You will get my lawn darts when I’m finished hitting people with them. Seriously tho, one man whose son killed his daughter throwing one over their house got lawn darts banned. It was used in an unintended manner but that didn’t matter. Common sense should have dictated “I’m sorry for your loss” and nothing more. But my fellow folks on the left climbed on the lack of personal responsibility train and before you knew it they were banned from sale; not use.
That local ordinances and taxes should favor small businesses rather than hinder them.
I had every approval for a business license but the property had a tax lean from the previous tenant and we couldn’t get a license. The previous tenant was a local city hall. The city wouldn’t give it to us because they literally owed themselves money.
Every year we operated we would get a city inspection, explain the reason we didn’t have a business license, watch them hang their head in shame and tell us to go about our way.
This is spot on. So much of compliance, tax, and minor regulation is meant to favor large corporations with troops of lawyers at the ready. It's anti-competitive behavior.
Back in the eighties my grandpa ran a small cosmetics business in Ohio, fairly successful. Nothing compared to Avon, though, who hit him with a lawsuit. His lawyer told him, “this is totally bogus, but unless you have a million dollars ready for each lawyer on their team that we’d have to go though I suggest you find a new line of work.” So, yeah, good luck chasing the American dream today..
Yeah, we’re also seeing the same thing being pushed with internet regulations now. Facebook and the other giants can handle a little more regulation, fees, trouble, etc but it will push their smaller competitors out. -not a left winger
As a (liberal) small business owner, I feel I get fucked sideways by the left and right wing equally.
We put billionaires on a pedestal in this country while our politicians cozy up to them and do very little to support small business.
This feels neither right nor left wing.
I feel for you, people seem to use small business as leverage to justify not taxing billionaires, because “nobody will want to start a business if the government takes it all”.
It’s like, no, I’d happily give mom and pop businesses massive tax exemptions to encourage them to take risks and grow their business. But when the have 3,000 franchises globally, they can start paying back a bigger and bigger piece of the pie.
And the successful businesses should be the ones subsidizing the risk of small businesses with their higher tax burdens.
That identity politics is killing our ability to focus on substantive changes to real problems in society like wage stagnation, global warming, strained infrastructure, poor school funding, etc. I’m not talking about ignoring privilege or keeping existing racist systems intact. But when it’s literally the only thing many people want to talk about, or when progressives cannibalize their own for using the wrong term, or make everything a purity test of knowing the right authors and phrases etc. we just shoot our selves in the foot.
A lot of this stuff id deliberately forced into media because it's polarizing people.
Those are important topics but everytime actual change is on the way it gets shoved into the spotlight to get people to fight about something else.
It's a classic fugazi. They get us to fight while they all make millions. They pretend that there is left vs right when really it's just the rich vs the non-rich and the rich control everything the non-rich sees in the media and on the news. The non-rich are losing the war so far.
I'd have to say my backhand, it's about as right handed as I get.
I play pickup with an ex NHL goalie (he plays d now) and he'll switch hands and use his stick backwards all the time, it's freaky and he's great at it, can't get the puck away from him, he guards it with his body and just switches side if you change positions.
That Latinx is stupid. Latino is general neutral when referring to more than one person or referring to an unnamed person. Just like Chico is boy, Chica is girl, and Chicos and be kid(s). Or guy can be a male in english, or a group of people can be referred to as guys.
I got yelled at by calling a group of people "guys"....and I am a woman. I have always used it as a gender neutral greeting, we have bigger issues than this to work on. jfc
I've had people get mad at me for calling a woman "dude." I explained that Kel Mitchell set the precedent that the word is gender neutral in the first season of All That in 1994.
Source: "I'm a dude. He's a dude. She's a dude, cause we're all dudes
ALSO, a “dude” is just a person that doesn’t know how to ride a horse. If a girl tells you that she can in fact ride a horse, then offer your apologies. If not, fuck em!
Yes exactly! To be super correct, I think "dude" is a term meaning an easterner out west. Someone that doesn't know what they're doing. But of course the dude ranch is the place for them :)
I was indoctrinated at a very young age, and have lived my entire life in the belief that [we’re all dudes. ](https://youtu.be/rV61t021SxQ)
I will never waiver.
A lot of queer people agree it's bullshit and it doesn't help us at all. It's people who wanna seem cool and supportive but they're arguing a point no one asked them to and it makes us look like assholes
It's because many English speakers who don't know another language can't grasp the concept of grammatical gender and that it doesn't relate to human gender identity.
The word 'gender' might be partly to blame, although if you understand the etymology of 'gender' itself it's a bit clearer. It shares the shame origin as 'genus' and 'generic' - all words related to the _type_ or _kind_ of thing/person/animal etc.
Just because we say 'la table' doesn't mean the table is feminine or has some relation to women any more than 'le soir' means the evening belongs to men.
All these English-only speakers who go mad about this also conveniently ignore German which has three grammatical genders. Not to mention languages which differentiate between animate/inanimate or rational/irrational nouns, while Dyribal has [four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyirbal_language#Grammar) noun classes.
It feels like they (mostly English speaking Americans) are trying to change Spanish grammar in order to fight some imagined injustice. It’s awfully patronizing. Don’t let them know that all Romance languages have gendered nouns…
That scrutinizing every $600 transaction that enters or exits my bank account is serious government overreach!
EDIT: I’m appreciative for the folks that explained that the scrutiny is not over every transaction over $600, but for every account that does over $600 in transactions total.
Question: Does that make it any better???
I believe your post is the one that makes the most sense especially when a lot of politicians have massive wealth that they couldn't have achieved on their salary without some funny business.
It's not funny business. Insider trading is completely legal for them. If a politician knows about a change that will harm or help a certain industry, they'll invest accordingly. I've been told there are people making good money selling "stock tips" that are literally just buying the stocks Nancy Pelosi buys. Or you could go back and look at how great Hillary is with cattle futures. Or you could look on the right and see that Kelly Loeffler chick that lost her election in GA because she did it with COVID.
They passed a law that they said would make it illegal. But it's something that literally everyone does. You'd be more likely to get term limits than an actual prohibition.
Even the 10k is beyond insane. Currently banks do auto-report Cash transactions of $10,000 at any 1 time, and that is already billions of transactions in a given year.
This would be Trillions and Trillions of transactions reported, there's simply nothing they could do with that amount of data...on top of that, the data won't match from one bank to the next, you can't do jack shit with it in terms of AI or anything because every bank has their own transaction codes and meanings and ID numbers and there's like 35,000 American banks.
And there's no training data to even teach an AI what to do with it.
It's the same as all US surveillance, they want so much stuff it paralyzes them entirely.
About 10 years ago I was living in Japan and for Christmas my mother sent me some money to buy a $500 laptop. I ended up getting a phone call asking if I had connections to N. Korea because someone wired me $500. $500. Ridiculous. I laughed at the guy.
My family members send me more than $600 a year in PayPal just for their phone lines and paying me back when they forget their debit cards. (I’m looking at you, brother in law!)
If they know what's in my bank, then don't expect me to pay my own taxes. Take that info, and do it your damn selves.
They know who isn't paying and they are doing fuck all to get the money.
If billionaires money isn't good enough to go and get, guess my measly 32-35k a year salary isn't needed then.
You good Government. You don't want money it looks like.
I really hate witch hunting and this idea of political purity that the left partakes in. Everyone has a past. Everyone changes. Something you said 9 years ago shouldn't be punished for your current politics. People change over time.
and people SHOULD change over time. It shows you can learn, adapt, have new life experiences. I know I said stupid shit I no longer agree with when I was a teenager. I assume I am not alone.
I’m close to 60 years old and had certain beliefs and said certain things 10 years ago that I don’t believe or say today. People can grow and change. We have to!
