Misc Political Posts

[LFC]

Republican governance has turned Oklahoma into an ignorant shithole that is having a hard time attracting businesses not connected to the fossil fuel industry. The governor just asked the legislature for cash to attract a company without naming the company and the legislature not only did it but they refused to release the bill to the public. How's that for grift right out in the open!

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, just returned from a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago with a request for his state legislature to dole out cash for a corporation he desperately wants to lure to the state. Not only did he ask for the money for the undisclosed company, but the legislature also did it without even releasing the bill to the public.

Oklahoma has suffered over the past several years as the hard-right policies, failing schools and access to healthcare has made it an increasingly unwanted place for people to live. When people don't want to live in a state, businesses don't want to relocate their headquarters or factories there.

In 2021, the Oklahoma Journal Record reported that the lack of skilled workers is causing problems for those companies that already are in Oklahoma. Companies that need highly skilled employees with good pay and benefits simply can't find them in Oklahoma because the skilled workforce is so small. That leaves companies in a position to search for employees out of state and import a workforce. However, with such bad rankings, people don't want to move to the state, particularly when other jobs are available elsewhere.

Still, the governor thinks he can pay people enough to relocate their companies. It's remarkably similar to the effort to court Foxconn to Wisconsin. In that case, former Gov. Scott Walker promised $3 billion to the company had to hire a minimum of 5,200 workers by the end of 2022 and "up to" 13,000 after that. So, up to means one more than 5,200. Foxconn never hired anyone and later claimed there was never any intention to build what Walker and former President Donald Trump had promised.

Now, Stitt is trying the same tactic with Oklahoma; only he won't name the company or give details about the agreement. A report from the local site NonDoc explained Panasonic’s board of directors is meeting soon to vote on the location of a $4 billion battery plant in North America. Panasonic has an agreement with Tesla to make their car batteries. While Republicans assume that is the company, it's not even confirmed Panasonic is the one they'd give the money to.

So, after going to the fundraiser in Florida, Stitt came back with the idea for a rebate program to bring a company he won't disclose to the state and create 4,000 jobs. State leaders have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements about the plan, which is called "Project Ocean."

Kansas, another ignorant Republican shithole, is trying to buy jobs too, and maybe the same jobs. If this is a bidding war it is beyond stupid and, of course, highly socialist as tax dollars from hard-working people are spent to buy jobs. How redistributive.

Kansas has a bid for Panasonic, offering $1.2 billion in incentives. At a press conference Monday, Stitt said he signed a non-disclosure agreement preventing him from saying the name of the company or revealing anything about the job possibilities and financials of the project. Still, with nothing to go on, Stitt wanted the GOP-led legislature to pass an economic incentive package for the company, with details to come later. The legislature did it, offering at least $3.6 billion for 500 direct jobs and at least 1,000 in the second year, 2,500 in the third year and 4,000 in the fifth year. That's $900,000 per job that Oklahoma is offering to pay the company.

Now I want to start a company, get red states to hand me massive incentives, run thing for a few years, shut down, and walk away with most of the money.

[andydp]

Just a reminder about today's date.

[andydp]

Meme says:

Macron schools POTUS on Saudi oil production.

Resulting in snarky comments. But wait ! There's a bit more to the story !!

The article where that meme came from:

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (Reuters) -Two top OPEC oil producers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, can barely increase oil production, French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said he had been told by the UAE’s president.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been perceived as the only two countries in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with spare capacity to boost global deliveries that could reduce prices.

“I had a call with MbZ,” Macron was heard telling U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 summit, using shorthand for UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. “He told me two things. I’m at a maximum, maximum (production capacity). This is what he claims.”

“And then he said (the) Saudis can increase by 150 (thousands barrels per day). Maybe a little bit more, but they don’t have huge capacities before six months’ time,” Macron said.

www.reuters.com/article/macron-biden-oil-idAFKBN2O81F6

[AnBr]

[goldenvalley]

Jul 13, 2022 14:56:34 GMT AnBr said:

In California people want to worry about the cost of building the rail system...where the first line will be laid (nobody travels between those two places) and what about eminent domain if the landowners in rural areas won't grant easements for the tracks to be laid or to redesign existing tracks.  I wonder if back in the 1960s when federal and state water projects were digging vast canals to move water from north to south there was such concern about these things.

[AnBr]

Jim Wright

America really, really despises its children.

