VAX or FIRED

Herb & Suds said:

Many are one issue voters no matter how far down the rabbit hole the GOP goes

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Unfortunately we lost the guns people. I think that's a weak spot for the dems, guns are sort of THE issue in rural places, and gun laws really should be different in cities vs rural areas, but the national messaging of the party killed that. They aren't going to be interested in anything else the dems say.

HGCC said:

Unfortunately we lost the guns people. I think that's a weak spot for the dems, guns are sort of THE issue in rural places, and gun laws really should be different in cities vs rural areas, but the national messaging of the party killed that. They aren't going to be interested in anything else the dems say.

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This is one of the big issues that I think demonstrates how the 'left's' position is being dictated/branded/propagandized by right wing propaganda.

Eh, gun control is pretty popular in the large cities that make up the base of dem voters. It is something they run on and popular. The dems themselves held Beto out there with whatever that statement was. They really did seize on stuff like parkland to make their points.

It's the dem platform. I can point out that Obama opened up national parks to guns, and that it isn't popular with the whole party...but it isnt the republicans fault that people think dems are opposed to guns. The national messaging of the party doesn't align with local or regional views (or even what the dems do), but they are what they are.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

sometimes, but people don't play by the rules, they try to cheat the second you aren't directly watching them, so you need inspectors to make sure food is properly handled, you need inspectors to make sure products are manufactured in a safe environment, that waste is disposed of in a safe way, that the products themselves aren't dangerous...you need watchdogs to make sure the inspectors are doing their jobs properly, and aren't accepting bribes. you need irs agents to make sure that people are paying their fair share of taxes (yeah, i know...)...the system demands a certain number of people to be in jobs that really shouldn't have to exist, but do, because people aren't to be trusted if not under direct observation

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When government gets too big you end up with 2 groups of people, people working too many hours for too few dollars paying for government workers who sit around eating donuts and sipping coffee. A few dead people once in a while is the better alternative.
It can also create 2 classes of people. In Japan mothers want their daughters to marry government employees because they know their lives will be set. Better benefits, more vacations, less stress, better subsidized rent. In fact there is a loop hole in the laws where they can’t evict government workers and they found the majority of them were either behind on or never paid rent. We’re talking prime real estate too. Normal person would pay $4k and their rent is like $700 of which they weren’t paying.

HGCC said:

Eh, gun control is pretty popular in the large cities that make up the base of dem voters. It is something they run on and popular.

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What I mean is the ambiguity of the term 'gun control' has been so manipulated that it is virtually meaningless without a half hour discussion that is full of nuance and therefore trigger words all planted by right wing propagandists.

HGCC said:

The dems themselves held Beto out there with whatever that statement was.

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This is a good example. The 'Dems' didn't vote Beto in, so your statement is right off the back wrong, and yes whatever he said about AR's or whatever it was, was plastered all over right wing propaganda channels nonstop to the point that it obviously stuck, and then by tying it to 'the Dems', we are back to the point I was making.

HGCC said:

They really did seize on stuff like parkland to make their points.

It's the dem platform.

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What is the Democrat platform in your mind?

This is what I found on the actual DNC website:
https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/the-issues/preventing-gun-violence/


I would be curious how it matches up to what you thought it was, and what part of it you think is wrong.

HGCC said:

I can point out that Obama opened up national parks to guns, and that it isn't popular with the whole party...

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Can you name anything that is popular with 100% of the Democratic party? The Democrats are not a party of almost all 1 demographic and represent the entire country well, that makes a statement like you made technically correct, but virtually meaningless.

I would point out that a Democratic POTUS signed a bi partisan bill expanding gun rights in a congress that had a Democratic majority in the House and a Super Majority in the senate.

And still this becomes an example of Democrats being anti-gun because 100% of them don't like it? I don't see it.

HGCC said:

but it isnt the republicans fault that people think dems are opposed to guns.

