American Politics IV: 1400 Reasons Why(A Stimulus Serial)

[Sengoku Americas]

Can't ship the replacement jet engines for your fancy schmancy 6th gen anywhere if all your roads, ports and airports are broken.
*taps forehead*

Yep. Plus, can’t forget that a big chunk of Eisenhower’s plans for the interstate highway system had a military use in mind.

I've heard the expressways were meant to be used for runways. Is this true?

[-SARS-]

Exactly, I'd much prefer for whatever spending is available for the yearly national budget to be spent on wonder weapons that can take on China or Russia if not both.

Can't ship the replacement jet engines for your fancy schmancy 6th gen anywhere if all your roads, ports and airports are broken.
*taps forehead*

Sai really is good at Nazi thinking. The Nazis overspent on fancy weapons like V2s, even while their rail network was failing them.

[-SARS-]

Yep. Plus, can’t forget that a big chunk of Eisenhower’s plans for the interstate highway system had a military use in mind.

I've heard the expressways were meant to be used for runways. Is this true?

I've heard that too. The routes are designed to include straight stretches where planes can land.

Edit: apparently the part about straight stretches is an urban legend.

[San Lumen]

As compared to all that sexy spending on fighter jets

Exactly, I'd much prefer for whatever spending is available for the yearly national budget to be spent on wonder weapons that can take on China or Russia if not both.

Yeah it would have been no big deal if the Tappen Zee Bridge collapsed. It’s better to spend that money on ships and planes we don’t need.

[Godular]

Yep. Plus, can’t forget that a big chunk of Eisenhower’s plans for the interstate highway system had a military use in mind.

I've heard the expressways were meant to be used for runways. Is this true?

I think it was more focused on tanks, but I'm admittedly unsure.

[Kannap]

Yep. Plus, can’t forget that a big chunk of Eisenhower’s plans for the interstate highway system had a military use in mind.

I've heard the expressways were meant to be used for runways. Is this true?

Nothing more than urban legend. We have no records that indicate straight sections of the interstates were built for this purpose. I'd hazard a guess that, where possible, straight roads were easier to pave and design that roads with lots of unnecessary curves. Besides, the interstates were supposed to make travel faster and safer, which is more practical with straight roads.

In general, Eisenhower's support for the interstate system as President was overwhelmingly to fulfill civilian needs: support for economic development, highway safety, and congestion relief. The value of the interstate system for military travel and for improved routes for evacuation in emergencies were minor reasons for supporting the interstate system.

[Kannap]

I've heard the expressways were meant to be used for runways. Is this true?

I think it was more focused on tanks, but I'm admittedly unsure.

The interstate system was designed and supported with civilian interests and needs in mind more than anything else. The runway thing is an urban legend. As for military convoys, the value of the interstate system for the military wasn't lost on Eisenhower. He'd been an observer for the War Department of the 1919 transcontinental motor convoy, noting the inadequacy of the roads - "practically unpaved from Illinois to Nevada" - and bridges (that convoy broke - then repaired - 88 wooden bridges crossing the country).

Then, as Supreme commander of the Allied forces in WW2, he'd gotten to see the efficiency of the highway system the Germans had built across Europe.

[Kowani]

Trump crashes wedding party to whine about his election loss

[New haven america]

Trump crashes wedding party to whine about his election loss

Who?

[The Caleshan Valkyrie]

Trump crashes wedding party to whine about his election loss

Such is the risk of having it there. Stupid move, that.

50% chance of babyrage.

[Cannot think of a name]

Trump appointees at the Social Security Administration are sabotaging the rollout of stimulus checks

On Wednesday, March 24, House Democrats Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ), Richard Neal (D-MA), John Larson (D-CT), and Danny Davis (D-IL), members of the Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to Social Security Administration commissioner Andrew Saul, complete with an ultimatum. According to the letter, nearly 30 million Social Security and Supplemental Security Income recipients, some of the country’s poorest and neediest people, were being prevented from receiving their $1,400 stimulus checks from the American Rescue Plan, because Saul was refusing to send the necessary payment files to the IRS.

Weeks after the American Rescue Plan had been signed into law, while many Americans had already received payments, the Social Security Administration’s inaction was standing in the way of millions of beneficiaries receiving desperately needed cash aid. After escalating pressure on Saul to no avail, the letter gave him 24 hours to remedy the holdup. A few hours later, the SSA announced that they’d be sending the information the next day. This delay is just the latest in an array of extremely troubling decisions under the leadership of the Social Security Administration’s commissioner Saul, and his deputy David Black. The SSA manages benefits for the 61 million Americans who receive Social Security payments, along with the five million additional people who get disability benefits via the Supplemental Security Income program. The SSA also helps determine Medicare eligibility. It manages a trillion-dollar annual budget.

