2018 Democrats thread

[StrangeSox]

You could read the amici briefs or the dissents for detailed information on why it actually is harmful. Again, already 2M purged. illini also laid out some of the issues with the route they chose.

And there's no real assumption here about the purpose. Look who did it, look at the impact, look at the lack of necessity for the rule. 

 

Here's a pretty clear distinction: there is some minimum of things necessary to ensure fair and accurate elections. I would agree that a voter registration roll is one of those things. You can call it a barrier, sure, but it's one that is necessary. Contrarily, purging voters from rolls, which can restrict or eliminate their ability to vote in a given election, is not as necessary. Yes, you want to keep reasonably accurate roles for a variety of reasons, but there was no serious electoral challenges faced in Ohio that necessitated mass purging of their rolls. So barrier that are kept as minimal as possible (motor voter, automatic registration, etc.) are good, barriers that are erected by partisans for partisan reasons are bad (basically all GOP electoral changes, from voter ID to voter purges to restricting voting times and places).

It's not a hard distinction to make, and it's not some sort of logic trap. If you agree with the necessity of voter registration rolls, it doesn't mean that you have to accept every other possible barrier to voting or attempts to purge voter rolls.

Edited June 12, 2018 by StrangeSox

[caulfield12]

5 minutes ago, Jenksismyhero said:

Even if we assume that this is all intentional to suppress D votes, the act itself is still not oppressive. It's a fucking postcard. It's voting in a 4 year period of time ONCE. That's not an unreasonable barrier. 

And yes, if you believe that is a barrier, then you also have to believe that registration itself is a barrier since registration takes more work. 

What’s the average amount of time that poor/lower middle class people live in one house or apartment?  Usually less than one year.   Heck, we’ve heard stories of carriers not delivering any mail for a year at at time...just carrying it around in their personal vehicle.

What’s the average amount of time that upper middle class or rich people live in a house (often not an apartment, where mail more easily disappears or doesn’t get delivered/received)?  5-10 years?  15 years?

It’s the same argument if they used “internet” voting or registration, it would disadvantage the lower middle class and poor people who might not have access or would have to go to a public library, versus everyone else who can just do it on an ipad, mobile phone or PC.

Of course, you’re going to see more disenfranchisement in one group than another.

[illinilaw08]

14 minutes ago, Jenksismyhero said:

Even if we assume that this is all intentional to suppress D votes, the act itself is still not oppressive. It's a fucking postcard. It's voting in a 4 year period of time ONCE. That's not an unreasonable barrier. 

And yes, if you believe that is a barrier, then you also have to believe that registration itself is a barrier since registration takes more work. 

Except there are a lot of better ways to handle this.  Postcards can get lost in the mail.  People move within the same district, but forget to update their voter registration, so they would not receive that postcard.  Even if it gets there, people ignore mail like that all the time.  The State's own records can verify addresses in a better manner (particularly via tax returns).  

The question is - what is the bad act that this is intended to fix.  If it's clearing the voter rolls to reduce administrative costs, then why don't you allow people to re-register day of for the people who didn't realize they had been removed?  

Every. Single. Legitimate study on voter fraud finds that it is so statistically insignificant that it is not something to legislate around.  Republicans push this type of legislation, and cheer results like this from the Supreme Court, because it enables voter suppression - voter suppression that ultimately acts in their favor at election time.  You say any restrictions on voting have this impact.  I say what is the harm that the restrictions on voting are in place to stop?

On the firearm side, there is significant evidence that increased access to firearms costs lives.  Hence, some reasonable restrictions on firearms provide value to society.  Absent some compelling evidence that restrictions on voting serve society (like taking the vote from convicted felons, for example), your comparison between the right to vote and the 2nd Amendment doesn't hold water.

[Reddy]

 

Yes, I wholeheartedly disagree with your fundamental belief that questioning liberal-think automatically means you're racist/sexist/classist/etc. 

I didn't call you those things. You just did. Are you speaking for the group that is keeping black and brown people from voting, or are you speaking for those who are being disenfranchised? 

[StrangeSox]

The NC GOP, which had their last voter suppression attempt via Voter ID struck down because they explicitly targeted minority voters, is trying to push through a constitutional amendment to require Voter ID. It's vague and leaves a whole lot to be worked out, but the goal is to pass it this way so that the Democratic majority state supreme court can't rule it unconstitutional. We don't need to ignore the years-long pattern of voter suppression efforts by the GOP when we look at the latest one.

 

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article212943754.html

Quote

 

There are important questions to be resolved before the legislature votes to put voter photo identification in the state Constitution via referendum.
 

