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Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?

#18641 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2021-August-09, 09:44

View Postjohnu, on 2021-August-09, 02:35, said:

Trump ‘Imagines’ How People Would Squawk Had COVID-19 ‘Attack’ Erupted On His Watch

Ever the victim/hero. Del should create Victim Man 👨

Well, you can't argue with that kind of logic :rolleyes:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#18642 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2021-August-09, 14:53

Judge asks why Capitol rioters are paying just $1.5 million for attack, while U.S. taxpayers will pay more than $500 million
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#18643 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2021-August-10, 06:53

Heather Cox Richardson said:

https://heathercoxri...p/august-9-2021

It appears the Senate is on track to pass the bipartisan $1 trillion “hard” infrastructure package as early as Tuesday morning.

As soon as it passes, Democrats will turn to the $3.5 trillion bill, a sweeping measure that would modernize the nation’s approach to infrastructure by including human infrastructure as well as the older “hard” projects. It establishes universal pre-kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, cuts taxes for families with children, makes community college tuition free for two years, and invests in public universities.

It invests in housing, invests in job training, strengthens supply chains, provides green cards to immigrant workers, and protects the borders with new technologies. It expands the Affordable Care Act, invests in home and community-based health care, and reduces the cost of prescription drugs.

It also invests significantly in measures to combat climate change. Focusing on clean electricity, it cuts emissions through tax incentives, polluter fees, and home electrification projects, and replaces federal vehicles with electric ones.

The bill calls for funding these measures with higher taxes on corporations.

The measure will move forward as a budget resolution that simply says how much money the government expects to need next year, and from 2023 to 2031. Once it passes, the various committees will hammer out exactly how much money should go where, and Congress will then hammer that into some form of an agreement.

Once a measure is finalized, the Senate will try to pass the bill through the process of budget reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered, meaning that it can pass with a simple majority.

If, indeed, President Joe Biden manages to pass both a bipartisan bill that pleases some Republicans and the reconciliation bill that pleases progressive Democrats, it will be an astonishing accomplishment.

One thing that is not in the larger bill is an increase to the debt limit, which will be imperative before October. Raising the debt limit is necessary because Congress has already appropriated money that the Treasury does not have, so it will have to borrow to meet existing obligations.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has threatened that neither he nor any other Republican will lift the debt limit and that Democrats must do it alone. But Democrats are not willing to raise it themselves, when it was the Republicans who ran up the debt during Trump’s term, adding $7 trillion to the debt while they slashed corporate taxes. ″The vast majority of the debt subject to the debt limit was accrued before the administration taking office,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress on Monday. “This is a shared responsibility, and I urge Congress to come together on a bipartisan basis as it has in the past to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The large infrastructure package will reshape American society to invest in ordinary Americans and to get the nation on track to face a future that does not center around fossil fuels. That such an investment is on the table right now seems like good timing, since today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations released the most thorough report on climate ever compiled, and the conclusions are a “code red for humanity,” according to United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres. The report is based on more than 14,000 studies and is endorsed by 195 governments.

It warns that we have waited too long to reduce our use of fossil fuels, guaranteeing that the globe will continue to warm for at least the next 30 years even if we address climate change immediately. This will mean more extreme weather: fires—like the Dixie fire currently raging in Northern California, which is the largest in the state’s history—floods, disease, extinctions, and social conflict. If we address the issue, though, there is still a window in which we could mitigate changes that are even more dire.

The Republicans object to the larger infrastructure bill because it uses the government to invest in the economy, which will cost tax dollars. For forty years, Republicans have called for turning the economy over to private interests and for tax cuts to free up capital for investment, which they argued would make the economy grow. But those policies have sparked discontent as they concentrated wealth upward and ran up huge deficits and debt.

Now, as Democrats want to go back to the sort of system that created our booming post–World War II economy by stopping the concentration of wealth upward and investing in infrastructure, Republicans are complaining that the cost will hobble the nation. They are threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, although as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pointed out, Congress assumed the vast majority of the debt that requires a higher limit before President Joe Biden took office.

