US Politics, January 2022 — a pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin state

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The power to spend federal money sent to Wisconsin would be taken away from the governor and given to the Legislature under a proposed constitutional amendment the state Senate approved Tuesday.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Senate approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday that says only citizens can vote in elections.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republicans who control the Wisconsin Assembly were set to approve bills Tuesday that would require employers to count a prior coronavirus infection as an alternative to vaccination and testing and prohibit vaccine passports.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Assembly was poised Tuesday to vote on a pair of GOP-backed bills that would create tougher penalties for protesters who participate in riots and deface public statues.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Assembly was set to vote Tuesday on a package of Republican-authored bills designed to bolster police recruiting.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Assembly Republicans were set to vote on a bill that would create tougher penalties for coordinated shoplifting.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin on Tuesday became the 16th state to call for a convention of the states to consider making a variety of changes to the U.S. Constitution, a move that drew bipartisan opposition in the state Senate but not enough to block its approval.

to consider making a variety of changes to the U.S. Constitution

sounds cool!

this is the feeling of being owned

WI should be a utopia any minute with all of those important bills passing.

I can probably guess, but is there a list somewhere of the cool ideas they have for the nu-Constitution?

i'm gonna wait til i see it to pass judgment on this plan

I confess I have a sick urge to hear someone tell me we need to rewrite the constitution to better honor the intentions of the founding fathers

Balanced Budget amendment
No more direct election of Senators
Super-majority for tax increases
End of "birthright" citizenship
"Right to life" amendment

Would love to see a court 200 years from now trying to honor the intentions of today's nutbags

Balanced Budget amendment
No more direct election of Senators
Super-majority for tax increases
End of "birthright" citizenship
"Right to life" amendment

my favorite Ezra Pound stanza

another time I am asking myself why tf did I choose to move to Wisconsin

also the bitcoin tweet above said that guy is a US Senator and he is not, he is a state senator and the MIGOP are all crackpots so

he is not, he is a state senator

Odd that Bitcoin Magazine would get its facts wrong.

https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/2022/1/chair-meeks-introduces-house-companion-bill-to-the-defending-ukraine-sovereignty-act-of-2022-to-impose-sanctions-on-russia

Good thing we don't have a better use for a half billion.

call for a convention of the states to consider making a variety of changes to the U.S. Constitution,

Ahh, the old 'constitutional convention,' a perennial favorite of right wing kooks and something that will clearly never happen

I'd like one to enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but that seems like a total fantasy.

something that will clearly never happen

They were only like three state legislatures short of being able to call one a few years ago, I wouldn't bet on this at all. Between gerrymandering and Democratic incompetence they could well cross the threshold in the foreseeable future.

Thank god, we're saved

BREAKING: Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she will seek re-election, reversing an earlier vow to turn over party leadership pic.twitter.com/V5OFkjPpRo

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 25, 2022

another time I am asking myself why tf did I choose to move to Wisconsin

also the bitcoin tweet above said that guy is a US Senator and he is not, he is a state senator and the MIGOP are all crackpots so

Ftr though he is a Democrat

He is a Senator in the United States, to be fair.

(re: Pelosi)

God damn I hate my party. Exactly the wrong set of addled, corporate stooges that we need in this moment. One can only hope they will be first into the guillotines under whatever fascist regime emerges while they are napping their final years away in congress.

Nancy Pelosi's Fourth Farewell Tour

she has her fingers on the pulse of a grandma that knows a young person

how in the fuck can she begin to understand what it's like to be young right now. whyyyyyy are there so many ancient elders in all the leadership roles, just retire you're fucking LOSING

Why would she want to understand what it's like to be young right now? Being young right now fucking sucks. She's rich as hell and has nothing to worry about, ever. Much more fun.

i do not understand why you would be that old and rich and choose to continue working

I don't care whether she understands what being young is like, I'm more concerned she's forgotten what it's like to be an actual human.

xp
Power is a helluva drug.

Wielding power is fun, she's never wanted for relaxation/vacations/rest, it would be like Keith Richards retiring from playing guitar.

Bullying the Progressive Caucus is her version of warming up with scales.

All of the US Congress and US Senate? Never seen a better crop of candidates for getting launched into the sun.

not like nancy pelosi deserves any consideration but for a lot of these people who are old and rich and love working i think they're just scared shitless of change.

The SALT cap is her final horcrux, repeal it and she'll die.

“i think they're just scared shitless of change.”

and what are we scared of? what are we willing to do about it?

About time:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and dozens of other Democrats on Wednesday called on President Joe Biden to show his cards on student loan forgiveness and release a legal memo his administration prepared about his powers to cancel student debt.

The new request for the documents by 85 House and Senate Democrats comes as progressives are once again ramping up their pressure campaign to convince Biden to cancel large amounts of student debt ahead of the midterm elections.

