All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Darkspellmaster]

While he is not who anyone would want as a poster boy for it, I remember reading that Johnny Manziel had to attend a gala thrown in his honor where his face was plastered everywhere on all sorts of stuff for sale, with the article pointing out that the only one not allowed to make money off of his image was the guy himself. No wonder some sportswriters call it shametuer athletics.

It's really horrible that they do this to these players.

[PaulBullion]

Thread about a journalist who pretends to be a leftist, but also collects a paycheck to produce pro-Proud Boys propaganda

He issued a weak denial that does not do away with the proven facts. He also quickly retweeted an anti-nazi story, which he had not done much of before.

Be careful who you trust.

[aja_christopher]

The Republican penchant for worrying about "wasting" money on education while rarely if ever complaining about "wasting" money on excess military spending and unnecessary tax cuts never fails to both dissappoint and disgust me -- many will spend hours arguing with you about how "more money" won't help these kids while ignoring how their party has no problem giving that same money to companies and individuals who don't need them in the form of individual, corporate and estate tax breaks for the wealthy.

I've both attended and taught at wealthy and underpriveleged schools both inner-city and rural, as well suburban and overseas. Inner-city and rural students should have the same educational opportunities as their wealthier -- and often lighter-skinned -- peers regardless of "outcomes" and that's not the case in modern America, nor has it ever been, especially during the era of segregation, which in reality still exists in many districts across the nation.

Inner-city and rural schools often lack many of the basic necessities that wealthier schools take for granted, including quality teachers who often feel that they are underpaid despite directly attempting to directly address the inherent inequalities in our system.

Yet some Republicans would still argue that "money" in education isn't the problem even as Republicans cut educational funding while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and "privileged" in our society -- they seem far more concerned about making sure students don't get "too much" funding while rarely if ever putting the same amout of effort into arguing that the corporations and the military get "too much" of that same funding from Republican polticians and leaders in comparison.

Apparently it's far more important to them to "waste" money on things other than education and our nation's future -- it's short-term thinking at it's finest, and par for course for Republicans, whose destructive leadership (Trump, DeVos, Barr, McConnell, etc) we bear witness to on a daily basis.

[aja_christopher]

"Trump administration proposes $7.1 billion funding cut to Education Department"

"Trump signs $738 billion defense bill: The $738 billion for 2020 represents a $21 billion increase over what Congress enacted in 2019."

"FACT SHEET: Republican Budget Cuts Education"

"The Republican conference agreement on the fiscal year 2016 budget resolution makes many cuts in support for education.

Guts investments — The budget agreement maintains the post-sequester non-defense discretionary funding cap for 2016, slashing the 2016 funding level by $37.3 billion below the comparable President's request. But after 2016, the cuts get worse. Over ten years, the budget cuts non-defense funding by $496 billion below the cap levels, leading to a 21 percent loss of purchasing power by 2025. In addition to the cuts shown for education programs, the budget has another $575 billion of unallocated discretionary cuts that could fall on education programs or any other non-defense program.

Effect on pre-K, elementary, and secondary education in 2016 – House Republicans have not yet produced their 2016 education funding bill but they have cut its allocation by $3.7 billion below last year's enacted level, and by $14.6 billion (8.7 percent) below the President's request. If cuts are spread proportionately under that allocation, the Administration estimates that the Republican funding bill will cut 46,000 children from Head Start, cut $1.3 billion from Title I, and cut $450 million from special education relative to the President's request.

Increases student debt — Even though student loan debt already exceeds $1.3 trillion – more than the total of all credit card debt – the conference agreement on the budget guts current policy support for higher education by about $200 billion over ten years.