Meanwhile, Republican policies are not looking very good right now, as Republican governors have stood staunchly against combatting Covid-19 with either masks or vaccines. The virus is now surging again in the U.S., which currently has 17% of the world’s new infections despite having the best vaccine supply. The spike is especially obvious among children, who make up 20% of the nation's new cases, apparently becoming infected in homes where adults are not vaccinated. On ABC, Dr. Mark Kline, Physician In Chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, said: “We are hospitalizing record numbers of children. Half of the children in our hospital today are under two years of age, and most of the others are between 5 and 10 years of age.”

Cases continue to rise in Florida and Texas, where governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott have prohibited mask mandates. In Florida, journalist Katherine G. Hobbs reports: “Volusia County and Advent Health Orlando are finalizing the purchase of fleets of refrigerated mobile morgues amid Florida's COVID surge.” In Texas, Abbott today called on Texas hospitals to postpone elective procedures in order to clear more beds for Covid patients. The state’s health department is trying to find more health care workers to come to the state to help out.

Nonetheless, DeSantis and Abbott refuse to modify their ban on mask mandates, clearly seeing a strong stand on this issue as a political statement that they believe will win them Republican voters. But as infections and deaths, especially among children, rise, the wisdom of this move is not clear.

Private companies, courts, and schools are all challenging the governors’ edict. A federal judge has overruled Florida’s prohibition on private companies from asking about vaccine status, a rule challenged by cruise ship lines, who would have faced millions of dollars in fines, although vaccine requirements are standard in other ports they visit. DeSantis says he will appeal.

In Arkansas, where only 37% of the state’s population is vaccinated, two challenges to the state’s ban on mask mandates led a judge on Friday to block the ban temporarily. One of the challenges was brought by a school where more than 900 students and staff are quarantining because of a coronavirus outbreak. In Texas, Austin, Houston, and Dallas Independent School Districts are instituting mask mandates in defiance of Abbott’s executive order.

In Florida, the Miami-Dade school system is the fourth largest school district in the nation. When Superintendent Alberto Carvalho made it clear that he will follow the guidance of public health experts and doctors, DeSantis threatened to withhold the salaries of any superintendents or school board members who defy his executive order prohibiting mask mandates.

Carvalho issued a statement saying “At no point shall I allow my decision to be influenced by a threat to my paycheck; a small price to pay considering the gravity of this issue and the potential impact to the health and well-being of our students and dedicated employees.”

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#18644 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2021-August-10, 07:29

Jonathan Bernstein said:

The Democrats’ clever-but-convoluted two-bill scheme for passing a large part of their agenda still has plenty of obstacles ahead, but it’s going so well right now that Republicans are complaining about how unified their opponents have become. At this rate, no one is going to know what Will Rogers was talking about when he said (famously), “I am not a member of any organized political party, I am a Democrat.”

With the final Senate passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill scheduled for Tuesday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should be pretty happy. It appears that Republican support for the bipartisan bill has held, and there’s been no public sign of Democratic opposition to either that bill or the second, larger one that they’ll try to pass using the reconciliation procedure. The next step is to pass a budget resolution, and the Senate is planning to move to that on Tuesday and pass it later this week.

After that? The budget resolution only lays out the broad outlines of what the second bill will look like. The next step is to fill in the details, which is the work of the various Senate committees that don’t necessarily need to abide by the intentions of the budget committee (which was responsible for writing the resolution). Nor will the real fights necessarily take place at the committee level. We can expect at least one serious round of negotiations between committee approval and Senate floor action, with Schumer accommodating all 50 Democrats — since all of their votes are needed for passage.

And that’s before the House gets involved. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the House won’t vote on the bipartisan bill until the Senate delivers the reconciliation bill, and so far that too seems to be on track. Jonathan Chait argues that the House Progressive Caucus has plenty of leverage here, and he’s correct, but the truth is that both the most and least liberal Democrats have leverage over each other. It appears that it will play out this way: President Joe Biden along with House and Senate leadership will make the opening bid and try to set the basic outlines of the reconciliation bill; the moderate liberals such as Senator Joe Manchin can negotiate that offer down to something they can live with; and the most liberal group in the House will have the clout to make sure that the bill actually passes.

What’s less clear is what, if anything, Manchin wants beyond the big thing that he’s getting, the bipartisan bill. It’s true that the most liberal group doesn’t care much about that proposal, which gives them leverage to force the reconciliation bill through. But the plan being contemplated right now gives them more — perhaps far more — than they’d need to make the two-bill strategy worthwhile. That could give the more moderate group the ability to trim the reconciliation bill quite a bit — and that, in turn, means the various wings of the party could still fail to reach a compromise. And of course, given the tiny margins Democrats hold in both chambers, it wouldn’t take a large faction to derail things. One stubborn senator, or fewer than half a dozen representatives, will do.

