We're near DFW. Mom is north of us by a bit. We lost power too, for days. Towards the end we had rolling outages that were predictable so we prepped anything that needed heat or power and as soon as the lights came on we made fresh coffee and tea and water for oatmeal or whatever and recharged the water supply since we are on a private well. Our power bricks handled most of the phone/laptop power delivery so we basically topped off the charge on the bricks whenever we had power. My greenhouse is solar/battery powered though I did use 1 lb propane cylinders for the coldest periods since the heater in the greenhouse was way too small to manage temps that went below 10F. I lost some things but I learned some things too. We are much more resilient today.
Showing ID to vote wouldn't be controversial in the US if states made it easy to obtain a valid ID for the purpose. But states routinely use it as a backdoor mechanism to prevent people from voting.
There's an excellent documentary by Channel 5 (formerly All Gas No Brakes) where he tries to work with a group of homeless people in Las Vegas to get them papers and the process is extremely difficult. Like bordering on impossible.
>where he tries to work with a group of homeless people in Las Vegas to get them papers and the process is extremely difficult. Like bordering on impossible.
That seems like the worst case scenario though? I don't think homeless people should be disenfranchised, but at the same time it's unfair to pretend the typical experience of getting a voter id resembles whatever the TV show is depicting either.
"But these marginalized group of people isn't something we need to worry about right?"
But even setting aside homeless, US states have a very documented, very public history of disenfranchising African American voters.
* 1890-1960 you've got "literacy tests" that would routinely fail black voters but allow white voters through
* 1800-1960 you've got poll taxes which was used strategically in places to harm black & sometimes even poor white voters, mostly to suppress black voters. This by the way is where a lot of the sensitivity comes up around driver's licenses and ID cards - it's frequently referred to as a modern day poll tax.
* "Grandfather" clauses where if you grandfather could vote before the Civil War then you could bypass literacy tests & poll taxes.
Let's fast forward lest you think this is an "old" problem.
* In the 1960s you've got racial gerrymandering which starts to become popular as previous mechanisms are disallowed (this by the way still happens today & the GOP will frequently try to whitewash it as a political move and it just so happens that the Democratic party is predominantly black & the current SCOTUS has allowed that kind of fig leaf).
* Voter roll purges frequently seem to target black communities.
* Felon disenfranchisement laws seem "equal access" until you realize that African Americans are jailed in a 2:1 ratio to white people.
* North Carolina in 2013 cut early voting and same-day registration specifically targeting Black voters (as ruled on by the 4th circuit). Alabama in 2015 closed DMVs and polling places making it hard to get an ID AND to vote (closures centered in majority-Black counties). Wisconsin in 2016 had DMV clerks caught on tape intentionally giving incorrect information to deter voters from getting ID. Georgia in 2018 closed a huge amount of polling places centered in black majority districts. Texas as well (these counties had been protected by the VRA).
Sure, the most impacted tend to be poor people, but regardless of income, it's almost always got a racial bent by most of these power centers. Pretending like racism is a solved problem in America is being willfully blind.
> but at the same time it's unfair to pretend the typical experience of getting a voter id resembles whatever the TV show is depicting either.
"Typical" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is it typical in your socioeconomic class? No probably not. Is it typical in terms of many millions of people experience this problem every election cycle? Yes.
> when I specifically acknowledged that homeless not being able to get id is a real issue.
In one breadth you acknowledge it and then say "but is it really that big a deal?" in the next. That's minimization.
>"Typical" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is it typical in your socioeconomic class? No probably not. Is it typical in terms of many millions of people experience this problem every election cycle? Yes.
Do you honestly think the median person who can't vote because of voter ID laws is experiencing the same level of difficulty as a homeless person trying to get an ID? If not, then maybe you shouldn't accuse other people of ""Typical" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here".
You're somehow creating this weird dichotomy where if someone is struggling more then another person can't be experiencing difficulty either. It's possible for both problems to exist and you're playing some weird competition of "well if someone has it worse then your issue isn't as bad". No, both problems are bad and trying to stack rank between them is weird - is disenfranchising black people because of racism worse than disenfranchising the homeless? It's still disenfranchisement at the end of the day.
Pretending like voter ID laws are about the median voter is being willfully blind. If it was, they'd be pared with "free ID" legislation and making sure there's polling places commensurate with the size of population centers. But it's not - it's always purely about disenfranchising people. I'm all for voter ID laws if and only if they're pared with making voting easier. As standalone measures intended to harm specific groups I'm not in favor of them.