Student loans – In total, the conference agreement cuts mandatory spending in the education function by almost as much as the House-passed budget. Although the agreement does not specify which higher education cuts it intends, the House budget made the following cuts:
o Eliminated in-school subsidies for student loans for needy undergraduates. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this would add $3,800 to the debt of a student borrowing $23,000 in subsidized loans. Many students who get these subsidized loans also rely on Pell grants to pay for college. Eliminating subsidized loans cuts student support by $34 billion over ten years.

o Eliminated public service loan forgiveness which forgives borrowers' remaining balance owed on Direct Loans after working full time in public service and making 10 years of on-time payments. Eliminating the program will cut about $10 billion in student loan debt relief designed to help graduates afford to work in public service, including as teachers, law enforcement, or in military service or other government employment.

o Eliminated existing expansion of income-based repayment. This program generally caps the monthly repayment amount at 10 percent of the borrower's discretionary income for 20 years. Eliminating this program cuts about $16 billion from student debt relief efforts.

Pell grants – Section 6209 of the conference agreement makes it the policy of the House to freeze the maximum Pell grant for the next ten years, erasing the already-enacted inflationary increases that will raise the maximum grant by $225 by 2017. Congress already offset the cost of this increase and of maintaining it thereafter. The House budget made clear that it intended to eliminate all the mandatory funding Congress has already enacted for Pell grants, which eliminates nearly $85 billion in Pell grant aid over the next ten years.

College tax credits – The budget agreement lets the American Opportunity Tax Credit expire after next year, eliminating a $2,500 tax credit that helps more than 10 million low- and moderate-income students pay for college each year. Extending the tax credit costs $80 billion over ten years."

https://budget.house.gov/fact-sheet/...cuts-education

[aja_christopher]

"Record debt and inequality gap? It's almost like 40 years of Republican tax cuts failed."

"Trickle-down failure: The cult-like Republican belief in tax cuts isn’t supported by results. It's leading to an apocalypse of debt and inequality.

"Since the Reagan administration, Republicans have fervently claimed lower taxes will unleash the "makers" — incentivizing them to work harder and invest more, thereby trickling down to benefit ordinary Americans. Moreover, they have consistently claimed that their tax cuts would create such dramatic economic growth that they’d literally pay for themselves. A rising tide lifts all boats! No hard choices to make — just cut taxes!

Instead, the national debt is at a record high, and the gap between the richest and the poorest U.S. households is now the largest it has been in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been tracking it. And that inequality gap started to expand dramatically about the same time the Republican Party started cutting taxes.

More growth during higher-tax eras: The American economy since 1950 offers a chance to consider the impact of these tax cuts. From 1950 to 1980, the top federal marginal tax rates (the rates on income above certain levels) were as high as 92% and never below 70%. Republicans have been slashing the top tax bracket for annual earned income since the early 1980s, and it is now 37% on income above $612,350.

Further, in 2003 the GOP shrank the tax rate on unearned income (such as dividends) to 15%, resulting (for example) in the billionaire Warren Buffett having a lower tax rate than his secretary. With such dramatic tax cuts, GOP dogma predicted a booming U.S. economy. But it turns out U.S. economic growth was substantially higher during the period of high taxes. From 1950 to 1980, average annual growth in real (inflation-adjusted gross domestic product) was 3.9%, while from 1981 to 2018 the comparable number was 2.7%.

Similarly, during the high tax period, median household incomes increased on average (in real terms) by a bit over 2.5% per year. During the low income tax period, average real growth in household income declined to 0.7% per year...

Tax cuts cost money we don't have: More intuitively, the idea that Mark Zuckerberg was thinking about his tax rate while working in his college dorm room on what became Facebook is ridiculous. Another (though related) argument the GOP keeps making is that its tax cuts will pay for themselves. The available data, however, show that the 2003 tax cut and an earlier cut in 2001 benefited the richest Americans, and did not pay for themselves (indeed, by some calculations the two tax cuts added $5.6 trillion to the national debt).

More recently, Republican Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claimed that the GOP’s 2017 tax cut would not only pay for itself, but would actually reduce the federal deficit by $1 trillion. So far (according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office), the 2017 tax cut isn’t paying for itself with higher tax revenue, and it’s projected to add $1.5 trillion to our national debt over the next 10 years...