Still, there are no obvious dealbreaker provisions so far, it seems like Democrats in both chambers want to make this work and the two-bill plan provides incentives for everyone to stay on board. And while the size of the bill may make some moderate liberals nervous, it also means that there are a lot of Democrats with something they really want in one bill or the other.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#18645 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 08:24

Heather Cox Richardson said:

https://heathercoxri.../august-10-2021

The shocking revelations from former acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen about former president Trump’s direct efforts to use the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election, along with the horrors of spiking Covid among the unvaccinated, drove out of the news cycle a revelatory piece of news.

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor released the jobs report for August 2021. It was stronger than economists had predicted, and even stronger than the administration had hoped.

In July, employers added 943,000 jobs, and unemployment fell to 5.4%. Average hourly wages increased, as well. They are 4% higher than they were a year ago.

Harvard Professor Jason Furman, former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, tweeted: “I have yet to find a blemish in this jobs report. I've never before seen such a wonderful set of economic data.” He noted the report showed “Job gains in most sectors... Big decline in unemployment rate, even bigger for Black & Hispanic/Latino… Red[uctio]n in long-term unemp[loyment]... Solid (nominal) wage gains.”

“Still a long way to go,” he wrote. “[W]e're about 7.5 million jobs short of where we should have been right now absent the pandemic. But we've made a lot of progress.”

Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays, told New York Times reporter Nelson D. Schwartz: “It’s an unambiguously positive report…. Labor market conditions are strong. Unemployment benefits, infection risks and child care constraints are not preventing robust hiring.”

The jobs report is an important political marker because it appears to validate the Democrats’ approach to the economy, the system the president calls the “Biden Plan.” That plan started in January, as soon as Biden took office, using the federal government to combat the coronavirus pandemic as aggressively as the administration could and, at the same time, using federal support to restart the economy.

In March 2021, the Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package. In addition to strengthening healthcare systems to combat the coronavirus, it provides economic relief primarily to low- and middle-income Americans by extending unemployment benefits and the child tax credit; funding schools, housing, and local governments; providing help for small businesses; and so on.

Polls indicated that the measure was enormously popular. A Morning Consult poll from February showed that 3 out of 4 voters liked it, and local governments and state governors, including a number of Republicans, backed the bill.

But every single Republican lawmaker in the House of Representatives voted against the measure, saying it was too expensive and that it was unnecessary.

Since 1980, Republican lawmakers have opposed government intervention to stimulate the economy, insisting that private investment is more efficient. Rather than use the government as presidents of both parties from Franklin Delano Roosevelt through Jimmy Carter did to keep the playing field level and promote growth, modern-day Republicans have argued that the government should simply cut taxes in order to free up capital for wealthier Americans to invest. This, they said, would create enough growth to make up for lost tax revenues.

President Ronald Reagan began this trend with major tax cuts in 1981 and 1986. President George H.W. Bush promised not to raise taxes—remember “Read my lips: No new taxes”—but found he had to increase revenues to address the skyrocketing deficits the Reagan cuts created. When he did agree to higher taxes, his own party leaders turned against him. Then President George W. Bush cut taxes again in 2001 and 2003, despite the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2017, Republicans under President Donald Trump cut taxes still further.

In 2017, Trump claimed the cut would be “rocket fuel for the economy.” Then–Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin echoed almost 40 years of Republican ideology when he said: "The tax plan will pay for itself with economic growth." And then–Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: "After eight straight years of slow growth and underperformance, America is ready to take off.” (In fact, while Trump’s tax cuts meant tax revenues dropped 31%, they yielded only 2.9% growth, the exact same as the economy enjoyed in 2015, before the cuts.)

Laws like the American Rescue Plan should, in the Republicans’ view, destroy the economy. But Friday’s booming jobs report, along with the reality that the Biden administration has created an average of 832,000 new jobs per month, knocks a serious hole in that argument.

It may be that the pendulum is swinging away from the Republican conviction that tax cuts and private investment are the only key to economic growth.

