Nothing helps traffic like more roads. It’s not like mass transit could fix it.
Still need infrastructure for mass transit.
Busses still need roads and rails need maintenance.
Buses dont need multi-lane highways and massive interchanges, neither do trains…
I’m not for the highways, but trains need train stations and large rail yards and big storage and maintenance areas, and whole new set of machinery and infrastructure to maintain.
Operators for trains and tracks and other systems.
Its not just “lay some track and buy a train”, and you are not saying that either.
Right decision imo to aim for that in the long run tho!
Yeah, I mean that’s where the money should be spent, not on highway changes.
Trains still need some pretty massive interchanges, just look at any megabase in Factorio. There are literally books of blueprints to deal with any interchange you could possibly need for your trains.
Rail takes up some space, but only at terminating stations. The tracks themselves for 99% of the journey are much more space efficient than roads. We can’t compare factorio to real life aha, we are transporting people instead of cargo and over much larger distances.
Besides, USA has a lot of space, that wasn’t really the issue, it was the spending of money on the wrong infrastructure.
We’re very much also transporting cargo, but I don’t know anything about factorio or trains, so I don’t know if that’s a large distinction
In Factorio the only passenger on the trains is the player character known as “the engineer,” and if your play style is anything like mine, you can run faster than your trains, so they just ship cargo.
I was being a bit facetious by bringing up Factorio, it’s just my go to use case for train path designing, since Railroad Tycoon basically doesn’t exist any more.
Also their point on distances stands since the largest Factorio maps would scale to be several hundred to a thousand miles across.
Trains still need some pretty massive interchanges, just look at any megabase in Factorio. There are literally books of blueprints to deal with any interchange you could possibly need for your trains.Replied to the wrong comment.
ONE MORE LANE
Infrastructure doesn’t necessarily mean roads. Although I haven’t heard of anyone using this money to make public transportation better I have heard stories of cities using this money to improve pedestrian and bike infrastructure.
You’re right but that’s not really the point of this post
OP: posts example of Republicans taking credit for things they opposed
ITT: “Roads are bad!”
Kinda missing the point, here.
Remember: anything Democrats do is bad. That is literally ALL that these fucking shills care about. Spin spin spin. They look at any topic and think, “how can we spin this to attack Democrats?”
They get the point. They’re deflecting.
Go to c/fuckcars. Not sure which instance. The anti-road peeps are consistent and the American ones are progressive and would probably have to be tortured to vote R.
Those nationwide infrastructure bills should distribute funds to the districts and states according to who voted for or against the bill. The bill passed, but you voted against it? Nothing for your district that you would have received even if it’s in the bill.
Look at TANF.
Give any control to states of federal funding and it’s the most vulnerable who suffer.
And that creates a whole load of angry people suffering who tend to fall for rhetoric blaming others for their problems.
Republicans gain votes by making people angry, poor, and powerless.
If the Democrats want to flip a swing state the best way to do it is making people better off.
The fact Republicans then try to get credit is irrelevant. If Republicans need to say how much “they” improved things it’s them saying how positive things are and evidence the damaging messages the party usually spews are failing. This representative is panicking because of the infrastructure bills effect.
I like the concept of what you are trying to do, but the suggested implementation is terrible.
Republicans put a poison pill to make men wearing dresses a felony in a funding bill when they have the majority in the House?
Vote against it and no funds for you!
The best way to fix this is to have a sign as you enter the highway system on how your representative voted.
I begged for COVID checks to have the same.
Something simple like:
This highway goes through congressional districts 6, 9, and 12. Representatives Asshole, Dingus, and Cunt (respectively) voted against it.
Politicians really need to start being held accountable for blatant lies… they don’t even try anymore, which means it will only get worse. Lying like this should be punishable.
The voters are supposed to hold them accountable. It’s just rotten from the bottom up.
No, laws should be in place that make this illegal. I want every speech a candidate gives to be under oath and punishable by being banned from holding office.
We have a first amendment. It protects speech. “Laws” against what can and cannot be said in public is not a slippery slope I want to go down, regardless if the person is a lying sack of shit.