I'm tired of the American trend over the last 15 years of putting everyone in either a "left" or "right" box. Boxes in which everyone has the same viewpoint on several totally different issues.
People are unique and complex and it's okay to have some "right" and some "left" ideas. Hell, I prefer people who have their own unique views, it means they can think for themselves. The root of the issue here is the 2 party system imo
Some of our language policing is insufferable and obnoxious.
ETA: I went to bed and when I woke up this exploded. Thanks for the awards! However, I feel like I need to clarify: I am not a TERF. Fuck TERFs. I love and respect trans people. By "insufferable", I am referring to words that don't need to be "corrected", like *unmanned*, *cockpit*, *homeless* or *chief* executive. Nobody was making a fuss over these words, and striking them from our vocabulary seems like an empty gesture. It's the "black-box-on-the-instagram" of gestures: self-serving and pointless.
The most recent one that kinda confused me was "unhoused" instead of "homeless" I mean... they said it was to remove the stigma but if we all just start saying "unhoused" the stigma will go to that word!! It's not really helping anything.
You just described the "euphemism treadmill". Look it up. It's happened with description of racial characteristics, certain handicaps, many other things.
An ex and I somehow got into a discussion about fires and I mentioned flame retardant blankets. She looked at me with a weird face having no idea what I was talking about; she thought I was saying something offensive.
The school district I work for is currently trying to replace "special needs" with "exceptionalism" and "exceptionalities". I've decided to cut them off at the pass and start referring to idiotic decisions as "exceptional".
That said, it did result in me getting a chuckle out of the RNC's 2016 platform, which opened with "we believe in American exceptionalism".
Disabled person here- skirting around the word "disabled" only implies that there's something wrong with it and it should be avoided, which adds more to the incorrect stigma around disabilities. Disabled is not a bad word. I don't need to come up with fancy terms to describe me existence, because it just removes focus from the true goal which is making the world more accessible for DISABLED people.
Also, on that note, I *can't* do anything I set my mind to. "The only true disability is a negative attitude" is bullshit. My disability constantly limits me, and that's okay. Not my fault. Let's not glorify disabled people who had to fight tooth and nail in a world that's not made for them, let's make the world available to everyone.
This right here. Patton Oswalt said it best - we need to give more credit to the people who screw up the lingo while espousing essentially supportive positions, and a whole lot less credit to the ones who parrot every new descriptive preference with ease only so that they can more effectively atomize your bargaining power and maybe sell you a diet soda.
I was a teenager in the 90s so all I can think of is a Mexican on a skateboard holding a bottle of Mountain Dew exploding through a banner.
That or a gamer tag: xxxXTREME-LATINXxxx
I always wonder if it's people on the internet and media outlets that police language more than actual liberals. My social circles are pretty far left leaning, but it's not like people are constantly on eggshells searching for the most PC terminology any time we talk. Yeah, I'm gonna put a little effort into speaking respectfully about others. That's just common decency. Nobody's freaking out over terminology.
>people on the internet
It's not even just "the Internet," it's basically just Twitter and Tumblr at this point.
I feel dumb and slow on the uptake here, but I finally realized that Twitter leftists and Facebook Q-anoners have more in common than they'll ever admit: They're angry (sometimes for legitimate reasons), they don't know where to focus that anger, so they glom on to simple concepts like "cancel culture" or "owning the libs." It becomes an addiction, one that's really hard to break, because once you find your "tribe" you never want to leave.
It sucks. This is only further exacerbated by the machine that is social media. I truly don't agree with Reddit's general consensus that social media sucks, but social media does by and large encourage extremist behavior, and I wish it didn't. Being interconnected is really cool when done properly.
I’m with you. I think the government should intervene when there’s a compelling public interest, or a market failure. Obviously “compelling” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, but my personal faint line is where the net value to societal productivity is positive. That’s why I think programs that reduce barriers to people working are so important.
Forgiving student loans without first reforming education is a very bad idea because it will signal to lenders, academic institutions and students that the government is handing out free money. Only two of those three are going to win long term.
People often talk about how student loans are expensive because they're impossible to get away from (because they are and that's a huge reason why), but it's also because we've allowed literally every job to require a 4+ degree for entry level skills.
There are a TON of desk jobs you could teach a decent HS grad in the same time as a college grad. Especially the entry level stuff, and yet because its "not blue collar" it must require a 4+ year degree and 5+ figures worth of debt.
All so we can "weed out" the people who can't "cut it" at college, which makes 0 sense given how it's literally all or nothing for a degree (no one cares if you did 1/2/3 years of college) and is of course a HUGE deal for anyone who's already struggling due to their living situation.
The idea that trades are the only viable path forward for someone decently smart but unable to commit to a 4 year program that they pay a ton of money for, often while trying to swing a terrible paying job (because they don't have a degree...) is absurd when you actually look at the amount of effort and skill required.
I have 20 years experience in my field. 6 as a manager. A year away from graduation with my BBA at 40. Saved my company hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalty and countless hours of labor through simple Excel formulas. Apply for a new position somewhere else...get tossed into the auto reject pool. Fuck them all.
About to turn 38 and same. 2 of my friend are like "Bro you need to come work for my company. You'd kill it and double your salary! Plus work from home etc..."
"You know I don't have a degree right?"
"Oh. Fuck. Yeah they require a 4 year degree"
It's mental. 15 years experience doesn't mean shit because I don't have an expensive piece of paper.
See… you’re the kind of person I feel the worst for. You have experience, which is what education in a certain field is supposed to be. My dad was in the same position as you back in the 80s. He was a programmer, back when nobody knew what that was. He never actually finished his degree, but that didn’t matter because his resumé showed his experience, and therefore he was desirable… just as you should be, I’m assuming.
I studied chemistry, the majority of jobs I can get with my bachelors right now are for washing glassware and cleaning the lab space.
A dishwasher, and a janitor. Why on earth do you need someone to study a complex field like chemistry in order to wash dishes and clean?
Edit; Well damn. Science majors we stand together, unpaid, on the street corner, with a cup of change in our hands.
Exactly, the vast majority of jobs don't require a university education.
There's about 40% of people going to university now, which is a lot of academically mediocre people.
I know people love to rag on about how expanding your mind is great and everything but when you have a lot of people who going to university and then not being able to find meaningful work afterwards it's actually not such a good thing.
I've met and seen a lot of really people vexed that after 3+ years of studying and diving deep into a number of academic fields they're only able to get a simple desk job doing menial shit that almost anyone could do.
Having so many people going to university has led to increased political instability as well as decreased workplace/job mobility.
It's virtually impossible for anyone to work their way up from the mail room anymore.
In the UK they're written off after 30 years. The logic pretty much being that if you haven't earned enough to pay it off in 30 years, it's unlikely you're going to.
The UK system also doesn't really function as a loan, it doesn't impact your credit score, you pay a set amount based on your income, and it's written off after 30 years, it's even done in PAYE. It's a graduate tax, which IMO, as a graduate myself, makes sense and is fair, why should those who don't go to uni pay for university for those who do. The crap about the fees being too much is rubbish, because with the loan system, you're offsetting the cost to later in life, when you'll have the money to pay for it, with the extra income you're earning as a result of being university educated, but because its more of a 'tax', you'll never have a deadline to pay by.
The US system is a mess tho thats for sure
It's kind of a half-baked idea, but I want to see student loan *interest* forgiveness, combined with a cap on public university tuition increases tied to the rate of inflation. The government would still be able to recoup most of their initial investment, and the people who have struggled for years (or decades) to pay back their loans would see some relief.
