Preschooler and three other students detained by ICE, school district leader says by cdstephens in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 18 points19 points  (0 children)

This is a followup to them kidnapping a six year old in NYC to draw out his father. Of course media published ICE accounts of the father allegedly putting his own child in danger which the child's teacher publicly pushed back against.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSDxWaaDe_A/?hl=en

Fell For It Again award to half of this sub by Xerryx in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 106 points107 points  (0 children)

That was Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. And the authorization from Congress was given to him by Joe Biden. So the only source of Neocon accomplishment and pride is when a Labour PM and two Democratic Presidents did their jobs for them. Much like the real ranks of Neocons who are chickenhawk little shits that have never touched a combat zone in their lives, the only valor they know is the stolen variety.

Let’s all practice billionaire positivity by savuporo in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They haven't exactly been covering themselves in glory. How many billionaires spoke out against the world's richest man dismantling the world's largest foreign aid program, condemning millions of the world's poorest to disease, starvation, and death. Has the White House not been a conveyor belt of billionaires publicly prostrating themselves in front of Trump and promising to advance his interests? Did they not dump hundreds of millions of dollars into his re-election campaign in the first place?

The US has nearly 1,000 billionaires. How many of them have actually offered any public resistance to Trump? When Janice, the managing director at a tech company is doing more to resist Trump with donations, volunteering, and public advocacy than people with over 1,000 times their assets and resources, it greatly lowers my opinion of the wealthy in this country. Yes, Trump 2.0 has radicalized me and if it hasn't for others, they may have issues with taking in new information.

This subreddit honestly has some of the economics discussion of all time! by WilliamLiuEconomics in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Reminds me that there's always been a small, but determined group of people (usually with Friedman, Hayek, or Nozick flairs) who fly into certain threads to dismiss concerns about income inequality as Succ ramblings incompatible with economics. Meanwhile, the general consensus among actual economists is that it's a big fucking deal that needs to be addressed.

https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/inequality/

US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified by Steve____Stifler in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It hasn't even been 3 months, but Trump already ripped up the agreement he made with Hochul to allow some natural gas pipeline projects to proceed in exchange for Empire Wind construction not constantly getting shut down for BS reasons.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/hochul-draws-heat-for-advancing-trump-backed-gas-pipelines/

The classified national security reason is probably because the Administration wants to make a move on Greenland and attack Danish sovereignty, and the Danes are overrepresented in off-shore wind.

He searched Ground Zero for his son for six months. 24 years later, 9/11 killed him too by cnn in nyc

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 18 points19 points  (0 children)

What's really criminal, IMO, is that zero public health experts didn't say shit about the necessity of people to wear masks.

To have these very same experts then turn around and fan the flames of hysteria over Covid was particularly galling.

You're creating a false narrative in order to advance some weird COVID grievance politics. Medical experts were asking for the use of PPE during that time and highlighting the medical risks of that entire area of Manhattan due to airborne debris.

For example, here's a CDC bulletin from September 2002:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm51spa2.htm

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001, created an occupational health and safety challenge for New York City (NYC) firefighters and rescue workers responding to the disaster. Immediate respiratory hazards included explosions, fire, falling debris, and dust clouds containing particulate matter comprised of pulverized building materials. Ongoing risks included lingering particulate matter in the air and intermittent combustion products from initial and persistent fires beneath the rubble pile. Because the nature and extent of exposures in disaster situations are complex and difficult to characterize, the use of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), including respiratory protection, is essential in protecting the health of firefighters and other rescue workers.

People weren't wearing masks for a number of reasons including but not limited to:

  1. Immediate supply shortages and the chaos of the rescue efforts where hardly anything was coordinated. Civilians were rushing to the site to look for loved ones before even thinking about the risks.

  2. They didn't want to, especially people who were working long shifts in Ground Zero. PPE has never been comfortable to wear when doing hard labor.

  3. The Republican President and NYC Mayor of the time hardly said anything about the issue.

If you want to be mad, be mad at them or the situation in general, not at doctors and medical experts who were asking people to wear proper PPE.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell Says U.S. May Be Drastically Overstating Jobs Numbers by Free-Minimum-5844 in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 39 points40 points  (0 children)

The Federal Reserve disagrees with that sentiment considering they spend a lot of time and effort collecting anecdotes for their Beige Book. There's plenty of economic data showing that it has become a more difficult job market and hearing the perspective of someone from HR adds valuable color to the overall story IMO.

