Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "The Rational National"
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@carlosb5523 They are talking about the fact that a large portion of the population was told that they didn't need to be productive because their needs would be met. The malaise that followed was what Betty Friedan described in The Feminine Mystique.
That being said, I think that you were replying to someone else, because my argument was about Yang wanting to destroy the existing social safety net.
And you can talk about automation all you want, but there are two things that I saw when my family visited last month that tells me that it might not be what Yang says it will be, and another as to why his solution is inadequate if he is correct.
First, the things that suggest the possibility that automation might not be the end of human labor: when my family came to visit, I took my daughter, my niece, and my parents to two different factory tours: Herr's Snack Factory and Visitors Center, and the Martin Guitar Factory Tour. Both places told something quite interesting: there were some places were human hands produced a bottleneck (a lacquer finish for the guitars, and peeling potatoes for the chips), and by automating those processes, they were able to hire more workers than they ever could have hired had those parts of the process been run by human hands. So, it is quite possible that other companies just might find that automation frees up more hands to be used in a more efficient way. After all, at one point in this country, 90% of the population worked on farms. Now, we produce more food than ever.
And why if Yang is correct, his answer will cause more problems: if he is right about 1/3 of the jobs being gone with no replacement, the fact that he also wants to get rid of the existing social safety net and use a regressive tax to pay for it means a very bleak future for most of the population.
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I remember when I was in Iraq, and I was talking to someone while guarding the gate, and as we were talking, at one point, I said, "Jesus isn't a conservative, He is a socialist." A day or two later, he must have asked the chaplain about that, because the chaplain said, "Jesus isn't a liberal! 'If you don't work, you don't eat.'" I said, "Sir, if you'll remember, Paul said that, not Jesus, and I didn't say He was a liberal, I said He was a socialist." He was even more shocked and I pointed to the Rich Young Ruler and how the apostles lived after the church was founded with a passage in Acts 2. He said, "That wasn't about conservative or liberal or socialist, or anything, but about the needs of the people" (emphasis his). I responded, "Didn't Marx say 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'?" He just kind of grinned a little as his way of admitting, "Well, you've got me there."
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@jones1618 Except Alaska doesn't have two in the final election. It has four. And a national primary has a whole host of other issues, such as some states having their order set in stone, primary vs. caucus states, and the fact that it would make the primary geometrically more expensive, because instead of focusing on small states (I'm not saying it has to he Iowa and New Hampshire, but small states) where retail skill and organization matter, then you immediately have to start plunking down hundreds of millions of dollars in ads. It would be much better to have a Presidential ranked choice voting with the nominees once that gets settled.
Re: Hillary and Biden winning the nomination, I wanted Bernie to win and I did everything I could to help him (not money or YouTube comments, but real world grassroots organizing), but like it or not, he didn't have the votes. If all it takes is a few well-timed endorsements to derail the effort, it was a pretty hollow lead. In all honesty, given the way the centrists tried to sabotage Biden, of all people, how do we know they wouldn't do it to Bernie and then say this was proof that his ideas failed? Bernie doesn't sit and whine about a raw deal. He uses his gavel to make good things happen. If it is his fate to be our Bryan instead of our FDR, he has done the work and cleared a path for the next generation to lead the movement.
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@CeceMack That's not how it works, especially in a state where Trump won by 39 points. The last non-Manchin Democrat to hold statewide office was John Perdue, who was actually popular for finding literally millions of dollars in unclaimed funds for West Virginians. He lost to Capito's nephew by 13 points in 2020. There are no statewide elections in 2022. The state is losing a Congressional seat, but no Democratic challenger has been within single digits of a Republican incumbent in Congress this century (the closest was 16 points). Republicans have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. Where is someone going to "pop up and build a reputation"? Do you think that Jennifer Garner is going to move back to West Virginia and win on star power?
When Ben Nelson was in the Senate and actually had a voting record to the right of the most liberal Republican in the Senate for his first eight years in office (Chafee, 2001-07; Snowe, 2007-08), which has never been true of Manchin (Snowe, 2011-12; Collins, 2013-16; Murkowski, 2017-present), and Nelson represented a state where Republicans won by less than half of the margin Manchin has faced the last two cycles, no one gave him anywhere nearly as much grief. I want the most lefty candidate who can win. That is probably Gallego in Arizona. Sadly, it is definitely Manchin in West Virginia, and given that he barely held on against Morrissey in 2018 (who is a total charisma vacuum whose wife was a lobbyist for the leading manufacturer of Oxycontin), quite frankly it would probably take a miracle for him to survive in 2024.
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@Badatallthis Stuff How did the second vote go for the Truman plan for health care? How about the Nixon plan? How about Hillarycare?
How does forcing a performative vote doomed to fail hurt Medicare for All? Okay, let's go through the logic. Let's say the vote is forced to "put people on the record," even though there is such a thing as sponsorship that does just that. So, you have a vote on the floor. One of three things happens:
1) The sponsor list matches the final vote, so you just wasted everyone's time.
2) The Soft Yes members become Hard No, and you're farther away from passage.
3) Pelosi allows Catch and Release, knowing the bill is 100 votes short. So, members in lefty districts how don't really support it vote Yes to avoid an Eliot Engel situation, but if it ever actually has a chance of passage, they'll show that their support was insincere and just to avoid a primary challenge (See also: Gabbard, Tulsi).
So, not only does it not help you get what you want, but it defeats its own stated goal. Not only that, but it was always a primary tactic, not about expanding the map at all. Funny how every Dore tactic is only about hurting Democrats.
Riddle me this, Batman, what have you personally done to build support for Medicare for All?
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@EverRae First of all, there was actual interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections to help Trump. Not ballot stuffing, and no one ever suggested that. It was there in plain sight, and people were convicted for their roles in it.
And, yes, it is lazy. You originally insisted that if one side did it the other side had to it, too. And, like it or not, there is a huge difference between pointing out that a propaganda campaign happened and storming the Capitol to try to overthrow the government. To make those remotely equivalent is not only lazy, but indescribably dangerous.
And you honestly don't see how it enables the worst actors to play both siderism enables the worst actors, just look at what you have posted. You are dismissing an armed insurrection because someone pointed out that bad things happened in another election. Democrats had a much stronger case in 2000, and no one stormed the Capitol to try to kill Denny Hastert. Al Gore shut down efforts to switch the results. To pretend that they are the same gives zero incentive to the worst actors to do better because "everyone does it." You seriously need to look in the mirror at yourself to see why you are refusing to call out a literal fascist coup attempt.