Unquestioning and unsubstantiated belief in the magical power of tax cuts isn’t a viable economic policy. The GOP is putting America on an unsustainable path that is disastrous both for its fiscal future and for the hopes of people trying to get ahead."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...mn/3833546002/

[Lord Falcon]

Gamestop's been doing terrible stuff here.

Corporate gave instructions to resist police orders to close down because they considered themselves "essential retail."

https://kotaku.com/gamestop-we-can-s...wer-1842415962

I'll note they did close earlier today.

The Gamestop situation does show a failing of the free market, because the incentives of the people in charge were terrible.

One person who worked at Gamestop wrote online that sales had been awesome during the early stages of the Coronavirus concerns, because you had a lot of people looking for entertainment for when they're shut-in.

Gamestop's financial situation has been terrible. No one wants to buy it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-search-buyer/

So the incentives are to make as much money in the short-term as possible. The people in charge don't care about hurting the image of the brand in the long-term because they probably don't think the company has any future.

This has led to the store remaining open way too long during a pandemic attracting crowds at a time when the workers were told to bring in their own cleaning supplies.

Gamestop's outdated business model deserves to go the way of Blockbuster by basic free market principles, but is trying to persist at the expense of the actual wealth the market produces under how an unchecked free market run by humans actually operates. Support games through some other platform.

It's not that schools get more money due to liberal/conservative bias per say... it's more an issue of schools getting their money from property tax. Wealthier neighborhoods obviously generate more property tax, thus generate more income for the school. Inherently, they system itself produces disparities. In many states the wealtiest districts spent two to three times what the poorest ones can spend per student. But a lot of states do try and off set that. Obviously more needs to be done.

Funding schools through local property taxes is one of the most hilariously bad ideas I've ever heard of that's actually been implemented. The rich don't need public schools but get the best ones. The poor are stuck in underfunded public schools because their properties aren't worth as much as they're crammed in together. If there was one system that deserved to be totally uprooted and burned in the U.S., it'd be how the U.S. funds its schools.

[PwrdOn]

It's really horrible that they do this to these players.

Well the people who can actually make it to that level are the lucky ones, for every one that becomes a marketable star there are hundreds of kids who dedicated extraordinary amounts of time and efforts to the sport and end up with nothing to show for it, and perhaps picked up some major injuries or brain damage along the way. By the time they realized that all the hard work they put into football would have been better off applied to their schoolwork or learning a useful trade, it's usually too late. I do think to some degree it's a bit reckless and irresponsible to keep filling kids with false hope that anyone can make millions if they just say their prayers, eat their vitamins, and believe in themselves, a lot of them could probably have made a real difference had they directed that energy toward something else from a young age.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled John Becker, a member of the Ohio House of Representatives who prior to taking office, spent two decades working as an anti-abortion crusader who was originally spurred into that role after he was “horrified” by the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Becker has already sponsored legislation that would ban insurance companies from covering “abortion”, but his definition of that term was so poorly worded that it would have blocked funding from IUDs. When confronted with that fact, Becker’s excuse was to say, “Well, I’m not a doctor.” as well as fetal heartbeat bills. He has also voted to defund all Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio, and has written newspaper editorial to argue that since schools are “gun free zones”, that there should also be “condom free zones”. On LGBTQ rights… he is also an abysmal human being, comparing gay marriage to bestiality and polygamy, calling for the impeachment of judges who rule in favor of the widowed spouses of gays to honor the benefits they would be given by departed spouses on death certificates, and has called for Massachusetts to be kicked out of the United States for having been the first state to legalize gay marriage (incidentally, he also once stated that Alaska should be expelled from the union over oil drilling rights). Becker also wrote in his own political magazine, The Becker Report in August of 2015, that the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling was "a national flipping of the middle finger at God." Becker has sponsored multiple Voter ID bills, and claimed that he broke down in tears when he heard guns that confiscated by law enforcement are sometimes melted down and destroyed. Becker has also argued that it’s the protesters of police violence in cases like that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, or Tamir Rice in Cleveland… it’s the protesters who are the real racists. In 2016, Becker made headlines with his support of transphobic bathroom legislation, and while he flailed about, paranoid about the transgendered using the bathroom of their choice, he also decided to lambaste Target stores for respecting their bathroom choices.

