Zaktor

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

Mr. Rodgers says READ POSTS BEFORE YOU REPLY TO THEM. Not spamming people with unrelated responses is the first step in respectful dialogue.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

Dude, I live here. I looked them up when I saw them and read the same dumb statements you're copypasting from Wikipedia. Which, surprise surprise, is not the whole fucking story. You don't live here and don't know anything about the politics here, so stop relaying useless wiki text.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Learn to read:

The Green party isn’t a party worth anyone’s heart.

You don't counter this with "we don't really care about the Green party". Go repeat your argument somewhere that makes sense. I don't care about the 5D chess you think you're playing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago (5 children)

This whole fucking post is about candidates in deep blue areas running without a viable challenger and you come back to write paragraphs about the spoiler effect? The whole of the post is about places where the spoiler effect does not apply. You didn't read anything you replied to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

No they don't. Just having smaller units you take-all in doesn't make something proportional. Proportionality means that minority vote totals result in a proportional number of seats, but getting 25% everywhere still gets you zero seats. Jill Stein, in her maximum success, will not win a single district.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Why on earth would you feel compelled to educate me about my local politics by pulling up some wiki pages and then refusing to even format your message? And why the fuck would anything in this post indicate RFK might be someone to vote for? The theoretical appeal of the Greens is progressivism, not the unfortunate antivax shit that's glommed onto it.

And Aloha Aina is the local party I had never heard of before seeing them on the ballot, which may sound good to you because you know nothing about Hawaii, but is something in the vague realm between nutjob sovereign citizen types and conservatives that can't bear to be Republicans due to history.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

From a European perspective the race should be in the final quarter since it would have started two weeks ago.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (7 children)

FPTP means there will be two viable candidates in each race, it doesn't mean they'll always be the same two parties. There are lots of races in deep blue areas that don't have a viable Republican challengers where the Greens (if they were a real party) could mount a challenge. Sort of like the Justice Democrats, but making the play in an unopposed general election instead of the primary. Then they could caucus (or not I suppose) with the Democrats like the independents do.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (6 children)

If Stein is fantastically successful, beyond her wildest dreams, and got 15% of the vote she will win zero electors (the intermediaries that then make the official vote for president). They're awarded winner take all for each state, and there's no conceivable way she reaches a plurality anywhere. But if she takes those 15% disproportionately from people who would have otherwise voted for Harris, she could very much make it so Trump wins a plurality and gets all the electors for a state. The structure of the first-past-the-post system always devolves into two parties being viable, and any third parties can only practically influence the outcome in the votes they take away.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (10 children)

The Green party isn't a party worth anyone's heart. It's all a big grift funded by conservatives that only puts any effort into the scammy presidential run. I don't want more of that, I want progressives that challenge moderate Democrats in safe seats to give people a real option to move left.

I'm in Hawaii, and we're solid blue but last election the Greens had a whole of 2 candidates across the entire state. Some random party I'd never heard of had more candidates on the ballot. My state rep won with something like 2000 votes, no Green challenger in sight. If the Greens were a real party they'd jump on that opportunity. A little sweat and door knocking can pull off 2000 votes. Hell, we have Ed fucking Case in Congress. I'd kill to vote against him, but my only other option is a MAGA conspiracy theorist.

The GPUSA isn't a real party.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

It's also just not a meaningful act. The people signing the original letter have the personal power to boycott Israeli cultural institutions. The signers of this letter can only complain. Their writing this doesn't in any way change the boycott, it's just writing a response to write a response, and the ham-fisted way they did it doesn't have much ability to influence anyone who wasn't already all in on the genocide-denial.

 

The editors of Israel's oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that's killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.

Original paywalled editorial in Haaretz.

 

Vice President Kamala Harris proposed increasing the long-term capital gains tax rate to 28% for wealthy Americans during an economic speech in New Hampshire on Wednesday, breaking with the policy laid out by President Joe Biden in his 2025 budget by suggesting a lower rate.

The current long-term capital gains tax rate – 20%, plus an additional 3.8% tax on higher earners – is paid when an investment is sold, or gains are realized. The Biden budget proposes raising that rate to the top rate he wants to levy on ordinary income – 39.6% – for households with taxable income over $1 million. Harris, the people familiar with the matter say, believes 39.6% is too high.

While Harris still supports taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations at higher rates – as Biden’s budget also calls for – she believes that a lower capital gains rate would incentivize investors to put more money into startups and small businesses. She has also proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to 28%, up from the current 21% rate set by Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

 

Progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced Wednesday that there are currently enough votes in the Senate to suspend the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade and abortion rights if Democrats win control of the House and keep the Senate and White House.

“We will suspend the filibuster. We have the votes for that on Roe v. Wade,” Warren said on ABC’s “The View.”

She said if Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2025, “the first vote Democrats will take in the Senate, the first substantive vote, will be to make Roe v. Wade law of the land again in America.”

 

A new budget by a large and influential group of House Republicans calls for raising the Social Security retirement age for future retirees and restructuring Medicare.

For Social Security, the budget endorses "modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy." It calls for lowering benefits for the highest-earning beneficiaries. And it emphasizes that those ideas are not designed to take effect immediately: "The RSC Budget does not cut or delay retirement benefits for any senior in or near retirement."

Biden has blasted Republican proposals for the retirement programs, promising that he will not cut benefits and instead proposing in his recent White House budget to cover the future shortfall by raising taxes on upper earners.

 

Harlan Crow (of the Clarence Thomas patronage scandals) donated the max individual donation ($3,300) to Cornel West's campaign, which invited obvious criticism.

Text of his response on Twitter:

As an independent candidate and a free Black man, I accept donations within the limits of no PACs or corporate interest groups that have strings attached. I am unbought and unbossed. Despite my deep political differences with brother Harlan Crow (who is an anti-Trump Republican), I’ve known him in a non-political setting for some years and I pray for his precious family. I find it hypocritical for those who highlight his $3300 donation to my campaign but can’t say a mumbling word about the PAC-driven billion dollars to support the genocidal attack in Gaza sponsored by their candidate! I’m fighting for Truth, Justice, and Love! Onward!

Frankly, the pleasant words make this look much worse than just saying "if some asshole wants to send me money, I'll keep it". Sounds like someone he wants to keep on the good side of, but y'know they're only political differences, not stuff that really matters.

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