A thread for Democrats Only
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UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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I second that!
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:But will you second this?
Originally posted by JO753:
I second that!
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
Question: Speaking of things being worse than you imagined, we got to watch you react in real time to Trump’s election on your Showtime special. How deeply shocked were you?
Stephen Colbert's Answer:
I know nothing, so I tend to believe the number-crunchers. I was shocked, and I was dismayed, but I will say this: There is nothing that has happened since Trump became president that wasn’t in my fear matrix about him. Now, all the horrors that you can see dawning on my face on that Showtime special have only been borne out. Nothing about Trump and Putin, nothing about his caging children, nothing about him saying, “There’s good people on both sides.” Nothing about his handing the reins of power over to just a rogues’ gallery of anti-regulation, pro-pollution, anti-union, anti-women officials in any way surprises me. It’s all what I thought would happen. Which is why I was truly horrified.
www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/stephen-colbert-late-show-rolling-
stone-interview-716439/
Disheartened Trump Can’t Get ‘Fox & Friends’ to Hear What He’s Saying
It’s sad!
www.thenation.com/article/disheartened-trump-cant-get-fox-friends-to-h
ear-what-hes-saying/
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Just ahead of Labor Day weekend, President Donald Trump announced he would freeze the salaries of some 2 million federal workers next year. After outcry, Trump said he’d use the long weekend to “study” the matter. Thus far, he’s spent much of the long weekend on the golf course and rage tweeting about Canada, the Department of Justice, the Russia investigation, his approval ratings, and Tiger Woods.
He seems to want people to think he’s still on the fence about the pay freeze, hence the “studying” comments, but he’s already issued the order.
His announcement on the pay freeze comes just days after a federal judge invalidated key provisions in three executive orders he issued in May that made it easier for agencies to fire federal workers and placed restrictions on union activities. The New York Times reports the administration seemed to be dragging its feet in complying with the judge’s ruling, and some agencies told managers and union officials that the policies implemented in May are still in effect.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/2/17812408/trump-worker-pay-fre
eze-labor-day
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The future for collectively bargained unions looks bleak given the president’s position as Union-Buster-In-Chief. Since taking the office, Trump has rolled back a series of pro-union Obama-era regulations.
In December, the majority-Republican National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) got rid of policies that helped smaller unions organize, protected the rights of franchise employees, and shielded workers from union-busting tactics. The Trump-appointed NLRB general counsel Peter Robb, made the agency’s pro-employer stance crystal clear in a memo to regional offices that signaled the NLRB would continue to reverse Obama-era policies.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative appointed to the Supreme Court by Trump, was the deciding vote in the recent anti-worker Court decision, Janus v. AFSCME. The holding of Janus is that workers in a unionized shop who choose not to pay union dues can still receive the benefits and protections a union offers because the agency fees workers are required to pay are form of speech protected by the First Amendment. The decision creates a “free-rider” problem that could severely depress union membership. After all, why pay dues if you can get something for nothing?
https://thinkprogress.org/the-sorry-state-of-labor-in-2018/
Unions give workers bargaining power to fight for better wages and working conditions. As multiple studies have shown, the hollowing out of workers’ wages is tied to the decline of collectively bargained union contracts. In one long-term study by Princeton University, researchers found that unions have consistently “provided workers with a 10- to 20-percent wage boost over their non-union counterparts over the past eight decades.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I'd cry for unions if they weren't such an exclusive club that nobody else benefits from.
What I don't understand is why the teacher's union hasn't been shut down yet. These are professional people with college degrees who aren't risking life and limb in mines and around dangerous equipment all day long. Kids get dumber every year but they maintain their wages, wage increases and jobs while the rest of the work force has remained stagnant and even regressed since GWB took office.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:There are couple of things that only a Republican would believe: 1) That it is the fault of the teachers that your children are getting dumber. The teachers' own children are doing fine. Foreign exchange students can clue you in on what is wrong. (Hint: it is not American teachers' fault): Valuing sports over knowledge is distinctly American, according to these foreign students. Nearly two-thirds of foreign-exchange students in the United States view American teenagers as placing a much higher value on athletic success than teens in their home countries do. By comparison, only 5 percent of international students say American teens place a much higher value on success in mathematics than teenagers abroad. Around 65 percent of foreign-exchange students also feel that American teens spend less time on homework than their international peers.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'd cry for unions if they weren't such an exclusive club that nobody else benefits from.