The ballot question says, “Every person offering to vote in person shall present photo identification before voting in the manner prescribed by law.” This language appears to not allow exceptions for those without ID or those who have lost them, as the 2013 law did. Will it be a “hard ID” like that struck down in federal court, or a “soft ID” like the 2013 House version that allowed student ID, public assistance ID or employer ID? Will there be a tedious provisional ballot process?
 

The referendum voter won’t know the actual proposal. Senate staffer Brent Woodcox tweeted, “Very few would read the details of the bill to make their decision on the amendment. Unless it passes, there will be no need for implementing language.” How cynical. Is the amendment just a blank check, as well as a sound bite to trap candidates? Is the actual reason to amend the constitution to end review on state constitutional grounds? Republicans control the legislature; the N.C. Supreme Court is now 4-3 Democratic and will remain Democratic next year. 
 

What justification have proponents offered, other than voter confidence would be improved? Gov. Pat McCrory in signing the 2013 bill said it was common sense because you “need a photo ID to fly.” This is untrue; the Transportation Security Administration has many published workarounds for fliers with no photo ID. Other misconceptions: "The law requires photo ID to buy beer, wine and cigarettes." Not true. There is no law requiring this, but if merchants gets photo ID they have a safe harbor if it’s phony.

“You have to have a photo ID to get a prescription.” Most prescriptions have no legal ID requirement. Controlled substances require a government ID, but it doesn’t have to be that of the patient; others can pick up those drugs by showing their ID.

A large segment of society, especially the poor, don't fly and don't have checking accounts. Research has shown that the poorer the voter, the younger the voter, or if the voter is black, the less likely there is an acceptable photo ID. Also, why are we writing into the constitution 2018 technology, disallowing other methods that may develop?

I’ve seen attacks that people without ID could easily get one. For many, this isn’t true. Those of us in politics are privileged to be in the top 95 percent of society. We often don’t see the struggle of citizens who are un-banked, poor, homeless, mentally ill, with no car, or living far away from DMV in rural areas. The lesser among us deserve respect and honor, not baseless fraud allegations or artificial and unnecessary barriers to voting. This bill will disenfranchise voters and is poorly thought through. No one is breaking into the voting booth.
 

Most voter fraud is in mail-in ballots, not touched by this bill. The other major fraud in 2016 was largely baseless post-election fraud accusations made by representatives of a campaign, organized by Virginia lawyers who duped volunteers into signing false allegations.
 

Over 400,000 persons have had licenses suspended in the last three years in North Carolina for failing to pay court fees (which have greatly increased). How would this affect voter ID?
 

Also, the constitutional amendment is effective upon certification (likely around November 28) allowing a December session to fill in the details. I’ve seen this movie before. If the ID amendment is passed by voters, make it effective in 2019 and let the new legislature write the law, since the proponents say they have no details.

 

 

[southsider2k5]

3 hours ago, Jenksismyhero said:

Lol, so I guess the majority of people in this thread arguing it is oppressive should be ignored too, huh?

It is only oppression if you don't stick to the talking points. 

[bmags]

For those who work at companies that sell things online, you know how much even the tiniest bit of friction in the purchase process can affect sales. An extra click, a poorly placed button, etc. The buyers aren't lazy or stupid, but it's easy to get distracted or something come up that prevents a percentage each time.

But you work to remove that friction because you want people to buy the stuff.

But with voting apparently there's no amount of scorn that can't be applied to certain Americans that consistently get more and more friction thrown in their way. Many will overcome it, some will have something come up that causes them to miss a step along the way.

There needs to be a right to vote. This is nonsense. You can protect voting integrity in the front or the back of the process, you throw it in the front specifically to make it difficult. Why on earth would that be the preferred solution for the Government, except gamesmanship.

[caulfield12]

California's Gavin Newsom wants to lead the way to a post-Bernie, post-Hillary party

Now, as a candidate for governor at a time of fake news, rising populism and a progressive base that has responded by turning against both Davos Democrats and Silicon Valley, Newsom no longer stumps about “Citizenville.” (“Every time I talk about participatory platforms,” he tells Yahoo News, “my campaign team literally tries to choke me.”) Instead, he is promoting a liberal wish list that would, if enacted, represent one of the largest government expansions California has ever seen: a statewide single-payer health care system; universal preschool; full-service community schools, open every day; hundreds of thousands of new affordable housing units per year; a state energy grid run solely on renewable energy; and a state bank dedicated to financing infrastructure projects, small businesses and the burgeoning marijuana industry.

...

And he is skeptical, even critical, of fellow progressives like Bernie Sanders, who he says want to “tear other folks down” — presumably richer folks — in order to build their movement.

But I have 23 little businesses I started out of college, with 800 employees,” he continues. “The one tendency I have not succumbed to, that I don’t embrace, is begrudging other people’s success. Some people in our party, their rhetoric comes across as particularly crass in how it relates to economic development, entrepreneurism, business growth. I just caution against that. I don’t think that’s a healthy thing for our party. I hear everyone say, ‘I’m pro-job,’ and then I hear us bashing the private sector. I’m not there.”

