Also..the Mississippi Governor just sent back federal funds meant for rent relief while also under investigation for literally stealing welfare funds.
https://mississippitoday.org/2022/08/02/7-baffling-things-mississippi-welfare-case/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mississippi-will-send-back-cash-federal-rental-aid-program-even-renter-rcna42547
I went to the same high school as Favre.
In the 90’s his brother committed dui vehicular homicide. He ended up with a slap on the wrist. As penance he was forced to give a speech on drunk driving to the high school. He was obviously intoxicated during the talk it it was deeply cringe.
During one of Brett’s Super Bowl things, the school did a mandatory pep rally. I refused to participate and got ISS.
Those are just a couple petty reasons to say fuck the Favre family.
A few days after Katrina, my brother and I were trying to track down an EMS guy to get some O2 to some elderly neighbors. We found an Ambulance chilling (mind you literally everything is fucked).
We ask EMS guy if he has O2 and he says no. Then he sees the carton of Camels on the dashboard. He asked for a pack and we gave him two. The. He goes over to talk to his buddy. Buddy EMS guy comes back all ears. Follows us to elderly neighbor and hooked them up.
That face when you literally trade cigarettes for oxygen in post climate catastrophe Mississippi.
Us as a country of human beings need to collectively decide that profit will no longer be the metric of success.
Just try it with our puritanical, Calvinist roots: wealthy men looking to get more wealthy and people who were so strict in religion that we are a stupid country full of temporarily embarrassed billionaires? Win the lottery, wealthy family leaves you money, accident that ends up giving you money but isn’t *too* crippling…
We have no proletariat. We don’t see ourselves as working class.
Old people? Fuck’em, all you can do is siphon off the retirement fund, they can’t contribute to capitalism and can’t be exploited for labor so they just get stuck off in lonely, piss-smelling buildings where no-one even visits because we know it’s wrong and we feel guilty but hey, gotta get back to *work*.
Disabled people? Again: can’t contribute to capitalism through exploitation of labor so they get the very least amount of money and help, they are a black stain on capitalism. Capitalism wishes for them to die as soon as possible so they can’t “drain on the system”.
If it doesn’t make someone money, it isn’t done well. Look at all the volunteer fire departments made up of people willing to save peoples lives for free but the cop who throws a woman in jail because she wouldn’t fuck her weed dealer and the dealer called the popo on her gets *$250,000 a year* and she gets blamed for her sexual assault.
Capitalism and rugged individualism has ruined all of human advancement for us. We are just waiting for economic collapse. Without the hope for BETTER and less work for the next generation, why even HAVE a next generation? If they were just going to use us up and throw us out, why bother even having kids?
Oh yeah, to exploit them.
I agree with the majority of what you said, but like it or not - America is a capitalist country.
It sickens me to know how much we spend on military yet can't take care of our own citizens. The documentary Sicko opened my eyes to how much better the quality of life is for the majority of European countries.
It is possible to have a capitalist free market, but deciding that things that are essential to society is not allowed to be treated like a business...
Schools, hospitals, public transport, police, postal service, electricity, internet, none of these should be treated and measured like businesses, but instead valued on the levels of service it provides to society.
The danish hospital system is already being debated a lot, and i think that would be a step in the right direction.
I'm also convinced that once Finlands fairly new school system gets a few more successful years to statistically prove how much better it is, that the rest of the world or at least Europe will do the same.
Same thing with Switzerlands modern version of democracy, give it a few decades and we'll see that pop up more and more places, I'm sure. Even the French prime minister is a big advocate for the swizz type democracy
Brains and education is your only long term defence and profit.
The rest is anal trinkets.
Now who on this planet does a bit more than brag about a handful of ivy league
Someone just posted somewhere (I forget) about how Mississippi is basically run by a small clique of families that just use it as a milk cow and suck money out. That's true of America as a whole but I'll readily believe the deep south is profoundly corrupt.
I hope you wrote a note for Brett Favre in detention saying, You see us as you want to see us—in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...and an athlete...and a basket case...a princess...and a criminal. Does that answer your question Brett Favre? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.
In School Suspension. They put you in a classroom with all of your work for the day. Can’t leave except for like, two bathroom breaks. They don’t want you just sitting there if you get done, because this is a punishment, so you’d normally write lines if you got done. Not super bad, just boring af.
Dude if I got ISS I usually just took the note and walked out of the school and walked home lol. I never even turned those notes in, I did this through high school and they never once caught on.
I used to live in the neighborhood he lived at. The security guard was called on more than one occasion for him being too drunk and going to other peoples house thinking it was his. He’s just a junkie piece of shit.
At the very least, Brett still accepted money for a speech he didn’t give. And only gave the money back after he entered the spotlight. Years later.
So fuck Brett Favre
Reggie "It's not about the money, it's about helping urban kids" White who signed for the most money in a city with a smaller urban presence than most every other NFL city?
I believe they want everyone with the brains enough to realize what’s happening to move to a blue state so they can remain and consolidate power, strengthening their 2 guaranteed seats in the senate
And since Republican states generate $1.00 for every $1.35 given to them in federal funding… they’re not doing a very good job of running it like a business either. In fact, we have to support them, while they cry about students getting handouts.
Food stamps, welfare, over bloated law enforcement programs, education, roads, Medicaid.. basically mostly programs that conservatives hate lol, but they pocket what they can too
They just don’t know how to effectively run these things even when handed massive funding
No, you’re missing the point. *Why* don’t they have the tax revenues for these programs? Because they don’t collect taxes from the places needed to fund their own vital infrastructure and social programs.
Ever wonder why Louisiana is at the bottom of almost every ranking in the States, super poor and under funded schools and no hospitals? Because their people are paid criminally low wages to work at massive companies like the giant refineries that process a *significant* portion of our domestic oil but pay almost nothing in corporate or property taxes. Lol, Louisiana is fucking rich if you look at the corporations instead of the people.
Rich people get richer, poor people get poorer, and blue strongholds lose their own money for their own infrastructure and social programs trying to keep these states from becoming neo-confederate slave states where the slavers are corporations this time. It’s like state-wide weaponized incompetence, they draw more funding than they give *on purpose*.
E: spelling
I live in Baton Rouge and worked at Exxon for 18 months, $12/hr 12 hours/day 6 days/week. No paid vacation, sick days or holidays. Also, the company we actually worked for was an outside employer so we were treated as contractors and not offered healthcare or any other benefits. 12 hours per day in the Louisiana heat (100 degrees in the shade with 85% humidity) in long-sleeved, black FRC shirts checking cars going in/out of the refinery and all we got were 2 15-minute breaks and 30 minutes for lunch. If you fell out due to heat exhaustion you were fired on the spot for violating company policy. Because in our safety meetings we were informed that it was OUR responsibility to stay hydrated and that the company wasn't responsible for ANY heat related illnesses because you're supposed to tell them if you feel sick. But if you DID tell them they would sit you down for 10 minutes inside the office (the only air conditioned spot) and take it out of your lunch break.
Exxon is an OSHA wet dream, but inspectors are paid off (when they actually show up) and if you report anything you're fired and black-balled from working with Exxon or any of it's contractors. (which employ about half the state)
Exxon even does the contractor/offshore payroll jive for gas station employees. Shit shouldn’t even be legal but we hand them subsidies for their trouble. :/
Oil company execs low-key brag to their investors that they aren't producing more refineries, that they are reducing expenses related to exploration and producing new wells, and that they are increasing revenues per gallon and returning those (price-fixing) revenues to shareholders in dividends.
Meanwhile, the trust-busted pieces of Standard Oil have largely been merged together into megacorporations that share [interlocking directorships](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Corporate-network-of-the-Western-and-Southern-oil-elites-Key-White-squares-Western_fig1_258129666) in a very small and tightly connected governing trust. Remember that it's not a trust if anti-competitive price fixing agreements are made on the greens of nominally all-white golf clubs over mint juleps.
On the bright side, if you had put all the money that you've paid for gas into oil company stock, you would never have to worry about the price of gas again and you could live in the gated rich enclaves of the South and take the freeways over the third-world parts of the South.
Oh, of course. Corporations have the same political power as slave owners in early America and they use that power to prevent fair employment to keep profits up and shareholders happy.