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@jessatesta Who is Varn? Yes, I do think that there is some merit to giving someone some grace, but it should have been obvious at that debate, not a year and a half later, that Jimmy Dore was an unserious person who was only doing it for clicks and cash. Telling Sam "go easy on him" was in a sense saying not to expose the grift.
Yes, he started to get a bit quicker on the ball towards the end (he even let David and Nathan Robinson go on at length about their problems with Rising on his own show, even if he didn't want to join in himself, so I do think that had he lived a few more months even, he would have completed his acceptance of what they were doing), but at this point in time, we have seen the "how I left the left" grift so many times that we know its beats and rhythms pretty precisely. Michael was great at many things, but grifter spotting wasn't really one of them.
Then again, it would make an interesting question of how you handle an ethos of "kindness to people and ruthlessness to systems" when a grift is both slow motion and obvious at a certain point. A month or two ago, I was willing to say that this might be a one-off of an occasional bad take, but the fact that they have dug in so hard seems more and more like evidence that their former proteges didn't betray them as much as they showed them the path.
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@whosays1977 I would say that the swing states are Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, with the reach states being Texas, Ohio, and Iowa.
Thank you for all your work! I knocked on doors in PA starting in July with DSA, did a reading at a fundraiser, and was captain for a petition drive (if the primary wasn't over by the time it got here, I would have been a block captain). When I hear the keyboard warriors insist that they tried, only to find out that they didn't really do anything, it can be so maddening.
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@mayavox I don't care what caucus she sits on. Do you think Nancy Pelosi is a big lefty? After all, she was a member of the Progressive Caucus until very recently. What about Joe Kennedy III?
Really? I'm making it up that Tulsi Gabbard never used the sake talking points that John Delaney did about "choice" when it came to private insurance? Well, then what was this she said to Anderson Cooper?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/3/1876429/-In-which-Tulsi-Gabbard-literally-calls-her-own-healthcare-bill-un-American-Seriously
[Excerpt]:
AC: Do you think those who are embracing taking away private insurance from people alternately, is that just politically/strategically a non-starter?
TG: I don't know about the politics of it, but I just think about it from the perspective of [...] thr American people... that if all of a sudden you are taking away their choice... that's not a very American thing in my opinion. [...] So, let's do our jobs, try to bring down the cost of healthcare in this country that's exorbitant, make sure people get the quality care they need, and if they still choose that that's not what they want, they can go get private insurance.
I didn't put those words in her mouth, and you can watch the video in the link starting at 3:32. The part that shows the flip is at 4:16. Checkmate.
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@carlosb5523 So, Yang never said that. He never once let those words or a similar formulation come from his mouth? Then, riddle me this, Batman, what do you call this at the 4:11 mark?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is2VWliq7Jg
Or this at the 2:35 mark?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eqin3ELGnU
Both of those sure sound to me like his long-term goal is to get rid of the existing social safety net, especially the one with Rubin. Or, as Grover Norquist put it, shrinking it to the size that it could be drowned in a bath tub.
You keep saying that people just need to do more research, but maybe the problem is that people have already done a lot of research about his program and realize that it is terrible. If someone gets more now and decides to keep what they already have, those people will be negatively affected by the method of taxation. Unless he thinks that he can get rid of disability, or parents needing to send their children to daycare, or poor people needing affordable housing (he doesn't even try on that front), then a lot of people will suffer from either eliminating those programs or not benefiting and having to pay the taxes for them. $1000/month isn't enough to live on now, let alone in the future when there are no new jobs if he is right.
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@elbruces It depends on the area. It might make it easier for a third party that actually organizes rather than focusing on a doomed Presidential election chasing matching funds* then they might have some strength. Its main draw is getting rid of the spoiler effect, but if the third parties understood this and did the work, they might be more competitive. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the last third party to win a significant number of Congressional seats focused on local organization, won races, and proved their competency to voters. It's how Sewer Socialism became a thing.
*as an example, in my native state [one that I left 15 years ago], all it takes to get ballot access statewide is 1% of the vote in the previous gubernatorial election, the Mountain Party [originally started as a statewide party, now affiliated with the Green Party] and the Libertarian Party both qualified, and in 2020, out of a possible 117 legislative seats (where all it takes to qualify as a candidate, you need a filing fee of $100 for the House and $200 for the Senate), each party only fielded five candidates.
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@jones1618 Bernie narrowly lost Iowa and had a massive win in New Hampshire. However, Hillary got a very big win in South Carolina and had a huge lead going into Super Tuesday. Bernie won four of the 11 states and was trying to play catch up after that.
In 2020, Biden basically gave up on the early states. Bernie was in a very close won in Iowa, won in New Hampshire but not by enough to get more delegates, had a big win in Nevada, and lost big in South Carolina. Bernie led by about four delegates going into Super Tuesday. Buttigieg and Klobuchar had virtually zero support from black voters, and they dropped out before Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden. Biden got a big win on Super Tuesday and never looked back. Bernie always had trouble in the southern states, but he had a shot in Texas and Tennessee. Losing both of those proved to be fatal.
Had Ranked Choice Voting been a thing, it may not have made a difference. The Warren voters resented the fact that Bernie got what they saw as their lane, so it wouldn't have been as clear cut as people think. By the time Bernie dropped out in April, he needed 2/3 of the remaining delegates to win, but he was only getting half that.
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@jones1618 The 2016 race was down to three candidates by Iowa, but O'Malley was such a non-factor that he dropped out that night.
Yes, there was an effort to coalesce around one candidate in 2020, but quite frankly, Klobuchar should have dropped out after finishing fifth in Iowa (which didn't happen because all of the problems of Iowa took center stage, and outside of a surprise third in New Hampshire, she did nothing in Nevada and South Carolina, so the real question was how she even made it as far as she did) and Warren should have dropped out after New Hampshire (she is the only candidate from a neighboring state to ever lose, and she had a pitiful 9% and a fourth place finish but no delegates) and she stayed in past Super Tuesday. In that sense, it definitely hurt Bernie that she stayed in as long as she did, and he may have won Texas and Tennessee without Warren and Gabbard on the ballot. The usual function of the early states is to narrow the field.
The only candidate who could have made a case for staying in longer was Buttigieg. Ironically, the 2020 race was more decided by people staying in too long rather than getting out too early. The reason why I mention stuff like that is because a lot of the so-called Bernie or Busters have continued this myth that is completely counter to what happened. Bernie got 44% of the vote in 2016, and 32% of the vote in 2020 before he dropped out. It was a remarkable showing, but it just wasn't enough, and in all honesty, given that his 2020 campaign was running based on the flawed strategy that the non-Bernie candidates wouldn't coalesce around one and this huge field would stay in place to the point where 30% would be enough, that proved to be a fatal mistake. Focusing on perceived slights keeps us from doing the necessary work. Two weeks ago, I got to see Bernie in action. To borrow a phrase from Edward Kennedy, the dream will never die.