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/californias-gavin-newsom-wants-lead-way-post-bernie-post-hillary-party-160041273.html

[caulfield12]

Maine GOP candidate for governor...

Election nights are long -- no matter what.

 

But asking voters multiple questions on each race further drags things out. So far, CNN has been unable to project a winner in the Maine House District or either the Democrat or Republican primary for Maine governor.

 

While you wait, though, check out this is saucy video of one of Sen. Angus King's opponents, who ran unopposed for the Republican nomination, has online.

 

He's a long shot.

source: cnn.com

Edited June 13, 2018 by caulfield12

[StrangeSox]

 

[GoSox05]

Corey Stewart winning.  Steve King retweeting a Neo-Nazi.  Banner day for the white nationalist party. 

I'm sure it's the Democrats fault or liberals or the left.  Anyone, but conservatives.

[StrangeSox]

Another Democrat with a big swing in Wisconsin state senate seat last night, winning in a Trump +16 district. This was the election that the courts had to force Scott Walker to hold.

6 minutes ago, GoSox05 said:

Corey Stewart winning.  Steve King retweeting a Neo-Nazi.  Banner day for the white nationalist party. 

I'm sure it's the Democrats fault or liberals or the left.  Anyone, but conservatives.

Corey Stewart is a Minnesotan cosplaying as an unreconstructed Confederate.

[GoSox05]

3 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

Another Democrat with a big swing in Wisconsin state senate seat last night, winning in a Trump +16 district. This was the election that the courts had to force Scott Walker to hold.

Corey Stewart is a Minnesotan cosplaying as an unreconstructed Confederate.

So is Steve King.  He keeps a confederate flag on his desk.  Having been born and raised in Iowa.  I'm sure it's just a southern pride thing though.

Honestly, that the Republican party doesn't completely disavow someone like Steve King says a lot.  He is an open white nationalist, who tweets daily about the mad hordes coming to kill "our culture". 

Edited June 13, 2018 by GoSox05

[StrangeSox]

Already seeing more fallout from SCOTUS giving the okay to partisan voter suppression, this time in Kansas:

 

 

[StrangeSox]

 

 

[Dick Allen]

4 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

 

 

Who would have known?

[GoSox05]

Seattle council votes to repeal tax to help homeless amid opposition from Amazon, other businesses

Not everyone is thrilled that Jeff Bezos wants to go back to the moon

Quote

Bezos of mistreating his employees, working them to exhaustion and forcing them to live in tents and urinate in bottles.

Jeff Bezos seems cool.

 

Yeah, we don't need unions and better labor laws.

 

[greg775]

1 hour ago, Dick Allen said:

Who would have known?

So businesses are making more money but not giving any of it to the little people. That's our country in a nutshell right now. It's all about the 1 percenters, folks. I don't think Trump can make business owners do the right thing with their profits. However, he is one of the ruthless 1 percent as well. I wonder if Judd Legum is in favor of Bernie led socialism as well. This is why I want free stuff now. The top money earners will never change and spread the wealth to their employees. They'll just buy another vacation house with the profits. Meanwhile we're all going to be on the streets. Did you see it was 1 percent of all baby boomers or something like that have any cash saved for retirement? When 40 percent of Americans are living on the streets it should get interesting, very interesting cause that will even affect the 1 percenters. Elect Bernie.

Edited June 13, 2018 by greg775

[Dick Allen]

6 minutes ago, greg775 said:

So businesses are making more money but not giving any of it to the little people. That's our country in a nutshell right now. It's all about the 1 percenters, folks. I don't think Trump can make business owners do the right thing with their profits. However, he is one of the ruthless 1 percent as well.

Which was obviously going to be the result. Sure some Walmart employees got one time bonus of up to $1000 if you were there forever, most got about $250. But people who weren't spending the money they have got thousands of times more than that. And the deficit created will lead republicans to cut other programs non rich depend on to survive, but fuck them. They didn't inherit a ton of money, they are obviously useless. 

Edited June 13, 2018 by Dick Allen

[LittleHurt05]

47 minutes ago, GoSox05 said:

Seattle council votes to repeal tax to help homeless amid opposition from Amazon, other businesses

Not everyone is thrilled that Jeff Bezos wants to go back to the moon

Jeff Bezos seems cool.

 

Yeah, we don't need unions and better labor laws.

 

While I disagree with his motives, I do support Trump's attack on Bezos.  I feel like him and Amazon are getting out of control and it is gonna turn into one of those all-encompassing corporations we see in future sci-fi movies like Demolition Man or Idiocracy.  He needs to be curtailed.

