US Politics April 2019 Thread: 'I find that pretty hard to believe'

zoning out

i used to post on the internet for a living and i can tell you from my first-hand experience that some of you are doing it real wrong here fyi

frozen-let-it-go.gif

jfc

plz May plz

Personal attacks and ad hominems are not cool.

Disagree with people’s ideas and arguments. This is the agora.

childish gambino's long-awaited followup

Can we talk about how Jacob Wohl isn't already in prison yet pls?

M4A’s first committee hearing underway

good morning!

mungry4ass

The Dues Sucking firefighters leadership will always support Democrats, even though the membership wants me. Some things never change!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 29, 2019

'Dues Sucking'?!?

Dues he suck? Or, boy, dues he!

Dues he ever!

dues ex suckina

Historically speaking, I can think of at least one other time in history where imo striking union teachers were in the wrong and those who crossed the picket line to teach students in shut-down schools were in the moral right. But I'll admit it takes an unusual set of circumstances.

The Dues Sucking Firefighters Leadership is a god lost Kinks lyric

Yikes, Trump's Federal Reserve pick Stephen Moore enthusiastically supports child labor & having 11- and 12-year-olds work.

“I’m a radical on this,” Moore said. “I’d get rid of a lot of these child labor laws. I want people starting to work at 11, 12.”https://t.co/IS0V8w8HPx

— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) April 30, 2019

go mine some of that clean coal, barron

Moore's got that "especially for sex workers" vibe re child labor laws

Of course, his own kids would land a sweet summer job at corporate sustainability at Goldman Sachs or whatever. Everyone else gets to work at Burger King for below minimum wage

it is time we all recognized that making children swab floors at a fast food franchise for pitiful wages is the perfect preparation for adult life in the USA

Interestingly, in interviews w voters here, the issue they have been citing first as a “too far” lefty pipe dream is free college. Have heard from people who love Warren but part with her on that.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) April 29, 2019

They don’t say Medicare for All goes too far, they don’t say the Green New Deal does. They say free college does.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) April 29, 2019

#JoeBiden Surging Among Democrats in Presidential Race, Poll Finds; U.S. Voters Support Wealth Tax, Oppose Free College https://t.co/08l04x5yyR #2020Election

— Quinnipiac University Poll (@QuinnipiacPoll) April 30, 2019

this just shows the power of "better things aren't possible" and self-loathing "the things we want are fundamentally unpopular with real americans". it's not just melt centrist politicians spouting it. it infects voters too. so in a way the melt centrist politicians are right!

a wealth tax (which to be clear i support) is way, way more radical than free college. it's a fundamentally new and very lucrative form of taxation what will change the the economy works. and medicare for all is (by normal standards of budgeting) more expensive than free college. but free college is where even people who like warren draw the line.

Couldn't it also be that they see health care as a human right that all Americans should have, while college seems something that mostly the middle class will get to do anyway?

it's not either/or but it is in their mind because they've (we've!) trained themselves to think so.

there are a lot of factors that make it difficult for children of the poor or the working class to succeed through academics, compared to children of the middle class. it isn't just social stigma or self-hypnosis.

getting a "why do I need to pay a school tax? I don't have any kids" vibe from this

Anti-intellectualism has deep roots in the USA. Richard Hofstadter wrote an excellent book on the subject. Republicans have enthusiastically tapped into that lately, while Democrats have tended to reject it. It's yet another way in which the two major parties have divvied up the nation into exclusive spheres of influence.

Also, the Dems have become the party of college-educated voters -- a remarkable shift from even the 1970s and 1980s.

feel like "free college" is still new enough to the conversation that sustained messaging and how-it's-framed could change those numbers a lot. comparison to m4a should actually highlight that, imo, since that's a classic "popularity has soared since it's been steadily in the conversation" case.

i wonder who (besides student loan companies) would be against the idea of using student loan "profits" to subsidize college tuition? why not shift management of student loans to the public sector, where theoretically there's not a profit motive? why is the status quo to allow third party lenders to make billions of dollars off of everyone else's misfortune?