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@Dan0TheMano She was not the point person for Bernie for five years. She was the point person for one year, and then they parted ways once she pulled this Never Biden nonsense. Then, she made the accelerationist argument to Noam Chomsky, so if she had gotten her way, Donald Trump would have won a second term.
If you have a vote, it doesn't end up the way that she thinks it will. She does a great many things well, but if your underlying theory is one of accelerationism that has been proven false time and time again, the other assumptions that you make that spring from that will also be wrong. Demanding a floor vote will be worse than nothing, because Pelosi can then say that she gave you what you wanted, and it failed, so now it's time to shut up. And exit polls are completely unreliable on Medicare for All, because it all depends on the wording. I have seen it anywhere from 37-73%. There is a way to build support, and it doesn't involve meaningless message votes. It involves doing actual work. So, what have you personally done to fight for Medicare for All and build support?
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@Badatallthis Stuff Well, you are one of the few advocates of this goofy strategy who has actually done some of the actual work, so I salute you for that.
How could you hold Republicans accountable? Work to defeat them in the general election. If Republicans become the majority in Congress, do you honestly expect a vote on Medicare for All? When they held Congress, they tried to take away health care for tens of millions.
If such big majorities support Medicare for All, why did only 21% vote for it in 2016 in Colorado? Why did Biden not lose an ounce of support after saying he wouldn't sign it in March 2020? Why do majorities think that it means you can keep private insurance, with even bigger majorities thinking that who support Medicare for All? When you dig deeper, people like the idea of universal health care, but it is clearly not an indicator of support for the bill. We have a lot of work to do, and saying things like that leads people to think that our work is done.
So, given that Catch and Release is a thing, how is having a vote really going to hold anyone accountable? It makes it easy for people to fake it only to abandon it once it has an actual chance to pull the rug out.
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8:32 Actually, there were exit polls that did for some reason lump Johnson and Stein voters together. They were asked, if their chosen candidate was off the ballot, would they support Hillary, Trump, another third-party candidate, or not vote at all. To my surprise, despite Libertarians more than tripling the Greens, Hillary was their overwhelming choice. If you add the net percentage who supported Hillary in the H2H (i.e., if they would have been 50-30 for Hillary, add 20% to her total), and she would have won Michigan and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania would have been very close, so I'm not sure if Hillary would have won, but it would have been awfully close.
Why did more Johnson voters prefer Hillary? Probably because they were suburbanites who didn't like Trump or Hillary and saw Johnson as a safe place to go.
That being said, the argument that Bernie cost Hillary is ridiculous, because that was the primary and he didn't cost her one vote.
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@bru1016 I would if he called it single payer, because keeping competing private insurance is, by definition, not single payer. Medicare for All is a single payer system that expressly prohibits competing health insurance. Tulsi Gabbard said that was un-American. Play the video.
As I said to the other tulcel, I look at the principle involved rather than the person, so you're argument that I am going to jump up and down and support something just because Bernie says it shows that you don't understand the point at all.
Is a public option preferable to what we have now? Yes, it is. Is it Medicare for All? No, it is not. "Choice" is the exact word that John Delaney tried to shove down people's throats in his bid to protect his stock value, I mean for President. Tulsi Gabbard embraced that framing when talking about health insurance. Therefore, she abandoned Medicare for All. Either that, or she is incredibly stupid when it comes to politics, and I don't think she is stupid.
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@TheBigShaun100 14 years ago, at a Young Dems event, I said, "If we don't stop going halfway when Republicans keep pulling the political spectrum farther to the right, before you know it, Newt Gingrich will be considered a liberal." People laughed, and I said, "That might seem funny now, but Barry Goldwater is already considered a moderate." In 2012, Gingrich got in trouble for supporting the Republican alternative to Hillarycare (aka, the framework for the ACA) until 2009, and supporting action on global warming. I wasn't wrong.
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@DickskinJones666 It depends on what you mean by cheat. They clearly put their thumbs on the scales by burying the debates when no one would watch them and violating neutrality rules, but going from name recognition lower than the margin of error to 44% of the vote was pretty miraculous. If you would have asked most Bernie supporters in the summer of 2015 if they would have taken that result, they absolutely would. (My "optimistic scenario" at the time was that Bernie got 25% in an early state and used that momentum to keep fighting all the way.)
However, that does not mean that if the DNC would have been completely neutral that Bernie would have gotten to a majority. His own campaign, and the candidate himself, didn't expect him to win, but wanted to pull Hillary to the left when he started. If you look at his Senate schedule, he clearly didn't think he had a chance to win until it was too late to get the needed infrastructure in place. That being said, if he got a majority of pledged delegates, he would have won the nomination, just like in the other two scenarios that I presented, Obama and Kerry got the majority of superdelegates in the end.
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@afrodinho Yes, Chile is a fascist regime.
Again, you are conflating authoritarian regimes with fascism. If you notice, I used the word "authoritarian regimes." And, I know several Iranians, and fascist isn't the word they used. Maybe because they were graduate level and actually understood definitions of word. Again, I posted a link that lists 14 very specific characteristics of fascist regimes. I am not saying that it means right wing authoritarian, because it is once again a subset. If you made a Venn diagram, it would be inside, but it would not occupy the same space. If you meet a few of the criteria, you're probably not a fascist, but a different strain of authoritarian. You probably think that if someone has breast cancer, that person also has prostate cancer.
I am from the United States. I learned that you don't insist that the second definition (that also says "colloquial" is not the definition that is accurate when plenty of people keep telling you that it's not) os correct when it is not the formal one. Do you think it's accurate when people use "literally" when they mean "figuratively," even though it is literally the exact opposite? Or is that a bridge too far?
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@carlosb5523 What has Yang done for the past decade? Well, after making his fortune on test-prep software and trying his hand at making lightning strike twice, Yang started a non-profit organization in 2011 that he said would lead to 100,000 jobs by 2025. All the while, he went on the TED talk circle and was feted about how much of a difference maker he really was, but in reality, after an initial splash, the number of applicants plummeted, there are fewer than 400 jobs more than halfway to the deadline, and half left the communities he sent them to for greener pastures:
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/13/18637853/andrew-yang-venture-for-america-jobs-record
No, thanks. One businessman who became President vastly overstates his accomplishments is more than enough for a lifetime.
