Another awful law 6 years in the making, all thanks to people being too lazy to go out and vote.
We are going to be feeling the repercussions of that laziness for decades to come.
In today’s world, we can still see the results of Reaganomics and the terrible Reagan administration and what it did to this country some 4 decades later. Allowing Trump to enter the White House 6 years ago has, and will, continue to have a similar profound negative effect on the trajectory of this country for a long, long time.
Riiiight, always with the excuses. Most of those fall flat when you consider HALF the registered voters can’t be bothered to go vote on election day on most elections. Even in heavily trafficked ones, turnout rarely breaks 60 or 70%. Not saying voter suppression or gerrymandering doesn’t exist, but neither of those would swing an election if we had enough people voting. The excuses have long since gotten old.
Gerrymandering is half the reason people don’t vote. If an election isn’t competitive and there’s significant roadblocks put in your way, you might not vote either. Imagine having two jobs and kids and a long ass line at a voting precinct that isn’t within walking distance.
Lazy idiots like you rather come up with excuses than actually go do what you should be doing. You’re the typical “lazy American” stereotype that fascists count on to get into power. Congrats asswipe.
Lazy idiots like you rather come up with excuses than actually go do what you should be doing. You’re the typical “lazy American” stereotype that fascists count on to get into power. Congrats asswipe.
So I guess your voter outreach is nil then.
Keep it up, I'm sure it'll work out great for you and the causes you champion.
And yes, suppression IS a big enough reason to. Who the fuck on an hourly wage has the luxury of driving/transiting to a distant poll station and wait in line for 9+ hours to vote?
But hey, if it makes you feel better to dunk on them as "Lazy", keep at it, that's sure to convince them /s
Edit: Forgot to mention that you assume all these non-voters would vote for your party. Based on research, a very sizable portion would not.
That site didn’t give much info. It says they are hard working people who are underexposed to political info and don’t feel they can decide. Besides that making them fucking morons (sorry), that still doesn’t excuse their inaction.
It says they are hard working people who are underexposed to political info and don’t feel they can decide.
That's not what it said.
Besides that making them fucking morons (sorry), that still doesn’t excuse their inaction.
There's plenty of data there that explains their inaction. Your refusal to read it doesn't make you right.
It all comes down to giving people a reason they can understand to take the time to vote.
Again, asking an hourly wage worker that can barely make ends meet already to travel/transit and then wait 9+ hours in line to vote is completely unrealistic and not something they should be blamed for.
But hey, like the other guy, keep calling them fucking morons, I'm sure it'll work out great. /s
This is a result of a SCOTUS decision. SCOTUS membership is determined by the president and control of the senate at the time of vacancies. Neither of those are influenced by gerrymandering.
At the core of it this comes down to 2016 when a larger than typical number of people on the left lied to themselves and said “eh, they’re all teh same” and tossed their vote at a third party or just didn’t vote at all. Following that, SCOTUS went from a 4-4 tie (with 1 vacancy) to 6-3 conservative advantange.
I wouldn’t blame laziness, but instead a combination of apathy and people who are more interested in ideological purity than in accepting the available-better such that they would rather complain about the unavailable-best.
RBG refusing to retire in 2012-2014 also shares blame. She could have retired then and the court would be 5-4 instead.
Since you actually seem to be asking… There is no gerrymandering at the federal level in the presidential election. You could argue that the electoral voting system is somehow a form of this, but it isn’t the same as intentionally drawing districts to mathematically skew the advantage to the party drawing the map. That said, because electoral votes are based upon congressional representation, they do weigh smaller, emptier states more heavily. US senators are entirely free from gerrymandering as they are directly elected by popular vote. Small, empty states do have more power as a result and by design, for better or worse.
And they have 0 say in the Supreme Court. They have a minor say in creating other courts, but it’s been a long time since anything has meaningfully changed there either.
It doesn’t really matter if a state is “empty”, what matters is the population not the density.
And for what it’s worth: of the ten states with the least population, half generally vote for Democrats (HI, VT, DE, RI, ME). They are often overlooked in these discussions because they are mostly small in area too.
