US Politics: Biden Hood - Prince of Plebs

[Fragile Bird]

11 minutes ago, ants said:

If Whitmer is an economic terrorist, what are her demands?

Why? Isn't the purpose of most terror just terror? Besides that, she made her demand. Close Line 5. The result is economic terrorism. But if she's forced into mediation, don't kid yourself, she'll make demands. I gather from the news in Canada she's demanding a share of profits from Enbridge. That would set a precedent that will be supported by corporate America, right?

[ants]

No. Most terrorism is aimed at achieving something. Give us what we want or we’ll do these terrible things. And the actual terrorism is deliberate and targeted. 

What you’re describing is someone who is trying to achieve something (meeting election promises and closing the line) which has catastrophic side effects on others. That isn’t terrorism. Your issues are a byproduct, not a goal or a tactic. 
 

As you’ve described them anyway. 

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, ants said:

No. Most terrorism is aimed at achieving something. Give us what we want or we’ll do these terrible things. And the actual terrorism is deliberate and targeted. 

What you’re describing is someone who is trying to achieve something (meeting election promises and closing the line) which has catastrophic side effects on others. That isn’t terrorism. Your issues are a byproduct, not a goal or a tactic. 
 

As you’ve described them anyway. 

Political terrorism, yes. This is economic terrorism. The hackers who shut down the Colonial pipeline demanded money (and from all signs, got it). The result is still economic terrorism. By demanding line 5 shut down, she's committing economic terrorism. The US does this all the time. Trump did it to Canada, he put tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, calling it a matter of national security, because Canada is one of the US's greatest enemies, right? Of course, we politely don't call it terrorism. In Whitmer's case she's just saying fuck you, eastern Canada, I'm shutting it down, so I call it terrorism. Again, I point to the US eastern seaboard, where after only 3 or 4 days of the Colonial pipeline being shut down panic mode has set in, and that's a case where the company says things will be up and running by the weekend. 

[Martell Spy]

Cheney booted from Republican leadership spot
Rep. Liz Cheney was voted out of House GOP leadership in a quick voice vote Wednesday morning.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/12/liz-cheney-removed-leadership-position-487522

Quote

 

House Republicans voted quickly on Wednesday to remove Liz Cheney as their No. 3 leader over her repeated criticism of Donald Trump, a massive shakeup that ties the party tighter to Trump and threatens to create a new litmus test in the GOP.

The fast-moving campaign to dump Cheney, Congress' highest-ranking Republican woman, and replace her with a Trump loyalist was orchestrated by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his top deputies. The California Republican and his allies complained that Cheney’s constant readiness to call out Trump’s lies about the 2020 election was a distraction that prevented the party from unifying around a cohesive message to win back the House next year.

 

 

[Zorral]

The media beat to get rid of unemployment benefits keeps increasing.  The prime time public radio program devoted it's opening first half hour -- the entire half hour -- to it, with multiple call-ins, all from employers making what they think are waterproof arguments proving they deserve to make lots of money at the cost of the safety and poverty of their employers.  W/o their capacity to utterly exploit we shall lose their all so essential to the public welfare their entirely useless business selling designer moss.  Notably, who didn't call in, were people from the construction industries.  They are far more concerned on how they can't get lumber and many other essential components.

People must be forced to go back to work instead of expecting to have living wages, decent treatment, and safe work environments, because those things cut into my bottom line.  Support ME!

[Week]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Political terrorism, yes. This is economic terrorism. 

A legitimate political, State actor delivering on a public campaign promise is not terrorism. You can call it war and gnash teeth, but it is not terrorism. Also, can we please give this a rest until there is actual new news to comment on?

Enbridge has said they won't shut down without a court order, Ottawa has filed in US court under the 1977 statue wrt cross border pipelines - shutting down anytime soon is unlikely. In the meantime, it would be smart to explore alternatives (allegedly other pipelines may have additional capacity) that do not endanger sacred and fragile lands.

[Week]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The media beat to get rid of unemployment benefits keeps increasing.  

Maintaining eligibility for benefits can be quite a pain in the ass too - at least in MA. Proof of job seeking, interviewing, etc. You can't just sit on your ass and collect. Is that not true in other states? Or has that changed with the pandemic? I rarely hear this pushback that really ought to defang the pearl clutching.

Note: I think those restrictions - especially in the first few weeks after losing your job - are unnecessarily onerous.