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@TowelReady Well, I gave an example. And what do you mean by "support"? Just running some lefty, especially one who lets ego get in the way when a group that supports her sees the writing on the wall and puts its emphasis on a candidate who has an actual chance of winning at the end (the documentary that includes Swearingen and AOC, among others, expected to end with losses for all, so AOC winning changed its entire narrative), then it's not going to work. The fact that people keep mentioning Ojeda tells me that those people don't know WV politics. The 70-80 years of taking power for granted followed by inaction once that power was lost is not something that can be fixed in one cycle. It will take time. I ran for office in WV in 2006 (House of Delegates, but I moved out of state and still have family and friends there), and I remember hearing long-term elected officials worried that they had to run on issues when they never had before, so they weren't sure how to do that. WV Can't Wait will take time to work, but something like it is the only chance in the end.
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@Toad2943 I have been saying this for quite some time, and I will keep repeating it until people understand the rules. Splitting votes by having a dozen candidates would backfire spectacularly if the goal is to keep Bernie from getting a majority of pledged delegates.
Here is why. A candidate has to get 15% statewide or in a Congressional district, depending on the rules in each state. If you have, say, eight establishment candidates still in the race who do not meet that threshold who get 30% of the vote, that vote goes into the ether. If Bernie wins a state with 40% of the vote, but only 60% of the vote goes to viable candidates, Bernie will get 2/3 of the delegates. A lot of establishment candidates makes it easier for Bernie to win, not harder, because the longer it takes them to coalesce around one or two candidates, the longer they will be defeating themselves.
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@j.israelsson Yeah, that's a pretty big asterisk that you didn't include in the first post. Even granting that, there were a lot of people in Michigan and Wisconsin who thought their state surely would hold in 2016 (probably PA, too, but the numbers were always fairly close). There were also people in Georgia who didn't think they had a shot in 2020. Surprises and realignments happen all the time. The bluest state from 1932-1996? West Virginia. The reddest state in American history before 1992? Vermont.
But, let's assume that you're right and nobody inadvertently makes it easier for Trump to win. You've played it smart, and voted for a candidate who isn't actually doing any organizing (I'm on her e-mail list because I gave her a dollar to get on stage in 2019, and she pretty much disappeared for three years, whereas Bernie focused on his job, kept people going about issues, and endorsed down ballot candidates) and she gets maybe 5% of the delegates if she's really lucky, and West doesn't play spoiler, and he even gets the Green Party matching funds, what exactly does that accomplish? Maybe you missed the part of the video where the last third party to get matching funds fell from 8.5% in 1996 to 0.43% in 2000, and was basically dead by the next election cycle. In American history, only Perot ever got 5% in consecutive elections, and he fell from 19% without matching funds to 8.5% with them.
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@j.israelsson There is, but third-party Presidential campaigns ain't it. Any movement worth anything starts from the ground up, but it takes time, and it takes work, and any time I ask the people who say they gave up after Bernie didn't become President what they did, with one exception, I either get silence or excuses. It took the right 16 years after Goldwater lost to take charge, and they had money on their side. If people are truly committed to their ideals and making things better, they need to stop being so lazy. I did everything I could to help Bernie win in 2020, and in 2022, I came back to help a friend try to win a state senate seat and this year tried to help a mayoral candidate. This fall, I might be helping a township council candidate.
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@schumanhuman Yes, Yang made it either/or, but his long-term goal was the elimination of the current social safety net. And this is incredibly problematic. Take a single parent with two young kids. That parent makes $20,000/year. Daycare for two costs over $1500/month, so this subsidy is worth over $1000/month, so you are looking at telling that single parent that either he/she can give up the subsidy and have to give up the job in order to get the $1000/month, or turn it down and see costs increase.
Re: land tax, so you want to punish the rural poor? It's no wonder this idea came from an urban dweller who didn't understand how that would effect people in rural areas. For example, my brother bought a tract of land that is 29 acres because he wanted the trailer on the land, but you can't develop the land, because most of it is nowhere near a road, and it had an old cemetery on it. A lot of people in rural area own plots of lands that can't be developed or would completely kill the whole point of living in a rural area in the first place.
Re: rent control, if it distorts the market and inflates housing costs, why did Toronto see its homelessness quintuple within five years of Ontario abolishing it? Not the theory, the actual effects of the policies.
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@emileconstance5851 Thank you for your appreciation. You and others in your situation are why I do the work I do. Yes, I would appreciate a more generous system. The last four years, our church has had a program where we agree to reduce our food spending during Lent to the SNAP limit and donating the difference between that and our regular spending to an anti-hunger charity (we have picked Heifer International each year). This year, there was a 15% increase in SNAP benefits, and the difference was night and day. I get that it doesn't fully capture the experience because I know that it ends on Easter, but the previous amounts were ridiculously low, and then you have the people wisecracking about how expensive it is, but they wouldn't last a week, let alone a month and a half or permanently.
After a while, I came to realize that the real Yang came out to right wing audiences, because there was no benefit in pandering to people who couldn't vote for him.
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@mike1134 "have seen support for non major party candidates in prime minister elections"
I looked it up. Excluding two periods of 22 and 39 days, Australia hasn't had a PM outside of the Liberal Party or the Labor Party since 1929. Except for En Marche, the Fifth Republic of France has always had a conservative PM, or a socialist PM, even if the party's names have changed.
Yes, there are more than two parties in those countries. That is because they have Parliamentary systems instead of a Presidential system. And even then, they end up either on the sidelines or supporting one of the two major parties. Functionally, there isn't a whole lot of difference. The main advantage of Ranked Choice Voting is that it gets rid of the spoiler effect.
And, riddle me this, Batman. If "the duopoly refuses to allow Ranked Choice Voting," why did Maine, Alaska, and NYC approve it?
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@mike1134 Re: ballot access, sometimes third parties are far more lazy than they are willing to admit (then again, maybe the whole trying to get money rather than actually win elections and build a movement plays a role). In my native state, any party that gets 1% in a gubernatorial election gets an automatic ballot line for the next four years. In 2016, both the Mountain Party (started as a state party, but now affiliated with the Green Party) and the Libertarian Party meet that threshold.
Of the 117 seats up in the state legislature (all 100 in the House of Delegates and half of the 34 in the State Senate), the Mountain and Libertarian Party each had five House candidates, and the Libertarian Party had two State Senate candidates to one for the Mountain Party. Once again, these are automatic ballot lines. In 2018, the Mountain Party didn't even bother to run a single candidate for State Senate. Yeah, it's those evil major parties keeping them from running those races.
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@bigbrocook2119 UBI is neither left nor right. Everything depends on how it is structured, and he made it as right wing as possible, both by excluding the poor and disabled, and by using a regressive tax to pay for it. And, yes, he talked about automation, but he also wanted to do nothing about it other than give people what he described to Ben Shapiro as "the magic of a thousand bucks a month because it is below the poverty level for one person, which means that people will have to work in order to live any life of meaning." But, if there's no job in the future, how can that happen? He was a grifter all along, and any examination of what he said on right-wing shows was the real Andrew Yang.