oh wait, because a whiff of socialism will destroy our wonderful society

as far as the 'private sector is much better at managing things than the government, which is the problem!" theory goes, i just received an INCREDIBLY confusing letter from myfedloan.org today which somehow presented 4+ pages of detailed information on my 8 student loans and all of the various payments and when they're due, and i STILL had no idea when the next payment is or how much it would be.

shit, the government is pretty bad at managing a lot of things, but they can fail at least as well as myfedloan.org or any other number of lenders or middlemen

The most brillant move of the conservative right was to convince the american people that Keynesianism was socialism. I really think it won them 30 years and counting.

why is the status quo to allow third party lenders to make billions of dollars off of everyone else's misfortune?

For the same reason that post offices are legally barred from providing banking services and North Dakota is the only state that has created a state-run bank. Control of credit gives banks incredible power and gives bankers incredible wealth. They make full use of that wealth and power to retain control of credit.

The 'free market' theory is that in return for this wealth and power bankers perform a valuable economic service, by applying their professional expertise to vetting loans and allocating capital only to those who are good risks and will create social value out of that capital; bankers who fail to do so are punished by the withdrawal of capital from their control, so that the bank falters and dies. This theory is officially hilarious, in light of the role banks played in the financial crisis of 2008.

No reason to get excited about the URL but worth noting that Trump isn't even George W. Bush.

Apparently all the Democrats have to do is give that 55 percent no reason to change their minds. For what it’s worth, a similar poll in mid-2016 found that 48 percent of Americans “definitely” wouldn’t vote for Trump. And that turned out to be true. In the end, an additional 4 percent joined the crowd and 52 percent of the electorate didn’t vote for him. If the same dynamic holds next year, Trump will receive about 41 percent of the two-party vote and be turned out of office in one of the biggest landslides ever. Wouldn’t that be great?

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/chart-of-the-day-donald-trump-has-already-lost-the-2020-election/

For the same reason that post offices are legally barred from providing banking services and North Dakota is the only state that has created a state-run bank. Control of credit gives banks incredible power and gives bankers incredible wealth. They make full use of that wealth and power to retain control of credit.

The 'free market' theory is that in return for this wealth and power bankers perform a valuable economic service, by applying their professional expertise to vetting loans and allocating capital only to those who are good risks and will create social value out of that capital; bankers who fail to do so are punished by the withdrawal of capital from their control, so that the bank falters and dies. This theory is officially hilarious, in light of the role banks played in the financial crisis of 2008.

― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, April 30, 2019 3:07 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Plenty of countries have banks operating in free market settings and have regulated interest rates for students loans + affordable tuition and/or straight free tuition. One of these countries happens to be just north of the border.

The reason why the US does not have affordable tuition is because Americans voted for policy makers that don't give a shit about affordable tuition.

You gotta hand it to the GOP’s commitment to the bit in light of a mountain of data proving them wrong

For the same reason that post offices are legally barred from providing banking services and North Dakota is the only state that has created a state-run bank. Control of credit gives banks incredible power and gives bankers incredible wealth. They make full use of that wealth and power to retain control of credit.

fwiw we had a ballot measure in LA on this in 2018 and i don't think there's much evidence that it lost because of the banks.

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation’s conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department.

wouldn't it have been cool if mueller, instead of handing over his report to a lying piece of shit who mischaracterized the report and then saying absolutely nothing for a month, had instead held a goddamn 30-minute press conference and walked everyone through the report he just spent 2 years working on?

didn't only like 19 people bother to vote, bcz America?

xp

maybe mueller fell for the good ol' "republicans can't be THAT evil" trick and assumed that barr wouldn't completely fuck him over

All the assholes that used his so-called silence as proof that it was a nothingburger can fuck off now

I’m quoting something mordy said a few weeks ago—but why is mueller such a coward?

If he felt the report indicated serious wrongdoing—actionable wrongdoing—he could have made that a lot clearer.

I guess he just likes being a sphinx?

Let's not rush to judgment until we see Bill Barr's summary of Mueller's angry letter to him. https://t.co/ZWcQ25BAFq

— Josh Gohlke (@JoshGohlke) April 30, 2019

Yeah but as karl malone said