Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

> making it more likely people will fight within the bounds of the existing political system.

You are aware there was a violent disruption to the peaceful transfer of power last year, right? Since then, predicated on lies, partisans have changed the system to give political parties full control of election results; and the January 6th Committee has essentially uncovered and extensive coup plot that spans the White House, DOJ, and DoD.

We are so far outside of the bounds of the system as we know it that it’s scary people don’t recognize it yet.

EDIT: I'm going to expand upon this because of the dead comment to me, which calls Jan 6 a "riot". It's clear that there is an effort afoot to minimize the events of Jan 6. This needs to end asap because of what the Jan 6 Committee is uncovering.

Jan 6 was not a riot, it was the last stage of a coup plot that started at least the day of the election, before the final results had even been tallied. It's detailed most clearly in the Eastman Memo, authored by John Eastman [0]. The coup plot spanned the White House, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, state legislatures, various members of Congress and the Senate, various lawyers, and of course various paramilitary groups.

The plan was:

1) Pence must declare Arizona invalid when counting certificates of the vote. Specifically Arizona because of the closest states, it comes first alphabetically, and so is counted the soonest.

2) Democrats object, so the matter is taken to the House

3) Voting is done by State Delegation according to the Constitution. Republicans control a majority of delegations, so they would vote in Trump, thus ending democracy in America.

The problem with this plan was that there was no reason to reject any certificate. There was no fraud on the scale Trump claimed. So they tried to litigate, but that failed because they couldn't prove their allegations. Then they tried to strong-arm state election officials by threatening them with jailtime if they didn't manufacture fraudulent votes. That failed as well. They also tried to convince friendly Republican state legislatures to send an alternate slate of electors. That failed as well. They even went so far as to put pressure on state elections boards and county elections officials. This came in the form of threats and intimidation. Trump put pressure on AG Bill Barr to declare the results suspicious but Barr did the opposite, claimed there was no proof of fraud, and he quit because he was smart enough to realize what was going on.

All of this failed because people were just doing their job of running elections in an apolitical matter.

After those efforts, Pence was still wavering on whether to declare Arizona invalid. He needed more pretext so Trump leaned on the Justice department. No one there would open the demanded pretextual investigation except Jeffrey Clark , who was several rungs down the order of succession for acting AG after Barr left. Trump wanted to make him acting AG to open the investigation, but essentially every senior member of the DOJ threatened to quit if he did that, thus ruining the pretext of the investigation, so that failed.

So how do you execute the Eastman memo without Pence? Disrupt the proceedings. The Jan 6. counting of electoral votes is the last stop in the Presidential selection process. If you delay that, you're in extraconstitutional territory. Think of it like a buffer overflow. You're in undefined space where the rules are made by those in power. And guess who had power at the time?

Thus the plan became to hold the Capitol as long as possible in the event that Pence failed to do what Trump wanted. The plan was to generate a great crowd at the ellipse, whip them to a frenzy, point them at the capitol, and if Pence certified Arizona, to then call him out on twitter. Within the crowd they threaded several paramilitary groups including the Prod Boys, Oath Keepers, and 3%ers. While the vast majority of people were not there with any specific goal, there were groups there with the premeditated intent of breaching and occupying the Capitol. But to penetrate all of the security, they needed a mob. You can see these paramilitary groups slithering through the riot crowd like a snake through water in many of the videos from that day. They move in formation and came prepared with uniforms and equipment. Their goal was not to kill anyone, but it was to occupy the capitol for as long as possible. That's why they didn't come with an arsenal, because they knew as soon as the guns come out on one side, they come out on the other side.

To hold the Capitol for as long as possible, they would have to delay the National Guard from showing up. Thus, right after the election when Sec. Esper refused to call the election fraudulent, he was fired and replaced (essentially) with a Trump loyalist Kash Patel. That's why you keep hearing the phrase 187 minutes from the Jan 6 Committee. Because for 3 hours almost, Kash Patel did nothing as far as sending the National Guard, and he did nothing because he was ordered to do nothing (or as it may be more likely, wasn't ordered to do anything, despite urgent need, a dereliction of duty).

Why? What were they trying to do during this time. Well:

1) they were seeing how bad it was going to get. The worse it gets, the better a justification for extraordinary uses of power.

2) They were continuing to lean on state legislatures during this time to send alternate slates of electors. Giuliani and Sen. Mo Brooks were texting at the time, with Rudy telling him to stall as long as possible.

3) They were waiting for Pence to evacuate the building, but he refused.

Ultimately this part of the plan failed because of sheer luck. If any hostages were taken, it probably would have worked. This is why many want Officer Goodman as Time person of the year, because he singlehandedly goaded the mob away from the Senate chambers where he knew many members were hiding.

--

Now take a step back. What have I just described? I've detailed the efforts of a sitting President to use his powers as President to fraudulently remain in power despite an opponent being duly elected under the system in place. That's a literal autocoup. That's not a mere riot. That's how democracies die. If that plan had worked, that's the end of Constitutional order in America.

So how does this plan work in the future? Well:

1) make voting harder. Georgia flipped blue this year because there was surge of minority support in a few key counties by just enough votes. Make voting harder in just those counties, and next time maybe it won't flip by just enough votes. These efforts have been passed into law.

2) Spread FUD about voting. This justifies unbounded skepticism of any election result, no matter how above board. This has been going on for a year and now a large portion of our country believe there was fraud in the 2020 election.

3) Take partisan control of state elections. A lot of the above could have been avoided if Georgia had just "found" missing votes like Trump had asked in the first place. Or if Barr had concluded there was basis for an investigation. Or if state legislatures had just "decided" to send electors they preferred as opposed to ones the voters preferred. For example, Fulton County, which saw no fraud and which has been under non-partisan control forever, is now under partisan Republican control by people who are very sure there was fraud in the 2020 election, even though they can't identify any in Fulton County. But they are there to make sure there is never any fraud again. Which we all need to take to mean that they are there to make sure that a Democrat never wins Georgia again in a close decision. There's no other way to interpret this effort.

Now you can call any results fraudulent, send any electors you want to the counting of the certificates, and leave it up to the Supreme Court to decide. Fingers crossed!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_memorandums

Alright but I've been making quadruple the federal minimum wage...

I wonder: what's the average age of a worker whose wages would increase if the federal minimum wage increased to $15/hr? There's "supposed" and then there's what's actually happening. I suspect most people in those jobs are not the people you're saying should be doing them.

> You forgot to mention that the left is mostly funded by anti-gun interests.

It’s...not.

> If money from Bloomberg or Soros helps you win

Neither Soros nor especially Bloomberg are or especially fund the left; Bloomberg is center-right, Soros is, frankly incoherent; while, yes right-wing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories focus on his funding of organizations to the left of the Republican platform, among the organizations he funds are ones like Cru, the organization known as “Campus Crusade for Christ” before its recent rebrand.

(The Democratic Party is a center-right to center-left coalition party, where dominant power is held by the center-right, neoliberal corporate capitalist faction.)

Unfamiliar cities could certainly be more challenging to drive around prior to GPS, you got lost more often, and yes you often needed to have a paper map. It took me a while before I really developed a decent mental map for driving around the Boston area. But I find people seemingly arguing that travel to unfamiliar places was this daunting task absent GPS availability rather amusing.

For photos I shot B&W (which I printed selectively) and then slides. But most people just took their roll of print film to the pharmacy or whatever and got a stack of 3 1/2" x 5" color prints back.