Probably more the swing-district republicans saying, “Government shutdowns always get blamed on the GOP. You gotta take one for the team here. Take it up with Donald later.”
These meager token “raises” are, for many if not most of us, wildly insufficient compared to the rising costs of everything (due in very large part to the aforementioned corporations and their year over year record profits).
Sounds nice on paper but that’s not reality for a significant number of people still scraping by paycheck to paycheck, many with college degrees and years of experience, one shitty day away from being homeless.
Actually yes... fascism is a natural consequence of late-stage capitalism as it's one way to keep the exploited masses under control by focussing their anger away from the wealthy leaders.
Basically every historic precedent works here. The turn of the 19th to 20th century can be mainly characterized by the results of a rapid technological advancement via industrialisation in which the workers were left behind while the control sat in higher-up circles, partly made up from remaining aristocracy and partly from rich high education citizens who accumulated mnost of the produced wealth. This basically slowly eliminated a general middle-class, provoking clashes between left wing worker movements representing the majority but not having the power and an established rich upper class trying to exploit them for more wealth. (To no one's surprise this is exactly the time when capitalism was defined in details: Karl Marx - Das Kapital (volume 1 to 3, 1867-1894 ))
That scenario can only (and usually has) resulted in either revolution or focusing that (poor, and usually less educated) majority's anger into another direction. The latter resulted in nationalist populist movements all throughout Europe. The only thing in doubt is if it would have won everywhere over time (as in some countries there still was a stable enough middle-class to delay that development at least fo a time). I assume so, but we will never know, as the countries where this development won faster (usually because the pre-conditions for the poorer population were already worse) changed the course of history for all.
If you want to call it a rise of fascism (the original one in Italy), nazis (in Germany) or a definitely fascistic military dictatorship based on "popular front" politics -with some support by monarchists realizing the risk they were in- (Spain) doesn't make a huge difference in the big picture.
Also: for a less historic and more "today" point of view look at Russia. Contrary to people still associating them with communism their form of oligarchy is definitely a variant of late-stage capitalism. In fact the risk of the US' capitalism developing even further into a pure wealth-based oligarchy is a discussion topic for at least two decades. And look were Russia is taking pointers from right now... straight from the nazi playbook.
(And now that I have mentioned it... and the discussed risk of the US moving into the same oligarchy direction: Isn't there a certain guy leaning heavily into far-right nationalism while using fascist and nazi rhetorics at times, who wants to become president again?)
Given their posting history, I’m sure OP will find a way to say it’s Biden and the Democratic party’s fault.
Looking at the states through this lens is like all the articles that blame “congress” while ignoring which people in which party of which half of congress caused the issue of the day.
There are a multitude of reasons why this metric would come to be, but according to the comments here the important part is to keep saying “America sucks right now” without identifying any realistic solutions.
Best you’ll get is a half assed hand wave of people mumbling about Karl Marx like that helps anything.
At least this’ll probably push more people to hate Republicans. Like, fucking with a man’s porn supply is just political suicide. At least I hope it is.
Slaves can also be owned by the state, rather than individuals. Weirdly some empires had slave armies, for example. In other cases slaves have significant rights, including their own property; Roman slaves could save money and buy their own freedom (although many slaves were worked to death in mines, or used for sex, so it was definitely still shit). In some cultures children of slaves were free (technically, although still starting from a terrible position). There was also indentured servitude, where you agreed to be a slave for a limited time period - a lot of people came to the Americas for free, but were slaves for a few years in exchange (before Europeans started buying chattel slaves from Africa, which gave better return on their investment, as long as you didn’t mind being evil).
They should have also added a bit about big government intrusion into their personal privacy rights. They have to speak the conservative language to conservatives to really get them riled up.
Veterans get their loans backed by the government, so no down payment.
It allowed me to get a decent sized 3 bedroom house on almost an acre inside of a metro location… For $400 more than a 1 bedroom apartment down the street a decade ago. I got two friends as roommates at first, paid lower than my old rent and they saved up their own down payments and both moved out into homes they bought in just a few years because I charged really cheap rent.
