the state’s 1898 reform empowered ordinary citizens to initiate ballot initiatives.

Just over the past decade, South Dakotans have approved initiatives to raise the minimum wage, create an independent ethics commission, and legalize cannabis.

Republican politicians have responded by gradually restricting the initiative process. In 2016, voters adopted the South Dakota Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act, which set new ethics rules and created a system for public financing of political campaigns. Republican politicians repealed the measure, arguing that voters didn’t understand what was in it when they passed it.

The legislature then crafted two measures to make it harder for voters to initiate initiatives. The first would have required all constitutional amendments to receive 55 percent of the vote to be ratified, but South Dakotans rejected the proposal in 2018. They passed the second, which requires constitutional amendments to only relate to a “single subject.” Most states with ballot initiatives have such requirements, but there is tremendous variation in how this language gets interpreted. Some state supreme courts apply it broadly and only rarely hold that a proposal violates it, while others apply it much more stringently, routinely striking down proposals.

South Dakotans quickly learned that their supreme court, made up entirely of GOP appointees, would interpret the new requirement strictly. After voters approved legalizing marijuana in 2020, Republican Governor Kristi Noem challenged the constitutionality of the measure, and the state’s high court struck it down for encompassing more than one subject in November.

State Republicans further escalated their war on popular initiatives last year with a law that increases the font size of ballot petitions while requiring that the entire text fit on one page. This has made the organizing effort to gather signatures far less practical.

South Dakota advocates still managed to qualify an initiative to expand Medicaid, which would provide coverage to tens of thousands of low-income South Dakotans, for the November ballot.

But those same advocates have had to turn their attention to fighting next week’s Amendment C, the measure that increases the threshold for initiatives. Dakotans for Health, a group organizing for Medicaid, opposes the measure. Other groups have also come out against it, including the South Dakota Municipal League, several major health systems, and the state chamber of commerce.

Some Republicans have explicitly acknowledged that they scheduled Amendment C for the June ballot to stall November’s Medicaid expansion proposal.

Conservative anti-tax groups, including Americans for Prosperity, the organization founded by the Koch brothers, have fueled the campaign on behalf of Amendment C. And GOP leaders like Noem are focusing on making the case that Amendment C would forestall tax hikes.

Despite the GOP’s dominance in this legislature, the state Senate barely approved scheduling Amendment C for the June ballot; it only passed the chamber on a narrow 18 to 17 vote, with many Republicans balking at the proposal. Republican Senator Mike Diedrich said he backed the goal of Amendment C but opposed placing it on the ballot in June. As KELO-TV reported, Diedrich argued that it was “bad faith to cut off the process” that the ballot organizers “entered into in good faith” and was “unfair to the people who are following the laws.”

Troy Heinert, one of only three Democrats in South Dakota’s Senate, said Amendment C was part of “a systematic assault on the will of the people.”

It would be hard for Medicaid proponents to clear Amendment C’s 60 percent threshold, though it may not be insurmountable. The Medicaid initiatives in Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah received between 50 percent and 54 percent of the vote, but Idaho’s triumphed with 61 percent in 2018. (Idaho was redder than South Dakota in the 2020 presidential election.)

Amendment C also faces a lawsuit on the grounds that it violates the state’s new single-subject requirement. But machinations by the state attorney general’s office delayed the litigation by months, preventing it from coming to a resolution before June 7.

The erosion of direct democracy in South Dakota mirrors how the GOP is reacting to initiatives they dislike elsewhere. According to an analysis last year by the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Republican lawmakers filed dozens of bills nationwide to make it harder for voter-initiated measures to make it onto the ballot, and many of them have become law.

In Utah, after voter-initiated statutes that legalized medical marijuana, expanded Medicaid, and created an independent redistricting commission all succeeded in 2018, the legislature repealed all of the statutes in its next session; they later added new restrictions on the process of gathering signatures, making it more burdensome for organizers. Mississippi’s supreme court shut down the state’s entire ballot initiative process last year while striking down a marijuana referendum. Similarly, after Idahoans approved Medicaid expansion in 2018, the legislature moved to thwart future efforts by greatly increasing the difficulty of qualifying an initiative for the ballot. The Idaho Supreme Court invalidated these restrictions last year, holding that voters’ powers to initiate statutes were “fundamental rights” that the legislature had infringed upon.

