Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Chas_P]

A little comic relief.

[y66]

Georgia Republicans Worry Trump Feud Could Hurt Key Senate Runoffs by Cameron McWhirter and Lindsay Wise at WSJ

 

ATLANTA—The Georgia Republican Party is beset with infighting, as leading Republicans in the state come under public attack from President Trump and his supporters following his apparent defeat by President-elect Joe Biden there—the first loss by a GOP presidential candidate since 1992.

 

The internal strains come as state party leaders are trying to rally support for two sitting senators facing Jan. 5 runoffs that will determine control of the U.S. Senate.

 

The Senate’s partisan breakdown after the Nov. 3 election stands at 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats. If Democrats win both Georgia runoffs, they will hold a majority in the chamber, since Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, could cast tiebreaking votes.

 

“These two seats…are the last line of defense against this liberal, socialist agenda the Democrats will perpetrate,” Sen. David Perdue (R., Ga.) said on Fox News Channel on Sunday. Mr. Biden, who was criticized during the Democratic primaries for not embracing a more liberal agenda, has mocked accusations that he’d lead as a socialist. “Do I look like a radical socialist?” Biden said in August.

 

Mr. Perdue is trying to fend off Democrat Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, while Georgia’s other Republican senator, Kelly Loeffler, is being challenged by the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.

 

Energizing Mr. Trump’s base is essential to the GOP’s runoff strategy, and Republicans in Georgia and in Washington, D.C., would like to see the president train his fire on Messrs. Ossoff and Warnock. But Mr. Trump, apparently preoccupied with a continuing recount of the state’s presidential results, instead spent the past few days on Twitter attacking top Georgia Republicans: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, both once considered allies of Mr. Trump.

 

“This could really go off the rails and really cause long-term damage,” former GOP state Rep. Buzz Brockway said Saturday. “The long-term health of the GOP is on the line here in Georgia.”

 

More than a dozen Republican officials and strategists said they worried the intraparty feud was distracting from the runoff effort and could hurt the party’s chances in 2022, when the governor and one of the Senate seats will be on the ballot.

 

The Trump campaign declined a request for comment.

 

One GOP official said the situation is more problematic for Mr. Kemp than for Sens. Perdue and Loeffler and pointed to financial resources and manpower flooding the state for the runoffs from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican National Committee and other GOP groups.

 

“That said,” the official added, “I think it’s important for everyone to be on the same page, working to the same goal, which is to make sure Republicans hold on to the Senate majority.”

 

David Shafer, the current state party chairman, declined to speak on the telephone to a reporter Sunday but texted in response to queries, “I believe the party will pull back together. There is too much at stake for us not to reunify.”

 

On Sunday, Mr. Biden’s lead in the contest for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes was roughly 14,000 out of about 5 million cast. The Associated Press hasn’t called the race because it said the tight margin means it could be subject to a post-certification recount under Georgia rules; however, major media organizations have called the race for Mr. Biden. A special by-hand recount of the presidential contest, before certification, is under way already.

 

Trump campaign officials called for the early recount, but in tweets over the weekend Mr. Trump assailed the process. On Saturday, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that the by-hand recount is flawed because “they are not showing the matching signatures.”

 

The recount is meant to review ballots, not signatures. Absentee voters had to sign on the outside of the envelope, not the ballot. Election officials compared that signature to the voter’s registration file. If the signatures were consistent, the envelopes were then separated from the ballots to safeguard voters’ ballot choices. Election officials also verified signatures on paper applications for an absentee ballot.

 

Mr. Raffensperger last week defended the system and said he didn’t believe the recount would change the vote tally because he had confidence in the state’s voting machines.

 

Sens. Perdue and Loeffler last week took the extraordinary step of calling for fellow Republican Mr. Raffensperger to resign, alleging election mismanagement. They didn’t offer evidence for that assertion. Mr. Raffensperger wasn’t notified of the call until he saw a mass email sent to media outlets. He refused to resign.

 

Rusty Paul, a former chairman of the Georgia GOP, said the senators had no choice but to publicly disavow Mr. Raffensperger because if Mr. Trump turned on them in frustration, it would be disastrous for their re-election prospects. “If the president is tweeting bad things, the base is not coming out,” Mr. Paul said.

 

The Senate candidates threw Mr. Raffensperger overboard to save themselves, he said. “Somebody’s got to go,” Mr. Paul said. “This is about survival.”