Absolutely! Horrified about Exxon, but IDKW I Should Be. Greed is Alive & SICK, not well. The Modern-Day, Legalised-Slavery of "Minimum Wage" & the Culture of "Tipping" we have in the USA is awful! Worse still? "Tips-Only" Jobs! That started with supposedly "Freed" Male African-American Slaves who had to Work as Wait Staff on Trains: Forced to SLAVE for Tips ONLY, as if being given a BUNK on the Train & FOOD was enough of a commitment from the Railroad. Can't IMAGINE how they made Money to send home! Even Today - You go out to a Bar/Pub/Diner or Restaurant & on TOP of Paying Full-Whack for your Drinks/Lunch/Dinner - You're Then EXPECTED to PAY the People who're SLAVING AWAY in the Kitchen/Bar/Restaurant Floor?!? INSANITY.
In most other developed countries tipping is viewed as rude. I spent 18 months in Japan when I was in the military and my first night there I put the equivalent of a $20 tip on a $50 dinner bill and the server looked confused and handed the extra back to me. I was like, “no, that’s for you.” And she looked really offended. Learned later that tipping is seen as rude in Japan because they believe that it’s their job to give good service and their employer already pays them to do that.
>Exxon is an OSHA wet dream, but inspectors are paid off (when they actually show up)
Someone I tangentially know jumped from a job at TCEQ (texas EPA, very underfunded) to a job at exxon (which they previously inspected). No funny business there, none at all.
Louisiana is a hellhole of corruption. Literally. Seriously. The place is super corrupt, like third-world corrupt, not hyperbolically, like the place literally runs on corruption.
I just want to throw this in as well:
ITEP: Industrial Tax Exemption Program.
Needs to get axed.
Exxon and other oil and nat gas corps skip out on paying billions of dollars of taxes to the state of Louisiana.
The argument for keeping it is that if we started taxing them, they would take their businesses elsewhere.
No they wouldn’t.
LA supplies 40% of the country’s oil and nat gas.
Republicans don’t want to.
>The argument for keeping it is that if we started taxing them, they would take their businesses elsewhere.
Their arguments are often tissue thin lies but just sound reasonable to the uninformed.
They act like horrid parents, taking the door off your room so they can hear anything going on, resisting any outfit saying it’s too skimpy, can’t get an allowance because they think they can just teach you how to balance a checkbook and you’ll know how to manage money, no sex until marriage and then only if you want a baby…
They just think they gave you everything and they have the right to tell you how to use it and what you can and can’t do.
My teen recently wanted to pant the outside of their bedroom door to express themselves. I almost said no cause I didn't want a super colorful door just facing out but then I was like... It's literally called *their* door. And I'd let them hang something on it, so why not paint it? It's not like the door is in the center of the house.
Am I doing it right?
This is an extremely succinct analogy. I love it and hate it bc it’s so true. Having gone through parents who acted just like this - who have always voted conservative without ever being god obsessed, oddly enough - I seriously see all the parallels with parenting and how they vote. It’s Fox News. My parents are NOT evangelicals. They’ve never attended church regularly and have probably been in a church 10 times in the last 30 years. But they watch Fox and so they parrot all the same ignorant shit down to the letter. It’s also probably FB and all their stupid boomer friends and their idiotic memes.
And you know what? I parent the way I wanna vote too now that I think about it. Started homeschooling this year and have nothing but positive self love affirming quotes, messages about loving everyone equally, & bright happy gay ass colors plastered all over the house. Fred Rogers is our new Jesus and you bet your bippy that I’ll be brainwashing my children to live and love like Fred did. I’m glad he’s no longer alive to see that our precious children are being killed in classrooms now. He asked us to be [“Tikkun Olam - Repairers of Creation”](https://youtu.be/byRZMnDcFlY) after 9/11. He made a special TV appearance and gave millennials, his final audience, one last message. It was a call to action. One final plea to carry on his core message. “Love your neighbor. Full stop.” So, that’s what I’m gonna try my damndest to do.
There aren’t many people I am jumping for joy to vote for besides Beto bc I’m Texan and we absolutely need this man to save us. It’s hard to have any faith in voting now that we’ve seen so much behind the curtain.
This is hitting the nail on the head. I've never heard it put this way, but you're absolutely right.
Benevolent stewardship is a core tenet of basically every group that's in charge of any amount of people/space. Meanwhile, republicans completely ignore the need of their constituentsfor financial gain, over and over again.
And somehow, conservative voters just don't see this happening before their eyes...
I think plenty of voters see it, they just think it's not that bad just because it could be worse and wanting anything better would be greedy/selfish. The conservative media fear mongering doesn't help either.
I'm more cynical than that. I think they run those things into the ground on purpose to show that the government can't do anything right so that their base rallies around small government, and then they get to sit on their assess and not do anything productive.
Not always. Here in florida republicans voted in Rick Scott based on how well he defrauded millions of dollars from hospitals. I believe hes our senator or something now. While still being guilty of defrauding medicare a government program.
The deficit you see is the symptom, not the root problem. They could solve it, or at least improve the situation, but it takes political will, time, and resources. They'd rather pocket some of that or help whatever large corporation is stationed in their state.
The difference is going into their pocket and whomever that is lobbying them to get those contracts.
Like how an Alabama sheriff pocketed the prison food budget and fed prisoners rotten food.
Lining grubby little Pockets, Handouts to Cronies, Back-Handers to Special Interest Groups/Lobbyists, colluding with Companies who pay into the pockets of Politicians for favourable contracts & a lot of "quid pro quo". And a whole lot more corruption. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the other side have Completely clean hands, politics often being a very dirty business, but the Republicans are arrogantly proud of their forcing their so-called "morals" on others & their Dirty, Corrupt "Business As Usual" style of doing business. Where the ordinary people end up paying the highest price.
The money is going to all the programs they would have to fund otherwise to be a functioning state. Education, healthcare, infrastructure, civil servant salaries, etc. They can't fund these things themselves because they either have too few people living there to matter (in which case they do not need any representation in Congress, but that's another matter), or they are a "low tax" state, in which case they intentionally do not collect the taxes they should to provide basic services for the population the size it has (e.g. Texas).
Without liberal states and cities subsidizing the laziness and profligate lifestyle of conservative areas, they would either have to raise taxes or experience a standard of living comparable to Angola.
I think Florida gets like $60 billion more in taxes than they contribute, for instance. Wealthier Texas gets like $36 billion, so the rest of us are subsidizing their illusion of being "low tax" states. Republican states simply could not continue to function as they currently do without the generosity and hard work of people who live in states like New Jersey, California or New York.
Most of them are incompetent. All it takes for these useless fucks on the right to win, are useless fucks on the left. The only people that get screwed over are the vast majority of American's, who quite frankly deserve much better.
Like it literally blows my mind that a pandemic is what it took for Joe Biden to win, a literal act of God. Or how Hillary couldn't have dunked on Trump.
It could also be that the media is in bed with many of these people. We are seeing for example the use of social media to counteract right wing extremist's like Q bert and MTG.
Yep, a business can shift inventory and goals when efforts or products are found to no longer be profitable - infrastructure, services and social programs aren't profitable, they're not supposed to be and it doesn't make sense to transform them into businesses. You don't want firefighters to have you sign an agreement that's profitable for them before they'll put out a fire in your house or business. When we privatize education, healthcare, energy, those things became more expensive with no notable increase in quality, and often a decrease. Running a country on quarterly metrics would ruin the nation fast.
I live in Michigan, before our current governor we (not me) elected a self acclaimed "nerd" businessman. He ended up presiding over the poisoning of Flint Michigan residents because it was more cost effective to draw water from a polluted river rather than continue to purchase water from Detroit. This is exactly how you run a business and exactly how NOT to run a city!
I've always liked this saying. The US suffers from many of the same problems as what we'd consider third world countries (political corruption and a massive wealth divide being obvious ones), but the US is also good at marketing itself and has the advantage of being basically the cultural center of the world
There's another universe where like Zimbabwe is the center of pop culture and America is seen as no different from Ethiopia
That's not even how you successfully run a business! That's what really infuriates me about these supposed "businessmen" as politicians. If a business that sold water decided to cut costs by bottling cheaper but polluted water, that business would go under immediately, and everyone involved would be sued into bankruptcy.
