301–310 of 459 posts
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Do you have a citation for that? Interesting if true, however 100% of State and Federal legislators are paid.
Serval states only pay a small amounts. New Hampshire is the smallest I’m aware of at $100/ year.
A Republican just won an election in Seattle City Government for the first time in three decades. This election has seen some big shifts in the electorate, even in some deeply-Democratic areas. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/republica...
A "Republican" who has previous run as a Democrat and has voted for Democrats in all recent presidential elections. This says less about any shift in the electorate than it does about the extremism of the Seattle left.
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Likability has always been a factor in democracies. It serves as a proxy for trust and a proxy for similarity. Both major political parties try to use the “down to earth/have a beer with” PR move. AOC was celebrated for being a bartender prior to being elected. She was quite literally someone who you could share a beer with.
I've never encountered a bartender that would drink on the job, so I doubt you could have shared a beer with AOC, at least not while working.
A Republican just won an election in Seattle City Government for the first time in three decades. This election has seen some big shifts in the electorate, even in some deeply-Democratic areas. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/republica...
A "Republican" who has previous run as a Democrat and has voted for Democrats in all recent presidential elections. This says less about any shift in the electorate than it does about the extremism of the Seattle left.
https://www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow
Reminiscent of 1991 Edwards vs Duke, "Vote for the Crook, It's Important" LA governor election (without casting either Seattle party as the crook or the wizard).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Louisiana_gubernatorial_e...
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"we're not there just yet" is a political decision, not a scientific one.
Yes, but it can be based on more objective statistics though, like the local hospital being overrun with COVID patients, as ours was over the summer.
It is a political and value judgement to err on the side of minuscule improvement, if any at all, from wearing masks and mandating vaccines for cohorts that statistically don't need to worry about covid, while degrading the social development of children, and hurting the wider economic interests of people affected by endless restrictions. These are all political questions. There are no all encompassing "facts" that delineate who is harmed and who is helped and in what proportions. That is the realm of politics.
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This race has proven that it doesn't actually matter whether or not white people are being attacked (they're not) or whether CRT is even being taught in schools (it's not). Republicans effectively created a media moral panic around "Critical Race Theory" and it paid off for them in spades.
It doesnt help that democrats paint anyone who finds this stuff obnoxious as republicans- they are alienating the largest constituent in America- independents.
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I recently learned that drugs have become more dangerous and more damaging not due to customer demand, but because of the war on drugs. You need to transport a lot less fentanyl than cocaine for the same effect strength. Meth also had changed to work without ingredients we have banned. This has made meth much more damaging. I wonder what things would look like if we just took the Portugal route. https://www.econtalk.…
Coincidently, I just listened to this. (Perhaps we saw the same recommendation on HN.) 100% recommend, and the whole podcast approach at econtalk.org is very interesting. Economics plus life-of-the-mind.
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Is jail appropriate for litterers? Seems extreme, but I might be able to get behind it. Let's start with the folks who throw fast food wrappers out on the interstate though, not the homeless we wish to criminalize. Throwing them in jail seems like the worst of both worlds... it burns my tax dollars and does nothing to rehabilitate anyone.
That's up to the police to decide. If they don't like a law, they don't enforce it.
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And I want people who lack compassion and consideration housed at the bottom of the ocean, but we can't all win.
Is this a paradox? Because it sounds like you may end up there yourself.
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It doesnt help that democrats paint anyone who finds this stuff obnoxious as republicans- they are alienating the largest constituent in America- independents.
There is a school of thought that says that there almost no "Independents" in the USA at all, only people unwilling to use "Democratic" or "Republican" as a label, and that the overwhelming majority of them fall into the "almost-never-trump Republican" category.
Basically everyone close to me is independent (mostly in the 'leans' democrat category), generally despises both parties, and I know many people who have voted for candidates from different parties in back to back elections.