Here’s the Republican party:
- Marjorie Taylor Greene won a charity auction — she paid $100K for Kevin McCarthy’s lip balm. I wonder if MTG’s donors approve of this use of their cash…nah, they’re idiots, probably they think it’s great.
- Lauren Boebert left a pack of birth control pills at a pharmacy once because it cost too much, and she figured that raising an actual child for 18 years would be cheaper. You know she has a teenaged son who recently impregnated his teenaged girlfriend, right?
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Democratic party is actually being effective. Follow that link for the long, long list of progressive accomplishments we got just this past year. Democrats who actually fought for labor and education and immigrants and gun control and abortion and trans rights? Unheard of!
This is not a blanket approval for the national Democratic party, however. The article points out how other state parties have failed.
All told, it’s quite the record of accomplishment—all done in less than half a year, and with a governor, Walz, who was not notably progressive in his prior career in Congress. One wonders why it is so difficult to get anything even remotely similar done in solid-blue states like New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul has been faceplanting on minor things like getting a state judge confirmed or passing moderate housing reform to bring down her state’s sky-high rents.
I suspect the difference is that Minnesota Dems had to run on a serious progressive agenda to win. By all accounts, the backlash to Dobbs was especially important in the 2022 midterms. Where New York Democrats generally win easily, and so the Democratic establishment focuses above all on maintaining its control of the party machine and associated patronage, Minnesota Democrats have to actually represent their constituents. It turns out when a political party has a coherent agenda that it actually tries to carry out, it can get a lot done.
Oh, a coherent agenda and also a sense that they have to live up to their promises. Those sound like good things for a political party. One of our American afflictions is parties whose main mission is to simply get re-elected year after year.
Dude. You think in the rest of the “democratic” world it is any different?
New York state was officially a feudal system until the 1840s, and has remained a feudal system unofficially ever since. NYS is one of the states that has the clearest class distinctions, and the clear idea that there are those who rule and those who are ruled. Some motherfuckers need to shoot some sheriffs again.
Seriously, though, growing up in NYS, we learned about the Patroon system, and we were basically taught, “And then, one day, they stopped.” We weren’t taught that violent rebels forced reform to the NYS land laws. We also weren’t taught that “the landowning class just moved into being the capital class and nothing substantial changed”.
(As an adoptee, I only recently made contact with my birth family- how charmed was I to discover that they own a farm in the Catskills which is the site of where the Anti-Rent Rioters shot the sheriff.)
Like it says in the article, concerns about getting elected are the opposite of the problem here. It’s those places where the party can be sure of a win where their energies are directed solely toward maintaining internal discipline. This is one of the things ranked choice voting is designed to prevent, since you can have both wings of a dominant party run independently of one another and still be sure of one of them winning.
I suppose there are more disgusting things than used lip balm that one could buy, but I won’t name them because breakfast and rarely do they cost $100,000.
But hey, that’s a free market economy in action, right? Rational actors, invisible hands, yada yada yada. Smart value investors prevail over time, and any time you have a chance to buy personal items and toiletries and such used by a man who may someday be an actual footnote in history, you have to do it.
I assume that McCarthy’s lip balm is used and now colored brown.
She isn’t very good at math.
.1. “As of 2022, raising a child from birth to age 18 costs roughly $288,094.”
Add in another $120,000 for a college degree for a total of $408,094.
.2. ” Without insurance, birth control pills can cost between $20 and $50 for each pack, according to the National Women’s Health Network. This adds up to an annual cost of $240 to $600.”
I’ll note here that low income women can usually get birth control for low cost or free through the county health department or local Planned Parenthood.
Let’s see, $600 a year for birth control or $408. 094 for a child with a college degree.
Which is the less expensive option here?
All this misses an important point.
Children aren’t just an investment or expense.
They are also an investment in your life, an emotional investment, and a responsibility for forever.
As hard as it is to believe, Lauren Boebert seems to have given as much thought to child bearing as a cat does to having kittens.
Given that her 17 year old son recently impregnated his 15 year old girl friend, I’d say the results speak for themselves.
It doesn’t take much to be a right wingnut/christofascist hero.
Lauren Boebert reminds me a lot of Sarah Palin, who has 5 children and a domestic life that is a mess. Her first two grandchildren were born out of wedlock by teenagers. Her son has been in sporadic trouble with the law, and she is divorced.
Rudy Giuliani is a total creep.
Donald Trump is in a class by himself as to how many social norms and laws he can ignore.
Two of those ran for president or vice president.
One of those was our president for 4 very long years.
I too am mostly happy with the MN Legislation.
I am NOT happy with the fact that they bowed to Mayo and did not implement minimum staffing rules to keep nurses from overextending themselves. That was cowardly. Call Mayo’s bluff- they aren’t leaving.
The legislation they did pass for nurses was so tepid. “investigate what is causing nurse burnout”? I’m all for exploring common wisdom with the scientific method, but seriously you guys- we know what’s causing burnout.
The difference between Minnesota and New York’s democratic majority is, Minnesota has a shitty ROI for the money brokers that pay off, erm, for election campaigns. So, no such investment, not beholden to those money brokers, laws get passed.
Understanding corruption isn’t really all that hard.
@8, never fear, they’ll then have to investigate why it’s so hard to recruit replacement nurses, then investigate why it’s so hard to figure out. What lobbying that is done is still effective at obstruction.
I’d say that they’d start to pay attention when taxpaying patients start dying due to a lack of nursing care, but I’d be lying.
The lip balm isn’t as stupid as it looks. It also sold access to donors. The balm is a smoke screen for the real sale.
What is freaking stupid is that such blatant corruption isn’t immediately prosecuted.
Sad to say, but the Republican Party has a coherent agenda and it has been very successful in carrying it out. If they succeed in taking over both houses of the legislature here in Virginia this fall, they will quickly repeal the gun laws passed by the Democratic controlled legislature, ban or severely restrict abortion, establish charter schools with public money, and no doubt pass anti-gay and anti-trans laws. The Republican-controlled state House passed much of this but was thwarted by a Democratic Senate. Virginia elected a Republican governor largely on a “parents’ rights” agenda, and there will be a major push to control both houses of the legislature this fall. We have our work cut out for us here.
Going off on a tangent: A corrupt politician lands himself in trouble because he was too cheap to pay his own bills to his lawyers.
Yes, it is the British motherfucker again.
I include this simply to cheer you up, I realise the political system is different.
https://youtu.be/hv0DgInwVM8
or
https://youtu.be/hv0DglnwVM8
@ 12 birgerjohansson
Oh, that is lovely. Turned by the Cabinet Office. I’m going to be chuckling at that for some time.