Idiocy, Actual

Looks like Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Thunder_Bay

Telling too that the Democratic leadership said after the fact that one of the reasons they lost was that they relied too much on small donators instead of billionaire donators. Disgusting

Would like to point out that part of this bill includes a provision that makes it illegal for Courts to hold the Government in contempt for not complying with their past, present, or future injunctions:

H.R. _____, Title VII § 70302:

No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.

I always feel sorry for the fans no matter what because I know the feeling when your team loses or crashes out. I don’t feel sorry for the team itself though. Referees could’ve done better and Florida is a dirty team, but this is how things go the deeper and deeper into the playoffs you get. Leafs do this to themselves as far as I can see. They’ve run the same core team back almost ten times now and have barely made a dent because Nylander is the only one that doesn’t turn into a pumpkin every year when the going gets tough

Unfortunately for Americans too, solidarity striking (the main premise behind being able to perform a General Strike), is also illegal (most citations I could find cite 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(4) though I couldn’t work out specifically what verbage outlawed it). Keep in mind to that this specific labor law only applies to private labor unions that are administered by the NLRB, federal unions have a different agency.

I know a few people, including a family member, that work for the federal government, and I think they want to try to weather the storm, but it’s hard. Trump wasn’t a fluke in 2016 and he certainly isn’t one now. Just because he and his party might be out of power in 4 years doesn’t mean much. Half the country still thinks their jobs and livelihood are superfluous at best and harmful at worst. And with four more years of the hack and slash mentality going, it may take a while to rebuild all of this. To get from the precursors to the New Deal through to the EPA was almost 50 years of slow progress.

One thing that I think doesn’t get pointed out enough is that for the United States, the number of federal employees (pre-Musk) is basically the same as it was in the early 60s. The actual size of the federal government hasn’t changed in 60 years by any appreciable amount. All that extra revenue and debt in the budget has gone to federal contractors.

There’s a lot of risk to striking for a federal worker. First of all, it’s against the law for any employee of the US Federal Government to do so according to 5 USC §7311

An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia if he-

…

(3) participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia; or

(4) is a member of an organization of employees of the Government of the United States or of individuals employed by the government of the District of Columbia that he knows asserts the right to strike against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia.

There exists federal employee unions, but they don’t have as much power because they can’t strike. Additionally, there’s another US code (18 U.S.C. §1918) that reinforces this idea, also noting that it’s a felony that can carry the charge of a fine or jail time up to 1 year and prevents you from being employed by the Federal Government (using the exact same language).

Additionally, the Office of Management & Budget can name you “unsuitable” for Federal employment if you participate in a strike even without the felony conviction.

This happened in the 80s when a bunch of Air Traffic Controllers went on strike for higher wages and the President at the time (Ronald Reagan) just fired them all and hired new controllers at lower wages who wouldn’t strike. There was no recourse for those fired workers.

Given all of this, I wouldn’t even risk it with DOGE to strike right now. Under a more labor friendly administration, you might be able to get away with it. But with Musk running the country, the most likely outcome would be that they’d fire them all for striking, the courts wouldn’t restore them like they have with others because they did actually violate the law, and Musk would spin it as locating and eliminating the “corruption”

P.S. - For those keeping score at home, both of the aforementioned US codes are the same codes that bar someone for working for the Federal Government for advocating for the overthrow of the government (that’s what subsections (1) and (2) state). Yes that means the Federal Government, at least as far as its own employees are concerned, equate striking with revolution

It’s funny because back in the day before Elon lost his marbles, I first heard of Signal from Musk on twitter as he was promoting it as a better alternative to WhatsApp

Seems like they don’t have federation turned on either, unfortunately

This is what happens when you don’t pay your tickets kids, the sheriff hunts you down

Slide me one of those jobs with a work visa and I’ll be on the first train out. Got like 6 months of Duolingo French if that helps

Unless you take the “i” in Alien to be the imaginary number, then it’s -Alien

The main crux of the “Biden is too old” criticism though wasn’t the actual age number, it was that he wasn’t mentally all there, which was on display constantly. Bernie always comes off as put together and his speeches are well executed. Biden’s issue was that he sounded less put together than Trump which was impressive in its own way

The problem with exit polling, as with the problem with polling in general (exacerbated by the modern age), is that they’re voluntary. The simplest explanation is that a higher percentage of women answered the exit poll than men. Or that women who voted for Trump were less likely to answer the poll. Or the people lied when they answered the poll.

