Half the country votes for a party that is totally anti-worker because said party tells them they're pro-worker on TV... so that's not really all that surprising.
And many of the most stubbornly ignorant potential voters in swing states declare smugly, from their ivory tower of lazy truthiness - which they refer to as "purity" and "enlightenment" - that bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe.
Insisting against all reason and evidence that their absence from the 2016 election sent a clear message, made them the opposite of insignificant... when what they actually did was drop a goddamned pellet of cyanide into their own drinking water, along with everyone else's.
Demanding a charismatic messiah god-king, willfully ignoring that what they are electing (or not electing) is a system of governance with thousands of employees at all levels. Like a pathological, medieval peasant mindset that they seem unwilling or unable to transcend. "Massage me with a single voice, who cares about the rest."
Shitting like monkeys on the importance of the Supreme Court, unable to grasp the far-reaching importance of it.
Unable to grasp how massive coordinated republican stonewalling and sabotage can be to scuttle the best intentions of whatever charismatic messiah god-king might happen to try and arise.
They keep giving the keys to the kingdom to republicans, keep them powerful, then get pissed at Democrats when they can't clean up the mess fast enough, with one hand tied behind their back.
You can't change a system overnight, you nudge the inertia one election at a time, but judging from the mediocre seesaw of the flaky, lazy and petulant electorate, it seems no momentum can ever be built.
The end of true representative democracy in this country began the moment the courts accepted the "corporations are people / money is speech" arguments. When that happened, governments stopped representing the needs of ordinary people and only listened the needs of billionaires and their lobbyists.
It's taking decades to play out, but it's going to end badly.
Reagan was super anti-worker, and that's when the drift started. After the PATRIOT act, the entire justice system (including the court systems) started seeing the public as the enemy (after all, we were harboring terrorists) which corresponds to the shredding of the Bill of Rights (specifically the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States). Business interests (and their plutocratic masters) were the true citizens of the US, with us lowly proletariat becoming second class citizens. Citizens United took us by surprise but we haven't really done anything and won't until the police are busting our own heads (or we see enough officer-involved brutality -- which is, incidentally, how La Résistance got started in Paris).
Now recently
SCOTUS neutering regulatory agencies in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
SCOTUS deciding in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson that civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people.
If you're too broke to have a place to live (easy to do right now), then you can have life, liberty and property stripped from you by the state. Essentially, being a human being is very much insufficient to have rights in the US. You must also be able to afford renting or owning a place to sleep. (As tempted as I am to rant about this, I'll stop here.)
A 2022 study found that of the 57 justices who have sat on the court over the past century, the six justices with the most pro-business voting records are the six members of today’s 6-3, rightwing super-majority, all appointed by Republican presidents
Because in the past they thought they had to care about the law, they know now that they don't need to do anything other than what the owning class wants, but they must drop the large bombs like this one on a Friday and preferably after another event that will keep the media occupied like say a debate? That way there is as little pushback and attention to it as possible...
every other american seems to talk about their huge salary compared to other western countries but then complain all they do is work and have little free time to use the money
"Unlike the Europours, we have so much money! We get paid more!"
No healthcare if not working
Rarely paid time off
Less holidays
Less workers rights
Most states don't allow time off for voting
Tax dollars go more to bombing people than education of the future workforces
No major way of sending donations to political groups
Taxes are done inefficiently on purpose to enable companies to get money from doing your yearly legal requirements as a citizen
Still tested for drugs on your private time
Longer commutes other nations
Commutes are often paid by the worker, not the company
Commutes are in cars because public infrastructure doesn't allow most workers to get to work on time or doesn't have the last mile covered.
Cars that cost money to just exist, let alone actually use.
Commutes and needing to eat food take time away from the 16 hours "free" from work, meaning people have to cut on sleep or other important self regulations
I feel so fucking free you guys man we have it good.
Unemployment insurance payouts are at or below poverty level at best, short in duration (normally 12-24 weeks at most) despite complete wildcard on how long finding a job may take, and aggressively restricted or even denied in many states(remember Republican controlled states refused free federal funding to bolster their unemployment payouts because they wanted people back working during a global pandemic without a vaccine at that point).
Unions and organizing and employees thinking of organizing are aggressively and illegally attacked, discriminated and retaliated against while the enforcement mechanisms to hold powerful companies to law are so underfunded the laws nearly don't exist
OSHA, FLSA and other cornerstone pieces of workplace law are so routinely broken and have been by so long and enforcement so underfunded and penalties so trivial the laws don't exist in practice. Injuries at work, minimum wage, overtime are so commonly violated, suing through the courts has been the only recourse for employees. With the court system now captured, even that menial disincentive is gone for companies to comply.
Companies systematically underpay and are able to collude on wages thanks to market salary tools to suppress wages. Switching companies is the only way to get a raise.
Most Americans at this point are a product of capitalist indoctrination via privately owned for profit media propaganda, and public schools defunded and in utter ruin by capitalist captured government to cut their taxes, despite still profiting directly from a pre-literate workforce to draw from that they just don't want to pay for.