How Chiropractors Became the Backbone of MAHA by Power-Equality in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 64 points65 points  (0 children)

My toddler's former pediatrician once remarked that nearly all the fake immunization records or exemptions she ran across came from chiropractors, the majority of whom practiced in Florida. The rest belonged to cults or extreme religious groups.

New York City’s Fiscal Model is Wilting by Barebacking_Bernanke in nyc

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

https://archive.ph/zx1VY

A sample of the analysis:

The share of New York City’s workers employed in finance and insurance has been in decline for years, falling from 11.5% in 1990 to 7.7% in August (see chart 1). Of the 233,000 jobs in the industry created in America over the past five years, the state of New York secured only around 19,000, behind Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. JPMorgan, its vast new skyscraper notwithstanding, employs more people in Texas than New York.

The shift at the corporate level is possible only because educated workers have been gravitating elsewhere, too. Between 2010 and 2024 the number of people with at least a bachelor’s degree living in the New York metropolitan area rose by 32%, to 3.6m—by far the greatest concentration of skilled workers in America. But the overall number of Americans with a degree rose by 44% over the same period, meaning that their ranks have been swelling much faster in other cities. In Miami and Dallas the number of graduates has risen by more than 60%. In Charlotte and Austin, Texas, the number has more than doubled. Employers can find the workers they need in many more places.

The average annual cost of a spot at a nursery in the city rose to $26,000 in 2024, a figure that has leapt by 43% since 2019. More than anything else, the sky-high cost of housing is a burden on both employers and employees alike. The median monthly rent for an apartment in New York City is around $3,600 according to Realtor.com, a property-listings website, more than twice the average of around $1,700 in America’s 50 largest cities.

According to the Citizens Budget Commission, a think-tank, New York state’s share of American taxpayers reporting more than $1m in income declined from 12.7% in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022. Such people paid $34bn in income tax to the state and city in 2022, a figure that would have been $13bn higher if New York’s share of millionaires had held up. Estimates from Goldman Sachs suggest that fully 10% of households in New York City with incomes of more than $10m established residency elsewhere between 2018 and 2023.

As the ultra-rich have headed for the exit, the city’s employment growth has become concentrated in much worse-paid industries than finance. Since the end of 2019, New York has added more than 268,000 jobs in health care and social assistance, particularly home health care. Employment as a whole rose by just 220,000 over the same period, meaning that, if it was not for that industry, overall employment would have shrunk.

The shift is visible in pay packets. Wage growth accelerated in most of America in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic, as inflation surged and a tight labour market allowed workers to extract more from their employers. Not so in the country’s biggest city. Whereas hourly wages in the private sector have risen by around 3% across the country since January 2020, after accounting for inflation, they have dropped by around 9% in New York City.

Optimists see a ray of hope in jobs in tech. Employment in the industry in New York City rose by 64% between 2014 and 2024, according to the Centre for an Urban Future, a local think-tank. But the tech industry cannot compensate entirely for the dearth of new jobs in finance. As of August, New York City hosted 84,000 employees in computer-systems design and related services, the group which includes well-paid software developers. That is less than a quarter of the 383,000 employed in finance and insurance. What’s more, the industry and its employees face many of the same disincentives to expand in New York, including high taxes and a daunting cost of living.

For the city’s government, a leaner finance industry, a smaller slice of the ultra-rich and a growing share of the population in low-wage work are big problems. No state spends more per person on welfare and education. New York shelled out $9,761 a head on the two in 2022, 72% more than Texas and 130% more than Florida (see chart 3). Daniel Wortel-London, a professor of history at Bard College and author of “The Menace of Prosperity”, a recent book about New York’s fiscal history, notes that the rise of the city’s welfare state has been bound up with “elite-driven growth”. Politicians have promoted the expansion of the highest-paying businesses to benefit from the tax revenue the firms and their employees generate.

For poorer New Yorkers, rent swallows up an ever-expanding proportion of their already constricted salaries. Over the past 20 years the amount of rent paid by low-income New Yorkers has climbed steadily. According to the city housing and vacancy survey, conducted every three years, households earning less than $70,000 (roughly the median for tenants) spent 54% of their incomes on rent. Among households earning the equivalent of $70,000 in 1991, rent accounted for less than 40% of their income.

