“It’s a little too quiet” - US Politics February 2021

Cool cool cool

Can’t wait for our next invasion this time next year.

folks,,, they gotta win the midterms. and this is how!!!!1

porter has a point IMO, but not if you view the covid relief bill as a stimulus bill rather than relief (which i'm 90% certain i've heard people do on this thread, possibly including you milo).

The government needs to stop legally recognizing marriages but I’d settle for the government not giving extra free money to parents who happen to be in blissful wedlock

Just give the kids money directly so they can buy Switches

xps- i'm not sure i understand the biden ICE thing. he ordered to stop all deportations for 100 days and then a trump-appointed judge blocked it, now this memo instructs ICE not to deport anyone unless they meet public or border safety, which sounds like a return to the obama policy... but maybe that's just something that a judge can't immediately shoot down? or is there something else in between stopping all deportations and this that wouldn't get shut down in the courts? the immigration bill unveiled today has an 8-year path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants with green card in 5 years but basically nothing on border enforcement

I have not described the child tax credit as a stimulus. The direct payments are, but I wouldn’t say most of the other billy and a half in the relief bill is a stimulus, really.

Porter has a very simple solution to the tax credit issue anyway - for that one portion, erase the means testing distinction between single and married.

Which also works if you want to call a tax credit most people are going to deal with in February 2022 a stimulus, giving more single parents money to go into the economy, etc..

seems utterly insane to me that the dems don’t use romney’s family security act, it’s better policy than anything those dipshits have come up with and you can claim bipartisanship. but what do I know

Just give the kids money directly so they can buy Switches

Too Much Time on Nintendo Direct

The government needs to stop legally recognizing marriages but I’d settle for the government not giving extra free money to parents who happen to be in blissful wedlock

It should be a single amount of money per child divided between all custodial parents.

And then a little of the top for me

Anyone arguing against a higher minimum wage, or not pushing for it with all their political power, is a traitor to humanity and should be guillotined afaic.

The stimulus checks are per adult and the monthly child benefit (is that what she’s talking about?), but neither of them result in a single parent getting more money from this bill per child than a couple (married or not).

and the monthly child benefit

Anyone arguing against a higher minimum wage, or not pushing for it with all their political power, is a traitor to humanity and should be guillotined afaic.

Sorry. I reserve at least some fraction of my political power to push for other issues. I suspect you do, too. Hurrah! Guillotining for 99.999% of everyone!

so so far we still don't know what the hell with the stilly checks, no $15 min wage, no college debt forgiveness... anything else I'm missing ?

Why do humans immediately turn every question into a binary?

A. They are very stupid.
B. They are extremely smart.

$15 is very popular and *EXTREMELY* over due, and has been for years.

seems weird for the leftist admin since fdr not to be bully-pulpitting on its behalf

I've yet to see anyone on ilx have the slightest hesitation over whether a $15 minimum wage, set to rise with automatic COLAs, is a long overdue requirement. It would relieve only the worst of the problems with poverty in urban areas, because of higher housing costs, but it would do a better job for reducing rural poverty. it's not an argument around these parts, unless you start arguing for guillotining everyone who shows less ardor for it than the people who stormed the US Capitol last month.

If the people storming the capital last month were doing so for a $20 minimum wage and universal healthcare, I would have been down there with them tbqh.

waht

would $15 minimum wage mean som egreedy nogoodnik would push up the cost of living accordingly so things would still be damocletianlay out of reach like

With all due respect, table, if I had done the same, I've been shot dead because you can't have storming the capital by people of color at any time for any reason

we should lower the min wage and then costs would go down

/s

millions have flowed to defense contractors (see Raytheon deals in recent days).

a second stimulus looks like it isn't coming until late spring or early summer.

no college debt forgiveness.

no raising of the minimum wage.

no movement on getting kids out of cages.

it looks to me like people in power are making it pretty fucking easy for people like me, nay anyone with any sense or empathy, to create binaries.

Look I'm genuinely not trying to cast aspersions on anyone specifically here, because I'm seeing similar comments all over Twitter, but lol @ "geez, come one, it's only been a month" when it comes to COVID, but absolutely freaking out because he hasn't delivered on other things yet.

It's because— as I've been saying on these threads for months— these people don't care about their constituents, and are all too happy to have most of us serve them until we die early and probably preventable deaths.

Perhaps because it’s much easier for a party that controls the White House and Congress to pass a minimum wage increase than vaccinate 320mn people with vaccine doses that do not actually exist yet.

That was an xp

Apparently it's not that easy. I mean, yes, I'm disappointed too, but all hope is not lost just because it hasn't happened yet.

The fact that we are even this close is a huge change from where we were six months ago, so there is some hope on the minimum wage front, even if it is still way too little way too late in the grand scheme of things.

Seeing as there was an article in the Times today about "accessing doses that were previously reserved" (aka hoarded), I think there could be a lot more being done regarding Covid too.

No, it really is that easy, if the party wants to. There are no obstacles - they have the ability to nuke the filibuster and start governing, but they don't want to. Biden could be out stumping for $15 an hour and calling out Democrats who are objecting, if he actually gave a shit.

calling this "hoarding" is unfair IMO

Health providers around the country figured as well that it was prudent to squirrel away vials to ensure that everyone who got a first dose of vaccine got a second one.

This is the big story in my county today: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article249367270.html

Like I said, I'm not attacking anyone here, just surprised by the absolute fatalism everywhere. I'm supposed to be the pessimist.

I should point out that, in my local Dem chapter meeting tomorrow, I'm bringing up the immigration compromises and ACLU comments.

To add context to the Miami Herald story: the federal vaccination site getting activated is in one of the poorest and Black-est parts of Miami-Dade County. A big deal.

I should point out that, in my local Dem chapter meeting tomorrow, I'm bringing up the immigration compromises and ACLU comments.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 19, 2021 2:39 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk maybe you should try complaining on the internet instead

Equally effective tactics, to be honest.

I'm going to publish a stinging op-ed in the NYT! Stinging!

jon i think the part disconnect is that the covid situation is objectively improving. there is good news every day. could be better. might get worse. but right now it's moving in the right direction. and you struggle with this.

meanwhile there is regularly news that many of us consider bad or ominous about biden's economic agenda. and there hasn't been any concrete good news yet, either accomplishments or statements from biden that meet or exceed hopes.

Equally effective tactics, to be honest.

― Joe Biden Stan Account (milo z),

I appreciate the encouragement. Thanks!

meanwhile there is regularly news that many of us consider bad or ominous about biden's economic agenda. and there hasn't been any concrete good news yet, either accomplishments or statements from biden that meet or exceed hopes.

I mean, yes, there is a lot about Biden's agenda that is ominous one way or another, he's far from the ideal progressive president, no matter what promises he made. I guess I'm just tired of the fatalism about the minimum wage, specifically. There is nothing to indicate it's never going to happen. Obviously it sucks that it's being kicked down the road, but that's not the same as "never going to happen", which I'm seeing quite a lot of.

Meanwhile in the grift salt mines

NEW: A Roger Stone-connected group called "Committee to Stop the Steal" failed to meet two IRS filing deadlines to show how much money it raised and spent since the election, and its registered agent seems to have disappeared. Me @Salon https://t.co/sDNTEFCadz

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) February 19, 2021

xp people don't trust joe biden based on his actual record, and he has nothing under his belt yet as president other than words and some good hiring decisions. so when he says he wants to fight a battle over the minimum wage another day (which is not what he's said. he hasn't said much publicly. but i guess that's what you think.), people don't trust that.