Good News Fox Won't Share

In March 2021, not a single Republican voted for the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to stimulate the economy.

This past February, unemployment was 6.3%, and the Congressional Budget Office projected that to reach 4.6% unemployment would take until the end of 2023.

The American rescue Plan extended unemployment benefits and provided stimulus payments to individuals. It increased food stamp benefits and significantly expanded the Child Tax Credit, putting money in parents' pockets. It provided grants to small businesses and local, state, and tribal governments. It provided money for schools, housing, and healthcare.

Again, not a single Republican voted for it.

On Friday, November 5th, it was reported that the economy had dropped to 4.6% unemployment, which is two years ahead of schedule. 

Biden added more jobs in the first 9 months of his presidency than the last three Republican administrations, covering 16 years combined.

Biden's policies would hurt the economy, right-wing politicians insisted. The news on Friday about the economy caused a rally on the stock market, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite closing at record highs.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen credited the American Rescue Plan and Biden's immunization campaign, which has vaccinated 193 million Americans against the novel coronavirus, for the recovery.

No Republicans voted for the American Rescue Plan, and right-wing politicians continue to decry efforts to get people vaccinated.

Will any of this be reported in the Q universe, of which Fox News is the leader? You know the answer to that. Instead, handouts, socialism (USSR style), and violating people's freedoms will continue to be the talking points. Along with Biden's supposed dementia.

Ref: Heather Cox Richardson, November 5th, 2021

Social Security Trojan Horse

 A Trojan Horse to cut benefits for Social Security – The Trust Act. A conservative wet dream repeatedly introduced by both Republicans and conservative Democrats (including the infamous Senator Manchin) sets up a bipartisan committee to propose changes that could be fast-tracked through Congress.

The proposed alternative is The Social Security 2100 Act., introduced October 26, 2021. While it does increase benefits somewhat, it only increases the solvency of Social Security to 2038, rather than the current 2034. After that, per the Social Security Actuarial Office, the assumption is that Social Security would borrow from General Revenues.

Senator Manchin (DINO-WV), in a quote on Romney's official website, opines that "Generations of irresponsibly cutting taxes combined with spending beyond our means has left the important programs on which we all depend – Medicare, Social Security, highways, and pensions – on the brink of insolvency."

Does anyone remember when Congress cut Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes? I don't. Does anyone remember when spending beyond our means affected payroll tax revenues (which fund Social Security and Medicare)? I don't.

No. What has occurred is decades of efforts by the GOP to kill Social Security. They have proposed privatization. They have repeatedly blamed "entitlement" programs for increasing the National Debt. They have blocked routine adjustments to payroll tax rates, and they have stopped adjustments to salary wage caps for income subject to those taxes. They have blocked reallocations of revenues between the retirement insurance, disability insurance, and survivor' benefit programs of Social Security. (Note that Social Security is not a savings plan; it is an insurance plan.)

The GOP is ideologically opposed to government programs that the financial sector cannot make a profit on. Money and greed – the pillars upon which the Republican party rests.

And what better way to gut Social Security than to create an artificial crisis to cut benefits? Instead of a 75-year 100% solvency, Social Security is only fully funded until 2034, a mere 13 years. Cue cries of "Reform! Save Social Security!"

And so this program, outside of general revenues, not affecting the federal budget, not affecting the National Debt, is somehow now in need of reform to fix all of those.

Also fueling GOP's lust is the matching employer portion of payroll taxes. Never mind that it's a cost of employment; companies somehow feel that it is their money being taken.

Social Security is not the federal government's biggest expense; it is not part of the general budget. Social Security is separate. It has its own revenue stream, and its surpluses and deficits are handled through the Trust Fund. And that $3 trillion in the Trust Fund has not been looted. Its paper IOUs are interest-bearing Treasury Bonds; those bonds are not instruments of theft.

The easiest way to fix and expand Social Security is to raise the payroll tax exemptions, or wage salary caps, above which payroll taxes are not paid. Fix revenues, not benefits. Lower-income wage earners fund social Security. It's time to get the wealthy to pay more of their fair share instead of letting them continue their efforts at killing Social Security.

Romney, Bipartisan Coalition Introduce TRUST Act for Inclusion in Next Relief Package, July 27, 2020, romney.senate.gov 

Time to Rescue United States Trusts (TRUST) Act, April 21, 2021, congress.gov

Thompson co-authors Social Security 2100 Act to expand Social Security program, October 27, 2021, thereporter.com

SOCIAL SECURITY, Office of the Chief Actuary,

"Estimates of the financial effects on Social Security of enacting Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust", October 26, 2021, ssa.gov

Globalization

Corporations and the wealthy have spent years removing all barriers to imports and offshore manufacturing. Many imported goods aren't manufactured to the same legal standards as domestic goods, which is unfair competition. 

Even wage standards for workers are not the same, and most foreign companies do not have to provide health care coverage for their employees. Either they don't bother, or their countries (like most western industrialized nations) have some form of universal healthcare.

The cheap extraction by US companies of foreign resources often leaves behind huge messes.

The US no longer protects most domestic production from unfair competition, and corporations reap huge profits from this. 

Good luck with leveling the playing field in this era of globalization. We have become an oligarchy (control is exercised by a small group of individuals whose authority is generally based on wealth or power), resulting in unfettered capitalism. 

The GOP mostly achieved their goal of destroying unions, and now Democrats and Republicans both rely mainly on corporate and wealthy donors.

It's a mad, mad world.

