I know two people who took out home equity lines of credit right before the housing bubble burst, used those to pay off student loans, then walked away from their houses and declared bankruptcy. It was basically a creative way to include student loans in their bankruptcies.
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Cringed and laughed, but um, probably not a good idea to publish the teacher possibly committing a felony?
If you’re referring to recording the phone call, the parent did it.
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My first thought was that the teacher published it and I thought it was, although hilarious, incredibly stupid on their part. My brain couldn’t comprehend that the level of delusion existed in the parent that they thought publishing that was a good idea. Then again, they all live in a Parler/OAN bubble that will only get worse in the coming years.
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You need to check out the rest of the posts on there - some are more absurd. Exhibit A:
https://mobile.twitter.com/CopingMAGA/status/1328321929200144384
Sad thing is there’s a non-zero chance it’s not a level.
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I basically haven’t read this thread but are we at the point we hope the GOP talking points about Bernie and AOC mind controlling senile Biden are what are pinning our hopes on yet?
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I am hoping to boink GA then I think some real shit is going to go down… And I think after 4 years of being battered, really from just one election in 2016, we are discounting the possibility that this quasi-Election Steal gambit is making the GOP look ridiculous without really firing up the base to vote and may backfire on them in GA.
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Like in what other context has someone said, “yeah, we should plan a coup attempt destined to fail, that sounds like a great idea!”
Just makes you look weak, stupid and pathetic… even to people who prefer that you have power…
Having an educated populace is good for the economy and also generally a good thing for any country to have (cf. eg. Trump voters). It‘s a worthy cause the government should pursue. Instead of means-testing there should simply be higher taxes and „undeserved“ payments can be clawed back that way.
Nobody says it‘s the only thing that should be done about higher education. It’s one of the steps though. Free community college as was proposed in the primaries is a way to combat run-away inflation of college tuition. There are also ways to help non-college educated people, for example raising the minimum wage and free healthcare.
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There’s a good discussion being had here, but did somebody mention that it’s 41k a year for DePaul? Beam me up.
Oh my god. That didn’t even cross my mind. Suppose I don’t really connect with these people lol
Yeap. And keep looking. She makes MAGA pop art. An absolute nutter she is.
I was thinking about ChrisV’s post from a few days ago about not leading with values, and honestly am not sure what to make of it from a strategy standpoint. Like, I definitely find the argument persuasive. The vegan example is great. But I also find the argument that “people don’t vote based on policy” to be persuasive, too, and those two things seem to be in conflict to some degree.
Like, the Florida minimum wage example seems highly relevant. Liberal policies usually poll well, and if you ask people to vote directly on policy, they usually vote for the liberal policy. And then if you ask them to vote for the Democrat who supports that policy, they don’t. What do we make of this? Are they not connecting the individual person to the policy? Or do they not care about policy when they are voting for individuals? The fact that people have policy opinions that are incoherent and that change based on the individual candidates makes me think it’s that policy doesn’t matter much, but it seems difficult to know for sure.
On the other hand, the two recent times I can remember when Democrats did very well were in the 2018 midterms, when they hammered policy, and in the time period when Republicans almost ended Obamacare (iirc, Trump’s lowest approval rating).
So I guess I’m left wondering what Democrats should do. It seems to me they do well when policy is at the forefront of people’s minds, but that (at least in Presidential elections) it’s hard to accomplish this as the narrative shifts toward the values of the individuals instead. So perhaps the idea is to stay laser focused on policy and try not to engage on the other stuff? Or is this entire frame of policy vs. values somehow missing what really matters?
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it’s not policy versus values.
Let’s try policy connected to and framed by values.
We need to come up with messaging that clearly defines how each progressive policy is a result of our values
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For example, government health care.
Saying “health care is a right” doesn’t work. Saying “the government should take care of its citizens” doesn’t work. Even going to the Book of Matthew and talking about “the least of these” doesn’t work.
So why not try: “In America, we reward hard work and ingenuity. Shouldn’t you have the freedom to quit your job and start your own business without worrying about where you’re going to get your health care? The American dream is being hampered right now because health care is paid for by your employer. How are people supposed to be free to pursue that dream if they are tied to their jobs because they’re afraid they won’t have health care?”
(notice I used NONE of the current buzzwords surrounding health care. shut up about M4A, public option, single payer, the ACA, etc.)
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Yeah I took a crack at this in post #897. Pete is very good at it.
Tying hard work into the messaging on socialized healthcare is definitely something we should be doing.
One thing that has worked very well is “covering pre-existing conditions”, even the Republicans trip over themselves to say they’re for it, albeit spoiler.gif they’re not actually for it.
Something like this seems right to me. I think maybe it has to do with avoiding moralizing and especially lecturing about values. If your message requires the recipient to challenge their default reaction, or if it requires any significant amount of thought or work or philosophizing, it’s probably a bad message.
Particularly in a society that is distracted and selfish and entitled, I think it makes sense to go with quick hitters that use frames and values that aren’t really in question and won’t evoke a hostile, defensive reaction. Hence why appeals to FREEDOM and hard work like you mention are so effective.
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Right, I was midway through a post much like this using minimum wage as the example. Here’s one way of framing it:
Government has a responsibility to ensure all its citizens receive a living wage.
Here’s another:
Working people, who work hard, have a right to be paid a wage which allows them to provide for themselves and their families.
Same policy and more or less the same message, just couched in a collectivist vs individualist set of values.
A corollary of this idea that you couch policy in the other person’s values is that then you build a political coalition AROUND POLICY. Values are for persuasion, policy is the goal of doing politics. The Democrats try to do it exactly backwards, where like any vaguely progressive healthcare policy is fine but everyone has to mouth the correct liberal value system platitudes. I was actually halfway through this post, opened Twitter for a sec, and here comes Cori Bush demonstrating exactly what I’m talking about:
https://twitter.com/CoriBush/status/1329134291138252800
Ben Shapiro quote tweeted this and pointed out, correctly, that Cori Bush probably considers housing a “human right” too, but we’re not cancelling all mortgage debt. It turns out that the nexus of individual rights and collective welfare isn’t fucking “simple”, actually. And this is just incredibly sanctimonious to anyone who doesn’t already agree with these policies, like the clear implication here is that if you’re not on board with cancelling student debt, it’s because you’re insufficiently concerned with human rights. It’s a demand that everyone accept this value that collective provision of things to people is inherently good. That framing is going to be rejected even by a lot of people who would sign on for medical debt relief if it were framed differently.
It would be one thing if people like Cori Bush were just playing to the base here, but a lot of them appear to genuinely believe that demanding that other people accept your values is the way you do politics. This is how we end up with the situation described here:
Liberal policies usually poll well, and if you ask people to vote directly on policy, they usually vote for the liberal policy. And then if you ask them to vote for the Democrat who supports that policy, they don’t. What do we make of this?
It’s complicated, but one reason is that Democratic policy is popular and Democratic framing is unpopular.
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