As already stated, the voters are supposed to hold these lying sacks of shit accountable by voting out said lying sacks of shit. I think this problem gets dealt with in abolishing first past the pole voting systems.
I am not a lawyer and do not know legal law, but I do know that a verbal contracts are legally binding and do not impede upon free speech. This would be a case similar to that. They want to say they will do everything to get something done, I want to see them immediately removed from office for doing shit that counters it.
My point does not in any way interact with FPTP and is not an instead of. All I’m saying is we should legally define what promises you can make on the campaign and hold people accountable for lying to constitutents.
I have been told multiple times on Lemmy, including this morning, that Harris and Trump would be exactly the same when it came to queer rights and women’s rights but at least Republicans are honest about it.
It’s mind-boggling.
Yeah the amount of gas lighting and mental gymnastics is astounding. I stopped wasting energy listening to these clowns. Just call them for what they are and disengage and place a mirror in front of them so they can gaslight themselves.
I mostly just hear screeching about genocide (but only when criticizing democrats, never about republicans). I’ve noticed that I’ve started racking up bans on various communities for calling out such bad-faith arguments.
Meanwhile, I’m talking to someone right now elsewhere who is coming very close to saying that the way to stop the genocide of Palestinians is a genocide of Israelis. I’m curious to see if they are actually going to go that far.
People have some severely fucked up morals regarding the genocide in Gaza.
You got banned from a vegan community and a left-wing meme community. Did you really get banned from a vegan community because “screeching about genocide?”
I’ve got a couple alts floating around that were used for single comments/conversations that I really didn’t need my main attached to. The vegan ban was just funny, not politics related.
(and before anyone accuses me of admitting to ban evasion, this account doesn’t go to those communities my alts were banned from anyway)
Well, in that case, I’m happy that many of these accounts of, “I’m going to get mine, so certain populations are out of luck” are just alts.
I have a cousin, whos kinda weird, but he comments like that hoping to be picked up as a up incoming republican by the true government. Fuck years who his mom and i were drinking in the middle of trumps term, and she says… that he will make a great general when the next civil war comes…
These crazy posters probably have a similar mind set. Its honestly revolting.
I see this in a lot in my red town. There are a lot of infrastructure projects and they all say “project x funded by the republicans for <town> initiative or whatever” and then you go to the website and in the fine print it says that initiative was itself funded with IRA money.
I really wasn’t sure about the IRA at the time; I had big sticker shock at $5 trillion dollars. But seeing my middle-of-nowhere-in-particular town get big big projects funded with it has convinced me that this is landmark legislation that history will recognize as significant.
Now extend the northeast corridor to the rest of the country please! I want more passenger rail! I demand better train service!
You can vote against a bill and still be responsible for specific portions of it or how it gets distributed. You fight for your state and district to get their pork even if you disagree with slaughtering the pig.
Which is how Florida gets the second largest share of FEMA support (after Texas), despite its leaders voting against expanding FEMA’s funding. It’s as if they want to deprive others of the same kind of help they themselves benefit from.
That’s silly. They don’t want anyone to get it. It’s their money as much as it is ours, so of course the reps should be fighting for their districts even if they hope the bill fails.
My issue isn’t that people are dolling out the money they got. The problem is that they are telling anyone who will listen that they alone did this when in reality they are ideologically opposed to the money and the tiniest bit of investigation reveals that not only do they hate the money, they also voted against it. You can’t claim a policy as your own accomplishment if you tried to tank it.
It’s weird, but kind of accurate a lot of times. If they negotiate for an earmark or project, they did technically bring the money in - even if it’s something they would prefer not to have passed.
I’ve certainly been in similar situations at work where we all agree something is stupid, but make sure to get something out of it.
My take is, both parties bad, one far worse.
Hot take right here
Who is saying both parties are the same? All I see are people misconstruing criticism of the Democratic party as meaning both are the same. Both parties have a lot of similarities, both are right wing, both support Palestinian genocide, but no one I’ve seen is suggesting they are the exact same unless you grossly misinterpret them.