It can be incredibly difficult and time consuming to get a birth certificate if you have lost yours. If you work full time, you'd have to take off for an unknown time period (typically multiple hours) to stand in line at a court or other facility that provides them. In some cases, people just don't have the option to take that time off and/or lack vehicle access to get there. Then there's a fee to get a copy, lots of forms you and your relatives have to sign & get notarized. Finally, if you're successful, then you get the opportunity to make an appointment to wait at line at a DMV location. In Texas, they have severely limited hours since COVID.
I think it's become significantly worse since COVID & REAL ID requirements, but it's always been a Kafkaesque nightmare to try & get the proof of who you legally are. And, not to mention, it's a paper form that you can't just pull up digitally, so if you don't take precautions, it's easy to misplace.
Oh man the birth certificate thing is ridiculous. I had to get a new Id from scratch recently and it was the most painful process
The state I was born in decided to outsource the handling of birth certificates to some shit tier consulting firm.
In order to get my birth certificate shipped to me, I would have to wait over six months simply to process my request (ostensibly due to Covid, but this was 2023). It would have been quicker for me to walk hundreds of miles and get it in person. Thankfully I lucked out and found an old one.
Just a reminder that this is the shit politicians mean when they talk about privatizing government services.
For non-US contrast, when I needed a birth certificate recently, I filled an online form and the next day I received a digitally signed pdf by email. It was free.
Not just a slow turn-around time, but as I recall, it also cost me $90 to get my copy. That's not much for most of us, but to someone living paycheck to paycheck, it may be insurmountable or nearly so.
Having each section of our government and it's services privatized it's a whole other issue as well. We're watching the same thing that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union (and all the Warsaw pact states) happen here in the U.S. right now: the organs of the state being shut down & sold to the highest bidder to create a loyal oligarch class.
Slowly but sure, the USPS, the NWS, and public broadcasting is being destroyed so private entities can scoop up the leftovers or take over in their stead.
To add to this, there’s friction from the citizen side of things with a relatively high level of distrust in government that’s been present for decades. If you go out deep enough into the boonies for instance you can probably find people who still don’t have government ID of any type despite being native born and prefer to keep it that way.
In my state I bring two forms of ID and a couple of bills to the DMV and I’m issued a same-day license?
How does that compare to a notoriously unfriendly nation like Germany?
In any case, my understanding is virtually any nation in Central and South America requires identification to vote. If the third-world poverty stricken nations make it work there is no reason the rich United States cannot.
You can't use your driving license under the proposed SAVE act, as it's not proof of citizenship. Only a few states offer "extended" driving licenses, which do, but also need to be requested separately in most (or all?) states that offer them IIRC. For every other state: you will have to use a passport, birth certificate, or a separate state ID card.
> Only a few states offer "extended" driving licenses, which do [prove your citizenship]
If anyone is wondering, an enhanced drivers license is not the same as a "REAL ID". A "REAL ID" does not indicate citizenship status, which the SAVE act requires.
OK now we just need to find out how well it works for thousands of other people from different states, social classes, and skin colors and then we'll have some real data.
assuming that you're talking about a driver's license, you're leaving out the important steps of passing driving tests and, more importantly, having a car.
In GA, to pick on the state I was living in when they started instituting these rules, they cut DMV locations at the same time as they started adding the ID requirements (or trying to, I moved and don't know the current status of their rules). Yes, the state ID was free, but their actions at the same time, intended or not, made it harder for people to get the free ID.
Just this week Trump posted on his social media that Obama should be indicted for treason, aka, executed and not a blip from the supposed left-wing media
Not every side deserves to be covered for each story. This is the problem with major media today, they give equal opportunity to people that have no idea what they are talking about. It's like one side says 2+2=4, the other 2+2=5, and media gives them equal air time.
Can you point me to a good source that actually gives equal opportunity to multiple sides of a story? Because I rarely see that (regardless of which side), the whole reason why I subscribe to things like ground.news.
Axios does a pretty solid job of covering point and counterpoint on their stories not bias towards "equality" for different perspectives, but actually covering fully the different angles of a story.
See yourself in their article from a couple of weeks ago about the federal funding cut of CPB.
> Ahead of Trump's second term, Project 2025 wrote in a detailed memo foreshadowing the president's agenda ways the administration could pull funding for public broadcasters. The Trump administration started taking actions to scrutinize public broadcasters shortly thereafter.
There's no mention of why they want to defund CPB beyond "Trump administration efforts to strip funding." Muh Project 2025 is referenced briefly, but the rationale isn't explored.
They provide quotes from those opposed "unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions,... gutting" without the For Side saying anything e.g. that this is no longer necessary due to media landscape.
It doesn't consider whether it's necessary and while saying it will be a loss to rural news never looks at the fact it's used less and less there, whether gap will be filled and in part has.
It centers the negative consequences, it has very limited perspective by supporters and centrally frames Project 2025 despite questionable connection. There's clearly a tilt, but it performs neutrality that less critical might accept.
