Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[digitaldog]

One relevant distinction is that Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn't censured and stripped of her committee assignments because of anti-Semitic remarks.

Indeed, much worse IMHO (coming from a family that raised me 'Jew Lite").
The article Joe posted stated this was some of the anti-Semitic remarks:

Ms. Omar has on multiple occasions questioned the support shown for Israel by most members of Congress. At one point she suggested it was because they were bought off by Jewish money and more recently she suggested Israel-backers had dual-allegiances both classic anti-Semitic tropes.

Not a huge stretch IMHO.

[faberryman]

Josh Hawley, everyone's favorite Capitol riot advocate, has suggest that instead of a minimum wage hike, low paid workers should get a refundable tax credit, paid quarterly, for one-half the difference between their hourly wage and roughly what they would have gotten if Congress had raised the minimum wage. Of course that would be limited to 40 hours a week, i.e., it wouldn't apply to overtime. So basically, the government pays the difference instead of businesses paying higher wages. This guy claims to be a Republican. If you are going to have the government pick up the tab, it seems like it would be easier to raise the minimum wage and give the businesses the tax credit, but what do I know. There is additional complexity in the bill, but that's what jumped out a me.

https://www.axios.com/hawley-minimum-wage-tax-credits-2087ac1e-a007-4095-b2b8-c0aa6d202dc2.html

[Robert Roaldi]

Josh Hawley, everyone's favorite Capitol riot champion, has suggest that instead of a minimum wage hike, low paid workers should get a refundable tax credit, paid quarterly, for one-half the difference between their hourly wage and roughly what they would have gotten if Congress had raised the minimum wage. Of course that would be limited to 40 hours a week, i.e., it wouldn't apply to overtime. So basically, the government pays the difference instead of businesses paying higher wages. This guy claims to be a Republican. If you are going to have the government pick up the tab, it seems like it would be easier to raise the minimum wage and give the businesses the tax credit. There is additional complexity in the bill, but that's what jumped out a me.

https://www.axios.com/hawley-minimum-wage-tax-credits-2087ac1e-a007-4095-b2b8-c0aa6d202dc2.html

What does the minimum wage hike amount to? Isn't something like $1 an hour or so. I guess Republicans are worried the price of their double roast grandes will jump to $4.75 from $4.50 or something.

How was the minimum wage first introduced? Seems to me it's a practical way to prevent employees from undercutting each other in a race to the bottom. Without it, I bet we'd see the return of sharecropping and people working for food and a bed.

Which is sort of what prison labour is. Do privately run prisons participate in prison labour programs? Do prison labour programs undercut free market rates? I often wonder about the economics of that "industry" and if it shares any common features with the slave trade.

Sorry, just some random thoughts on a lazy afternoon apropos of nothing at all.

[faberryman]

Tucker Carson, the media darling for Trump supporters, announced last night on his Fox News show that he couldn't find anything about QAnon on the internet, and posited that it was something imaginary dreamed up by the commie/lib news media. Shocked, and wondering if I had been living in a dream world, I googled "QAnon", and the search returned 26,300,000 results. I wonder what search word Tucker was using?

Tucker Can’t Seem to Find QAnon: ‘It’s Not Even a Website!’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-cant-seem-to-find-qanon-says-its-not-even-a-website

[Robert Roaldi]

Speaking of random thoughts, I don't know if any of you have ever watched any of the thirteen seasons of Poirot on PBS. If you don't know, Poirot is a detective appearing in Agatha Christie mysteries. Anyway, in some of the stories he has a sidekick named Arthur Hastings whose dialog is frequently limited to exclaiming "Good Lord!" whenever something happens. So I was sitting on the sofa this morning having my first cup of coffee and thinking about Superman, and remembered that Perry White, the editor of The Daily Planet where Superman, in his disguise as Clark Kent, works as a reporter, always used to exclaim "Great Caesar's Ghost" every time Clark and Lois and Jimmy told him what they were up too. Well, I realized that over the past half century I had no idea where the expression came from, so I looked it up. I found that it is a reference to Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar where in one scene Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus for a little back and forth. As best as I can tell, the only one who has ever used the expression "Great Caesar's Ghost" is Perry White. So that's one more thing I can check off my to-do list. I am on a roll.