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@kalaba360 So, a person getting $200,000/year has to get it or it isn't really UBI, but people getting any one of 125 programs, seven of which he only bothered to specify (TANF, SNAP, WIC, LIHEAP, SSI, daycare subsidies, housing subsidies) not getting it without giving up those benefits for life is just fine? [In Dr. Evil voice] Riiight.
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@kalaba360 Yeah, your statement shows that you still don't understand how progressive and regressive taxation works. It is based off the percentage of income. Someone making 100K does not need to spend as high a percentage of income as the poor in order to survive. Saving is a luxury. If you save, you aren't paying the tax. In my adopted home state of Pennsylvania, we exempt staple goods from our sales tax such as groceries, clothing, medicine, and diapers. End result? The poorest 20% pay nearly ten times what the richest 1% do as a percentage of income. Therefore, it is a regressive tax, and the single parent with two small children making $20,000/year and almost certainly also getting SNAP, WIC, and LIHEAP has to pay the tax and gets nothing. The person making $100K pays the tax and gets something for it.
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@kalaba360 Well, then you did very poor research because "stacked" means both/and in this context, and 125 of the existing programs are either/or, and Yang only ever bothered to mention seven by name that he didn't later backtrack: TANF, SNAP, SSI, WIC, LIHEAP, housing subsidies, and daycare subsidies. However, we know it was 125 because Yang said 126 before he changed his mind about RSDI and then said 125 after. The mere fact that you are defending the idea that it isn't both/and shows the cognitive dissonance by those who support this while trying to make arguments for the left: the things that you say that "make it work" are the exact opposite of what Yang wanted to do, yet you actually defend his proposal.
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@kalaba360 The criticism is that it is a regressive benefit with a regressive tax to pay for it, and the person advocating it wants to ultimately get rid of the existing social safety net, which means that if people's circumstances change, it will lead to a lot of devastation. Because he refuses to give the full list of the 125 programs, people have no way of knowing ahead of time whether or not they are affected by the either/or nature of the plan. If it was both/and, paid for by a progressive tax, and societal issues were addressed, that would be another story, but it isn't, so those are three strikes, and three strikes means you are out.
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@kalaba360 In my example, the working parent makes $20,000/year. The daycare subsidies are already about $1500/month, and the SNAP for three people at that level is close to $700/month, and WIC is probably another $100-150/month. So, that person clearly would be better off with what we have now. Because of that, this person suddenly has to pay a VAT so some millionaire can get a little bit of extra money.
Either people who support this approach know exactly what they are doing and are purposely trying to hurt the poor and disabled, or they don't know and would unwittingly do so, and Yang specifically mentioned daycare subsidies as one of the 125. Since you "did the research," you should know this, so why are you lying?
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@bluesrockfan36 Bernie adds to Medicare. Yang subtracts from existing programs. The 94% figure is false. It assumes that everyone gets the full thousand. And unless Yang has flip-flopped AGAIN, he has specifically said that housing and daycare subsidies are either/or. You don't get to $600B in cost savings unless you are going after pretty much every needs-based program out there.
How is it regressive, aside from the fact that not everyone gets it? (And before you repeat the nonsense of how much better it is, the amount is already lower than the poverty level to the point that Yang has to pretend that the extended family is back or that living with your buddies is an attractive option for anyone other than poor college students.) Well, he says "every Amazon purchase." This means that he isn't talking about luxury items, but perhaps exempting some staples, although Amazon does sell groceries, so even that is iffy. My state exempts groceries, clothing, medicine, and diapers from the sales tax, and the poorest 20% pay nearly ten times what the richest 1% do as a percentage of income:
https://itep.org/whopays/pennsylvania
AT BEST, it is putting your feet on the gas and the brakes at the same time, and you don't know what will happen then.
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@bluesrockfan36 So, the poverty level for one person is higher, Yang doesn't want people to get any more benefits, it is much higher than that for single parents, and he will not give any more for children, and he was insistent to Ben Shapiro that he won't expand the benefit, and it will eliminate poverty completely? Yeah, sure.
And there have actually been studies about different versions of UBI. Ones that are below the poverty level (the study defined it as €1100 for every man, woman, and child, so about $1200) and eliminates other anti-poverty programs. The end result? Poverty and wealth and income inequality get worse:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/universal-basic-income-switzerland-finland-milton-friedman-kathi-weeks/
For someone who went to the research place that every Yang Gang banger eventually goes, the irony is that I am actually documenting more of my research.
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@patricktuorto I have been critical of the Electoral College for over 25 years. If you like the Electoral College, either it's because you think it helps you, or you don't like democracy. Don't give me this line about "every state being heard," because no one goes to places like Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, etc. Heck, in 2012, the election was fought over a whopping nine states. Yeah, that really makes sure everyone gets a voice!
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@jessea5044 You don't know what that means? Coca-cola, IBM, and Ford (among others) had friendly business relationships with Nazi Germany before and during the war (Fanta was invented due to a sugar cane embargo). Before WWII started, several prominent business leaders, including but not limited to Rockefeller and Koch, tried to install a fascist dictatorship led by Smedley Butler, but luckily for us, they picked the wrong general and he exposed the plot.
Yes, FDR wrote that letter, and he did what he could at all times against the Nazi government, but there was enormous pressure against the war until Pearl Harbor. Right wingers have even spread the nonsensical lie that he let his guard down in order to justify entering the war. Projection is a powerful thing for some.
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@tjmul3381 Here is a article written a week before the election talking about Nader's intentions, his statements, and his actions (if his real goal was to get to 5%, he would have actually gone to safe states like California, New York, and Texas, instead of camping out in close states like Florida, Washington, Oregon, and Wisconsin):
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2000/11/ralph-the-leninist
So, let's look at the argument: if voters on the left stay home and a race narrowly goes the other way, the Democratic Party will come to their senses and vote a hardcore lefty in. There are two case studies, 2000 and 2016. Instead of Gore, we got Kerry. Instead of Hillary, we go Biden. Sitting elections out doesn't "scare the party," it angers the party, and it marginalizes the people who make it.
And what has Nader done since? Tried to shove billionaires and Rand Paul down our throats. If that is your true blue believer, then you don't understand politics.
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@BobbyU808 First, it is lose (the opposite of win), not loose (the opposite of tight). Sorry, but that is my grammar pet peeve.
Second, if I supported something for 25 years, I wouldn't support the candidate who is doing the least to make it a reality.
