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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

#251

Post by spywaregorilla »

Covzire wrote: post #119
spywaregorilla wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following you. Your main point seemed to be that all holidays are major shopping days, citing Thanksgiving and Christmas. But Thanksgiving and Christmas are not actually major shopping days. And now you're pivoting to say its because employees are traveling? That doesn't make sense...

You correctly pointed out two exceptions to US holidays where businesses tend to make their money before or after, but I'm pointing out they're the exception (because of travel) and I see no reason why Voting Day as a holiday would be like Thanksgiving/Christmas i.e. high amounts of travel, most likely it would result in an increase in local commerce and potentially be a way that would hurt the very people it's meant…

People travel on Christmas because they have the day off, not the other way around, obviously. None of them are especially large sales days aside a bit from memorial day. It's a really weak assumption being made here. Also, and this may be a shocker, not everyone works a low level job in retail.

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

#252

Post by asciimike »

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…

Election sausages are by far my favorite fun fact about voting in Australia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage

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

#253

Post by RickJWagner »

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.

No. Ensuring every single citizen gets access to a Identification Card that guarantees access to health care, social service, and voting would be much healthier for democracy and for the card holders.

Everyone deserves access to public services. Everyone needs a government ID.

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

#254

Post by fighterpilot »

Lammy wrote: post #58
tinyhouse wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Are you saying housing is expensive is a discrimination?

When it's coupled with an economy that disenfranchises certain groups over others, yes, exactly. Like how America offshored all the manufacturing jobs that used to provide for the middle class.

Is it the housing being expensive per se that's discriminatory, or any laws that stand in the way of increasing housing supply? I'd say the latter.

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

#255

Post by throwkeep »

dlp211 wrote: post #138
throwkeep wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it a holiday and move the election to the day after tax day: "Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders." - Thomas Sowell

What a trite and overly simplistic idea. First is the idea that Government spending is bad. Second is the idea that Government spending is controlled directly by taxes. Third is the idea that a majority of people actually pay any income tax at the end of the year. Fourth is the idea that people understand their taxes. Fifth is the idea that it is income taxes are the only taxes. I could go on, but I digress.

> First is the idea that Government spending is bad.

It's not saying that all spending is bad. The point is to have some pushback so it's not so wastefully spent. Some efficiency would be welcome by all, I think.

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

#256

Post by nickff »

Jedd wrote: post #201
LordDragonfang wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>such as people who have to work on Saturdays A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US. Which is why that early and postal voting is so important.

> A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US. Questions around the math aside, in Australia for federal elections the polling booths are open from 08:00 through to 18:00 - and the process to hop in and vote is typically fast , at lea…

>"... the process to hop in and vote is typically fast, at least compared to what we see on the news for USA elections.."

The process is typically fast in the US as well, but the edge cases are what get into the news. The USA also has a population 13x larger, so we should expect any given issue to occur about 13x as often in the USA as in AUS.

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

#257

Post by User23 »

throwkeep wrote: post #255
dlp211 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a trite and overly simplistic idea. First is the idea that Government spending is bad. Second is the idea that Government spending is controlled directly by taxes. Third is the idea that a majority of people actually pay any income tax at the end of the year. Fourth is the idea that people understand their taxes. Fifth is the idea that it is income taxes are the only taxes. I could go on, but I digress.

> First is the idea that Government spending is bad. It's not saying that all spending is bad. The point is to have some pushback so it's not so wastefully spent. Some efficiency would be welcome by all, I think.

> Some efficiency would be welcome by all, I think.

That’s a silly thing to think when observably many are benefiting from that waste and inefficiency.

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

#258

Post by ninthcat »

jturpin wrote: post #176
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really encourage everyone who disagrees with this comment to reflect on it. The reporter just threw out, as though it was obvious, a partisan stance on an issue of great controversy completely unrelated to the topic of the article. A key component of media literacy is recognizing biases in your sources, so you have to be consciously aware of these kinds of things, or you'll be systematically misled. For example, on…

It doesn't help that CRT proponents do not provide a complete, rigid definition of CRT, and might provide a very nice sounding initial explanation like it "explores the history of systemic racism in the US and how it still has tangible effects today." If that's one's understanding of CRT, then it feels very reasonable to be against the people trying to suppress teaching it. Who wouldn't want to dive into the history…

Here’s a definition used in Florida’s ban[1] on CRT:

> the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.

CRT by this definition is an objective historical fact. The effect of white supremacy on the legal system can be seen from the end of reconstruction, to Jim Crow laws, to government officials allying with the Klan, to the modern-day carceral state. All of these topics were covered in my public school education.

If you want to argue that some works of CRT are flawed, that’s one thing, but substituting the objective historical facts of critical race theory with nationalist propaganda, as these CRT bans explicitly aim to do, is irresponsible and a disservice to the public education system. As NPR correctly points out, it “limit[s] teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history”.

[1]: http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19958/urlt/7-4.pdf

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

#259

Post by jolux »

bobthepanda wrote: post #226
Jcowell wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this doesn’t account for districts that were Gerry wandered and what would have happened had there been fair drawing of districts I. These communities. This is Where number allocation is more important that how many numbers there are.

well, there's an entire class of seats that by definition can't really be gerrymandered (Senate seats are always statewide). Those did not flip nearly as hard as polls had projected.

Right, exactly. People were predicting a blowout and it ended up 50/50 in the senate. The electoral college was comparatively rather close too.

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

#260

Post by jolux »

sidlls wrote: post #208
jolux wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It provides impetus to the government to make it as frictionless as possible. Ahahahaha. Have you tried dealing with American bureaucracy? None of it is frictionless, it’s all horribly inefficient and fragmented, and one party is steadfastly committed to keeping it that way, and the other party only vaguely recognizes how big of a problem it is. Voting needs to be made easier, but making it compulsory would not aut…

> one party is steadfastly committed to keeping it that way, and the other party only vaguely recognizes how big of a problem it is. Not quite: the other party is committed to keeping it that way, too, but is also content to let the first party be the fall-guy for its efforts. The two parties both play for the same team. They're in a big club you might say, and we're not in it (apologies to Carlin for my poor renditi…

It’s pretty clear this isn’t the case. It was more true 20 years ago, but polarization has been increasing rapidly. How are they playing for the same team if they can’t agree on anything anymore?
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