[Fez]

The UI has almost nothing to do with it. https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-job-market-is-starting-to-send-mixed-signals-watch-the-manufacturing-sector-51620828009

The lowest paying job sectors, which theoretically should be under the most pressure from the enhanced UI, have been having the most success in hiring.  

In fact, if you dig into the data, it's almost impossible to come up with a single convincing narrative to explain what exactly is going on. For instance, one big issue is that in the manufacturing sector, and no where else, workers are quitting their jobs (and therefore not eligible for UI anyway) at the highest rate in over 20 years. Voluntarily quitting suggests that they think they can get better jobs elsewhere, but it's unclear where that might be, since hiring in the manufactoring sector is still way down (even though demand is way up). Maybe they're leaving the sector entirely, but that would likely mean they're going to lower skill, lower paying jobs, which doesn't make sense either. Unless they are actually retiring early, due to the pandemic causing a rethink of priorities, there's definitely been some anecdotal stories about that.

Point is though that the economy is incredibly complex, and the US political system is not remotely equipped or incentivized to actually address the issues properly.

[Zorral]

On one hand there is a great deal of alarm over the long-term effect this pandemic keeping women out of the workplace is having on women advancing in careers in many, many sectors.  Because nobody knows what the schools are doing from one day to the next, lack of childcare -- and that they no longer can afford to pay for day care, and day care workers cannot afford to go to work, due to their own children and their concerns about their own health and safety -- yet these women are also supposed to be forced back to work.

I am listening to the Dem mayoral candidates supposedly answering questions about this, and they only fudge and do word salad, clearly lacking any plan or even thinking about these dilemmas, fudging over whether or not people in general -- in the lower paying sectors, including both education and medical sectors as well as the 'hospitality sector', should have their unemployment benefits shut off and forced to go back to work.  This includes the most endorsed candidate by the progressives, a WOMAN, Kathryn Garcia (endorsed today by the NY Times, which is always an alarm signal when it comes to anyone not members of Big Capital class).

I am so ashamed that nobody can think rationally and productively in this matter, but just howl, "economic recovery."

And yes, as inquired above, one does have to show proof of job hunting, which was waived or ignored, in favor of keeping people at home, instead acquiring and spreading infection.  But as soon vaccines became available came the drumbeat to force everyone in the lower sectors of the economy to go back to work, while so many of them didn't even qualify then to get appointments to get vaccinated.  And now, of course, it remains true: it's vastly easy to buy a so-called fake vaccination card, than to get vaccinated.  They are working on making it more convenient just now, such as setting up walk-up vaccination appointment or vaccination itself in subway stations.

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

The Fed is in a tricky spot, on the one hand they have been consistently downplaying the latest inflation as cyclical events that are going to subside.

On the other hand I think everyone is hoping like hell that that is in fact the case and not FAMOUS LAST WORDS.

 we doubt this report will change the view of officials that inflationary pressures are 'largely transitory,'" wrote Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. "It's just that there's a lot more 'transitory' than they were expecting."

[Cas Stark]

3 hours ago, Week said:

Maintaining eligibility for benefits can be quite a pain in the ass too - at least in MA. Proof of job seeking, interviewing, etc. You can't just sit on your ass and collect. Is that not true in other states? Or has that changed with the pandemic? I rarely hear this pushback that really ought to defang the pearl clutching.

Note: I think those restrictions - especially in the first few weeks after losing your job - are unnecessarily onerous.

I only know of New Jersey.  There is nothing more to do than click some boxes and hit submit and that was true before covid.

[Fez]

It's one of those things where there's a reasonable potential explanation for almost every price increase we're seeing. And maybe all of those individual explanations is correct. But seeing it all happen at once definitely raising the specter that "no, this time it really is over supply of money and we're about to hit an inflation problem."

[Martell Spy]

Pro-worker’ Republicans are status-quo toadies cloaked as populists

JD Vance, Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley love saber-rattling about ‘elites’. But they have no interest in taking on corporate power

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/10/jd-vance-josh-hawley-republicans-populist

Quote

 

When it comes to rhetoric, the new breed of conservative populists – Carlson, Hawley, Vance – love saber-rattling against “cosmopolitan elites”. When it comes to actual policy, they have no interest in challenging corporate power and few plans to invest in working-class communities. Take Vance’s recent opposition to universal childcare, which he called “a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent”.

