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Christmas Present posted:I've been grappling with this for a while now, because aside from the politics, I genuinely love it here That's a real common problem in the American economic and political system overall. Like...I live in Pennsylvania. I adore the terrain and climate here. It's wonderful. Trees and hills and water and clay and life. We get four distinct seasons and most of the year isn't hot. The wilderness is fantastic and we have loads of forest land that you can't mess with unless you want to commit political suicide. Pretty much everything else about the state is awful. We had similar problems to Kansas in that our poo poo bag Republican governor was all gung ho about fiscal responsibility, cutting spending, balancingbudgets, attracting businesses, blah blah blah. He simultaneously wanted to cut the entire state's education budget in half (all of it...not just college literally all of it), build a bunch of new prisons (think of the jobs they'll create which might be in your town if it's conservative and white enough), and give all sorts of favors to fossil fuel companies because jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs. If we cut their taxes they'll invest in drilling and revenue will go up! Except that everybody hates them because they pillage and burn whatever they touch, don't hire locals, and gently caress up the water. Then they leave. Thankfully we voted that clown out of office but now we have a state legislature treating our D governor like Congress treats Obama complete with a deliberate Cruz style budget impasse! All told it's partly hopeful in that these chucklefucks are losing support but terrifying in how much influence they manage to keep by screwing up the system. How do you vote people who aren't Republican into office in the face of gerrymandering? What do you do when the Republican prick trying to burn everything down loses but it does no good because his cronies just sabotage the system anyway? Then they blame the other side for not compromising. Meanwhile the state's recovery is dismal, people are suffering needlessly, and everything gets worse every year. But I'm sure it isn't conservative policy being incredibly loving delusional. It's incredible that they just double down on the crazy and try to pass the blame. Every time they try these things the result is a garbage fire.
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Jun 25, 2016 18:19
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radical meme posted:So there's absolutely no consideration for population growth in that formula? Is it taken as a given that people will start fleeing the state because of it's retrograde policies? Maybe I'm missing something but, if property values start to backslide, is the city going to actually have to cut it's budget? It's pretty much just "starve the beast" bullshit. A cornerstone of Republican philosophy is that bureaucrats will just gobble up every last dime you let them have and waste most of it. They'll spend their entire budgets every year, delving into really stupid, useless crap if they need to, just so they can ask for more next year. While that definitely does happen that isn't the entirety of what the government does and, let's face it, some government services are kind of handy but perpetually under funded. The nastier side of it is that if you cap government spending at a local level then local governments end up having limits to what services they can provide, which can lead to things like private emergency services or for profit schools. As we all know that's a positively wonderful idea.
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Jul 13, 2016 02:41
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effectual posted:So when do we get a mincome? After the next violent revolution, I imagine, if nobody pushes the big red "NUKE IT ALL" button along the way.
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Aug 11, 2016 23:33
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tsa posted:Probably sooner than you think and no there won't be a war before it. The need for one will be obvious, and the general mood in the US is more in that direction than ever. Even republicans are making overtures towards income equality like it was the loving 50's or something. But moreso than that will be new technologies that vastly improve the lives of poorer people, along with continuing improvements in things that churn out basic necessities (which are cheaper than ever). The absurdly rich quite like being able to control everybody without money. Right now the global financial elite can literally buy elections in several countries. There has also been a long, long history of the U.S. military getting involved in countries that just happen to be getting in the way of profit. Notice how right wing politics gets a ton of money from the absurdly rich and also just happen to be opposed to anybody getting a free lunch ever. Mincome is the ultimate free lunch; it's free life. What that political movement wants is for your right to life, unless you had the good fortune to be born rich, to be based on your ability to generate profit. If you can't then go die. I doubt they'll be willing to change that all that much. As much as it'd be totally awesome to do it without bloodshed history shows pretty strongly that this sort of thing ends in violence. And no, the Republicans are only paying lip service to such things because they know that's the biggest pressing issue in America right now; inequality is awful and getting worse. Take a careful look at the answers they're suggesting. They want to enact such wonderful policies as "rewarding people who create jobs" or "reducing government dependency." It's a bunch of code for "more money for rich people, gently caress everybody else."
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Aug 12, 2016 00:59
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Old James posted:There will be plenty of new jobs for them, such as Prison Guard, Policeman, Parole Officer since there will be a whole new group of criminals. Some railroad tycoon or another said something that's pretty appropriate. "The funny thing about poor people is that I can hire half of them to kill the other half." That's paraphrasing but it's terrifying that some people have exactly that attitude.
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Aug 13, 2016 00:56
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Poil posted:Wouldn't redistributioning the wealth in the US allow everyone to afford steak with silver cutlery for every meal? Not necessarily quite that opulent but yes, it would most certainly not be rice and water and nothing else for everybody. Generally speaking people that argue against socialism that way just plain don't understand it or the point. The biggest assumption is that if you provide everybody's basic needs for free everybody will just quit working. Which is...just plain not true.