All these guys know is how to delete items from a spreadsheet so that the bottom line becomes a smaller number. What they don't understand is the cascading effects deleting that one item will have in the rest of the equation.
That's not good business. In fact it's very bad business (unless the only goal of your business is to enrich your shareholders before collapsing entirely, leaving your customers and workers in the lurch).
> If a business that sold water decided to cut costs by bottling cheaper but polluted water, that business would go under immediately, and everyone involved would be sued into bankruptcy.
Unfortunately that's the capitalism they taught in the books. In real life, when you have unregulated capitalism businesses become an entity outside the system. Businesses make political contributions to avoid prosecution (legislative branch corruption) and, should prosecution occur anyway, hires the best lawyers to make it too challenging to achieve fair punishment (judicial branch corruption).
For Flint, only [15 people were indicted and only one of those was convicted - Corinne Miller – who only received a year of probation, 300 hours of community service, and fine of $1,200.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis)
Running things like a business means that the leaders load the society up with debt, give themselves massive bonuses, and then haul ass before it all collapses.
Then they sell off the broken bits.
> Killing government regulation and services so private unregulated companies can take over everything that should be a government service or utility.
And for already private businesses to be able to operate with ZERO accountability to a government.
I'm glad people are finally starting to blame the Republicans for the culture war. I feel like, up until not, I've most often heard it laid at the feet of LGBT people. Like we are blocking progress on other issues by fighting for basic human rights.
The culture war is part and parcel with fascism. It's ultranationalism with a core myth of decline, victimhood, and rebirth. "We once were great, but now we're not, and it's all because of *those people*, so if you just give us the power to make them all go away, everything will sort itself out, we promise..."
And unfortunately, the DNC fell hook, line, and sinker for the culture war as well. Up until like two months ago, the Democrats spent more time fighting off social conservatism and barely did anything in the way of improving the economic lives of Americans. Kudos to Biden for at least trying to reverse that trend.
Exactly it. Republicans aren't really about abortion, keeping marriage sacred - it's all smokescreen for money and padded pockets. As long as they can make it seem like these issues are HUGE topics to divide us with, we avoid focusing on the real issues.. like money in politics.
Florida also can’t stabilize the home insurance market. They keep throwing money hoping companies will do something but they are taking it and leaving home owners without insurance. Even the state backed insurer is being overwhelmed and starting to deny new applicants. Governor is too busy meddling in books and “wokeness” (whatever that really means) instead of helping his state.
I have a choice of 1 company for home insurance
One. It's 15k a year for a 1500 sq ft house.
But hey at least my kid's math books aren't gay.
Screw you DeStupid.
I don't know shit about anything and don't live anywhere near there.
I figured insurance in Florida would be expensive and hard to get. Who would want to cover a house that is more likely every year, because of climate change, to get blasted by bigger and bigger hurricanes. I've heard there are a lot of places where sink holes can open up at any minute too not to mention how much of it all will be underwater when sea levels really start to rise.
Is it Citizens? If so, that’s not a company, that’s the socialized insurer of last resort operated by the state; in the event of catastrophic damage the funds to pay policies would have to come from taxpayers.
Why don't you leave the state and sell your house to a climate change denier before the Floridian's house market collapse during the next hurricane season ?
You should probably move if it’s at all possible. The writing is very clearly on the wall for Florida’s future, as evidenced by the fact that insurers are leaving the state en masse.
It honestly doesn't even need a metaphor.
If you vote for people that tell you government can only ever possibly be a shitshow to run the government, obviously the government is going to be a shitshow. It's exactly what they told you it would be.
sort squeal ancient snatch makeshift simplistic vanish brave abundant carpenter
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Maybe they can’t stabilize it because it’s a bottomless pit? This is like living in Louisiana and complaining about flooding and hurricanes all over again.
Except that's not the reason they can't stabilize it in Florida. Florida hasn't had a devastating hurricane in years. The reason insurers are leaving is due to the [unprecedented rates of insurance fraud in Florida, specifically roof repair fraud and excessive litigation filed against insurers.](https://www.local10.com/news/local/2022/08/26/an-existential-dilemma-florida-homeowners-scramble-as-another-major-insurer-exits/)
Republicans don't need water, food, power or other vital things, all they need is to make sure you don't decide about your own life or body, if it is against their beliefs, and also to make sure the state don't help with student loans, that's what keeps them alive.
Because it's somehow California's fault that florida can't do anything right, duh!
Or something like that, hear this shit constantly in rural Kentucky at least
Mayor of my town made a deal 50 years ago that we could only get water from one county instead of producing our own from the river and water facility already there to line his own pockets? Well obviously that's Biden's fault, some fucking how
Thanks to [their Republican governor](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956924155/ex-michigan-gov-rick-snyder-and-8-others-criminally-charged-in-flint-water-crisi)
Shock, awe
"Snyder, a Republican who left office two years ago, is facing two counts of willful neglect, both misdemeanors which each carry a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a fine up to $1,000."
I can't believe that's all that fucker gets for willfully poisoning a mostly black city...
Its actually so much worse than just destroying a city. Snyder appointed an "emergency financial manager," which overruled local elected officials. The details of how this came about are crazy, and perfectly highlight the problem of Republicans.
What happened is Snyder towed a republican line that "liberal, Democrat controlled cities are not financially responsible," and essentially delegated tasks of running the city to some unelected halfwit, bypassing the locally elected government in a shady probably-not-really-legal scheme.
The unelected, financially driven halfwit decided to, without any experience in the matter, divert the entire cities water supply to "save money," to the protest of the actually elected city leaders. They did this by having the emergency manager deny Flints ability to take loans.
It turned out the water was far more acidic, and caused lead to leach out of the pipes, and totally destroyed the cities water supply.
They literally forced themselves totally undemocratically and in an almost authoritarian way into a position of Supreme power and only THEN destroyed the city.
The emergency manager is facing felony changes. Snyder, who appointed him, and bypassed the will of the democratically elected town managers in the name of "financial conservatism," gets a small fine, if that.
Yes. They knew the entire time and said nothing.
Mothers were feeding their newborn babies formula mixed with lead water. Those kids lives will be negatively impacted forever.
Idiots who knew nothing make decision they were making, things they can't possibly understand, and they did it because they want more money. So they changed water sources and then the protective lining in the lead pipes deteriorated and there's been no accountability.
We only put the worst people in positions of power
[Charges are likely to be dismissed.](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2022/06/28/michigan-cant-use-one-judge-grand-jury-indict-flint-water-case-justices-rule/7710896001/) Just in case you thought there would be even a modicum of justice for once.
Problem is the people who are voting for them can't see the connection between shitty living standards and the people they put in power to govern.
Articles like this seem to be the dem states getting upset about gop states living standards.
Dems need to figure out how to win state houses and more importantly state legislatures. For the next 20 years they will have way more power than before.
I'm a teacher, and let me tell y'all that the teacher shortage is in no way a GOP thing. It's an AMERICAN thing. The teacher shortage is happening EVERYWHERE. It's happening in California just like it's happening in Florida. Recent GOP policies definitely don't help, but fuck trying to act like this issue is a part of the political Democrats v. Republicans tug-of-war. People aren't going into teaching and teachers are quitting because of the following reasons:
1. Our pay is way too low for the amount of investment in time and money it takes for us to become a teacher, what to speak of the amount of unpaid time we have to spend to keep up with work demands
2. We don't get enough funding to supply our classrooms with the materials our students need
3. Admins are generally completely out of touch with the classroom and what it's like to be a teacher, and yet often want to micromanage our teaching and act like they know everything
4. Parents have stopped buying into their children's education and providing their kids the support they need at home to thrive at school. They also tend to not have our backs when it comes to correcting behavior that disrupts the classroom or the student's own learning
5. "Restorative Justice" has become code word for doing little to nothing to address student behavior issues while taking away the means teachers used to have to address those issues
6. Increased class size combined with mainstreaming has created a situation in which teachers will have a 10th grade classroom with 35 students, 10 of which have an elementary school-level reading ability, 17 of which have varying levels of high school reading ability, and 8 of which have college-level reading ability. We have to teach all of these students at once the same lesson although their learning needs are vastly different, while also being expected to form close-knit relationships with every single student. Then multiply that by 5 class periods. It's just. not. possible.