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I mostly disagree. The right wing media (tv/radio/print/online/etc) has decided it is easier to dictate what the Democrats want and sell that to the people they can trick into believing their spam.

HGCC said:

The national messaging of the party doesn't align with local or regional views (or even what the dems do), but they are what they are.

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Easy to say, but I am really not so sure. It is a lot easier to just trick the single issue (in this case guns) voters into thinking that the extreme view is what 'their side' is up against.

DaFreak said:

A few dead people once in a while is the better alternative.

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well, it won't be a few...if you're saying that there needs to be less government oversight, where exactly would you take them from? watching over food production? so you're fine with contaminated food being distributed across the entire country? because that was the situation that caused those oversights to be put in place, thousands getting sick and hundreds dying because canneries and meat packing plants ignored safety standards and cleanliness rules. would you remove them from manufacturing facilities? so that poorly made, defective products can be sent out to the entire population? products that don't operate as intended, and can lead to injury and fire? products painted with lead based paints, made out of toxic materials....the reason all those inspectors are where they are is that they were needed there, and not one single thing has happened to make me think that they aren't still needed. hell, i'd add a few more if it was up to me, the ones they have now are overworked.

DaFreak said:

government workers who sit around eating donuts and sipping coffee.

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some do, and some actually do their jobs. you have a whole bucket of very, very broad brushes you like to slap entire segments of society with.
society is made up of individuals, and you cannot know how any of them are going to react in different situations. some will be useless pieces of shit, and some will do their jobs. i personally think it's about a 20% piece of shit, 20% do their jobs very well, 60% have good and bad days ratio....just like everyone else...

DaFreak said:

When government gets too big you end up with 2 groups of people, people working too many hours for too few dollars paying for government workers who sit around eating donuts and sipping coffee.

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What exactly is "too big"? The point of larger government is to offset and balance big business. Meat safety inspectors have the time to inspect meat packing plants once every half a decade. People die from salmonella and poultry firms do nothing until forced.

Offshore drilling rigs get examined less frequently than that because there aren't enough inspectors because there isn't enough money. So entire gulfs get covered in oil.

Pharma and ag do their own safety research because government can't afford to test drugs on its own. So we get drug after drug that is ineffective or dangerous.

So what exactly is too big? What is this constant ideology that insists on smaller government in the face of larger need just because it sounds good.

Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 at the urging of President Reagan, declared in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

And it looks as though they may well succeed. They have always hidden under a blanket of fear of the tyrannical and now it turns out they themselves are the tyrants and they see government as in their way.

So many words hanimmal...so many words

First paragraph I fully concur, it is the root of the other issues.

Second one: beto was the darling of the party and did almost beat Cruz. He fizzled hard, but he had a good 3-6 months where he got serious play. I don't consider cnn right wing, that's where his gun rhetoric showed up for me. It was considered a selling point, again gun control (yes, loaded term) is a topic that plays well in cities and is popular with the dem base...and cnn readers.

Third: I agree with their platform and it is what I thought, but that isn't the messaging that is out there. Again it's the issue of not being able to have reasonable discussions on the topic. You can have whatever as your actual party statement, but republican influence or not, the dems need to own that conversation and steer it. Just saying "well that's not what we think, based on facts" isn't cutting it.

Four: of course nothing is popular with 100%. What I am saying is that the gun control topic is popular with a large chunk of the dem voters. Of course they go with that. It doesn't make any sense to then deny that something popular with the majority of the party won't leave the minority unhappy, rural gun rights voters are a minority. I wasn't trying to say the expansion of gun rights under dems meant they were anti gun (bad punctuationon my part), was pointing at that as something where you can point to facts and talk about what actually happened until you are blue in the face but it ultimately doesn't matter in the broad public discussion that occurs, that public discussion is based on feelz, not facts.

