Paid family leave and lower costs for prescription drugs for seniors have now been cut as social safety nets from the economic bill.
When asked why he wouldn't support paid family leave, Joe Manchin said it was because of his grandchildren. He doesn't want the costs of paid family leave to be passed on to his grandchildren. He's worried about sky rocketing national debt that future generations will have to pay for.
Even after all those concessions of the economic bill last week. This afternoon Joe Manchin is still a no go for the bill. He want's to hold off on the bill until "we better the economic impact of the bill".
Moving onto to another topic. Last nights episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was all about homelessness and is well worth the watch.
Basically to summarize Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, over the past 10 years there have been a sharp increase in laws against being homeless. New or more restrictive loitering, trespassing laws or laws that simply make it illegal to be homeless or sleep in the public. Sleeping in your car is the fastest spreading new law in many cities.
Here in America we seem to be resolved to criminalize being homeless over solving the issue. One guy they interviewed who has been homeless for 9 years says he has spent 1 out of every 3 nights in jail. As soon as he sits own he's "trespassing". If you think about it, that means he's spend 3 years in jail just for being homeless.
Since the Reagan administration we have been making economic policies that have only resulted in increased homelessness and cuts to the social safety nets that provide subsidized housing. As Reagan put it, "they are homeless by choice" and that belief is still heavily ingrained in people today. Homelessness isn't caused by the fact that the cost of housing has vastly out paced wage growth and economic policies have cut subsidies according to them. But rather mental health and addition. And while it's true a lot of homeless people suffer from addiction. Addiction wasn't the cause of homelessness, but rather the result of homelessness.
One lady they interviewed who became homeless earlier this year says it was because her landlord raised her rent by $150 a month suddenly. She couldn't afford it. When she was short of being able to cover rent in full she was evicted. Her landlord didn't want to negotiate or work out a deal. He was very much if you can't pay rent I sure as hell can find someone else who can attitude.
A city in Texas blasts 2 different children's songs at sleeping homeless people at night hoping to disperse them.
The story is the same city after city. The number of beds available in shelters is only a fraction of what is needed for each and every homeless person. For example, one city they listed has 345 beds but more than 1500 homeless.
In San Francisco the city only has 16 bathrooms (porta potties) accessible to nearly 4000 homeless people. To make matters worse they remove them at night because they don't have proper security.
News covers about homelessness is almost always through the lense of people living in homes. It's about how much a nuisance homeless are. One of the most reported topics is about human waste in the streets. But homeless people often do not have access to bathrooms at businesses and situations like in San Francisco leave people no choice. There is no place else to go.
The number of homeless people is also drastically undercounted in our country. They only count the number of homeless 1 night a year. And it only accounts for people in the shelter systems.
The leading cause of homelessness today is unaffordable housing. Of low income americans, there is only enough housing available for 40% of them.
$34,000 on average is spent per homeless person by taxpayers for medical and policing expenses for homeless people each year. They have calculated that it would only costs taxpayers a little over $10,000 a year total per homeless person if they subsidised housing. Yet time after time policy makers choose not to subsidise housing. They don't want people to become "spoiled", believe they are lazy and/or choose to be homeless.
Whenever policy makers try to do something to find housing for homeless people they get aggressive opposition from nimby's. The story is always the same. People believe something should be done about the homeless, but they do not believe their community is the spot to do it. They are worried about crime, their safety and how it will affect the local businesses.
Basically to summarize Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, over the past 10 years there have been a sharp increase in laws against being homeless. New or more restrictive loitering, trespassing laws or laws that simply make it illegal to be homeless or sleep in the public. Sleeping in your car is the fastest spreading new law in many cities.
Here in America we seem to be resolved to criminalize being homeless over solving the issue. One guy they interviewed who has been homeless for 9 years says he has spent 1 out of every 3 nights in jail. As soon as he sits own he's "trespassing". If you think about it, that means he's spend 3 years in jail just for being homeless.
Since the Reagan administration we have been making economic policies that have only resulted in increased homelessness and cuts to the social safety nets that provide subsidized housing. As Reagan put it, "they are homeless by choice" and that belief is still heavily ingrained in people today. Homelessness isn't caused by the fact that the cost of housing has vastly out paced wage growth and economic policies have cut subsidies according to them. But rather mental health and addition. And while it's true a lot of homeless people suffer from addiction. Addiction wasn't the cause of homelessness, but rather the result of homelessness.
One lady they interviewed who became homeless earlier this year says it was because her landlord raised her rent by $150 a month suddenly. She couldn't afford it. When she was short of being able to cover rent in full she was evicted. Her landlord didn't want to negotiate or work out a deal. He was very much if you can't pay rent I sure as hell can find someone else who can attitude.
