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Solkanar512 posted:Since the money is for the children, how exactly are the children means tested? Wait, that makes it sound like children are people who have needs distinct from those of their parents or something.
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Nov 1, 2021 21:10
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Trazz posted:I think it is actually kinda important to address the fact that a good chunk of the population are literally being brainwashed into becoming virulent racists, and that it stems from leftover animosity from a particular region of the country that once seceded from the Union It's also important to recognize that while the population of the south is disproportionately likely to be programmed as virulently racist, and while the population of the south is disproportionately likely to suffer from poverty, poor health, disfranchisement, and other forms of misery, the two don't actually describe exactly the same people. It's another replay of explaining school shootings as bulled kids pushing back when they're usually middle-class white boys that don't get singled out much.
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Nov 1, 2021 21:51
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Professor Beetus posted:I still think more direct aid to people living in poverty should be a thing though, just so I'm clear. People should get tax credits for all kinds of poo poo because capitalism is a miserable failure and the more the government can give to everyone, the better. It's a lot harder to claw good things away the more people benefit from them. This is definitely true. But even in a world where the government straight up gives everyone aid according to their needs, parents with children will need more than people without. In fact most likely to a greater degree than what they're getting in this bill. Again, because children are people with needs, but on government balance sheets their parents handle it because in our culture it's traditional for parents to care for their children. That's why characterizing it as that drat dirty means testing discriminating against people who don't have kids is gross. It's aid to children just as sure as money on schools is, and surely many of those benefiting from it will grow up to pay school taxes while never having kids of their own too. And that's just loving fine.
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Nov 1, 2021 22:21
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Professor Beetus posted:No not really. I agree completely that medical debt should be wiped out entirely; it doesn't require the framing that somehow the CTC is a bad thing to advocate for or desire that. The government could clearly afford to do all these things and more since there's infinite money for the military industrial complex and bank bailouts. Agreed. Why does the need to address medical debt invalidate giving payments to children? It just feels all very "how are we helping refugees while HOMELESS VETERANS" to me.
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Nov 1, 2021 22:49
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Gumball Gumption posted:It doesn't. You all read someone saying the current implementation is bad and not enough and reworked that into no one should get the tax credit. You heard "I wish everyone got more" and somehow turned it into "gently caress you I want just mine". I mean look at this wild reading of what was said If that's truly the argument, it makes the initial claim that people will resent Democrats because of aids "means-tested by your ability to have a child" even all the more incoherent. Again, if you're worried about homeless veterans, don't lead with how refugees are getting helped. On the other hand, if you're just not going to support any proposal that's not full communism now all in one shot, own it straight up and in no uncertain words. Otherwise it just comes off as taking pot shots at actual good things instead of proposal of additional good things, followed by mealy-mouthed backtracking when called out.
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Nov 1, 2021 23:17
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Lib and let die posted:What would be wrong with replacing the child tax credit with an equivalent amount for all Americans? Just to be clear, you mean the current payments to children being extended to adults as well, whether or not they have children? Or do you mean replacing it with a payment to adults, whether or not they have children, and children get nothing? This is an important distinction and affects my opinion on it.
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Nov 1, 2021 23:55
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Lib and let die posted:I'm not sure how much more specific I can be on this. A child residing within the borders of the united states is...a person residing within the borders of the united states, right? Of course that would be more, that's my whole point. If that was your proposal to start, why didn't you make it then? If you'd led with how you'd rather see UBI starting at birth, there wouldn't be ambiguity whether you meant you wanted UBI for all adults instead of the current UBI for children (through, the legal fiction I've already called out, the fact that payments to children go through the parents). As opposed to Lib and let die posted:Means testing is a hell of a thing to be put through. Every time the democrats means test aid - whether by some arbitrary poverty cap based on 1950's economic data or one's desire or ability to have a child Lib and let die posted:The metric by which the aid is means tested is "is the potential recipient have a dependent child?" Because, again, under the current plan people aren't being paid for having children. People are being paid to support the needs of children, who are people in themselves who do not have the means to care for themselves. In a world where the child tax credit becomes permanent law, everyone benefits from it because everyone is a child at some point. If you think that's still not enough because it ends at 18, that's fine. But it's a different failing than the one you initially described. Someone like me with no children, who is born into an America with the new CTC, benefits exactly as much from it as someone like my brother who has two kids. Would UBI for all 320 million Americans do even more than that? Well, sure!