Luke Mayville, the co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, an organization that sponsored the state’s 2018 Medicaid expansion initiative, says the successes in Idaho and South Dakota are linked—and so is the backlash from the state legislatures.

“Successful initiative campaigns in deep-red states are shining a bright light on the refusal of Republican political establishments to address a whole range of urgent issues,” Mayville told Bolts, including the bread-and-butter issues that impact people’s everyday lives. Reclaim Idaho is championing a new initiative this year to increase education funding by $300 million per year.

“Politicians would prefer to avoid accountability for their failure, and that’s why they’re trying to subvert the initiative process,” he added.

Blue Footed Booby posted:

It's wild to me how many politicians are willing to walk through fire and tear out their own rear end in a top hat to keep weed illegal. At least healthcare has a gazillion dollars on the line.

tgacon posted:

Police and prison guard unions donate reliably

cat botherer posted:

quote:

The view of life in New York City is bleak, according to a Siena College poll of city residents conducted exclusively for Spectrum News NY1.

A majority of respondents (56%) said their city is headed in the wrong direction, compared to 32% who said it’s on the right track.

And an overwhelming seven out of 10 New Yorkers said they feel less safe new than before the pandemic began.

quote:

This came as Mayor Eric Adams noted this week that shootings are trending downward — even while overall crime is still on the rise.

"This is not a large number of people,” he said Monday of offenders. “It’s a small number of people who are consistently inflicting violence.”

And what about Adams, who’s at the helm of the city? His job approval rating is deep underwater. Just 29% rated his performance as good or excellent, while more than twice as many (64%) said he’s doing fairly or poorly.

cat botherer posted:

There's a big push now among actual medical people to seriously limit pelvic exams among children. It turns out they can be about as traumatic as sexual abuse. Any doctor that has anything to do with this is a piece of poo poo, to put it mildly.

FlamingLiberal posted:

I see that NYC just now realized that Adams is loving crazy and has no idea what he’s doing?

HonorableTB posted:

Lmao everyone is pissed off and has a bleak outlook for the future and this seems to be a nationwide outlook among everyone and the political class is completely unable to do anything about it. The PNW is the same way. Everything we won in the 2020 protests was just given away at the ballot box. Nothing mattered

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Congress just reached a deal on a bipartisan plan to regulate cryptocurrency.

It actually isn't that harsh - crypto is still going to be treated with less regulation than stocks or other equities - but, every single crypto is currently crashing on the news.

The big thing that is crashing the price is that they are going to make it much harder to create wildly volatile cryptocurrencies that can lose all value or shoot up 1,000% overnight. Despite many crypto people telling you it is all about the technology/blockchain, the big appeal of crypto for most people is that it is highly volatile gambling/scamming that can get you a lot of other peoples' money.

Today we can see that taking away the gambling and scamming aspect drastically reduces the value to people holding crypto.

The biggest parts of the legislation:

- Most cryptos would be considered commodities.

- Crypto would be regulated by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission).

- Creates an industry sandbox in which regulators let crypto firms test new products, but doesn't allow public investors to buy into them until they have been approved.

- All "stable coins" must have 100% of the value of the assets they sell held in reserve to pay out and must disclose detailed information about their liquidity, asset type, and reserves to the public.

- Requires all companies raising money through crypto, NFTs, or other digital assets to disclose those revenues publicly.

- Sets up a legal process for customers to get their money back if a crypto exchange or entire cryptocurrency goes under.

- Crypto exchanges and brokers would have to register in order to sell products or services to the public. This will cut down dramatically on scammers, foreign crypto brokers who are out of U.S. jurisdiction, and the ability for crypto exchanges to anonymously take everyone's money and run.

- The CFTC would regulate options, spot trading, loans using crypto as collateral, or any other financial product that uses crypto or digital assets as collateral.

Basically, crypto is going to be treated 95% the same as stocks or other commodities. But, the crypto exchanges/brokers/developers get a little extra leeway and slightly less regulation than stock brokers or commodity traders.

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1534180881505689603

Gumball Gumption posted:

Stable coins having assets in reserve would be pretty big considering Tether has a market value of 15 billion right now. Most of this is pretty light but that specific provision would really blow up the house of cards right now.