A city in Texas blasts 2 different children's songs at sleeping homeless people at night hoping to disperse them.
The story is the same city after city. The number of beds available in shelters is only a fraction of what is needed for each and every homeless person. For example, one city they listed has 345 beds but more than 1500 homeless.
In San Francisco the city only has 16 bathrooms (porta potties) accessible to nearly 4000 homeless people. To make matters worse they remove them at night because they don't have proper security.
News covers about homelessness is almost always through the lense of people living in homes. It's about how much a nuisance homeless are. One of the most reported topics is about human waste in the streets. But homeless people often do not have access to bathrooms at businesses and situations like in San Francisco leave people no choice. There is no place else to go.
The number of homeless people is also drastically undercounted in our country. They only count the number of homeless 1 night a year. And it only accounts for people in the shelter systems.
The leading cause of homelessness today is unaffordable housing. Of low income americans, there is only enough housing available for 40% of them.
$34,000 on average is spent per homeless person by taxpayers for medical and policing expenses for homeless people each year. They have calculated that it would only costs taxpayers a little over $10,000 a year total per homeless person if they subsidised housing. Yet time after time policy makers choose not to subsidise housing. They don't want people to become "spoiled", believe they are lazy and/or choose to be homeless.
Whenever policy makers try to do something to find housing for homeless people they get aggressive opposition from nimby's. The story is always the same. People believe something should be done about the homeless, but they do not believe their community is the spot to do it. They are worried about crime, their safety and how it will affect the local businesses.
How are we going to get people to work for peanuts if we cannot frighten them with the threat of homelessness? The problem here comes when everything starts to become unaffordable for more and more people, and they start to look at the peanuts they are given and start asking how they are supposed to pay for things.
I read a really depressing article about what happens to all the returns that people send back from online shopping. In a regular store, an item would be tried on and then put back on the rack if it doesn't fit. With online shopping, they can't just put it back into rotation, especially if the clothes were packaged from the factory in bags already. Most of these items end up getting donated or thrown away. Now, because there are some things from some very high end places, there are some items that they don't want to donate here in the states because it would "dilute the brand".
Right now, I see a lot of the same patterns. We are withholding things from people in order to make sure that commercial entities can function. We have decided to gut social programs and not fund any new programs so that we have enough to buy weapons--because this is one of the few things we actually do make over here--and bail out corporate bad actors. We are letting people die from preventable and treatable diseases, while limping our anemic "service based" economy along, because that's the only care we are going to invest in. Over and over papers and models show that higher wages, nationalized medical care, and sick leave can help our economy improve, but corporations do not want to raise wages because the masses might actually come to expect a living wage and a medical system built for everyone.
Did John Oliver hit on the diseases that we are finding in homeless populations that we thought we had eradicated like trench foot and bubonic plague? Part of the reason we have societal standards has to do with disease control. When society breaks down, this sort of stuff happens. We forgot that it takes all of us together to move forward and have honed in on individual freedom as our only focus.
Did John Oliver hit on the diseases that we are finding in homeless populations that we thought we had eradicated like trench foot and bubonic plague? Part of the reason we have societal standards has to do with disease control. When society breaks down, this sort of stuff happens. We forgot that it takes all of us together to move forward and have honed in on individual freedom as our only focus.
One thing I forgot to mention that he touched on is that for homeless people, jobs available to work are at night. This often means if the homeless people work these jobs at night, they go without shelter. Shelters often have a curfew and close their doors and down let anyone in or out between 9pm and 6am.
He also covered that people like to throw things like bottles out of car windows at homeless. One lady from a interview they included had a black eye / goose egg from a bottom thrown at her.
People also love to yell things out of car windows at homeless. Like "Go home". John Oliver was like what the hell are they talking about. That tent is their home. Their homeless. They don't have a home to go home too.
I am heading to drop my ballot off at the drop box now. We had one crazy person running for the Tacoma school board that I gleefully got to vote against. Tacoma is pretty liberal so she didn’t stand much of a chance anyhow. Still a grumpy white woman who homeschools her grandchildren running for school board to protect kids from CRT and quoted MLK in her write up running against a doctor of Southeast Asian descent with 3 kids in Tacoma public schools is quite a dichotomy. Can you believe the Doctor didn’t bring up politics or race or “over sexualization” even one time in his write up?
Absolutely not.