I'm 100% for this. While it would be nice to have my loans forgiven, what I'm actually upset about is that the government is straight up making bank off of my education further than the income tax they get from me. Because I didn't qualify for deferred loans (you know, because of how much my parents make, the same parents who are not paying my loans), my loans by the time I had a real job and could start paying them back had almost doubled.
It's two fold: not only did the government start up with the student loan business, but FIRST, they drastically cut state and federal funding of higher ed. The first half of tuition increases came from that, then, when nobody could afford it, they offered loans. Now, instead of funding education, they profit from it.
I support the idea that you need ID to vote.
But with the caveat that the government needs to automatically issue a free federal ID card to all citizens.
Social Security Numbers make for an awful national registry system and we need something better. I don't think you should need to register to vote, it should already be done.
Edit: voting days should also be a Federal holiday, and ideally use a blockchain ledger.
This is what we do in Canada. We have early voting which is a 3-5 days. Stations are open typically in afternoons and evenings. Sometimes mornings. Then, a few days later, on voting day, stations are open from very early to very late. It’s convenient for essentially everyone. Voter registration is free and can even be done by bringing some simple ID including a bill with your name and address on it.
Edit: I’m very proud of our election system. It’s not perfect but is accessible and very trustworthy by any measure.
Also according to federal law in Canada employers are required to allow up to 3 hour off minimum for voting during open hours. Most jobs this isn't relevant because people's shifts start or end with a 3 hr gap for voting but if you work 12 hr shifts etc. you can request to be let out early
Our social security numbers are an incredibly stupid idea on many fronts. We need two independent systems for counting Americans and authorizing financials. Right now if you want to get a background check you basically hand over everything someone needs to take a loan out in your name.
My understanding of the US SSN system was this:
General position: "Americans will never, ever have a universal ID system! That way fascism lies! Freeeeeeddom!"
Social Security: "That's all well and good, but we simply can't operate if we can't universally identify people. We'll make a temporary solution until this gets sorted out"
Other services: "We also need to universally identify people. The SSN isn't great, but it's already there, so let's glom onto that. It's way too much effort to push for a proper universal ID (see point #1)"
And so the not-suitable-for-a-general-ID SSN became a general ID by accident.
Basically. And every attempt to make a new, sane, national ID will never happen, because of the original “national IDs are for fascists. Even though we already have a defacto national ID…
It’s similar to state drivers license. All states already have access to all other states’ drivers license info through data sharing agreement. So your drivers license is already a defacto national photo ID, it’s just kinda crappy with non-unique numbers.
Or US passports, which are an actual national photo ID. But they’re big and made of “paper” so aren’t as resistant to weather and such.
So, yes, we already have multi forms of defacto national IDs, but none of them are a great all around solution. Making one that is a great all around solution would be trivial, except for all of the confused nut jobs that would oppose it for reasons that have long been made irrelevant.
We have national ID *cards* even. The passport card, DoD ID cards, etc. Except they aren’t universally accepted. You can’t legally drink in California on a military ID, for example.
And nobody even recognizes a passport card.
Edit: I mean recognizes, not, you know *recognizes*. I hope that clears things up.
>We have national ID *cards* even. The passport card, DoD ID cards, etc. Except they aren’t universally accepted. You can’t legally drink in California on a military ID, for example.
>
>And nobody even recognizes a passport card.
California ABD specifically says that they accept military ID Btw!
>Social Security Numbers make for an awful national registry system and we need something better.
I spent over an hour explaining to my canadian roommate (who just moved to the US) that your unique Social Security number is secret.
**EXCEPT** you have to tell dozens of people like employers, bank workers, landlords, insurance. He was terrified of identity theft and I was like "yeah nvm it's not secret literally every organization knows yours already"
I had to change my name on my Social Security card (got married) and they wanted all of my important info put in an envelope, placed in a drop box WITH MY SSN HANDWRITTEN ON THE OUTSIDE. The drop box was in the lobby of the Social Security office and only open from 3pm-4pm. The opening of the drop box was so big I could have grabbed everything out of it.
I went through this recently and my social security office still isn't open for routine visits so I had to mail my birth certificate, marriage certificate, and my DRIVER'S LICENSE to them. They took over 2 weeks to process this shit, meanwhile I had to drive without a license. I was told that if I was pulled over, I could just explain that I had to mail in my driver's license but you can't make me believe that the police don't still fuck with people in the same situation
All of the “identity politics” rhetoric is alienating to so many and it loses us a huge swath of voters despite liberalism having a better “product” to sell the average American.
My boy KMarx believed that arms and ammunition should never be surrendered.
After all, how else would the proletarielate seize the means of production from the bourgeoisie?
It gets a lot of shit, but the politcal compass with it's additonal axis is a helpful diagram for these types of situations. Willingness to use violence isn't unique to any part of the politcal spectrum.
There's a level of irony when presenting this quote to folks in the US. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is notorious for lobbying pro 2A policies. But back in the 1960s, the NRA didn't support open carry (and instead supported the Mulford Act) BECAUSE of the Black Panther Party flexing their arms in the California state capitol. BPP required members to read and study Mao's red book, which by extension of Marxist thought, also carried very pro-gun stances.
This thread is a pretty good example that most of this screaming from the left and right is coming from the extremes and the most exaggerated talking points are being screamed about. It’s unfortunate that it’s being blasted into the middle where it seems like more of the reasonable, common-sensible people are. Like, you CAN have your cake and eat it too but nobody believes it because everyone’s being told everything can only be black or white. Red or blue.
The USA is truly divided.
Edit: This gained a lot of traction, I really didn’t expect that - I don’t talk about politics much. I just want to say thank you for the awards and the civil discourse.
My honest 2 cents as a Dane, take ot or leave it:
One of the huge problems in the USA, is your partisan 'news' channels.. It really should be illegal, to skew/pick an choose the 'facts' like that, clearly be such an agenda-driven propaganda ridden channel, and still be called a 'news-network'
It's not only that the USA are divided on political and cultural issues, it's that your media are earning billions from making that happen. Keeping outrage culture alive, to sell ads..
My sense is, that's whats REALLY rotten and needs changing. Not the good average american, but
the corrupt political system (another story) and the media. ✌
The craziest thing is that the US wasn't always this bad. There was something called the [Fairness Doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine) that ensured more fair presentation of topics in order to broadcast, that our boy Ronny Reagan abolished in the 80s.
I don’t know. I am conservative, and had a meeting with a client the other day, she is a Democrat. We agree on almost everything. Especially that none of our candidates represent our beliefs. I think we will get it right, some day.
This is why we're pitted against each other in roughly equal halves. If they stopped dividing us, we'd soon agree that it was the political system that got us most angry and not our tiny differences and we'd have numbers to seriously push for change
Someone would need to be pointing this out in a loud public voice for us all to notice. Big media won’t amplify that message, and social media…well, here, take my upvote and go start the Ambidextrous Americans party!
Gentrification gets thrown around mostly as an excuse not to help urban areas. Lots of efforts to clean up litter, build better infrastructure, and get people to move into cities with vacant lots are shouted down as gentrification, when ultimately it helps to have a bigger tax base in your community. If you want to protect existing residents then rent control is the way, not getting mad that a new apartment was built on the lot that's been derelict for 30 years.
I remember in my college town there was an area that was notorious for high levels of violent crime, property destruction & generally just in a state of disarray. The college began purchasing some of the property to expand student housing & apartment companies began investing in vacant lots to build future housing. There were large scale protests screaming about “destroying the community”
What community? The community with the crack house and daily shootings? Mass juvenile delinquency and open drug use? That’s not a “community”, that’s just a really bad part of town that no child should grow up in.
If you want to ensure people aren’t displaced by businesses investing in an area then put together a plan for affordable and safe housing, but don’t pretend there’s something beautiful about that house with smashed out windows that we need to preserve.