Population density absolutely matters, because when an ignorant person looks at an electoral map, by county, it looks like a couple small blue dots in a sea of red. If the wrong person shows them that map, it can become pretty simple to convince them that Democrats are cheating them because, “just look at all that red!”
It is also about how districts in larger, more empty states, use that mostly empty area to gerrymander their blue population centers. You can’t do that in smaller, highly dense, states.
I was responding to someone who said that “empty” states have disproportionate power in the electoral college and Senate. Their emptiness does not give them undue power, regardless of what ignorant people think.
Hawaii isn’t in the ten least populous states and Maine isn’t a blue state. It’s not a straight sort, but Republicans far and away benefit from the unequal representation of the Senate and Electoral College.
Maine has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election in the past 30 years. It’s true that it has a Republican Senator, but if that means it’s a battleground state then by the same logic so are Montana and West Virginia. Those incumbents are popular despite their party, but when they finally leave the Senate they will be replaced by someone in the opposite party.
But you’re right that Hawaii is not one of the ten smallest. It’s eleventh. However, I left out New Hampshire, which voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election in the past 30 years except one. So of the eleven smallest states, six consistently send Democrats to the electoral college.
While it’s still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC, the issue is more complicated than simply blaming the small states. Or for that matter the big states: the top ten include three red (FL, TX, OH), three blue (CA, NY, IL) and four battlegrounds (GA, NC, MI, PA).
it’s still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC
LOL, wut? There’s nothing arguable about that. Republicans very definitely have an unfair senate and electoral advantage entirely related to being more popular in less populated states (which, with the notable exceptions you’ve highlighted, tend to also be more rural).
You’re cherry picking top ten and bottom ten like the whole swath of states in between don’t also have unfair allocation and thus don’t matter, while being pretty inconsistent with your battleground state definitions to suit your sorting needs (NH is blue because it only voted R once in 30 years, while every battleground you listed has the same history, and red Florida and Ohio have been 50/50).
While your point about population vs. density is correct, everything else seems to be trying to muddy the waters about the EC rather than just point out an interesting factoid or offer a pedantic correction. There’s no serious argument that the EC isn’t unfair from an individual voter perspective and biased toward one side from a national perspective.
First, I’m using the common definition of battleground states, which is states that are currently considered winnable by both sides. That doesn’t include New Hampshire, or any of the smallest states.
Second, arguable means you can make a good argument for something, so I think you just proved that it’s arguable. It is not a slam dunk.
The only advantage of less populated states is that they get two “free” electors regardless of their population. This effect is strongest in small states, where it helps both parties equally.
Looking at all the states, the maximum advantage to a presidential candidate is the difference between the number of states they won times two. For example, if both candidates win 25 states, then the two “free” electors per state will cancel out and the electoral college will be determined solely by the number of representatives in the states that each side wins. Or to put it differently, if the Constitution were “fixed” so that electors were strictly awarded by population, then the winner would never change in a 25 to 25 split.
Of course, if one candidates wins 26 states and the other wins 24 states, then the first candidate could potentially get four “unfair” electors by winning more small states. But historically, the electoral college is won by much larger margins. The only modern candidate who might have won if the Constitution were “fixed” would have been Gore, and that was a highly unusual election. Otherwise, the small state advantage hasn’t made a significant difference in our lifetime.
You’re arguing that the EC’s unfairness is unimportant, not that it’s fair. And ignoring the senate imbalance where just a couple extra votes is a massive change.
So since it’s unimportant, let’s change it to be fair. Except I don’t think you really feel it’s unimportant and actually care very much about those two extra votes.
You seem to be implying that I don’t want Democrats to win, but I can assure you that’s not the case. I still do think that the extra votes in the EC are unimportant, and we should focus our efforts on things like voter suppression that have an actual impact.
I am especially concerned when Democrats are defeatist about elections (ie “The Constitution is hopelessly stacked against us in the EC”). Fair or not, the presidency is very winnable. So is the Senate: when was the last the time the GOP held a supermajority? They may have a rural advantage, but we have other advantages, including educated voters and women.
