Bailout / Stimulus Discussion (Hints Missed & Shartz Fired)

I imagine almost if not every person on this forum would want the Dem bill passed. We are for UHC, social safety nets, etc. This nun line of attack that people here lack empathy and are willing to sacrifice people for political gain just isn’t accurate at all. Most of us here would gladly sacrifice some or a big part of our own well being if it meant the greater good. Hell I was a huge Bernie stan. If he was elected and accomplished what I wanted him to it would mean the end of my law practice that I have spent years building.

Literally no one here is framing what is happening as rooting for widespread misery for political gain. At least I don’t think anyone is.

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I don’t agree that I have no empathy for the people affected. I got absolutely obliterated by the last recession and I spent two months earlier this year spending significant chunks of my day talking to small business people in the process of losing everything.

I just know that they are going to get absolutely wiped out either way, and that the people suffering two years from now aren’t going to be in better situations.

We’ve allowed the GOP to turn hostage taking into a standard procedure. That has had consequences that led us to this moment where they created the pain that has already happened in the last two weeks just to show us they were serious.

The thing is it’s a bluff. It’s always been a bluff. We’ve let them walk up to us an hold a gun to their own heads over and over again. Mitch is talking about coming back to the table because he desperately needs us to come back to the table because Trump just shot himself in the head.

I know what the cost is here, and I know plenty of people who will pay the price just like everyone else does… because this is going to be a lot of suffering. Like a LOT of people are going to get hurt. People in this thread, people we are related to, people we’ve known our whole lives. It’s going to be really really ugly.

I’m not even a little bit interested in letting the GOP put a bandaid on all that pain until the election so that they can drop it all on us once they’ve passed. The downside risk to your plan is astronomical. Trump could get reelected. He’s already gotten 200k people killed running the country in a pandemic for 6-7 months. Imagine how 4 more years would go.

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They’ve called the bluff and look what it’s going to cause.

The way I feel you’re approaching it is a patient is in severe pain waiting for a long term experimental medication (50 percent chance of working) to kick in in two weeks. You’re telling them, ‘if I give you this short term pain medication now the 2 week medication won’t work’. The person suffering can’t see two weeks ahead, because the suffering is now. This is what living paycheck to paycheck feels like. The paycheck has been pulled and there is no way to catch up if money is not in people’s pockets by September 1. The worst part of this is there is NO reason why that money is not flowing. It’s pure politics and angling by people this does not affect AT ALL. It’s gross.

Again, you’ve already mentioned you are massively well off numerous times on this site. If you were absolutely wrecked, homeless, credit ruined, your industry gone, no prospects for anything do you honestly believe the way you’re thinking would not change at all? I cannot emphasize enough nearly every person on this site is on a perch looking down at the carnage and is not officially part of it. Everyone will eventually be a part of it, but it’s not right now for almost if not everyone here.

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No. We caused this level when we induced a bluff. They literally let the benefits expire before they even started negotiating.

I grew up super poor, which I’m sure you’ll recall I’ve also mentioned many many times. I don’t struggle to empathize with people dealing with awful hardship or have difficulty understanding what it feels like to be in day to day survival mode.

This sucks a lot. A lot a lot.

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They’re negotiating from the position that they don’t give a f if 150 million people die by doing nothing. Doesn’t that change your calculus even a little? This is a feature for them, not a bug. This is what the GOP wants. They would be ecstatic to never give another dime.

Yeah it won’t even last long enough for the retro payments since it’ll take longer than that for states to set up

150M people won’t die dude. The calculus changes as the numbers change obviously. Unfortunately because of the position that well meaning people whose views you’re representing in this thread we are now at a point where up to 1M of our fellow citizens are probably going to die as a direct result of the dysfunction we’ve allowed in negotiating with the GOP. And every time we do this we set up the next time to be meaningfully worse. I’ll give you an incredibly obvious example. Let’s say Biden wins but we don’t take back the Senate. There is no chance any further relief will be passed at that point. The worse it is the better it is for the GOP at that point because it sets a favorable contrast in the minds of the population between how things used to be under them and how they are under us.

That is what happens at least a majority of the time when we take your line here.

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$44b/$300 = 147M payments roughly.

In no way did I say 150 million people would die, I’m telling you that the GOP negotiators WOULD NOT CARE if 150 million people die by doing nothing. When you know your negotiation opponent is that far away from reality how do you handle it?

