All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Malvolio]

Ah no they don't. That would be illegal. Employers don't determine health benefits, everyone employed by that employer receives the same packaged health benefits and any changes are the responsibility of the Insurance company. The insurance company has limited access in the sense that they have to pay doctors and health care providers.

I stand corrected. I was confusing the stick with the carrot. Employees who smoke are not forced to pay more, but they are sometimes offered a rebate on their health care if they voluntarily quit smoking. Companies could offer a similar incentive to get vaccinated.

[Jack Dracula]

What specifically did the economist say that you disagree with?

What specifically do you agree with? Since you posted the article, it's assumed all of it.

When considering policies that will further disrupt the educations of 50,000,000 students, it is important to weigh the loss of life, which in the context of loss of life to children due to the pandemic has been in the hundreds, with the long term consequences if tens of millions are unable to reach their academic potential (How many people won't be able to become doctors? How many doctors will save one life less?) Policymakers need to consider these things. Anyone discussing policy needs to be able to have this conversation, even if it is deeply unpleasant.

Let's not pretend the welfare of students or their families is actually a concern of conservatives or Republican legislators. If it had ever been, we wouldn't be having this conversation. The threat the virus posed would've been recognized at the beginning of the outbreak and The GOP would've worked with their Democratic peers to mitigate its spread and social impact. They would've set an example and encouraged their base to behave responsibly by putting public health ahead of self-interest. Frankly, the opinions of any conservative on any aspect of the pandemic have no value at this point.
I'd sooner as Loki for his opinions on Asgardian society.

Who is promoting an indifference to death?

People who spread articles about it on social media.

Thank you, Chad. Although, Ill add that I personally I think the normal response that the public needs to develop to this argument is, "If your politics are to promote an utter indifference to death, your politics are garbage and you can kindly get out."

It's the same bullshit argument conservatives make regarding gun control or environmental legislation, etc.

The real questions are 'who profits from society choosing X over the lives and well-being of our fellow citizens?' and 'Who's responsible for creating the conditions making the choice supposedly necessary?'

[Tami]

I stand corrected. I was confusing the stick with the carrot. Employees who smoke are not forced to pay more, but they are sometimes offered a rebate on their health care if they voluntarily quit smoking. Companies could offer a similar incentive to get vaccinated.

Getting vaccinated is a slightly different story. An employer can mandate safety rules to protect all the other workers. Businesses have liability insurance, if they have an unsafe workplace that could affect the premiums they pay or even if the Insurance company continues to carry them. So that is more about liability than health.

Imagine if a Flight Attendant isn't vaccinated and is carrying the COVID virus, and she or he spreads it to half of the passengers in the plane, and some get sick or even die, and it is all traced back to that one Flight Attendant. The Airline could be sued millions of dollars, not to mention the bad publicity.

[Mister Mets]

The party full of numb-nutses you keep defending all the time. Like, it was pathetic when they were indifferent to 20K deaths a year to mass shootings, but now we're starting to talk about hundreds of thousands of people a year who could die of Covid-19 and they're questioning the wisdom getting vaccinated or not putting unvaccinated people into public spaces together at the height of outbreaks. MTG is talking about pulling guns on people who would go around to encourage you to get vaccinated last week.

Their politics are garbage, and if anyone supports them while they're killing hundreds of thousands of people, theirs are too.

High time we all stop pretending otherwise.

You have misinterpreted a statistic or get your information from unreliable sources if you think 20,000 Americans die each year as a result of mass shootings.

In 2019, 14,861 people in the U.S. died from firearm homicide. It's pretty much impossible for mass shootings (which is a portion of firearm homicides) to exceed that number.

https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html

There are a multitude of definitions for mass shootings, which makes efforts to determine how many people have died somewhat complicated.

A common definition of a mass shooting is "any incident in which four or more people are shot and killed, excluding the shooter."

https://everytownresearch.org/maps/m...ica-2009-2019/

By this definition, between 2009 and 2020, 1,363 people in the United States were killed in mass shootings. If you thought the number would be over 200,000 casualties, I can understand that it will result in different policy objectives, and freakouts about how Republicans aren't dealing with it more, since you think the problem is over a hundred times worse than it actually is.