I just checked, my old apartment has went up $700 in that decade.
The Down Payment is the hardest part of buying a home. You can’t save up 25k while paying what’s essentially a mortgage payment.
Give first time homebuyers the same program, and loads of people who think they’ll never own a home would be able to do so and pay less than renting within just a few years.
If we don’t do anything, those people are going to be lifelong renters.
We were lucky enough to buy in 2019 before everything got out of sight in our area. We used a FHA loan which required a 3% down payment and I got a first time homebuyer grant that covered all of that which allowed us to pay closing and moving costs since we were leaving in a hurry due to the small podunk town we lived in for 12 years stopping extra trash haul off and allowing trash burning in town instead. Almost every day my house was full of smoke. I had to choose between my home or my health. We were outbid on about a dozen houses by landlords. With the loan type we got stuck with a PMI, but even with that and extortionate Texas home insurance rates we still pay half of the renters in the house next to us. Although we’ll never be able to afford moving now and if we had waited any longer we would have been stuck in the corrupt small town EPA violation. We paid 96k for a brick 3/1 and five years later it’s shot up to 240k in value. I feel bad for the people that can’t get one now because I fear it’s more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the same people they do.
because I fear it’s more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the save people they do.
This is absolutely not an endorsement of fascist traitors and everyone should absolutely (1) vote and (2) pick Biden, but I feel compelled to point out that a lot of the factors causing the housing crisis (car dependency, NIMBYism, etc.) are thoroughly bipartisan.
I mean absolutely. Lobbying, no party actually representing progressive ideas, and corporatism insures that if nothing else does. I’m just saying that the people who tend to vote for the fascist traitor always vote against their own interest. I’m sure it’ll trickle down any old time though. checks watch
No, I mean it’s really bipartisan – including progressives. You’d be surprised how many folks with yard signs like this get just as NIMBY as the WASPy-est suburban conservative when push comes to shove and somebody proposes increasing density in their neighborhood. I live in a very progressive part of my city and am active in local politics, and I see it all the time.
I’m afraid my experience is limited, but I’m not too shocked. Granted I’m jaded, but people mostly seem to suck regardless of other demographics. I grew up in a small town in SE Oklahoma and have never lived in the fancy neighborhoods. I live across the border in Texas, but it’s like 80% Conservatives here too so not a lot of experience outside of that unfortunately.
How so? This is about home ownership. People who own homes don’t want new apartment buildings going up next to them so vote against that. But apartment buildings do not have home owners.
People are perfectly fine living in suburban sprawl which is what NIYMBism is most often associated with. So there is some argument that this causes higher rent but it seems quite the stretch to apply it to also blame it on home prices.
First of all, dense housing can be townhouses and condos that are owned, so “apartment buildings do not have home owners” is a bit of a red herring.
Second, The law of supply and demand is a thing. When density is prohibited by law due to NIMBYism, supply can’t meet demand and prices go up. In other words, the absence of dense housing – even rental apartments – makes it harder for first-time buyers than it otherwise would be.
There is a federal first time home buyer program even for non military members. You can put basically 0% down on your first house. You just also have to pay PMI until you have 20% equity in your home. So you are better off making as large of a down payment as you can but it can be as low as 0%. Of course there’s still closing costs but that doesn’t cost too much more than most rentals charge for a security deposit anyways. As far as PMI goes it isn’t that expensive. With the PMI, taxes, and insurance included my mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom house is still less than rent on a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.
It’s better than renting, but PMI is a racket and needs to be discontinued. It’s a handout to the wealthy. The mortgage insurance is the property itself. If you don’t pay your loan, they take the property. It’s a hassle to foreclose a house, but I think mortgage lenders do just fine overall. They must assume some risk, it’s part of the deal.
It’s BS but it’s still better than renting. With house prices currently bloating like a roadside racoon corpse you can also get rid of it pretty quick.