Commissioner Saul and Deputy Commissioner Black were appointed by President Trump, alongside Deputy Commissioner for Retirement and Disability Policy Mark Warshawsky, to self-fulfill the Republican promise about the failure of government, and destroy the departments they were tasked with managing. Warshawsky, a veteran of the American Enterprise Institute, was pegged as an early candidate to be fired by the Biden administration for his work undercutting the program; he retired from the post in late January.

The Biden administration has set to work rolling back some of those Trump appointees’ designs on Social Security, including a proposed rule that would have subjected disability insurance recipients to even more frequent and stringent eligibility reviews, which would make an already challenging process even more difficult for people with disabilities to secure and maintain cash benefits. That move was widely celebrated among advocates. But President Biden has not heeded the call from those same advocates to fire Saul and Black, who have clear track records of working against the very department they’ve been tasked to head up, and against Democratic ambitions on Social Security.

Now, a growing number of congressional Democrats are joining the chorus calling for Saul and Black’s ousters. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) called for their resignation as his first act as chair of the Social Security and Pensions Subcommittee, and has since urged Biden to fire them. He’s joined House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John Larson, Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Danny Davis, and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Bill Pascrell Jr. in demanding Saul’s immediate removal. Both Saul and Black are serving terms that don’t expire until 2025. [...] Meanwhile, Saul and Black have openly pursued a number of reforms aimed at aggressively curtailing benefits. Their attempted rule change, which the Biden administration rolled back, was a Reagan-era reform that would have led to tens of thousands of people losing benefits. When President Reagan enacted it, it led to a rash of suicides, and was deemed so cruel that it led to a unanimous Senate ruling to overturn it. Elsewhere, they’ve sought to deny benefits for older and severely disabled non–English speakers, resulting in an estimated 100,000 people being denied more than $5 billion in benefits. [...]
The same cannot be said of Saul and Black, who do not enjoy the fond feelings of their staff and co-workers. In December, the Association of Administrative Law Judges issued a vote of no confidence in both of them, with 88 percent of its members in favor. The American Federation of Government Employees, a union that does not frequently align itself with the AALJ, also called on President Biden to fire the two officials, saying that Saul and Black were effectively sabotaging the department, working to “undermine the agency’s mission” by allegedly putting employees up to major ethics violations in the name of denying injured workers and veterans their rightful benefits, and obstructing the smooth operation of the administration. Saul and Black have feuded with their workforce repeatedly, busting up union efforts and torpedoing morale.
With such uniform opposition from Social Security advocacy groups, Democrats at various levels of government, and even bureaucrats within the SSA, it may be impossible for President Biden to present a credible case for keeping Saul and Black on much longer. While the president has pledged a return to normalcy, and an extrication of Trump’s legacy on government, he’s been shy to root out all of the influences of Trumpism in Washington to the full extent of his power.

But that timidity is going to come up against his, and Democrats’, broader ambitions. While few expect that Social Security expansion will come up in this legislative session, there is a nontrivial possibility it will be on the floor before Biden’s re-election campaign in 2024. At that point, Biden will have either overseen an SSA that has continued its Trumpist charge to chip away at one of the most popular government programs, or he’ll usher in a new era of expanded benefits, in line with the sizable welfare expansion he made a cornerstone of the American Rescue Plan, his first major piece of legislation. Both cannot plausibly be true.

This might explain why I haven't been stimulated yet.

[Kowani]

Oil and natural gas production emit more methane than previously thought, due to the EPA underestimating them

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underestimating methane emissions from oil and gas production in its annual Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, according to new research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The research team found 90 percent higher emissions from oil production and 50 percent higher emissions for natural gas production than EPA estimated in its latest inventory."This is the first country-wide evaluation of the emissions that the EPA reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)," said Maasakkers, who is currently a scientist at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

Currently, the EPA only reports total national emissions to the UNFCC. In previous research, Maasakkers and his collaborators, including Daniel Jacob, the Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at SEAS, worked with the EPA to map regional emissions of methane from different sources in the US. That level of detail was used to simulate how methane moves through the atmosphere.

In this paper, the researchers compared those simulations to satellite observations from 2010-2015. Using a transport model, they were able to trace the path of emissions from the atmosphere back to the ground and identify areas across the US where the observations and simulations didn't match up.