Five: I think we do disagree here. It isnt right or moral, but facts don't matter in terms of these large issues as discussed in the public sphere. You can't just say the other side isn't playing fair, you have to get out in front of it and make your case to convince people. That's the job of a politician. Policy wonks can sit and make factually heavy arguments all they want, doesn't sway the people. Again, not saying this is the way it should be, bit I think it is the way it is.

Six: sort of the same as above. So the other side tricks people...well what do you do about it?

Finale: public perception isn't based in reality. It's emotionally driven. You can have all the facts and figures in the world and make great points, but if you fail against someone just yelling "they took yer gunz" then you need to change your tactics. Also, dems aren't a monolith, things won't be popular with everyone. You have people on the far left unhappy with the dems going center (where most voters are), you have rural voters that don't like the stuff that appeals to the city voters (where most voters are) such as guns. I do think it's a mistake to paint that as the republicans fault, its just how reality works if you have a diverse group, but its not the oppositions fault.

hanimmal said:

I was just playing off your use of brutally competitive.

Just collaborative works for what I meant. Competition is cool and all, but I would rather have people understand how to work in a team and learn to listen to everyone in the group regardless of gender/race/language barriers/etc. Also we shouldn't throw up bottlenecks for people gaining knowledge IMO. Ever. Learning should be lifelong and far easier than it currently is for people to gain quality education.

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This seems nearly axiomatic to me. The greatest examples I can think of in recent(ish) memory are the war effort and the space program. Competitive results were secured as the outcome of large-scale cooperation across dozens of professional domains. Total access to education (one outcome of which is fair grading instead of the current compassionate fudging) should be a marker of a prosperous and civilized nation.

Gonna be hard to get there from here. But if we do, we shouldn’t have another “lost generation” of undereducated people vulnerable to obviously false propaganda.

Until the next revolution in communications blows away our hard-won adaptations to the dangers of the current one.

HGCC said:

Eh, gun control is pretty popular in the large cities that make up the base of dem voters. It is something they run on and popular. The dems themselves held Beto out there with whatever that statement was. They really did seize on stuff like parkland to make their points.

It's the dem platform. I can point out that Obama opened up national parks to guns, and that it isn't popular with the whole party...but it isnt the republicans fault that people think dems are opposed to guns. The national messaging of the party doesn't align with local or regional views (or even what the dems do), but they are what they are.

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After having read NRA propaganda organs until last year (when I told them just where to file my membership after reading relentless, full-octane MAGA Big Lie hagiography of that man and his new Scotus weasels) I can tell you the gun lobby is uniformly somewhere to the right of MTG.

Guns are deliberately made a polarizing issue by the GOP, with the exception of the few surviving nonradical R legislators. It’s grievance politics of a very successful type.

It was made plain the relationship of guns to the hard-right false flaggers who were deliberately setting up Antifa and BLM to look like they are the violent revolutionaries!

For gun rights to survive the decade, this alliance between gun manufacturers and sellers and their pseudolibertarian customer bloc will need to be broken. There is currently no effective platform to discuss gun rights and restrictions in the centrist to left press. The Nazis have made the issue their own, and as such are greater ultimate enemies of gun rights than the liberals in their crosshairs.

It

canndo said:

What exactly is "too big"? The point of larger government is to offset and balance big business. Meat safety inspectors have the time to inspect meat packing plants once every half a decade. People die from salmonella and poultry firms do nothing until forced.

Offshore drilling rigs get examined less frequently than that because there aren't enough inspectors because there isn't enough money. So entire gulfs get covered in oil.

Pharma and ag do their own safety research because government can't afford to test drugs on its own. So we get drug after drug that is ineffective or dangerous.

So what exactly is too big? What is this constant ideology that insists on smaller government in the face of larger need just because it sounds good.

Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 at the urging of President Reagan, declared in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

And it looks as though they may well succeed. They have always hid under a blanket of fear of the tyrannical and now it turns out they are the tyrants and they see government in their way.

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I don’t accept that more government workers make us safer. You guys sound like you think the world would be perfect if only we had government controlling all the evil private companies.

