I was an organizer with AFSCME in the mid 2000's. Not to say AFSCME was perfect because I was involved with some campaigns I didn’t agree with (like in-home caregivers faux “unions”). But others I was really passionate about like non-professional hospital workers (e.g. cleaning staff, cooks, CNA level caregivers,…

What’s actually possible?! Jesus christ, what’s actually possible with judicial nominations is whatever the party in control of the Senate want to do. We’re talking about what to do in the case of a Democratic Senate majority. Dick Durbin et. al. are already talking about bringing back fucking blue slips for god’s…

The minimum wage has existed in this country for almost 100 years. The “consequences” for this form of “price control” have been studied in enough depth with enough opportunity for the kind of “natural experiments” usually not available with empirical economics that there is nothing which could be "unintended”

Anti-minimum wage arguments are usually either facile econ-100 “but the graph! The world is exactly like the graph!“ nonsense or insane ideologically based normative claims which only make sense if you’re a hardcore randist. At least those arguments are “true” in the most simplistic kind of “all else being equal” way…

Reconstruction was way too lenient and way, way, way too short. Unfortunately it is clear that most of those in power were more interested in reconstituting the Union than punishing traitors. Let alone empowering the newly freed slaves. And the traitors were fine with reestablishing the Union without formal, legally…

Um, they could have purchased “white” slaves in the Ottoman empire until the 1850's. People from Georgia and other regions of the Caucasus. Literally caucasians. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire).

Apologies for the tardy reply

The NHS isn’t “single payer”. It’s “single provider”. The government doesn’t just pay for peoples’ care. It actually provides the care through government employed and owned providers and facilities. The equivalent in the US would be the VA which is the system for military veterans.

Just as an aside, because I can already anticipate idiots saying “but Obama!!!”, saying he was “nominated by the Obama administration for the Republican seat on the Federal Labor Relations Authority” is slightly misleading.

Good point. Just like how my car is now worth more because I let a guy use it to do rideshare driving while I’m chilling at home and take a percentage of his fares. Elon, bro. Don’t you have real work to do that isn’t shitposting on anonymous Kinja boards?

Using IP to defend enormous wealth on a “moral level (she “earned” it) is like almost the worst possible argument. IP isn’t a “thing”! It’s not a factory or a machine. It’s an intangible social product which only exists as “property” because as a society we let it be so. Each copy of a Beyonce song has a marginal cost…

There are multiple solutions on the table. Many of them have been put in to the form of legislation which could “actually happen” immediately.

He’s lying and he thinks we are dumb as shit.

Just by signing up for the insurance and using it they probably “agreed” to some sort of expansive HIPAA waiver which allows the “concierge” to access what would otherwise be HIPAA protected info. There’s no way the company would have created the “concierge” (ugh...) program without running it by a employee benefits…

Not because they are “really men”. But because they were at least for some portion of their lives socialized as male and maybe retain that early form of socialization. In the same way trans men were for part of their lives socialized as women and may retain elements of that socialization even after transitioning. Is…

So recognizing how trans women were for at least a part of their lives socialized as males, which in our society means they were socialized to be confident that when raising their voices people will listen, is now “terfy”? Does male privilege no longer exist? Or is male privilege now the only form of privilege that…

What it reveals is their desire for diversity is really just for more people who totally agree with them, but look a bit different. It’s the “diversity” of corporate boardrooms. Giving an inclusive gloss to the same old political program. As if the current system would be totally fine as long as the composition of the…

a) The ACA under Obama didn’t require abortion coverage and in fact required people who wanted abortion coverage to buy a separate rider policy which could not have its costs subsidized by any federal dollars. I.e. the ACA subsidies. So you’re concerned about M4A under republicans being exactly the same as the ACA was…

If you’re jacking the car up anyway why not take off a tire from the car? That’s what I do. I only have doughnut spares so I feel much safer with a full size tire down next to me. Though I don’t think it would be thick enough to save me if the car came down. I’m working on either a Volvo 245 or a Mazda 3 and neither…

If Medicaid expansion went “according to plan”, and then the benefit income cap was raised gradually over time, it would be a public option. The public option would eventually “poach” all the customers on the exchange because plan would be so much better value (assuming it wasn’t sabotaged to protect the private…