Invite ye felawes and frendes desirous in gold to enter the gates of Shrewd'm, for they will thanke ye later.
- Manlobbi
Investment Strategies / Mechanical Investing
No. of Recommendations: 2
Here's a segment from Pakman, about the cut in SNAP benefits.
Listen to the first guy, 60+ years old, with a son on disability. With the son losing SNAP, the father says he will need to take on another job, to earn more money, to make up for the shortfall.
Second person: retired woman. She only got $23/month from SNAP. Now, she says she will compensate by shopping sales.
Exactly what Trump wants. Cue the GOP refrain "personal responsibility". Force Proles to do without SNAP. Then Trump can give that money to himself and his cronies, instead.
Trump FALLING APART as millions LOSE FOOD STAMPShttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa6Zn26-MRsSteve...HBTT
No. of Recommendations: 3
Not at all.
But it is what the KINGS in the Senate Democrat Caucus want, specifically, for "political leverage." Senate Dems have admitted this.
Senate Dem KINGS would rather our kids starve then vote for the clean C.R. They know their policies suck so bad that they can only win by blackmailing starving poor kids.
But that's why they're KINGS.
No. of Recommendations: 9
"Second person: retired woman. She only got $23/month from SNAP. Now, she says she will compensate by shopping sales."
$23 per months ??? That doesn't amount to 1/1,000,000 on what Trump soaks
the taxpayer for on golf, on a monthly basis.
There is a local Christian Thrift/Charity shop that put out an alert that their
shelves have gone bare, with the MAGA SNAP cutoff looming. I went to
the local Meijer and filled up a small grocery cart with canned and dried goods
and dropped them off there. I admit to having mixed feelings about doing that.
The Thrift/Charity shop is out in the country a bit, and that is MAGA land.
Not saying everybody out there is MAGA, but I'd bet that MAGA is in the
majority. I'm not feeling real charitable toward MAGA at this point in time.
But I also do not want anyone going hungry. The older ladies working the store
were definitely not giving off arrogant MAGA vibes, which gave me a good feeling.
With winter coming on, I'll be dropping off some good winter gear I no longer use
to the Shop, the lady said there is a need for that in the area.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Looks like the little d’s plan to drive turnout via the shutdown worked.
As for us, we get to hang Mamdani and his commie policies on the democrat party.
No. of Recommendations: 19
Dope1: Looks like the little d’s plan to drive turnout via the shutdown worked.
I guess that's why democrats outperformed in nearly every special election in 2025 before the shutdown.
Republicans just don't get what's happening. Keep enabling a wildly out of control demented arsehole pedophile and we'll keeping winning elections.
Oh, look: Mikie Sherrill kicked the shit out of Ciattarelli despite Trumpedo's endorsement, Spanberger kicked the shit out of Sears, Pennsylvania voters retained three state Supreme Court justices, preserving Democrats' 5-2 majority, and Mamdani just won the mayoral race.
Trumpedo's having a rough night, but then polling shows Americans kinda' despise his driving the country into his marble and gold, chandeliered toilet.
No. of Recommendations: 19
Senate Dem KINGS would rather our kids starve then vote for the clean C.R. They know their policies suck so bad that they can only win by blackmailing starving poor kids.
Trump can find $40 billion to give to Argentina but he can’t find $4 billion to feed American “starving poor kids.”
That says it all.
No. of Recommendations: 18
Trump can find $40 billion to give to Argentina but he can’t find $4 billion to feed American “starving poor kids.”
Even when ordered to spend earmarked money by two judges.
How much does Trump want to feed hungry children.
He loves hungry children so much that when several grocery chains offered discounted food to SNAP beneficiaries who are unable to access their benefits, Trump’s USDA threatened those stores, telling them that such discounts are illegal.
And that is exactly how much he cares for hungry children.
Is it any wonder that Americans gave Democrats a huge win tonight?
No. of Recommendations: 3
$23 per months ??? That doesn't amount to 1/1,000,000 on what Trump soaks
the taxpayer for on golf, on a monthly basis.
iirc, the media has been reporting the monthly SNAP budget is something like $9B. Take that money away from the Proles, and that is $9M/month that can be given to each of the 1000 richest in the US, every month. I realize it's only walking around money, but that is only the start of the Prole defunding.
The net sifter says the average ACA subsidy is $550/month, for 22M people, which works out to some $12.1B/month, or $12.1M/month/rich dude.
As Senator Everett Dirksen said, years ago, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." The premise of "supply side economics" has always been that the path to economic nirvana lays in funneling all the loot into the hands of the richest few.
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 1
Trump can find $40 billion to give to Argentina but he can’t find $4 billion to feed American “starving poor kids.”
GOP spin: "teaching them about personal responsibility and the dignity of work".