When I was in management I did not have access to anyones medical records. It was the insurance company we went through looking at the records for insurance benefits not a warehouse manager like myself or the manager of the store. not the boss of an office etc... I dont like citizens or not doctors or insurance providers looking at medical records of their employees at all. Like a ceo or manager of a company should not have access to anyones medical records. If you give an employer the right to look at medical records for the coivd shot to see if they had it then a good lawyer could fight for the right or any employer to look at anyone's records for any reason. There is just too much potential for abuse. I posted about this in the vaccines thread. No ones medical records should be made public for any reason unless the person gives consent.

That's a fair point that it can be easily abused if employers had access to employee health records.

A boss might decide that a female employee likely to have a baby shouldn't get a promotion. Bosses might also decide to kick out people who go to therapy or receive some kind of coverage for addiction services, and nervous employees might decide that they wouldn't take advantage of those programs because an employer could learn about it, and make some adverse decisions. It would also be in the interests of insurance companies to make it easier for bosses to kick people with expensive health conditions off of the employee insurance plan.

A further wrinkle with the Covid vaccine is that it's not FDA approved yet, so it would be legally shaky to mandate its use. It should receive full approval in a few months.

[Mister Mets]

What specifically do you agree with? Since you posted the article, it's assumed all of it.

The article seemed reasonable enough, although I am open to hearing an alternative perspective.

I want to make sure that we're coming at this from the same understanding, so that even if you think a point of view is reprehensible, you at least understand it, while I understand where you're coming from.

The following may be very basic and pedantic, but I want to make sure there's no confusion.

One key principle is that there are degrees of being wrong, and there are different ways to respond to disagreements. There are topics where we could believe that reasonable people could disagree. Beyond that are topics where you may believe you're clearly right and that a rational analysis of the situation will show that. And then beyond that are topics where someone is so clearly wrong that personal insults are merited. So when things get personal, when the character of someone you're talking to online, or even the character of a third party who made an argument, can be called into question, this has to be someone who isn't just wrong, but very much so. This is a high bar.

I'll note that you haven't pointed out any line of the article that you disagree with.

It's the same bullshit argument conservatives make regarding gun control or environmental legislation, etc.

The real questions are 'who profits from society choosing X over the lives and well-being of our fellow citizens?' and 'Who's responsible for creating the conditions making the choice supposedly necessary?'

Every policy is going to have tradeoffs. Difficult choices are often unavoidable.

[worstblogever]

You have misinterpreted a statistic or get your information from unreliable sources if you think 20,000 Americans die each year as a result of mass shootings.

In 2019, 14,861 people in the U.S. died from firearm homicide. It's pretty much impossible for mass shootings (which is a portion of firearm homicides) to exceed that number.

Alright, so you're going to nitpick that I used the term "mass shootings" instead of firearm violence, and then quote a number from last year that's lower than it's been because people are in lockdown...

And it's still roughly 15 THOUSAND DEATHS you and your party find to be an acceptable statistic.

Hours after you asked:

Who is promoting an indifference to death?

You answered your own question that was justifiably taken to be as facetious as you just helped prove it to be.

I reiterate, if a party's politics are an indifference to mass death, and arguments that would cause more, your politics are garbage. And if you defend those politics, yours are, too.

I'm not about to let the party that fought against gun control after Sandy Hook when 20 kids got murdered be the one to dictate that it's time during a pandemic to put children back in school and not even require them to be masked. They don't care about any life that's out of the womb, and demonstrate that fact daily.

[worstblogever]

And... Fox News just interviewed Trump, who has a bit of a memory problem regarding Covid-19:

"Could you imagine if I were president right now and we had this massive attack from the coronavirus - you know, now they like to call it, they have new names and they have other new names - but it's exactly what we had, we had the same thing. If that were me, they would say 'what a horrible thing, what a horrible job.' I don't ever hear that. And these are numbers in some cases that are equivalent to what it was, but we don't hear that."

He... got hundreds of thousands of people killed. He CAUGHT IT HIMSELF.

But... Could you imagine?