Just to ask a really dumb question: I guess the reason to talk about student loan forgiveness rather than "hand out cash to everyone whether they have a degree / some credits / are carrying loads of student debt or not" is simply that the President is empowered to do the former but not the latter? Is there an argument that it wouldn't be better to distribute a big financial benefit more broadly?

yeah, I think that's why Biden concentrated on extending the child tax credit rather than student loan forgiveness, but the latter doesn't need congressional approval (though Biden would like to pretend it does)

While I think it's a good policy, just watch this get spun by right-wing MAGAnauts as more money for college-educated elites at the expense of the (white) working class.

The spin will go: Loan forgiveness for preppy fratbois snubs honest (white) Joe Lunch-pail who didn't go to college. You know, all those (white) people working blue-collar jobs who are forgotten and left behind by the coastal elites, blah blah blah.

"I mean, What? So you're telling me that Trevor Fratboy McPrivilege, who drank his way through State U., gets a pass? Or Sandra McFeminist gets loan forgiveness for her Victimization Studies degree? Meanwhile, where's the handout for Joe The (White) Plumber?"

Never mind that in actual (non-Fox) reality, there are a whole bunch of people of color whose career paths might embrace trades, higher education, and a mix of both.

I don't have a solution but I know the current information landscape will be messy in the extreme.

Who cares what they think? They'll never vote for a Democrat so it makes zero sense to include them in any political calculation regarding student loan debt forgiveness. Biden is reluctant to do it because he's a lifelong and loyal collared pet of the banking industry.

It should be pretty easy to spin it the other way around that it will allow for millions of people to spend more on Main Street instead of having loads of cash just sitting idly in banks.

The bots had already carpet-bombed Reddit and FB with this message a month ago and gone on to other things.

fuuuuuuuuuuck i could use any amount of student loan forgiveness, any at all would go a long way

just do it and never, ever worry about what the GOP thinks of a POLICY issue, ever again. why worry about what they think about a policy? they have...ZERO policies! they have...ZERO platform! they really don't! they only exist to make money, stay in power, and troll you. there are only a couple years in this country before they turn it into a full christian fascist state, how about we just get some student loan foregiveness in the meantime and spend zero time worrying about how they'll react, because of course they'll say it's a socialist communist overstep and that biden is an old doof out of his mind, a marionette with the strings being pulled by the ultra violent left.

as if the GOP ever, EVER thinks about what anyone on the left thinks, EVER

google bitchute

that is how the GOP mind operates. just try to be on that website for 5 minutes straight

just watch this get spun by right-wing MAGAnauts as more money for college-educated elites at the expense of the (white) working class.

I think that spin is wrong but I think the spin that it's more money for college-educated people (who are not "elite" but are mostly wealthier than the median person of their age) not at the expense of the white working class, at the expense of rich people who will pay more taxes, but exclusive of the both-white-and-POC non-college working class, who are disproportionately likely to be in economic distress right now. But as I said, there are two pretty different questions here, "what would be best?" and "what would be best among things that can be done with the stroke of a pen?"

It should be pretty easy to spin it the other way around that it will allow for millions of people to spend more on Main Street instead of having loads of cash just sitting idly in banks.

I don't disagree, but wish to piggyback on it slightly to say: why can't this be the spun narrative for most government spending?

Conservatives act like government spending is essentially setting money on fire (except the spending they like; see note below). But most spending happens inside the economy. If you are a public-sector employee or contractor, the money "spent" by the government goes into your bank account. Mostly what you do with it is buy groceries and clothing and pay for housing.

The money isn't gone, it's alive and well and going into the economy. If you buy and sell goods and services to people who are employed by the government, guess what? You are getting that money that you thought was simply set on fire.

Note: defense, "homeland security," and police-state budgets are largely sacrosanct for the right. Sure, some of that money evaporates in waste/fraud/abuse, and in indiscriminately killing people of color in another part of the world. But a surprising amount of it just circulates right back into the same economies that right-wing voters inhabit. I recently drove through Quantico and Fort Belvoir and saw approximately 600 car dealerships, all of whom offer easy credit to military personnel.

So let's say a 20-year-old recruit gets his signing bonus and immediately buys a three-year-old mustard-colored Mustang, at an interest rate of something like 25% APR. Do you know what that is? Government spending that immediately returns to the local economy. But I'll bet the owner of that car dealership sits over beers with his buddies and rails against "government spending" like it's a problem.

meanwhile, they are stealing the election in 2024 in plain sight

Here's an unsettling thought:

If we don't revise the ECA, successfully overturning the 2024 election might only require a single corrupt GOP governor and a GOP-controlled House.

An important new paper spells out this nightmare scenario.

Details here:https://t.co/EhSRaBwtYQ

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 26, 2022

David Perdue is running for governor in Georgia on the explicit claim that he wouldn't have certified Biden's electors.

All it takes is one governor like him, plus House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who's tolerating rampant insurrectionism in his ranks:https://t.co/EhSRaBwtYQ pic.twitter.com/9L5hDRj65t

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 26, 2022

i feel like a madman

these policy discussions are nostalgic and remind me of a better time

weird how Republicans seem to believe that both 1) anyone making minimum wage should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a degree and 2) anyone who gets a degree should be in crippling debt for the next 15 years