What I don't understand is why the teacher's union hasn't been shut down yet. These are professional people with college degrees who aren't risking life and limb in mines and around dangerous equipment all day long. Kids get dumber every year but they maintain their wages, wage increases and jobs while the rest of the work force has remained stagnant and even regressed since GWB took office.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Still, U.S. schools need not panic about its overall performance. Out of around 70 educational systems tested by the PISA, the United States scored equal to or better than 51 nations in science and equal to or better than 55 nations in reading. Similarly, out of 42 educational systems that tested eighth-graders using the TIMSS, the United States scored equal to or better than 35 nations in both math and science.
www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/examining-poor-school-pe
rformance-in-the-us/520653/
The other thing only a Republican believes: 2) "I'd cry for unions if they weren't such an exclusive club that nobody else benefits from."
It's too much trouble to explain, but how in the hell could an agreement with union auto workers in a Ford plant change how much gets paid in a non-unionized job in a non-auto industry in another state that forbids unionizing? Foreign companies place factories in states controlled by Republicans because they don't want to pay union level wages; it is one large corporation versus one employee. Who loses? Always the one employee.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:There are couple of things that only a Republican would believe: 1) That it is the fault of the teachers that your children are getting dumber. The teachers' own children are doing fine. Foreign exchange students can clue you in on what is wrong. (Hint: it is not American teachers' fault): Valuing sports over knowledge is distinctly American, according to these foreign students. Nearly two-thirds of foreign-exchange students in the United States view American teenagers as placing a much higher value on athletic success than teens in their home countries do. By comparison, only 5 percent of international students say American teens place a much higher value on success in mathematics than teenagers abroad. Around 65 percent of foreign-exchange students also feel that American teens spend less time on homework than their international peers.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'd cry for unions if they weren't such an exclusive club that nobody else benefits from.
What I don't understand is why the teacher's union hasn't been shut down yet. These are professional people with college degrees who aren't risking life and limb in mines and around dangerous equipment all day long. Kids get dumber every year but they maintain their wages, wage increases and jobs while the rest of the work force has remained stagnant and even regressed since GWB took office.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Still, U.S. schools need not panic about its overall performance. Out of around 70 educational systems tested by the PISA, the United States scored equal to or better than 51 nations in science and equal to or better than 55 nations in reading. Similarly, out of 42 educational systems that tested eighth-graders using the TIMSS, the United States scored equal to or better than 35 nations in both math and science.
www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/examining-poor-school-pe
rformance-in-the-us/520653/
The other thing only a Republican believes: 2) "I'd cry for unions if they weren't such an exclusive club that nobody else benefits from."
It's too much trouble to explain, but how in the hell could an agreement with union auto workers in a Ford plant change how much gets paid in a non-unionized job in a non-auto industry in another state that forbids unionizing? Foreign companies place factories in states controlled by Republicans because they don't want to pay union level wages; it is one large corporation versus one employee. Who loses? Always the one employee.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
There's so much wrong with everything in this reply that it's not even worth going into a debate with you about it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:If, big IF, I take you at your word about how many problems you have caused yourself, and how poorly you are doing in the world, has it ever crossed your mind that your strong opinions are wrong? Maybe you did shitty in school and you blame the teacher. You didn't say that, but it could be why you are angry at teachers. Maybe the real truth is you were a shitty student? And why are you blaming unions? I have seen how unions negotiate with their employers. I've seen how individuals negotiate, without a union. The individual always does worse than a union. If you want to keep on being a victim of cheapskate employers who screw their workers, keep on misunderstanding what a union does. No one can teach you (not a teacher nor a co-worker) what you do not want to learn, whether in a school or in a job.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
There's so much wrong with everything in this reply that it's not even worth going into a debate with you about it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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A president with this worldview cannot be trusted
Trump wants to fire Attorney General Sessions, and he has suggested he will do so directly after the midterms. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) backed the move in advance. “The president’s entitled to having an attorney general he has faith in,” he said.