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Nov 2, 2021 00:23
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Lib and let die posted:Is your issue that my criticism that the democrats aren't doing enough is wrong or that I didn't present it in the proper manner? I'm happy to debate the merits of means testing aid but I'm not interested in engaging in a signal:noise disrupting derail on whether or not I paid appropriate fealty to the table scraps we (some of us at least) have been given. I think the parts of my post that you selected and deleted in making the reply are relevant there. To put it another way, why did you repeatedly frame aid to children as being aid to breeders or whatever, if your argument was actually that a program that helps both children and adults could be better? It still sounds by your "it could be argued" that you only even picked up on that possibility after doubling down on the "why shouldn't a couple without kids get the same help as one with" sort of talk? I'm not asking you to love the CTC and kiss it and marry it or anything. It just feels really weird and unclear what you even think it is, or alternatively what you think "means testing" is at least in any negative sense. The free pre-K is also means-tested based on whether you are at any point in your life a child, I suppose.
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Nov 2, 2021 01:03
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^^^^^ Also literally the part of my post that got selectively deleted from the quote!lobster shirt posted:Do you mean regular kindergarten? Free pre-k is absolutely means tested, at least in some parts of the country. Here are the requirements for the school district I live in, for free pre-k. If you are not eligible, it's $5,675. I mean the universal pre-k in reconciliation that somehow doesn't get name-dropped as "means testing" every time someone calls for universal college too. But sure, can say the kindergarten we already have.
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Nov 2, 2021 01:16
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Gumball Gumption posted:Universal Pre-K and universal college wouldn't be means tested and also don't currently exist in the US. Universal Pre-K and the CTC are both currently part of the reconciliation bill and yet only one of the two gets called out on "Meh, why this thing that's means-tested based on reproductive status, doesn't help me none." And it's the less focused one that benefits more people.
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Nov 2, 2021 01:29
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Lib and let die posted:People without kids don't need Pre-K. People without kids do need help crawling out of debt (eta: people with kids can also need both!). If the Pre-K is means tested, that's even more of a disappointment - I haven't probed the particulars of the UPK part of the bill (since it's not relevant to my situation) so "actually, that part is means tested, too!" isn't doing it any favors in my evaluation. That last part was added in by someone who wasn't following the conversation/reconciliation bill context closely and got confused, as far as I can tell. But it's not parents of young children that get to go to pre-K, it's kids. It's also kids that get the juice boxes and school clothes and extra bedroom or whatever they personally need that wouldn't have been purchased in a childless household, and that's what the CTC is. Both parents and non-parents equally might have crushing medical debts, or remaining college debts or whatever else too. Likewise, if nothing else changes, the kids who benefit from these programs might one day become adults without children who are in need, and yet they'll still have gotten the same benefit from these things. The new generation will get better than the older generation, and that sounds like an unalloyed good. It's also true even if all the additional benefits you've proposed for adults come to pass, presuming you're not planning to take from the child-focused programs to do so. If anyone proposed retroactively paying for my childhood expenses I missed it I mean. As an adult with no children that's paid off all my college debts I'm not "left behind" in any meaningful sense by universal pre-K, child tax credits, or other proposed ideas like free college or educational loan forgiveness, even though I would have materially benefited from all of those in the past. I would not be left behind by those things even if tomorrow I ended up jobless and with massive medical debts. I would want help with those things, yes! But in asking for that help I I can't see a reason I should bring up aid programs for children unless I wanted a cut of that specifically. The core of what I'm getting is that government aid to children isn't for the benefit of people raising children any more than child support is for the benefit of the custodial parent, and in all but the accounting sense you don't get it from having children but from growing up as a child. Sure, it doesn't apply to us olds but if college debt forgiveness passes tomorrow I won't benefit from that either. I'll still cheer it the gently caress on.
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Nov 2, 2021 02:45
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Rochallor posted:I understand the metaphor, but is catfood even significantly cheaper than people food? I don't have any pets but the people I know with cats constantly complain about the price. Also the advent of the >=$1 donut has severely damaged the classic "I'll bet you dollars to donuts" saying.
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Nov 2, 2021 04:56
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 You didn't have to blame him for the attack, think embassy security was well-handled actually, or approve of the Obama administration or its actions in Libya to learn something about this man that night.
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Nov 3, 2021 04:44
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TulliusCicero posted:...What is the story behind this because holy poo poo it sounds fuckin wild Hillary likes to put hot sauce on her food and started carrying one of those tiny travel bottles in her purse during the 1992 campaign when she was eating on the road all the time. And stuck with it. Predictably, in 2016 everyone who believed Hillary Clinton lies about absolutely everything or that literally no white woman eats any spices made it up in their heads that it was some sort of long con to steal the Hispanic vote.