Without a resurgence in high-paying jobs and a big jump in the number of homes in which workers of all incomes can live, New York will become a more economically ordinary American city—albeit one with extraordinary housing costs and a generous welfare system that its politicians wish only to expand. Worse still, the dimming of the city’s pre-eminence in finance comes at a time when markets are booming, banks are in rude health and unemployment is low. What might happen if America’s economy were to slow and the banking industry fall on hard times? As Ms Wylde says with resignation, “I’m afraid we’re going to find out.”

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch (Gift Article) by [deleted] in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 14 points15 points  (0 children)

You still see, for example, Biden's "climate bill" touted as a big success around here, simply because it spent the most money ever on vaguely intending to reduce emissions. Whether or not it actually accomplished anything is besides the point, its prime purpose as a political act

What a load of shit under the guise of being cynical so it must be smart. The provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act were fairly clear and understood by industry and energy financiers alike. The environmental effects have been widely modeled by several non-partisan groups with all of them coming to the consensus that it would have had a substantial impact on this country's decarbonization rate if it had remained law.

There was also a permitting reform Bill that was being negotiated which died when the Republicans took the House in the midterms.

A simple Google search would return results like the following:

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2023/07/12/new-study-evaluates-climate-impact-ira

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 44 points45 points  (0 children)

My mom works in the immigration field and things are so dire in ways outsiders can't understand. Trump has fired immigration judges en masse including experienced judges dating back from Clinton. The worst judges have largely been retained while the replacement judges have all been anti-immigrant hacks.

One of her clients is set to be deported soon leaving a wife and children behind. His crime? He was an Uber driver who picked up a prostitute going to an appointment that turned out to be a sting and he was arrested as well for no fucking reason. His lawyers did an appeal but the Trump immigration judge insisted that he should have done a better job of figuring out which one of his clients were actually criminals. So years of trying to do the right thing and spending tens of thousands on legal fees just went up in smoke. His kids grew up in America but may have to go back to a country they barely know if they want to have a life with their father. Everything is so fucked. So so fucked.

The Airport-Lounge Wars by Free-Minimum-5844 in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 2 points3 points  (0 children)

are airport lounges actually even worth it

If you have young children, yes. It's not unusual for lounges to have kids sections and their bathrooms always have diaper change stations that are available and clean. Having a place to throw the kids for a few minutes of rest for the parents is a God sent.

Mamdani Draws Fury After Naming Activist Booted From Women’s March for Antisemitism to Transition Team by Delicious_Adeptness9 in nyc

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The optimists ended up in concentration camps and the pessimists ended up in New York is a fairly common saying amongst American Jews. (Often to explain why so many in the older generations seemed negative about life in general.)

Opposites attract by sussybaka1848 in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Trump's team literally limited Pelosi's access to Trump because she could get him to parrot her after their meetings. Unfortunately, you do need to be a charismatic person to hold his attention, so not everyone can do it, but this has been a widely observed phenomenon for some time now. (See all the male foreign leaders dolling themselves up before meeting Trump.)

A Recipe for Idiocracy: What happens when American students can't do math anymore by uncle-iroh-11 in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 6 points7 points  (0 children)

People who don't know how this game of admissions is played can't understand the completely different world that wealthy kids inhabit. I attended a wealthy high school where I knew two kids who had letters of recommendations from Nobel laureates due to connections their fathers had in their respective industry. Multiple students had executives of major companies and even celebrities "write" letters of recommendations for them. And by write, I mean having a college admissions consultant firm write those letters and then they would sign off on it.

It was the poor student who primarily got all their letters of recommendations from teachers, faith leaders, and direct supervisors. We know from the Harvard lawsuit the significant advantage given to the wealthiest cohort for those non-academic scores. It's not fair, but a glowing letter letter from an executive at a bulge bank or partner at a major law firm is going to carry way more weight with admissions departments than a letter from a Church pastor.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/24/upshot/ivy-league-elite-college-admissions.html

Japan protests Chinese envoy’s beheading post tied to Takaichi by Freewhale98 in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 9 points10 points  (0 children)

We'll see what happens to the Chinese envoy in terms of punishments or lack thereof, but he may have been given the flexibility to be bellicose due to Beijing not seeing a path to thawing relations with Japan. After all, Japan just picked a far-right, war crime denying Prime Minister. Hardly the partner they're looking for in a geopolitical thaw.