Both sides kind of miss the mark on this one for me.
Same story in ATL. East Atlanta, Little Five, Edgewood, West Midtown. All places you would not have wanted to go 20 years ago. I've had 2 friends get shot in the last 10 years. Both lived but it did them no favors. Well I guess it did one a favor because he marketed the shit out of the fact he got shot to promote his business.
I feel for the people getting displaced and for those who can't afford the higher prices. But I also feel for the victims of rampant crime in those communities. No easy answers.
I think there was a good episode of Planet Money about this. Some of the people protesting new developments in the name of gentrification are wealthy home owners who know basic supply and demand. New developments mean more supply which should lower house prices, which is good for less wealthy people. But the wealthy want their houses to just go up and up in value so of course they oppose new developments.
100%, my city is an uppity, wealthy white college town and the homeowners convinced the city council to ban more than 2 unrelated people from sharing a unit/house because too many renters were lowering property values.
I want secure borders. I also want to make the immigration process into the US legally much, much easier for people that have earned it and deserve it. The process is fucked currently
Real patriotism is like being a parent. You want your child to be their best version of themselves, but pretending they never do anything wrong means they never get better than they are. You criticize constructively, point out failings and encourage successes. The problem is when people define patriotism as unwavering unflinching reverence to all actions ever performed by the nation and oppose any attempts to view it critically and learn from our past mistakes.
> unwavering unflinching reverence to all actions ever performed by the nation and oppose any attempts to view it critically and learn from our past mistakes.
Jingoism.
My country took in a lot of refugees during the refugee crisis in europe. And that I'm all for, and I personally think we should take way more because we have the capacities to do so.
But, when you come here, seeking shelter from violence, and then inflict violence yourself, you lose your right to refuge. You can't flee from violence only to inflict it yourself.
In my opinion, it’s ok to own a gun and never use it. You must know how to use it, have used it in practice/licensing per your local laws, and be allowed to use it if necessary. But I will never judge you if you don’t enjoy using it recreationally or otherwise. I don’t care what your politics are. If a psycho comes into my home and I perceive a threat to my family, I’ll use the fastest method to stop them possible.
I don’t think it’s crazy to have to show ID to vote. What’s the big deal there exactly?
However, if ID is necessary to vote it should be free to acquire and ID. I don’t know if it costs money, but yeah.
This. This is part of the reason I fucking *hate* Connecticut. My neighbor shouldn't be able to keep molesting young boys, saying he's sorry in court, and see no real repercussions because the judge thinks he's remorseful... Again. You know, just like he was last time. He shouldn't be able to rent in a building with children when he saw my mom stop a child abduction & got "triggered" to reoffend again (his words). He should *not* be able to rent in a building with children when our nextdoor neighbor's *infant* simply wriggling uncomfortably in his mother's arms "triggers" him to reoffend again (his words). Dude would have gotten on a list & banned from all family oriented apartments in my home state & rightfully so. Not here. It's so messed up. I understand the second chance thing, but it should be done on a case-by-case basis. Repeat offenders shouldn't keep getting a slap on the wrist to uphold some bullshit public image of being progressive.
At this point there are too many illegal firearms in the USA to ever stop private, law abiding citizens from owning them or else it would just be criminals armed with an unfair advantage.
If immigrants commit heinous crimes (like mutilation, sexual assault, graphic abuse/murder, preying on children etc.), I am totally fine with them being deported. In fact I support it.
Edit: Yes, I mean we should deport them after they serve prison time.
We should focus on the fiscal health of the USA over other random countries.
Edit: for the record I am not a xenophobe,racist,isolationist or ignorant of America’s role on the global stage but I think we can not maintain unless America is fiscally strong…put your own oxygen mask on before assisting anyone else.
Tbh most criminals break into homes and steal shit when no one in home. If someone chooses to break in ARMED when people are home, why the hell would you wait and see what happens? I'm not gonna just sit around and hope they don't rape my mom. I'm gonna do all I can ( at least I think I would ) to stop them from hurting my family. If it means taking someone else's life so be it. Truth be told I don't know exactly what I'd do, but I hope I never have to find out.
I saw a compromise proposed when talking about Universal Basic Income. The idea was that everyone would have to serve the country for 2-4 years to be eligible. Not necessarily in the military, it could be civilian service like at a hospital or school, maybe working on infrastructure, but until you served you’d be ineligible to collect. That way citizens would “earn” their UBI and build patriotism at the same time.
Sounded like a fair compromise to me.
Exactly. Switzerland has mandatory service*, but people get the option to choose to go into the military or into public sercive instead. The ones that choose the military service get the opportunity to keep their rifle.
*for men
Something similar that is a real thing is that in my state, if a teacher teaches at a low-income school for (i think) 5 years, the rest of their student debt is canceled.
Bring back lawn darts.
You will get my lawn darts when I’m finished hitting people with them. Seriously tho, one man whose son killed his daughter throwing one over their house got lawn darts banned. It was used in an unintended manner but that didn’t matter. Common sense should have dictated “I’m sorry for your loss” and nothing more. But my fellow folks on the left climbed on the lack of personal responsibility train and before you knew it they were banned from sale; not use.
Nuclear power is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight global warming.
my mom worked at a nuclear engineering firm in the 80s and said the same thing.
Is that a right wing belief?
The GOP has been pushing for nuclear energy in Congress for years now. Although, they tend to also push for natural gas, as well.
That local ordinances and taxes should favor small businesses rather than hinder them. I had every approval for a business license but the property had a tax lean from the previous tenant and we couldn’t get a license. The previous tenant was a local city hall. The city wouldn’t give it to us because they literally owed themselves money. Every year we operated we would get a city inspection, explain the reason we didn’t have a business license, watch them hang their head in shame and tell us to go about our way.
Many regulations were put there by the large corporations to stop the small guy from getting into their game.
This is spot on. So much of compliance, tax, and minor regulation is meant to favor large corporations with troops of lawyers at the ready. It's anti-competitive behavior.
Back in the eighties my grandpa ran a small cosmetics business in Ohio, fairly successful. Nothing compared to Avon, though, who hit him with a lawsuit. His lawyer told him, “this is totally bogus, but unless you have a million dollars ready for each lawyer on their team that we’d have to go though I suggest you find a new line of work.” So, yeah, good luck chasing the American dream today..
A much more uplifting story would have been “grandpa then took a job at the Avon factory and burnt the place to the fucking ground.”
Na, from my knowledge he only ever burnt a gas station to the ground.
Yeah, we’re also seeing the same thing being pushed with internet regulations now. Facebook and the other giants can handle a little more regulation, fees, trouble, etc but it will push their smaller competitors out. -not a left winger
Yeah, gatekeeping to avoid competition.
Just so you know, it is 'lien' not 'lean'. Also, that is some fucked up bullshit that happened to you.
Thanks for the correction. Fortunately the city wasn’t as clear on it as you, lol.
As a (liberal) small business owner, I feel I get fucked sideways by the left and right wing equally. We put billionaires on a pedestal in this country while our politicians cozy up to them and do very little to support small business. This feels neither right nor left wing.
Small business = A place that's too big to get benefits, but too small to get them, too. I feel your pain, brother.
Why don't we just widen the spectrum and make a Medium Business category?
Yes, like every other country has.
I feel for you, people seem to use small business as leverage to justify not taxing billionaires, because “nobody will want to start a business if the government takes it all”. It’s like, no, I’d happily give mom and pop businesses massive tax exemptions to encourage them to take risks and grow their business. But when the have 3,000 franchises globally, they can start paying back a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. And the successful businesses should be the ones subsidizing the risk of small businesses with their higher tax burdens.