If there's one thing I've heard over and over this week it's how the current generation is a bunch of worthless, lazy, entitled, gender-confused wimps who don't produce anything of value.

All you have do is look at the responses on my various timelines to see just how much contempt Americans, and Conservatives in particular, apparently have for their kids.

Brainwashed moochers with no respect for their elders (can't imagine why) seems to be the general consensus.

And apparently, it's all the fault of schools.

Social Media has been shouting "Education not Indoctrination!" at me for three days now.

Heck, a local politician ran for the local schoolboard on that very phrase.

Education. Not Indoctrination.

Weird how a bunch of people who consider themselves NOT indoctrinated all chant the exact same words as if they're in a cult though, isn't it?

Catchy phrase, I guess, but what do Americans think they actually mean by it? Indoctrination? Education? Define both in this context. Go on.

No?

No, I guess not.

A lot of Americans seem to think the only courses of study offered nowadays are "gender studies," "CRT," and "wokeness."

Lot of responses on my timelines said any degree program other than "STEM" is worthless woke indoctrination.

STEM. Science, technology, engineering, and ... math?

Math?

Science?

When science tells them they are wrong, suddenly they don't believe in any of THAT anymore either and you don't have to look beyond the most recent pandemic and a public cheering a president telling them ignore science and medicine and the experts and believe in hysterical conspiracy theories.

Science? LOL. Come ON.

Last year about 3 million undergraduate degrees were awarded in the US.

Of those, less than 0.4% were in some variation of cultural and gender studies.

Less than 0.4%.

Hardly a tsunami of wokeness there.

And, hey, what do you even do with a Gender Studies major anyway?

Well, funny thing, a lot of the people with those degrees also got LAW degrees and are now lawyers, judges, magistrates, and judicial workers.

Seems understanding people makes them better at their job.

Many become managers, social workers, human resource specialists, doctors, nurses, teachers. Some even join the military.

Professionals with an in-depth understanding of how people fit together in large groups? That's important to making a lot of organizations work better.

Lot of Americans mad about pronouns.

Mad that other people don't identify the way they think is right.

Mad the world isn't as simple as black and white, male and female, right and wrong. Human beings are COMPLICATED and so how do you know what is right?

How do you know if you don't study it? If your society doesn't develop experts? Actually KNOW?
Unless you don't WANT to know.

Unless you're AFRAID to know.

Afraid to find out that maybe the things you were raised to believe are incomplete, biased, or just plain wrong.

Once upon a time here in America it was morally, ethically, economically, socially, religiously, and scientifically right to own other people and force them to work in the fields. Kill them, rape them, beat them, and breed them like livestock.

Why isn't it now?

What changed?

No. Don't look away. Don't wave your arms. Really, what changed? How did it change? How does it affect us today -- do you know? Can you see the lingering consequences of that time all around you, in science, in religion, the buildings, in our culture?

What changed? How do you know? If someone doesn't study it? If there aren't experts?

What is it you really fear?

Change?

History?

The unknown?

Or is your fear that your kids might one day be better people than you were?

There's nothing wrong with this generation.

Sure, they expect things. They feel entitled.

And why shouldn't they? YOU promised them a better world. YOU told them they were special, exceptional. Right? God's chosen people, wasn't it?

Remember?

They don't respect you?

Why should they? You keep telling them they're garbage. Stupid. Worthless. Weak. Woke. And that they should be little carbon copies of you.

Instead of giving them wings, you tell them what they CAN'T be.

Why the hell should they respect you?

You tell them how great your generation was. Make America great again, right?

Great how? Kids working barefoot among the factory machines? Dead at 40 from black lung in the mines? Company town? Lynchings? Segregation? War? Stand for the flag, kneel before your God? That kind of great?

We tell them how great things were. So great, back in our day.

And then, in the very next breath, we complain bitterly about how bad we had it, up hill, both ways, in the snow, and goddamn you kids don't know what it was like!

Now, respect us, you stupid weak losers!

You ever wonder how our world looks to the current generation?

That time you remember as so great?

No, you don't wonder. You just turn your nose up in a sneer at these worthless woke kids nowadays. Don't pretend that you don't, because your contempt is right here out in the open.

Entitled?

Why not?

We made a lot of promises, expressed and implied, to the current generation.

And in case you haven't noticed, they've been stepping up for the last decade, fighting those wars we started, paying back their country, and paying it forward.

