• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • You seem confused on what an executive order is (or you’re not confused and are just saying this in bad faith). It’s not just the president randomly saying I order this to happen like some kind of dictator. It’s the executive laying out his/her interpretation of specifics on how a law should be implemented, a law already passed by congress. So unless congress has passed a law already, saying congress gives the executive the power to increase the size of the court on a whim, or decide to impose term limits on a whim (and they most certainly have not), then the power still rests with congress. Setting up and regulating the courts is a job expressly delegated to congress in the constitution. An executive order is meaningless here. What law would it derive its authority from? A congressional law might not even be enough for all of this, that’s why part of the plan talks about a constitutional amendment.

    And “No words” ?! How on earth are we supposed to build a concensus to do something, if in your opinion no one is allowed to even talk about it or express their support until it’s already happened? You make no sense. The sitting president endorsing supreme court reform is a huge step. And Harris is endorsing it too. Now we just need enough members of congress to get on board, and that’s how it could happen. Not talking about it because it can’t happen this second doesn’t make it any more likely to happen. Comments like yours if anything make it less likely, and discourage support for the people trying to actually get it done.

    I’m tired of all these nonsensical, “why doesn’t Biden just become dictator right now” comments. We’re voting against Trump because we don’t want a dictator.






  • Just to elaborate more, it is an open convention because the delegates are unbound, they could vote for anyone now that Biden has withdrawn. To get on the ballot, anyone just needs to get the signatures of 300 delegates saying they support them. If the vast majority of delegates publicly endorse Harris before the convention though, it’s essentially already over. As this would indicate she would easily win the first ballot (and no, before anyone asks, super delegates cannot vote on the first ballot).


  • Their proposals are in the article

    The IMF, which often requires fiscal prudence among its borrowing countries, recommended a series of options to lower deficits, including reducing some longstanding tax deductions and exemptions that it said were “poorly targeted.” These include tax exemptions for the value of employer-provided healthcare plans and capital gains on the sale of a primary residence, and deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes - breaks that add up to about 1.4% of U.S. GDP per year.

    The U.S. should consider closing the “carried interest” provision under which investment partnership income can be taxed at lower capital gains income rather than normal income, the IMF said. It added that corporate tax rates should be raised and the corporate tax system shifted to a cash flow tax.

    The IMF also recommended raising federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel, which have not been raised since 1993.

    On the expenditure side, the IMF recommended indexing Social Security benefits to the chained consumer price index and subjecting earnings greater than $250,000 a year to payroll taxes.

    So kind of a mix of good and bad. But raising corporate taxes was one thing. A lot more reasonable than I was expecting.




  • You don’t need to be hospitalized to get all the antivirals. In fact, that’s the whole thing paxlovid is supposed to prevent. Anyone with risk factors can take paxlovid, and it’s very effective at preventing severe covid. It should be started as soon as possible, not waiting until someone’s already hospitalized. Even in unvaccinated people, if taken early in the course, is 90% effective at preventing severe disease.

    Remdesivir is the one that’s generally only for hospitalized patients, though even that can be used pre hospital too.

    Anyways point is, if you get covid, and have risk factors for severe covid, call your doctor or urgent care to get paxlovid to take if you can, especially if you’re unvaccinated.

    And yeah between getting diagnosed quickly, getting paxlovid I’m sure, and being immunized, Biden will very likely be fine.

    Edit: yes he started paxlovid https://www.npr.org/2024/07/17/nx-s1-5043814/biden-covid


  • The reasoning was that in the old style of filibuster no other senate business was possible. In theory was supposed to help the senate be more productive. In practice, it’s made the filibuster even more powerful. If a party was holding up all legislation and other functions of the senate by grandstanding for something stupid, that could hurt them politically, especially if it got bad enough that the military was being impacted or there were government shutdowns. So maybe they would think twice if it was worth a filibuster. Now they can kind of do it risk free. I think if you saw, government shutdown caused by Republicans trying to prevent abortion protections, well it’d be pretty unpopular with most Americans. And they’d pay for it in the polls. Or maybe not even do the filibuster in the first place.


  • I suppose if we had way more judges who worked on a much quicker timeline and retained independent qualified experts in all these areas, and the judges weren’t just partisan hacks, then Chevron being struck down might not be so bad. But that’s not the world we live in. Slow decisions by corrupt judges that don’t know anything about what they’re ruling on. Just look at some of the ridiculous fda related rulings trying to go after abortion.

    But that’s basically why at the time it was originally ruled on you had liberals upset about Chevron and conservatives happy (basically a more conservative executive and more liberal court at that time).

    One slight silver lining is that it may make it easier for judges to strike down Trump admin regulations if he wins the election. But that is kind of cold comfort. Probably have worse issues than that if Trump is re elected.