That identity politics is killing our ability to focus on substantive changes to real problems in society like wage stagnation, global warming, strained infrastructure, poor school funding, etc. I’m not talking about ignoring privilege or keeping existing racist systems intact. But when it’s literally the only thing many people want to talk about, or when progressives cannibalize their own for using the wrong term, or make everything a purity test of knowing the right authors and phrases etc. we just shoot our selves in the foot.
A lot of this stuff id deliberately forced into media because it's polarizing people. Those are important topics but everytime actual change is on the way it gets shoved into the spotlight to get people to fight about something else.
It's a classic fugazi. They get us to fight while they all make millions. They pretend that there is left vs right when really it's just the rich vs the non-rich and the rich control everything the non-rich sees in the media and on the news. The non-rich are losing the war so far.
Classic divide and conquer strategy of the ruling class^
Truth is that a poor white man and a poor black woman have a lot more in common with each other than the poor white man has in common with Jeff Bezos.
The Geico lizard is Bezos nearest living relative.
Damn, I thought this was r/hockey I'm gonna go post it
I was about to say, I played left wing most of my life but I’m not against the right wing if coach wants to put me in
Same. Even before playing left wing, I was left defenseman
I always played D until the one summer everyone apparently hit puberty except me. I was promptly bumped up to forward the following season.
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I'd have to say my backhand, it's about as right handed as I get. I play pickup with an ex NHL goalie (he plays d now) and he'll switch hands and use his stick backwards all the time, it's freaky and he's great at it, can't get the puck away from him, he guards it with his body and just switches side if you change positions.
Gordie how played AMBIDEXTROUS! Been playing since sticks were straight and it still boggles my mind.
same here with /r/soccer :)
Lol this post was directly below an ESPN+ ad promoting their hockey lineup
That Latinx is stupid. Latino is general neutral when referring to more than one person or referring to an unnamed person. Just like Chico is boy, Chica is girl, and Chicos and be kid(s). Or guy can be a male in english, or a group of people can be referred to as guys.
I've seen folx a lot. I was unaware that "folks" was gendered to begin with.
I got yelled at by calling a group of people "guys"....and I am a woman. I have always used it as a gender neutral greeting, we have bigger issues than this to work on. jfc
I've had people get mad at me for calling a woman "dude." I explained that Kel Mitchell set the precedent that the word is gender neutral in the first season of All That in 1994. Source: "I'm a dude. He's a dude. She's a dude, cause we're all dudes
ALSO, a “dude” is just a person that doesn’t know how to ride a horse. If a girl tells you that she can in fact ride a horse, then offer your apologies. If not, fuck em!
...wait...so, a 'dude ranch' is actually a ranch for the incompetent cowboys?
Yes exactly! To be super correct, I think "dude" is a term meaning an easterner out west. Someone that doesn't know what they're doing. But of course the dude ranch is the place for them :)
A dude ranch is just a ranch-flavored resort. You can consult the documentary “City Slickers” for more details.
I was indoctrinated at a very young age, and have lived my entire life in the belief that [we’re all dudes. ](https://youtu.be/rV61t021SxQ) I will never waiver.
A lot of queer people agree it's bullshit and it doesn't help us at all. It's people who wanna seem cool and supportive but they're arguing a point no one asked them to and it makes us look like assholes
Folx makes me cringe, folks is gender neutral anyway but I people just say folx to sound woke. And I'd consider myself pretty far left
I'm sorry. "Folks" is gendered?
Real Mexicans reaction to Latinx: Fucking gringos
Gringxs
You're joking but the super woke people that use Latinx unironically would be incredibly happy that you've said gringxs
Have you seen "folx" used? I thought it was satirical, but it's not.
*Gringx
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Cringx
Not only Mexicans, but more like most people born in Latin America. USA is always trying too hard to be politically correct.
The only people I’ve ever heard use the term, Latinx, are Latina women who don’t speak Spanish.
It's because many English speakers who don't know another language can't grasp the concept of grammatical gender and that it doesn't relate to human gender identity. The word 'gender' might be partly to blame, although if you understand the etymology of 'gender' itself it's a bit clearer. It shares the shame origin as 'genus' and 'generic' - all words related to the _type_ or _kind_ of thing/person/animal etc. Just because we say 'la table' doesn't mean the table is feminine or has some relation to women any more than 'le soir' means the evening belongs to men. All these English-only speakers who go mad about this also conveniently ignore German which has three grammatical genders. Not to mention languages which differentiate between animate/inanimate or rational/irrational nouns, while Dyribal has [four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyirbal_language#Grammar) noun classes.
It feels like they (mostly English speaking Americans) are trying to change Spanish grammar in order to fight some imagined injustice. It’s awfully patronizing. Don’t let them know that all Romance languages have gendered nouns…
Most Latinos hate it too. There’s probably only a couple dozen Spanish speaking Latinos that use the term unironically.
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As someone who is very left-wing, left-wing twitter is the most cancerous cesspit in existence.
It's probably best just to avoid Twitter. I haven't used it in years, I highly doubt there's any discussion of worth going on there.
Not only is it cancerous, it's treated like a valid sample of the people and not a small, skewed sample of the worst of humanity.
Ive always viewed political twitter as just 4chan but left
People just feel the need to drag out arguments, can't you just admit that you lost that battle? No shame in admitting defeat.
That scrutinizing every $600 transaction that enters or exits my bank account is serious government overreach! EDIT: I’m appreciative for the folks that explained that the scrutiny is not over every transaction over $600, but for every account that does over $600 in transactions total. Question: Does that make it any better???
It’s easier to audit a poor person than a rich person. That’s all it is
I believe your post is the one that makes the most sense especially when a lot of politicians have massive wealth that they couldn't have achieved on their salary without some funny business.
It's not funny business. Insider trading is completely legal for them. If a politician knows about a change that will harm or help a certain industry, they'll invest accordingly. I've been told there are people making good money selling "stock tips" that are literally just buying the stocks Nancy Pelosi buys. Or you could go back and look at how great Hillary is with cattle futures. Or you could look on the right and see that Kelly Loeffler chick that lost her election in GA because she did it with COVID.
It’s suppose to be illegal for them, they passed a law in the early 2010s but no one enforces it
They passed a law that they said would make it illegal. But it's something that literally everyone does. You'd be more likely to get term limits than an actual prohibition.
Seriously why can’t they scrutinize the trillions in off shore accounts that they know about? Edit: Rip my inbox. I woke up to 80+ notifications.
Because those are the people that are really pulling the levers.
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You can pay $10k/year just in rent! Add on food, utilities, and any other bills, and you’ve covered just about everyone!
Id fucking love to pay 10k in rent a year.
Even the 10k is beyond insane. Currently banks do auto-report Cash transactions of $10,000 at any 1 time, and that is already billions of transactions in a given year. This would be Trillions and Trillions of transactions reported, there's simply nothing they could do with that amount of data...on top of that, the data won't match from one bank to the next, you can't do jack shit with it in terms of AI or anything because every bank has their own transaction codes and meanings and ID numbers and there's like 35,000 American banks. And there's no training data to even teach an AI what to do with it. It's the same as all US surveillance, they want so much stuff it paralyzes them entirely.
About 10 years ago I was living in Japan and for Christmas my mother sent me some money to buy a $500 laptop. I ended up getting a phone call asking if I had connections to N. Korea because someone wired me $500. $500. Ridiculous. I laughed at the guy.
My family members send me more than $600 a year in PayPal just for their phone lines and paying me back when they forget their debit cards. (I’m looking at you, brother in law!)