There's song, from our generation. Maybe you remember it? David Bowie.

"And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through"

And the more things change, right?

You want a better nation? You got to be better citizens.

And if you won't, they will.

In spite of you.

[Bact PhD]

Aug 29, 2022 2:56:14 GMT AnBr said:

href="https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/pfbid0hU3HCK4MqGvqMv9cB8dYTDYcxu7RwePziBB2eodpqthQUds8cVXaXcCn8Yyyry4Vl?__cft__[0]=AZXcaZPAKpfx5PUleWp-coC5sR4Qo4EraaV9hGZ_WCqv3CduWoi9oMvpvuJ14EdekRR6IJtoVGbpLj3CsJ-iUZTlGycDB8IL3qi58rE5IZSUMp8_GuYywCozb71w2IcYNUQyALw4fISdEZ6ZxUAiGj7FFqsbSw9MSUouKpMwKyYUqw&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R"]Jim Wright

America really, really despises its children.

If there's one thing I've heard over and over this week it's how the current generation is a bunch of worthless, lazy, entitled, gender-confused wimps who don't produce anything of value.

All you have do is look at the responses on my various timelines to see just how much contempt Americans, and Conservatives in particular, apparently have for their kids.

Brainwashed moochers with no respect for their elders (can't imagine why) seems to be the general consensus.

And apparently, it's all the fault of schools.

Social Media has been shouting "Education not Indoctrination!" at me for three days now.

Heck, a local politician ran for the local schoolboard on that very phrase.

Education. Not Indoctrination.

Weird how a bunch of people who consider themselves NOT indoctrinated all chant the exact same words as if they're in a cult though, isn't it?

Catchy phrase, I guess, but what do Americans think they actually mean by it? Indoctrination? Education? Define both in this context. Go on.

No?

No, I guess not.

A lot of Americans seem to think the only courses of study offered nowadays are "gender studies," "CRT," and "wokeness."

Lot of responses on my timelines said any degree program other than "STEM" is worthless woke indoctrination.

STEM. Science, technology, engineering, and ... math?

Math?

Science?

When science tells them they are wrong, suddenly they don't believe in any of THAT anymore either and you don't have to look beyond the most recent pandemic and a public cheering a president telling them ignore science and medicine and the experts and believe in hysterical conspiracy theories.

Science? LOL. Come ON.

Last year about 3 million undergraduate degrees were awarded in the US.

Of those, less than 0.4% were in some variation of cultural and gender studies.

Less than 0.4%.

Hardly a tsunami of wokeness there.

And, hey, what do you even do with a Gender Studies major anyway?

Well, funny thing, a lot of the people with those degrees also got LAW degrees and are now lawyers, judges, magistrates, and judicial workers.

Seems understanding people makes them better at their job.

Many become managers, social workers, human resource specialists, doctors, nurses, teachers. Some even join the military.

Professionals with an in-depth understanding of how people fit together in large groups? That's important to making a lot of organizations work better.

Lot of Americans mad about pronouns.

Mad that other people don't identify the way they think is right.

Mad the world isn't as simple as black and white, male and female, right and wrong. Human beings are COMPLICATED and so how do you know what is right?

How do you know if you don't study it? If your society doesn't develop experts? Actually KNOW?
Unless you don't WANT to know.

Unless you're AFRAID to know.

Afraid to find out that maybe the things you were raised to believe are incomplete, biased, or just plain wrong.

Once upon a time here in America it was morally, ethically, economically, socially, religiously, and scientifically right to own other people and force them to work in the fields. Kill them, rape them, beat them, and breed them like livestock.

Why isn't it now?

What changed?

No. Don't look away. Don't wave your arms. Really, what changed? How did it change? How does it affect us today -- do you know? Can you see the lingering consequences of that time all around you, in science, in religion, the buildings, in our culture?

What changed? How do you know? If someone doesn't study it? If there aren't experts?

What is it you really fear?

Change?

History?

The unknown?

Or is your fear that your kids might one day be better people than you were?

There's nothing wrong with this generation.

Sure, they expect things. They feel entitled.

And why shouldn't they? YOU promised them a better world. YOU told them they were special, exceptional. Right? God's chosen people, wasn't it?

Remember?

They don't respect you?

Why should they? You keep telling them they're garbage. Stupid. Worthless. Weak. Woke. And that they should be little carbon copies of you.