Today, the Senate passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by a vote of 69 to 30. The bill repairs roads and bridges, invests in transit and railroads, replaces lead pipes, and provides broadband across the country, among other things. In the next ten years, it is expected to create nearly 3 million jobs.

Nineteen Republicans voted in favor of the bill. There were many reasons to do so. The measure is popular with voters, and Republicans were embarrassed by their unanimous opposition to the American Rescue Plan. Indicating a willingness to work with Democrats might also undercut the Republicans’ image as obstructionists and help to protect the filibuster (a factor I’m guessing was behind McConnell’s yes vote).

But that Republicans felt they needed to abandon their position and vote yes for any reason is a big deal. "For the Republicans who supported this bill, you showed a lot of courage,” Biden told them. “And I want to personally thank you for that."

The bill now goes to the House, which will take it up after the Senate passes a $3.5 trillion infrastructure measure through the reconciliation process, which Democrats can do with a simple majority and without Republican support. The larger package addresses climate change, child care, elder care, housing, and so on. Moody Analytics, which provides economic research and modeling, says that, if it is combined with the bipartisan bill, it will add close to 2 million jobs a year over the next ten years.

Yet, Republicans say it is a “reckless tax and spending spree.”

In contrast, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: “My largest concern is not: What are the risks if we make these big investments? It is: What is the cost if we don’t?”

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#18646 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 08:44

The Democrats need to learn that showmanship is critical to public perceptions. Remember how Trump continually hailed the greatest ever economy?

If Biden does not feel comfortable with self promotion like that then he should have a spokesperson who is basically a promoter.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#18647 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 09:43

Where's Kurt Russell when you need him?

Quote

Texas’s Republican House speaker, Rep. Dan Phelan, signed arrest warrants Tuesday night for 52 House Democrats who fled the state last month in protest of GOP plans for restrictive new voting rights legislation.


https://www.youtube....h?v=9ClCMR58LV8


"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#18648 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 13:34

Being that this is a Trump thread is mostly populated by USAians and mostly non-Trumpians But still, there is the occasional Republican poster.

Hear is a WaPo article.
https://www.washingt...a970_story.html


Here is part of it:

Quote

DeSantis, too, has made opposition to covid-19 rules a key part of his political branding. This summer, his political team started selling “Don’t Fauci My Florida” beer koozies and T-shirts as he said that the state had chosen “freedom” over the pandemic precautions advocated by White House chief medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci.



I am not trying to convert anyone to be a Biden supporter. But I have a question.


Is it really possible to support something like this? More than a few Republicans and more than a few conservatives have disowned these guys. We need the support of more Republicans and more conservatives. I don't expect wild enthusiasm for Biden, but I would like to see a further disowning of anti-vaxxing and anti-masking lunacy.


We have a crisis. Lot's of stuff needs doing, but rejecting lunacy seems like a start.
Ken
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#18649 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 14:25

View Postkenberg, on 2021-August-11, 13:34, said:

Being that this is a Trump thread is mostly populated by USAians and mostly non-Trumpians But still, there is the occasional Republican poster.

Hear is a WaPo article.
https://www.washingt...a970_story.html


Here is part of it:
[/font][/color][/size]


I am not trying to convert anyone to be a Biden supporter. But I have a question.


Is it really possible to support something like this? More than a few Republicans and more than a few conservatives have disowned these guys. We need the support of more Republicans and more conservatives. I don't expect wild enthusiasm for Biden, but I would like to see a further disowning of anti-vaxxing and anti-masking lunacy.


We have a crisis. Lot's of stuff needs doing, but rejecting lunacy seems like a start.


These people need to be talked off their ledge but they are 100% convinced that the building behind them is on fire.

I read an interesting piece yesterday that came to the conclusion that the "My Pillow" guy is actually a mark, the victim of a scam. Basically, what it said was that if you waive a bunch of detailed information that requires expert understanding to interpret and say - decide for yourself because here is the proof - then people who are looking for a reason not to accept reality will buy into your claims.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#18650 User is offline   pilowsky 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 15:35

View PostWinstonm, on 2021-August-11, 14:25, said:

These people need to be talked off their ledge but they are 100% convinced that the building behind them is on fire.