What was new from John Becker is 2018, was that he suddenly became quite the apologist for police brutality, defending a Cincinnatii police officer after he used a taser on an 11 year old girl, saying he would be “shocked and embarrassed” if it happened to his daughter because “it would mean she resisted arrest”. In the days that followed, he doubled down, saying, "'I've about had it with all of the finger pointing at law enforcement officers after shooting a punk in self-defense." (Remember, this ***hole claims to believe in a right to life.) What wasn’t new, though, was his anti-choice fervor, as we saw him vote for a fetal heartbeat bill that would effectively have outlawed abortion at six weeks, had it been signed by Gov. John Kasich.

Becker won re-election comfortably with 66.6% of the vote in 2018, and went back to work showing he had no understanding of female reproductive science when he tried to claim ectopic pregnancies could be re-implanted in the uterus of a woman having them removed, against all logic.

He also made headlines in May of 2019 after showing a “humorous” image of a shotgun propped up near a sleeping bag, and indicating he would be preventing his daughter and her fiancée from sleeping in the same room with it. Because of course this guy is fantasizing about murdering someone who might have sex with his daughter. Of course he is.

[BruceWayneJr.]

I’ve always thought it would be better to call it black/poc under-privilege.

If they cared about black/poc under-privilege, then we wouldn't need to have these conversations to begin with. The idea is to bring self-awareness to how the system is unbalanced in their favor. You could tell them all day long about the under-privileged and nothing will change; it's only when you bring their personal situations into it that they'll ever start to even begin to give a damn.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

White House Won’t Say When More Masks Will Be Available To Health Care Workers

During Saturday’s coronavirus task force update, Trump once again blamed his administration’s bungled response on Obama. This makes absolutely NO sense! What the fuck does Obama have to do with this, other than Trump needing someone to blame for HIS failures! The malfeasance by this administration on the coronavirus response has been absolutely criminal!

**********

I’m A Canadian Quarantined In Italy. My Message: Self-Isolate Now.

Minimizing unnecessary contact with others can be an act of care and compassion.

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White Supremacists Discussed Using Coronavirus As A Bioweapon

Federal investigators appeared to be monitoring the white nationalists’ communications on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app.

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Ohio Is Trying To Use The Coronavirus Crisis To Stop Abortions

The state’s attorney general is using concerns about limited supplies of protective medical gear to prevent women from ending pregnancies. Predictably, said attorney general is a Republican.

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Trump Touts ‘Game-Changing’ Drug Cocktail For Coronavirus Linked To Fatal Arrhythmia

The president, who is not a doctor, recommends a potentially dangerous drug combo to his 74 million Twitter followers. “What do we have to lose?” he asked. How about lives? This crazy motherfucker is LITERALLY going to get people killed!

[XPac]

Gamestop's outdated business model deserves to go the way of Blockbuster by basic free market principles, but is trying to persist at the expense of the actual wealth the market produces under how an unchecked free market run by humans actually operates. Support games through some other platform.



Funding schools through local property taxes is one of the most hilariously bad ideas I've ever heard of that's actually been implemented. The rich don't need public schools but get the best ones. The poor are stuck in underfunded public schools because their properties aren't worth as much as they're crammed in together. If there was one system that deserved to be totally uprooted and burned in the U.S., it'd be how the U.S. funds its schools.

In many states, due to worries about unequal educational opportunities, there are attempts to shift away from local property tax as the main source of funding in favor of state imposed taxes.