Third, Dave Chappelle was a huge get, but if you want to compare endorsements, Donald Glover isn't anywhere near the best Glover endorsement. That would be Danny, who has a long record of fighting for the people, and Bernie has him. And, quite frankly, if Elon Musk endorsed my chosen candidate, I wouldn't brag, I would be embarrassed.
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@BobbyU808 No, it won't increase the purchasing power for 94% of Americans, because Yang forces the poor and the disabled to choose between their current benefits and his plan. He has a lost of 125 programs that people have to forfeit if they take his money, but he has only mentioned seven, so a lot of people will find out that, not only aren't they getting anything, but now they have to pay a VAT. Example: daycare subsidies is either/or, and daycare for two children is over $1500/month, so you are now telling a single parent making $20,000/year that he/she now has to pay a VAT and get no benefits.
And how is the freedom with 125 strings attached dividend "tax free"? Everyone has to buy things, so everyone will pay taxes. If it was structured with the slightest hint of concerned with ability to pay, then it would be incredibly easy to structure a UBI that is actually tax free.
So, a UBI that is neither universal nor basic income is better than Medicare for All? The biggest cause for bankruptcy isn't purchasing power, it is medical expenses. And there are so many things that need to be done that are societal rather than individual: health care, housing, dealing with the climate crisis in a bigger way than just giving people a little bit of money to move to higher ground, funding education, and repairing our crumbling infrastructure. Then, we can start looking at individual, especially considering the problem that. as many have noticed, at this time you cannot make a UBI that is both universal (such as taking other benefits away) or basic income (enough to be above the poverty level). Yang does neither.
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@BobbyU808 The Iowa caucuses are more about organizing than personal appeal. Yang couldn't get on the Ohio ballot because his campaign didn't bother to include a sheet for their petition drive saying who it is for and what office is being sought, so this is not a good reflection on their ability to organize. It wasn't about signatures, because you only need 50 per Congressional district. The Yang campaign insisted that it was a violation of the First Amendment and poorly written, even though every other campaign could figure out the rules.
And as someone else pointed out when talking about other candidates, the greatest organization in the world cannot overcome fundamentals. And, as is fairly common, candidates who are not viable tend to lose about 2/3 of their support by the time the night is over. If Yang ends up at 1-2% in Iowa, his support will crater. Yeah, sure, he will have the money to go to Super Tuesday, but barring this being the most inaccurate poll in American history, he won't be able to build on anything and he will be just running out the money.
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@BobbyU808 Well, I talked to a few Yang Gang bangers out and about who said, "Is Bernie going to give me free money?" and as soon as I or the person I was with said, "What will you do with that thousand dollars if you have a medical emergency?" That was the end of the support for Yang. And if you know all these things as to why you can't put too much stock in either thing, why bring them up at all? The time for rallies was months ago. And after Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie, that will almost certainly help among a type of voter that is very hard to get. Two weeks ago, he said that all but two candidates could eat something not disgusting, Yang was not one of the two. And the path for hoping for Iowa to shoot you to relevance is a lonely one indeed. In 2008, Richardson was hoping for his big breakthrough in Iowa, and was in the high single to low double digits in the polls (he peaked at 12). Long story short, 7% of voters walked in supporting Richardson, he ended the night with 2%, and his campaign was dead a week later after only getting 4% in New Hampshire.
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@BobbyU808 You assumed that it was a young person. And you say that Bernie's ideas are outdated, but I would call not pushing to have the United States join the rest of the world in not having tens of millions uninsured or underinsured, half a million medical bankruptcies, and tens of thousands dying every year from a lack of health insurance an idea whose time has come. I didn't give up on the idea a few years ago (despite claiming to support it for 25 years, you either clearly gave up on it or it just isn't a priority), because you can say #HumanityFirst all you want, but if that isn't a priority, there is a human-shaped whole in your #HumanityFirst.
And you can say that young people don't care about health care, but talk to a young person who is sick, or someone who has lost coverage because his/her boss decided to go for a sham no-frills plan. They will care deeply about health care. Tell someone whose landlord raises the rent on a fairly regular basis that rent control isn't necessary to avoid eating up a sizable amount of the thousand. Tell the single parent scraping by at the poverty level that, because Mr. Humanity First doesn't want him/her to get both the thousand and the daycare subsidies that now everything at the store costs 10% extra that this will improve that family's lives.
And if you want to let a few big companies get to control what automation looks like, they will get to keep all of the power. People aren't stupid. When they hear that someone both says that we need his plan because there won't be any jobs left in the future, and that he is keeping it too low to actually live on and wants to keep it that way to force people to work, that is a bleak idea.
"So, what do I say to that? [Pause] I say that I'm holding out for something better." Matt Damon, "Good Will Hunting"
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@AW-nb5dt Again, not forced to join. Apparently, your lack if knowledge knows no bounds. And Taft-Hartley is not the Constitution, therefore, it can't be used to argue that something is unconstitutional. When it comes to questions of business, the Interstate Commerce Clause almost always beats the Tenth Amendment. If the Chamber or the Business Roundtable or ALEC or any other union busters are paying you, they should arm you with material that is fresher than a two-year old gallon of milk.
Oh, and another hint, if you want to cite something that contradicts the idea that union workers get paid more, GDP is irrelevant to average income. For that matter, since the union busters started getting their way and unionization started to plummet in the 1980s, productivity isn't, either.
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@cartermclaughlin2908 I also have a job and a kid, and being a single parent complicates my activism to the point where the first thing I have to ask if it is a weekend with my daughter is if there is any sort of childcare available. (Philly DSA had a canvass in January, and you can see my daughter on the website in the picture because they always take pictures of everyone at grassroots events so that people will be inspired to come out the next time.)
That being said, you're asking the right questions. This is a good thing. Any attempt at activism needs to go out to the people, because the real organizing is making sure that other people show up. If you want to go more into detail without giving too much away, what kind of area do you live in? I ask because it is a lot easier to organize in metropolitan areas. When I ran for the WV House of Delegates in 2006, even wearing a suit and a sticker with my name on it and holding a clipboard and pamphlets, someone called the cops on me. (It's practically a rite of passage in the world of door-to-door canvassing.) Still, that was the one precinct where I was able to find every single door, and it was the home of my best performance in the district. I say this not to scare you off, but just to let you know that as long as you're not selling anything, you are perfectly entitled to do so, and most cops will let you be on your way.
The next step is to find the cause that most interests you. A lot of my Medicare for All volunteer work was inspired by Bernie, and I just happened to meet some Philly DSA people in my neighborhood and they told me about what they were doing. If you are in a union, that is another good way to get some activism going, but there may be some pushback from the people who like to play small ball.