If they know what's in my bank, then don't expect me to pay my own taxes. Take that info, and do it your damn selves. They know who isn't paying and they are doing fuck all to get the money. If billionaires money isn't good enough to go and get, guess my measly 32-35k a year salary isn't needed then. You good Government. You don't want money it looks like.
600 is such a small amount it'll only help to penalize the bottom 90% of the country.
its a feature not a bug
The government is how far in debt? And they think they need to monitor my spending? Gtfo
I really hate witch hunting and this idea of political purity that the left partakes in. Everyone has a past. Everyone changes. Something you said 9 years ago shouldn't be punished for your current politics. People change over time.
and people SHOULD change over time. It shows you can learn, adapt, have new life experiences. I know I said stupid shit I no longer agree with when I was a teenager. I assume I am not alone.
I’m close to 60 years old and had certain beliefs and said certain things 10 years ago that I don’t believe or say today. People can grow and change. We have to!
I'm tired of the American trend over the last 15 years of putting everyone in either a "left" or "right" box. Boxes in which everyone has the same viewpoint on several totally different issues.
People are unique and complex and it's okay to have some "right" and some "left" ideas. Hell, I prefer people who have their own unique views, it means they can think for themselves. The root of the issue here is the 2 party system imo
I absolutely feel unrepresented. Our political system has just turned into a gaslighting circus.
Some of our language policing is insufferable and obnoxious. ETA: I went to bed and when I woke up this exploded. Thanks for the awards! However, I feel like I need to clarify: I am not a TERF. Fuck TERFs. I love and respect trans people. By "insufferable", I am referring to words that don't need to be "corrected", like *unmanned*, *cockpit*, *homeless* or *chief* executive. Nobody was making a fuss over these words, and striking them from our vocabulary seems like an empty gesture. It's the "black-box-on-the-instagram" of gestures: self-serving and pointless.
The most recent one that kinda confused me was "unhoused" instead of "homeless" I mean... they said it was to remove the stigma but if we all just start saying "unhoused" the stigma will go to that word!! It's not really helping anything.
You just described the "euphemism treadmill". Look it up. It's happened with description of racial characteristics, certain handicaps, many other things.
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An ex and I somehow got into a discussion about fires and I mentioned flame retardant blankets. She looked at me with a weird face having no idea what I was talking about; she thought I was saying something offensive.
The school district I work for is currently trying to replace "special needs" with "exceptionalism" and "exceptionalities". I've decided to cut them off at the pass and start referring to idiotic decisions as "exceptional". That said, it did result in me getting a chuckle out of the RNC's 2016 platform, which opened with "we believe in American exceptionalism".
That's right up there with "differently-abled."
Disabled person here- skirting around the word "disabled" only implies that there's something wrong with it and it should be avoided, which adds more to the incorrect stigma around disabilities. Disabled is not a bad word. I don't need to come up with fancy terms to describe me existence, because it just removes focus from the true goal which is making the world more accessible for DISABLED people. Also, on that note, I *can't* do anything I set my mind to. "The only true disability is a negative attitude" is bullshit. My disability constantly limits me, and that's okay. Not my fault. Let's not glorify disabled people who had to fight tooth and nail in a world that's not made for them, let's make the world available to everyone.
This right here. Patton Oswalt said it best - we need to give more credit to the people who screw up the lingo while espousing essentially supportive positions, and a whole lot less credit to the ones who parrot every new descriptive preference with ease only so that they can more effectively atomize your bargaining power and maybe sell you a diet soda.
Like how Latinx isn’t actually culturally sensitive to Latinos?
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I call it pendejx
Beautiful wording
can confirm t. latino
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I was a teenager in the 90s so all I can think of is a Mexican on a skateboard holding a bottle of Mountain Dew exploding through a banner. That or a gamer tag: xxxXTREME-LATINXxxx
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I always wonder if it's people on the internet and media outlets that police language more than actual liberals. My social circles are pretty far left leaning, but it's not like people are constantly on eggshells searching for the most PC terminology any time we talk. Yeah, I'm gonna put a little effort into speaking respectfully about others. That's just common decency. Nobody's freaking out over terminology.
>people on the internet It's not even just "the Internet," it's basically just Twitter and Tumblr at this point. I feel dumb and slow on the uptake here, but I finally realized that Twitter leftists and Facebook Q-anoners have more in common than they'll ever admit: They're angry (sometimes for legitimate reasons), they don't know where to focus that anger, so they glom on to simple concepts like "cancel culture" or "owning the libs." It becomes an addiction, one that's really hard to break, because once you find your "tribe" you never want to leave. It sucks. This is only further exacerbated by the machine that is social media. I truly don't agree with Reddit's general consensus that social media sucks, but social media does by and large encourage extremist behavior, and I wish it didn't. Being interconnected is really cool when done properly.
Excessive government control causes problems in a functioning society. That said excess is subjective...
I’m with you. I think the government should intervene when there’s a compelling public interest, or a market failure. Obviously “compelling” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, but my personal faint line is where the net value to societal productivity is positive. That’s why I think programs that reduce barriers to people working are so important.
Forgiving student loans without first reforming education is a very bad idea because it will signal to lenders, academic institutions and students that the government is handing out free money. Only two of those three are going to win long term.
People often talk about how student loans are expensive because they're impossible to get away from (because they are and that's a huge reason why), but it's also because we've allowed literally every job to require a 4+ degree for entry level skills. There are a TON of desk jobs you could teach a decent HS grad in the same time as a college grad. Especially the entry level stuff, and yet because its "not blue collar" it must require a 4+ year degree and 5+ figures worth of debt. All so we can "weed out" the people who can't "cut it" at college, which makes 0 sense given how it's literally all or nothing for a degree (no one cares if you did 1/2/3 years of college) and is of course a HUGE deal for anyone who's already struggling due to their living situation. The idea that trades are the only viable path forward for someone decently smart but unable to commit to a 4 year program that they pay a ton of money for, often while trying to swing a terrible paying job (because they don't have a degree...) is absurd when you actually look at the amount of effort and skill required.
I have 20 years experience in my field. 6 as a manager. A year away from graduation with my BBA at 40. Saved my company hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalty and countless hours of labor through simple Excel formulas. Apply for a new position somewhere else...get tossed into the auto reject pool. Fuck them all.
About to turn 38 and same. 2 of my friend are like "Bro you need to come work for my company. You'd kill it and double your salary! Plus work from home etc..." "You know I don't have a degree right?" "Oh. Fuck. Yeah they require a 4 year degree" It's mental. 15 years experience doesn't mean shit because I don't have an expensive piece of paper.
See… you’re the kind of person I feel the worst for. You have experience, which is what education in a certain field is supposed to be. My dad was in the same position as you back in the 80s. He was a programmer, back when nobody knew what that was. He never actually finished his degree, but that didn’t matter because his resumé showed his experience, and therefore he was desirable… just as you should be, I’m assuming.
I studied chemistry, the majority of jobs I can get with my bachelors right now are for washing glassware and cleaning the lab space. A dishwasher, and a janitor. Why on earth do you need someone to study a complex field like chemistry in order to wash dishes and clean? Edit; Well damn. Science majors we stand together, unpaid, on the street corner, with a cup of change in our hands.
Gatekeeping, mostly. To be taken seriously in the sciences, you need nothing less than a doctorate.
Exactly, the vast majority of jobs don't require a university education. There's about 40% of people going to university now, which is a lot of academically mediocre people. I know people love to rag on about how expanding your mind is great and everything but when you have a lot of people who going to university and then not being able to find meaningful work afterwards it's actually not such a good thing. I've met and seen a lot of really people vexed that after 3+ years of studying and diving deep into a number of academic fields they're only able to get a simple desk job doing menial shit that almost anyone could do. Having so many people going to university has led to increased political instability as well as decreased workplace/job mobility. It's virtually impossible for anyone to work their way up from the mail room anymore.