 

An adviser to Mr. Raffensperger said Saturday that the secretary of state, a strong supporter of the president since 2016, was baffled by the attacks. Those who claim the election was corrupt are in “complete looneyville,” the adviser said.

 

“Why is this guy lying?” the adviser recalled Mr. Raffensperger asking in a reference to the president.

 

On Monday night, Mr. Raffensperger said that he started receiving threats and nasty emails and texts, including threatening messages sent to his wife’s cellphone, right after Sens. Perdue and Loeffler called for his resignation. “That’s when the stuff started coming in,” he said.

 

Mr. Raffensperger, who put himself in quarantine last week after being exposed to Covid-19, said he was surprised by the attacks from Mr. Trump. Mr. Raffensperger has been a conservative Republican all his life and he will remain so, he said.

 

“I am absolutely Republican,” he said. “I have never voted for a Democrat. Where would I go?”

 

Mr. Trump also criticized Mr. Kemp on Twitter over the voting process.

 

The governor, who doesn’t oversee elections, couldn’t be reached for comment. Mr. Kemp, who is expected to run for re-election in 2022, narrowly won in 2018 over Democrat Stacey Abrams. Mr. Kemp was aided, in part, by campaign visits from Mr. Trump. After Mr. Kemp won, the president sent him a signed note congratulating him, written on a newspaper clipping about his victory.

 

But the relationship has been strained since. In 2019, Mr. Trump privately questioned the governor’s choice of Ms. Loeffler to succeed retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson (R., Ga.). Ms. Loeffler has repeatedly voiced support for the president, and Mr. Trump has publicly warmed to her. But relations between Messrs. Kemp and Trump remain frosty. Earlier this year, the president publicly questioned the timing of the governor’s decision to allow some businesses to reopen after a Covid-19 lockdown.

 

Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters have soured on Mr. Kemp, too. At a “Stop the Steal” rally outside the state Capitol held Nov. 7, protesters chanted, “Where’s Brian Kemp?” several times. On Saturday, a smaller “Stop the Steal” protest gathered outside the governor’s mansion in Atlanta.

 

Former Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.) said he hoped the infighting would die down so the party could unify behind Sens. Perdue and Loeffler but added, “No one party is going to dominate forever. We did dominate for a period of time. Now it’s competitive.”

[PeterAlan]

I've been wondering for a while about posting this anecdote; it's fairly well-known, but may be new to some.

 

The pre-eminent mathematical logician Kurt Gödel fled Austria just before the second world war, and settled at the IAS in Princeton. In 1947 he had applied for US citizenship, and was about to undertake the examination, with Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern as his witnesses. Being the man he was, he took this very seriously, and gave the Constitution close study.

 

Shortly before the examination, to Morgenstern's consternation, Gödel told him that he had found a logical flaw in the Constitution that could lead to the legal establishment of a dictatorship in the United States. Morgenstern was concerned that Gödel would pursue this at the examination, and enlisted Einstein's help in trying to dissuade him from it; they spent the journey to Trenton by telling one joke after another in an attempt to distract him.

 

The examination was conducted by Judge Phillip Forman, who had done the same for Einstein a few years earlier and was friendly with him. Early on in the process, Gödel picked him up on the distinction between German and Austrian citizenship, and Forman made some remark about it being just the one dictatorship, adding that it "couldn't happen here." This, of course, triggered Gödel, but Forman was a sensible man and interrupted, hastily changing the subject, and the rest of the process passed off smoothly.

 

The thing is, Morgenstern doesn't seem to have made a record of the point that Gödel had found, and I'm not aware of any suggestion of just what it was. Suddenly, though, it begins to seem more pertinent ...

[y66]

A federal judge won't delay tomorrow's hearing on President Trump's lawsuit to overturn the election he lost in Pennsylvania because most of his lawyers quit. His remaining lawyer - who's also a radio host - will have to go it alone and is "expected to be prepared."

Three of President Trump's other lawyers in the Pennsylvania case filed a somewhat noisy request to withdraw today, saying "Plaintiffs [that's Trump] will be best served" if they're allowed to leave the case.

 

A Russian, a Cuban, an American and a lawyer are in a train. The Russian takes a bottle of the best vodka out of his pack; pours some into a glass, drinks it, and says: "In the USSR, we have the best vodka in the world, nowhere in the world you can find vodka as good as what we produce in Ukraine. And we have so much of it, that we can just throw it away...". Saying that, he opens the window and throws the rest of the bottle out the window.