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 15
GOP spin: "teaching them about personal responsibility and the dignity of work".
Often spoken by those who haven’t done an honest day’s work in their lives, and whose lives show anything BUT personal responsibility.
When an electrician or carpenter, who has worked forty years and raised a family says such things, I take them seriously. I may not agree with him, but the fact that he has worked and demonstrated responsibility for decades gives him the right to be taken seriously.
But some of these jokers in Congress who shake their fingers at folks on SNAP?
Or the bosses’ sons who got promoted to CEO right out of college and never had to worry about a layoff or back injury, or making a minimum wage or even slightly above minimum wage paycheck stretch enough to by groceries during the last week of the month?
And we haven’t even mentioned health care and the ACA…..
Is it any wonder that American voters turned to Democrats tonight?
Not because Democrats are saints and saviors.
Nope, that’s not what today’s elections were about.
Think drowning men and lifeboats…even leaky lifeboats.
Democrats better have some humility here. A horrible president gave them a smattering of wins across the country. It’s not because they are super heroes.
It’s because folks are being dumped in the water by super villains who couldn’t give two shits for them.
As Obama said yesterday: If you’re losing your health care, don’t worry. Trump will save you a dance in his new ballroom.
No. of Recommendations: 5
When an electrician or carpenter, who has worked forty years and raised a family says such things, I take them seriously. = zambon
=====================
Except when it comes to using their tax money to forgive loans to college grads who discovered they cannot earn a living with a degree in gender studies.
No. of Recommendations: 8
Except when it comes to using their tax money to forgive loans to college grads who discovered they cannot earn a living with a degree in gender studies.
Mike, you’re actually a guy I respect, though I disagree with you often.
Why start with the horseshit?
No. of Recommendations: 20
Just a note on all of those gender studies graduates:
In 2023, which could be argued was during Biden’s term and thus an encouraging environment for gender studies:
A 2023 report indicates that there were 6,365 bachelor's degrees awarded in the "Cultural & Gender Studies" category, according to X.
Double that figure, just to be safe, so now we’re up to 12,730- and round that up to 13,000.
There were 3.9 million people who graduated from colleges and universities.
Gender studies graduates represent one third of 1% of the people who graduated in 2023.
A rounding error. A minuscule problem. If the problem was 10 times larger than it actually is, that figure would still be only 3.3% and if it was 10 times that figure, then you might have a point
But that’s the sort of thing FOXNews and Republicans latch onto in order to justify their attack on colleges and universities. One third of one percent of college graduates graduate with degrees in gender studies, and yet to hear FOXNews and Republicans talk about it, our colleges are awash in gender studiies, producing hordes of gender studies graduates who can’t get real jobs.
In my day, the same argument was jokingly advanced about “basketweaving”
No. of Recommendations: 8
Senate Dem KINGS would rather our kids starve then vote for the clean C.R. They know their policies suck so bad that they can only win by blackmailing starving poor kids.
Interesting viewpoint.
I believe in personal responsibility and paying your own way in the world if you are an able adult 18-65. Both parties have abandoned this view in favor of giving their preferred groups taxpayer-funded bailouts. The least worst are the Democrats, with ACA subsidies and Medicaid expansion (sorry, in Washington speak, avoiding cuts) so more people can pay for health insurance. At least they are trying to help the poor instead of lowering taxes on the super-rich and driving us into a debt crisis. I have not forgotten the GFC when the Republican Bush Jr bailed out rich bankers while doing nothing for those losing their retirement savings and house equity.
Why don't the Republicans cave and add these two provisions? It's not going to bankrupt America any more than it already is.
No. of Recommendations: 2
Except when it comes to using their tax money to forgive loans to college grads who discovered they cannot earn a living with a degree in gender studies.
It's up to you. One of my bosses had a degree in Poli Sci and he was smart, very good instant memory, and was successful. He tried to come an Astor Physicist (I think) but couldn't handle quantum mechanics so he switched to poli sci. I remember reading about a tech bro CEO whose degree was in Philosophy, and he thought it was the best degree for being a CEO. To me a degree in Philosophy was what my buddy Ken used it for, to start a vending machine business. :) Ken was also blind in one eye and was slow.
No. of Recommendations: 3
AlphaWolf,
The world doesn't stop just because Senate Dem KINGS want to starve our kids for political leverage.
No. of Recommendations: 2
The least worst are the Democrats, with ACA subsidies and Medicaid expansion (sorry, in Washington speak, avoiding cuts) so more people can pay for health insurance. At least they are trying to help the poor instead of lowering taxes on the super-rich and driving us into a debt crisis. I have not forgotten the GFC when the Republican Bush Jr bailed out rich bankers while doing nothing for those losing their retirement savings and house equity.