Vance’s alternative idea to help American parents, who frequently face a crushing, Catch-22 style choice between giving up their full-time jobs or paying astronomical amounts of money on childcare? Instead of an expanded social wage through a government program, Vance lauds a plan, proposed by Hawley, to give a tax credit to married parents with children under the age of 13. Not exactly transformative, New Deal-style reform to aid struggling Americans; if anything, it’s the kind of tepid, wonkish program that the New Democrats could have very well dreamt up 30 years ago.

Recall the words of the then candidate Bill Clinton, who in 1992 pined for “an America in which the doors of colleges are thrown open once again to the sons and daughters of stenographers and steelworkers. We will say: everybody can borrow money to go to college. But you must do your part. You must pay it back.”

Like the Clintonites, Republicans such as Hawley and Vance are trying to find a way to balance pro-working class appeals popular with voters with the enduring fact that their party is largely funded by rich donors and powerful business interests. Their solution is to offer Americans rhetoric about elites and the importance of hard work, but not to actually take power away from those elites or, say, enact job programs.

It took decades, but millions of voters came to see the New Democrats as frauds. The same, I hope, will be true of the New Republicans.

 

 

[Zorral]

Speaking of crypto as we were, Charlie Stross & His Merry Followers are now speaking of it too:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/05/because-i-am-bored.html

 

[Week]

18 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Speaking of crypto as we were, Charlie Stross & His Merry Followers are now speaking of it too:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/05/because-i-am-bored.html

 

lol -- grifters grifting

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

That was a weird read.

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Pro-worker’ Republicans are status-quo toadies cloaked as populists

JD Vance, Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley love saber-rattling about ‘elites’. But they have no interest in taking on corporate power

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/10/jd-vance-josh-hawley-republicans-populist

 

I think the author of this article, like many people, doesn't understand how the average voter in the USA defines the "elite". They do not see corporations or business leaders as part of the "elite". The "elite" are college professors and those who are actively involved in the arts and sciences or mainstream journalism. I don't think most people define "elite" as being a synonym of "rich" anymore. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

30 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I think the author of this article, like many people, doesn't understand how the average voter in the USA defines the "elite". They do not see corporations or business leaders as part of the "elite". The "elite" are college professors and those who are actively involved in the arts and sciences or mainstream journalism. I don't think most people define "elite" as being a synonym of "rich" anymore. 

Don’t forget the racial and sexist component.
I remember when Carlson tried to frame AOC as the type of pampered trust-fund kid he was/is.

Instead of a woman whose mother was a maid and who was working in a bar to make ends meet three years ago.

She doesn’t fit the conservative stereotype of the working class which would be cis het white guys.

[ThinkerX]

rough transcripts from a couple of quick conversations with my conservative coworker today.

 

CC: Yeah, we need to launch a big cyber attack against Russia over this pipeline thing.

Me: Uh, we have Trump to thank for these attacks in the first place.

CC: What?

Me: Remember when people kept warning Trump about Russian hackers and his first response was always to fire them?

CC; Yeah.  Good thing too, since those guys were spreading fake news.

Me: Turns out Trump fired so many people there weren't enough to keep cyber security going.

CC:  Trumps a patriot!  He'd never do anything like that.

Me:  He did.

CC: Well, why hasn't Biden done anything?

Me: Biden has to rebuild the whole department.

-----

CC: You hear about those states getting people off unemployment and putting them back to work?  Can't have them lazing around.

Me: Why work a job that doesn't pay enough to make the bills?  Costs are really going up - most places, $20 an hour won't pay the rent on a two bedroom apartment.  Last time things got this wonky was right before the big crash in 2007.

(there was more here, including a digression into illegal aliens - we both agreed that giving the honest ones work permits and aiming them at the farms was probably the best solution)

CC: You got a point.  Still, we can't have those people collecting unemployment.

Me: Where do you think unemployment comes from?

CC: The government.

Me: everybody in the country who collect a paycheck pays into unemployment.  (except for contractors).  That's automatic.  Most of those people probably paid into unemployment for years without getting anything back.  Now they are getting some money out of something they paid into, and people want it stopped.  What does that sound like to you.

CC: sounds like theft. can't trust the government.

[Fragile Bird]

Yesterday Colonial pipeline said they had restored the pipeline without paying any ransom, but today sources are saying Colonial had, in fact, paid out a ransom to Dark Matter.