Political Discussion

True, and I don't mean to write off everyone in her district at all, but there were 200k people who did vote for her.
Yeah, it's a weird district. Top left, It starts in an area fairly close to Atlanta, but stretches all the way up into mountain country.


All the folks I know live in Paulding County, but you can see how it stretches up into more rural communities from there. I live in Douglas, one county below it. Proudly leaning blue here.

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Unemployment fraud was huge last year. It saw a huge uptick with the expanded unemployment benefits due to COVID-19.

And a lot of people are now just learning that they were a victim of identity theft and unemployment fraud due to tax season. They are learning for the first time of this fraud when they receive a 1099-G tax form in the mail stating they received unemployment benefits even though they had a steady job all year and never filed for unemployment. This is leaving them on the hook for paying back taxes for that unemployment to the IRS.

In many cases people are saying they reported the fraud to the state, filed a police report and contacted elected officials for help since receiving the 1099-G form in January, but have gotten nowhere yet with getting a corrected 1099-G form from the state leaving them on the hook to pay taxes to the IRS.

Even people who caught the fraud last summer and reported it are still finding themselves receiving 1099-g tax forms. And they are at the mercy of paying taxes to the IRS until their state can straighten this out.
 
exactly. We know we will likely have 50 votes against i from the get go. This means 50 votes for it is the ceiling and the tie breaker comes into play.

The issue is, convincing a couple of moderate democrats that they need to vote for it. What's his face from I think West Virginia comes to mind.

The $15 an hour minimum wage might be a sticking point. This is the section of the bill that is most likely to see some concessions sadly.

Not things like yet another airline bailout.
A minimum wage increase is popular even amongst Republicans overall. I think The Dems should push hard on a stand alone bill and see if they get some Republicans support. The Romney/Cotton bill is $10 an hour maybe they can come in with a compromise a $12? My guess is most in the GOP wouldn’t want to run against a bipartisan bill raise wages. It’s not nearly enough (but neither was $15 tbh) but it’s better than the current Federal Minimum Wage.
 
Yeah, it's a weird district. Top left, It starts in an area fairly close to Atlanta, but stretches all the way up into mountain country.


All the folks I know live in Paulding County, but you can see how it stretches up into more rural communities from there. I live in Douglas, one county below it. Proudly leaning blue here.

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I think a Democrat winning this district would take an act of god but at least one has announced so far and her first ad is taking the right tact.
 

The problem is at this point she is the Left’s version of AOC in that they are the boogiemen that each side can rage against and raise money off of. (the fact that these two people hold that same “scare tactic” position is utterly insane considering the way each approach their position in public office and how they personally represent themselves, but I digress). The Democrats hope that instead of actually bringing productive and progressive governance they can skirt by saying “re-elect us, we tried and the only other option is MTG AKA Trump 2.0”. This incredibly dumb thought process will likely cost them control of, at the very least the House. Pretty disheartening.
 
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The Democrats hope that instead of actually bringing productive and progressive governance they can skirt by saying “re-elect us, we tried and the only other option is MTG AKA Trump 2.0”. This incredibly dumb thought process will likely cost them control of, at the very least the House. Pretty disheartening.
Ah, our lovely duopoly, it's a recipe for dysfunction because players are rewarded for being obstinate.

from an analytical standpoint, the Republican and Democratic Parties are just like the major players of any other private industry: they act out of their private and rational self-interest.

And because the private political industry controls our public election process: “politicians have little incentive to put the public interest first if they believe that blocking legislation is rewarded by their party and inaction is not penalized by voters.”

The report identifies many of the key players in this industry beyond politicians, including candidates, campaign managers, political consultants, pollsters, public relations staff, data analysts and providers, social media directors, ground and elected official support staff, lobbyists, and even academic scholars.

These groups of professional politicians have a natural self-interest in aligning themselves with one of the two major parties.

In other words, the reality of the political profession is that you align yourself with the Republican or Democratic Party, or you find a new career.


"In the politics industry, however, most everything necessary to run a modern campaign and govern is tightly connected to—and often controlled by—the duopoly. Suppliers, then, have limited power to shape competition, but face strong pressures to align with one side of the duopoly. In fact, as elections and governing become more complex and partisan, suppliers prosper and their revenues grow. Rather than supporting solutions and finding common ground, suppliers make partisanship worse." - Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter
 
It’s so easy to make good snarky comments like this1C8C275C-801F-4C4D-AC5C-4F6CB82F2D0B.jpeg

When an hour later the rank partisans clown themselves with comments like this:82BAAA09-BC2D-4B7D-8923-2D7A8F07A0F7.jpeg
 
Got to love capitalism. What's best for the company and its shareholders is above what's best for employees.

The latest example I have heard is companies doing rolling layoffs. For example, each department has to lay off a 1/4 of their department each week. Every employee is laid off 1 week out of 4 each month as they go through the rotation.

Employees have been told that this is what's best for the company. They can retain skilled labor for when they are ready to gear back up.

But this does not work well for employees in many states because of the mandatory waiting period to start collecting unemployment. Essentially one week off isn't enough to collect anything, and it doesn't matter that the week off repeats every month.

This is resulting in all the employees taking a pay cut and not being able to get unemployment benefits. Which has been a real struggle to many employees and their families.

While yes, retaining the talent can be beneficial, especially when hiring new people means training, one person who works in management at one such company posted about how the company is avoiding paying unemployment claims be doing it this way. And that that is a larger benefit to the company than retaining talent.
 
Wonder what additional actions we'll be taking now that the US intel report found Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman responsible for approving Khashoggi assassination.
Nothing. I still don’t understand why we aligned ourselves so closely with the KSA. For all of the drum beating about Iran sponsoring terrorism, the #1 exporter of the Whahabist brand of Islam that undergirds nearly all of the radical Islamist groups we fight against worldwide is the KSA.

The Saudis are not our friends, but they have paid handsomely for the loyalty of our so-called leaders.
 
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