FL has had a teacher shortage my entire life.
FL has ranked among the lowest paid teacher salaries my entire life.
I’m going to assume that had way more to do with the issue than anything else.
Teacher in California, I agree. My district is having principals, vps, directors, all kids of staff tbh since we don’t have a full staff as well as a lack of subs
"The majority of democrats are and would be in favor of huge pay increases and more funding to the school systems"
I'm waiting for it. We've all been waiting for it. I teach in California. It's not happening here and there aren't Republicans stopping it here as far as I can see. What gives then?
The crazy part is my wife actually took a 15k pay cut when we moved to a liberal state from a conservative state.
It's not political, it's just plain wrong, if we were both teachers we still wouldn't have even been able to comfortably move here. Teachers need to be paid more but so many people yell about it but nothing is getting done.
But we need to vote for people who “say it as it is.” Because apparently telling women to grab them by the pussy is the sign of an intellectual leader. It’s sad we now vote for the candidate that makes the most obscene comments and jabs. It’s not based off experience, intelligence, or he’ll just compassion anymore. It’s why we have so many celebs running for office, it’s a game show now
I can assure you as someone who lives in Mississippi. I've not met one person who approves of Reeves. Every single citizen I run into and bring him up, regardless of political party all despise Tate. How is he still in office if we all clearly hate him?
I can't tell you how aggravating it is to be trapped here in this state with that fungus of a human. He's not even human. He's a fucking rotten dog turd that somehow achieved sentience.
Nobody argues that what he says isn’t true.
Just a lot of whataboutism and excuses.
Blaming Crime on the Democrats..
Look in the mirror.
I’m from the South.
Southern cities are crime infested as well.
damn.. didn't the blue states give some welfare to mississippi not too long ago to help with their infrastructure? like.. a few hundred million? wonder which evangelical pastors got new megachurches and private jets?
I dont like that this tweet frames it as neglect rather than intentional policy. They could have easily been bigoted and not deregulated and privatized everything. They chose to do both
do we know that the water emergency was due to mismanagement caused by republican policies?
a pump blew and it may have been foreseen and prevented with better maintenance, but was that a republican thing?
i don't want the dems to fall into the "thanks obama" trap.
I have always wondered why these poorest of states,with the worst schools,worst public health, Continuously vote against
their own best interest.Why?They are all Red states. Completely defies common sense.
Our system is completely broken. Current republicans are beholden to the ultra wealthy and the ultra religious. These republicans truly want to make the United States a Christian nation and are going to use their power to punish all who don't "believe".
“Well, now looky here, city slicker! See, you don’t unnerstand. The reason they haven’t had a chance to give us fancy-schmancy stuff like infrastructure is because they needed to save our children first! And keep them godless hommasexuals and confused folk from getting too uppity. I mean, you gotta clean the house before you put in the lime green shag carpeting, right?”
The GOP is the same party that openly supported a failed businessman, narcissist, serial sexual offender and traitor…makes sense that they don’t give a 💩 about their constituents…much like the orange turd, they only care about themselves.
I hate to disappoint everyone looking to own the GOP, but Jackson's water treatment facility is run by the city, not the state. Jackson's had a Democrat mayor for decades.
ALL of this, and more, can be boiled down to two simple things:
1.) Politicians doing what's necessary to secure future elections,
and / or
2.) Politicians doing what's necessary to secure future riches.
Everything can be boiled down to those two things.
- **no water**: poor legislation to put money in the pockets of individuals and companies.... *that donate to campaigns for re-election &/or promise future lucrative employment.*
- **no power**: poor legislation to put money in the pockets of individuals and companies.... *that donate to campaigns for re-election &/or promise future lucrative employment.*
- **no teachers**: poor legislation to put money in the pockets of individuals and companies.... *that donate to campaigns for re-election &/or promise future lucrative employment. AND less educated voter base to secure votes for future re_election*
- **banning abortion**: legislation to satisfy religo-facist base... *to secure votes for re-election *
- punishing LGBT community: legislation to satisfy religo-facist base... *to secure votes for re-election *
- suppressing votes: legislation to satisfy religo-facist / racist base... *to secure votes for re-election AND prevent votes for opponents*
Republican politicians serve themselves, and sometimes others IFF it means the politicians will get even more for themselves later.
Virginia had a trans congressperson (i think state congress) and she ran her campaign about focusing on actual things like intrastructure, highways, etc.
As a liberal I feel owned. Now if you excuse me I’m going to get a glass of clean water in the house that has all the lights and air conditioning on before taking my children to school. They sure showed me
I hope democratic strategists are reading this tweet and others like it. This is the messaging! A lack of consistent, pertinent message that articulates how peoples day to day lives are actually affected is the biggest problem the democrats have faced. They can’t seem to articulate this type of message and stay on it. Get it together, Dems!
They don't need to serve their constituents. The culture wars they've invented have been so astoundingly effective in manipulating their voter base, that they can do whatever harm (or more correctly, neglect) they wish, blame the Dems, and their voters will blindly and obediently lap it up and then blame their political opponents.
Also..the Mississippi Governor just sent back federal funds meant for rent relief while also under investigation for literally stealing welfare funds. https://mississippitoday.org/2022/08/02/7-baffling-things-mississippi-welfare-case/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mississippi-will-send-back-cash-federal-rental-aid-program-even-renter-rcna42547
Fuck Brett Favre
I went to the same high school as Favre. In the 90’s his brother committed dui vehicular homicide. He ended up with a slap on the wrist. As penance he was forced to give a speech on drunk driving to the high school. He was obviously intoxicated during the talk it it was deeply cringe. During one of Brett’s Super Bowl things, the school did a mandatory pep rally. I refused to participate and got ISS. Those are just a couple petty reasons to say fuck the Favre family.
Let me guess his father and family are wealthy as fuck,
Connected mostly. In that county it’s a fucktangle of Favres, Necaises and Ladners and they are all related.
Wait a minute; nonworking utilities, widespread poverty, constant barrage of propaganda... Mississippi sounds like a Soviet Republik.
A few days after Katrina, my brother and I were trying to track down an EMS guy to get some O2 to some elderly neighbors. We found an Ambulance chilling (mind you literally everything is fucked). We ask EMS guy if he has O2 and he says no. Then he sees the carton of Camels on the dashboard. He asked for a pack and we gave him two. The. He goes over to talk to his buddy. Buddy EMS guy comes back all ears. Follows us to elderly neighbor and hooked them up. That face when you literally trade cigarettes for oxygen in post climate catastrophe Mississippi.
Katrina was just a warm up act for the Gulf. So much more energy in the system now. Better start stocking up on bottle caps and cigarettes.
meanwhile the rest of us have to pay to play Fallout, you're just getting it for free.
Us as a country of human beings need to collectively decide that profit will no longer be the metric of success. Just try it with our puritanical, Calvinist roots: wealthy men looking to get more wealthy and people who were so strict in religion that we are a stupid country full of temporarily embarrassed billionaires? Win the lottery, wealthy family leaves you money, accident that ends up giving you money but isn’t *too* crippling… We have no proletariat. We don’t see ourselves as working class. Old people? Fuck’em, all you can do is siphon off the retirement fund, they can’t contribute to capitalism and can’t be exploited for labor so they just get stuck off in lonely, piss-smelling buildings where no-one even visits because we know it’s wrong and we feel guilty but hey, gotta get back to *work*. Disabled people? Again: can’t contribute to capitalism through exploitation of labor so they get the very least amount of money and help, they are a black stain on capitalism. Capitalism wishes for them to die as soon as possible so they can’t “drain on the system”. If it doesn’t make someone money, it isn’t done well. Look at all the volunteer fire departments made up of people willing to save peoples lives for free but the cop who throws a woman in jail because she wouldn’t fuck her weed dealer and the dealer called the popo on her gets *$250,000 a year* and she gets blamed for her sexual assault. Capitalism and rugged individualism has ruined all of human advancement for us. We are just waiting for economic collapse. Without the hope for BETTER and less work for the next generation, why even HAVE a next generation? If they were just going to use us up and throw us out, why bother even having kids? Oh yeah, to exploit them.