[greg775]

Has anybody noticed Chelsea is getting a lot of positive press and is appearing in the news more and more? Hmmmm ... I think a run is inevitable, but 2020 may be one round too early. Bill's been getting some negative press over Monica on his book tour, facing some me too questions. Notice how Bill once in a while gets railed in the press but ONLY when the presidential elections are far in the horizon. The press does not complain at all about the Clintons once we near presidential election time. Actually I could see Oprah picking Chelsea as her running mate. That would make sense if Oprah runs. Can you imagine 8 years of Oprah as prez then 8 of Chelsea? Things would completely change in a 16-year span that is for sure. Chelsea is lead story on yahoo today in her showing class to Twitter bullies saying she looks like Howdy Doody.

Edited June 13, 2018 by greg775

[Soxbadger]

Some quick Greg replies:

 

1) Trump and congress could have made business owners do the right thing. They just purposefully chose not to. This is what Trump fans voted for, so its what they get. Perhaps instead of just being about "Bernie" you will look into local elections, speak with your neighbors, about what they can do in the 2018 election to help. 

2) Chelsea wont be running for office any time soon. I dont think she has any interest at all and its doubtful shed get very far in a national primary given what happened to her mother. 

[caulfield12]

33 minutes ago, raBBit said:

I agree but I think it's too late. They're already a huge supplier to the DOD and he's in cahoots with the CIA.

Sourcing, about last allegation/insinuation?

For decades, big multinationals were always in cahoots with the military/industrial complex...but on the conservative side of the political spectrum.

Starbucks is part of it as well?

[StrangeSox]

They do stuff for the DoD via Amazon Web Services, aka providing data farm computing power. I wouldn't be shocked if they did similar for any of the alphabet agencies.

 

Bezos started pushing hard against this modest tax the day after he was quoted in an interview saying that he couldn't even think of ways to spend his vast wealth. Maybe oligarchies are...bad??

2 hours ago, GoSox05 said:

Seattle council votes to repeal tax to help homeless amid opposition from Amazon, other businesses

Not everyone is thrilled that Jeff Bezos wants to go back to the moon

Jeff Bezos seems cool.

 

Yeah, we don't need unions and better labor laws.

 

the warehouse work conditions are really bad, but the management culture within their white collar world is awful, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

Quote

At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)

 

 

 

Quote

 

Many of the newcomers filing in on Mondays may not be there in a few years. The company’s winners dream up innovations that they roll out to a quarter-billion customers and accrue small fortunes in soaring stock. Losers leave or are fired in annual cullings of the staff — “purposeful Darwinism,” one former Amazon human resources director said. Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.

Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable. The company, founded and still run by Jeff Bezos, rejects many of the popular management bromides that other corporations at least pay lip service to and has instead designed what many workers call an intricate machine propelling them to achieve Mr. Bezos’ ever-expanding ambitions.

 

 

 

Quote

Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

pretty horrific in the warehouses though

Quote

In Amazon warehouses, employees are monitored by sophisticated electronic systems to ensure they are packing enough boxes every hour. (Amazon came under fire in 2011 when workers in an eastern Pennsylvania warehouse toiled in more than 100-degree heat with ambulances waiting outside, taking away laborers as they fell. After an investigation by the local newspaper, the company installed air-conditioning.)

 

Quote

 

Each year, the internal competition culminates at an extended semi-open tournament called an Organization Level Review, where managers debate subordinates’ rankings, assigning and reassigning names to boxes in a matrix projected on the wall. In recent years, other large companies, including Microsoft, General Electric and Accenture Consulting, have dropped the practice — often called stack ranking, or “rank and yank” — in part because it can force managers to get rid of valuable talent just to meet quotas.

The review meeting starts with a discussion of the lower-level employees, whose performance is debated in front of higher-level managers. As the hours pass, successive rounds of managers leave the room, knowing that those who remain will determine their fates.

Preparing is like getting ready for a court case, many supervisors say: To avoid losing good members of their teams — which could spell doom — they must come armed with paper trails to defend the wrongfully accused and incriminate members of competing groups. Or they adopt a strategy of choosing sacrificial lambs to protect more essential players. “You learn how to diplomatically throw people under the bus,” said a marketer who spent six years in the retail division. “It’s a horrible feeling.”

 

 

Edited June 13, 2018 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

8 hours ago, GoSox05 said:

So is Steve King.  He keeps a confederate flag on his desk.  Having been born and raised in Iowa.  I'm sure it's just a southern pride thing though.

Honestly, that the Republican party doesn't completely disavow someone like Steve King says a lot.  He is an open white nationalist, who tweets daily about the mad hordes coming to kill "our culture". 

don't forget, Trump himself retweeted British anti-Muslim hate group propaganda last year, and his administration was completely unapologetic about it.