This is accurate, same experience here. It’s a good solution for new buyers, and the PMI cost should be a small expense relative to the alternative of having the full down payment.
At this point we’ve reached a complete and utter death of euphemism around anything regarding Trump.
All attempts to “bring to light” any horrible thing Trump has factually committed will be met by his followers with, “Well that’s actually a good thing.” And any politician trying to ride his wake will have to go along with it.
How soon until we start hearing “Look, we have to view Hitler with some nuance” from the Senate podium.
I remember briefly questioning how tyranny takes hold of a whole country when I was younger. I didn’t think on it hard enough, really. It sucks now to have to live it.
We need to recognize that Hitler did at least one good thing.
(He offed himself.)
In a more serious vein, we need to recognize how easy it is to fall in with… that. Hitler was unspeakably evil. But he had a lot of people following him, some of whom are no more evil than anyone else.
the only way to prevent another version of him, is to recognize there is a risk we, personally, could fall for it. And to be perfectly blunt, republicans have.
Said another way, there is a capacity for evil in everyone; even as there is a capacity for good. Evil people don’t know that they’re evil- they can’t even consider the possibility, because they refuse to accept this.
That workers in the US have a lot more reason to be wary about striking. Hell, just look at the way protestors are being treated in Georgia over Cop City.
They should still do it, but also it’s more risky than in Europe.
French cops are the closest Western Europe gets to American-style policing. Don’t fuck with French cops, they will break your legs and get away with it.
Well, that’s why you guys are allowed to bear arms, right? In case the cops and government get all crazy? Isn’t that the whole reason for the gun thing? So, go strike. Wait for cops. If they open fire, take them down. Mobilize more people, because the military is next. See what happens. Defend your rights. Don’t just pose around with a shotgun in your truck.
The problem with that is the coordination, a general strike like is the flavor in europe requires a lot of prep and a lot of coordinating resources to keep everyone from losing their shirts during the struggle, imagine the problems trying to coordinate a general strike across the whole of Europe, sans language barriers for the most part, and you’ll begin to get a picture of what America’s working with on the labor solidarity front
Ok, so here’s what we do. We fake the apocalypse. Destroy buildings, set things on fire, scream and yell “oh the humanity” once in a while, and as the rich retreat into their underground bunkers, then we bring out the cement trucks.
Let’s see how independent and self made they really are, as we hack their surveillance systems to create the world’s new favourite reality show… say it with me now:
So… my first question was: Why’d they even want the information? It’s answered in the article:
In a statement Thursday, Paxton’s office said the information is highly relevant to investigations into whether medical providers are committing insurance fraud to circumvent the ban.
Ok… so they know something about the possibilities of insurance scams. I wonder how they know about the methods of insurance scams? Perhaps now would be a good time to investigate how Paxton knows so much about insurance scams.
Wait... So if I accuse Donald Trump of sexual harassment for "grabbing them by the pussy"... I become a sex offender? Goodness me, I didn't even know I did such a thing!
Former governor of Florida and professional Voldemort impersonator Rick Scott’s company committed the largest known case of insurance fraud in US history. He is currently a US Senator.
I’m sure this guy did fear for his life. I am sure he did feel like the safest thing he could do in that moment for himself was to fire directly into the unknown car.
And that’s why he doesn’t belong in our society. He is not welcome to participate given that the above is true, and we need to remove him until the end of time to ensure that no such thing can ever happen again.
I say that as a firearm owner and manufacturer. Anytime somebody asks me about my guns I explain to them how any 13-year-old could have done the same thing and how are gun laws are completely broken
You can be pro gun in pro regulation at the same time, fuck all these false dichotomies
You joke, but using air dropped bombs to put out fires is a tactic that's been used for quite a while. probably not the best thing to do next to a site with nuclear materials on-hand, but it's absolutely been done before.
More specifically, they are EXEMPTED from insider trading laws that apply to all other citizens. That is hypocrisy at its finest. Just like how they vote on whether to give themselves raises.
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