Of course, this is just my opinion. 😥

Weaponizing the Filibuster

Mitch McConnell weaponized the filibuster. Now he just has to declare one to require 60 votes for passage of any bill rather than a majority.

It used to be that a filibuster actually required speaking on the floor of the Senate, which is why so many Senators would read things aloud such as Green Eggs and Ham.

At some prior point in its history, the rules were changed so that Senators could conduct other business while the filibuster was active.

The filibuster has gone from being a delaying tactic to an effective veto.

Not only did McConnell weaponize the filibuster, but he also changed SCOTUS nomination confirmations to require only 51 votes. And he invented the Scheduling Veto.

That veto power used the Right of First Recognition when a bill was introduced. That right gives the first person recognized by the President of the Senate (usually the VP) to offer amendments, substitutes, and motions to reconsider before any other senator.

And, more importantly, to schedule a debate. By precedence since 1937, that first person is the majority leader, and it's not in The Constitution nor in the Senate rules.

McConnell's solution was to never schedule debate, no matter how popular a bill is. So the Senate is where House bills go to die, and it's more effective than a presidential veto since voting on a bill never takes place.

The Scheduling Veto was also used to deny Merrick Garland a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court seat, enabling him to pack the Supreme Court more effectively with conservative justices.

Stop Changing the Windows 10 User Interface

 I have had the line I was typing in your feedback erased 5 times by your stupid X. I am now typing this in Notepad.

I am so sick of t

Oh my God. Even in Notepad, my lines are being erased. What the. Am I hitting the damn keys too hard?

One more time.

Stop changing the UI without my express permission. 

Do I like the Windows 8 menu in my Windows 10 computer with its stupid clunky boxes and bizarre start menu and dysfunctional right-mouse-button (a la MAC)? No. I hate it. I loathe it. It's why I stayed far, far away from Windows 8. And every time I have to reinstall Windows 10 the smell of your new start menu comes back like a toxic fart.

I hate grouping in Windows Explorer. Did you ask if I wanted grouping? No.

Are you giving me easy ways to change back to what I was used to? To what I liked? So I didn't have to stare at your latest "improvement"? No.

Oh, sorry, that will require you to obtain 3rd party software to fix our new and improved feature to something that lets you access your information without a computer science degree. Or to try right-clicking in white spaces to find choices that are not there in order to change the way every other window works. Or to edit the Registry with its many programs and modules and data stored in one file (a single failure point) that if you screw it up, you are screwed so many different ways if you can't find your backup.

Oh, wait. I have a BS in computer science. And a BS in Math. And I have programmed in Ada, MSDos, Assembly, BASIC, COBOL, SNOBOL, Fortran, Forth, SAS, C, C#, C++, F, Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic, HTML, SQL, and others that I don't even remember.

I used BBSs and a 150 baud modem before there was a World Wide Web. I used AOL and collected their CDs to make art. I wrote a whole assembly terminal program to use my TRS-80 Model III to hook up to a University's IBM 360. All because I needed to insert a delay after a CRLF, otherwise characters that had been echoed back as received disappeared. I've used paper tape from TTYs to store programs on. I've carted around boxes of punched cards of data and statistical analysis programs. I've used magnetic tapes that had to be mounted and unmounted on mainframes. Graphics terminals. Keypunch machines. Mainframes. Graphic plotters. Home computers that didn't have hard drives. MicroPCs. Laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones. I have used cassette tapes for storage. I've used 5-inch and 3.5-inch floppies and numerous USB sticks along with SD and microSD memory cards and HDDs and SSDs and clouds.

I've repaired people's PCs, both hardware and software.

I'm not stupid. But I am so tired of speed bumps added to the UIs on your OSs. It's like you are programming for nerds while your target market is people who are not very computer literate. 

If I wanted obscure UIs I would be using LINUX. For some tasks, it uses a stupid 30- or 40- or 50-year-old command-line interface that for simple tasks requires looking up every single obscure procedure, as if higher programming languages were never invented. But I am reconsidering my hate relationship with Linux.

Did my significant other like it when the UI on her tablet changed? No. She threw it back at me with some choice words and gave up on the idea of ever using a tablet again. Not when she had struggled to understand how to use it and it morphed into something she was not familiar with. Without her permission.

This is my feedback. Now pardon me while I once again try to become an alcoholic.

Photo IDs Are Not About Election Integrity

• From the supposedly pro-life party.

  
  
  A woman was convicted of voter fraud for casting a provisional ballot in 2016. They convicted her for the same reason she had to cast a provisional ballot. Her vote was never even counted. OMG! Voter Fraud! Look, look, over here! Don't look over there!
  
  Voter ID laws are strictly aimed at people who vote Democratic. Polling places have long used other means to verify that the person voting is who they say. Trump's vision of busloads of illegal aliens voting plus people who vote and then put on a mustache and vote again is just delusional. Voter ID laws. Add in just a few of the many other tools of radical conservatives:
• gerrymandering,
• eliminating voting places and creating long lines,
• purging of voter registrations of likely Democrats,
• not letting people vote who owe the government money (poll taxes),
• blocking former prisoners from voting,
• restricting of early voting (fewer days and hours, no voting on Sunday),
• restricting absentee voting,
• misinformation such as the mailing of incorrect voting times or days,
• eliminating drop boxes (or creating illegal 'private' drop boxes),
• voter intimidation (think watchers with guns),
• refusal to adequately fund election security (hacking)

If you think voter ID laws are about honest elections, think again.