 

All the others are quite impressed.

 

The Cuban opens a box of Havanas, takes one of them, lights it and begins to smoke it saying: "In Cuba, we have the best cigars of the world: Havanas. Nowhere in the world are there better cigars, and we have so many of them, that we can just throw them away...". Saying that, he throws the box of Havanas out the window.

 

One more time, everybody is quite impressed.

 

The American just stands up, opens the window, and throws the lawyer out...

[y66]

WaPo's version of what's happening in Georgia provides more detail than the WSJ version.

 

In the interview, Raffensperger also said he spoke on Friday to Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has echoed Trump’s unfounded claims about voting irregularities.

 

In their conversation, Graham questioned Raffensperger about the state’s signature-matching law and whether political bias could have prompted poll workers to accept ballots with nonmatching signatures, according to Raffensperger. Graham also asked whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger said.

 

Raffensperger said he was stunned that Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Absent court intervention, Raffensperger doesn’t have the power to do what Graham suggested because counties administer elections in Georgia.

 

“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Raffensperger said.

 

In an interview on Capitol Hill on Monday evening, Graham denied that he had suggested that Raffensperger toss legal ballots, calling that characterization “ridiculous.”

 

But he said he did seek out the secretary of state to understand the state’s signature-matching requirements. Graham said he contacted Raffensperger on his own and was not asked to do so by Trump.

 

“The main issue for me is: How do you protect the integrity of mail-in voting, and how does signature verification work?” he said.

 

“If he feels threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem,” Graham added. “I actually thought it was a good conversation.”

 

On the same day that Graham spoke to Raffensperger about signature matching, a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Georgia challenging the way county election officials check signatures and allow voters a chance to fix ballots with errors.

 

The suit, filed by Atlanta lawyer and Trump supporter Lin Wood, seeks to block certification of Georgia’s election until all ballot envelopes are inspected.

 

Also that day, Trump tweeted about signature-matching in Georgia and criticized Raffensperger for his management of the state elections: “Georgia Secretary of State, a so-called Republican (RINO), won’t let the people checking the ballots see the signatures for fraud. Why? Without this the whole process is very unfair and close to meaningless. Everyone knows that we won the state.”

[kenberg]

I'm not clear if you - or we, all of us - understand just how big of question this is. How do you unwind the results of the educational morass where the sciences are only suggestions no more valid than the book of Genesis, generational racism, voter apathy, and a concerted effort to rule as the minority regardless of what happens to the country?

 

The problems are so huge by now that they may well be unsolvable.

 

I am still not getting my main point across to you. Perhaps a story, I swear it is a true story, would help. A couple went to a marriage counselor and I later asked the husband how it went. Pretty well, he said., The counselor suggested that they each take some time to think through what they might change in their own behavior to improve the marriage. He took this advice, thought it through carefully, and concluded that there was nothing he could do, everything he was doing was already for the best, but he thought of several ways in which his wife could change for the better.

 

This probably helped the counselor identify part of the problem.

[Winstonm]

WaPo's version of what's happening in Georgia provides more detail than the WSJ version.

 

 

 

When I first read this story my immediate thought was: What the hell is a senator from South Carolina doing talking to the secretary of state of Georgia about their election?

[Winstonm]

I am still not getting my main point across to you. Perhaps a story, I swear it is a true story, would help. A couple went to a marriage counselor and I later asked the husband how it went. Pretty well, he said., The counselor suggested that they each take some time to think through what they might change in their own behavior to improve the marriage. He took this advice, thought it through carefully, and concluded that there was nothing he could do, everything he was doing was already for the best, but he thought of several ways in which his wife could change for the better.

 

This probably helped the counselor identify part of the problem.

 

Ken, I don't think your example story fits the circumstances. To make your story work, the husband and wife could still visit the marriage counselor but the problem would be that the wife has announced that she is moving to Guyana with Jim Jones because he is the true messenger of god and her husband is the enemy of Jim Jones and the only possible solution is for her husband to abandon his own views and join her.

 

Unless her husband is a trained deprogrammer, there is not much for him to accomplish, regardless of how much self-examination he does.