There can also be statistics reasons for it too. Not knowing the methodology behind how this was collected, but you can also have selection effects. If I’m trying to run a statistical analysis on a population, I want as many respondents as possible to reduce the error and deviation, but I also have to operate with limited funds. Be much more efficient to post a few people up in higher density places like cities that tend to vote more blue anyways than having pollsters scour the backroads of Wyoming, for example, where I would wager a higher percentage of women voted for Trump.

In the end, don’t put too much stock in pre-election polls, and definitely don’t put too much stock in exit polls. Think about it like this, if you got a phone call from a random number, would you pick up and answer questions about how you vote in such a controversial election? If the answer is no, then you know why polls aren’t accurate

I may be one of these people. At least for the more obscure places, the highway pullouts and national forests and things, if I see another person parked there, I’ll typically park next to them. Safety in numbers, the more people parked in a turnout, the more legitimate it looks to park there

Hey now, that’s Warren Peace from Sky High you’re talking about as an “unknown actor”

I don’t know, it could probably work, America is the outlier for their election seasons. UK elections are held 5-6 weeks after Parliament is dissolved. The 2022 French Presidential election was held less than 2 weeks after the polling date was announced. Comparatively, the USA’s 7 months to convention, 10 months to election is a lifetime. You can do loads in 106 days

Fairly far left myself. I agree with the person who said that

The left is loyal to ideals, not people

To me, one of those ideals is being anti-death penalty. I believe that no matter what the crime is, a government that claims to represent all people, as a democratic government theoretically does, can never justify the killing of one of those people by their hand. Were it up to me, they would be removed from office, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and tossed in jail for the rest of their natural life (which judging by the age demographic of the federal government, wouldn’t be too long).

The prospect for an impeachment for treason raises some interesting questions about how the legal and political systems of the United States interact though. Because impeachment is a political process, impeaching a government official doesn’t constitute that a crime was committed, and committing a crime doesn’t necessarily impose grounds for impeachment. If the Vice President was impeached and removed from office due to committing treason and let’s say criminal proceedings were brought, there’s no precedent as to whether any of the evidence brought in the impeachment trial or the successful removal would count towards evidence of the treason trial itself. In the most extreme of cases that would likely never happen, a government official could be arrested, tried, convicted, and (under current law that I disagree with) executed without ever being impeached and leaving office.

Also wanted to note that impeachment doesn’t just apply to the President, it applies to

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States

Which means federal judges, cabinet officers, etc. Though most notably, no one in Congress

It’s the same stuff with all these programs that have the trapezoid structure (income phase-ins). What the designers of the program are really looking to do is to not spend a lot of money, so the phase-ins move a large group of people (or children) from just below the line to just above the line so everyone can pat their back, they’re not actually interested in

Also actually having evidence that people just want to take care of children breaks the “moral hazard” narrative down which people don’t like

I think I recently saw an article about a trial of the 32-hour work week in the UK that most of the companies ended up sticking with.

I work at a smallish company that has to be really precise with how much time is charged to specific (mainly government) programs, but there’s a lot of downtime. I think this would really help.

John Maynard Keynes, basically the founder of modern, macroeconomic theory predicted in 1930 that his grandchildren would only be working 15 hours a week. Ironically, up until the 80’s in the US, average work hours per employee per week was trending down and had it continued would have gotten as low as 15 by now (I think, can’t perfectly recall the trend line)