[Tami]

Dick Durbin confirms former Trump DOJ official Richard Donoghue will also testify this week about the Trump-Clark election plot. This means the two top Trump DOJ people from the final days are both eager to bring Donald Trump to justice. Makes for a slam dunk criminal case.

[Tami]

Black real estate agent, clients handcuffed outside of Michigan home they were viewing

Brown, 46, with Grand Rapids Real Estate, arrived at the two-story, two-garage, brick-covered home at 2 p.m. Sunday and did what he always does. He tested the doorbell, used an app on his phone to open a lockbox that held the key and let himself in before his client arrived in order to open the closets and bedroom doors.

Thorne, 45, who Brown has known since they were teens, and Sammy arrived 10 minutes later.

The three waved to neighbors outside doing Sunday things — the guy who was mowing the lawn, the family next door who was hosting an outdoor gathering.

They didn't notice when the officers arrived.

Brown said he and his clients were ordered to come downstairs and exit the front of the house one at a time, with their hands up.

"We realized, OK this has been going on for some time," he said.

Three or four police vehicles were parked with their wheels on the sidewalk. And officers, using their open SUV doors as shields and with guns drawn, were waiting for the trio to emerge from the house.

The officer paused, and asked how Brown got in the house. Still handcuffed, Brown said he was led back to the entrance of the house to demonstrate how he got the key out of the lockbox.

The officers, with the Wyoming Police Department, took the handcuffs off the three and apologized, Brown said. They told him the house recently had a squatter. The squatter's black Mercedes resembled Brown's black Genesis.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that in the overwhelmingly white neighborhood, he, his friend and his friend's son had been racially profiled.

"This feels wrong. It feels bad," Brown said. "My heart's racing. Sammy looks 10 shades lighter. He’s clearly terrified and traumatized by the situation." Meanwhile, the officers "just pulled off."

I know I may not be the one to say this, for obvious reasons, but even I'm getting sick and tired of these types of incidents.

I mean, okay, a police officer can check out a situation if they receive a call. But why is it always overkill? Why do these police officers over react? It's bad enough that someone in the neighborhood made the call to begin with, but why the over response? Just glad no one was shot.

[PwrdOn]

What specifically did the economist say that you disagree with?

https://marginalrevolution.com/margi...ls-anyway.html

When considering policies that will further disrupt the educations of 50,000,000 students, it is important to weigh the loss of life, which in the context of loss of life to children due to the pandemic has been in the hundreds, with the long term consequences if tens of millions are unable to reach their academic potential (How many people won't be able to become doctors? How many doctors will save one life less?) Policymakers need to consider these things. Anyone discussing policy needs to be able to have this conversation, even if it is deeply unpleasant.

You have to earn credibility when talking about any topic, and as long as I've been paying attention to politics, I've NEVER heard conservatives make any kind of constructive comment about public education. The actual work of educating children doesn't interest them in the least, the only time they EVER bring it up is to score hacky political points about school prayer or vouchers or critical race theory whatever other nonsense they heard on talk radio. Fittingly, it's the right's disinterest in education that makes them rather oblivious to the fact that their bad faith arguments aren't anywhere near as clever or slick as they think they are.

[Mister Mets]

Alright, so you're going to nitpick that I used the term "mass shootings" instead of firearm violence, and then quote a number from last year that's lower than it's been because people are in lockdown...

I think you're mistaken in several ways here.

However, you act when someone else points out that you are mistaken is how you think it should be okay for someone who disagrees with you (or anyone on your side) on some issues responds when you point out that they are mistaken.

You're still mistaken in ways that are illuminating.

I did clearly identify that the numbers I cited were from 2019, before any lockdowns. So it seems you misread what I said. I'm not sure if it's because you're in a hurry, or because you're responding to what you think I said rather than what I actually wrote, but my link was about 2019 and I did write "In 2019, 14,861 people in the U.S. died from firearm homicide. It's pretty much impossible for mass shootings (which is a portion of firearm homicides) to exceed that number."

In addition, the number of firearm deaths in 2020 was actually higher. This is not an obscure phenomenon, so the fact that you think the number from last year is lower because people are in lockdown suggests something wrong with your media diet.