"The choice of what to include and what to leave out, what to emphasize and what to downplay, inevitably reflects a point of view."
I'd much rather deal with the 2nd version than the first. It's self-documenting and prevents errors like calling "foo(userId, accountId)" letting the compiler test for those cases. It also helps with more complex data structures without needing to create another type.
No I want to block both. I don't want to give devs the option of creating a function doSomething(String) that happens to accept MyType. If I need to call trim then I'll do
Sorry but the risk:reward narrative is tiring. Many of these CEOs walk away with millions whether they succeed or fail, there's little to no risk for them. In fact, even they fail in cases they end finding another well paying executive position. Meanwhile, many of their employees are living paycheck to paycheck.
> "Many of these CEOs walk away with millions whether they succeed or fail"
Surgeons walk away with their pay whether a high-risk patient lives or dies, aside from provable malpractice. Why? Because they made a good faith effort to do their jobs despite an uncertain outcome.
I have never seen the high pay commanded by surgeons justified by the risk of the profession.
Surgeons are paid highly because it is 1) a highly-skilled profession, requiring many years of schooling and practice to gain the medical knowledge necessary; 2) a stressful profession (related to risk, but not the same thing); and 3) highly in demand—due to both 1 and 2, not a lot of people choose to become surgeons, and AIUI, there's a fair amount of specialization within the surgical field, so you can't just swap in a heart surgeon to cut into someone's knee, for instance.
Ridiculously high CEO pay is frequently justified by the supposed "risk" they take on, but experience doesn't back that up. Observation indicates that the primary factor that leads to high CEO pay is the incestuous relationships between company boards and the CEOs they pick—far too often, the CEO of company A will be on the boards of companies B and C, and vice versa, and they will just each support higher compensation for the others because they're all buddies.
Even if he got fired and had his entire pay package clawed back somehow, Brian Niccol would still be fabulously wealthy. His risk is basically zero.
There's something about the human mind that makes it feel worse for a rich person to lose insignificant-to-them millions than for a poor person to lose a thousand bucks.
People have trouble with orders of magnitude. A billionaire could lose 99% of his wealth, and still have $10M--set for life, never having to work again.
I don't necessarily mean financial risk (though tbh, even the golden parachutes you cite are often a drop in the bucket compared to the market cap of these companies), but there's a lot of legal risk involved: think testifying to Congress, embroilments with the FTC/FCC, etc., dealing with a board of directors, navigating potential hostile takeovers or activist investors, etc. My point is that it's just a different ball game and being a CEO of a public company simply isn't the same thing as being an accountant that works 9-5.
I personally have significantly more of a problem with Congress having no term limits and being able to trade on the very market they're regulating.
I disagree with term limits. I'd prefer to see the number of representatives vastly increased (no increase since 1929) and gerrymandering removed. I do agree they should not trade on the market.
I think you misunderstand the risk that non-CEO employees are exposed as cycomanic pointed out. CEOs that make this much money are more capable of defending themselves than a regular employee, not only from their wealth but from their network. It's rare that a CEO has to testify to Congress, or deal with FTC/FCC, etc. And dealing with BOD, hostile takeovers, or activist investors pales in comparison to what many people deal with day to day. A CEO is not going to go homeless from a hostile takeover.
Not sure if this is rhetorical, but there are Wiki entries, investigative articles, documentaries, and even entire books dedicated to corporate malpractice and its consequences over the past century.
But now you are talking about malpractice. I would argue a regular employee is just much exposed to legal risk. I would argue that their risk is actually higher, because they don't have a full office of corporate lawyers to defend them.
Take the VW Diesel scandal, several engineers went to jail over this. In contrast Winterkorn has been charged, but AFAIK the case has been suspended and I'm not sure if it will ever go forward.
I bought an electric early last year and never considered Tesla because of Elon. I'm sure I'm not the only one.I disagree with "have to go out of their way", many companies now build electrics and it's easy to find them.
In 2024 Tesla sales accounted for 49% of EV sales in the US. Tesla sales have been dropping quarter to quarter (ie, Q1 2025 was less than Q1 2024) as well as year over year. I see no reason why that trend would change in Tesla's favor.
Yes, Medicare too. Unless Congress intervenes, Medicare providers will see about a 4% cut every year starting next October. The new law's deficit boost triggers automatic sequestration cuts across the board each year for ten years.
Interestingly my representative just sent me a message assuring me that both were protected in the bill. Which proves my point, you don't touch them, or if you do you ensure it looks like you didn't.
Well, based on unbiased information out there (like GAO for example) your representative is clearly lying. Maybe you consider voting for someone other than your representative…