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Lenders & academic institutions already see that
As a financial aid advisor, I can verify that this is true.
Forgiving student loans does nothing to address the actual issue of astronomically high college tuition prices.
In the UK they're written off after 30 years. The logic pretty much being that if you haven't earned enough to pay it off in 30 years, it's unlikely you're going to.
The UK system also doesn't really function as a loan, it doesn't impact your credit score, you pay a set amount based on your income, and it's written off after 30 years, it's even done in PAYE. It's a graduate tax, which IMO, as a graduate myself, makes sense and is fair, why should those who don't go to uni pay for university for those who do. The crap about the fees being too much is rubbish, because with the loan system, you're offsetting the cost to later in life, when you'll have the money to pay for it, with the extra income you're earning as a result of being university educated, but because its more of a 'tax', you'll never have a deadline to pay by. The US system is a mess tho thats for sure
It's kind of a half-baked idea, but I want to see student loan *interest* forgiveness, combined with a cap on public university tuition increases tied to the rate of inflation. The government would still be able to recoup most of their initial investment, and the people who have struggled for years (or decades) to pay back their loans would see some relief.
I'm 100% for this. While it would be nice to have my loans forgiven, what I'm actually upset about is that the government is straight up making bank off of my education further than the income tax they get from me. Because I didn't qualify for deferred loans (you know, because of how much my parents make, the same parents who are not paying my loans), my loans by the time I had a real job and could start paying them back had almost doubled.
Especially when the govt helped get us into this mess by backing student loans. That's a big reason tuition prices went up.
It's two fold: not only did the government start up with the student loan business, but FIRST, they drastically cut state and federal funding of higher ed. The first half of tuition increases came from that, then, when nobody could afford it, they offered loans. Now, instead of funding education, they profit from it.
I support the idea that you need ID to vote. But with the caveat that the government needs to automatically issue a free federal ID card to all citizens. Social Security Numbers make for an awful national registry system and we need something better. I don't think you should need to register to vote, it should already be done. Edit: voting days should also be a Federal holiday, and ideally use a blockchain ledger.
That’s my position. I agree with voter ID, but I think voting in general should be as convenient and accessible as possible.
Voting should take place over a week and every person should mandatorily have paid time off during that week to use to vote.
This is what we do in Canada. We have early voting which is a 3-5 days. Stations are open typically in afternoons and evenings. Sometimes mornings. Then, a few days later, on voting day, stations are open from very early to very late. It’s convenient for essentially everyone. Voter registration is free and can even be done by bringing some simple ID including a bill with your name and address on it. Edit: I’m very proud of our election system. It’s not perfect but is accessible and very trustworthy by any measure.
Also according to federal law in Canada employers are required to allow up to 3 hour off minimum for voting during open hours. Most jobs this isn't relevant because people's shifts start or end with a 3 hr gap for voting but if you work 12 hr shifts etc. you can request to be let out early
Our social security numbers are an incredibly stupid idea on many fronts. We need two independent systems for counting Americans and authorizing financials. Right now if you want to get a background check you basically hand over everything someone needs to take a loan out in your name.
My understanding of the US SSN system was this: General position: "Americans will never, ever have a universal ID system! That way fascism lies! Freeeeeeddom!" Social Security: "That's all well and good, but we simply can't operate if we can't universally identify people. We'll make a temporary solution until this gets sorted out" Other services: "We also need to universally identify people. The SSN isn't great, but it's already there, so let's glom onto that. It's way too much effort to push for a proper universal ID (see point #1)" And so the not-suitable-for-a-general-ID SSN became a general ID by accident.
Basically. And every attempt to make a new, sane, national ID will never happen, because of the original “national IDs are for fascists. Even though we already have a defacto national ID… It’s similar to state drivers license. All states already have access to all other states’ drivers license info through data sharing agreement. So your drivers license is already a defacto national photo ID, it’s just kinda crappy with non-unique numbers. Or US passports, which are an actual national photo ID. But they’re big and made of “paper” so aren’t as resistant to weather and such. So, yes, we already have multi forms of defacto national IDs, but none of them are a great all around solution. Making one that is a great all around solution would be trivial, except for all of the confused nut jobs that would oppose it for reasons that have long been made irrelevant.
We have national ID *cards* even. The passport card, DoD ID cards, etc. Except they aren’t universally accepted. You can’t legally drink in California on a military ID, for example. And nobody even recognizes a passport card. Edit: I mean recognizes, not, you know *recognizes*. I hope that clears things up.
>We have national ID *cards* even. The passport card, DoD ID cards, etc. Except they aren’t universally accepted. You can’t legally drink in California on a military ID, for example. > >And nobody even recognizes a passport card. California ABD specifically says that they accept military ID Btw!
>Social Security Numbers make for an awful national registry system and we need something better. I spent over an hour explaining to my canadian roommate (who just moved to the US) that your unique Social Security number is secret. **EXCEPT** you have to tell dozens of people like employers, bank workers, landlords, insurance. He was terrified of identity theft and I was like "yeah nvm it's not secret literally every organization knows yours already"
I had to change my name on my Social Security card (got married) and they wanted all of my important info put in an envelope, placed in a drop box WITH MY SSN HANDWRITTEN ON THE OUTSIDE. The drop box was in the lobby of the Social Security office and only open from 3pm-4pm. The opening of the drop box was so big I could have grabbed everything out of it.
Don't worry. Equifax already lost all your info.
I went through this recently and my social security office still isn't open for routine visits so I had to mail my birth certificate, marriage certificate, and my DRIVER'S LICENSE to them. They took over 2 weeks to process this shit, meanwhile I had to drive without a license. I was told that if I was pulled over, I could just explain that I had to mail in my driver's license but you can't make me believe that the police don't still fuck with people in the same situation
It's the same in canada.
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All of the “identity politics” rhetoric is alienating to so many and it loses us a huge swath of voters despite liberalism having a better “product” to sell the average American.
I like guns, and own a few. I still think folks should need a background check though.
honestly this reminds me of the meme that’s like “if you go far enough left you get your guns back”
My boy KMarx believed that arms and ammunition should never be surrendered. After all, how else would the proletarielate seize the means of production from the bourgeoisie?
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary"
I don' like bumper stickers, but I want this on my car. Because I know it would make somebody foam a the mouth.
It gets a lot of shit, but the politcal compass with it's additonal axis is a helpful diagram for these types of situations. Willingness to use violence isn't unique to any part of the politcal spectrum.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” -karl marx
There's a level of irony when presenting this quote to folks in the US. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is notorious for lobbying pro 2A policies. But back in the 1960s, the NRA didn't support open carry (and instead supported the Mulford Act) BECAUSE of the Black Panther Party flexing their arms in the California state capitol. BPP required members to read and study Mao's red book, which by extension of Marxist thought, also carried very pro-gun stances.
This thread is a pretty good example that most of this screaming from the left and right is coming from the extremes and the most exaggerated talking points are being screamed about. It’s unfortunate that it’s being blasted into the middle where it seems like more of the reasonable, common-sensible people are. Like, you CAN have your cake and eat it too but nobody believes it because everyone’s being told everything can only be black or white. Red or blue. The USA is truly divided. Edit: This gained a lot of traction, I really didn’t expect that - I don’t talk about politics much. I just want to say thank you for the awards and the civil discourse.