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Nov 3, 2021 05:43
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^^^^ Don't leave out the two massive Nixon victories that cemented the Southern Strategy and set the stage for Reagan. In 1992 a lot of the country just assumed Carter was a Watergate-induced blip on a permanent Republican White House, plus Democratic congressional majorities meant a lot less with a lot of them still not even moderates but full-on conservatives.Angry_Ed posted:India Walton has nobody to blame but herself: I wasn't following the election closely since I'm not actually in Buffalo but I was excited on the assumption that she was going to win so this was a real bummer. And the thing is, she still easily could have if she'd really driven turnout and excited voters: turnout was low and there was a lot of slack. It looks like she didn't. Really if she was just making a lot of bad decisions in her campaign that's at least something other candidates on the left can learn from. Killer robot fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 06:16
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DeadlyMuffin posted:I know the thread consensus seems to be that if only the Democrats were further left they'd do better electorally, but I have a hard time jiving that with what actually happens in elections. A lot of people who want change don't like to face the heavy lifting of making your beliefs more popular. It's really easy and self-affirming to assume most people will back your views with little resistance if you back them forcefully enough (and, therefore, failure of candidates who agree with you is either lack of resolve or powerful interests.) Sometimes it's even true! But other times it really isn't. It's like how M4A polls really well when people hear the name and fill in what they imagine, but it turns out a lot of them imagine "keep what you have now and get options to change to if you like." When you tell them they've gotta leap into the unknown and that it will take away their current plan and the new system will cost money, they get really risk-averse. And you've got to work to convince them that the new plan will be better and cost less. Which won't always be easy. Sure doesn't help that a lot of politicians are risk-averse themselves. Is doing that worth it? Sure! But it's /work/ by all means. And there's a hundred other topics like it.
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Nov 3, 2021 09:06
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TulliusCicero posted:My dude, how many Executive Orders did Trump sign? In like his first hundred days? They took a shot at Healthcare as soon as they got Congress.  Oh, and while the Obamacare repeal in 2017 flubbed, the big tax cut that was the only major legislation of that year didn't pass until December. If you want to say Biden could be doing things he isn't and that there are many good executive actions he can legally issue but has not, I'm all ears. This does not change the fact that, like many, you probably just heard more noise about what Trump was doing. Whether that's due to media, personal circles, or just how negative changes can feel sudden while positive ones drag.
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Nov 4, 2021 01:43
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MooselanderII posted:He could keep federal student loans on pause, for starter's. Yeah, no disputing this.
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Nov 4, 2021 01:59
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lil poopendorfer posted:ok, of the 42 EOs signed, 21 weren't revoactions of prior orders. I stand corrected: many, not most were rollbacks of trump stuff Additionally, not only were many of Trump's early EOs there to undo Obama policies but so was the big first legislative push to repeal Obamacare. Especially in a polarized country, early actions after a party flip are going to be "And I'll undo this thing the last guy hosed up!" It's all the more true for Republicans who have convinced themselves that all bad things are caused by liberals and foreigners and when you stop them you never have to do anything else.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:13
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Honestly, I feel like the Democrats should literally rebrand themselves to the Democratic Coalition because at this point it isn't a party. You just have a bunch of completely different groups with similar interests and share the same values. By that standard, "at this point" the Democratic Party is more of a party than it has ever been in living memory and perhaps in its history as an institution. Parties historically had a lot of internal ideological and regional divides, and only came together on specific issues or when really deftly handled by leadership. Southern Democrats and Northern Democrats were basically different parties. Even when I was young and saw some of the 1992 (or maybe 1988) convention coverage there were "liberal Republicans" and "conservative Democrats" as significant minorities still. And not in the "Romney's pretty far right, but in today's party he's almost a commie" stuff, the Republicans had people left of lots of Democrats and vice-versa. This eventually went away, first in the Republicans with the Democrats lagging. The 2010 purge of most of the Blue Dogs made party alignment a lot sharper than it had ever been, even if it's obviously still not there. But that's on the national level: local parties tend to be a lot more about machine politics and personal connections, and have things like "Yeah, if you're conservative in this town you gotta be conservative on the Democratic ticket since the primary is the real election." So they still have people not really in alignment with the national party.