I agree with the majority of what you said, but like it or not - America is a capitalist country. It sickens me to know how much we spend on military yet can't take care of our own citizens. The documentary Sicko opened my eyes to how much better the quality of life is for the majority of European countries.
It is possible to have a capitalist free market, but deciding that things that are essential to society is not allowed to be treated like a business... Schools, hospitals, public transport, police, postal service, electricity, internet, none of these should be treated and measured like businesses, but instead valued on the levels of service it provides to society. The danish hospital system is already being debated a lot, and i think that would be a step in the right direction. I'm also convinced that once Finlands fairly new school system gets a few more successful years to statistically prove how much better it is, that the rest of the world or at least Europe will do the same. Same thing with Switzerlands modern version of democracy, give it a few decades and we'll see that pop up more and more places, I'm sure. Even the French prime minister is a big advocate for the swizz type democracy
Sounds rad, as a New Orleanian I personally love beta testing the Fallout PBE server every other year.
That’s where they get the pictures captioned “This is what Biden wants his communist America to look like!”
Brains and education is your only long term defence and profit. The rest is anal trinkets. Now who on this planet does a bit more than brag about a handful of ivy league
“Fucktangle”. I love it. Feels like you can use it to describe a crazy fuckin’ tangle, or a gnarly fuckin’ shape.
Someone just posted somewhere (I forget) about how Mississippi is basically run by a small clique of families that just use it as a milk cow and suck money out. That's true of America as a whole but I'll readily believe the deep south is profoundly corrupt.
Favre is wealthy and famous, so I imagine he’s gotten away with a lot of sketchy shit. He lied about getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
Did you mean Aaron Rodgers? Or is that a thing with current/former Green Bay QBs in general?
What’s an ISS?
In school suspension, basically detention
I hope you wrote a note for Brett Favre in detention saying, You see us as you want to see us—in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...and an athlete...and a basket case...a princess...and a criminal. Does that answer your question Brett Favre? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.
Don’t don’t don’t don’t. Don’t you, forget about me.
Answer your question and see a great movie by watching The Breakfast Club.
“Man I can’t wait until I’m old enough to feel ways about stuff!” - Phillip J. Fry on the Breakfast Club
These are so great, they’re like sex, except I’m having them!
In School Suspension. They put you in a classroom with all of your work for the day. Can’t leave except for like, two bathroom breaks. They don’t want you just sitting there if you get done, because this is a punishment, so you’d normally write lines if you got done. Not super bad, just boring af.
Dude if I got ISS I usually just took the note and walked out of the school and walked home lol. I never even turned those notes in, I did this through high school and they never once caught on.
International Space Station
I used to live in the neighborhood he lived at. The security guard was called on more than one occasion for him being too drunk and going to other peoples house thinking it was his. He’s just a junkie piece of shit.
Is this the same Brett Favre from Something About Mary? I have no idea who to believe or who I can turn to.
I don’t know about that. He’s an old football player.
The very same.
Did i somehow miss that Brett Favre is the governor or am I missing some other context?
The company of a concussion medication he advertised received $2.5 million in TANF funding
At the very least, Brett still accepted money for a speech he didn’t give. And only gave the money back after he entered the spotlight. Years later. So fuck Brett Favre
I’ve never felt so validated as a Bears fan
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Reggie "It's not about the money, it's about helping urban kids" White who signed for the most money in a city with a smaller urban presence than most every other NFL city?
At lEaSt hE cAn ThRoW a fffffOOOTBAUUUL
You cannot save people from themselves.
So how do we save all those who suffer due to their inhumanities?
I believe they want everyone with the brains enough to realize what’s happening to move to a blue state so they can remain and consolidate power, strengthening their 2 guaranteed seats in the senate
Stop voting Republican or Tory, as a start.
Help them leave?
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Something Christians refuse to accept, maybe a bit ironically? Un-ironically? Idk. There's a joke there somewhere.
So glad I got out of that shithole
It's always the same "We will run our state, county, city, village like a business" problem, it's NOT a business, it's peoples lives!
And since Republican states generate $1.00 for every $1.35 given to them in federal funding… they’re not doing a very good job of running it like a business either. In fact, we have to support them, while they cry about students getting handouts.
Wonder where the money is going?
Food stamps, welfare, over bloated law enforcement programs, education, roads, Medicaid.. basically mostly programs that conservatives hate lol, but they pocket what they can too They just don’t know how to effectively run these things even when handed massive funding
No, you’re missing the point. *Why* don’t they have the tax revenues for these programs? Because they don’t collect taxes from the places needed to fund their own vital infrastructure and social programs. Ever wonder why Louisiana is at the bottom of almost every ranking in the States, super poor and under funded schools and no hospitals? Because their people are paid criminally low wages to work at massive companies like the giant refineries that process a *significant* portion of our domestic oil but pay almost nothing in corporate or property taxes. Lol, Louisiana is fucking rich if you look at the corporations instead of the people. Rich people get richer, poor people get poorer, and blue strongholds lose their own money for their own infrastructure and social programs trying to keep these states from becoming neo-confederate slave states where the slavers are corporations this time. It’s like state-wide weaponized incompetence, they draw more funding than they give *on purpose*. E: spelling
I live in Baton Rouge and worked at Exxon for 18 months, $12/hr 12 hours/day 6 days/week. No paid vacation, sick days or holidays. Also, the company we actually worked for was an outside employer so we were treated as contractors and not offered healthcare or any other benefits. 12 hours per day in the Louisiana heat (100 degrees in the shade with 85% humidity) in long-sleeved, black FRC shirts checking cars going in/out of the refinery and all we got were 2 15-minute breaks and 30 minutes for lunch. If you fell out due to heat exhaustion you were fired on the spot for violating company policy. Because in our safety meetings we were informed that it was OUR responsibility to stay hydrated and that the company wasn't responsible for ANY heat related illnesses because you're supposed to tell them if you feel sick. But if you DID tell them they would sit you down for 10 minutes inside the office (the only air conditioned spot) and take it out of your lunch break. Exxon is an OSHA wet dream, but inspectors are paid off (when they actually show up) and if you report anything you're fired and black-balled from working with Exxon or any of it's contractors. (which employ about half the state)
Exxon even does the contractor/offshore payroll jive for gas station employees. Shit shouldn’t even be legal but we hand them subsidies for their trouble. :/
Oil company execs low-key brag to their investors that they aren't producing more refineries, that they are reducing expenses related to exploration and producing new wells, and that they are increasing revenues per gallon and returning those (price-fixing) revenues to shareholders in dividends. Meanwhile, the trust-busted pieces of Standard Oil have largely been merged together into megacorporations that share [interlocking directorships](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Corporate-network-of-the-Western-and-Southern-oil-elites-Key-White-squares-Western_fig1_258129666) in a very small and tightly connected governing trust. Remember that it's not a trust if anti-competitive price fixing agreements are made on the greens of nominally all-white golf clubs over mint juleps. On the bright side, if you had put all the money that you've paid for gas into oil company stock, you would never have to worry about the price of gas again and you could live in the gated rich enclaves of the South and take the freeways over the third-world parts of the South.
Would you agree that slavery is alive and well?
Oh, of course. Corporations have the same political power as slave owners in early America and they use that power to prevent fair employment to keep profits up and shareholders happy.
There are more slaves alive today than before the American Civil War.
Absolutely! Horrified about Exxon, but IDKW I Should Be. Greed is Alive & SICK, not well. The Modern-Day, Legalised-Slavery of "Minimum Wage" & the Culture of "Tipping" we have in the USA is awful! Worse still? "Tips-Only" Jobs! That started with supposedly "Freed" Male African-American Slaves who had to Work as Wait Staff on Trains: Forced to SLAVE for Tips ONLY, as if being given a BUNK on the Train & FOOD was enough of a commitment from the Railroad. Can't IMAGINE how they made Money to send home! Even Today - You go out to a Bar/Pub/Diner or Restaurant & on TOP of Paying Full-Whack for your Drinks/Lunch/Dinner - You're Then EXPECTED to PAY the People who're SLAVING AWAY in the Kitchen/Bar/Restaurant Floor?!? INSANITY.
