The Politics Thread

[DramatistDreamer]

The reality is that many in Congress are going home to their home districts to be ensconced in their offices. I want to see some of them walk home at night with a flashlight through my neighborhood where the buses have stopped running early in the evening but still have hours to go from a low-wage job and not enough money to take an Uber, don't own a car.

I really wish all would interact with all of their constituents. I'm fairly active and even I have gotten a tiny bit of a response from one one of my Congresspersons (a Senator) on these issues and I supposedly live in a reliably blue state. Everyone else around me has pretty much given up on hoping that anything will change. I have at least one sibling that says he no longer believes in voting because it changes nothing. What do I tell someone like that? Believe it or not, there are still people out here who are hurting.

[marceline]

It doesn't have to be town hall meetings. It could be protests inside and outside local offices. But I think the focus during this recess should be on Labor Day parades. Even with COVID these parades are still going to happen and politicians will show up for photo ops. Liberal and progressive voters would do well to organize around that.

 

Which is why people need to show up to their offices.

[Ponds]

Bill Maher had a wonderful description of the House of Representatives last night.  I'm sure it's available somewhere to watch!

[DramatistDreamer]

I agree, but the people who are the most neglected tend to work more than one job. Unless it's a police shooting of a young kid, it's hard to get people together for a cause. It's often the well-heeled people who can drive out to their offices, where public transit routes don't go.

[DRW50]

Not to go off topic even more, apologies, but one thing I wish Congress could work on is the unemployment system. You have Rick Scott who  bragged a few years ago about making sure barely anyone in Florida was able to get unemployment. That's true in many places. I know someone who in going on 6 months of unemployment, not only has received nothing, but was only able to even get on the phone with the unemployment office once. 

There's such an idea of moochers and how extra unemployment benefit was causing people to not go back to work, and it was a smokescreen to hide just how many people are not even getting their fair share. 

[DramatistDreamer]

Last year, I was helping people navigate some pandemic related issues and unemployment was one them. Thank God I don't live in Florida, but even in my state, the computer system was decades old and unable to bear the flood of applications. The state had to bring in people who had retired, some a decade ago, to help process the applications. Meanwhile, I was helping get food boxes to people's apartments, some of whom didn't have bus fare or gas money for their cars to drive out to the designated lots where they could get food boxes. When I tell you people are tired. Eventually, the labor department's computers were updated. I hope that never happens again. I don't talk about it but that was probably one of the most depressed I had ever been.

[Vee]

They should extend pandemic UI, but they won't.

[dragonflies]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DRW50]

The GOP do want COVID to spread, because they can then try to blame it on Biden, which they are already doing. The talking points that the media are lapping up are Biden and immigrants. 

Anyway, here is what Bernie Sanders, who is supposed to be an Outreach Chair for the party, is doing today - putting a huge target on Shontel Brown, encouraging his followers to see her as wrongly elected and unworthy. 

As many others here have mentioned before, it tends to be heavily black elections where the dead end left swoops in to talk about the results being rigged and the voters being idiots.

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by DRW50

[DRW50]

An example of how much some of these senators care about doing their jobs:

 

[DramatistDreamer]

[Faulkner]

 

[Vee]

 

[amybrickwallace]

How come these pro-covid governors are not being held to account? Recalls? I got nothing.

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[Faulkner]

Cuomo just resigned. Kathy Hochul will become NY’s first female governor in two weeks.