But the funny thing about politics is that there's always all sorts of trade offs. While attempting shifting away from local property tax to state imposed taxes, it has had the effect of leaving some parents and local governments feeling as though they have lost control of educational decisions effecting their community. And sales tax, one of the more common go-to taxes to replace local property taxes for funding schools in a lot of states, is inherently regressive - it disproportionately burdens those who have lower income. Plus, it's less reliable that if the economy stumbles consumers buy less and sales tax renevue sink.

Point being the whole thing can be a real muddy issues at times... most agree something needs to be done, but it's a work in progress.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

If they cared about black/poc under-privilege, then we wouldn't need to have these conversations to begin with. The idea is to bring self-awareness to how the system is unbalanced in their favor. You could tell them all day long about the under-privileged and nothing will change; it's only when you bring their personal situations into it that they'll ever start to even begin to give a damn.

I get that. I personally don’t have an issue with the term. I just think we have years of evidence to suggest that it creates more issues using the term than advancement towards solving the problem and it makes too many white people who can’t be introspective to get hostile and shut off over it. If the end goal is the end goal, I prefer the quickest path with the least resistance. Right now we have a generation of people that just shut their minds off when they hear it

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It's really horrible that they do this to these players.

It’s a shitty situation though. I think they should 100% be able to profit off their image in college.

However once you get into the dynamics of paying players, you start to realize that the football and in rare cases the basketball team end up subsidizing the entire athletic program. Which creates complications because those other programs are used to make the school more attractive to people who want to go there. Then you have title IX thrown in the mic which causes other issues with payment and supplying programs (like maybe the men’s lacrosse team makes just enough to self sustain itself, but the women’s lacrosse team doesn’t but you either need both or none). It also gets into a weird area where you realize boosters would quickly start having bidding wars over high school kids which would instantly make some of the smaller programs irrelevant and shrink the pie for everyone but some of the top schools. So you’d have a handful premier programs where players were making an absurd amount of money, but it’s at the expense of the rest of the programs, and then everyone else is non competitive and you kneecap smaller schools which hurt their profits.

It’s one of those issues where it seems obvious, but then you unpeel it and it’s a lot easier to see why they fight so hard to keep it the way it is. And considering that already you have football players that basically spend all year training and in practice and isolated in ore selected classes together it’s going to sharpen that division between the school and sports program. Also like the 3000 other kids and their parents aren’t going to be happy when sure their is a football program, but they cut all the athletics their kids might participate in and it becomes less attractive for overall enrollment.

It gets messy very fast. And that if we are being honest, the top athletes already have boosters who are taking care of them under the table

[Steel Inquisitor]

I get that. I personally don’t have an issue with the term. I just think we have years of evidence to suggest that it creates more issues using the term than advancement towards solving the problem and it makes too many white people who can’t be introspective to get hostile and shut off over it. If the end goal is the end goal, I prefer the quickest path with the least resistance. Right now we have a generation of people that just shut their minds off when they hear it

There is no path of least resistance when it comes to privilege. It's what they represent, not what terms are used. It's not a "right now" problem, it's a problem which has plagued humanity since the beginnings of our species.

[Gray Lensman]

I get that. I personally don’t have an issue with the term. I just think we have years of evidence to suggest that it creates more issues using the term than advancement towards solving the problem and it makes too many white people who can’t be introspective to get hostile and shut off over it. If the end goal is the end goal, I prefer the quickest path with the least resistance. Right now we have a generation of people that just shut their minds off when they hear it

As someone who grew up poor and white (my parents left the working class behind shortly before I moved out but most of my childhood was spent rather poor) my early thoughts on the words 'white privilege' were always 'when do I get to have some of this so-called privilege'. It wasn't until I lived on my own for a while that I saw and realized that white privilege is largely about what doesn't happen to you as opposed to what you have, and I bet I'm not the only one to have made that error - many people still make it.