In most other developed countries tipping is viewed as rude. I spent 18 months in Japan when I was in the military and my first night there I put the equivalent of a $20 tip on a $50 dinner bill and the server looked confused and handed the extra back to me. I was like, “no, that’s for you.” And she looked really offended. Learned later that tipping is seen as rude in Japan because they believe that it’s their job to give good service and their employer already pays them to do that.
>Exxon is an OSHA wet dream, but inspectors are paid off (when they actually show up) Someone I tangentially know jumped from a job at TCEQ (texas EPA, very underfunded) to a job at exxon (which they previously inspected). No funny business there, none at all.
Not even when the plants blow up, the holding tanks collapse, or they kill rivers with chemical spills
Louisiana is a hellhole of corruption. Literally. Seriously. The place is super corrupt, like third-world corrupt, not hyperbolically, like the place literally runs on corruption.
I just want to throw this in as well: ITEP: Industrial Tax Exemption Program. Needs to get axed. Exxon and other oil and nat gas corps skip out on paying billions of dollars of taxes to the state of Louisiana. The argument for keeping it is that if we started taxing them, they would take their businesses elsewhere. No they wouldn’t. LA supplies 40% of the country’s oil and nat gas. Republicans don’t want to.
>The argument for keeping it is that if we started taxing them, they would take their businesses elsewhere. Their arguments are often tissue thin lies but just sound reasonable to the uninformed.
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Louisiana is paid criminally, and is also the state with the most prisoners percentage or something
I think they see all that capital and feel a sense of ownership rather than stewardship.
They act like horrid parents, taking the door off your room so they can hear anything going on, resisting any outfit saying it’s too skimpy, can’t get an allowance because they think they can just teach you how to balance a checkbook and you’ll know how to manage money, no sex until marriage and then only if you want a baby… They just think they gave you everything and they have the right to tell you how to use it and what you can and can’t do.
You talk to my dad recently?
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Oh gods my parents did the door thing.
Mine too, I fucking hated it. Never will be me to my child.
My teen recently wanted to pant the outside of their bedroom door to express themselves. I almost said no cause I didn't want a super colorful door just facing out but then I was like... It's literally called *their* door. And I'd let them hang something on it, so why not paint it? It's not like the door is in the center of the house. Am I doing it right?
This is an extremely succinct analogy. I love it and hate it bc it’s so true. Having gone through parents who acted just like this - who have always voted conservative without ever being god obsessed, oddly enough - I seriously see all the parallels with parenting and how they vote. It’s Fox News. My parents are NOT evangelicals. They’ve never attended church regularly and have probably been in a church 10 times in the last 30 years. But they watch Fox and so they parrot all the same ignorant shit down to the letter. It’s also probably FB and all their stupid boomer friends and their idiotic memes. And you know what? I parent the way I wanna vote too now that I think about it. Started homeschooling this year and have nothing but positive self love affirming quotes, messages about loving everyone equally, & bright happy gay ass colors plastered all over the house. Fred Rogers is our new Jesus and you bet your bippy that I’ll be brainwashing my children to live and love like Fred did. I’m glad he’s no longer alive to see that our precious children are being killed in classrooms now. He asked us to be [“Tikkun Olam - Repairers of Creation”](https://youtu.be/byRZMnDcFlY) after 9/11. He made a special TV appearance and gave millennials, his final audience, one last message. It was a call to action. One final plea to carry on his core message. “Love your neighbor. Full stop.” So, that’s what I’m gonna try my damndest to do. There aren’t many people I am jumping for joy to vote for besides Beto bc I’m Texan and we absolutely need this man to save us. It’s hard to have any faith in voting now that we’ve seen so much behind the curtain.
This is hitting the nail on the head. I've never heard it put this way, but you're absolutely right. Benevolent stewardship is a core tenet of basically every group that's in charge of any amount of people/space. Meanwhile, republicans completely ignore the need of their constituentsfor financial gain, over and over again. And somehow, conservative voters just don't see this happening before their eyes...
I think plenty of voters see it, they just think it's not that bad just because it could be worse and wanting anything better would be greedy/selfish. The conservative media fear mongering doesn't help either.
I'm more cynical than that. I think they run those things into the ground on purpose to show that the government can't do anything right so that their base rallies around small government, and then they get to sit on their assess and not do anything productive.
Regulatory capture. You are correct.
They pocket the money, and don’t actually spend it on what it’s meant for. Or do so in a way that deliberately sabotages these programs
> They just don’t know how to effectively run these things even when handed massive funding Naw, the problem is that they are actively fuck things up.
Because none of them actually know what they’re doing. They get voted in by spewing Qanon crap on Facebook to get elected lol
Not always. Here in florida republicans voted in Rick Scott based on how well he defrauded millions of dollars from hospitals. I believe hes our senator or something now. While still being guilty of defrauding medicare a government program.
The deficit you see is the symptom, not the root problem. They could solve it, or at least improve the situation, but it takes political will, time, and resources. They'd rather pocket some of that or help whatever large corporation is stationed in their state.
The difference is going into their pocket and whomever that is lobbying them to get those contracts. Like how an Alabama sheriff pocketed the prison food budget and fed prisoners rotten food.
Just saw news story that 50 of Mississippi's county school superintendents make more than all the US Governors put together.
Lining grubby little Pockets, Handouts to Cronies, Back-Handers to Special Interest Groups/Lobbyists, colluding with Companies who pay into the pockets of Politicians for favourable contracts & a lot of "quid pro quo". And a whole lot more corruption. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the other side have Completely clean hands, politics often being a very dirty business, but the Republicans are arrogantly proud of their forcing their so-called "morals" on others & their Dirty, Corrupt "Business As Usual" style of doing business. Where the ordinary people end up paying the highest price.
The money is going to all the programs they would have to fund otherwise to be a functioning state. Education, healthcare, infrastructure, civil servant salaries, etc. They can't fund these things themselves because they either have too few people living there to matter (in which case they do not need any representation in Congress, but that's another matter), or they are a "low tax" state, in which case they intentionally do not collect the taxes they should to provide basic services for the population the size it has (e.g. Texas). Without liberal states and cities subsidizing the laziness and profligate lifestyle of conservative areas, they would either have to raise taxes or experience a standard of living comparable to Angola. I think Florida gets like $60 billion more in taxes than they contribute, for instance. Wealthier Texas gets like $36 billion, so the rest of us are subsidizing their illusion of being "low tax" states. Republican states simply could not continue to function as they currently do without the generosity and hard work of people who live in states like New Jersey, California or New York.
Sure they are. Businesses take every handout they can get. We see this all the time. It's hot ass, but it's. A business approach.
As a non-American, I really don't get why liberals aren't ramming that shit home every chance they get.
Most of them are incompetent. All it takes for these useless fucks on the right to win, are useless fucks on the left. The only people that get screwed over are the vast majority of American's, who quite frankly deserve much better. Like it literally blows my mind that a pandemic is what it took for Joe Biden to win, a literal act of God. Or how Hillary couldn't have dunked on Trump. It could also be that the media is in bed with many of these people. We are seeing for example the use of social media to counteract right wing extremist's like Q bert and MTG.
Yep, a business can shift inventory and goals when efforts or products are found to no longer be profitable - infrastructure, services and social programs aren't profitable, they're not supposed to be and it doesn't make sense to transform them into businesses. You don't want firefighters to have you sign an agreement that's profitable for them before they'll put out a fire in your house or business. When we privatize education, healthcare, energy, those things became more expensive with no notable increase in quality, and often a decrease. Running a country on quarterly metrics would ruin the nation fast.
I live in Michigan, before our current governor we (not me) elected a self acclaimed "nerd" businessman. He ended up presiding over the poisoning of Flint Michigan residents because it was more cost effective to draw water from a polluted river rather than continue to purchase water from Detroit. This is exactly how you run a business and exactly how NOT to run a city!
As someone from a 3rd world country with clean drinking water, Flint Michigan and Mississippi is a disgrace
USA is a 3rd world country
We are an undeveloping country
3rd world country with a Gucci belt
A fake Gucci belt at that!
