Vastly poorer countries, including ones with remote mountain villages, hold efficient elections where results are known in hours. Yet the wealthiest country on the planet, including some of its wealthiest cities and college towns, doesn’t, where people are forced to stand in lines for hours, just to cast a ballot. This is voter suppression, and it’s systematic, concentrated in areas where people are younger and browner. We need to overhaul our election system, guaranteeing the right to vote, and holding municipalities accountable when election boards fail their duty. We should also make election days federal and state holidays.
"Free Public Childcare and Pre-K is Popular and Affordable"
The people of the US need to take back the levers of our government from the wealthy. If we had a functioning democracy, we would have many of the nice things other advanced countries do. More of us need to join active political organizations, and fight for the changes we need.
Matt Bruenig, making the case for public childcare and pre-K:
In October of last year, People’s Policy Project commissioned a poll from YouGov to determine the popularity of this proposal. The poll asked 1,004 registered voters the following question:
“Would you support or oppose a policy to have the federal government provide grants to local school districts to provide free public child care for all children too young to attend school?”
YouGov found that the proposal was popular. Overall, 57 percent of Americans support the proposal while only 35 percent oppose it. Among Democrats, the support was overwhelming, with 82 percent in favor of the proposal and only 12 percent against it.
"Pete Buttigieg’s Health Care Plan Is A Joke"
Buttigieg is a standard empty politician, who either doesn’t understand the issues and how to fix them, or doesn’t care, but is very good at convincing you he knows what he’s talking about. Thankfully there are experts who actually do.
Buttigieg’s health plan is too vague to score in any kind of precise way, but it is clear enough from its text that it will cause national health expenditures to go up, not down. This is because it insures 30+ million more people but does very little to lower unit prices. The increase in the insured population and resulting utilization increases should more than overwhelm his puny cost-cutting measures, meaning that the total health bill under ButtigiegCare is actually higher than the total health bill under M4A.
So when you put it all together, what we have with Buttigieg’s plan is a proposal that combines administrative impossibilities with an extremely unpopular mandate and then delivers a system that provides less coverage at higher cost than Medicare for All. In short, a joke.
Our slow descent to authoritarianism, in all its corruption
i know i keep saying this, but right now has STRONG Venezuela ~2006 energy. all these little complicated micro-scandals where the president is obviously breaking the law or violating long-standing practice to consolidate power.
news-savvy individuals and toothless opposition cry out in anguish, but nothing happens. then on to the next politicized court ruling or sacking of inconvenient bureaucrats or take-over and gutting of a previously-functioning part of the state.
at this point Trump can do whatever he wants, and I'll be amazed if we have a free and fair election in 2020. people keep talking about electability as if the election itself is going to be fairly normal.
Iowa's Democratic caucus disaster is normal. The parties, not our government, build the tools.
It’s worth reading the rest of @rabble’s Twitter thread to understand why Iowa’s Democratic caucus was such a disaster. What happened with the app that Iowa’s Democrats used is normal. Our country doesn’t invest in electoral software, because the parties are concerned that if they make good tools which can last for more than one campaign, those tools will be used against them. it’s all about maintaining power. It’s corrupt.
We should demand that Congress fund open source software, free for any campaign to use. Lower the barriers to be able to run a successful campaign. Ensure that software is built to the highest standards—ease of use; security; etc.
"What the Iowa fallout revealed about the 2020 candidates"
A good summary of the top presidential candidates’ reactions to the caucuses in Iowa, from Ryan Cooper in The Week:
People's character tends to reveal itself in times of stress, which the bungled Iowa caucuses at least provided in spades. We see today Buttigieg the ruthless and opportunistic political climber, Biden the incompetent and panicky bungler, Sanders the patient movement-builder, and Warren the steady and dogged campaigner. Future primary voters should take these revelations into account when making their choice.
"Trump Campaigned on Saving Factory Jobs, but U.S. Manufacturing Just Went Through a Year-Long Recession"
Peter Suderman, writing for libertarian Reason magazine:
Last week, the Federal Reserve reported that U.S. manufacturing was in a recession for all of 2019. This wasn't slow growth; the sector actually became smaller. The slowdown was relatively mild, with factory production shrinking by about 1.3 percent. But it was the worst performance since 2015, the year that Trump started his presidential campaign…
…the uncertainty and increased costs surrounding Trump's trade war, which was billed as a way of supporting American factory jobs, has instead wreaked havoc on an export-heavy sector that relies on the global flow of goods to operate. Trump's interventions were intended to prop up U.S. manufacturing. But they backfired, harming the people he claimed to help…
…
Nor are manufacturing jobs the only ones to be hit by trade costs and uncertainty. As a New York Times report notes, middle-wage job growth, which includes manufacturing as well as occupations like mining and construction, slowed considerably over 2019, dropping from 2.6 percent to 1.3 percent, owing to trade-war squabbling. "That slowdown is driving the deceleration of job growth across the American economy," the report notes. Farming, another industry that Trump campaigned on helping, was so harmed by the trade war that the Trump administration ended up spending some $28 billion—more than double the price tag of President Obama's auto bailout—to keep them afloat.
Time to do something about this mess...
We deserve a better life, and we will have it when we organize.