Politics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

How can you be worth $200 BN and still be so thin skinned?

[Owendonovan]

Because he can't grow a beard or mustache, feels inferior.

[Suliso]

This article is worth reading: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... y-00203464

I don't see any lies being told and I think it would apply to many other countries and their statistics as well.

[ponchi101]

It applies to a lot of countries in S. America.
For example. There are a lot of food staples with controlled prices. Prices fixed by the government. And those items are included, always, in the inflation indexes. So, of course, inflation is kept artificially low because those prices will not rise, by definition.
The stats are correct. The data gathering, as your article implies, is wrong.

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

The marula doesn't fall far from the tree.

[ti-amie]

The Republicans have a new voter registration bill, the SAVE Act, which experts warn could be a major threat to voting rights for all Americans, and particularly for married women, people of color, young voters, and other marginalized groups.

The bill, sponsored by Texas Republican congressman Chip Roy, was first introduced in 2024, where it passed in the House of Representatives. Now, it has been reintroduced to the new 119th Congress. The SAVE Act is clearly written to further intimidate undocumented immigrants from voting (which is already illegal), amid the debunked right-wing hysteria that noncitizens are voting in American elections. However, the data show that the SAVE Act would only disenfranchise eligible American voters, and do nothing to prevent illegal voting.

What is the SAVE Act?

The legislation would require all potential voters to provide, in person, proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, when they register or reregister to vote. So, for instance, if you’re already registered to vote but move to another state, you would probably need to present one of these documents, in addition to a photo ID, at a government office when you reregister.

Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, tells Glamour, “This legislation is being promoted as an election integrity bill, but it’s actually voter suppression. If it passes, it would be the first federal law in our history restricting access to voting.” Weiser notes that there are already “multiple safeguards” to prevent noncitizens from voting, and all this legislation would do is make it more difficult for everyone to vote. “It would destroy the most popular methods of registering to vote—whether that’s online, by mail, through a registration drive, or when you update your driver’s license at the DMV—by requiring people to show their documents in person to register. That would keep out many more eligible voters and cause chaos for election administration.”

How does it impact women?

In fact, the bill would impact millions of eligible voters, including the estimated 21.3 million Americans who do not have ready access to a birth certificate or passport, as well as anyone who relies on voting by mail. Early research indicates that it would disproportionately impact voters of color and young voters.

But it would also have a direct impact on anyone whose legal name does not match the name on their birth certificate or passport, such as the 79% of heterosexual married women, per Pew Research, who take their spouse’s last name. “If a married woman hasn’t paid $130 to update her passport—assuming she has one, which only about half of Americans do—she may not be able to vote in the next election if the SAVE Act becomes law,” Weiser says.

And there’s a chance this may not even be an accident. As recently as 2020, per The 19th, RNC speaker and antiabortion activist Abby Johnson said she supported “household voting,” in which the head of household, typically a man, casts one vote for the entire family. This was a common argument against women’s suffrage before the 19th Amendment was passed. And it should be noted that Project 2025 explicitly condones and seeks to enforce this sort of family structure. Should the SAVE Act pass, household voting could become the de facto law for married women who changed their last names.

While out trans people represent a much smaller percentage of the country (about 1.6% of adults, according to Pew) than heterosexual married women, they, too, could face practically insurmountable hurdles to voting if this bill becomes law. Already, the State Department has blocked trans people from changing their gender markers on their passports, according to NBC News, and from getting new passports that do not reflect the gender assigned at birth. If a trans person legally changes their name to reflect their gender, but is denied a passport with that name, they would not be eligible to register to vote under the SAVE Act.

Roy told Axios that the bill “explicitly directs States to establish a process for individuals to register to vote if there are discrepancies in their proof of citizenship documents due to something like a name change,” but voting-rights experts aren’t convinced. The Brennan Center found that when similar documentation requirements were introduced in Arizona and Kansas, tens of thousands of citizens were barred from registering to vote.

Should we panic yet?

We don’t need to apply for asylum in Canada just yet, but we should all be concerned. Luckily, for the time being at least, we still live in a democracy and there are things we can do to stop this bill. “If we speak up, we can make sure the SAVE Act never becomes law,” says Weiser.

“If you are concerned about the SAVE Act and how it would undermine Americans’ voting rights, contact your elected officials in Congress and ask them to reject this dangerous bill. Invite your friends and family to do the same,” Weiser tells Glamour. “And we don’t have to stop there. We can demand law reforms that actually expand voting rights. We can make sure we are registered to vote and make a plan to vote in the next election. And we can encourage others in our community to do the same.”

Additional reporting by Sam Reed.

https://www.glamour.com/story/save-act- ... men-voting

[ti-amie]

That Westchester County win is huge.

Still, will enough people see these daily posts to make a difference?

[ti-amie]

Trump closes down federal worker buyout offer after judge lifts hold
The administration moved to close the buyout program Wednesday evening after a federal judge in Massachusetts rejected a call from several labor groups that sued to block the initiative

Updated
February 12, 2025 at 6:33 p.m. ESTtoday at 6:33 p.m. EST

By Olivia George, Steve Thompson and Emily Davies
A judge on Wednesday lifted his pause on the federal government’s deferred resignation program, prompting the Trump administration to swiftly declare victory as it closed the offer to any more workers who might still have been mulling it.

