Market values for services that include cost of living isn't what I'd deem an entitlement argument. But frustration with the Fed Govt is certainly understandable.
My thought on minimum wage is that it ought to be tied to regional cost of living and re-calculated every year or so. The goal being to reward work with the dignity of being able to pay one's own way without subsidy from local/state/federal programs.
That was a good article. HATED the last paragraph tho:
Thats basically what I was saying yesterday or two weeks ago(who knows what time is anymore?). The fn party constantly eats it's own. Just so scared of people who stand up and say exactly what they are and have been doing wrong. I'm honestly so sick of how afraid they are of everything.
AOC's problem is that she has to have it all now. To put it in terms Brits can understand, when you're a new House member you're supposed to take your backbench seat, shut up and build relationships. If you hold your seat a couple of times (thus proving that you'll likely be around a while) people will take you seriously as a member and those relationships will start bearing fruit if you built them.
If you want to try and shortcut that process to gaining influence by building a national profile, you can, but doing that disrupts the relationship building process. If you want to instead double down and build your national profile by tossing verbal hand grenades at leadership, you shouldn't be surprised when they try to throw you under the bus at every opportunity.
well to explain, people in Liverpool boycott the sun, which is owned by Rupert murdock and many of those people will have sky. Giving money to the person who also owns the sun newspaper. Is that hypocritical?
Re AOC, that’s not quite all the facts is it?
She’s asking for her salary, and the minimum wage, to be pegged to inflation. Seeing as though congressional members haven’t had a raise for 10 years. Which is in effect a 15% pay cut during that time.
Do you think it’s fair that politicians get a high salary? Doctors? Architects? What about footballers?
What’s the level of salary where it’s safe to talk about inequality without being hypocritical?
While we all enjoy a glib post every so often, and I have even indulged in them, the backstory to Abe's recent cleverness has nothing to do with racist ascriptions--that seems to have come from Abe's mind--but it does have a lot to do with the Republican war on food stamps/food assistance. Hence the tweet by Pam Keith.
And whether Pelosi owns an expensive freezer or not is a dumb thing to bring up. I'm certain Abe is wealthier than the person who cleans his house on Thursday mornings, but this doesn't mean he is indifferent or hypocritical in supporting the less wealthy.
More simply, most politicians will always be richer than their constituents. This was true of Clinton, Obama, Trump. The difference is whether those politicians generally vote in favor of improving the lives of the impoverished or not. As a rule, Republicans have a poor track record on giving a crap about poor people or hunger. (And yes, Obama did bail out big banking so I'm aware of the corporate Democrat stuff).
Here is some context about Trump and other Republicans:
President Trump’s 2021 budget proposes to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) by more than $180 billion — nearly 30 percent — over the next ten years...
Shrill and defensive as usual, but you are missing the point.
"Distressed at the plight of the poor resulting from the Winter's severity, Queen Marie Antoinette saved three hundred thousand francs from her personal budget and turned this sum over to her ladies-in-waiting, the parish priests of Paris, and charitable organizations for distribution among the needy"
And the peasants famously replied "Cheers, Marie!" and harmony was restored to the land.
How do you think it feels to read that tweet, undoubtedly shared on some facebook group or whatever, after you've spent a quarter of your weekly budget on gas to queue idly with thousands of other cars because you can no longer feed your kids without someone else's charity? And then the algorithm links to Nancy Pelosi showing off her mansion and suggesting you give her favourite $12 ice cream a try.
Do you think they immediately googled Pam Keith to get the backstory, or to compare Pelosi's voting record with Kevin McCarthy's? Are they sitting there thinking, 'You know what's wrong with America these days? The lack of civility in our political discourse"
The Democrats are the party of the professional elite. They are the party for people with college degrees, and the socialisation and manners that accompany them. It wasn't always this way - West Virginia was the most Democrat state going until Clinton finished that off for good - but it is now, and everybody except for people with college degrees knows it. It's a bit like that old joke: 'A frog asks a fish "how's the water today" and the fish says 'what the hell is water?'
The Democrats are so thoroughly immersed in their own self-righteousness that they are genuinely baffled - they sincerely cannot comprehend - how anyone could fail to love them. "They must all be racists", they soothe themselves, over cute electoral college fantasy maps. "We'd win every state if only 60% of the population spontaneously disappeared". It is all but impossible these days for them to empathise with people who don't spend every waking hour retweeting Trump outrages, and Russiagate hysteria which quietly but invariably turns out notto be true . Virtually impossible for them to see themselves the way those outside their own tribe see them. Even synapse strains, and usually the 'But the Republicans!!!/you morons are voting against your own interests!!!' circuit-breaker kicks in first.