In a normal presidency, that would be true. But in this presidency, an attorney general the president can have faith in is an attorney general the public cannot have faith in. After all, Trump has bluntly stated that he admires the previous attorney general for protecting a corrupt presidency, and he has raged against his own attorney general for doing too little to protect him from investigation.
These are mistakes, presumably, that Trump will not repeat with his next appointment. Which means that there is no one he could appoint to the job whom the public could trust; we’d never know the assurances made behind closed doors to win the role, and so we’d never be able to have faith in the Justice Department itself.
And it’s not just Sessions. This week, Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. We can’t know precisely why Trump chose Kavanaugh for the role, but we do know that Kavanaugh, unusually among judges, has advocated “exempting a President — while in office — from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel.”
This raises an obvious question: What, if anything, did Trump demand from Kavanaugh to win one of the most coveted positions in American government? Did Kavanaugh assure Trump, directly or indirectly, that he would take a dim view toward troublesome investigations into the White House’s conduct? Did he reiterate that he thinks it is too distracting for a president to face criminal prosecution while in office, and his decisions would reflect that? Does Trump, at the least, think he did?
Kavanaugh’s defenders will hear this as an outrageous slur. Kavanaugh is a decorated judge, they say, and his law review article proposing a law exempting presidents from prosecution will not affect his jurisprudence given that Congress ignored his plea. And they may be right! But who can know for sure?
That’s the problem with a president who so clearly believes that his appointments owe him a blood debt of loyalty and protection: He casts unanswerable doubt on each and every one of his nominees.
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/5/17819008/donald-trump-impeach
ment-sessions-kavanaugh-woodward
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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You Might Call It Wealth
What aspects of the economy are under our control? According to John Maynard Keynes, if interest rates are low enough to keep investment flowing and consumer spending high enough to maintain sales, everybody can be put to work. Businessmen will never lose their confidence, and their property will never be idle. The economy, in other words, could be manipulated to yield desired outcomes: manageable growth, full employment, and the boom and bust of a business cycle smoothed out of existence.
During World War II and the three decades that followed?—?the so-called golden age of capitalism?—?American and British economics departments reworked Keynes’s observations into a formula for endless expansion. Under the right conditions, they argued, society could create as much wealth and income as it wanted. Fiddle with taxes correctly and you’ll ensure the right amount of private savings and investment. Growth could be “balanced,” each group’s share stable into the future. It was like calculating the propulsion for rocket trajectory: adjustment by economic telemetry would guarantee optimal flight. These were the tenets of growth economics, a field of academic inquiry fused with policy proposals that would come to define midcentury liberalism.
More than half a century later, Thomas Piketty’s 2013 Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the discipline’s most lauded, yet apostate, progeny. As the editors of After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality write, Piketty has continued the tradition of growth economics?—?but in a backward way. Unlike his predecessors, Piketty doesn’t aim to provide policy tools for managing the expansion of the economy. Instead, his data and equations explain why worsening inequality is inevitable and normal. No matter what tools you use, Piketty suggests, growth may never deliver equality. Wealth always accumulates at a greater rate than that of economic growth, an argument he made famous with the formula r > g (in which r is the rate of return on capital and g is the rate of economic growth generally). Absent a world war or unplanned cataclysm, market economies as a rule bestow increasing largesse on a minuscule portion of the population while leaving most people comparatively poor. We can’t control the distribution of growth, Piketty says; we can only “counter the effects of this implacable logic” by making the post-tax distribution of wealth and income more equal.
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-32/reviews/you-might-call-it-wealth/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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