Last week, Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony charges in the hush-money case against him. Compared to before the verdict, the biggest changes we found in a post-conviction poll conducted between May 31 and June 2 are in Republicans' positions on felony, crime in general, and the presidency. They have shifted in a way that puts the verdict in a more favorable light and keeps Trump's candidacy viable. For example, fewer Republicans think it should be illegal to pay hush money for the purposes of influencing an election than did a year ago, and more now say felons should be allowed to become president than did a few months ago.
Felons should be able to vote, even while in prison. Otherwise you just have to make sure your political opponents are all charged with a felony and skew and keep skewing the results because those people can never vote to potentially make their crime no longer a crime.
Like, if they ever make it a crime to be gay, now they've basically also stopped gays from being able to vote on the issue. That's not good democracy.
I mean that guy is being an idiot, but it's also not quite that simple. There is still more and less ethical consumption. A fairphone is more ethical than an iPhone, and pointing that out in good faith to someone complaining about Apple's behavior seems entirely fair.
It's not a complete fallacy to point out that someone is consuming something less ethical when they have a better option. Obviously it's impossible for anyone to do this with literally everything, but absolutely you can avoid Starbucks because of their treatment of unions, and frequent a local coffee shop instead.
Granted this is mostly assuming two people having a good faith discussion, which on the internet is infrequent lol.
A fairphone is more ethical than an iPhone, and pointing that out in good faith to someone complaining about Apple's behavior seems entirely fair.
True. However, a Fairphone isn't available to everyone. Every place that sells phones will offer you several kinds of iPhones with several payment plan options for those of us who don't have $1000 available immediately. Same with several brands of Android phones for those of us that aren't gullible enough to buy into the overpriced walled garden bullshit of Apple.
Fairphone, on the other hand, isn't available from your local provider, though. You have to buy them outright online. At least that's how it is here in Denmark.
Your example actually proves my point further: iPhones are universally available whether you can really afford one or not, whereas getting a Fairphone is much less straightforward in every way.
I'd love for my next phone to be a Fairphone but unless my financial situation changes significantly, that's not possible due to the universal favoring of less ethical brands.
It's not a complete fallacy to point out that someone is consuming something less ethical when they have a better option
Bolded the key words. The frequent lack of an ethical (or even less unethical) option is my point. The only way to ALWAYS have the ethical choice available you ironically have to be wealthier than is ethically achievable.
absolutely you can avoid Starbucks because of their treatment of unions, and frequent a local coffee shop instead.
Not always, no. Like Walmart with grocery stores, Starbucks have been forcing out competitors to the point that they have de facto monopolies on coffee shops in some areas. You can't choose a local shop if it doesn't exist.
Granted this is mostly assuming two people having a good faith discussion, which on the internet is infrequent lol.
Hey fuck face, I didn't ask to be born here, and there isn't really other things to buy in America. So fuck you and the anti-solidarity horse you rode in on.
Also, what a ridiculous leap of logic to make. "Stupid Americans, always," shuffles deck of ridiculous hypotheticals "celebrating union losses by buying iPhones.
You didn't ask to be born there, but you don't have to belong to the group of Americans that consume without any regard.
Also, how is knowingly buying products from anti-union companies a "leap of logic"? Do you even know what that means?
You don't need to buy Apple products to function in society, nor do you need Starbucks products, nor do you have to use Amazon. There are small local retailers you can support, as well as fair trade products, second hand goods you can purchase, and a lot more.
Having worked in an environment helping people who either didn't have either, or didn't know how to use them, and needed jobs...I discovered basically the answer is somewhere between "Wait outside at Home Depot" or "You don't."
Actually my wife worked for a company that used iPhones and provided her a phone. I suppose, at the point she was worried about job precarity and got a separate non-work phone, she could have gone android (the principle offerings of which are also FOXCONN made) but she was quite busy with an agenda from her company (to which she was loyal) to learn a new user interface and alternate between the two.
I, in the meantime, had no company phone, and was on a tight budget, so I went android and shopped around, not for a fair-trade phone but for one on opportunistic sale, as I can't afford a conscience.
Apple sucks. But really, so does Google. So does Sony. So does Samsung. So, evidently, does Asus, though I like their interface choices more.
In the end, we consumers end-users don't have the political power to influence the market when the government fails to be public serving. (Called government failure since that's Its alleged job.) It's why we erected a non-feudalist government in the first place.
Blaming iPhone users is like blaming car owners in the States, when the automotive and fossil fuel industries systematically dismantled mass transit nationwide.
Yes, blame everything on the system. Americans are just drones guided by the system by a deluge of ads, indoctrination by the media, school, and government. Taught to consume from the day they exit the womb, every American mindless follows the lifescript incapable of individual thought. A nation of puppets blabbering about freedom, being #1, and the American dream.
The regulators are the National Labor Relations Board, who brought the suit attempting to force Starbucks to re-hire them. The regulators are doing their jobs in this case. The courts, especially the Suprene Court, are the ones captured.
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 😎
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
theguardian.com
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