** Coal production has declined 31% since Trump took office. Coal mining jobs are not coming back, because the practice of burning coal for energy is in a death spiral. Natural gas is far less expensive for utilities. There is nothing Trump can do about that except make promises he can't keep.
** Abortion: Roe vs. Wade. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that the right to abortion differs in each trimester. In the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.
States have increased restrictions by going around the Supreme Court decision, doing things like requiring that any doctor performing an abortion must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Most of these restrictions have been overturned already, but in some states, there is only one clinic performing abortions left.
There is absolutely nobody advocating, as Trump would have you believe, that Democrats want to be able to abort a baby the day before it is to be born. That's ridiculous, and it completely ignores the ruling in Roe v. Wade.
Nobody likes abortion, but taking away a woman's right to control her own body in the beginning of her pregnancy? Let's go back to the days of back-alley abortions and the untold numbers of deaths that resulted.
** Hardly anybody is advocating taking away people's guns. What they are advocating is banning the sale and possession of weapons capable of mass murders along with 30 round clips. And advocating background checks. And advocating holding gun show sales to the same restrictions that gun shops have to abide by.
As for militias, every state, territory, and D.C. has one known as the National Guard. They can be called up by governors, or in the case of a national emergency, by the president. The Second Amendment has a militia clause in it, though the NRA omits it in their quote of the Amendment. One drunk with a gun is not a militia.
The right of gun ownership, like the right to free speech, is not absolute. If it was, states and counties and cities would not be able to have gun laws on their books. People have a right to live, too.
** A 3 to 6-week shutdown? What do you think we had in the beginning? But now we have millions of people saying they have a right not to wear a mask. As long as they refuse, this pandemic will just continue to get worse and worse.
You don't think the economy is taking a hit now? How long are people willing to delay a return to normalcy? So many countries took COVID-19 seriously. Unless they opened back up too early, they are the ones where there are few new cases and almost no deaths.
But we have a president who was willing to let more than a quarter of a million people die because he wanted the economy up and running to increase his chances for reelection.
And now it turns out that even people with mild cases are having devastating complications weeks or months after their infections which will affect them for the rest of their lives.
This is not the flu. It is much more contagious and 10 times deadlier. Where are the right-to-life people, now? Go ahead and die for the economy, gramps.
** Trump brought jobs back to the USA? The few highly publicized deals to keep jobs here turned out to only delay the layoffs. Corporations sent jobs overseas because of cheaper labor. And the products coming back in this country essentially do not have to meet the standards required by law for goods produced here.
It is only after products are sold that defects such as toxic contaminations or safety problems are discovered. Two-thirds of all jobs in the US are now service jobs.
Other notes:
Those high corporate taxes? A myth. That 35% tax rate is rarely paid because of tons of loopholes. One in five US corporations pays 0% in federal taxes. Small businesses and taxpayers end up paying the big bucks.
And the China tariffs? Tariffs are used to raise the price of imports to make American goods more competitive. To protect American industries. All that happened with Trump's tariffs was that the price of Chinese goods increased for American consumers. And since there were no longer manufacturers here in the US, there were few alternatives for those Chinese products.
Tariffs are not a money-making tool. The only money taken in was paid by Americans.
So tell me how Trump helped with your job? Trump has not worked with Congress to get legislation passed. He merely signs them into law. Three-fourths of his Executive Orders don't actually do anything legally. What he has done is tried to wipe out every one of Obama's actions, including all those related to worker protections including wages, consumer protections, clean air, clean water, and clean soil.
The EPA was established under Nixon when pollution was becoming a real problem.
Rivers would catch on fire. Smog was choking cities. Toxic waste sites were becoming a problem and they weren't being cleaned up. Rivers were dying because of discharges into them, including by farmers. Poisonous insecticides were legal and they were ending up in our bodies. Lead contamination was lowering our IQs, especially those of children who were eating leaded paint chips. Asbestos insulation was found to be causing cancer.
Trump has worked hard to shut down the EPA and eliminate all the progress that was made in cleaning up our water, our soil, and our air.
