spaceghoti

joined 1 year ago
 

Gordon said there's also a ton of uncertainty surrounding the Social Security program itself. Because of this, there will likely be reduced benefits in the future to keep the program solvent.

Couples who wait until the higher earning spouses max their benefits at age 70 face additional issues.

I can't help but note that Newsweek didn't even attempt to discuss the prospect of increasing payments to Social Security from upper income earners or requiring Congress to payback the "loans" they took from it to pay for military expenditures.

 

Members of the United Auto Workers have overwhelmingly approved a contract that will deliver higher wages, assure them of a role in the EV transition, and possibly lead toward greater unionization of the auto sector. With all of the benefits the pact provides, tens of thousands of people will immediately see their pay rise more than 40 percent, the union said.

The union’s ratification of the pact, by a margin of 64 percent, with Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis followed a two-month strike. Though the electric vehicle transition was never an explicit part of bargaining, it ran as a simultaneously tense and hopeful undercurrent through the walkouts, pickets, and negotiations. This contract, analysts say, will allow the union’s 150,000 members to maintain their quality of life as the nation decarbonizes the transportation sector.

 

For decades, regulators have tried to clamp down on front-running, the term for when investment professionals make personal purchases or sales of securities when they know that their employers or clients are about to buy or sell the same securities. But a massive assemblage of confidential stock trading data obtained by ProPublica reveals that the practice may be continuing on a notable scale.

 

How the economy is doing has always been a contentious topic, particularly when friends and family with different politics gather for Thanksgiving dinner. And the question has gotten even thornier this year, with consumer sentiment and polling data about the economy becoming historically de-linked from official measures of economic health like GDP. It’s not our job to tell people how they should feel about the economy, but we can at least add some facts as context to common complaints.

 

Americans who want to get free COVID-19 tests mailed to them by the federal government are once again able to request them as of Monday, after the White House restocked the program for the holiday travel season and an expected seasonal rise in coronavirus cases.

At covidtests.gov, each residential household can order four free rapid antigen COVID tests, which will begin shipping on November 27. Those who did not order tests during the last round in September are allowed to order a total of eight tests.

 

Latino voters appear to be evenly divided between Trump and Biden, including in battleground states. And with the economy and the war in Israel, immigration policy might not rank as the top-of-mind issue for most voters. But it has the potential to draw a striking contrast between the two candidates. Biden came into power vowing to roll back many of Trump’s worst policies and restore humanity to a broken immigration system. While he has delivered on some campaign promises—rescinding the Remain in Mexico program, launching efforts to reunite families separated under Trump, and expanding the use of temporary humanitarian protections for migrants from several nationalities—his administration has also come under fire from advocates for turning to restrictive asylum measures and even Trump-like policies to appease criticism from Republicans of “open borders.”

 

Every time the pee-tape story is about to slip out of my mind, Trump brings it up in a public forum. In 2021, he announced, “I’m not into golden showers,” while addressing the National Republican Senatorial Committee retreat, though no one had asked. He brought it up during at least two separate speeches he delivered in Ohio last fall. And he mentioned it again on Saturday during a campaign rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

 

...it's quite clear from the polling that most conservative evangelical Christians like the libertine, gutter-snipe Donald Trump even more than the rest of the Republican Party. They are the strongest pillar of his following. So attempting to pry them loose with appeals to decency is a waste of breath. There have been billions of pixels spent trying to figure out why they like him, and I suppose there are many reasons. But recent polling by the Public Religion Research Institute found that one-third of white evangelicals favor political violence so Trump's insurrection obviously holds major appeal to a lot of them.

 

Phillip Fisher Jr. is a pastor and Republican ward leader who coordinates faith-based outreach for Philadelphia’s Moms for Liberty chapter.

He’s also a registered sex offender, due to a 2012 felony conviction for aggravated sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy when Fisher was 25.

 

Hamby holds the trump card. The Law of the River — the compacts, laws and court rulings that govern how the river is allocated — reflects a time when water use was encouraged to bring settlers west. And court decisions have favored users with senior priority rights, meaning those who were first to plant stakes along the river, file claims in county recorders’ offices and prove their claims by taking water before federal and state water laws were codified. Those with such rights are legally entitled to receive their share of the river before the next person or agency in line receives any. The Imperial Irrigation District holds some of the basin’s oldest rights, dating back to 1901.