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Aug 17, 2016 23:40
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FilthyImp posted:Yeah, like the poo poo jobs being a cashier or bagboy might actually go back to teenagers, while others pursue higher education or personal goals (like being in better shape, training for marathons, painting, becoming YouTube stars or writers or filmmakers). It isn't just turning their nose up when you say "everybody gets to not go hungry" they can think of at least one demographic that they want to see suffer. It also puts an end to systemic racism which is, to far too many people, absolutely unthinkable.
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Aug 18, 2016 01:35
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Gyges posted:I always wonder what they think is getting all the CEOs, famous actors, politicians, and sundry other rich people out of bed in the morning if the imminent loss of food, clothing, and shelter are the only things keeping the poor from doing nothing. Well you see those people get out of bed in the morning because they know the value of hard work and sacrifice. That's why they're rich. Those poors are lazy and need to be forced to do anything. If they were harder working they wouldn't be poor. QED, libtard. 
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Aug 18, 2016 02:32
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mrbradlymrmartin posted:lol working is so much harder when youre going hungry. i wouldnt wish going hungry on my worst enemy but then again thats why im a dirty pinko Yeah the hardest I ever worked was when I lived in poverty. I used to work two jobs off and on; sometimes two full time ones. I'm talking swing shifts in a restaurant, then overnight in a convenience store kind of life. Now that I'm a programmer I have it so comparatively easy it just feels absurd. I sure as hell wouldn't wish the horrifying hours and bug gently caress crazy schedules from those days on anybody either. Poverty is awful; worse when you have to do unpleasant things just to maintain it.
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Aug 18, 2016 03:35
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It's also important to note that actual welfare fraud costs the nation so little money you can really just ignore it. If memory serves it's less than 1% of all the money spent on welfare, which is itself already a small chunk of the overall budget.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:31
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Similar things have been done with apartments in some places, actually; programs rounded up some homeless/nearly homeless people and just gave them free apartments. The only real stipulation was that if they got jobs they had to pay 1/3 of their income or the rent, whichever was less. Mysteriously most of them managed to get jobs not long after that.
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Aug 19, 2016 03:50
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Rynn posted:I've looked on Google but I can't find anything concrete - does anyone have some info on Kansas elections and how they're polling? Are the Repubs going to get smoked for pushing Brownback's tax nightmare hellscape? Deeply Republican states would elect somebody worse than Hitler if there was an R next to the name. They'll find some way to blame the Democrats; Obamacare will probably get the blame for Kansas happening somehow.
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Oct 31, 2016 04:51
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Family Values posted:I would never force such awful governance on anyone against their will, but since the Kansas electorate volunteered themselves by electing and then re-electing this moron, I'm kinda glad to see the experiment continue. Maybe when Kansas is a failed state Republican voters will get it through their thick skulls that supply side is complete and utter bullshit they'll do something about it. The people who didn't elect Brownback are leaving Kansas. Same with Wisconsin, really; Democrat voters have been moving to Minnesota. Blue people won't be staying in red states.
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Feb 24, 2017 00:40
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Potato Salad posted:That's a problem. No way in Hell will I live in a red state. My state is purple and barely tolerable. The main reason I want to stay here is that I like the terrain and climate. Even now I'm still thinking "ugh, got to move me to a blue state."
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Feb 24, 2017 01:23
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PT6A posted:Yeah, apart from the easy access to guns which is a uniquely American thing, I can see this happening in any city anywhere in the world. There are horrible, violent, unstable racists the world over. They got far more vocal and open in America after Trump won.
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Feb 28, 2017 05:01
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Sundae posted:Is this the part of the play where the state threatens to defund the SC and gets told it's unconstitutional to do it? Or did that bluff already get called and I missed an act? I think that failed miserably. The court was like "lol nah you don't get to do that."
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Mar 2, 2017 23:47
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Ol Standard Retard posted:They're... Literally having trouble right now. There is a looming constitutional crisis predicated on the differing perspectives of two of the branches of the government. This isn't a thing that just quietly fades. The Republican party as a whole has just been careening fast first into a constitutional crisis for decades at this point. Their platform is "we do what we want, we get all the money, gently caress everybody else." The shenanigans they're getting up to in the states they run are just going to keep throwing gas on the fire of "everybody else" being pretty unhappy with them.
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Mar 3, 2017 02:48
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Mooseontheloose posted:I just wonder what it will take for people in these states to vote out these people. They likely won't, sadly. The people who would vote them out have probably already left or will leave. It's a common problem in those deep red states; the further to the left you are the more likely you are to move out. As the state continues to burn down the bug gently caress crazies are happy that everybody else is GETTIN' OFFA MAH LAND and those people are leaving. The damage being done is going to take decades to clean up, leaving the state in the shitter for a long drat time.