And I can think of two or three amendments that I would work towards (cough, Second Amendment!) before worrying about the EC.
I think they have a good point though. Sure, at a basic level, you can’t gerrymander a senate election. But you start with the state, draw the district lines. Now the state is gerrymandered, often packing dense districts with democrats. Now your state legislature (gerrymandered as hell) passes a law that says 2 voting machines per district. You bet your ass that affects national elections. Ol’ Jim-Bob has to share his two voting machines with 150 other people, whereas a city dwelling Democrat has to share theirs with a few thousand.
That 1 vacancy should have been Obama’s pick. It was fucking stolen from him, and now we’re paying the price of “decorum”.
Of course, Republican hypocrites shoved another conservative justice on the bench before RBG’s body was even cold, even after Trump lost the election (not to mention impeached).
It wasn’t just 4 years of Trump that we had to endure, it’s now three lifetime conservative appointments to the supreme court. So progressive legislation is stalled for another 30+ years. Our generation will be as old as the fucking Boomers are now before we get another chance at kicking out the conservatives, whose ideology is literally killing the planet. Gen Z and the generation that follows them will rightfully blame us for our inaction.
Or instead of giving up we could make court expansion and reform a litmus test in future Democratic primaries. And/or normalize the idea that judicial rulings need to be enforced by someone else and they too have agency.
Because allowing this to continue for much of our remaining lives is also decorum. We live in an unjust system, but it’s not just how life has to be for the next 30 years.
I don’t entirely disagree, but I’d like to see an actual roadmap for how such changes would be implemented. Voting for somebody who promises court expansion and reform, but doesn’t have the support of either the legislative or judicial branches and doesn’t have a concrete method of implementing it, seems like they are set up to fail.
I want to see more ruthless politicians on the left as well, but not if they can’t actually follow through with their promises.
Pass law changing the number of justices on the court
Support from the legislature is all that’s important. If the justices say “you can’t do it”, then ignore them because clearly they can. The constitution says very little about the supreme court and its size has been changed multiple times before. This is just doing history again.
ML? I don’t know what that stands for, but I did see the absurdity of Bernie and so-called progressive subs that were trying to convince people that a vote for Trump would further Bernie’s agenda more than a vote for Hillary. They also were trying to convince people to “stick it to the DNC” and simply sit out the vote.
So the foreign agents running those subs were trying to flip some votes and push voter apathy onto others. Doesn’t take much to change an election and the stuff I saw was clearly just a teeny, tiny part of their larger misinformation campaign. A few key votes here or there and that would easily explain Trump’s victory.
There is no way this stuff isn’t happening on Lemmy now. In fact, I guarantee it is.
As disturbing as this was to read, it was nice to know there were still some honest and clear-headed people working in the government at the time this shit went down.
It blows my mind that Elon would still be well-regarded as a visionary entrepreneur, accurately or not, if he had just kept his stupid fucking mouth shut.
Why does it blow your mind. Steve Jobs disowned his child and tried to cure cancer with fruit juice, and then used his wealth to jump the line for organ donation. He was human garbage. And people still adore him and iphones. But Jobs never hurt progressive liberals with any of his bullshit. Just his family.
This article says a lot about american consumers. They don’t buy things like iphones or teslas because of how they actually perform. They buy things based on how they will be preceived for owning it. AKA a society of shitty narcissists.
Your generalizations about US consumers has no basis in reality. You really think people would buy these mass-market products if they weren’t good? Just look at the consumer satisfaction surveys. I’m far from a Tesla fan, but for a long time, there weren’t truly good competitors to Tesla EVs. iphones have always and continue to be some of the most highly rated phones on the market.
And what is wrong with voting with your wallet and choosing not to support the business of a terrible person? That’s about the only power you have as a consumer, so people should exercise that power if they see fit.
