Beware the Ides of March -- U.S. Politics March 2021

actually no

it's been 11 months, I'm not sure what might happen

You don't have to mention it, no thanks

i'm a government man

there is also much saying that biden is literally out of his mind and that this paves the way kamala harris which was the plan all along etc

what else are they planning? tell me more

i misread the word "pennies" for a second there

looool, so did I!

You don't have to mention it, no thanks

i'm a government man

― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone),

I'm so thin!

xp it has to do with the one world government and bill gates/vaccinations. this has been in motion for a long time, some say every 80 years, this is the fourth turning, we all know what i'm talking about here

xp you have no idea how deeply i related to that song on a literal level during the obama years

i would listen to it while riding the train into work and be like "well i guess it's neat to have my own 'song', like mechanics in NJ have springsteen songs"

don't even mention it!

One concern (or concern-troll depending on the outlet) is not having the tax-paying workforce to cover for 85-year old Gen Xers who still won’t stop talking about Lollapalooza I guess.

it is concern trolling and a non-issue. even tiny productivity gains over time will swamp the difference in population. better for the environment too.

xpost i know the bigger harm = if you piss off your voter base enough, they stay home on election day, but how are Rs going to successfully enact attack ads that expose that Democrats actually provided a larger one-time stimulus check than they ever did (1400 vs 1200) and when they weren't willing to give them anything, much less 1400.

hey if they want ppl to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, why not push Kamala Harris' bill to give everyone $2,000 a month for the duration of the pandemic? seems like ppl would still remember that in a couple of years

screw that, Dems get all of the credit for the $600 in January.

no they don't, but also what $600

We did get $600.

We did get $600.

I didn't. But I believe that means I can knock $600 off my taxes this year, so...

Yep

(although I still never got that last $600 check so who knows if I'll even get the $1400)

― Stefan Twerkelle (Old Lunch), Thursday, March 4, 2021 3:44 AM (seven hours ago)

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/claim-missing-stimulus-payments-2020-tax-return.html

i am hoping the IRS fixes its blunders from the last few. like maybe give people a week to update their info, a few weeks before checks go out or something.

when do those $2,000 checks go out the door immediately, again

i got the 600 check, but never got the initial 1200.

good system we have here

works great for for homeless and transient people too

Wow. Chris Hayes is denouncing the stimulus check nonsense.

sorry sic, I didn't realize you meant you personally. Between the collapsing Trump regime and the wreckage of USPS I guess it wouldn't be a shock if a lot of checks literally got lost in the mail, or never sent. (I'm in the lucky group that files electronically, so mine just appeared in my bank account.)

I got a check as my old bank was closed after the first one

yeah, the fact that heaps of ppl didn’t get the $600 bcz ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ makes it even more infuriating that nobody’s getting $2000 bcz lol@u, and hugely more infuriating that heaps of ppl won’t get the $1400 bcz fuck you, and that THE ECONOMY WON’T GET THAT STIMULUS bcz fuck_everyone-tim_dog.mp3

As frustrating as the stimulus and minimum wage moves have been, I think HR1 is going to be the real gut check. This absolutely needs to pass if the democrats want a future, and that means getting around the filibuster. If they do not have a plan to pull this through, they might as well just pack it up rather than deal with months of humiliation as house bills crash upon the rocks.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EvnNcTIWgAAzI4v?format=png&name=900x900

under deadline, unscrupulous journos C&P from the press kit instead of listening to the album

the pareene article poster has logged on. thinking about this one from early january after yesterday's stuff about who deserves $2000.

https://newrepublic.com/article/160810/2000-stimulus-checks-vaccine-rollout-democrats

A politics designed to avoid backlash would be more forgivable if our governing institutions and political leadership were effective. In the United States of 2021, they are just exacerbating the widespread incompetence. The alternative to $2,000 checks wasn’t a better-targeted stimulus—it was $600 checks. The alternative to handing out the vaccine more freely isn’t a more efficient rollout to the people who need it most—it’s perfectly good doses spoiling and getting tossed out. It’s time to err on the side of generosity. Give everyone vaccines and checks.

What, do you want to live in a socialism full of comminists and anarchyists?