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Nov 5, 2021 03:53
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I'm definitely for loan forgiveness even though mine are personally paid off, but I think it's definitely wise of Democrats to think hard about how to frame it to the majority of their voters who won't be getting direct benefits, especially if the ones being left out are disproportionately poor besides. Just in this thread we already had people suggesting Democratic voters with no kids would push back on financial aid going disproportionately to children, even if other people are getting helped by different programs. College debt is a lot like that except that there are more people who never even had college debt than there are who were never even kids. Again, it's the right thing to do, but feels irresponsible to totally dismiss the idea that a non-zero number of Democratic voters will say, "Well fine for those richies who went to college, I've got problems too!" Especially if it happens via isolated executive order that applies to student loans but not to anyone else.
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Nov 5, 2021 17:30
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Lib and let die posted:You seem to be willfully misrepresenting the criticism. If you wanted to make an accurate comparison, you should make the comparison to "student loan debt relief for parents", not to universal student loan debt relief. There's nothing misrepresentative about saying that universal aid to children is a wider net than universal aid to college borrowers with broader downstream benefits, and that there are still people saying "gently caress that, where's MY money?" to it. As someone in favor of both though I'll directly benefit from neither, how to make both well received is in my interests.
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Nov 5, 2021 17:43
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Mellow Seas posted:I wonder (legitimately) what a CARES Act passed by a Republican trifecta would’ve looked like. Intuition suggests that the House got a lot of really good poo poo into that bill that it wouldn’t have had otherwise. But it was a crazy time, and clearly Republicans had realized their ideology was wholly unsuited to the moment, so they were going to be doing stuff out of character no matter what. Interesting counterfactual. As is, remember how much of that got sucked up by, not even right-wing allies in general, but Trump's specifically?
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Nov 7, 2021 02:01
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None of this is actually isolated to economic questions either. For nearly 30 years of falling crime rates, and falling violent crime rates in particular, a large percentage of the US population remained utterly convinced that things were getting worse rather than better. That was and still is a tough nut to crack, since it made things harder for politicians that didn't want to go hyper "tough on crime" penal populism. Not least because the solutions intended to hasten already declining crime rates in a way that's actually good for people just don't line up well with people who earnestly if delusionally believe things have been getting worse and worse even since the genuine peak of the late 20th century violence. The fact that American society is still in fact violent explains some of why, but knowing that fact doesn't present any easy solution that many of the communities harmed by the war on crime still demand more, or at least balk when you propose serious steps to dismantle it.
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Nov 9, 2021 04:19
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BRJohnson posted:I really dislike the trend I've seen amongst otherwise (seemingly) free thinking individuals suddenly exilerated at enriching themselves in this perceived cheeky rebellious way. drat have some vision guys. Hippies were a minority counterculture among young boomers that by and large became a liberal (if sometimes out of touch) minority of old boomers. Don't mistake them for the straightlaced young Nixon/Reagan voters who adopted superficial "Yeah, we were pretty cool back then and really of course we knew the war was a bad idea" talk as 80s/90s conservatives.
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Nov 10, 2021 01:38
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Randalor posted:So why are the left making GBS threads on AOC now anyways? Is it just because she's stuck in a situation where both parties hate everything she stands for and the messaging machines of both parties have been focused on tearing her down for... uh... as long as she's been in politics, if not longer? For many, she committed the unforgivable sin of working within a party and a system to sway public discourse and achieve what legislative goals she could. If she wasn't going to seize power and lead the revolution, the only acceptable course of action would have been to become a ranting pariah with no voice outside of an irrelevant floor vote. Anything in between is proof that she's a worthless lib or CIA plant.