Both the iPhone and Tesla perform well. You made some valid points, but went off the rails at the end. Yes, the image of the product influences people’s buying decisions. That’s basic marketing knowledge. But they’re also good products.
Tesla never really had a brand besides being “Elon Musk’s electric car company”, and now as it turns out it’s way easier for car companies to add tech into their cars than for a tech company to learn to build good cars.
Because a lot of states no longer have power from the people, they’ve gerrymandered and made it hard to vote enough that you need a supermajority to get the will of the people into law.
the federal government has a lot of similar issues, but it also innately has some more checks. For instance, its districts are the states, and you cannot arbitrarily redraw state borders like how states can redraw voting districts.
Except that states have no fucking business telling someone what they can do with their body. “State’s rights” my ass! This is a “personal right”that was stolen.
Because In many state you are beholden to large swaths of Rural land and the representatives they send to the statehouse. Those reps can be swayed (bought). Lucky for Ohio they were able to use their constitution to protect themselves. Ballot initiatives can give the people a voice on pressing matters… As in Ohio, The Reps were trying to take away the voice of the majority of the state voters. They lost and I expect they will brought to heel by the will of the people of Ohio in November. State constitutions are a check against legislative power. No wonder the R’s don’t like that. They want to rule, not represent.
Because several ass-backward states then took advantage of the fact that the right to undergo an abortion was no longer protected under Constitutional law and passed legislation that stripped away reproductive rights from their citizens.
Just because the SC didn’t ban abortion itself, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the effective result for millions of Americans.
Because the idea of states of the same federation being allowed to decide such fundamental issues on their own feels patently absurd to an outside observer. This isn’t the 1400s any more, do something remotely modern or fully separate and split into 51 countries and do your own shit.
"The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on these questions has not followed a straight line. At times, the Court has stated that the Tenth Amendment lacks substantive constitutional content and does not operate as a limitation upon the powers, express or implied, delegated to the national government. At other times, the Court has found affirmative federalism limitations in the Amendment, invalidating federal statutes not because Congress lacked legislative authority over the subject matter, but because those statutes violated the principles of federalism contained in the Tenth Amendment"
It’s not a state rights issue, it’s a human rights issue and the SCOTUS was protecting the people of the US from the States until the court overturned Roe v Wade
I've seen this argument elsewhere and it seems (pardon me) like patent horseshit.
Why is this a state's right? What makes a uterus in Delaware different than an uterus in Nebraska? I'm a woman and an American citizen. Everyone keeps telling me that I live in a first-world nation. This makes no sense. "Oh sorry. You live in a first world nation, but you picked the neighborhood of Ohio."
And let's be realistic - I can afford to travel to anywhere that local, precious state laws where I live are irrelevant.
The idea of state autonomy made sense in some way in the America that existed before telephones. Emergency decisions might need to be made and horses are slow. But let's be honest for just a moment. The whole idea of federation was a hard sell to the slave states and invested powers. These were a mixture of landowners and merchant classes who had been running things locally in their colonies. They didn't want to give up control, and who could blame them? Meanwhile, the young country needed to have everyone on board for some sort of federation if post-colonial America was going to survive. States rights were a compromise. We've been choking on it for 200+ years.
As a country we should have evolved past this many years ago. But we haven't. The biggest disruption to our American system was the Civil War. States rights again. Yeah, so we have that to look back upon but never really seem to reckon with it. The last time I heard anyone significantly whine about infringement of "states rights" was with regard to chattel slavery.
I’m thinking the good if this keeps up is the Republicans will lose a lot of seats. Of course the bad is Dems will be in charge. So it balances out to being lit.
Anti-abortion advocates scored a big win on June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But since then, their luck seems to have run out.
Abortion has been on the ballot in seven states since that landmark court decision one year ago and in each instance, in red states and blue states, anti-abortion advocates have lost.
In some instances, voters have approved state constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights. In others, they’ve rejected measures that would weaken protections or make explicit in the state constitution that abortion rights are not protected.
Thankfully since she wasn’t on drugs she got medical care!
“… her husband following the bizarre incident. She said the doctor asked her if she was on drugs after hearing her story.