Hamby defends this system, which allows the Imperial Valley — home to only half of a percent of the river’s users, Hamby included — to control about a quarter of the river’s flow. That’s more than 10 times southern Nevada’s allocation and more than the entire state of Arizona receives. A recent ProPublica and Desert Sun analysis found that 20 valley farming families use about 387 billion gallons of cheap water annually, most of it to grow cattle feed, and one family uses more water than the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area.

 

There's a spectrum of ways to reform the House using proportional representation. Two key factors are how many representatives a multi-member district would have and how winners of House seats would be proportionally allocated.

In 2021, Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia led a group of other House Democrats in reintroducing a proposal that's been floating around Congress since 2017. The Fair Representation Act would require states to use ranked choice voting for House races. It calls for states with six or more representatives to create districts with three to five members each, and states with fewer than six representatives to elect all of them as at-large members of one statewide district.

 

Kelly is questioning the amount of support Trump has been able to gain despite the former president's legal woes, according to The Washington Post.

"What's going on in the country that a single person thinks this guy would still be a good president when he's said the things he's said and done the things he's done?" Kelly said in a recent interview, according to the newspaper. "It's beyond my comprehension he has the support he has."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (13 children)

We get that. The complaint here is that while the far-right will fuck us over for their corporate masters, they're generally honest about that. But Manchin's sabotage comes from within the Democratic party. He helps the Democrats obtain technical majority in the Senate, then blocks their agenda so Republicans and trolls can say "see? Democrats are just as bad! They're not interested in helping Americans either!"

And since the average voter isn't following legislation and how Republicans have weaponized obstruction, they hear that and assume it must be true. All because Manchin and Sinema don't have a problem with Republican obstruction.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (22 children)

Anything. Literally just change the rules! The Senate can do that!

The Senate can do that with a simple majority of votes. But when they need Manchin and Sinema to achieve that majority and neither of them are interested in helpful changes like fixing the filibuster, no. No they can't do that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He's not a centrist. He's conservative.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

However, at that point Reagan wasn't so concerned with his public image. Trump is as insecure as they come.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

What exactly does the appointment have to do with the corruption taking place?

That's how politics has devolved in the US. As long as you're on the correct side, you can be as corrupt as you want and the people on that side will shrug and go "not a big deal."

Note, please, that this problem is not the same with all political parties. For example, our House Speaker just announced an inquiry into impeachment proceedings for Joe Biden, apparently for governing while Democrat. The response from the left-wing is generally to roll our eyes and point out this is just political theater. If they actually find something actionable, then we'll agree that he should be removed from office and thrown in jail. But in 2021 Republican leadership outright admitted that Trump was culpable for the Jan 6 insurrection riot at the capitol, but still refused to impeach because he's a Republican.

This is how broken American politics have become. We're trying to maintain our faith in the system and trust our leaders to do the right thing, but an entire faction of our leadership wants to break the government and replace it with private, profit-based solutions. So here we are. We ought to be marching, but the protests against racism and discrimination didn't get us anywhere either. So we don't know what else to do and we're not eager for a second civil war.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I agree. But Thomas, Alito, and the other corrupt jurists on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republicans, so a large portion of the population will shrug and say "eh, no big deal." If it were Sotomayor or one of the less conservative jurists, those same people would be marching in the streets demanding blood.

American politics resembles nothing so much as a sports match.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Except this is the only job they care about. So they'll let the rest of the government's tasks go untouched.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (16 children)

We expect them to vote like assholes because they caucus with assholes. Manchin is allegedly supposed to be a Democrat and work with Democrats in Congress, but he seems to have more in common with Republicans. The only reason Democrats defend him at this point is because of their razor-thin majority in the Senate. If he switched parties or otherwise stopped caucusing with them, Republicans would take the majority and gain further control over our government. And that never ends well.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Right? It doesn't smack of desperation at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cram it down their throats. Make it a campaign message that gets repeated every hour on the hour in the upcoming campaigns. There are more districts that are no longer Republican strongholds than people realize.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At risk of repeating myself ad nauseam, no one is suggesting Biden is the perfect president or arch-progressive. Only that the policy successes he's managed to create are far more progressive than anyone expected and are victories we've been waiting for since Clinton's failed promises.

That leaves plenty of room for other ways he's disappointed us.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Sadly true. I don't know why I expected better. They're like toddlers throwing a tantrum because they didn't get everything they wanted.

view more: ‹ prev next ›