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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • The reasoning was that in the old style of filibuster no other senate business was possible. In theory was supposed to help the senate be more productive. In practice, it’s made the filibuster even more powerful. If a party was holding up all legislation and other functions of the senate by grandstanding for something stupid, that could hurt them politically, especially if it got bad enough that the military was being impacted or there were government shutdowns. So maybe they would think twice if it was worth a filibuster. Now they can kind of do it risk free. I think if you saw, government shutdown caused by Republicans trying to prevent abortion protections, well it’d be pretty unpopular with most Americans. And they’d pay for it in the polls. Or maybe not even do the filibuster in the first place.


  • I suppose if we had way more judges who worked on a much quicker timeline and retained independent qualified experts in all these areas, and the judges weren’t just partisan hacks, then Chevron being struck down might not be so bad. But that’s not the world we live in. Slow decisions by corrupt judges that don’t know anything about what they’re ruling on. Just look at some of the ridiculous fda related rulings trying to go after abortion.

    But that’s basically why at the time it was originally ruled on you had liberals upset about Chevron and conservatives happy (basically a more conservative executive and more liberal court at that time).

    One slight silver lining is that it may make it easier for judges to strike down Trump admin regulations if he wins the election. But that is kind of cold comfort. Probably have worse issues than that if Trump is re elected.





  • Such a misleading way the story is written. Also a failure to mention that inflation was a global phenomenon, that it was brought down faster in America than most other places, that it was able to be brought down without a recession as was widely predicted which would have been far more devastating, that wage growth has compensated for inflation and then some, that wage growth was highest for hourly and low income workers, and a failure to mention the responses made by congress and the president to help inflation. So much important context left out.

    Barely a mention of the fact that all of Trump’s polices are the exact opposite of what you would do to help inflation. That his tarrifs alone will raise this person’s costs by $1700 a year. Why don’t they ask her what she thinks of Trump’s tarrifs costing her $1700 more a year if he takes office? They could mention how his first term policies including pressuring the federal reserve for unnecessarily low rates created a dangerous environment for inflation before the pandemic kicked it off.

    But all they can say is, just, I dunno, inflation was fine when Biden took office. In March 2021 prices were already increasing by 0.6% a month from the month before, a 4.8% annualized rate. Comparing to the year before is an average of the past 12 months of change combined. The month to month rate is a much better way to see how it’s changing when it’s changing rapidly. They were begining to accelerate before Biden did much of anything, and not to mention this occurred simultaneously around most of the globe.

    Anyways, journalists can’t be bothered I guess. Everyone always wonders why people think Republicans are better for the economy despite all the evidence to contrary. I think a lot of it is lazy journalism that just regurgitates opinions and polling instead of researching facts.


  • A lot of “rules” taught in high school writing classes are more stylistic choices. They’re not necessarily wrong. Some of them might help to improve clarity, or a rule might help encourage new word choices so writing doesn’t sound so repetitive. Lots of reasons. But many are more for style. Hey I did it! I even made a sentence with only an implied subject and verb, naughty.

    I would also argue that sometimes a period followed by a conjunction can be the best stylistic choice. Maybe the sentence was already getting too long and a break was needed, but you still wanted to draw contrast. Maybe you could have put a comma but wanted an increased emphasis on what comes after but. A lot of these things are just preference or style though. Like “never ending a sentence with a preposition.” Of course you can end a sentence with a preposition, but you might want to make sure what the preposition is referring to is clear to the reader too.


  • Weird cause I’ve got the FTC act right here. Says this:

    (a) Declaration of unlawfulness; power to prohibit unfair practices; inapplicability to foreign trade (1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.

    And then later on it has this whole entire section where it lays out the process for how the FTC is supposed to make rules in regards to unfair or deceptive practices

    Except as provided in subsection (h) of this section, the Commission may prescribe– (A) interpretive rules and general statements of policy with respect to unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title), and (B) rules which define with specificity acts or practices which are unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title)

    And more sections about how they can enforce those rules on individual rule breakers.

    Sure sounds like congress was trying to give the FTC the authority to make rules about unfair competition. Both general rules and with “specificity” apparently. Specifically here, non compete agreements have been declared an unfair practice and they followed all rule making procedures as laid out in the law.

    https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/statutes/federal-trade-commission-act/ftc_act_incorporatingus_safe_web_act.pdf





  • It’s mostly been conservatives that have a problem with this, not progressives for the most part. I mean sure some progressives are against but they’re by far the minority.

    I know progressives and democrats, and conservatives and Republicans, aren’t the same thing, but you get the picture. I think most on the left would prefer to stand up to authoritian genocidal governments, whereas many conservatives crazily see a lot they like in Russian government and want the US to embrace them.



  • The president already was protected from all civil lawsuits due to previous rulings. This ruling was only about criminal prosecutions.

    He has absolute immunity for any use, for any reason, of his core presidential powers include anything listed in article 2 (the military, pardons, firing or hiring officials within the executive department). There is no determining if those are an official act or not. Anything the president does with an article 2 power is an official act with absolute immunity now. Motives or reason for using that power or the outcome of that cannot be questioned. It is legal for the president to accept a bribe to pardon someone right now. The fact that it happened couldn’t even be mentioned in court.

    Only when the president is doing something not listed in the constitution can it be determined if it’s an official or unofficial act by the courts and should be immune. And again it’s the action, not the motive or the result or purpose of the action, that determines whether it is official. The only example they gave was talking to justice department officials is official. So if he is talking to justice department officials to arrange a bribe or plan a coup? Legal, immune, can’t even be used as evidence against him. It doesn’t matter why he was talking to the justice department, the fact that he was makes him immune from any laws he breaks in the process of doing so. They aren’t determining if a bribe or coup is an official act, they’re determining if talking to justice department officials in general is. It doesn’t matter what he’s actually doing it for, arranging a coup? That’s perfectly okay. Oh someone found out, pardon everyone else involved in the conspiracy who wasn’t already immune. Now it can’t even be brought up in court.

    In the example you gave of ordering an assassination, if it used the military to do the assassination that is a core power, cannot be questioned. The supreme court ruling placed no limits on what can be done with his article 2 powers. Only a nebulous official vs not official test for things not listed in article 2. There’s also a very worrying core power in article 2 about “ensuring laws are faithfully executed” that even Barrett thought was too much in her concurrence as it could apply to seemingly anything. Basically, as long as the president is using the levers of government to commit crimes, legal now.

    Impeachment is the only recourse now as you say, but even if impeached and removed from office by some miracle, they still wouldn’t be able to be held criminally liable afterwards for that.

    Everyone panicking in this thread is right to do so.