After assuring them this story was true, she was given antibiotics and her arm was bandaged. Luckily, her doctors determined she was not bitten by the snake…”
So both the lady and the husband are in the hospital and described the attack and it’s obvious she’s got deep lacerations and bird claw puncture wounds and she’s terrified and bleeding badly. She’s in her 60s and being asked if she’s on drugs. If she was on drugs I wonder if they would have given her antibiotics and fixed her up.
The venom that was spewed thankfully didn’t blind her.
But, what if someone sees an undesirable, having a good time, and simply wants to exercise their god-given right to harass them without fear of consequences?
How do you stand your ground at them without this most basic thing?
My alternative was to point out that some sharks are black and there are cops on the beaches but I felt this line does a better job. Slightly more relevant.
It's not a valid argument, because frankly both harassment and brandishing a firearm are both illegal everywhere in the USA, which means there actually is consequences.
Well, what it someone really, really wants to get sand and salt water into all the little nooks and crannies and tightly clearanced areas in their gun?
Because they're constantly pants shittingly terrified of anything they don't understand and need a gun to feel anything other than the constant overwhelming feeling of cowardice in the face of normal life.
What happened to respecting states rights? So sick of the judicial branch in the US, the most untethered and corrupt branch of them all. Which is saying a lot considering the state of the legislative branch.
Republicans only care about state’s rights when they can use state law to push one of their terrible policies at state level because they can’t force it nationally.
Until 15 years ago, there wasn’t an individual right to bear arms, so talking about “the Bill of Rights” really just means “the Conservative Supreme Court”.
Pretty sure that the “shall not be infringed” part of bearing arms covers that. The 2nd amendment is an individual right, so there you go. If you are trying to say that the 2nd is somehow the only non-individual right in the Bill of Rights, I’d argue poor context interpretation. If you are trying to say that it requires militia affiliation, I’d argue that the Militia Act that required the people to supply their own guns and ammo pretty effectively proves the people were supposed to be armed before being called to the militia. If you are arguing that you just don’t like the 2nd, then get ~75% of the country and state governments to agree with you and update or repeal it with the required constitutional amendment.
If the Second Amendment was clear in its individual right to bear arms for personal protection (a much different thing from just owning guns), then it wouldn’t have taken until 2008 for it to be recognized, and anyone pretending the Second Amendment is a clearly worded amendment with broadly agreed on meaning is just delusional.
Previous supreme courts have ruled that the constitution only applied to the federal government, allowing states to restrict the rights of their citizens to vote, speak, assemble, etc. Does that mean that it isn’t clear that our individual and constitutional rights were intended to apply at a state or local level? I am not saying that it is broadly agreed upon, but I do think that the founder’s documents and correspondence surrounding the Bill of Rights, along with contemporary laws like the Militia Act, provide enough context for it being an individual right.
In 1792 the government required that the individual would have their own rifle, bayonet, gunpowder, and ammunition to bring with them if they answered the called to join the militia, which is hard to do if they didn’t have the right to individually own said guns and ammo. Same with the fact that every other amendment in the BoR is an individual right.
If it was only the ability to own guns so that they could be brought in case the owner was called to join a militia, but not to use them in any other way why would it specify the right to bear those arms and not just to keep or own them? If the individual right is to own guns and use them as tools for hunting and sport, where does the limitation on using them for defense come from? Are knives or any other tools that can be used in a fight included in any of this? I’d consider knives under the right to bear arms, plus it is a frequent argument that they serve other purposes so get an exception.
Ignoring the inexplicable diversion into the Constitution’s applicability to states.
You keep arguing against a straw man (no ownership) rather than the actual point (no absolute right to free carry/use). You can have an individual right to own weapons for the purpose of being a part of a militia without having an inherent right to use those weapons for other purposes.
As to the “bear arms” it’s still in the context of a militia. You can’t be arrested for being in a militia. You and your buddies can march around, showing that you’re ready to rebel against an oppressive government, but that doesn’t mean YOU can individually walk down Main Street firing into the air. There’s a prosocial and political benefit from the citizenship being able to rebel, there isn’t one for having random people be constantly armed for resolving personal disputes.