Instead of giving them wings, you tell them what they CAN'T be.

Why the hell should they respect you?

You tell them how great your generation was. Make America great again, right?

Great how? Kids working barefoot among the factory machines? Dead at 40 from black lung in the mines? Company town? Lynchings? Segregation? War? Stand for the flag, kneel before your God? That kind of great?

We tell them how great things were. So great, back in our day.

And then, in the very next breath, we complain bitterly about how bad we had it, up hill, both ways, in the snow, and goddamn you kids don't know what it was like!

Now, respect us, you stupid weak losers!

You ever wonder how our world looks to the current generation?

That time you remember as so great?

No, you don't wonder. You just turn your nose up in a sneer at these worthless woke kids nowadays. Don't pretend that you don't, because your contempt is right here out in the open.

Entitled?

Why not?

We made a lot of promises, expressed and implied, to the current generation.

And in case you haven't noticed, they've been stepping up for the last decade, fighting those wars we started, paying back their country, and paying it forward.

There's song, from our generation. Maybe you remember it? David Bowie.

"And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through"

And the more things change, right?

You want a better nation? You got to be better citizens.

And if you won't, they will.

In spite of you.

Of course, so many of those criticizing “kids these days” think THEIR kids are superstars-in-the-making (I’ve seen ENOUGH parent-brag on my social media feeds the last decade to be convinced of this). I guess they mean, you know, OTHER people’s children!

I got into it on FB a few months back with someone who had posted yet another “kids these days” trope. The OP is my age, and I pointed out matter-of-factly that when WE were teens, the opinion writers of our parents’ generation, our parents’ friends, our parents themselves made the same complaints about us, and so on and so on.

As far as all the hand-wringing about “wokeness” in schools, from my limited sample size (n = 2), I’d say it’s waayyyy overblown. In her college years, Dear Daughter the Theater Major encountered absolutely nothing that could have been construed as “indoctrination”; she didn’t come face-to-face with the pronoun issue until the 2019 summer stock experience. Dear Son, at a private nonsectarian school that historically has championed the traditional liberal arts, has encountered a couple of interesting things that may have come up in classroom discussion, but he’s more likely to bring home some RW talking point that a buddy parroted over lunch.

Yeeaaahh, the blather about “gender studies” (or “underwater basket weaving” in my day) as proxy for “useless college degree” is a trope that’s about as old as American youth attending college in large numbers.

To quote the late Andy Rooney, It’s amazing just how long the country has been going to hell without getting there.

[AnBr]

Of course the indoctrination that they are so worked up over is nothing more than the gained ability to think over and evaluate information and then they might begin to independently question the "truths" their parents raised them with.

[LFC]

Aug 29, 2022 16:50:30 GMT Bact PhD said:

To quote the late Andy Rooney, It’s amazing just how long the country has been going to hell without getting there.

Republicans: "Challenge accepted!"

[pnwguy]

Aug 29, 2022 21:12:20 GMT LFC said:

Aug 29, 2022 16:50:30 GMT Bact PhD said:

To quote the late Andy Rooney, It’s amazing just how long the country has been going to hell without getting there.

Republicans: "Challenge accepted!"

I wish it was like this though...

[AnBr]

[LFC]

I expect that House Republicans will be bypassing normal procedure at a dizzying pace.

The slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives has just voted to give itself a streamlined way to fire civil servants and shut down federal programs it doesn’t like — outside the standard process of review and debate.

This method, known as the Holman rule, has been used in the past by both parties to cloak political decisions in the language and process of saving taxpayers money. It was included in a package of rules approved as the House began its business in January.

As a former acting general counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives and the author of a treatise on congressional procedure, I know that this method has been used in the past to push extreme political agendas through the political process without due consideration for the public interest. And it’s likely to happen again.

Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack spoke about the Holman rule’s adoption on the House floor in early January 2023, calling federal officials “unelected bureaucrats, the true, real swamp creatures here in D.C.,” saying they had “run roughshod over the American people without consequence.”

“Today marks our first move, and certainly not our last, to hold them accountable,” she said.

Jacqueline Simon, public policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, sees the Holman rule differently: “It goes around everything that protects the civil service from political corruption — not just federal employees but entire agencies. It is precisely for theater and to create chaos and disrupt the operation of federal agencies, including law enforcement agencies.”