The ones complaining about them being the same are generally the type to abstain or vote 3rd party from what I’ve seen. It’s anecdotal so take that for what it’s worth but hang out near those groups and you’ll likely see it more.
A lot of my low-information friends and colleagues. “They’re all corrupt.” “The republicans wouldn’t really ban abortion” “I heard the Republicans will cut my taxes” etc.
Here’s a fun thing that happened at the state level when Republicans cut taxes.
Essentially, the Republican dominated state government in Kansas significantly cut taxes, the ‘expected’ increase in revenue didn’t materialize, the quality and quantity of public services decreased, the state’s credit rating went down, and everyone got mad. After a few years, the governor was voted out of office and Republicans ‘saw the light’ and put the old taxes back in place. What’s wild is there are still conservatives who look at that and say ‘Well, you guys didn’t do it right. I still think it’s a good idea.’ If it were up to me, we’d go back to the tax levels we had when that antifa commie Marxist-Leninist far left extremist Eisenhower was in office.
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $400,000: 92% - 91%
Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25%
Romney’s Approx. Tax Bill: $5,250,000
During the administration of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a 92 percent marginal income tax rate for top earners in the United States remained from the previous administration of Harry S. Truman. At the time, the highest tax bracket was for income over $400,000.
This was nearly the highest tax rate for top earners in the century, just under the 94 percent rate for income over $200,000 instated during World War II under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.
In 1954, the 92 percent marginal rate decreased to 91 percent under Eisenhower. The maximum tax on long-term capital gains was 25 percent – a rate that remained in place for a decade.
And-
Eisenhower explained it this way: The super rich could avoid the high taxes by investing their money in things that make America stronger. If they wanted to avoid high taxes, he said they could invest in business expansions and higher employee wages. They could give a million or two to tax-exempt non-profits that feed, house and clothe poor people of America, among other things.
Piss off.
Both parties have a lot of similarities, both are right wing, both support Palestinian genocide
THIS IS saying both parties are the same.
“Oooh I didn’t mean they’re literally 100%-” no. Fuck you, you know what the fuck you’re saying. Don’t try to get off on a technicality. Stop playing games.
So the problem for y’all isn’t that they’re the same. The problem is saying that that they’re the same. That sounds about right.
The problem for us, is bastards like you failing to fuck off back to Russia where you belong.
Based on your description the difference between the parties is just red vs blue.
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/
They’re not the same, but if you look at the big picture, like a livable vs an unlivable biosphere, then the slightly-lesser evil is still omnicidally evil (and helping with a genocide).
I wish I had your privilege of only having to worry about two things; the environment and Palestine.
I’m one of those folks who has to deal with the police, doctors, schools, roads, and the possibility of a fascist takeover of the government by someone who has been praising Hitler for years.
I’m sorry if I’ve offended your high morals.
I’m not offended - I understand most people have very different priorities. I personally think that preventing a mass extinction event is more important than police, doctors, schools, roads (for cars), and fascism; because I happen to think that a catastrophic climate cascade means nothing else matters. Healthcare is nice, but doctors will all be dead when the biosphere becomes unlivable.
I don’t stand with the genocidal Hamas voters, nor with the genocidal Israeli voters.
And that is exactly what the reply means by privilege. It is a luxury to be able to think that far ahead.
It turns out, when you’re at risk of being dead in a week, a month, or a year, you tend not to care about whether humanity will be around in 20 years.
So having the ability to focus on the long term is a privilege that the vulnerable do not have.
Of course, these things are not mutually exclusive. But when you have two parties that both suck at climate care, but only one of them is trying to incarcerate or kill LGBTQA+ folks, for example, and your focus is on things like “don’t vote for anyone or you’re supporting fascism and climate destruction” it reeks of privilege and a disregard for the immediate welfare of your neighbors.
EDIT: To put it another way - if the cost of humanity’s survival is sacrificing our LGBTQA+ neighbors, perhaps humanity is not worth saving.
So it’s okay to help yourself in the short term, and by doing so help make the biosphere unlivable?