I thought it was pretty clear my response on supreme court interpretation changing when rather wrong, either obviously or on new technicality, was directly addressing your statement that the individual right to both own and carry arms changed in 2008. I also think you may want to brush up on what a straw man is, as I am directly engaging with your statements to get a handle on your viewpoint and opinion. I apologize if you were saying that we have a right to own military hardware and NFA regulated weapons, as long as we never use them alone or for personal reasons (this would be taking your statement to a probably absurd degree).
My mention of ownership was because prior to 2008, states could prevent you from buying guns as well as preventing bearing them. I would also like to point out that it is certainly legally shakey to form a private militia or paramilitary organization, with multiple laws and even state constitutions outlawing it. I mention this because outlining an individual right to bear arms to prevent the government from arresting their own soldiers for carrying a gun under military orders just doesn’t make sense. I am also curious if you also believe that hunters for the past 200+ years have been breaking the law, using their guns for purposes other than military service. I’m also pretty sure walking down Main Street firing guns randomly is a crime, reckless endangerment at the least, even under the most lax interpretation of the 2nd, and completely different than acting against a credible threat to your life.
Also rebellion is especially illegal, even if/when benefitial or even necessary. It is definitely an opinion that having an armed populace has no prosocial benefits that can be debated. Minority and oppressed populations are harder to victimize when armed. Anyone who has saved their life thought defensive use of a weapon would also disagree with you. The police have no legal obligation to save or help you or anyone else, so making self defense illegal outside of pure hand to hand combat leaves people vulnerable. If melee arms are allowed under the 2nd and the inferred right to self defense, why wasn’t there a distinction made on what kind of arms. Or are they not covered under the 2nd? Genuinely curious on your view of using an available knife or bat or crowbar if someone tries to gravely injure or kill you.
I would also like to argue that no other right in the Bill of Rights requires you to be in or part of a group, either actively or passively, to have them apply or be exercised. Even though a free press is essential for a free society, we don’t have to get a degree in journalism or join a newspaper to have freedom of speech and association.
Militias aren’t government controlled. That’s the whole damn point. You regulate them if they’re doing dangerous stuff like practicing next to a school, but you can’t do things that are effectively preventing them from existing.
For your questions on hunters and ownership and whatever, there’s a difference between constitutionally protected and legal. States can say hunting with guns of various types (you’ll note there are restrictions). You don’t need the constitution to make something legal and it not being constitutionally protected doesn’t make it illegal. States can legalize or restrict firearms for anything that does not prevent the citizenry from forming a well-regulated militia. Having your guns locked up and disassembled when not in use in training doesn’t prevent you from forming an effective(-ish) militia so DC vs. Heller was badly decided (5-4! it was a contentious decision split along political lines).
All the other weapons are arms too and if owned for the purpose of militia service, should be legal. If not, states can decide which weapons are appropriate for which purposes. Texas can decide cowboys were super cool and everyone should have a mandatory six shooter while peaceful Hawaii can decide guns are good for hunting pigs and bad for going to the beach. And if we decide we want to change one or the other, that’s our business, because the government can regulate things that don’t involve preventing the citizenry from rising up against it.
Now that is a very interesting idea, I’ve never heard anyone claim that militias are independent private armies not subject to government control. The militia exists purely for the government to mobilize in times of disaster or war, be it state or federal, as outlined in Title 10 Chapter 12 of the US Code. The National Guard and Naval militia are the standing, organized militia. All able bodied men age 17 to 45 are considered part of the unorganized militia, and subject to being called upon by the government through selective service. All or nearly all 50 states have explicit laws banning private citizen militias and/or paramilitary organizations, which as been affirmed at least twice by the supreme court and as recently as 2008. Any overthrow of the government that no longer is of and by the people would be carried out by the people in general, not a militia or any defined organization.