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Mar 3, 2017 04:32
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Ol Standard Retard posted:Assumption confirmed. Standard Republican at this point. PA's last governor did basically the same thing; said "nah, gently caress that" to the expansion of Medicaid. Literally free money for the good of the state but nope! Gots to keep that elephant cred going on! Then he got voted out. One of very few (first in like 200 years) governors to lose reelection. Now we have a Democrat that was like "gently caress yeah gimme that sweet, sweet medicine!" Of course the Republicans in our state government are actively sabotaging everything they possibly can while blaming him for everything that goes wrong.
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Apr 2, 2017 22:09
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Oxxidation posted:The guiding principle of the GOP is that government is worthless. Any beneficial public services damage their ideological line. That's the core of it, really. They run on a platform of "government is useless and can do nothing right." Once they get into office they prove it by taking the hammer to everything they can.
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Apr 12, 2017 00:33
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Queering Wheel posted:I know that you don't have to convert them. It's just frustrating that they have to be beaten at all. How do they not see what a disaster Brownback and his ilk have been? Why do they want to take the time to show up and vote Republican again? I don't understand. First is the already mentioned "vote R all the time forever." Plus no matter how bad things get these people blame Obama or just say "well it's bad but the demonrat would have done far worse so it's really actually good." Plus a lot of these people are true "burn the government down at all costs" believers. Others are just abortion or guns voters who believe that every Democrat ever just wants to take all the guns and murder all the babies. It doesn't matter at all how bad Republicans are once they get in office because Jesus/guns.
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Apr 12, 2017 17:49
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VitalSigns posted:It gets better. After three years of getting skinned on rent, Arizona bought their own capitol back for 25% more than they sold it for Am I the only one that immediately thought "this screams of deliberate corruption?" That isn't just incompetence that's "make profit for mah buddie."
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Jun 5, 2017 06:40
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Kilroy posted:Doesn't that mean the Kansas government will take in even less revenue now? And what's going to happen to all those companies that moved their operations to Kansas' business-friendly environment? Are they going to have to close shop? How many jobs is this going to cost the people of Kansas? All of them. Kansas will have negative jobs, in fact.
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Jun 7, 2017 05:36
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VitalSigns posted:Haha oh my God, the governor's counter-proposal The thing he got wrong was being too nakedly corrupt. You're supposed to do it behind the scenes doing things like over paying companies owned by your friends to pave roads badly or build lovely bridges.
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Jun 7, 2017 18:16
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hobbesmaster posted:Thanks to crazy bidding on tv rights power 5 conference teams bring in an enormous amount of cash. College sports is overall a scam. Colleges generally lose money on their athletics programs or get convinced to build ridiculous sports buildings they just plain don't need. It's a racket top to bottom but you'll never, ever get rid of it because  ENROLLMENT
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Jun 7, 2017 23:51
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Proud Christian Mom posted:I'd like to remind people that we're discussing a multi-billion dollar industry where adults make millions off the backs of unpaid children. There really isn't any sort of defense for this. But but but but athletic scholarships!!!!!!! Think of the poor black kids who have to acquire literal long-term brain damage playing football to get an education!!!! I think that there is what bothers me most. Like if people see the risks and want to play football anyway then fine. They can play football. But for those that have literally no choice but to play sport and get exploited to go to college that's extremely hosed up.
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Jun 8, 2017 01:40
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kiimo posted:Hahaha this thread man. Yeah college basketball is slave labor for the enjoyment of meatheads and generates zero positives but exploits the poor. These poor kids destroy their bodies for the sake of my immersion because they are tricked into playing a sport for my blood lust and when they end up millionaires there will be nobody to blame but college fans. If you want to argue athletes should be paid that's worth it but spare me this think of the children horseshit. There's no defense of sports shut it down. Very few people go from college sports to pro sports. I don't really give a crap if professional athletes who know what they're getting into and decide they're fine with it do it. Top level pro athletes at least get a cut of the entertainment money. College athletes don't. They get tuition maybe.
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Jun 8, 2017 02:00
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kiimo posted:Fine then suggest paying college athletes, I would agree. But you've taken the entire concept of sports into an absurd argument. I'm not saying "shut down college sports entirely" partly because sports are fun. People enjoy playing sports and I see no problem with colleges having teams and having them compete. Like, whatever. If people want to toss balls around after class I see no problem with it. It's the deliberate, knowing exploitation of the corrupt as hell college athletics system as it stands right now that needs to go the gently caress away.
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Jun 8, 2017 02:07
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SalTheBard posted:It failed because they didn't go far ENOUGH. No see the problem is that the Kansas government still existed in any form at all. Just burn the whole thing down and a magical utopia will magically take its place because reasons.
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Jun 9, 2017 22:35
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