We spent a LOT of time on that play in grade 9. Many of us in class knew several of the speeches by heart. Same with Macbeth a year later. I've seen most of Shakespeare's plays at Stratford, Ontario, over the years. For those who haven't, the plays are much more interesting acted out than when just read in class.

I don't know if there is a black-out on these programs outside Canada, but many Stratford productions are available on CBC GEM online, https://gem.cbc.ca/series/stratford-presents/all/8d5898e8-9215-4c97-8fe3-a10b30c89d58.

[Robert Roaldi]

Tucker Carson, the media darling for Trump supporters, announced last night on his Fox News show that he couldn't find anything about QAnon on the internet, and posited that it something imaginary dreamed up by the commie/lib news media. Shocked, and wondering if I had been living in a dream world, I googled "QAnon", and the search returned 26,300,000 results. I wonder what search word Tucker was using?

Tucker Can’t Seem to Find QAnon: ‘It’s Not Even a Website!’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-cant-seem-to-find-qanon-says-its-not-even-a-website

Not much of a journalist, is he, if he can't operate a web search. Maybe he misspelled "Q" and didn't notice.

[John Camp]

I am a little baffled why CPAC would have invited this guy to speak in the first place. This conference isn't their first rodeo. Who would have suggested him? Who would have approved him. <snip>

Because he's a black guy who trotted out some conservative tropes. Wouldn't let him into their country clubs, but they love to see rightwing bigotry from black celebrities so they can point and say, "See. They agree with us."

[faberryman]

Because he's a black guy who trotted out some conservative tropes. Wouldn't let him into their country clubs, but they love to see rightwing bigotry from black celebrities so they can point and say, "See. They agree with us."

The irony is that the theme for the CPAC convention is "American Uncanceled".

[faberryman]

Not much of a journalist, is he, if he can't operate a web search. Maybe he misspelled "Q" and didn't notice.

He is not a journalist. He is a TV host. It is an opinion show.

“So it’s worth finding out where the public is getting all this false information — this ‘disinformation,’ as we’ll call it,” Carlson says in the clip from his show on Tuesday night. “So we checked. We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which in the end we learned is not even a website. If it’s out there, we could not find it.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/24/tucker-carlsons-we-could-not-find-qanon-comment-was-worse-than-it-appears/

The interesting thing is that some Trump supporters are QAnon conspiracy theorists, so they must be confused if they think that Trump was engaged in battling a deep state cabal of cannibalistic Democrats operating a pedophile sex ring, and now Tucker Carlson is now telling them that QAnon doesn't exist. If Trump was not engaged in battling a deep state cabal of cannibalistic Democrats operating a pedophile sex ring, what the hell was he doing for four years? Was he really just watching television all that time?

[Peter McLennan]

He is an idiot who is paid a lot to tell some people what they want to hear.

He's not an idiot.  He is, however, a venal, craven asshole.  That's what it takes to be popular on Fox.  Just like the former guy.

[faberryman]

He's not an idiot.  He is, however, a venal, craven asshole.  That's what it takes to be popular on Fox.  Just like the former guy.

I agree he is not literally an idiot, though many of the things he says sound idiotic to me. So I guess I should call him idiotic rather than an idiot. Anyway, I thought my description was a little over the top, so while you were responding I replaced it with: "He is not a journalist. He is a TV host. It is an opinion show." I also added a comment after the link. For some reason, edits to posts take a while to be reflected on the site.

[digitaldog]

He's not an idiot.

Based on what he reported about QAnon, what about (many) in his audience?

[faberryman]

Based on what he reported about QAnon, what about (many) in his audience?

I doubt many in his audience are literally idiots. At the same time, I am not sure whether it is worse to literally be an idiot or to metaphorically be an idiot, as in idiotic. It seems to me that to literally be an idiot is outside of your control, while to metaphorically be an idiot is within your control. I have sympathy for the former but not the later.

[John Camp]

From the Wall Street Journal today:

"Nearly 20 years ago, Texas shifted from using full-service regulated utilities to generate power and deliver it to consumers. The state deregulated power generation, creating the system that failed last week. And it required nearly 60% of consumers to buy their electricity from one of many retail power companies, rather than a local utility.

"Those deregulated Texas residential consumers paid $28 billion more for their power since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates charged to the customers of the state’s traditional utilities, according to the Journal’s analysis of data from the federal Energy Information Administration."