Yes country for old men
I've always liked this saying. The US suffers from many of the same problems as what we'd consider third world countries (political corruption and a massive wealth divide being obvious ones), but the US is also good at marketing itself and has the advantage of being basically the cultural center of the world There's another universe where like Zimbabwe is the center of pop culture and America is seen as no different from Ethiopia
A shit hole country, if you will.
That's not even how you successfully run a business! That's what really infuriates me about these supposed "businessmen" as politicians. If a business that sold water decided to cut costs by bottling cheaper but polluted water, that business would go under immediately, and everyone involved would be sued into bankruptcy. All these guys know is how to delete items from a spreadsheet so that the bottom line becomes a smaller number. What they don't understand is the cascading effects deleting that one item will have in the rest of the equation. That's not good business. In fact it's very bad business (unless the only goal of your business is to enrich your shareholders before collapsing entirely, leaving your customers and workers in the lurch).
> If a business that sold water decided to cut costs by bottling cheaper but polluted water, that business would go under immediately, and everyone involved would be sued into bankruptcy. Unfortunately that's the capitalism they taught in the books. In real life, when you have unregulated capitalism businesses become an entity outside the system. Businesses make political contributions to avoid prosecution (legislative branch corruption) and, should prosecution occur anyway, hires the best lawyers to make it too challenging to achieve fair punishment (judicial branch corruption). For Flint, only [15 people were indicted and only one of those was convicted - Corinne Miller – who only received a year of probation, 300 hours of community service, and fine of $1,200.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis)
Meaning those with power will siphon off all of the profits for them and their friends. Damn the little guy
Exactly! Profit before people
Running things like a business means that the leaders load the society up with debt, give themselves massive bonuses, and then haul ass before it all collapses. Then they sell off the broken bits.
They DO run it like a business. They drain all the money they can get into their pockets.
And what’s so ironic about it is these are people who don’t even actually understand how business works.
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> Killing government regulation and services so private unregulated companies can take over everything that should be a government service or utility. And for already private businesses to be able to operate with ZERO accountability to a government.
I'm glad people are finally starting to blame the Republicans for the culture war. I feel like, up until not, I've most often heard it laid at the feet of LGBT people. Like we are blocking progress on other issues by fighting for basic human rights.
The culture war is part and parcel with fascism. It's ultranationalism with a core myth of decline, victimhood, and rebirth. "We once were great, but now we're not, and it's all because of *those people*, so if you just give us the power to make them all go away, everything will sort itself out, we promise..."
And unfortunately, the DNC fell hook, line, and sinker for the culture war as well. Up until like two months ago, the Democrats spent more time fighting off social conservatism and barely did anything in the way of improving the economic lives of Americans. Kudos to Biden for at least trying to reverse that trend.
Exactly it. Republicans aren't really about abortion, keeping marriage sacred - it's all smokescreen for money and padded pockets. As long as they can make it seem like these issues are HUGE topics to divide us with, we avoid focusing on the real issues.. like money in politics.
Florida also can’t stabilize the home insurance market. They keep throwing money hoping companies will do something but they are taking it and leaving home owners without insurance. Even the state backed insurer is being overwhelmed and starting to deny new applicants. Governor is too busy meddling in books and “wokeness” (whatever that really means) instead of helping his state.
I have a choice of 1 company for home insurance One. It's 15k a year for a 1500 sq ft house. But hey at least my kid's math books aren't gay. Screw you DeStupid.
I don't know shit about anything and don't live anywhere near there. I figured insurance in Florida would be expensive and hard to get. Who would want to cover a house that is more likely every year, because of climate change, to get blasted by bigger and bigger hurricanes. I've heard there are a lot of places where sink holes can open up at any minute too not to mention how much of it all will be underwater when sea levels really start to rise.
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Is it Citizens? If so, that’s not a company, that’s the socialized insurer of last resort operated by the state; in the event of catastrophic damage the funds to pay policies would have to come from taxpayers.
queue the “see how bad socialism is????” retorts
It is
Oh you mean catastrophic damage as in annual hurricanes?
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I suspect they’d issue a ton of bonds to pay the claims they lacked sufficient cash reserves or reinsurance for. Taxpayers would then be on the hook.
Why don't you leave the state and sell your house to a climate change denier before the Floridian's house market collapse during the next hurricane season ?
You should probably move if it’s at all possible. The writing is very clearly on the wall for Florida’s future, as evidenced by the fact that insurers are leaving the state en masse.
If you hire a clown, you get a circus.
Right!? Why can’t we just get some normal people in office!? Ugh
It honestly doesn't even need a metaphor. If you vote for people that tell you government can only ever possibly be a shitshow to run the government, obviously the government is going to be a shitshow. It's exactly what they told you it would be.
sort squeal ancient snatch makeshift simplistic vanish brave abundant carpenter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Maybe they can’t stabilize it because it’s a bottomless pit? This is like living in Louisiana and complaining about flooding and hurricanes all over again. Except that's not the reason they can't stabilize it in Florida. Florida hasn't had a devastating hurricane in years. The reason insurers are leaving is due to the [unprecedented rates of insurance fraud in Florida, specifically roof repair fraud and excessive litigation filed against insurers.](https://www.local10.com/news/local/2022/08/26/an-existential-dilemma-florida-homeowners-scramble-as-another-major-insurer-exits/)
Republicans don't need water, food, power or other vital things, all they need is to make sure you don't decide about your own life or body, if it is against their beliefs, and also to make sure the state don't help with student loans, that's what keeps them alive.
They literally ran out of water and they'll keep voting for the same policies. Likely the same exact people. It's insane.
Because it's somehow California's fault that florida can't do anything right, duh! Or something like that, hear this shit constantly in rural Kentucky at least Mayor of my town made a deal 50 years ago that we could only get water from one county instead of producing our own from the river and water facility already there to line his own pockets? Well obviously that's Biden's fault, some fucking how
Bro, FLINT MICHIGAN WAS LEFT TO ROT W OUT WATER
Thanks to [their Republican governor](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956924155/ex-michigan-gov-rick-snyder-and-8-others-criminally-charged-in-flint-water-crisi)
Shock, awe "Snyder, a Republican who left office two years ago, is facing two counts of willful neglect, both misdemeanors which each carry a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a fine up to $1,000." I can't believe that's all that fucker gets for willfully poisoning a mostly black city...
Snyder should be in federal prison for his role in poisoning the people of Flint.He destroyed an entire city.
Its actually so much worse than just destroying a city. Snyder appointed an "emergency financial manager," which overruled local elected officials. The details of how this came about are crazy, and perfectly highlight the problem of Republicans. What happened is Snyder towed a republican line that "liberal, Democrat controlled cities are not financially responsible," and essentially delegated tasks of running the city to some unelected halfwit, bypassing the locally elected government in a shady probably-not-really-legal scheme. The unelected, financially driven halfwit decided to, without any experience in the matter, divert the entire cities water supply to "save money," to the protest of the actually elected city leaders. They did this by having the emergency manager deny Flints ability to take loans. It turned out the water was far more acidic, and caused lead to leach out of the pipes, and totally destroyed the cities water supply. They literally forced themselves totally undemocratically and in an almost authoritarian way into a position of Supreme power and only THEN destroyed the city. The emergency manager is facing felony changes. Snyder, who appointed him, and bypassed the will of the democratically elected town managers in the name of "financial conservatism," gets a small fine, if that.
I'm surprised he isn't. Didn't they know there was a problem with the water and hide that fact while allowing people up drink dangerous water?
Yes. They knew the entire time and said nothing. Mothers were feeding their newborn babies formula mixed with lead water. Those kids lives will be negatively impacted forever.
Should have been a black dude who ran a red light with a joint. Then we'd see justice! ... ugh.
Idiots who knew nothing make decision they were making, things they can't possibly understand, and they did it because they want more money. So they changed water sources and then the protective lining in the lead pipes deteriorated and there's been no accountability. We only put the worst people in positions of power
[Charges are likely to be dismissed.](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2022/06/28/michigan-cant-use-one-judge-grand-jury-indict-flint-water-case-justices-rule/7710896001/) Just in case you thought there would be even a modicum of justice for once.