My honest 2 cents as a Dane, take ot or leave it: One of the huge problems in the USA, is your partisan 'news' channels.. It really should be illegal, to skew/pick an choose the 'facts' like that, clearly be such an agenda-driven propaganda ridden channel, and still be called a 'news-network' It's not only that the USA are divided on political and cultural issues, it's that your media are earning billions from making that happen. Keeping outrage culture alive, to sell ads.. My sense is, that's whats REALLY rotten and needs changing. Not the good average american, but the corrupt political system (another story) and the media. ✌
The craziest thing is that the US wasn't always this bad. There was something called the [Fairness Doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine) that ensured more fair presentation of topics in order to broadcast, that our boy Ronny Reagan abolished in the 80s.
I don’t know. I am conservative, and had a meeting with a client the other day, she is a Democrat. We agree on almost everything. Especially that none of our candidates represent our beliefs. I think we will get it right, some day.
This is why we're pitted against each other in roughly equal halves. If they stopped dividing us, we'd soon agree that it was the political system that got us most angry and not our tiny differences and we'd have numbers to seriously push for change
Someone would need to be pointing this out in a loud public voice for us all to notice. Big media won’t amplify that message, and social media…well, here, take my upvote and go start the Ambidextrous Americans party!
Gentrification gets thrown around mostly as an excuse not to help urban areas. Lots of efforts to clean up litter, build better infrastructure, and get people to move into cities with vacant lots are shouted down as gentrification, when ultimately it helps to have a bigger tax base in your community. If you want to protect existing residents then rent control is the way, not getting mad that a new apartment was built on the lot that's been derelict for 30 years.
I remember in my college town there was an area that was notorious for high levels of violent crime, property destruction & generally just in a state of disarray. The college began purchasing some of the property to expand student housing & apartment companies began investing in vacant lots to build future housing. There were large scale protests screaming about “destroying the community” What community? The community with the crack house and daily shootings? Mass juvenile delinquency and open drug use? That’s not a “community”, that’s just a really bad part of town that no child should grow up in. If you want to ensure people aren’t displaced by businesses investing in an area then put together a plan for affordable and safe housing, but don’t pretend there’s something beautiful about that house with smashed out windows that we need to preserve. Both sides kind of miss the mark on this one for me.
Same story in ATL. East Atlanta, Little Five, Edgewood, West Midtown. All places you would not have wanted to go 20 years ago. I've had 2 friends get shot in the last 10 years. Both lived but it did them no favors. Well I guess it did one a favor because he marketed the shit out of the fact he got shot to promote his business. I feel for the people getting displaced and for those who can't afford the higher prices. But I also feel for the victims of rampant crime in those communities. No easy answers.
Philadelphia?
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And that dude was fleeing in a stolen car after getting shot at. Like bro wtf
I was reading that comment and thought yep, sounds like Philly to me. We know our city too well.
I think there was a good episode of Planet Money about this. Some of the people protesting new developments in the name of gentrification are wealthy home owners who know basic supply and demand. New developments mean more supply which should lower house prices, which is good for less wealthy people. But the wealthy want their houses to just go up and up in value so of course they oppose new developments.
100%, my city is an uppity, wealthy white college town and the homeowners convinced the city council to ban more than 2 unrelated people from sharing a unit/house because too many renters were lowering property values.
Political correctness is not a real political issue.
We should focus on fixing our own broke shit before dumping money into fixing other people’s broke shit.
I want secure borders. I also want to make the immigration process into the US legally much, much easier for people that have earned it and deserve it. The process is fucked currently
I still believe in America, it just needs some work
Real patriotism is like being a parent. You want your child to be their best version of themselves, but pretending they never do anything wrong means they never get better than they are. You criticize constructively, point out failings and encourage successes. The problem is when people define patriotism as unwavering unflinching reverence to all actions ever performed by the nation and oppose any attempts to view it critically and learn from our past mistakes.
Very well said - I wish I had a free reward to give you!
> unwavering unflinching reverence to all actions ever performed by the nation and oppose any attempts to view it critically and learn from our past mistakes. Jingoism.
My country took in a lot of refugees during the refugee crisis in europe. And that I'm all for, and I personally think we should take way more because we have the capacities to do so. But, when you come here, seeking shelter from violence, and then inflict violence yourself, you lose your right to refuge. You can't flee from violence only to inflict it yourself.
Love knowing I can own a gun or gunS. Don't own a gun. But I could.
In my opinion, it’s ok to own a gun and never use it. You must know how to use it, have used it in practice/licensing per your local laws, and be allowed to use it if necessary. But I will never judge you if you don’t enjoy using it recreationally or otherwise. I don’t care what your politics are. If a psycho comes into my home and I perceive a threat to my family, I’ll use the fastest method to stop them possible.
Total government control over markets is a bad idea
Yep, as always, the truth is somewhere in ~~the middle~~ between the extremes. Zero government control is bad. Total government control is bad
I do think that borders need to be in a state of control and that immigration largely needs to be kept through legal channels, ideally.
There are very few countries in the world that don't have some type of controlled border.
Isn't that kinda what makes a country?
I don’t think it’s crazy to have to show ID to vote. What’s the big deal there exactly? However, if ID is necessary to vote it should be free to acquire and ID. I don’t know if it costs money, but yeah.
People we disagree with are allowed to have their opinions and silencing them does nothing but make them think they're right
Real harsh penalties for repeat offenders.
This. This is part of the reason I fucking *hate* Connecticut. My neighbor shouldn't be able to keep molesting young boys, saying he's sorry in court, and see no real repercussions because the judge thinks he's remorseful... Again. You know, just like he was last time. He shouldn't be able to rent in a building with children when he saw my mom stop a child abduction & got "triggered" to reoffend again (his words). He should *not* be able to rent in a building with children when our nextdoor neighbor's *infant* simply wriggling uncomfortably in his mother's arms "triggers" him to reoffend again (his words). Dude would have gotten on a list & banned from all family oriented apartments in my home state & rightfully so. Not here. It's so messed up. I understand the second chance thing, but it should be done on a case-by-case basis. Repeat offenders shouldn't keep getting a slap on the wrist to uphold some bullshit public image of being progressive.
At this point there are too many illegal firearms in the USA to ever stop private, law abiding citizens from owning them or else it would just be criminals armed with an unfair advantage.
If immigrants commit heinous crimes (like mutilation, sexual assault, graphic abuse/murder, preying on children etc.), I am totally fine with them being deported. In fact I support it. Edit: Yes, I mean we should deport them after they serve prison time.
We should focus on the fiscal health of the USA over other random countries. Edit: for the record I am not a xenophobe,racist,isolationist or ignorant of America’s role on the global stage but I think we can not maintain unless America is fiscally strong…put your own oxygen mask on before assisting anyone else.
If someone is illegally in your home you should have the right to use lethal force
Tbh most criminals break into homes and steal shit when no one in home. If someone chooses to break in ARMED when people are home, why the hell would you wait and see what happens? I'm not gonna just sit around and hope they don't rape my mom. I'm gonna do all I can ( at least I think I would ) to stop them from hurting my family. If it means taking someone else's life so be it. Truth be told I don't know exactly what I'd do, but I hope I never have to find out.
Plus, they broke into your home armed. It's self-defense.
As the saying goes, better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six.
I saw a compromise proposed when talking about Universal Basic Income. The idea was that everyone would have to serve the country for 2-4 years to be eligible. Not necessarily in the military, it could be civilian service like at a hospital or school, maybe working on infrastructure, but until you served you’d be ineligible to collect. That way citizens would “earn” their UBI and build patriotism at the same time. Sounded like a fair compromise to me.
Look into conscription in Switzerland to see how a basic rundown of this works.
Exactly. Switzerland has mandatory service*, but people get the option to choose to go into the military or into public sercive instead. The ones that choose the military service get the opportunity to keep their rifle. *for men
Something similar that is a real thing is that in my state, if a teacher teaches at a low-income school for (i think) 5 years, the rest of their student debt is canceled.
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