DaFreak said:

It

I don’t accept that more government workers make us safer. You guys sound like you think the world would be perfect if only we had government controlling all the evil private companies.

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So one inspectors per 100 oil rigs is ok with you?

I asked you specifics. "Government is too big" ignores real requirements and an estimate of what is right sized.

So what is it? You complained of Japan ese government workers but this is not Japan. If there is an issue with overpay I don't know where it resides.

The average U.S. Government salary ranges from approximately $41,213 per year for Political Consultant to $178,939 per year for Office Administrator. Average U.S. Government hourly pay ranges from approximately $14.05 per hour for Checker to $45.57 per hour for Advanced Practice Registered Nurse.

These seem about in line with the private sector. So tell us please, what right sized government looks like.

Or are you not talking federal. And if you aren't, then how can the people of a nation affect the government of the local?

canndo said:

So one inspectors per 100 oil rigs is ok with you?

I asked you specifics. "Government is too big" ignores real requirements and an estimate of what is right sized.

So what is it? You complained of Japan ese government workers but this is not Japan. If there is an issue with overpay I don't know where it resides.

The average U.S. Government salary ranges from approximately $41,213 per year for Political Consultant to $178,939 per year for Office Administrator. Average U.S. Government hourly pay ranges from approximately $14.05 per hour for Checker to $45.57 per hour for Advanced Practice Registered Nurse.

These seem about in line with the private sector. So tell us please, what right sized government looks like.

Or are you not talking federal. And if you aren't, then how can the people of a nation affect the government of the local?

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Why focus on only those aspects? Have you not seen government inefficiency? 3 people to do the work of 1. I think you could add 10% more inspectors and they would find a way to get less done.

CatHedral said:

After having read NRA propaganda organs until last year (when I told them just where to file my membership after reading relentless, full-octane MAGA Big Lie hagiography of that man and his new Scotus weasels) I can tell you the gun lobby is uniformly somewhere to the right of MTG.

Guns are deliberately made a polarizing issue by the GOP, with the exception of the few surviving nonradical R legislators. It’s grievance politics of a very successful type.

It was made plain the relationship of guns to the hard-right false flaggers who were deliberately setting up Antifa and BLM to look like they are the violent revolutionaries!

For gun rights to survive the decade, this alliance between gun manufacturers and sellers and their pseudolibertarian customer bloc will need to be broken. There is currently no effective platform to discuss gun rights and restrictions in the centrist to left press. The Nazis have made the issue their own, and as such are greater ultimate enemies of gun rights than the liberals in their crosshairs.

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Thank you. I really don't see an end to gun violence until gun owners take ownership for reducing it.

DaFreak said:

Why focus on only those aspects? Have you not seen government inefficiency? 3 people to do the work of 1. I think you could add 10% more inspectors and they would find a way to get less done.

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Why focus on those? Because they are the tip of our protection from big corporations. Because they are the counter weight to the heavy hand of business.

I keep asking you specific, direct questions and you keep offering the vague or insubstantial as response.

Are you perhaps conflating the results of a government workers union with the government itself?

Again I'll ask, what is the right size?
What are those departments that are too bloated?

The right size is as small as you can get it.

Dude, I’m on my iPhone in my office. I’m speaking in general terms. The idea of a small government and classic Republicans are still important as a counter measure to unbridled spending and government getting too big. I get it, you think the governments got your back. Good for you. I don’t.

It can be zero if you want cancer and to live like a caveman.

DaFreak said:

The right size is as small as you can get it.

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How small can YOU get it?

DaFreak said:

Why focus on only those aspects? Have you not seen government inefficiency? 3 people to do the work of 1. I think you could add 10% more inspectors and they would find a way to get less done.

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Why? Why is government inherently less efficient? And yet again, what is the right size?

Oh, maybe the nsa and Cia are too big, but maybe we don't much need them at all. So what areas of government should we focus on if not protection of the citizens?