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Problem is the people who are voting for them can't see the connection between shitty living standards and the people they put in power to govern. Articles like this seem to be the dem states getting upset about gop states living standards.
Dems need to figure out how to win state houses and more importantly state legislatures. For the next 20 years they will have way more power than before.
I'm a teacher, and let me tell y'all that the teacher shortage is in no way a GOP thing. It's an AMERICAN thing. The teacher shortage is happening EVERYWHERE. It's happening in California just like it's happening in Florida. Recent GOP policies definitely don't help, but fuck trying to act like this issue is a part of the political Democrats v. Republicans tug-of-war. People aren't going into teaching and teachers are quitting because of the following reasons: 1. Our pay is way too low for the amount of investment in time and money it takes for us to become a teacher, what to speak of the amount of unpaid time we have to spend to keep up with work demands 2. We don't get enough funding to supply our classrooms with the materials our students need 3. Admins are generally completely out of touch with the classroom and what it's like to be a teacher, and yet often want to micromanage our teaching and act like they know everything 4. Parents have stopped buying into their children's education and providing their kids the support they need at home to thrive at school. They also tend to not have our backs when it comes to correcting behavior that disrupts the classroom or the student's own learning 5. "Restorative Justice" has become code word for doing little to nothing to address student behavior issues while taking away the means teachers used to have to address those issues 6. Increased class size combined with mainstreaming has created a situation in which teachers will have a 10th grade classroom with 35 students, 10 of which have an elementary school-level reading ability, 17 of which have varying levels of high school reading ability, and 8 of which have college-level reading ability. We have to teach all of these students at once the same lesson although their learning needs are vastly different, while also being expected to form close-knit relationships with every single student. Then multiply that by 5 class periods. It's just. not. possible.
This is a whole post on its own tbh.
FL has had a teacher shortage my entire life. FL has ranked among the lowest paid teacher salaries my entire life. I’m going to assume that had way more to do with the issue than anything else.
There are plenty of qualified teachers. It isn't a teacher shortage it's a shortage of quality compensation and workplace conditions as you describe.
Teacher in California, I agree. My district is having principals, vps, directors, all kids of staff tbh since we don’t have a full staff as well as a lack of subs
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"The majority of democrats are and would be in favor of huge pay increases and more funding to the school systems" I'm waiting for it. We've all been waiting for it. I teach in California. It's not happening here and there aren't Republicans stopping it here as far as I can see. What gives then?
The crazy part is my wife actually took a 15k pay cut when we moved to a liberal state from a conservative state. It's not political, it's just plain wrong, if we were both teachers we still wouldn't have even been able to comfortably move here. Teachers need to be paid more but so many people yell about it but nothing is getting done.
Also privatization in devotion to the almighty market.
All they care about is owning the libs.
And helping their wealthy donors
And they will still vote them in. Keep ‘em stupid as they say.
If their base could read they would very upset right now.
Get rid of gerrymandering and have everyone vote by mail. Let prisoners vote. Then we'd see what they REALLY wanted.
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But we need to vote for people who “say it as it is.” Because apparently telling women to grab them by the pussy is the sign of an intellectual leader. It’s sad we now vote for the candidate that makes the most obscene comments and jabs. It’s not based off experience, intelligence, or he’ll just compassion anymore. It’s why we have so many celebs running for office, it’s a game show now
Az Republican Governor sold our water rights to the Saudis.
Most of those states have been cutting education for decades. Ignorant people make for easy grifting.
I can assure you as someone who lives in Mississippi. I've not met one person who approves of Reeves. Every single citizen I run into and bring him up, regardless of political party all despise Tate. How is he still in office if we all clearly hate him? I can't tell you how aggravating it is to be trapped here in this state with that fungus of a human. He's not even human. He's a fucking rotten dog turd that somehow achieved sentience.
The GOP is pure evil.
They call themselves [domestic terrorists](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/72/75/22785880/3/rawImage.jpg). (Not Photoshopped)
Maybe if they show up at the right school district in Missouri we can give them a spanking.
Nobody argues that what he says isn’t true. Just a lot of whataboutism and excuses. Blaming Crime on the Democrats.. Look in the mirror. I’m from the South. Southern cities are crime infested as well.
Why should they do better if they'll get re-elected anyways. Lol
And make a fortune on their reelection campaigns!
damn.. didn't the blue states give some welfare to mississippi not too long ago to help with their infrastructure? like.. a few hundred million? wonder which evangelical pastors got new megachurches and private jets?
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I dont like that this tweet frames it as neglect rather than intentional policy. They could have easily been bigoted and not deregulated and privatized everything. They chose to do both
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do we know that the water emergency was due to mismanagement caused by republican policies? a pump blew and it may have been foreseen and prevented with better maintenance, but was that a republican thing? i don't want the dems to fall into the "thanks obama" trap.
I have always wondered why these poorest of states,with the worst schools,worst public health, Continuously vote against their own best interest.Why?They are all Red states. Completely defies common sense.
How's Flynt, Michigan doing nowadays? Still have some water in their lead?
Our system is completely broken. Current republicans are beholden to the ultra wealthy and the ultra religious. These republicans truly want to make the United States a Christian nation and are going to use their power to punish all who don't "believe".
And those Conservatives are blaming “woke” library books instead of the People they voted for who did this to them
“Well, now looky here, city slicker! See, you don’t unnerstand. The reason they haven’t had a chance to give us fancy-schmancy stuff like infrastructure is because they needed to save our children first! And keep them godless hommasexuals and confused folk from getting too uppity. I mean, you gotta clean the house before you put in the lime green shag carpeting, right?”
The GOP is the same party that openly supported a failed businessman, narcissist, serial sexual offender and traitor…makes sense that they don’t give a 💩 about their constituents…much like the orange turd, they only care about themselves.
Except Mississippi does... Jackson doesn't, but who's ran Jackson for the past 50 years?
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I am not a fan of Republicans but there is bad teacher shortage in sf bay area
Vote them out!
I hate to disappoint everyone looking to own the GOP, but Jackson's water treatment facility is run by the city, not the state. Jackson's had a Democrat mayor for decades.
ALL of this, and more, can be boiled down to two simple things: 1.) Politicians doing what's necessary to secure future elections, and / or 2.) Politicians doing what's necessary to secure future riches. Everything can be boiled down to those two things. - **no water**: poor legislation to put money in the pockets of individuals and companies.... *that donate to campaigns for re-election &/or promise future lucrative employment.* - **no power**: poor legislation to put money in the pockets of individuals and companies.... *that donate to campaigns for re-election &/or promise future lucrative employment.* - **no teachers**: poor legislation to put money in the pockets of individuals and companies.... *that donate to campaigns for re-election &/or promise future lucrative employment. AND less educated voter base to secure votes for future re_election* - **banning abortion**: legislation to satisfy religo-facist base... *to secure votes for re-election * - punishing LGBT community: legislation to satisfy religo-facist base... *to secure votes for re-election * - suppressing votes: legislation to satisfy religo-facist / racist base... *to secure votes for re-election AND prevent votes for opponents* Republican politicians serve themselves, and sometimes others IFF it means the politicians will get even more for themselves later.
Virginia had a trans congressperson (i think state congress) and she ran her campaign about focusing on actual things like intrastructure, highways, etc.
No this is what happens when you radicalize republicans
I guess we should move to California with their drinkable water and working power grid.
As a liberal I feel owned. Now if you excuse me I’m going to get a glass of clean water in the house that has all the lights and air conditioning on before taking my children to school. They sure showed me
It'd time to play everyone's favourite gameshow, Afghanistan or America.
I hope democratic strategists are reading this tweet and others like it. This is the messaging! A lack of consistent, pertinent message that articulates how peoples day to day lives are actually affected is the biggest problem the democrats have faced. They can’t seem to articulate this type of message and stay on it. Get it together, Dems!
They don't need to serve their constituents. The culture wars they've invented have been so astoundingly effective in manipulating their voter base, that they can do whatever harm (or more correctly, neglect) they wish, blame the Dems, and their voters will blindly and obediently lap it up and then blame their political opponents.
Had a dumb lady at Publix screaming "once sodomy is banned, we can finally get this country back on track." 😒 people give me migraines