I've been reading about them going to "net zero" and that's just a load of BS. Basically, these corporations and governments realize that the real answer is that we can't make and have so much stuff, but that would be awful for the way we currently structure our economy. So they are working on taking a few processes in these factories and make them greener, so they can continue to pollute during the raw mineral extraction phase of production or they burn gas or coal to keep the production lines running.
I feel like we have gone too far in this paradigm and our rationalizing is becoming absurd. The problem is that capitalism and pollution go hand in hand. Currently, each generation needs to replace itself plus some to keep countries "economically competitive" and consuming things keeps everything going. However, the best thing for the planet is fewer humans and less consumption. There is no way to marry the two. It doesn't matter how many carbon credits you buy, the planet doesn't accept our money.
The morning after election day news is that Republicans surged. They had a much better than expected performance in election results.
New Jersey was supposed to be an easy win for democrats. But the election is too close to call still for governor. A republican won the governor of Virginia.
Apple News spotlight is reporting that some of the key takeaways are the "The culture war still works" for the republicans and that "Democrats gave up on rural America".
The morning after election day news is that Republicans surged. They had a much better than expected performance in election results.
New Jersey was supposed to be an easy win for democrats. But the election is too close to call still for governor. A republican won the governor of Virginia.
Apple News spotlight is reporting that some of the key takeaways are the "The culture war still works" for the republicans and that "Democrats gave up on rural America".
This is not unusual. Neither Dems getting whooped in an off year election nor the hyperbolic overreaction by the media. It’s always a bummer when the GOP does well but in a two party system this is typically how things work.
This is not unusual. Neither Dems getting whooped in an off year election nor the hyperbolic overreaction by the media. It’s always a bummer when the GOP does well but in a two party system this is typically how things work.
Yes. And the Republicans were expected to have the advantage as it's an off year election and mid term for a democratic president. But they way over performed from what was expected. And that is the point the Apple News Spotlight was trying to make.
Even in areas considered solid blue and easy wins for the Dems the races are too close to call still.
Yes. And the Republicans were expected to have the advantage as it's an off year election and mid term for a democratic president. But they way over performed from what was expected. And that is the point the Apple News Spotlight was trying to make.
Even in areas considered solid blue and easy wins for the Dems the races are too close to call still.
Even is solid blue states you still occasionally get GOP Governors, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire all have them now, Illinois last Governor was a Republican. Virginia hasn’t been a solid blue state for very long but has had a Democrat as Governor for the past 12 years. Over the past month, polls have shown as tightening in the Virginia races. My point is that while it’s always disappointing when your side doesn’t win, it’s all very not nearly as shocking or out or out of place as the press is gonna paint it.
The morning after election day news is that Republicans surged. They had a much better than expected performance in election results.
New Jersey was supposed to be an easy win for democrats. But the election is too close to call still for governor. A republican won the governor of Virginia.
Apple News spotlight is reporting that some of the key takeaways are the "The culture war still works" for the republicans and that "Democrats gave up on rural America".
Apple news is not wrong though. The democrats gave up on rural America. They also gave up on non-college educated America--and seeing how it's getting harder and harder to afford an education, this maybe is not a great strategy. Eventually, you are going to have to sell people more than minimum wage service sector jobs if you want that cohort of people to vote for you.
I seriously doubt he would win. He lost for reasons that still stand and I feel certain he lost more base along the way with all the fraud claims and shit. Republicans may primary him, though.
I have to admit i might follow this to superficially but it´s kind of hard to convince democratic voters to come out if you don´t get anything done. If you cannot pass legislature that actually improves peoples lifes you won´t garner much excitement
I have to admit i might follow this to superficially but it´s kind of hard to convince democratic voters to come out if you don´t get anything done. If you cannot pass legislature that actually improves peoples lifes you won´t garner much excitement
Figured this was coming the moment Biden, an otherwise pretty terrible candidate, finally won and immediately renegged on stimulus checks. Treating right now as the calm between the shit storms (not that now isn't a shit storm but you know what i mean).
Figured this was coming the moment Biden, an otherwise pretty terrible candidate, finally won and immediately renegged on stimulus checks. Treating right now as the calm between the shit storms (not that now isn't a shit storm but you know what i mean).
Funny to me is how when a Progressive candidate or policy fails the media/talking head blame the Progressives for being out of touch but if a Moderate Dem, like Terry McAuliffe loses they still blame Progressives for pushing the party too far to the Left. It seems to me if the progressive Left has to foot the blame either way then we might as well be putting forward only Progressive candidates. If Terry McAuliffe supposedly as liberal as Bernie, then aren’t we better off putting up actual Sanders-esque Progressives since we’re damned either way?