The fact that you interpret fear of persecution and resistance to authoritarianism as a selfish act tells me everything I need to know about how you view the world. And I choose not to engage in this conversation with you. 👋
I don’t think fear of persecution and resistance to authoritarianism is selfish. I think some things are vastly worse than others, e.g. wiping out more than 50% of genera and more than 70% of species, and making the biosphere unlivable for most creatures larger than mice - is incredibly selfish; and being complicit in genocide is a line some people won’t cross no matter if it may benefit them personally in the short term. I understand most people have very different priorities, and care more about their own short-term goals even if those goals make them complicit in omnicide.
And your ability to be concerned about such things is your privilege
It is obvious that you are generally comfortable with little risk to your daily life riding on this election
Talk to me again when you’re sacrificing your own immediate safety instead of the immediate safety of others to uphold your high-minded values
You’re contributing to making the biosphere unlivable. You’re using electronics to communicate on Lemmy. That means you’ve contributed a huge amount of CO2 in all kinds of ways- a significant amount was expended just to construct whatever device you’re using.
So you’re going to stop using electronics and the internet, right? Otherwise you’re just helping yourself in the short term, something you are implying you do not want people to do.
I’m not sure why you think that changes what I said. You’re making a contribution to making the biosphere unlivable by using that electronic device you’re using in multiple ways. What other people do or don’t do does not absolve your own culpability.
You just don’t want to live without the luxury of the internet, so you’re evading.
“In June 2021, a federal judge struck down Biden’s pause on oil and gas leasing on federal lands, delivering a win to Republican-led states that had challenged the policy.”
Harris literally bragged about increasing domestic gas production to an all time high. The “hands-are-tied” bit is bullshit.
You suspiciously left out how she explained that they have invested a trillion dollars towards clean energy. Aso, the increase domestic gas production she “bragged” about is to counter our need to go outside of our own, and pay out the ass for it.
It’s amazing how you people can twist shit into a narrative that suits your agenda, but when light is cast on the reality of it-
You have nothing.
Incredible. The only one, “twisting shit into a narrative that suits your agenda” is you trying to paint all-time high gas production as a win, somehow. But whether or not it’s a win is irrelevant to the point being discussed, as is the “trillion dollar investment” that I “suspiciously” left out.
Maybe you need a refresher on the conversation so far. One person said that Biden promised to reduced drilling, then failed to keep that promise. Then someone else incorrectly said that they wanted to reduce drilling, but couldn’t because of the courts. So I presented a clip of Harris bragging about increasing gas production as an accomplishment of the administration. Now, you seem to have completely lost the plot, ignoring both the claim that they wanted to reduce gas production but were stopped, and the fact that Biden promised to reduce it in the first place, and are suddenly taking a completely different tact.
Why don’t you take issue with the person claiming that they wanted to reduce it, but couldn’t? They’re spreading misinformation to deny one of the Biden administrations “accomplishments,” and claiming that he was trying to do a bad thing, are they not?
Of course, it’s plain why you don’t do that, because facts don’t matter at all to you, it’s all about partisan loyalty. If one person says that Biden wanted to do a good thing by cutting gas production, but couldn’t, you’re fine with that, because they’re loyal to your team. If someone else says that they increased gas production, which is a good thing, you’re fine with that too, because they’re also on your team. The fact that those two positions are completely contradictory doesn’t seem to phase you at all.
Some of us believe in a single, observable reality, as opposed to holding every position that supports your agenda as simultaneously true in direct contradiction of reason and evidence.
Myabe you need a refresher on the conversation so far. The initial point was increase in drilling on federal lands and not overall gas production for the country. You are quite a bit cherry picking and mixing apples with oranges in this conversation.
As was already mentioned in the top level comment, the Biden administration outpaced Trump on drilling permits on federal land.
Also, strange that you’re defending someone who thinks increasing drilling is a good thing, care to explain that?
Well its nice we are getting back to the initial subject but drilling is permitted on the lands and that predates the administration. It has been democratic administrations that have restricted drilling in large swatches and republican that have lifted those restrictions. Once its allowed the permits are just about who does it and they can delay somewhat but not disallow them if they do everything according to the law.