I read an interesting piece yesterday that came to the conclusion that the "My Pillow" guy is actually a mark, the victim of a scam. Basically, what it said was that if you waive a bunch of detailed information that requires expert understanding to interpret and say - decide for yourself because here is the proof - then people who are looking for a reason not to accept reality will buy into your claims.


The mypillow guy is psychotic. His brain has been addled by years of crack addiction.

He gets by because he has a lot of money, which seems to be enough to make people think he is talking sense.
If he wasn't a wealthy Manchester salesman his concerned relatives would have sought professional help for him years ago.

The trouble with the MPG is that his money allows him to get the oxygen of the media to fan the flames of his madness.

It is a fact that many people are unaware of, that you cannot 'talk' people out of a delusion.
They do not wake up one morning and say "Oh bother Tigger, I've been a bit silly".

It's not like he's a Beginner at Bridge who can acquire and synthesise new information and realise that things he is saying or doing are pants and then change.
He's as silly as a wheel, a sandwich short of a picnic, as mad as a hat and has a kangaroo running around in the top paddock.

Tragically, the media from all sides of the political spectrum enjoy giving him airtime because (A) he pays for it and (B) people enjoy listening to it (I know I do).
We have the same kind of people in high office in Australia: they think they know what they are doing, they're convinced of it and nothing you say or do will affect any change - and that's just the Prime Minister.
PM Morrison when told that a staff member was accused of rape only thought that it was something that ought to be investigated when - after discussing it with his wife - "Mr Morrison said the announcement of a review into workplace culture at Parliament House was prompted by a discussion with his wife, and after considering how he, as a father, would want his daughters to be treated." - oh! I have daughters?

What bugs me is when people that aren't crazy start conversations along the lines of "Well the reason he's saying that is ...(insert clever rationalisation here).
Those people are also wrong. People like the MPG have a fixed genuine unshakeable delusion that they know what's right. They've already jumped off the ledge. You can talk to them on the way down but in the end, when they hit the ground we all suffer.

In Australia, our Fox news is called Skynews (still run by Rupert). I recently saw a video clip where the interviewee (referred to as "Professor Cox") explains that his principal experience is that he doesn't have any.
You can watch the whole thing here: http://bit.ly/CoxFairfax
When you believe that a lack of knowledge, training and professionalism is a qualification to manage a PLC you can believe anything - that's how Trump became President.
People are brought up to believe that if they try really hard they can do anything. It simply isn't true. They can't - there's always someone better - usually a lot of them.
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#18651 User is offline   PeterAlan 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 17:06

View PostWinstonm, on 2021-August-11, 14:25, said:

I read an interesting piece yesterday that came to the conclusion that the "My Pillow" guy is actually a mark, the victim of a scam. Basically, what it said was that if you waive a bunch of detailed information that requires expert understanding to interpret and say - decide for yourself because here is the proof - then people who are looking for a reason not to accept reality will buy into your claims.

https://www.washingt...s-winding-down/
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#18652 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2021-August-11, 21:26

View PostPeterAlan, on 2021-August-11, 17:06, said:



A little icing on this cake.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#18653 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2021-August-12, 07:05

From the icing on the cake link: Judge Allows Dominion Suits Against Giuliani, Powell, Lindell to Proceed
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#18654 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2021-August-12, 08:04

If it were not for the Water Coller I might have gone through my entire life never hearing of Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy!

I looked him up in the Wik and was distraught to learn that he was born, and usually lives, in Minnesota. Mankato is nice town I won't hold it against them.

An amusement (Feel free to skip this, it probably amuses only me).
The Better Business Bureau gave him an F, apparently because he advertised pillows as buy one get one free, but since this was a continuous offer it became the actual price and therefore should not have been advertised as a special.
I once worked in St.Paul at Al's Discount Furniture, everything one-third off. Mostly I delivered furniture but Al also gave me occasional odd jobs. One of the odd jobs: When new items came in, he would tell me what he wanted the selling price to be and I was to work out what price should be put on the tag so that 1/3 off would give the actual price. Improper I suppose but I needed the job and I figured that anyone could understand that when everything is one-third off this meant that the original price was a fiction.
Another of my other occasional jobs: Sometimes when new furniture came in it came in damaged. Sometimes the box it came in was also damaged, sometimes not. The shipper would replace the damaged stuff only if the box was damaged. My assignment was to make sure the box was damaged.
Oh, it's a vicious world out there.
Ken
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#18655 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2021-August-12, 11:20

View Postkenberg, on 2021-August-12, 08:04, said:

If it were not for the Water Coller I might have gone through my entire life never hearing of Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy!