I think I see your point one constitutionality vs legality, though I would say that all law stems from the powers granted by the constitution and thus are intrinsically linked. If something is enumerated in the constitution, it does not fall to the states to manage in my opinion, as the states only get the “everything not outlined” to legislate in my opinion.
I appreciate your viewpoint on this, thank you for engaging with me on this topic. I may fundamentally disagree with your conclusions, but I can see where you’re coming from now I think and this has been very enlightening.
Hawaii is a colonial project and isn’t respected by the federal court circuits in the same manner that continental states are. It’s closer to Guam and Puerto Rico than other states in that it carries disproportionate financial and military burdens, including the effects from the Jones act for example.
I gotta say, my understanding of MLism is pretty spotty, but a Lemmygrad user opposing the Jones Act seems really weird.
Anti-Jones arguments are generally just raw-freetradeism – advocating to remove protectionist regulations so businesses can off-shore (literally off shore) their shipping to cheaper foreign crews, with the (supposed) benefit being that they will save money and then pass the savings on to the consumer. Were you a big NAFTA fan as well?
Prices in US territories such as Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico are sky-high due to the Jones Act to protect American industries at the expense of colonized people. It’s more about the where the ship was built and who operates them than the workers themselves.
Yes, I am a big fan of NAFTA as well. The only parts I dislike are the parts that allow free movement of capital, disallow free movement of people, and protection of IP.
Wild. And the unions who argue against free-tradeism are the bad guys?
Labor is almost always the largest contributor to any business’s costs and offshoring it is very popular with capital, so waving away the 75% American crew requirement as “not about the workers” is wrong. From a DOT study, in 2010 an American crew costs 5x what a foreign crew does.
I live in Hawaii and while I don’t like paying more to subsidize US domestic shipbuilding (if the government wants to subsidize our shipyards, they should do it themselves), but when the major voices advocating for this (in Hawaii) are Republicans, libertarians, and business-oriented Democrats like Ed Case (one can argue those aren’t really three separate categories), I get wary. Because this sure looks like every other time capital wanted to stop having to pay so many expensive Americans with their benefits and labor protections when they could instead offload to foreign workers without any of that. And they pinky swear promise they’ll give us cheaper stuff in return rather than just pocketing the difference.
Your bad guy, good guy view of the world is myopic.
American labor vs International labor is a false dialectic that is used to pit working class against each other by the capital. You do realize that right? How is the Jones Act about the workers as you state when it doesn’t stipulate better working conditions, better pay, or ownership in the business itself? I don’t think you’re seriously arguing that the main reason for the price gouging that is happening in Hawaii is due to higher pay for American crew members, so I’ll ignore that.
In general, Marxists are internationalists and we don’t care about protecting American workers over other workers. I would be a syndicalist if I argued for the supremacy of the union.
You can talk all you want about an international brotherhood, but these are people’s livelihoods you’re dismissing as unimportant.
And requiring American labor IS stipulating working conditions, because there is a very real difference between the working conditions of Americans and foreign sailors. This sounds like all you ever engage in is theory, while capital favors foreign workers because they don’t have the same power (and expense) that American workers have.
Much of the American owned fishing fleet is entirely staffed by much cheaper foreign labor unable to leave their ships because their American company can get away with not applying for work visas. They didn’t just happen to end up with foreign crews effectively held captive during port calls, they do it because they’re cheaper and unable to easily challenge their bosses on conditions.
This isn’t a case of an open labor market where everyone is on an equal footing and Americans simply choose not to do this work. Americans simply can’t work for 70 cents an hour and bosses prize workers that don’t have worker protections and can’t demand more.
For many boat owners, the fishermen are a bargain: Bait and ice can cost more than crew salaries. Some of the foreign workers in Hawaii earn less than $5,000 for a full year. By contrast, the average pay for an American deckhand nationwide last year was $28,000, sometimes for jobs that last just a few months, according to government statistics. Experienced American crew members working in Alaska can make up to $80,000 a year.