Yawn… oh! Is your manifesto over? Good.
So anyway…. As I was saying, you cherry-pick bullshit narratives to make it sound like you have a clue, but in the end- all you end up doing is exhausting people that have the energy to look up the bullshit you spew. Wait… was I even saying that? Hmm… well, that’s what I’m saying now. But guess what? I am not one of those people that have that kind energy, but it sure looks like others do.
Let’s read along!
Oh, and real quick… don’t think I didn’t notice how you took everything I said out of context, rewrote it, and spit it back as a bullshit narrative- but that’s okay because thats just what people have come to expect from you.
Yawn… oh! Is your manifesto over? Good.
Least anti-intellectual liberal.
[ten paragraph treatise on shit that had little relevance to the point]
Least smug pseudo-intellectual socialist.
Incredible.
You are, indeed. I am happy that you have figured that much out 🫶
“I know you are but what am I?”
Why are liberals so bad at quips?
Oh I don’t think there was anything suspicious about it. It was very intentional.
Of course it was intentional. They’re as bad faith as it gets. They’re here to interfere with an election. Check their comment history though, they are having their ass handed to them left and right. It’s awesome!
So maybe the right-wing Biden shouldn’t have promised with “Period. Period. Period. Period.” something the even more right-wing Republicans’ judges could strike down.
By that logic literally nothing would ever get done because everything is always opposed by someone.
There’s a difference between saying you want to stop something, vs saying that thing is not going to happen “Period. Period. Period. Period.” when you end up doing the thing anyway.
If you care about honesty, and in this case if you care about a biosphere in which people are able to live, then it matters.
It’s possible to do things, and to be honest.
Historical evidence suggests that radical honesty regarding complex issues is not a winning political strategy.
One of the main reasons democrats lose so much is because they often prefer to take the moral high ground instead of, you know, winning.
Psychology has been weaponized and your faith in the general public to reward honesty is, sadly, misguided. We know this. It’s been proven out over and over again, in many ways…
So we can stick our heads in the sand, or we can play the game and then govern to the best of our ability after winning.
Call me selfish, but I’m a lot more concerned when it comes to this election about the potential genocides of queer and brown people that will happen if Trump is elected. Since, you know, they’re basically saying that will happen.
But there is this bizarre idea that some people have that adding two genocides on top of the existing genocides (because Trump isn’t going to do shit about the one Russia is doing in Ukraine either) doesn’t matter.
I want to keep queer people (including my own daughter) out of conversion camps and brown people out of concentration camps.
That’s a pretty big fucking picture.
deleted by creator
I have been working for Jewish Voice for Peace to work to stop this genocide since it began.
What have you done?
deleted by creator
Of course they’re not the same!
The Republicans now support Fascism at home, whilst the Democrats so far only support Fascism abroad.
You should check out harris’ record as a prosecutor in california sometime.
Republicans have always voted against anything thats good for the country or citizenry, then when it gets passed regardless, they take all the credit for it.
And thanks to conservative voters being nicely quaranetined into the conservative news cycle, They hear nothing but that their dear Republican Representatives scored another big win for them against the big bad evil mean demorats.
Who in the hell is saying they are the same?
You must be new here.
Mostly straw men, but there’s a few tankies who believe it.
Multiple people I have talked to on Lemmy over the past year.
Anybody who opposes genocide, cars, etc.
Oh joy, more money for roads. More state funds for drivers. The war on cars continues unabated.
That is off-topic. You might enjoy [email protected] if that’s what you want to debate.
It’s completely on topic to point out that both parties support the same dead end infrastructure, when the premise of the post is that there’s some meaningful difference. Ban cars.
No thanks on this car brain garbage. Their “infrastructure plan” is terrible. Nobody is supporting reasonable, sustainable infrastructure. Ban cars.
This. Insane fucking American car culture. Republicans obviously suck arse but wtf. Invest in public transit instead and these problems wouldn’t exist in the first place.
I came across a video on youtube from a major pro-business media outlet calling road diets a ‘socialist ideal’ and saying that the ‘liberals are trying to take away our cars’. The comments were equally unhinged.