I do feel like a lot of centrists are compelled to means-test and otherwise make things complicated because it superficially seems smarter and more responsible! In their view, blunt solutions are suspect because they seem too simple; surely, there's room to fiddle around and improve them.

what are the chances that senate leadership is allowing concessions on the stimulus in exchange for support on filibuster fixes?

Would think that alternative of issuing everything and then means testing before teh next tax return day would have been a lot smarter. since it would have recognised the stimulus point of the cheques being issued and allowed teh economy to be stimulated.
Time being of the essence for a lot of people etc whereas hopefully if it worked now things would be a lot better by then.
Seems to be shortsightedness rather tahn over intelligence not to be working that way doesn't it?

Finally some good news: The White House has agreed to drop retaliatory US tariffs on UK exports including scotch whisky, raising hopes of improved relations as talks continue about a post-Brexit transatlantic trade deal...

Oh hell yes.

whew

que lindo

The day after the Transportation Dept's watchdog office referred Elaine Chao to DOJ for potential prosecution, her husband, then-Senate Majority @LeaderMcConnell pushed to confirm a new head for that watchdog officehttps://t.co/KhQer1uBE4https://t.co/8LL0ryVLFu pic.twitter.com/hXunnncNvK

— Nick Schwellenbach (@schwellenbach) March 4, 2021

who will hold mitch accountable?

....unless maybe it's mitch himself?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has compiled a short list of successors in his home state of Kentucky, preparing for the possibility that he does not serve out his full term, Kentucky Republicans tell The Intercept. https://t.co/L3p9mbWlni

— The Intercept (@theintercept) March 4, 2021

v intersting if true

The zombie hand must be trying to strangle him at night

i suspect that's news to mitch

Tim Scott, another so-called moderate and another asshole:

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who led his chamber’s GOP police reform effort during the last Congress, predicted that the House bill would go nowhere in the Senate, noting “it’s the same one that they passed before.” However, Scott said he’d spoken to his Democratic counterpart, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, in policing talks as recently as last weekend.

“It just depends on their definition of bipartisan,” Scott said, when asked if a compromise was possible. “It depends on whether or not their bill includes demonizing police officers or not.”

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2021/03/04/policing-guns-voting-rights-historic-democratic-goals-hit-senate-skids-1366758

I don’t know why Tim Scott doesn’t just make a thumbs down gesture and call it a day

What is happening now: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson objected to dispense the reading of the bill, forcing the 628-page bill to be read out loud before 20 hours of debate can begin in earnest. A Senate clerk started reading the bill out loud around 3:20 p.m. ET and it is expected to take about 10 hours.

thoughts and prayers to the Senate clerk.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/04/climate-change-john-kerry-talking-to-banks-asset-managers-about-clean-energy.html

Who needs a Green New Deal when you can create exciting new bubbles for Wall Street?

Creating new government financed and publicly owned energy generation and distribution institutions like the New Deal TVA and BPA would be most excellent. Until Congress changes radically, it's so not gonna happen.

I am not an expert on finance wrt the environment, but I doubt SPACS are going to move the needle.

All the while, Hydro-Québec works incredibly well.

Pareene’s podcast is extremely relevant this week:

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-politics-of-everything-2/episode/the-unnatural-endurance-of-bipartisanship-82125082

The Unnatural Endurance of Bipartisanship

Joe Biden ran for president promising to “revive” the spirit of bipartisanship, put an end to factional battles, and bring Americans together after an era of painful division. Yet faced with an intransigent, extremist Republican Party that has little to gain from compromise, such a vision of politics seems quaint at best. On Episode 26 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene look into the history of bipartisanship as an ideal. The show features Paul Blest, a co-founder of Discourse Blog; Ed Burmila, the author of a forthcoming book on the mistakes of the Democratic Party; Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer at The New Republic; and Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University. Does bipartisanship have a future in American politics? And, more to the point, should it?

fwiw there’s some pretty solid research on $12/hr being a good federal minimum wage target by 2020 which was, uh, last year obv but there’s nothing magical about the number 15 other than it alliterates with “fight for”. by 2025, according to this analysis, $15/hr starts looking about right.

https://www.epi.org/publication/we-can-afford-a-12-00-federal-minimum-wage-in-2020/

A federal minimum wage of $12.00 in 2020 would return the wage floor to about the same position in the overall wage distribution that it had in 1968.