One man in the Senate is capable of killing any House bill he doesn't like and holding up any nominations he disapproves of (such as Obama's SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland, who was acceptable to both parties).
This man also vowed to hold up any Democratic nominee for the Supreme Court for the next four years if Hillary Clinton became president. That man is Mitch McConnell. He has killed hundreds of House bills each session just by never letting the Senate have a vote on them or letting his committees see them and come up with their own versions.
One man controlling Congress. And the method he uses is not in the Constitution and is not in the Senate Rules. It is merely set by precedent. It's called a Scheduling Veto. The only bills he can't stop are emergency bills.
Republicans are not concerned with citizens except to secure their votes and convince them to vote against their self-interest. They are focused on the wealthy and on large corporations. But their narrative works to convince people that the laws they want will help them, and the laws that Democrats want will hurt them. They have convinced people that Dems are the tax and spend party and that they are the Party of God.
Fiscal conservatives? Tell us another fairy tale. Republicans pledged to throttle revenues and to lower expenses. They have only managed to strangle revenues with their massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and their corporate loopholes.
No new taxes? How about some old ones? This country prospered while the top tax bracket was 91%. And note that the 91% bracket was only for income after a certain amount. Each bracket applies to only a portion of income. Income under a certain amount is taxed the lowest. Income above that and up to a certain amount is taxed at a slightly higher rate. Someone who is in a 91% tax bracket only has a certain amount taxed at that rate.
Worried about Social Security retirement and disability insurance? Or the federal deficits and the National Debt? Worried that Social Security is going broke and must be "reformed"?
Is Social Security the biggest federal expense? No. It's not a federal expense at all. It is separate from the federal budget by law (but including those surpluses sure made politicians' budgets look better).
The paper IOUs in the $3 trillion Trust Fund? They are interest-bearing US Treasury Bonds. The same ones that are used to fund every dollar of the National Debt. They are not instruments of theft, and defaulting on them would send borrowing costs through the roof.
So what happens if Social Security benefits are cut or retirement ages once again raised? The date that the Trust Fund zeroes out changes slightly, and that won't be until 2034. There is absolutely no effect on federal deficits or the National Debt.
That so-called entitlement is paid for by us and does not affect the budget. The Trust Fund handles all surpluses and deficits of the Social Security program. And the reason it was built up to $3 trillion is to handle baby boomer retirements. It's designed to handle times when payouts exceed the revenue from payroll taxes and the interest from T-bills.
Social Security is supposed to have a projected solvency of 75 years, not 14 years. But the GOP has blocked routine adjustments to payroll taxes and salary caps (above which no payroll taxes are assessed). Why? Because they are ideologically opposed to Social Security. They don't make a profit on Social Security. They don't get to play with all that money.
And companies think that the portion of payroll taxes that they pay comes out of their pocket rather than being a cost of having employees. Their portion is basically just part of our pay but structured so that we don't pay federal or state taxes on that money before payroll taxes are taken out.
The wealthy think that money is taken from them and given to others. But most of that money is gained by not paying their fair share of taxes, and by the corporations that they invest in paying employees poverty wages.
CEOs work hard to make sure their company stocks have a 15% rate of return because that is what industrial investors expect. That means CEOs' main focus is on profits. Not the future health of the company. Not the quality of their products. Not their employees' well-being. Profits. That's it.
Meanwhile, worker's wages are stagnant, and to CEOs, employees are just another expense to cut.
Did you like that big tax cut bill under Trump? Paul Ryan gushed about how one employee was able to take her yearly increase in pay and buy a Costco membership. Meanwhile, corporations got almost $1.5 trillion in tax benefits.
Do you know why people have to sometimes work two or three part-time jobs to make ends meet? Because only full-time employees get benefits, including healthcare coverage. Part-timers don't get benefits, and often don't even get sick days. Another expense cut to keep company profits flowing.
Then there's the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as ObamaCare, a plan developed by conservatives (the Heritage Foundation) which is basically RomneyCare with 170 changes Republicans wanted, including the elimination of a public option).
Before this act, medical expenses were the leading cause of all bankruptcies. It's still a major cause, but not as bad.