I looked him up in the Wik and was distraught to learn that he was born, and usually lives, in Minnesota. Mankato is nice town I won't hold it against them.

An amusement (Feel free to skip this, it probably amuses only me).
The Better Business Bureau gave him an F, apparently because he advertised pillows as buy one get one free, but since this was a continuous offer it became the actual price and therefore should not have been advertised as a special.
I once worked in St.Paul at Al's Discount Furniture, everything one-third off. Mostly I delivered furniture but Al also gave me occasional odd jobs. One of the odd jobs: When new items came in, he would tell me what he wanted the selling price to be and I was to work out what price should be put on the tag so that 1/3 off would give the actual price. Improper I suppose but I needed the job and I figured that anyone could understand that when everything is one-third off this meant that the original price was a fiction.
Another of my other occasional jobs: Sometimes when new furniture came in it came in damaged. Sometimes the box it came in was also damaged, sometimes not. The shipper would replace the damaged stuff only if the box was damaged. My assignment was to make sure the box was damaged.
Oh, it's a vicious world out there.


I had a similar experience years ago when I worked in the used car business and my trainer explained why he liked "push, pull, or drag your trade-in" sales because he would mark up the car an extra $2500 to offset that cost.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#18656 User is offline   Gilithin 

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Posted 2021-August-12, 15:12

View PostWinstonm, on 2021-August-12, 11:20, said:

I had a similar experience years ago when I worked in the used car business and my trainer explained why he liked "push, pull, or drag your trade-in" sales because he would mark up the car an extra $2500 to offset that cost.

This is just standard practice in many sectors. For example, kitchen and double glazed window prices are designed to be marked down 30% as part of the sales pitch before giving the customer the final cost.
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#18657 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2021-August-12, 16:23

View PostGilithin, on 2021-August-12, 15:12, said:

This is just standard practice in many sectors. For example, kitchen and double glazed window prices are designed to be marked down 30% as part of the sales pitch before giving the customer the final cost.


This is one of the many facts of life that I wish were different. We recently had our roof redone. The price started at 40K and ended at 13.5K. It's not a large house. At one point I told the guy "I'm not used to this but I guess it is how things are done in the roofing business". They did a good job, which is what my main concern was.
My father made his living installing weatherstripping in houses. He would go out, look at what needed doing, and say what the price would be. They would then say yes or no. If yes, he did it. If no, then no. This was the 1940s and 50s. Times change. Often not for the better. My father was a very trusted contract worker. 40K to 13.5K for the roof. I considered trying someone else, but this guy was the second one and I did not think I could stand going through it a third time.
Ken
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#18658 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2021-August-12, 22:18

View PostWinstonm, on 2021-August-11, 21:26, said:

A little icing on this cake.


And guess who Lindell, AKA My Pillow guy, has as his "software expert"?

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Guy Raz talks with journalist Aram Roston about his article in Playboy magazine about Dennis Montgomery, "The Man Who Conned the Pentagon."
my emphasis

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#18659 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2021-August-13, 03:09

No mystery why conservatives find education dangerous

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That’s a lesson students will be denied if Republicans like Ron DeSantis get their way. Last week, Florida’s governor signed a bill requiring the state’s public colleges and universities to survey students and faculty on their ideological beliefs. The aim, he claims, is to prevent schools from “indoctrinating” students. DeSantis has hinted that those failing to show “intellectual diversity” will face budget cuts.


In other words, if there aren't enough misogynists, gay bashers, racists, and white supremacists then schools will have their budgets cut.

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There is no mystery why conservatives find education dangerous. A 2015 Pew Research Center study quantified that the better educated one is, the more likely one is to hold liberal beliefs. But I’d argue, contrary to what conservatives seem to feel, that’s not because of bullying professors shouting left-wing dogma. Rather, it’s because once you learn how to think, you’re less susceptible to thin reasoning and easy answers. And increasingly, that’s all conservatism’s got.


I disagree a little. Thin reasoning and easy answers is all GOP conservatism has had for as long as I can remember.
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#18660 User is offline   pilowsky 

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Posted 2021-August-13, 05:14

How does this explain Jordan Peterson?
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