whoooboyy

Parent poster said to stop voting for bad candidates. I said you would be mocked/judged/told off for doing so. And here we are.

Seattle has largely increased police funding, dramatically? For a dept under a consent decree until recently.

The mayor also capped non police crisis response teams to 24 people. Total. For the city. 24.

Seattle has done everything except defund the police, lol

Sounds like the government should step in and fix that then.

Why does queer liberation means defund the police sounds dumb to you?

You know that for generations the police have been beating, arresting, and accosting queer people just because they are queer, right? A practice that continues to this day? (Just this year, Seattle police raided gay bars because they were gay bars)

You know that defund is not the same as abolish, right? And that the nypd has an operating budget in the billions annually?

You know that queer health care, particularly access to prophylaxis and safe facilities is woefully under funded, resulting in high homeless, violence, and drug abuse rates in the queer population right?

And that when you put them all together you get, "taking money from the police, who have historically and contemporaneously abused queer people, and allocating those funds to the medical and social welfare of queer people would be liberatory".

That sure as shit doesn't sound dumb to me, that sounds extremely reasonable to be honest given the context, history, and needs of the queer community.

That's what people are saying when they say defund. Reduce funding for. Consistently this is what anyone who says defund the police has always meant. You gotta take off the tin foil hat, my guy.

"We'll find out" haha, you think he's going to shut down the nypd? They have an operating budget of what, $6 billion dollars annually?

He's not going to shut them down, you can't just stop a $6b organization. You can, however, defund it. Maybe they could do just fine with $5 billion. If the city has an extra billion to spend on building housing or improving transit or providing health care or services to the homeless... a billion dollars a year buys a lot of things.

Worse for who? Better for who? I guarantee you the people who live in the rent control apartments aren't thinking they are worse off from it.

We'll never know because RBG chose not to retire when Dems could have done anything, and every Dem after that just politely waited for GOP to take advantage of them. It's still happening with folks like Jeffries today being utterly willing to capitulate on policy if it means the institution is respected.

It wasn't hard to see at the time. People just thought the West Wing was how politics should work. That somehow all the players come to play good, fair ball. Many of us were out here caucusing against Obama and Gore and Biden because they represented an obvious losing strategy in the long term.

I'm sorry, I refuse to just simply not acknowledge the role liberalism has in the rise of fascism. Whether it's in the past or today, fascism don't just materialize because one guy talks good. It's neither incorrect nor inappropriate to say (neo)liberalism and austerity are direct antecedents to fascist rhetoric.

It's not both sidesing to identify and critique the role democrats had to play here, especially when I say the gop is clearly worse. A critical assessment of how the Dems failed to protect us is not only not helping the GOP, it's exactly the sort of root cause analysis that helps ensure the mid terms go OK.

Saying now's not the time to criticize Dems is the same sentiment that gets us "vote blue no matter who" when Biden runs but "I think we have to consider our options" when Mamdani runs. It's sticking your head in the sand rather than having to face the fact that the party has a losing platform.

Try telling people you voted third party because of a deeply held conviction about not electing corrupt politicians. You will be told you are evil, that you've got an unreasonable/impossible purity bar, that you don't really believe in that deeply held moral conviction actually, that you are worse than the people who voted for the other guy, that you are a utopian idealist, etc etc.

Don't get me wrong, I did vote third party and I will continue to do so if the Dems put up candidates like Harris and Biden. But don't expect most people to be willing to weather the storm of vitriol they'll receive for holding a high bar for their politicians.

Did you read my post, where I clearly said the GOP is worse?

Better is not the same as good. The Dems are better. They are still bad. Stop pretending "not the worst" is an acceptable bar.

FWIW, I've believed we've had an authoritarian in power for quite a while now. Obama, Trump, Biden, and Bush have all tried and succeeded in expanding executive power. They've all engaged in extrajudicial killings overseas.

Nothing sets me off like seeing people think this behavior from Trump doesn't have shared roots across both parties.

Biden kept kids in cages. Obama bombed weddings. Yes, the current admin is accelerating hard but like, prior admins were accelerating.

People should really try to stop thinking about politics like it's a two party game where you have to pick a side. Figure out your principles, and start finding candidates who match those principles.

Did a Ferengi write this post?

That's not incompatible with what I said, and indeed is largely what I attempted to convey.

Shit you don't need like what? Rent is over 40% of pre tax income for most Americans. Health care is 30% of income for lower income Americans.

That's not leaving a lot of space for food, clothing, heating, transportation, education, entertainment, etc.

So people's work shouldn't result in private housing? That's an acceptable outcome? I'm not clear what your insinuation is here. People should live in communal bunks but also be saving for retirement?

Note the parent said "voters" not people. Of the people who voted, yes, nearly half voted for this. You are correct it's a small minority of the populace, but not of voters.

FWIW, as a left of democrat voter, the Dems have been a corporate captured neoliberal party for 40 years. They spent a lot of time building the infrastructure for a Trump-like. Biden and Harris were uniquely poor opponents to run.

That doesn't absolve the republicans for turning to fascism, but we shouldn't say the Dems are blameless here.

I think you are right, but not thinking deeply enough. You point at the government, and the voting that led to it. 100% that's a step in the root cause chain.

But we cannot stop there, and needs ask why. There are structural forces that lead to this government, some of which are corporate. Fox and MSNBC exist to extract wealth from polarization, and have every incentive to drive wedges between us. Meta and X likewise get paid for optimizing engagement and hate drives engagement.

It's not all corporations, but they contribute to structural forces we're have to unwind as we also try to fix the government side too.

I think about rust, I program in rust. Now you mm know someone who does those things.

Median rent value in Seattle is $2300/month if you are looking for a one bedroom, a little cheaper if you are looking at a studio. Minimum wage here is $21/hr. The first quartile for rent is $1600.

Assuming you work full time, you are making $3360 a month, less taxes.

That means that even if you get the bottom 25% of rents, over half your take home pay goes to rent. Then we need health care, food, taxes, transportation, clothing, etc.

Not a lot of savings easily available there.

Free software is an anarchist mindset -- wellbeing for all, take what you need, contribute back where you can.

It's scary for folks who are used to transactional relationships to encounter these different mindsets.

Oh. No. Not in most jobs. Many jobs do provide some health care.

If you are working many jobs in the US you get no health care. You have to pay for it yourself. Even jobs that provide it you still need to pay for it. The employer basically pays a portion of the insurance bill. Good employers pay a lot, bad employers pay none.

Then you have deductibles. The amount you have to pay out of pocket every year before insurance does anything. If you have a ten thousand dollar deductible, insurance only kicks in at $10,001 and beyond.

I.... they are dealing with systemic poverty. Being poor is expensive. They absolutely know they need to save, but if the choice is "starve to death today but save for retirement OR don't die, but don't save for retirement" most people are going to choose the latter.

Incredible HN post. I'm hoping it's because you are from a country where people are generally well taken care of.

Yes, there are people who don't invest. Where do they keep their retirement savings? 40-50% of Americans, at least, simply have no retirement savings! Most people in America aren't earning enough to put away a meaningful amount for retirement. It's going to be grim as boomers and millennials hit retirement age and have to keep working.

Read "The Four Pillars of Investing". Basically index funds, diverse whole markets, leave it alone and watch it grow.

I did this at 22, and that seed money has grown a ton.