If there isn't an active group that is already doing the work in your area, there is probably a national group doing something in that vein, and many would love to have someone in your area. In college, I started a group affiliated with Americans United for Separation of Church and State on campus, and they literally mailed me a bunch of booklets, pamphlets, etc., to give away. Once we got recognized by the university, I got a booth at the MountianLair once a month and got to it. If you have any other questions about how to get started in grassroots organizing, let me know or feel free to ask anyone who mentions experience with it, and we will be glad for more hands to lighten the load.
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@Quartermaster_Veteran I just now noticed that you responded to the Syrian refugees question. So, you think that the Republican Party, which went along with the Muslim ban, only cared about an "orderly refugee process"? How much more orderly do you need? Oh, and given that she said that she wanted to give preference to "religious minorities" (read: non-Muslims), she took an unconstitutional position. Well, she also entertained war crimes, so I guess I can't be surprised.
As far as her position on Iran, you don't have to take my word for it:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/yes-tulsi-gabbard-iran-deal-war-hawk
As far as her support of Russia, here is her praising Putin for bombing civilians in Syria and criticizing Obama for not doing so:
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/649458891168714752
And this is the problem with pretending that Tulsi Gabbard has any sort of principle: if you are looking for evidence of her support of a position, both before and after her supposed shift to port, or her opposition, you will find it. That's a lot harder for someone like Bernie.
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@Qossuth Looking at the numbers in the early states, I think that this could very well be a momentum thing like Kerry in 2004 (and, why I said at the time that Hillary knew she needed to win Iowa at all costs), where he won early and couldn't be stopped. No candidate has ever won the Iowa/New Hampshire double (Carter, Gore, Kerry) and lost the nomination. If he wins the double, he wins Nevada, and if he gets close in South Carolina, he will beat expectations (and he actually has the most endorsements from state legislators in the Palmetto State, so he might still pull it off). He already has the lead in California and other Super Tuesday states, so he can get quite a head of steam by the end of Super Tuesday and steamroll to victory.
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@Prague3203 Yang is not for increasing the minimum wage. Why do you have to lie? His argument wasn't that the minimum wage at the federal level is too one-size-fits-all (putting aside the irony of that from a man who insisted that this will revitalize rural communities because he said that people will move to where houses are cheap, ignoring that people live where they do because that is where the jobs are), his argument was that any increase in the minimum wage will lead to job loss and "$1000/month for everyone is worth more than $15/hour."
And this talk about "increased bargaining power" is little more than an incantation to try to make the counterargument go away. Who is going to have this "bargaining power"? Only 6% of the private sector and 32% of the public sector workforce is unionized, so if you aren't one of the fortunate ones like me, who is doing the negotiating? And don't give me "if people get $1000/month, they can turn down the job," because Yang himself gave the game away when he told Ben Shaprio that it's only $1000 so people still have to work, and he specifically called that amount magical. I guarantee that, for most workers, the best case scenario would be their bosses telling them "you just got an extra thousand dollars a month, so why do you need a raise from me?" if not an outright cut in wages. Your statements are based on wishful thinking rather than how employers actually treat their workers. Their goal is to keep costs down as much as possible, or else the topic of robots wouldn't even be a thing.
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@Prague3203 So, I am supposed to believe that the person who lied about his goals for the existing social safety net, who lied about his support for Medicare for All, who lied about his support for Bernie in 2016 (he neither voted, volunteered, nor contributed to the campaign), who lied about having a post-work economy, who lied about who would pay the tax, and who lied about giving it to "every adult, tax free, with no strings attached" is suddenly telling the truth? When someone lies that often, I need that person to admit that he lied, especially given his tendency to be honest about his motivations to right-wing sources.
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@Prague3203 I actually ran for office, and I didn't lie about my positions. Yes, Horseshoe Theory is a thing for some issues. This wasn't about "reaching everyone," because if it was, it was wasting his time talking to people who couldn't vote for him. You must be new to politics, because you would know that it would come back to burn you if you are saying one thing to one audience and the exact opposite to another. That is not "politics," that is lying.
And it's interesting that you bring up Horseshoe Theory in this instance, because there is a left-wing and a right-wing version of UBI. The key difference? Ones on the left are meant to supplement existing benefits (with the possible exception of TANF), and ones on the right are meant to replace it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see which side his is on. He invoked Martin Luther King, but his policy is Milton Friedman, made worse by paying for it with a regressive tax.
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@mbburry4759 Well, did you ever stop to think that Georgia designed it in such an awful way because they wanted it to fail and resented the federal government telling them to do it? In Pennsylvania, the first car is exempt, and pretty much the only things where assets factor in at all are TANF and Medicare Buy-in or nursing home programs. And the "nearly dollar for dollar" is by definition not the case for SNAP because, for example, the maximum payout for one person is $234, and I guarantee that the income ceiling is not $234 in any state.
So, your answer is, because some states design it poorly, to take it away from everyone who needs it? Using an example about it "punishing people and making it impossible to work," daycare subsidies is something that Yang would put on the chopping block, and by definition, it is there to help people be able to work. For two children, daycare alone is easily over $1000/month without the subsidies, and for one child, you are looking at anywhere from $600-800 depending on where you live. If someone is receiving the daycare subsidy, that person is probably also receiving other programs, too, such as SNAP, which puts him/her over $1000. If you've got someone making $20,000/year (and Yang doesn't support raising the minimum wage, so it is still a thing in his world), he wants to take away the thing that makes work possible in order to give someone less than his/her job is paying, or he wants to give that person nothing and force him/her to pay a regressive tax for benefits that he/she will not receive. It sounds like the Freedom with 125 Strings Attached Dividend is actually more guilty of what you think the existing social safety net does than the one we have now.
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@Prague3203 Okay, let's just hypothetically assume that you are correct, and that Yang didn't really want the right-wing version of UBI (even though, by definition, he did), and he really just wanted to lie to right-wing audiences so he could "make it law" instead of lying to left-wing audiences, as I have argued.
Well, in that case, you and your hero don't know the first thing about trying to make things law because you have to get elected before you make something a law. Emphasizing the right-wing nature of the bill is going to alienate voters in the Democratic primary, and how well did that work? I'd say that not getting more than 5% in either early state and zero delegates shows just how effective it really was.
And I've had friends who wildly overpromised things, too. They were still my friends, but I learned that I couldn't trust a single thing that they said about their capabilities, and and overestimating the capabilities of a program by over 50 times (remember, this was only going to be about jobs in poor cities, so by definition the people who went to boomtowns didn't accomplish what they set out to do) tells me that this is someone who tends to run with something that sounds good and overestimate his ability to deliver. If someone is that off on that, it makes me question how right he is about a lot of his projections.