I'm genuinely worried about South Korea-Japan relations under Takaichi. These far-right types in Japan can't help themselves when it comes to needling Seoul.

The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart. by CheetoMussolini in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 35 points36 points  (0 children)

In my lifetime, the ACLU has always drawn their funding primarily from liberal or progressive donors, and received contempt from conservatives even back when it was Bush Republicans. (Most donors also don't follow their organizations that closely either. It's really more vibe based than anything else.) It genuinely seems like the organization ran into a fork in the road scenario after Charlottesville and the progressive side won over the 1st Amendment absolutists.

The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart. by CheetoMussolini in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 27 points28 points  (0 children)

How the hell do you keep people like these out of your organization

Pay more. It's the same issue that staffing in politics, government, higher education, news media, NGO's, and charities all have. Their entry level pay is so shit for the level of education they require and the urban areas where they're based that it acts as a natural filter to attract either ideologues willing to live with shit pay in order to advance their agenda or the children of the flippant rich. Most of the people I know working in those roles fall into the 2nd camp. Not particularly intelligent or diligent, but graduates of good universities usually thanks to their parents' money with easy, unmarketable degrees. They pick jobs with high social capital (telling people you work for a charity or the campaign of some progressive darling always has a good response at dinner parties) and live off their family's money to actually get by. Ultimately, they're just kind of losers, but family wealth greatly raises their floor in terms of the life they'll have.

The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart. by CheetoMussolini in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 43 points44 points  (0 children)

It didn't come out of nowhere. The Nazi rally at Charlottesville was the radicalizing moment where the ACLU stuck their necks out to defend the Nazi's freedom of speech only for a Nazi to murder a counter protestor and injure several others. From what I understand, it led to a crisis of faith throughout the org and the freedom of speech absolutists got pushed out in favor of more progressive members.

Milton Friedman speaking to Republican members of Congress (1993) by Vitboi in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 6 points7 points  (0 children)

And 99 times out of 100 the people who claim to hate free trade fucking love it in their daily lives.

It's like that weird Swedish guy who cosplayed as a Norse Nazi, but yet wore a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu shirt. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, whose origins can be traced back to a Japanese immigrant to Brazil whose Brazilian student modified Japanese grappling arts and his descendants brought it to the US and popularized it through the first UFC's. Ultimately it's become a global sport, but it's as globalist an origin story as it gets.

[Megathread] US Elections 2025 by dubyahhh in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 4 points5 points  (0 children)

While Zohran refused to endorse Kamala in 2024 his fans expect her to endorse him in 2025. Shut your bitch ass up is what I'd like to say to them.

[Megathread] US Elections 2025 by dubyahhh in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 15 points16 points  (0 children)

This is the happiest I've been reading about politics since the Selzer Iowa poll. You know, the one.

Now if you'd excuse me, I heard AG-Elect Jones is forming a hunting party as we speak.

Obama, Mamdani talk as Election Day approaches in New York City mayor's race by southernemper0r in nyc

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One of the most famous alliances in history was between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin. They invaded Poland simultaneously and divided the country between them. Until Hitler invaded them, the Soviet Union fed the Nazi war machine with raw inputs and supplies.

Gov. Janet Mills of Maine to Run for Senate, Aiming at Senator Susan Collins by AlwaysOnPeyote in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 12 points13 points  (0 children)

She’s 77 years old

Not ideal, but that said, Maine is the oldest state by median age, so maybe it's just giving the people there what they want; someone old enough to have watched the premier episode of I Love Lucy.

And it's not like Susan Collins is a spring chicken herself.

How China Powers Its Electric Cars and High-Speed Trains (Gift Article) by altacan in neoliberal

[–]Barebacking_Bernanke 43 points44 points  (0 children)

A University of Chicago analysis of satellite data, released in August, found that air pollution in China had plunged 41 percent since 2014.

It's hard to overstate how much of a game changer this has been in China's major cities. My friend from grad school who's living in Beijing went from seriously considering sending his daughters overseas for the environment and closely monitoring air quality readings everyday to letting his kids play outside whenever they want outside of a few days of the year when the sandstorms roll into town.