You wait for reality to crack them. There’s no other option and it’s not your responsibility. You’ll be dealing with their replacement shortly. In this case they’ve created a situation so potentially terrible that they lose every election in every district nationwide. That scenario is NOT me being optimistic it’s me being incredibly pessimistic. We’re talking about food riots.

There is a point when that starts to go sideways enough that they come to us and give us something reasonable. That’s where I’m willing to deal here. I’ll lose a good amount of political capital to get that done. No deal that doesn’t protect people for the rest of the crisis is viable before the election. That’s my big red line and it’s really not movable. I don’t trust McConnell to do anything but be the biggest piece of shit in the world so I can’t do anything that involves giving him a chance to stab me in the back after the election.

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I accept the need to sacrifice some or a big part of other people’s well-being if it meant the greater good. That’s different from what you’re saying and it’s what nunnehi is objecting to.

Where he goes wrong is the idea that only someone without empathy could possibly make that choice.

The GOP leverages good people for political gain as a basic strategy. And it works because of people like you. The Democrats keep negotiating with terrorists and are somehow surprised when terrorism subsequently increases.

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The Democrats really need to examine how the global kidnapping insurance companies handle negotiations. They’ve done a masterful job of it with almost no hostages getting killed in the process.

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I mean are we really surprised that the person that thought the Mueller Report and then the Impeachment and then breathlessly debated whether we should impeach Barr/Pence before Trump doesn’t really have a handle on what actually matters here?

You can’t negotiate with the GOP. We largely got here because the Dems have caved and caved and caved for 35 years to get whatever small things done they could. Meanwhile the GOP has actually driven policy and built the country in their own image. As a result the country sucks. It’s time to stop negotiating with them. It’s time to stop trying to fix the mistakes of the GOP. It’s time to get power and wield power. I mean I have no illusions that will actually happen with Chuck, Nancy, Nadler and the rest of the losers but it is so fucking obvious that is what needs to be done.

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So I’m seeing business that got 150k from ppp in May

They are paying the employees the same or less and paying the owners an extra 5k a paycheck until it’s gone

Sweet system.

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Not to mention what the Dems want is what? Election security? Holding corporations liable for harm to customers/employees? Money for working class people? This isn’t some insane list of demands. If you polled those individual issues they would all poll at 70%+.

The Dems aren’t the ones holding that up. None of us want it held up. So I don’t even get what your point is Nun? It isn’t like any of us or the Dems can unilaterally accomplish any of that. You are blaming the wrong people.

I guess I need to put it another way.

One side wants both parties to come out alive. The other party would prefer to kill the other party without dying, but if they both have to die that’s just fine by them. If your opponent is willing to die for what they believe in, while you are not there is no way there can ever be a good negotiation. Again, I completely understand the point of view espoused here, but I think you are the person most willing to die for your position to win the negotiation.

I’ll ask a simple question. How many weeks/months away from financial ruin are any of the people espousing this point of view if zero money comes to anyone and if the GOP wins because of that zero money coming? If your answer is more than a month, you’re probably not able to look at this properly from the shoes of the people it affects right now.

Is this your way of saying the detente is over? I guess you’ll be happy when nothing comes to people who need it. I hope you’ll feel the same way in a year when you’re actually affected by the events of this singular moment in history. This will probably significantly help your business, though, so there’s that I guess.

It also looks like you’re saying that Barr isn’t the single most dangerous person in this country right now and that he didn’t need to be impeached. He absolutely should have been and still should be. I guarantee you half of what we’ve gone through in the last 2-4 months wouldn’t have happened if someone had held him to account at all.

Frankly it is worth a lot of misery to rid this country of GOP control. 418,000 Americans died during WWII and there is near universal agreement it was a necessary sacrifice to stop the Nazis from ruling the world. Well guess what, America is going full fascist, authoritarian dictator if the GOP stays in power and the body count will easily be in the millions.

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I am saying I don’t understand your point. No one here wants people to starve or lose everything. My office isn’t open now and hasn’t been open to clients since March. I have lost income from this. My wife works in a Covid unit. I’m already affected. Your self-righteousness is unjustified and the fact you keep making these insulting comments to posters or the forum at large about not caring is just total untethered from reality nonsense.

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