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

I'll stan for Pierre Salinger, who was also a piano virtuoso and the defense lawyer for both Catwoman and the Joker on the old "Batman" TV show.

I'm gaga for Dee Dee!

Adam Johnson:

This cartoon pathologizing is, of course, necessary to dehumanize and dismiss those calling for Covid mitigation measures, for which they gain nothing and, indeed, suffer just like everyone else. Otherwise, how does it make any sense? Surely it can’t be because other, similarly developed countries have employed many such measures to some success? Surely it can’t be because public health advocates and disability activists see the staggeringly high 866,000 death toll in the U.S. and think, “Perhaps our ‘fuck it’ approach isn’t perfect and could use some tweaks.” Maybe it’s because the cliche that “Covid will be endemic and we’re all going to get it so who cares” isn’t actually based on any science, but rather a vague hope from politicians eager to Go Back To Normal and force everyone back to work because anymore social spending is off the table.

https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/covid-isnt-a-human-being-it-doesnt

Worth the read (Pareene):

https://newrepublic.com/article/165053/biden-quits-covid-fight

yes to Pareene piece.

Also-

https://prospect.org/coronavirus/fire-jeff-zients/

epidemiologists pleaded with the Biden COVID team to ramp up rapid-test production and distribution back in October, to head off needless infection and death at December family gatherings. The Biden team sloughed them off—and given the nature of the request, that almost certainly means Zients was responsible for the rejection...

Zients’s failures are not only a result of his passive refusal to use the immense powers at his disposal to combat the crisis. They are also the result of intentional actions to head off effective strategies. Zients instructed Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, for example, against enacting a mask mandate, despite the policy’s high favorability and effectiveness. ZIENTS ISN’T A PUBLIC-HEALTH EXPERT: He’s a former corporate executive whose track record bolsters the worst possible impulses for a Biden appointee in command of the federal government’s resources. He cut his teeth at Bain Capital, the private equity firm Barack Obama ran against in 2012, which has erased pensions and health benefits for tens of thousands over decades of leveraged buyouts. Then he made a name for himself running a pair of management consultancies, where he advised CEOs to be blunt with their employees: “The social contract is never coming back, and your employees know it.”

These fuckin people

Actual twitter news blurb that popped up next to my feed that I think sums up the state of things:

Viewers react to Monday’s segment of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle where host Laura Ingraham responds to actor Kate McKinnon’s impression of her on Saturday Night Live.

The Impression Reaction Response Angle

uhh there's some weird stuff going on with tax returns this year, both i and my partner are basically at zero despite 1 w-2 and the normal arrangement where you get several hundred dollars back from the feds (our state returns are the usual). i'm too dumb to look into the surely byzantine details but if this is true for everyone filing the democrats are sooooo fucked, and rightfully so,

My husband and I owed a few thousand last year and changed all sorts of things to make sure that didn't happen again this year ... so yeah, pretty much I'll vote Trump if I owe a single penny.

It gets really blurry when you got money that wasn't really money, technically speaking, but was actually a tax credit.

Instead of getting yr usual chonky refund, you will be told that you already got it, and you already probably spent it. Probably on weed.

I’m hoping Psaki tells everybody that, in just those words tbh

Non-taxed weed!

there were changes to the withholding formula for 2021. btw getting a huge refund is bad.

I’m getting a bit less back from the IRS this year, but my salary increased, so maybe that accounts for it.

btw getting a huge refund is bad.

"You're giving the government a zero-interest loan!" is how conservatives usually say this. Not that they're wrong.

Yeah harbl otm; I'd vastly rather have accurate withholding, resulting neither in a refund nor a bill. If it were just income tax vs. withholding I'd probably be pretty close most years.

But everyone's situation is different. If you do stuff like have children, buy a house, give to charity, or have investments, it's going to be more complicated. This is not exactly news in 2022, is it? I think it has pretty much always been so.

I just didn't notice because in 50 years I have bought exactly one house and had two children. For the vast majority of that time I didn't have enough money (or a complex enough situation) to dread tax filing.

(two children that I know of)

well it's easy to adjust the withholding if you anticipate more deductions! i try to get as close as possible to 0 refund every year but i love this stuff, i'm strange.

i wish i could get a deduction for my cat, she is expensive lately

Kurtis Blow is right there with you.

David Dayen re obscure draft bills

the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021 would for the first time in over two decades re-regulate an ocean carrier cartel that made an astonishing $150 billion in profits last year. It got 364 House votes, and there’s a Senate companion. There’s practically nothing else on the legislative side that would have as much impact on inflation as bringing down shipping rates and getting exports moving

https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-pivot-build-back-better/

i've lived in three countries and i had never received a tax refund or bill until i moved to the US. it's insane.

As a freelancer in the UK I've had a couple of refunds, but that's only as a result of a bad year following a good one, or the weird timing of advances.

If I could be PAYE as a freelancer I totally would.

Due to a high level of uncertainty and uh, my stupidity, we ended up with a pretty massive refund for 2020, aaaaand a case of attempted ID theft, result? Incredible difficulty resolving (last call w IRS last week, 2 hrs 45 mins). “The wheels are in motion.” :-|

Yeah don’t let it get there.

I’ll add, the ID theft was actually some malfeasor filing under my ID and attempting to claim refunds, from the very sketchy info shared to me by the agents. So, this long-delay result is success!

it's a real race to the bottom with this stuff

"I’m going to work to make Michigan the most pro #bitcoin state in the country." - U.S. Senator Jim Ananich 👏 pic.twitter.com/RuSbNMsoTu

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) January 25, 2022

When these crypto schemes crash and impoverish lots of small-time speculators, we can at least hope that the pols who jumped on the bandwagon ruined their careers as a consequence.

You must be new here

Wasn't long ago that folks were burning cars in El Salvador after they adopted bitcoin as an official currency

crypto is here to stay, unfortunately. it's too late. it's not going to crash and burn, and there won't be a day of reckoning for the early supporters. why would it go away when it's where all the grifters are going? it's a place where you are encouraged to manipulate and lie and take advantage of people for personal gain, and those who do so are rewarded and copied. is the rightwing media weirdass wing, the alex jones/bitchute kind of insanity, is that going away? no, because any listener/reader/watcher of that kind of "news" is already 100% known as a mark, a person who can and will be taken advantage of. they don't need to wear a giant sign saying "i'm a dumbass - take advantage of me", because they're standing in a giant superdome that has giant letters on it visible from space which read "absolutely everyone in this building is a dumbass - take advantage of them". the crypto "community" is like that

i think a lot of people are working off of the assumptions of many of our upbringings, which are that there will be some kind of accountability and improvement over time, a true reckoning of what actually happened, leading to many course corrections, a version of a year or a time or place that fits in a book and can be shown to be right and proven. i'm very sympathetic to that kind of thinking because that's what i always thought to, and there's a world out there where it kind of happens, where everyone can take a stock of the same moment and more or less see the same thing, or at least there's used to be. but this crypto shit, the real life fascists taking over local election boards, the hyper-creepy white evangelicals, a movement of hundreds of millions of people dedicated to anti-vaxx denialism that bubbled up to the surface after bannon and beck flooded the zone with this for 15 years...these are different times

Man, Wisconsin Assembly having a field day today.

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.