 

PS: I agree in principle with conversation and willingness to change - but there comes a time when that is ineffective - like when dealing with a schizophrenic in full-blown crisis.

[helene_t]

He took this advice, thought it through carefully, and concluded that there was nothing he could do, everything he was doing was already for the best, but he thought of several ways in which his wife could change for the better.

Were they bridge partners?

[y66]

Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It. by Steven Teles

 

Mr. Teles is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.

 

The American voters chose to give the Democrats the White House, but denied them a mandate. Even if Democrats somehow squeak out wins in both Georgia Senate races, the Senate will then pivot on Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

 

Not only does this take much of the liberal wish list off the table, it also makes deep structural reform of federal institutions impossible. There will be no new voting rights act in honor of the late Representative John Lewis, no statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and no Supreme Court packing. For that matter, the filibuster will not be eliminated, which would have been the essential predicate for all of those other changes as well as expansive climate or health care legislation. Anything that Democrats want to do that requires a party-line vote is forlorn.

 

In response to this disappointment, a number of left-of-center commentators have concluded that “democracy lost” in 2020. Our constitutional order, they argue, is rotten and an obstacle to majority rule. The Electoral College and the overrepresentation of small, mostly conservative states in the Senate is an outrage. As Ezra Klein has argued, our constitution “forces Democrats to win voters ranging from the far left to the center right, but Republicans can win with only right-of-center votes.” As a consequence, liberals can’t have nice things.

 

The argument is logical, but it is also a strategic dead end. The United States is and in almost any plausible scenario will continue to be a federal republic. We are constituted as a nation of states, not as a single unitary community, a fact that is hard-wired into our constitutional structure. Liberals may not like this, just as a man standing outside in a rainstorm does not like the fact he is getting soaked. But instead of cursing the rain, it makes a lot more sense for him to find an umbrella.

 

Liberals need to adjust their political strategy and ideological ambitions to the country and political system we actually have, and make the most of it, rather than cursing that which they cannot change.

 

There are certainly some profound democratic deficits built into our federal constitution. Even federal systems like Germany, Australia and Canada do not have the same degree of representative inequality that the Electoral College and Senate generate between a citizen living in California versus one living in Wyoming.

 

There is also next to nothing we can do about it. The same system that generates this pattern of representative inequality also means that — short of violent revolution — the beneficiaries of our federal system will not allow for it to be changed, except at the margins. If Democrats at some point get a chance to get full representation for Washington, D.C., they should take it. But beyond that, there are few if any pathways to changing either the Electoral College or the structure of the Senate. So any near-term strategy for Democrats must accept these structures as fixed.

 

The initial step in accepting our federal system is for Democrats to commit to organizing everywhere — even places where we are not currently competitive. Led by Stacey Abrams, Democrats have organized and hustled in Georgia over the last couple of years, and the results are hard to argue with. Joe Biden should beg Ms. Abrams (or another proven organizer like Ben Wikler, the head of the party in Wisconsin) to take over the Democratic National Committee, dust off Howard Dean’s planning memos for a “50 state strategy” from the mid-2000s and commit to building the formal apparatus of the Democratic Party everywhere.

 

This party-building needs to happen across the country, even where the odds seem slim, in order to help Democrats prospect for attractive issues in red states (and red places in purple states), to identify attractive candidates and groom them for higher office and to build networks of citizens who can work together to rebuild the party at the local level.

 

A necessary corollary of a 50 state strategy is accepting that creating a serious governing majority means putting together a policy agenda that recognizes where voters are, not where they would be if we had a fairer system of representation. That starts with an economics that addresses the radically uneven patterns of economic growth in the country, even if doing so means attending disproportionately to the interests of voters outside of the Democrats’ urban base. That is not a matter of justice, necessarily, but brute electoral arithmetic.

 

That does not mean being moderate, in the sense of incremental and toothless. From the financialization of our economy to our constrictive intellectual property laws to our unjust tax competition between states for firms, the economic deck really is stacked for the concentration of economic power on the coasts. Democrats in the places where the party is less competitive should be far more populist on these and other related issues, even if it puts them in tension with the party’s megadonors.

 

We also need to recognize that the cultural values and rituals of Democrats in cosmopolitan cities and liberal institutional bastions like universities do not seem to travel well. Slogans like “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” may be mobilizing in places where three-quarters of voters pull the lever for Democrats. But it is madness to imagine that they could be the platform of a competitive party nationwide.