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@graceg3250 No, because he said there were 125 programs that he wanted to make either/or, and housing subsidies were one if them, and so was LIHEAP, which he referred to as "heating subsidies." He only ever specified a few, though: TANF, SNAP, WIC, SSI, LIHEAP, housing subsidies, and daycare subsidies. He also walked back two others (RSDI and VA Disability), but the mere fact that he put those two on the list in the first place is highly suspect. Then again, he never did give a full list of the 125, so it would have been impossible for people to make an informed decision about his proposal when he was running.
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@1massboy Yea, if you look at historical patterns, most states tend to be consistent, but there are often states that end up being a surprise. From 1032-1996, no state went blue more often than West Virginia, and it hasnt gone blue since. Going into 2008, Virginia was tied for the longest red streak in America, and it hasn't gone red since. Before 1992, the reddest state in America (only going Democratic once in its entire history [1964]) was Vermont. It has been blue ever since. Delaware and Illinois used to be swing states. California went red every election from 1968-1988 before going blue. Would any of those have happened if the people in the state had said, "Well, it's a afe state, so why bother?"
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@1massboy I'm losing nothing, because I'm not the one who doesn't seem to understand that surprise results happen all the time at the state level. And as far as those "warning signs," switching for a Presidential election is often (not always, but more often than not) the first sign of political realignment at the state level, not the last. When West Virginia went red for only the fourth time in the last 70 years and the first time for a non-imcumbent Republican since 1928 (the three times it went red from FDR to Clinton were 1956, 1972, and 1984, with popular incumbents who won re-election in a landslide), the Democratic Party held every statewide office, every Congressional seat but one (who won a very close race that year and was the daughter of a popular former governor), and controlled both Houses of the Legislature by margins of 75-25 and 25-9. Does that really look like a state that's about ready to flip? If Republicans hadn't seen an opportunity there, Florida would have been irrelevant, so even if 40+ states are safe, there is usually some outlier that nobody expected to see on the list, and this goes both ways.
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@gamingislife3332 See, the difference between me and advocates of term limits is that I don't talk about The Way Things Ought to Be, I look at the way things really are. Several states have enacted legislative term limits. Did it happen the way you think it would? No, it resulted in more control by donors (if you know you're only there for 8 or 12 years, you're going to look for a place to land) and unelected staffers (who understand the nuts and bolts of government in a way that the transients don't).
My native state of West Virginia wanted to give Robert C. Byrd a ninth term in 2006, and we did. My adopted home state of Pennsylvania didn't want to give Arlen Specter a sixth term in 2010, and we didn't. If you don't like that people get re-elected, that's up for the people to decide. I ran to try to deny someone a fourth term in the WV House of Delegates in 2006 and failed. Fourteen years later, someone else beat that person in the State Senate primary. I would have liked to have served, but the people didn't vote for me, and I accepted it. I was depressed about it for a couple days, but I accepted it as soon as I saw that my opponent's lead was far too great to overturn, and I conceded. That's democracy.
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ppm120667 Well, radiologists policed themselves, and their premiums plummeted. When my brother was in third grade, the doctor set his forearm upside down after it was broken. If that would have been my son instead of my brother, he wouldn't have ever had to worry about money again. As long as fields refuse to deal with those bad apples (which spoil the whole bunch), they are endangering patients, so that is why they need to pay premiums. Cinsidering how that the worst actors could never actually pay the settlements, there is a good reason why malpractice insurance exists. Then again, considering your lack of understanding in one area where your Dunning Kruger is kicking in, I can't be surprised that it kicks in other places, too.
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@HTownCharlieBrown When Manchin was governor and there were two coal mine explosions within as many weeks in 2006, he ordered every single mine in the state closed until safety audits could be conducted and a stronger mine safety law passed. It took three days.
That same year, he passed an increase in the state minimum wage.
After Sandy Hook, he led the effort to strengthen background checks on gun purchases. He usually goes just far enough left to avoid a primary defeat, and not an inch farther, but this was his true profile in courage moment.
He got his seat by defeating someone who wanted to abolish Social Security, Medicare, and the minimum wage. He has done a lot to be angry about, but he is literally the only Democrat who can win statewide in WV right now. Doug Jones got some slack for being in a state that Trump won by 25, but Manchin has managed to hold on in a state Trump won by 40. Call out the bad stuff, but have some perspective.
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@timn5008 I'm just asking what you did. You're the one who implied that I was a Biden backer in the primary. And I didn't say "what did you give?" I said "what did you do?" I knocked on doors, made phone calls, served as a petition drive captain, and did a reading for a fundraiser. I will not have someone who doesn't understand how math works or building a majority works.
And I work and am a single parent, and I managed to find the time to actually do things. Then again, I actually did those things because I supported Bernie, not because I opposed someone else, which sounds like what you did with your ageist remarks. Bernie did more for you than just about every other political figure in your life, and because he understands math and you don't, you have the nerve to call him weak? His slogan was "Not Me, Us" for a reason.
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@buddygrimfield7954 When was this supermajority? Are you talking about the whole seven months when Democrats held 60 Senate seats and one of those Senators was very sick and could only come to the floor when his vote was essential to the result? Because before that, you have to go all the way back to the Johnson Administration to see at least 60 Democratic Senators and unified control of elected government.
"Most (I would think) people consider it crazy to vote only against people rather than for them."
Well, other than those who insist on the wooing and wondering why they get nothing, that's a pretty common thing, and ignoring it can have tragic consequences. Imagine how world history would have changed if the DKP and the SPD agreed to form a coalition in 1933 rather than the former insisting that the Nazzty threat was a temporary one. The only thing Blue and White could agree on was that Netanyahu had to go.
To see the difference in your strategy vs. the one that I advocate, look at the Green Party vs. the religious right. Which group actually got any of the things that it wanted this century, the group that said it was above it all and that people shouldn't vote for the lesser evil, or the people who complained about several of their nominees but who always showed up to vote? They didn't gain that control because they sat back and whined about how much they hated the Rockefeller Republicans. They did the grassroots organizing, took over school boards, took over local parties, and by the time they were ready to flex their muscles, they dominated American politics for a generation. The left atrophied in the 1970s and 80s to the point where you had people trying to do something, anything, to win. And then, by the turn of the century, you had the people who decided that they were above it all and didn't want to get their hands dirty wondering why they always lost. The candidates I have worked or volunteered for over the years may have a record that would get a coach fired, but at least I am fighting and trying to move that Overton Window over. And, yes, a lot of those candidates lose, but sometimes it's like a vending machine. You can't knock it over with one push. You have to keep going. It took the Socialists and the Populists 40 years to see many of their ideas come to fruition with FDR. If they're willing to fight, who are we to give up?
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