The program — which encouraged federal workers to resign with the promise of pay through September — had been halted since last Thursday, when U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. temporarily stopped the Office of Personnel Management from moving ahead. Unions representing more than 800,000 federal workers had filed a lawsuit to stop the program, calling it an “arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum.”

In his ruling, O’Toole wrote that the unions’ lawsuit could not succeed because they lacked standing to sue and because his court lacked jurisdiction. The unions, the judge said, were not directly impacted by the administration directive “but are challenging a policy that affects others, specifically executive branch employees.”

“This is not sufficient,” he wrote, for the unions to sue under the Administrative Procedure Act. O’Toole, who was nominated in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, did not opine on the buyout program’s legality.

The ruling left a serious question: How much time would federal employees who had not yet signed up have to throw their names in? None, it turned out. McLaurine Pinover, spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management, said the program was closed as of 7 p.m. “There is no longer any doubt,” she said in a statement. “The Deferred Resignation Program was both legal and a valuable option for federal employees.”

About 75,000 workers have accepted the deal, Pinover said.

The decision out of the Massachusetts courthouse — and the Trump administration’s move immediately afterward — mark another milestone in a tumultuous period for federal workers, who have been left scrambling to make up their minds since the resignation offer, with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” first landed in their inboxes Jan. 28. Some workers jumped at the chance to leave. Others urged colleagues to reject a deal they consider a trap that will be used to eliminate staff without any payout.

The moves come as the Trump administration began initiating widespread layoffs across the federal government, starting Wednesday with probationary employees and with plans to extend deeper into the civilian federal workforce of 2.3 million. The drastic measures are led by representatives of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, who are deployed across agencies with full oversight of the hiring process and one central mission: to shrink the sprawling bureaucracy and align it with Trump’s vision.

The unions had sought the right to sue by claiming the buyout program’s rapid deadline, along with what they characterized as its confusing and chaotic rollout, impeded the unions’ ability to carry out their missions of counseling and advocating for federal workers.

The deferred resignation was the administration’s effort to lure workers into leaving before initiating the more direct reductions-in-force — which can pose legal challenges, especially when it comes to union-protected employees.

Most of the 2.3 million federal workers were eligible for the deferred resignation deal, according to the White House. Agency heads could make exceptions, and military personnel, U.S. Postal Service employees, people working in immigration enforcement and national security, and thousands of Veterans Affairs employees in direct care roles were exempt, according to OPM. In fiscal year 2023, 115,900 federal workers either retired or quit from their government jobs, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

Employees at first had nine full days to respond. Then came the lawsuit.

Three government unions — the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — challenged the legality of the offer. They are represented by the nonprofit group Democracy Forward.

In a statement Wednesday evening, AFGE National President Everett Kelley called the ruling a “setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants.”

The union’s lawyers, he said, are evaluating next steps.

“Importantly, this decision did not address the underlying lawfulness of the program. We continue to maintain it is illegal to force American citizens who have dedicated their careers to public service to make a decision, in a few short days, without adequate information, about whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk,” the statement continued.

The legal back-and-forth in recent days left tens of thousands of employees who already had accepted the deal in limbo. Some expressed regret that they’d jumped at the offer too quickly, now worrying they might have a target on their backs.

Amid the administration’s blitz of actions to slash the federal workforce and warnings of layoffs ahead, some employees saw the resignation plan as their best way out.

“My team has already been dismantled, so coming back to work, for me, I don’t even know what that would look like,” an OPM employee who opted into the offer previously told The Post.

Amid its pressure campaign, the administration also deployed an upbeat tone in its push to sell the program, pitching it as a chance to take a second job or travel to a “dream destination” while on the federal payroll. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “very generous.”

For some federal workers weighing the career decision, such messages seemed tone-deaf.

A lawyer with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal characterized OPM’s emails about the offer as “breezily condescending.” Others were left scratching their heads about whether they were even eligible, trying to decipher the vague conditions of the offer and its uncertain legal standing.

Employees at the CIA who were previously exempted were told that they had become eligible to participate. Employees at the Department of Defense were also left confused when they received the resignation offer, despite OPM stating on its website that employees in positions related to national security were not included.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed challenging Trump’s flurry of executive orders in the first weeks of his administration. Federal judges so far have halted his ban on birthright citizenship, issued temporary restraining orders against his freeze on federal grants and loans, and, at least for now, blocked the administration from putting 2,220 workers with the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va ... t-hearing/

[ti-amie]

Truth is they may never get what they were promised.

[Suliso]

This gets back to my “three levels of corruption” idea, which I would summarize this way: Level 1 is “Slip us come cash and we’ll do something extra for you”. Level 2 is “Slip us some cash and we’ll actually do our job for once”. And Level 3 is “Slip us some cash and nobody gets hurt”.

Above is from a Science blog I read regularly. I'm afraid USA is approaching level 3 if not already there.

[ponchi101]

That Westchester County win is huge.

Still, will enough people see these daily posts to make a difference?

No. Tiny's approval rate is at a high.
And the dems should have done this for the last 4 years. Not now.

[ti-amie]

[Owendonovan]

That Westchester County win is huge.

Still, will enough people see these daily posts to make a difference?

No. The content of the post isn't what people want to see. People want to see the other side getting hurt one way or another and that's about all they want to see.