"When we look at emissions from space, we can only see how total emissions from an area should be scaled up or down, but we don't know the source responsible for those emissions," said Maasakkers. "Because we spent so much time with the EPA figuring out where these different emissions occur, we could use our transport model to go back and figure out what sources are responsible for those under- or over-estimations in the national total."

The biggest discrepancy was in emissions from oil and natural gas production.

The EPA calculates emission based on processes and equipment. For example, the EPA estimates that a gas pump emits a certain amount of methane, multiplies that by how many pumps are operating across the country, and estimates total emissions from gas pumps.

"That method makes it really hard to get estimates for individual facilities because it is hard to take into account every possible source of emission," said Maasakkers. "We know that a relatively small number of facilities make up most of the emissions and so there are clearly facilities that are producing more emissions than we would expect from these overall estimates."

[Postauthoritarian America]

The accomodations are as humane as can be managed given what the previous adminstration left behind. The Biden team is working every hour of every day to make them better. It's unfortunate that conditions, both at the US border and in the countries of origin of the migrants, are no better than they are. But I refuse to equate Biden's policies and effort with the criminally inhumane, murderous policies and efforts of a xenophobic, racist, self-centered resident of 1600 Penn. Ave. aimed only at spreading more hate, division, fear and ignorance in order to advance his personal political and financial interests.

I mean, frankly, I'm not just going to take the administration's word for it that they're "working as diligently as possible" to do so when the results thus far have been negligible. Yes, the previous administration was callous in this regard, but I think it is totally fair game to express discontent with the current administration's handling of the crisis when we see that little has changed in two months. Aside from the press conference this last week, there has been little talk from the Biden administration about how they plan on reforming things other than saying that they will, with little substance or tangible evidence to back it up.

In other words, you don't have to equate Biden's handling of it to the previous guy, but you shouldn't have to deflect in that capacity either.

I happen to know some of the people who are working on the issue for the Biden administration from a previous life so allow me to assure you that when they say they are working on the issue that's exactly what they're doing.

Speaking of immigration: the current spike in minors crossing the border is expected to last...seven months

...
Under current policies, the government is facing unheard of numbers of migrant kids illegally crossing the border this fiscal year — from 159,000 to 184,000. Even the low-end estimate is double the total number of kids who tried to cross during the crisis year of 2019. In 2014, the Obama administration struggled to care for just 69,000 kids who crossed illegally. The data obtained by Axios did not include projections for migrant families, but the Department of Homeland Security is expecting from 500,000 to 800,000 migrants crossing the border this fiscal year in family groups, the Washington Post reported Sunday. The numbers would be equal to or greater than in 2019, compounding the growing crisis.

That would just about replace the losses from the previous administration's non-response to the COVID pandemic. So it's a wash.

[The Black Forrest]

If you are going to sign in to law Jim Crow 2.0, why not sign it with a painting of a plantation in the background? It seems somebody recognized the painting where the Georgia governor signed the “election integrity” law.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/28/us/georg ... gfooterold

[Postauthoritarian America]

If you are going to sign in to law Jim Crow 2.0, why not sign it with a painting of a plantation in the background? It seems somebody recognized the painting where the Georgia governor signed the “election integrity” law.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/28/us/georg ... gfooterold

Hell, why not just give the state legislature the power to remove any Democratic electors chosen at the ballot box by majority vote and replace them with Republican electors as has been proposed in Arizona? Make no mistake, that's the next step in the Republican campaign to get and hold power by any means including violent insurrection.

[The Black Forrest]

If you are going to sign in to law Jim Crow 2.0, why not sign it with a painting of a plantation in the background? It seems somebody recognized the painting where the Georgia governor signed the “election integrity” law.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/28/us/georg ... gfooterold

Hell, why not just give the state legislature the power to remove any Democratic electors chosen at the ballot box by majority vote and replace them with Republican electors as has been proposed in Arizona? Make no mistake, that's the next step in the Republican campaign to get and hold power by any means including violent insurrection.

Ah so voting by mail was the problem? Awhile back I posted a story where Oregon and Colorado used it for a couple decades. They had cases of fraudulent voting. A crazy grand total of 22.

I guess believing the lies makes some people all warm and safe.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

If you are going to sign in to law Jim Crow 2.0, why not sign it with a painting of a plantation in the background? It seems somebody recognized the painting where the Georgia governor signed the “election integrity” law.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/28/us/georg ... gfooterold

Hell, why not just give the state legislature the power to remove any Democratic electors chosen at the ballot box by majority vote and replace them with Republican electors as has been proposed in Arizona? Make no mistake, that's the next step in the Republican campaign to get and hold power by any means including violent insurrection.