Why don't the Republicans cave and add these two provisions? It's not going to bankrupt America any more than it already is.
Wow. So much to unpack here.
First off, only the Republicans will admit that there is anything resembling a fiscal issue. The democrats do not, yet no one on this board ever holds them accountable for it. When Republicans propose solutions that cause a little pain now so as to avoid the incredible pain known as austerity later, people freak out. So much for 'fiscal sanity'.
Second. The global financial crisis was blamed on Republicans even though you can trace all the bad incentives in the form of flawed rulemaking and/or poor legislation all the way back to 1975. At any rate, the US recession ended in early summer of 2009 thus rendering any 'stimuus' spending superfluous. But that didn't stop democrats from pumping a lot more money in the form of government spending to no where into the economy.
Third. Speaking of no accountability - and of putting band aids on gaping wounds - why do we have an "Affordable Care Act" that's so affordable it needs...subsidies from the government...to be "affordable"? Why are COVID-era policies still in effect today (which is what the subsidies were for, they were never intended to be a structural portion of the law). One would hope that the precipitous drop off in electric car sales would teach the lesson that subsidies aren't workable long term as a central economic policy: subsidies work when you want to provide a small incentive to nudge a market; they rarely work when they're the driving reason behind a purchase decision.
For you libs who refuse to believe that, let's revisit this conversation next year and look at solar panel pricing.
The democrats always escape accountability for their failed policies and increasingly erratic (and in some cases, sociopathic) behavior. No, the GOP shouldn't cave.
No. of Recommendations: 5
Dope1,
It is well known because it was designed that way at the time--the enormously growing costs of the ACA plan were deliberately structured not to balloon until about 10 years after it started--so it started in 2014 and we are now right at that 10 year mark.
The original plan was that the ACA was never meant to be an end in itself. It was meant so that government could fully capture the health insurance market and--assuming Democrats had been successful in maintaining permanent control of House, Senate, and the White House--a fully nationalized health care system, "single payer."
Trump's two terms threw a monkey wrench in that master plan.
The ACA system of premiums and subsidies is wildly economically irrational and unfair. It amounts to younger, healthier , harder working, but light-asset folks (as they are for the most part early on in their path of lifetime asset accumulation) subsidizing the health care costs of older, sicker, wealthier people. The extent of this unfairness is deliberately hidden in the kafkaesque maze of ACA.
It is not an "insurance plan." It is a wealth transfer plan.
It was always designed to be this way because back in 2010 a single payer nationalized health care system would not have been politically feasible. It was designed to wreck the private health care market so that the next phase--elimination of private health insurance companies, universal single payer health care, would be inevitable.
No. of Recommendations: 2
It is not an "insurance plan." It is a wealth transfer plan.
It was always designed to be this way because back in 2010 a single payer nationalized health care system would not have been politically feasible. It was designed to wreck the private health care market so that the next phase--elimination of private health insurance companies, universal single payer health care, would be inevitable.
Yep, 100%. It was and remains a Trojan Horse for what the democrats really want, which is single-payer, federally controlled health care. They look at Europe and think that's the model for the USA but in typical liberal fashion haven't thought it through.
And that last bit is the real problem in the body politic today: one political party just wants power and will say and do anything to get it. Once in charge they have no clue.
No. of Recommendations: 4
The ACA system of premiums and subsidies is wildly economically irrational and unfair. It amounts to younger, healthier , harder working, but light-asset folks (as they are for the most part early on in their path of lifetime asset accumulation) subsidizing the health care costs of older, sicker, wealthier people.
And that is different from social security and medicare and childless people paying extra property taxes because...?
A sensible government has to balance between "each man for himself" and "from each according to his ability to each according to his need". In US that means the olds live off of the youngs. In other countries it's their children instead of a social safety net.
Overtaxing working and middle class young people is definitely a problem. Solution is simple, tax the rich more AND stop wasting money we don't have, such as for the Argentinian bailout.
No. of Recommendations: 2
And that is different from social security and medicare and childless people paying extra property taxes because...?
So we need a 3rd unsustainable program to go with the 2 we already have?
Overtaxing working and middle class young people is definitely a problem. Solution is simple, tax the rich more AND stop wasting money we don't have, such as for the Argentinian bailout.
Uh, huh. Where would you cut spending, exactly?
No. of Recommendations: 5
It is well known because it was designed that way at the time--the enormously growing costs of the ACA plan were deliberately structured not to balloon until about 10 years after it started--so it started in 2014 and we are now right at that 10 year mark
It started in 2010, got fully going in 2014, and "deliberately structured not to balloon until about 10 years after it started" is garbage. Single payer is a separate issue. The wealth transfer plans are the tax reductions for billionaires that Trump pushed through into law. So all we have here (above and the rest in the post) is propaganda.