 

That doesn’t mean that we should expect members of the Squad not to speak out for fear of freaking out the small town voters that Democrats like Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia represent. But it does mean recognizing that, unlike the more homogeneous Republicans, the Democrats have no choice but to be a confederation of subcultures. We need to develop internal norms of pluralism and coexistence appropriate to a loose band of affiliated politicians and groups, rather than those of a party that is the arm of a cohesive social movement.

 

The Democratic Party has a future within the constitution the country has. The question for the next decade is, will we withdraw into pointless dreams of sweeping constitutional change or make our peace with our country and its constitution, seeking allies in unlikely places and squeezing out what progress we can get by organizing everywhere, even when the odds of success seem slim.

Ground control to Dems: Can you hear what this guy is saying? Take your protein pills, put your helmets on, start organizing and may God's love be with you.

[awm]

One thing we've learned over the past nine months of Covid is the number of white collar jobs that can be effectively done remotely. Many businesses have actually found that "work from home" has increased productivity!

 

If we double-down on this by having the government provide tax incentives for firms to allow working remotely, we might find that a lot of city dwellers actually prefer to move out into small towns or rural areas. The same 100k/year salary that seems meager in Manhattan or San Francisco goes a long way in the mid-west!

 

Such movement could help improve our democracy by reducing the concentration of Democratic voters in the coastal cities, and the influx of spending from new, more affluent residents in some parts of the country could revitalize their economies as well. At the same time, this could reduce pressure on the sky-high housing prices in major cities, allowing the people who really want/need to live there a little breathing room.

[y66]

One thing we've learned over the past nine months of Covid is the number of white collar jobs that can be effectively done remotely. Many businesses have actually found that "work from home" has increased productivity!

 

If we double-down on this by having the government provide tax incentives for firms to allow working remotely, we might find that a lot of city dwellers actually prefer to move out into small towns or rural areas. The same 100k/year salary that seems meager in Manhattan or San Francisco goes a long way in the mid-west!

 

Such movement could help improve our democracy by reducing the concentration of Democratic voters in the coastal cities, and the influx of spending from new, more affluent residents in some parts of the country could revitalize their economies as well. At the same time, this could reduce pressure on the sky-high housing prices in major cities, allowing the people who really want/need to live there a little breathing room.

I think more of this type of emigration will happen for the reasons you gave. Other advantages include increased retention of investments in valuable employees and the spillover effect on schools in places where remote workers relocate. I wonder where these people are moving to.

[Winstonm]

Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It. by Steven Teles

 

Mr. Teles is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.

 

 

Ground control to Dems: Can you hear what this guy is saying? Take your protein pills, put your helmets on, start organizing and may God's love be with you.

 

Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do.

[pilowsky]

Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do.

 

It's not going to be blue for much longer if 1/3 can't be bothered voting and another 1/3 still vote for Trump, McConnell and Lindsay ***** Graham.

[akwoo]

I think more of this type of emigration will happen for the reasons you gave. Other advantages include increased retention of investments in valuable employees and the spillover effect on schools in places where remote workers relocate. I wonder where these people are moving to.

 

 

I live in a university town that is about 60% of an otherwise very rural county.

 

I can imagine remote workers moving to here. (Actually we have some who have been here for 15-20 years.)

 

I can't imagine a remote worker moving to any of the towns of 500 that are 40 miles from here over not very good roads. Keep in mind that the closest hospital is here, the closest large supermarket is here, the nearest registered childcare providers are here, the Internet connections out there are unreliable, and the high schools out there are small and poor.

 

It's the same with the Green New Deal. It can create many good jobs here. It won't create jobs in the hamlets across the county.

 

My state senator (whom I know from the bridge club!) got 50.5% of the vote. I looked at the precinct level data - he got 20% of the election day in-person vote outside of town. (Mail-in absentee votes are counted centrally by the county; in-person early voting is only available in town at the county courthouse.)

[johnu]

One thing we've learned over the past nine months of Covid is the number of white collar jobs that can be effectively done remotely. Many businesses have actually found that "work from home" has increased productivity!

 

If we double-down on this by having the government provide tax incentives for firms to allow working remotely, we might find that a lot of city dwellers actually prefer to move out into small towns or rural areas. The same 100k/year salary that seems meager in Manhattan or San Francisco goes a long way in the mid-west!