Trump and the GOP are pushing for stripped-down plans with fewer benefits and more limitations, including not having to cover pre-existing conditions. They want a return to the way things used to be, where medical insurance was more like a coupon, benefits were routinely denied, and insurance companies were more focused on their 20% overhead (profits).
Without a public option, we still have high premiums, very high deductibles, co-pays, donut-holes, limits, and exclusions. All of which Medicare, and the proposed Medicare-for-all, have. There is no dental, vision, or hearing coverage (unless paid for separately).
Almost all other western industrialized countries have some form of Universal Healthcare. And no country has decided to end their coverage. Nearly all Universal plans are single-payer, meaning that the government pays the doctors and nurses and labs and hospitals and clinics and medical equipment manufacturers. None of which are nationalized (taken over).
People think our system might be preferable until they find out the costs. These countries still have private providers for electives paid by their patients. This is why Democrats are fighting for Universal Healthcare. It's not some socialist or communist takeover. It's about making healthcare available and affordable.
Universal Healthcare eliminates the need for employer-provided health care coverage, which is another expense that keeps getting shifted to the employees, and is not available to people between jobs or to part-time workers, or to workers treated as consultants and not employees.
What are the goals of this generation's radical conservatives (more so on the federal level)? Do you think we should be heading back to a time of poorhouses, no worker's rights, no affordable health care, no minimum standards for health care insurance coverage?
Or no environmental or consumer protections, no protections from Wall Street shenanigans or bank speculations with depositor's money, no protections for people's retirement accounts, no anti-trust regulations or food and drug protections?
Are you advocating no heating assistance for the poor, no Head Start for preschoolers, no community block grants, no infrastructure spending bills?
Or advocating that Medicare be changed to private health plans with ever-increasing costs and fewer benefits, the elimination of women's healthcare, the defunding of Medicaid?
How about no ethics oversight for government officials, inadequate pay for our military troops, the militarization of police forces along with inadequate training, no rights against discrimination?
Or the right of states to eliminate provisions regarding pre-existing conditions, privatization of Social Security, worship of individual responsibility, and an abdication of social responsibility?
Then congratulations. You fit right in with today's radical conservatives.
So you think there is
massive election fraud by Democrats? Let's list the ways the GOP has been cheating.
- Voter suppression
- Voter disenfranchisement
- Gerrymandering
- Voter ID
- Poll taxes (No voting until fines paid)
- Attacking absentee ballots
- Attempting to disqualify ballots only in Dem zip codes
- Making the process complicated & hard to comply with
- Dark money
- Having only one polling location in an entire city (reducing 300+ voting machines down to one)
- Running the election while you're also on the ballot
- Purging the rolls of Dem voters
- Lying about your opponent 24/7
- Blocking everyone on reservations from voting
- Blocking former prisoners from voting
- Sending out incorrect information about when & where to vote
- Eliminating early voting
- Eliminating drop boxes
- Understaffing the polling places in Dem areas
- Creating long lines in Dem areas
- Voter intimidation (people with guns watching)
- Putting malfunctioning machines in Dem areas
- Refusing to adequately fund election security
- Inviting foreign attacks on our election
- Insisting people vote in person during a pandemic
- Confusing & poorly designed ballots
- Having a propaganda tv channel to lie for you 24/7
- Sabotaging the Post Office
- Tampering with the census (reduced representation)
- Casting doubt on the process
- Claiming people are voting illegally
- Frivolous court challenges of votes
Original Comment in a post:
"So just curious and I'll be straight up right off the bat I voted trump for many reasons one I'm a miner which trump supports two I'm completely against abortion. 3 because I own guns 4. I believe a 3 to 6 week shut done will shut this country down worse then covid pandemic. 5 because trump brought jobs back to the USA. I don't agree with everything trump has done but he's helped my job out. Biden will affect my wallet shutting down mining oil rigs and union workers. I'm not saying this to start a argument but I would like to know why you guys voted for Biden so I can understand your side I'm not judgement any way just would like to hear someone opinions on why they did"