And it's still roughly 15 THOUSAND DEATHS you and your party find to be an acceptable statistic.

Hours after you asked:



You answered your own question that was justifiably taken to be as facetious as you just helped prove it to be.

I reiterate, if a party's politics are an indifference to mass death, and arguments that would cause more, your politics are garbage. And if you defend those politics, yours are, too.

I'm not about to let the party that fought against gun control after Sandy Hook when 20 kids got murdered be the one to dictate that it's time during a pandemic to put children back in school and not even require them to be masked. They don't care about any life that's out of the womb, and demonstrate that fact daily.

I also didn't say that 15,000 thousand deaths are an acceptable statistic.

In one comment on a message board it's impossible to get across every level of nuance and address every possible concern, especially when the earlier comments were about a different topic.

The main argument about gun violence is about the appropriate solutions. Democrats tend to favor restrictions on purchases, but this is going to take a while to have a serious impact, as the average time between someone obtaining a gun and committing a crime with it is over nine years.

https://www.atf.gov/news/pr/atf-rele...ce-data-report

There are more guns in the United States than Americans, so even if there were a complete moratorium on new gun purchases (a policy that does not appear to be seriously advocated by prominent Democrats) it wouldn't address the problem of existing supply. 3D Printers have also made it easier than ever for people to make their own guns.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/02...fle-fgc-9.html

In addition, there's a major problem with an unwillingness to go after violations of current law. According to the ATF, a majority of the cases they recommend for prosecution remain open four years later.

https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/...scal-year-2020

You have to earn credibility when talking about any topic, and as long as I've been paying attention to politics, I've NEVER heard conservatives make any kind of constructive comment about public education. The actual work of educating children doesn't interest them in the least, the only time they EVER bring it up is to score hacky political points about school prayer or vouchers or critical race theory whatever other nonsense they heard on talk radio. Fittingly, it's the right's disinterest in education that makes them rather oblivious to the fact that their bad faith arguments aren't anywhere near as clever or slick as they think they are.

I think that's more of a problem with media consumption than with conservatives.

For example, there are multiple podcasts on education policy from a conservative perspective, including AEI's Report Card podcast, Ricochet's Learning Curve podcast, and the Take Back Our Schools podcast. That's one medium through which conservatives are making a lot of discussions about public education.

[Kirby101]

When talking about kids and schools it is disingenuous and just bad scholarship if only death is considered and not long term health effects when contracting the virus ( there are some, even for children) and the chance of spreading the virus to adults. If those aren't considered, the analysis is worthless.

[PwrdOn]

I think that's more of a problem with media consumption than with conservatives.

For example, there are multiple podcasts on education policy from a conservative perspective, including AEI's Report Card podcast, Ricochet's Learning Curve podcast, and the Take Back Our Schools podcast. That's one medium through which conservatives are making a lot of discussions about public education.

I said CONSTRUCTIVE discussions about public education. Take Back Our Schools? From whom?

[Kirby101]

The American Enterprise Institute is a shill for the Koch brothers and other right wing endeavors. It is not a legitimate scholarly source.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.ph...rise_Institute

[worstblogever]

When talking about kids and schools it is disingenuous and just bad scholarship if only death is considered and not long term health effects when contracting the virus ( there are some, even for children) and the chance of spreading the virus to adults. If those aren't considered, the analysis is worthless.

And, for those who want to live in a sane world without just casually causing deaths in the tens of thousands...

We reopened schools before anyone was vaccinated last fall. We literally have the data to show what happens to the overall populace, and the number of Covid-19 cases when you do that. And that was before a more contagious Delta variant was in the mix.

My feelings are starting to trend away from asking, "Are conservatives in some sort of death cult?" to just making it a statement, because it's the only thing that makes sense. Other than they're just remarkably stupid, and unable to apply science to understand highly potential outcomes based on evidence.

I really wish I wasn't being hyperbolic, but I'm really, really not liking the idea of watching a death count jump back into the hundreds or thousands a day because Fox News in a majority of elected Republicans are telling their base to effectively die for the Trump cause of making Biden look bad. I just don't want to see that, and feel like it's honestly terrifying that I have to say that out loud and think it's a "controversial" opinion for those on the right.