At this point, both parties' primary function is to protect the status quo and manage America's lurching regression to the gilded age. Absurd as it is, the symbiotic culture war matters more than anything else in American politics because, very much by design, it is the primary realm in which the duopoly opts to perform their symbolic competition. They have in effect agreed to divvy up the spoils. The Democrats' positive vision is neo-puritarism; salvation from original sin - but only to a select few who can master the arcane rituals and incantations required for penance and absolution. For everyone else, they are Bill Cosby for white people, hectoring them for their cultural pathologies and blaming them for their plight. If only you'd pull your trousers up, stop listening to that dreadful gangsta rap Joe Rogan, and learn to code!
Voters without college degrees, who do not spend their spare time fretting about Lev Parnas or googling Nancy Pelosi's voting record to win arguments on the internet, would genuinely struggle to list a single way in which their lives will materially change after Joe Biden takes over. What they do know is that while Democrats think they are dullard barbarian heathens who are responsible for what is wrong in America, the Republicans do not. It is not a difficult choice.
Once the Democrats' transition to College Party is complete - and without a pandemic, a depression and the most reviled President since Harding to campaign against - they will lose every time. I suspect many Party elders probably feel relieved - after all, the modern Democratic Party functions more as a fundraising racket than a political organisation, and panic and hysteria reels in the checks like nothing else. With real power comes responsibilities which and expectations which they have no intention of fulfilling. A Republican senate means the Democrats can resume normal operations: approving Mitch McConnell's judges and reaching across the aisle to people who they accused of fascism not ten minutes ago, performing the comfortable rites of 'moderate, pragmatic bipartisan consensus' on, say, gutting and privatising social security (like Obama would have done with Boehner if the Tea Party hadn't stopped them) - until the next electoral cycle kicks in and we immediately return to edge of the totalitarian precipice.
AOC's problem is that she has to have it all now. To put it in terms Brits can understand, when you're a new House member you're supposed to take your backbench seat, shut up and build relationships. If you hold your seat a couple of times (thus proving that you'll likely be around a while) people will take you seriously as a member and those relationships will start bearing fruit if you built them.
If you want to try and shortcut that process to gaining influence by building a national profile, you can, but doing that disrupts the relationship building process. If you want to instead double down and build your national profile by tossing verbal hand grenades at leadership, you shouldn't be surprised when they try to throw you under the bus at every opportunity.
If she comported herself like Joe Crowley she would not have defeated Joe Crowley.
She represents people who want more from their Congressperson than 'little girls should be seen and not heard' and decades of being nice to Joe Crowley so that maybe, some day, decades from now, she can get a compromised-beyond-recognition version of her agenda passed.
I doubt she has much of a future beyond her own constituency for some time to come, but she does her job well and her constituents like her. And she has achieved much more thus far by standing outside the tent pissing in.
The Democrats are going to have to realise that they won't even be able to turn out college kids much longer so long as this persists:
Yeah that one stings. I jibbed Facebook years ago, but basically can't avoid using WhatsApp if I ever want to speak to my friends again. All because one guy has an Android lol
Yeah that one stings. I jibbed Facebook years ago, but basically can't avoid using WhatsApp if I ever want to speak to my friends again. All because one guy has an Android lol
AOC's problem is that she has to have it all now. To put it in terms Brits can understand, when you're a new House member you're supposed to take your backbench seat, shut up and build relationships. If you hold your seat a couple of times (thus proving that you'll likely be around a while) people will take you seriously as a member and those relationships will start bearing fruit if you built them.
If you want to try and shortcut that process to gaining influence by building a national profile, you can, but doing that disrupts the relationship building process. If you want to instead double down and build your national profile by tossing verbal hand grenades at leadership, you shouldn't be surprised when they try to throw you under the bus at every opportunity.
so what you're saying here is that AOC should know her place in the house and work for ages quietly building up relationships so people take her seriously.
That's all well and good till you consider that a reps term is 2 years so new reps spend over half their time fundraising and campaigning for re-election.
AOC has bypassed this through using the internet and social media to fast track her message and rase funds from her base with minimal effort.
It will become the new normal and you will see more new house members following this template (for better or worse).
AOC shouldn't conform to how congress normally works because the house, with it's two year terms, is broken.
qz.com
www.theatlantic.com
lol