[TechTalk]

If I was an attorney in Texas, I'd consider starting a class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone that was affected based on gross negligence by the State of Texas and the utilities that failed. This has happened before in 1989 and 2011 and they both failed to take action to prevent what occurred to citizens and customers despite clear warnings. I would seek reimbursement for any utility payments and cancelation of any unpaid balances plus damages.

[Alan Klein]

Josh Hawley, everyone's favorite Capitol riot advocate, has suggest that instead of a minimum wage hike, low paid workers should get a refundable tax credit, paid quarterly, for one-half the difference between their hourly wage and roughly what they would have gotten if Congress had raised the minimum wage. Of course that would be limited to 40 hours a week, i.e., it wouldn't apply to overtime. So basically, the government pays the difference instead of businesses paying higher wages. This guy claims to be a Republican. If you are going to have the government pick up the tab, it seems like it would be easier to raise the minimum wage and give the businesses the tax credit, but what do I know. There is additional complexity in the bill, but that's what jumped out a me.

https://www.axios.com/hawley-minimum-wage-tax-credits-2087ac1e-a007-4095-b2b8-c0aa6d202dc2.html

While 17 million people will earn more money, raising the minimum wage to $15 will be at the expense of others as 1.4 million jobs will be lost  This is according to the Congressional Budget Office.  The CBO is a non-partisan congressional group that's responsible to calculate the cost and effect of legislation.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965483266/-15-minimum-wage-would-reduce-poverty-but-cost-jobs-cbo-says

Hawley's recommendation is just another move by Republicans to buy votes.  In a sign of moving to the left, frankly, they're wasting their time. They'll never out-promise the Democrats in giveaways who have been playing that game for decades.  Unfortunately, the whole country is moving there for free stuff for everyone.  That will break the bank and impoverish the country. 

It's also a stupid idea.  All that will happen is that employers will keep wages down telling their employees that the government is making up the difference in their pay.  Of course, the rest of us will have to make up the difference for $200 billion dollars when we already are paying half the budget with printed money.   Who thinks of these things? Hawley should become a Democrat.

[Alan Klein]

If I was an attorney in Texas, I'd consider starting a class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone that was affected based on gross negligence by the State of Texas and the utilities that failed. This has happened before in 1989 and 2011 and they both failed to take action to prevent what occurred to citizens and customers despite clear warnings. I would seek reimbursement for any utility payments and cancelation of any unpaid balances plus damages.

They're already are lawsuits.  But the question is whether sovereign immunity applies and that is up to the Texas Supreme Court.
Link

[Alan Klein]

From the Wall Street Journal today:

"Nearly 20 years ago, Texas shifted from using full-service regulated utilities to generate power and deliver it to consumers. The state deregulated power generation, creating the system that failed last week. And it required nearly 60% of consumers to buy their electricity from one of many retail power companies, rather than a local utility.

"Those deregulated Texas residential consumers paid $28 billion more for their power since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates charged to the customers of the state’s traditional utilities, according to the Journal’s analysis of data from the federal Energy Information Administration."

The deregulation created competition like the airlines. That lowered prices. I pay less for electricity than the utility that serves my home would charge me because of deregulation in NJ.   How does the writer of the article know what the rates would be if they never deregulated?

[Peter McLennan]

If I was an attorney in Texas, I'd consider starting a class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone that was affected based on gross negligence by the State of Texas and the utilities that failed. This has happened before in 1989 and 2011 and they both failed to take action to prevent what occurred to citizens and customers despite clear warnings. I would seek reimbursement for any utility payments and cancelation of any unpaid balances plus damages.

I agree.  In fact, I've been saying for a while now that Americans should start a class action suit against the former guy.  Dereliction of duty.

[Alan Klein]

The deregulation created competition like the airlines. That lowered prices. I pay less for electricity than the utility that serves my home would charge me because of deregulation in NJ.   How does the writer of the article know what the rates would be if they never deregulated?

Actually, power utilities are opposed to deregulation.  Airlines didn't want the government to deregulate either.  They were very happy making their high prices.  Deregulation creates competition and lowers prices and profits.  Who wrote that article?  Could you provide the link? I wouldn't be surprised if he or she works for one of the utilities.