And now, through the long laid, long paid for installation of capitalist interest to the SCOTUS through their Federalist Society judicial extremist group, they now effectively own our... I'm sorry, their judicial branch of the government we have to suffer without recourse or appeal.
...They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it...
-George Carlin, decades ago.
This is also why study of the humanities is under attack in academia, btw. Believe it or not, maximizing growth/metastasis/GDP isn't healthy as society's sole practiced value and pursuit. Gotta hurry, a few thousand greedy sociopaths aren't getting richer fast enough, herp derp.
maximizing growth/metastasis/GDP isn’t healthy as society’s sole practiced value and pursuit.
One of their greatest achievements was brainwashing the country into believing that somehow higher higher higher GDP somehow means a better economy for everyone when it's literally just tracking business profits...
They're perfectly ok with the idea that our income doesn't need to increase at all, but their profit MUST increase at all costs...
Most Americans don't see themselves as workers, they see themselves as just some a main character who is only struggling due to a personal fault in a quick time event rather than corporate planed actions that worked with the government to enable that thinking in the first place.
You say "tax the rich" and they think you mean them because they made $100k last year. Nah you're good! You could make 10x that and you'd still be good. I was talking about the people who make 450,000x that amount in a year.
Bet, Dan. You know that bill in Louisiana is going to get thrown out, and that's why the Speaker you hate so much won't bring the Texas version to a vote.
I disagree, but only because giving into cynicism helps them win, and that's not something I'm willing to do. I would rather be optimistically deluded and try than apathetically complicit and give up.
And based on the voting numbers in Texas, "apathetic" sums up voter turnout for the most part. Vote, y'all.
Im willing to bet money that if more people simply vote wont turn the trajectory of the state around. There is waaayyyy more conservitives that you think. Texas is destined to be a conservitive shithole. Rather try and get out than try and make a change cause this state aint worth it anyway.
I understand, but I'm unfortunately financially tied for the next few years. Moved here as a Christian fundie planting a church, now left the religion and stuck here for a while.
So I gotta make due with what I've got. When life gives you lemons, make lemonades.
This would not have happened if the non-voting bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe idiots had bothered to vote in 2016, allowing republicans to stage a executive and legislative right-wing coup of the supreme court.
But here we are. And their ostrich head-in-the-sand response to this ruling and their passively complicit role in it will most likely and idiotically be, once again, yOu SeE? bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe
"I voted once ten years ago, and I didn't get my pony overnight. bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe"
Now thanks to these lazy, mediocre "muh purity" reprobates cutting off their noses to spite ALL our faces, things are now sliding faster toward a "yee-haw!" banana republic from within.
This is... not true. Orrin Hatch said if Obama nominated someone like Merrick Garland, the Republican Senate would approve it. Obama nominated him, then the Republican Senate said "psych."
The checks and balances were broken by the Republican Senate because they decided "advice and consent" could be abused to mean "wait until there's a Republican president."
The public decided the solution to this was selecting a Republican president and keeping a Republican Senate. It's a perfect plan for Republicans, because people on the left just blame Democrats so that the same pattern can happen again next time.
No it is true, nominating Garland to begin with was a major capitulation to Republicans. He was basically a moderate Republican that made the base not care about the nomination.
And Democrats could of and should have shut down the government over what McConnell did but did what they always do. Perform a right wing ratchet where they simple stop the country from becoming right wing but never push it left. Then when a Rep comes into office the push the country right once again which is exactly what happened.
Agree entirely except the part about the people keeping a Republican Senate. The Senate is rigged. 1 person from Wyoming should not have the same power as 65 from California. The entire point of the Senate is to rig things against what most people want if it goes against what small states want.
"According to James Madison, "The use of the Senate is to consist in proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.""
By far the popular vote is not for the GOP and hasn't been since 2004. The Senate makes sure that doesn't matter. Gerrymandering the house does the rest.
Similar to the Senate issue, the last time a Republican won both the popular vote and the electoral vote was again 2004. The electoral college is the same problem compounded. The people haven't picked a Republican president in 20 years.
The real question is why would you want to be rehired. I understand a settlement check but I mean were you really digging the job that much to begin with?
Who's fault is that??? Are you saying that these people live in the wilderness area with only Starbucks? You choose to work at a place that serves coffee.. a janitor makes more, a landscaper makes more.. hell be a bartender...it's basically a barista with alcohol and a lot better tips.. brotato chip 😎
Yeah, we get it. You are really cool. What I am actually saying is that in capitalist society there are people who have no other viable options than to sell their labor for survival. This skews the power dynamics so that the employers may dictate the terms of their agreement. If all the other jobs available to these people fall under the same category, they are fucked.
I wouldn't expect such a cool person^TM^ as yourself to understand this though, much less sympathize with the plight of those in question. Keep on being an ass 😎
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