Couldn't y'all ship these antidemocratic oligarchs to the place where they belong? I.e. Moscow?

[Blargoblarg]

Kids are still in cages.

It's not "kids in cages" anymore, now it's "unaccompanied minors in overflow facilities". Because using nicer-sounding terms makes it so much better.

[Picairn]

Kids are still in cages.

This is wholly misleading, Biden has made effort to reform the cruel Trump-era immigration system. Yes, problems do exist and we should criticize Biden on those, but I don't expect a grandstanding one-liner implicitly equating Biden with Trump to be helpful and informative.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checkin ... 9970724533

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/us/b ... house.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ot-hardly/

[North Washington Republic]

Kids are still in cages.

This is wholly misleading, Biden has made effort to reform the cruel Trump-era immigration system. Yes, problems do exist and we should criticize Biden on those, but I don't expect a grandstanding one-liner implicitly equating Biden with Trump to be helpful and informative.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checkin ... 9970724533

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/us/b ... house.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ot-hardly/

Agreed. President Biden is making an effort to reform the cruel Trump era immigration system. However, The number of unaccompanied minors crossing our borders has approached record numbers. There has to be a hard cap at some point because we cannot possibly take care of every child in Central America.

[Kilobugya]

Agreed. President Biden is making an effort to reform the cruel Trump era immigration system. However, The number of unaccompanied minors crossing our borders has approached record numbers. There has to be a hard cap at some point because we cannot possibly take care of every child in Central America.

Well, I would the best solution would be to ensure that central american kids can remain safely in their country with their family. And while that's a long and complicated task to do, USA stopping to create mess with its war on drugs or support to coups and destabilization would be a big first step. Remember it was Hillary Clinton, under Obama/Biden, who organized the coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, for example.

[Gravlen]

Kids are still in cages.

It's not "kids in cages" anymore, now it's "unaccompanied minors in overflow facilities". Because using nicer-sounding terms makes it so much better.

Trump:



Biden:


Does the wire fence make a difference? Arguably one can easily be called a cage, and the other one has less of that visceral feeling to it.

The cages aren't really the problem anymore. The overflow is.

[Greater Cosmicium]

The cages aren't really the problem anymore. The overflow is.

The problem is the migrant children being in cages in the first place. It's still a cage, no matter how empty or crowded it is, and no euphemistic names will change that.

[Kilobugya]

The cages aren't really the problem anymore. The overflow is.

A sudden overflow can create an unmanageable chaos for a few days, yes. But not for months. Not in the richest and most powerful country of the planet. There are hotels, many empty due to Covid. There are unoccupied houses owned by banks and used for speculation. There are many buildings owned by federal or local governments. There is no excuse apart from cold apathy or hatred, both of which are disgusting, for treating kids like that. They are children ! Doesn't matter their skin color, country of birth, religion. We have a collective responsibility to treat humanely and decently every single child. And our governments keep failing them, in USA and in EU alike. And it's really heartbreaking and shameful.

[Gravlen]

The cages aren't really the problem anymore. The overflow is.

The problem is the migrant children being in cages in the first place. It's still a cage, no matter how empty or crowded it is, and no euphemistic names will change that.

In an international perspective, yes. The problem is that the conditions in their country of origin is so bad that children are being sent as unaccompanied migrants all the way to the US in the first place.

Once they get to the US, however, they need to be kept safe somewhere. Keeping them in such a place as a stopgap measure, for a maximum of 72 hours, while you arrange other accommodations, doesn't strike me as unreasonable. Unfortunately, that isn't happening, because of the high number of migrants arriving many are being kept there for a longer period of time. That has to be fixed, and quickly.

However, it's a vast difference from the Trump administration's policies of separating children from their parents, and keeping them separated by chainlink fencing, while immediately expelling migrant children.

The current situation is not equal to what went on before.

Nearly 2,000 children have been taken from their parents since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy, which directs Homeland Security officials to refer all cases of illegal entry into the United States for prosecution. Church groups and human rights advocates have sharply criticized the policy, calling it inhumane.

Stories have spread of children being torn from their parents’ arms, and parents not being able to find where their kids have gone. A group of congressional lawmakers visited the same facility Sunday and were set to visit a longer-term shelter holding around 1,500 children — many of whom were separated from their parents.

“Those kids inside who have been separated from their parents are already being traumatized,” said Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who was denied entry earlier this month to children’s shelter. “It doesn’t matter whether the floor is swept and the bedsheets tucked in tight.”