An American crew has recourse and the force of law when an employer just refuses to pay their workers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard routinely inspect the Hawaiian boats. At times, fishermen complain they’re not getting paid and officers say they tell owners to honor the contracts. But neither agency has any authority over actual wages.
When your labor solidarity philosophy leads you to support and defend the position of capital, a position known to depower workers and empower abuse, it feels like that’s the point where you should be thinking about what the whole point is.
So you are deliberately ignoring your previous point about how the main business cost and therefore the reason for the high prices in Hawaii is due to higher wages for American sailors. It’s curious how you weren’t actually arguing in good faith then.
You do realize that America as a country can simply change its regulation to stipulate equal pay and treatment for foreign crew members who dock in American ports or are employed by American companies, right? You are arguing that Americans and American companies are allowed to treat foreign workers under horrible conditions, so it is labor solidarity to employ only American workers. Do you see how deranged that sounds when we get down to the meat of it?
What? This response is incoherent. American crews cost more, significantly more than foreign crews, and that has a significant impact on costs. Labor is 2/3 of the operating cost for domestic shipping and 1/3 for foreign shipping. Domestic workers costing more and offshoring being cheaper aren’t some new theory, they’re the bedrock motivation for global free trade. Are you a real person?
And why do you ignore that your philosophy just happens to align with capital? This just read like a neoliberal screed about supporting the global south through deregulation.
Ahhh here comes the bot accusation for you liberals as always. You still haven’t shown how the Jones Act actually help workers, and are arguing for the sake of arguing if you’re committed to your bit of saying that the higher prices in Hawaii are due to labor costs.
I see you’ve again ignored that your anti-protectionist political philosophy lines up exactly with the desires of capital and against that of organized labor.
I’ve read this philosophy before, from proud neoliberals. That’s why I question your authenticity.
You are arguing that protectionism is pro-labor? I don’t think you exactly understand what marxist ideology entails. Again, you are dodging the question on whether you truly believe that labor cost is the reason for high prices in Hawaii or if you were arguing just for the sake of arguing.
Organized labor sure thinks it is. And it’s not like these free-trade jobs are going to organized labor elsewhere, it’s going to people being exploited with no recourse.
And yes, I think it’s very likely labor is a major component of shipping cost increase from the Jones Act, and would love to see you provide literally any proof otherwise, because I’ve shown you a study of costs that directly compares them. I am notably not saying it’s only cost, but it is almost certainly a major driver, for the simple fact that labor is almost always the major cost in a business and why capital is so desperate to offshore or replace it.
I’ve answered your question. Why is your position aligned with capital?
Republicans want all power consolidated at the level they can most effectively control. They were only ever about “states’ rights” because they typically are better at capturing state governments than national institutions.
I bought my Model 3 Performance in 2021 because it ticked the boxes: fast, electric, and simple. After driving one for two years, I would probably still buy one again, but the association with Musk is a strong negative for sure…
I know a couple of Prius drivers. They drive like that intentionally, trying to eek out every possible MPG stat. It’s like a game to them. But they don’t seem to be aware of how much they impede the flow of traffic.
Boston has an emergency mental health response team, but currently they're only accessed via a different telephone number and don't link in with 911. They're considering joint responses from 911 and the B.E.S.T. team
Their approach is different, too. They’re taught in training to abandon the “pseudo-professional” affect that staffers inadvertently take on in talks with clients. And aside from an extensive background in medical care or mental health, all CAHOOTS employees are judged by their “lived experiences,” Brubaker said – people who’ve dealt with many of the situations CAHOOTS clients find themselves in are better able to empathize and serve those people, he said.
Wow, this looks interesting that the cops are calling them themselves.
Most of STAR’s calls for service come through Denver 911, where dispatchers are trained to send the STAR van for appropriate needs. But about a third of calls are from Denver police officers who responded to a call and determined it would be better handled by STAR.
“Officers consistently ask when there are going to be more STAR vans,” Sailon said.
This has also been happening in Austin, TX for over 2 years. People can call 911 to have mental health professionals dispatched, alternatively other first responders can call them to the scene
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