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Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

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Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#241

Post by fighterpilot »

ralusek wrote: post #215
always_left wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, but we’re also working with politicians that had discrepancies with a law protecting Asians from hate crimes[0] [0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/20/politics/republicans-voted-no...

Hate crimes are already a redundancy over the fact that the underlying crimes are already crimes. Hate crimes against Asians, doubly so. You already can't assault somebody. We don't need laws that say that you can't assault somebody on the basis of their race, and we definitely don't need laws saying that you can't assault somebody because they're Asian.

It's not all just redundancy since it imposes stiffer penalties on the strict subset of crimes deemed more important to punish or deter.

I don't really like that one kind of assault is punished more than another even if the physical harm is identical, although I can see why some people would.

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#242

Post by myfavoritedog »

mbg721 wrote: post #184
LordDragonfang wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"More people voting always hurts , and helps their opponents" has always seemed to me like an admission that is innately anti-democratic, and I don't know how people ever spin it otherwise.

"Requiring ID to vote always hurts " has always seemed to me like an admission that is innately anti-democratic, and I don't know how people ever spin it otherwise.

The ironic thing is that the people on Hacker News understand security.

They know that a lack of voter ID, mass mail-in balloting, ballot harvesting, lack of chain of custody of ballots, lack of ability to observe the counting of ballots, etc. are all terrible security practices. They practically guarantee fraud in elections.

If you told the average HN reader to secure his banking information like we secure the vote, she would think you're out of your mind. But somehow, a complete lack of ballot security is just dandy. It's almost like some people feel that any means necessary to win is okay.

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#243

Post by notyourwork »

dtnewman wrote: post #105
eganist wrote: post #16

This is a good symbolic gesture, but making election day a federal holiday equivalent in standing with Christmas would have real and positive impact. But the latter never draws the votes in congress, so that should tell us how meaningless this vote truly was.

No. Make early voting widely available and mail ballots available to anyone who requests one. Stop thinking of elections as a single day. That’ll be much healthier for democracy.

What's wrong with both? Expanding access in form of holiday for day of and early support seem like both good to have things.

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#244

Post by fighterpilot »

verall wrote: post #46
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Penal labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." What are most prisoners forced to do?

They are "forced" to work at below minimum wage rates both for the government and individual firms in public-private partnerships. I use "forced" in quotation marks, because although prisoners are no longer forced chain-gang style, these jobs can be a prisoner's only source of money, which is required to purchase communication with the outside world.

Is this work economically valuable/worthwhile to whoever is employing them? What are the profit margins that their employers make from their prison labor?

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#245

Post by femto »

jolux wrote: post #131
skissane wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia we always have elections on Saturday. Works well for most people. Of course, there is a minority of people it doesn't work well for, such as people who have to work on Saturdays, and observant Jews. And for those people we have early voting and postal voting too. I never quite understand why voting is such a controversial topic in the US. In many countries (I'm sure Australia is not alone in this) it is…

Voting is also compulsory in Australia.

And elections are run by the Australian Electoral Commission, which is largely independent of the government.

https://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#246

Post by ineedasername »

eganist wrote: post #16

This is a good symbolic gesture, but making election day a federal holiday equivalent in standing with Christmas would have real and positive impact. But the latter never draws the votes in congress, so that should tell us how meaningless this vote truly was.

Absolutely. If we can have Columbus Day as a federal holiday, there's absolutely no reason why something as fundamental as voting shouldn't also be a federal holiday. But the act that practically defines the difference in power that citizens have between the US and Great Britain when we fought free of them is an act that is made inconvenient at best and close to impossible at worst for people with certain types of jobs, obligations, mobility issues etc.

On paper it seems okay: polls generally open early enough or close late enough that a person can vote before or after work. Except that is so often the requirement for people that polls in some places are backed up for hours during those times, making the choice between losing money if you're an hourly worker to take extra time to vote or have to skip all together if you have a family to care for and can't wait hours to vote.

Voting should be made as easy as possible. It will always take an extra detour from your daily routine but it should never require a trade off between losing money or caring for your family or any other disincentive.

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#247

Post by skissane »

umvi wrote: post #239
Jedd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some states in the USA recently there's been legislation passed that makes it illegal to provide even water to people waiting to vote. For us Australians, I suspect that invites a huge range of questions, including how long are people normally waiting that they need water, and why would a nominally capitalist society legislate against selling libations and comestibles under these very specific conditions.

Yeah because it's like bribing a vote. If it was non partisan water no one would care but instead it's "Oh you're hot and thirsty standing in line? Here, have a cold one courtesy of Biden (or Trump)!" Nothing is stopping voters from drinking their own water and eating their own snacks in line. I applaud laws that limit "gift giving" at the polls. The polls should not be a place where your vote is swayed by a gift.

In Australia, schools are often used as polling stations. Schools generally have parent volunteer groups who try to raise money for the school, and those parent volunteer groups use election day as an opportunity to sell food (traditionally, sausages) to the voters in order to raise funds. The sale of food is an entirely non-partisan thing.

If a partisan group started giving voters free food or beverages at a polling place, that would be illegal.

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#248

Post by spywaregorilla »

solipsism wrote: post #204
spywaregorilla wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of your reasoning makes sense here. It's weirdly aggressive and is sort of a think of the children, but with poor people. But your conclusion feels like the right call. A weird 180 imo.

Weirdly aggressive? What's aggressive about it? The thin skin around here is ridiculous.

Getting upset by perceiving other people as thin skinned is like the sensitive equivalent of closeted, ashamed homosexuals behaving in aggressively homophobic ways.

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#249

Post by umvi »

skissane wrote: post #247
umvi wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because it's like bribing a vote. If it was non partisan water no one would care but instead it's "Oh you're hot and thirsty standing in line? Here, have a cold one courtesy of Biden (or Trump)!" Nothing is stopping voters from drinking their own water and eating their own snacks in line. I applaud laws that limit "gift giving" at the polls. The polls should not be a place where your vote is swayed by a gift.

In Australia, schools are often used as polling stations. Schools generally have parent volunteer groups who try to raise money for the school, and those parent volunteer groups use election day as an opportunity to sell food (traditionally, sausages) to the voters in order to raise funds. The sale of food is an entirely non-partisan thing. If a partisan group started giving voters free food or beverages at a polling…

That sounds more reasonable to me than interest groups going to the polls giving out freebies

Re: Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

#250

Post by fighterpilot »

ecshafer wrote: post #117
redis_mlc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're hoping you click on the link in that paragraph, which is full-on Marxist propaganda. Also, it's not 6 states banning CRT, it's 20 states now. (CRT is calling white children oppressors, and black children victims. Neither is accurate or helpful. CRT is derived from Marxist Critical Theory. Since the US doesn't have a class struggle, racism has been inserted to make it a racism struggle.)

Marxism has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory, which is an explicitly non-marxist idea. Marx theory is that all of history is a history of class warfare, so any racism is a result of class warfare. Marx was unconcerned with race.

It's true that Marx is about class and CRT is about race, but don't you think there's an abstract similarity there, which is the group-based oppressed/oppressor claim? I don't think it's totally disingenuous to think of CRT as a modern re-incarnation of this type of thinking due to this abstract nearness.

Perhaps a more accurate way to frame this is that both CRT and Marxism are separate instances of a collectivist way of thinking that tries to categorize people into groups based on their perceived power, where what informs that categorization is low dimensional (e.g merely class or merely race+gender). In that sense they're similar ideologies.

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