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Nov 12, 2021 21:49
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Charliegrs posted:CNN is saying that the justice department has submitted an indictment for Steve Bannon. So can this be challenged? Unless I'm missing a step, traditionally the challenge to the indictment is called a trial.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:00
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Even Bernie has had people hitting him from the "left" since the end of the primary. There is always a better Scotsman. Bernie committed the same ultimate sin. After decades of having absolutely no influence on national politics due to making independence his personal brand, he started to move the discourse by working with the libs. But he didn't achieve absolute victory, so that's worse than if he continued to do nothing at all.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:52
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Zeron posted:I mean...yeah? I liked Bernie because he seemed to have principles and appeared to be sincere about standing by them. I'm not like, upset, that he's just become a Democrat, but I'm not really interested in what he is up to anymore specifically because he has become integrated into the same system that continues to refuse progress and change. I'd take him over a whole lot of people but he's just another politician at this point. That's the point. The principle he stood by for most of his career was being able to say stuff that would never matter while being reelected in a safe seat. It's entirely understandable that the internet left finds that way more dreamy than anything he ever did to shape policy, push the overton window around, or make anyone's lives better.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:07
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selec posted:Man I cannot come up with a more bad faith reading of Sanders than maybe those “three houses/millionaire” veiled antisemetic takes wine moms have about him Yeah, gently caress that. I like Bernie. I voted for Bernie last primary even if by then he was pretty obviously sunk. But he's a politician, and has been for longer than my adult life, and for most of that his brand was that of the outspoken independent rather than that of actually shaping national politics. While the Bernie the left fell in love with was the Bernie who was unsullied by risking anything or changing anything. Just for one simple thing, if Bernie had spent his legislative career as formally a Democrat, without changing a single vote or stance of his past (since he was seldom actually alone on what he did and often didn't vote "pure" anyway), it would have increased his chance of being President today more than any counterfactual about the "ratfucking" of 2016 or 2020. And he'd be supported by most of the same people. Just, you know, the people today complaining Bernie=Domesticated and AOC=CIA would never have hitched onto his wagon in the first place since they seem to find positive change (short of total victory) way less interesting than shedding a tear for an outcast martyr.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:42
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GreyjoyBastard posted:They were means-tested tax credits, though? I've generally learned that whether actual aid gets called "means-tested" has a lot more to do with whether the speaker personally got it than whether it is actually means-tested. It's a rough equivalent to how in other circles it's only WELFARE from the GOVERNMENT if someone else gets it.
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Nov 14, 2021 21:00
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:No, that was a one-time thing that was not standard. That was why the checks had to be delayed initially. Weirdly, that was the only check I got as paper, the others were direct deposit. I wonder why.
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Nov 14, 2021 23:50
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The most notable thing Harris did during the campaign was land some solid hits on Biden before she fizzled out, so it's likely he saw some sort of shoring up there. I don't really see where she was ever that big of an "establishment pick," seeing as while she got a bunch of endorsements it seems only a handful were outside of California and even a lot of those were like state reps and relatively minor offices. It much more seemed she just looked good on paper until she got more scrutiny.
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Nov 15, 2021 08:18
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Delthalaz posted:Australia is shockingly large in terms of geographic size, it’s about as big as the US excluding Alaska! Land doesn't get covid though. Maybe you're thinking about anthrax.
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Nov 15, 2021 22:23
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papa horny michael posted:Didn't Trump rush to fly back all American citizens from China as soon as they began locking the country down? I don't remember any of those people being tested either. While blocking Chinese nationals and basically no one else if I recall. On top of that, most early covid cases in the US seem to have come from Europe anyway. Basically Trump did the same idiot racist thing as people who responded to the initial pandemic news by no longer going to Chinese restaurants specifically.
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Nov 15, 2021 22:55
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Devor posted:If Democrats are guaranteed a win in all 50 states by explicitly campaigning "disingenuously" for a white ethno-state, I don't want them to do that campaigning. I think that when the entire political nation is speaking with one voice on a subject, you can't really un-ring the bell. That's something that gets overlooked a lot when people debate whether the ends justify the means. It's not some isolated question of abstract ethics and whether you can look yourself in the mirror afterward. It's more about how confident you are, really, that the ends won't be seriously affected by the means.
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Nov 17, 2021 04:05
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From the moment the coup attempt fizzled the only sure thing was that the "What, do they give Nobel prizes in attempted chemistry?" argument would be used unironically to dismiss it. At least the argument that the people in front are being prosecuted more vigorously than the people behind has a little substance.
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Nov 17, 2021 23:35
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I forget, when the Whitmer kidnapping plot came out were there also people coming from the left with "lol they were just playing a little prank babies, didn't your dorm buddies ever move your bed up on the roof without waking you up or something?"
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Nov 18, 2021 05:34
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Main Paineframe posted:Who got shot? As far as I know, the only person who shot someone that day was a Capitol Police officer. I would like to clarify that my earlier post about "Nobel Prize in attempted chemistry" was a reference by analogy to a Simpsons episode, and I was not claiming that there was anything particularly novel about the pipe bombs found on 1/6.
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Nov 18, 2021 08:37
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icantfindaname posted:I think there's pretty decent opportunity to run third party at the state level. Like take India Walton, on the one hand you can say she lost 60 40 against a write in candidate. But on the other hand you can say she won 40% of the vote as a socialist against a Dem machine on the Dems own strongest terrain You can also say that she lost by that percentage in a race with the typical dismal turnout of mayoral races in one-party towns, and that a candidate who excited people/campaigned better could cinch it. It wasn't some case where the well-connected opponent generated some insurmountable lead: 80%+ of the electorate just stayed home.
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Nov 20, 2021 09:18
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