 

Such movement could help improve our democracy by reducing the concentration of Democratic voters in the coastal cities, and the influx of spending from new, more affluent residents in some parts of the country could revitalize their economies as well. At the same time, this could reduce pressure on the sky-high housing prices in major cities, allowing the people who really want/need to live there a little breathing room.

 

These Tech Companies Want Pay Cuts for Remote Workers

 

For companies in high cost areas with fierce competition for workers, reduced pay for those moving to, or already in, low cost areas seems like sound business sense to me.

[Zelandakh]

One thing we've learned over the past nine months of Covid is the number of white collar jobs that can be effectively done remotely. Many businesses have actually found that "work from home" has increased productivity!

If I were a CEO, it would occur to me how easy this makes outsourcing. I can employ people in Eastern Europe, SE Asia and South America and have them integrate seamlessly with a core local force with a massive reduction in costs. Those remote job are almost certainly not going to American towns and rural communities.

[pilowsky]

If I were a CEO, it would occur to me how easy this makes outsourcing. I can employ people in Eastern Europe, SE Asia and South America and have them integrate seamlessly with a core local force with a massive reduction in costs. Those remote job are almost certainly not going to American towns and rural communities.

 

And what would you be a CEO of? Exactly? .

[johnu]

The problem is that he still has a base of followers that believe everything he says, and the GOP depends on their votes and activism.

Today it is the Manchurian President, before is was McConnell obstructing Obama, a few years ago it was the Tea Bag party. As Roseannadanna once said, "it just goes to show you, it's always something - if it ain't one thing, it's another."

[johnu]

The only embarrassment I see here is someone seriously equating the phrase "major world leader" with how dangerous the country is for the USA and spending 3 posts on backing that up. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sounds like you are having a Manchurian President level tantrum because by implication, the USA is a world power. Feel free to look up where the US GDP stands in worldwide rankings, or where the US military stands worldwide. It is very convenient for you to ignore that I equated leaders of the G7 as world leaders. The G7 countries are all strong allies (or were strong allies before the Grifter in Chief) of the US. I don't consider those countries at all "dangerous" to the US.

 

If you want to consider Brazil, Mexico, Slovenia, and N Korea to be world powers, be my guest. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.

[pilowsky]

If you want to consider Brazil, Mexico, Slovenia, and N Korea to be world powers, be my guest. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.

 

No, everyone is not 'entitled to their opinion'. That's the whole problem. Some 'opinions' are getting passed off as reality. Some 'opinions' are called facts.

Lyndon Johnson (I'm informed) famously told his advisors to say that his opponent f$$#@ks pigs. When they objected he replied that he would have to deny it. Trumpists have lifted the big lie straight from Mein Kampf and turned it into a fresh-faced art form.

 

That's the problem with the 'Bill of rights' some of the rights are neither self nor evident. they're just silly.

 

Too much self-entitlement is what has led America to where it is now.

 

The fact is that 30% of the population will think absolutely anything at all. Because, well 30% of the population think that the world is flat, aliens live on earth etc etc etc etc etc. These people should not have the right to bear arms or decide whether or not someone should be put to death after carefully weighing up the evidence.

That's my opinion. I'm expressing it and that's a fact.

[Winstonm]

These Tech Companies Want Pay Cuts for Remote Workers

 

For companies in high cost areas with fierce competition for workers, reduced pay for those moving to, or already in, low cost areas seems like sound business sense to me.

 

UNION!

[Cyberyeti]

And what would you be a CEO of? Exactly? .

 

Pilowsky - this has already been happening for years, a back office insurance company job I used to do disappeared, the department was moved to India. Some of the IT function for that insurance company is also already done in India and has been for years. Covid will merely accelerate this.

[pilowsky]

America declares independence from Britain because the British were taxing them

The South fights the war of Northern aggression because they want free labour. They lose. The North takes away their slaves.

American industry becomes very technical but they have no slaves.

What to do? Wait, we'll use cheap labour in other countries and cheap labour from other countries in America, but we won't let them become citizens so we don't have to pay them and if they complain we can say that they are taking our jobs and send them back. YAY, problem solved.

 

The other countries start to copy the technology...

 

 

 

 

[kenberg]

Were they bridge partners?

 

No, but it's a good point. I have a long standing opinion that when the defense fails to set a contract that should have gone down, the first person who starts yelling is the person who made the error.