Why is everyone so mean?? US Politics: September 2022

Friend who works for the railroads when asked if they'll be okay: "my savings will last longer than the rest of the economy if we strike"

— culture war denialist (@shwiffles) September 15, 2022

my 7 year old son loves trains. every time one passes by he gets really excited. why won't someone think of the real victims here

The hobos

From a former hobo who knows a lot of rails, I can honestly say that the depths of corruption and lack of regard for their workers or any human lives is par for the course with rail companies. The execs at these companies have succeeded in stripping so many safety measures from the infrastructure that it blows my mind that there aren’t more accidents all the time.

I mean, they legit want (and in some cases have made mandatory) 1-person crews. One person as engineer, brakeman, and lineman. Sometimes operating hundreds of thousands of tons of machinery going very fast through dense, crowded areas. Totally bonkers

The NYT:

Negotiations in which the Biden administration took an active role produced a tentative contract deal announced early Thursday. The agreement included a significant pay increase for the workers, whose base wages typically start at around $50,000 and top out around $100,000, excluding overtime and benefits. But scheduling was the sticking point.

Unions complained that to manage a shortfall of employees, the carriers effectively forced their members to remain on call for days and sometimes weeks at a time, partly through the use of strict attendance policies that could lead to disciplinary action or even firing. They said the policies pushed workers to the limits of their physical and mental health.

“Every facet of your life is dictated by this job,” said Gabe Christenson, who until this year worked as a conductor for a large freight rail carrier. “There’s no way to get away from it.”

To table's point.

The renewed spotlight on rail companies as villains feels very in keeping with our Robber Baron Redux era.

a good friend of mine works for the railroad and yeah that aspect of it fuckin sucks. we can't really go anywhere nor can he be out too late, any day of the week. for like the last decade

Why don't they just do speed like truckers?

it's not like anything has fundamentally changed since the original one. xxp

They do! Still not safe tho

Longer story: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/09/15/politics/biden-white-house-railroad-strike/index.html

how is the shit that DeSantis is pulling right now not incredibly illegal

I mean, we live in an era where there seem to be almost zero consequences for anything, but the fact that multiple governors can just straight up kidnap people by the bus and planeload and force them to migrate across the country with just a strong "tut tut" in response makes me even more hopeless about this dystopian hellhole.

why did the fact that these railroad workers get 30 days off year (i.e. no weekends) become an issue now? was it a recent change?

the circumstances described here seem untenable https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkzbq/28-freight-rail-workers-tell-us-what-they-want-you-to-know-about-their-lives so... were they better in the past? or have they been like this for decades, in which case what lead them to feel like they could fight back now?

BNSF has the most draconian policies on attendance (30 points before suspensions and you could get docked 25 for missing one day potentially) and they were only instituted recently. The top level rails have also cut something like 40k jobs in the last 7 years (leading to the attendance policy).

The little city I live in (pop 7000) is very much a railroad town, created in 1887 by a railroad because it's halfway btw B'ham and Memphis. Line currently owned by BNSF. Part of me wants/wanted a brief strike so I could see this conservative area tie itself in knots over who to support.

oh man, you should threaten to blow up the railroad tracks. you're sitting on a strait of hormuz, it's time to capitalize

is what many people are saying, not me though

Senate delays same-sex marriage vote until after midterms

The Senate won’t vote on protecting same-sex marriage until after the midterm elections, said the bill’s chief sponsor, Tammy Baldwin.

“I’m still very confident that they bill will pass but we will be taking the bill up later, after the election. We will be putting out a joint statement,” the Wisconsin senator said after a Democratic caucus lunch.

Democrats had planned to hold a vote as soon as Monday, though it was unclear if there would be 10 Republican votes in support of the same-sex marriage bill. Several Republicans said this week that the measure had a much better chance to pass after the election.

“We should have a vote when you’ve got the votes. They’ll get more votes than November and December than they get on Monday,” said retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who spoke to Baldwin earlier in the day. “If I wanted [it] to pass and I was the majority leader and I wanted to get as many votes as I could possibly get, I’d wait until after the election.”

One of two things will happen in November:

1) Democrats gain seats, but not 60; Republicans filibuster same-sex marriage protection when it comes up
2) Republicans win the Senate majority; abortion and same-sex marriage are both outlawed by Christmas

Either way, this thing is fucking dead.

how is the shit that DeSantis is pulling right now not incredibly illegal

We had an few incidents in CA called 'Greyhound therapy'.. i.e. officials in Nevada were buying bus tickets to San Francisco for their homeless folks: 'Go ahead, they'll take better care of you.' SF flipped out and I think the Reno/Las Vegas folks were forced to apologize. So no, it's not legal.

Some hard truths here

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/09/trump-judge-aileen-cannon-court-reform.html

It's super frustrating because there are still at this very minute tons of legal professionals pushing out endless takes about "this is not how things work" and well I have news for you...

So we're just gonna let them change the subject from abortion to immigration?

(NB I form my view of the world via my Twitter feed)

It's the GOP's go-to topic when things aren't going well for them

Cue THE CARAVANS

I'm not sure I agree with this response to the same-sex marriage farrago, but it's something.