The rule allows House members to transform the normal process of compiling appropriation bills — normally, lists of amounts of money to be spent — into vehicles to fire government employees and shut down programs they don’t like.

Anything is ripe for cutting with the Holman rule, from environmental protection agencies to government efforts for human rights to existing programs for addressing sales of semi-automatic weapons.

Note that the piece mentions Democrats. It fails to mention that these are pre-Southern Strategy Democrats, many of who would be Republicans today.

Historically, the Holman rule, named after Rep. William S. Holman of Indiana, wasn’t a tool of only the Republican Party. It was first developed in 1876 when a Democratic House majority faced a Republican president. I wrote about the history of the Holman rule in my book on congressional practice and procedure.

At the time, the Democratic Party held what would later be called the solid South (today, these areas are usually Republican) and sought to expel Yankee Reconstruction — and repeal the laws behind it. Democrats adopted the Holman Rule to get those repeals of law past President Grant.

The Holman rule could be, and was, put to diverse uses in its early days.

The Congressional Research Service says, “A broad initial construction of the rule by the House resulted in putting a great mass of general legislation upon the appropriation bills.”

The Holman rule was used from 1876 to 1895 and again from 1911 to 1983. It was brought back into use by the GOP in 2017. When Democrats took over the House in 2019, they dropped it.

In one notable attempt in 2017, House Republicans were angry about evaluations of proposed legislation by staff of the nonpartisan Budget Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office. So, they used the Holman rule to try to abolish that division and move its employees to another part of its parent agency, making the proposal in a wider budget allocation bill.

Holman allowed disgruntled Republicans to rush their proposal onto the House floor, instead of going through slower, more deliberative processes of examining whether the Budget Analysis Division was fulfilling its mission. The vote to eliminate the division failed, but, significantly, the use at that time of the Holman rule was promoted by the same faction of the Republican party, the Freedom Caucus, that has advocated for using the rule now.

[pnwguy]

I had supported Kristof as governor here, but the state supreme court wouldn’t allow his two-state residence (Oregon and New York) to qualify him as an Oregon resident. But he’s an excellent journalist with a keen eye on the plight of humanity around the world. His family ranch is about an hour southwest of Portland.

By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
Pop quiz: What’s the best policy undertaken by any American president in the past half century?

I’ll get to that, but first a reminder that this week marks the 20th anniversary of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. I opposed the Iraq war. I also covered it and reported on the misuse of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. I hammered Bush for the eight years he was in office over Iraq, torture, Guantánamo, Darfur, reproductive health and so much more.

And the best policy by an American president? I’d argue that it was something else that Bush did that constitutes his most important legacy and that we in the media under-covered. At the same time that Bush was planning the Iraq war, he was also starting the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global effort to turn the tide of the AIDS epidemic. PEPFAR continues to this day and has saved 25 million lives worldwide so far. Think about that: 25 million lives. What can compare with that?

When Bush rolled out this initiative, he wasn’t reacting to pressure from Democrats, and he didn’t gain any political benefit. The American public is still mostly unaware of PEPFAR. My take is that we in the media bungled things in both directions: We were insufficiently skeptical of the Iraq war in the run-up to it, and then we were insufficiently attuned to something that Bush did that was actually heroic.

I know, I know. This messes with our heads. How can I, as a good liberal, accept that the most important humanitarian initiative by the United States in modern times wasn’t organized by some progressive Democrat whom I admire but rather by an evangelical Republican whom I disagree with on almost everything?

Much of the world is denouncing Bush this week for the invasion of Iraq, and in my view he deserves every ounce of criticism for that war. But if we’re going to be honest in weighing history, we also have to credit him for saving 25 million lives and turning the tide of one of the worst epidemics in history. So my Opinion colleagues and I made this video about Bush’s landmark effort to fight AIDS.

I’ve periodically made videos abroad — from Bahrain, Madagascar, North Korea and various places in between — with Adam Ellick, the head of Opinion Video. Adam was surprised to hear me speak reverentially about a Bush program that he’d never heard of and that had saved so many lives. Good journalism is unpredictable and forces us to see things in new ways, and Adam thought this video would help us all do just that. If you’re as liberal as I am, it may discomfort you to see praise showered on a man you maybe can’t stand. That’s fine. We don’t aim to preach to the choir but to call the shots as we see them — which sometimes means discomfiting the choir.

www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000008811012/george-bush-iraq-pepfar.html?playlistId=video/latest-video