The original draft of this sentence read, "'They’ll get more votes in November and December than they’ll get on Monday,' GOP Senator Roy Blunt told reporters, managing not to laugh as they pretended to believe him."

I don't know how good Yougov polls are but doin' stuff seems to be a successful move.

This is wild @chrislhayes pic.twitter.com/MihOt9Ozyq

— Matt Hodges (@hodgesmr) September 16, 2022

i thought yougov was an unscientific poll (like a web-based opt-in poll) but maybe I'm wrong

Even as they struggle to persuade voters that they should be trusted on the economy, Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress as the sprint to November’s midterm election begins, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.

The surprising Democratic strength has been bolstered by falling gas prices and President Biden’s success at breaking through legislative gridlock in Washington to pass his agenda. That shift in political momentum has helped boost, in just two months, the president’s approval rating by nine percentage points and doubled the share of Americans who believe the country is on the right track.

But Democrats are also benefiting from factors over which they had little control: the public outcry in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of federal abortion rights and the return of former President Donald J. Trump to an attention-commanding presence on the national stage.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/us/politics/biden-democrats-abortion-trump-poll.html

Don't talk to Jeanine Spanjers -- no popcorn!

Jeanine Spanjers, 44, from Racine, Wis., said that rising inflation had caused her to change her lifestyle, including driving less, skipping vacations and even abstaining from popcorn when she goes to the movies. A state employee, she also said she believed that Democrats were handing out too many government subsidies, pointing to relief payments distributed during the pandemic.

“What’s getting on my nerves is all this free stuff,” she said, criticizing how all the children at her son’s school received food stamp cards, including families who could afford to pay for lunch. “Republicans would never do something like that. It disincentivizes people to go out and do something. I’m starting to feel like people are being rewarded for not doing anything.”

Right, of course they're not going to give the Dems credit for having a popular policy position as the GOP zooms further right. Of course.

(in re "factors over which they had little control")

People should be incentivized by the prospect of their children going hungry, damn it.

I wish there was an Equalizer for NY Times small-town diner commentators. Like, poof, I've just given you a disabling injury and gotten you fired from your job, I'll check back in a couple months to see how you feel about government subsidies.

Wouldn’t change much, they’d all be doing the Craig T Nelson rant about “I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”

also, they would have a fairly legitimate beef with whoever runs the Equalizer for NY Times. "everything was fine until the Equalizer hurt me"

and who is the Equalizer? you guessed it, Frank Stallone

I can't believe how shoddy are Vets are being treated if you want to cut something how about Welfare 90% of them don't deserve it they lie

— Frank Stallone (@Stallone) October 15, 2013

i can't believe there's a @stallone and it's frank stallone

Jeanine must be fancy if she can go to the movies, I just watch free youtube movies on my phone, and all I can afford to eat is popcorn

(munches away while watcing Escape from Witch Mountain)

like many up-and-coming small business entrepreneurs, i sneak a gallon ziplock bag of prepopped popcorn into the theater and then sell it to eager customers during key scenes in the movie to earn back the cost of the ticket

It shouldn't be the case at this point, bu it's still amazing to me that someone in Racine WI could make these types of statements when Racine is a shining example of what happens to a community when GOP legislators and corporations have their way of things. I'm in Racine all the time, there is shocking inequality, lack of public infrastructure, crumbling roads and empty buildings—not to mention the ridiculous Foxconn development on the edge of town that residents will be subsidizing with tax money for the rest of their lives. There are good things in Racine too, and I would be interested to see how many white entrepreneurs there got funding/loans/etc to spruce up the downtown.

i thought yougov was an unscientific poll (like a web-based opt-in poll) but maybe I'm wrong

― akm, Friday, September 16, 2022 12:47 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's not great, but the change in the same poll is likely real(ish).

dare I say passing the climate deal, which news outlets have called DOA about 75 separate times, was actually a pretty big deal

I signed up for yougov early this year to figure out what the deal was, and it’s very goofy. There are polls on politics and issues that seem decently-crafted, but the way they incentivize people to participate is rewarding users for completing polls that seem like a cross between marketing research and incomprehensible question grab bags

I have no idea who is regularly participating

I'm figuring the debt relief had something to do with the shift in that particular demographic.
It's like some 19th century thing--you deliver for a certain group and then they want to vote for you. How barbaric!

I'm figuring the debt relief had something to do with the shift in that particular demographic.
It's like some 19th century thing--you deliver for a certain group and then they want to vote for you. How barbaric!

― You can't spell Fearless without Earle (President Keyes), Friday, September 16, 2022 3:49 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's an irregular verb:
I am rewarding the deserving; you are making sure the boys are covered; he/she/they are rolling out the pork to those people.

Jeanine Spanjers, 44, from Racine, Wis., said that rising inflation had caused her to change her lifestyle

Yesss! She knows that her lifestyle must only ever change in one direction, ever upward no matter what else is happening in the world. Bigger tubs of popcorn w/ more butter, more driving pointlessly from place to place, and of course, more good stuff for Jeanine.

What are the odds she's white?