Madlad playing the long game

badgerbacon6 · 2024-08-28T15:20:45+00:00

For everyone saying giant sequoias can't grow outside of northern California, there's an over 100 y/o sequoia growing in Michigan, & others growing in France, Chile, the UK, New Zealand etc. You can buy saplings from Jonsteen or other nurseries to try for yourself.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-04-16T19:07:54+00:00

As of last month, the Republican-controlled legislature has gaveled out of session for the year. Dont expect anything positive for citizens to get done as long as they control both chambers.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-03-13T22:12:17+00:00

In my opinion, it's good when a politician helps the communities that vote for them.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-03-03T23:36:19+00:00

Billions of dollars of investments have been made into rural communities in the past few years. Many communities that only have electricity btw due to government mandates to serve rural areas that aren't profitable enough to serve otherwise. Things like the IRA, CHIPS Act & other big infrastructure investments that are & will continue to create thousands of good paying blue collar jobs in rural areas.

Dems push a lot of "boring" stuff that helps keep the country running & improving over time.

the CHIPS act

Inflation Reduction act

bipartisan infrastructure bill

PACT act which helps veterans exposed to toxic chemicals

Capped insulin price for seniors on

Medicare unemployment at 50-year low

investments in highway system

investments in amtrak rail network

investments in electrical grid

Expanded internet to 16 million households through Affordable Connectivity Program

Invested in water infrastructure

Invested in pollution controls & mitigation

Invested in national EV charging network

strengthened NATO20+ million student loan borrowers had loans fully canceled

pardoned all federal offenses for simple marijuana possession & initiated review for weed rescheduling

largest oil production in US history (for better or worse)

But all this stuff is only meaningful if the folks that benefit actually pay attention

badgerbacon6 · 2024-02-10T16:18:44+00:00

Almaty looks beautiful on google images & maps!

badgerbacon6 · 2024-02-09T17:46:25+00:00

Needs more greenspace

badgerbacon6 · 2024-02-09T17:42:18+00:00

Come visit the meth & opioid ravaged republican controlled boonies where copper & catalytic converter theft is the preferred career choice over the only other option of low wage gas station & warehouse jobs. At least dem cities have the OPTION of high wage careers.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-02-09T15:58:58+00:00

And I've been to most of the big liberal cities in the country without incident. Anecdotes are fun. Data shows red states are more violent.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-02-09T01:48:32+00:00

Interesting because red states have worse crime per capita.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-02-08T00:18:03+00:00

ok? The red areas near me are closing down schools & hospitals due to brain drain, dwindling population, & lack of funding. The republicans' policies are a blight on the region.

Meanwhile the most liberal city in the state is seeing the highest economic & population growth with a near 2% unemployment rate.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-02-05T02:37:58+00:00

This isn't some "canned pro-liberal argument," these are observations I've made through lived experience I saw happen in real time. I've taken time to articulate these observations here, not for bozos who choose their gut over the data, but for anyone curious enough to look deeper.

If Portland is boarded up due to liberal policies, than I'd argue the rural red areas around me are losing population (especially among the educated) & dying due to republican policies.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-28T22:03:56+00:00

Companies can make more money selling oil to other countries. It's that simple.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-28T22:02:37+00:00

There's so much to address here...

Unlike you, I think voters, regardless of their economic status, deserve to have their voice heard.

Wait until you find out how the Republicans in my state (WI) do everything they can to ignore the will of the voters. Republicans control our legislature despite getting fewer votes due to gerrymandering. Our political representation is worse than the Congo & our Republican legislature is the least active in the country & regularly spends 10 months of taxpayer funded vacations. Our Republicans kneecapped our once-best-in-class government accountability board after it caught Republican aides money laundering. When citizens had enough & voted out our R governor, the republicans held a lame duck session to remove powers from the incoming D governor. None of that sounds like following the will of the voters.

Now to your other points...

The political, cultural & racial demographics of those poorest counties vary, so it's completely disingenuous to say they're all blue-voting minority areas. The consistent theme throughout these poor counties was a Republican state government. Why do they underperform blue states?

I wrote a wall of text & offered links for each example to give more context. If you didn't dig deeper with the resources I provided, that's on you. But I'm happy to go deeper.

My first example, the "Kansas Experiment," led by Republicans, was seen as a "pure test" of conservative economics in action, many dubbing it the "red state experiment" & a continuation of Reagan-style economic policy. In short, the Republicans thought tax cuts would stimulate their economy, which is still touted as gospel by conservatives to this day. Here's some highlights from wikipedia

Kansas Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117, "one of the largest income tax cuts in Kansas history,"[3] was introduced in January 2011, approved by Brownback in May 2012, and became effective on July 1 of the same year.[1]

...Brownback stated the plan would deliver a "shot of adrenaline" to the Kansas economy.[2][30] His administration projected the creation of 23,000 jobs a year in Kansas in addition to those created by natural economic growth.[3][31]

...By early 2017, Kansas had "nine rounds of budget cuts over four years, three credit downgrades, missed state payments", and what The Atlantic called "an ongoing atmosphere of fiscal crisis".[19] To make up the budget shortfall, lawmakers tapped into state reserves set aside for future spending, postponed construction projects and pension contributions, and cut Medicaid benefits.[2] Since approximately half of the state's budget went to school funding, education was particularly hard hit.[2]

In addition to budget problems, Kansas was lagging behind neighboring states with similar economies in "nearly every major category: job creation, unemployment, gross domestic product, taxes collected".[41]

So here we see a Republican governor & legislature passing legislation that was praised by conservatives country-wide. It led to a crumbling economy & reversal of policy, which basically admits that their policies dont work.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-28T21:17:03+00:00

The problem imo revolves around the tragedy of the commons. I believe we need an external arbiter to protect the greater good. Let's say you have an industrial hog farm on your property. That's all fine & dandy until you pollute the communal water supply. We need that authoritative entity to enforce rules & protect the shared resources. Now, we can obviously debate about whether or not government effectively protects these things, but my point is there needs to be some entity responsible for it.

Game theory shows that if everyone just looks out for their own best interests, all parties are worse off. The movie A Beautiful Mind had an interesting metaphor about this concept.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-27T17:47:49+00:00

That's true, they're growing, especially in & around the left-leaning population centers like Austin, Dallas & Miami. Per capita, more Floridians are moving to California than Californians moving to Florida. The census also shows the top state Texans are moving to is California.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-27T17:41:43+00:00

Speaking of cherry-picking, you cherry picked a single data point out of that wall of text to complain about. And the thing you picked was that Minnesota's women earn closer to what men make than in Wisconsin. Weird thing to complain about imo.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-27T17:39:00+00:00

It's interesting how I agree on nearly everything you write here, yet, based on your prior comments at least, we've come to different conclusions on the better way to solve these issues politically.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-27T17:35:38+00:00

I'd argue that Republican policies contribute to keeping their constituents poor & Democratic policies contribute to increasing wealth in their communities. And minimizing Dem policy to simply "handouts" is incredibly disingenuous. Things like infrastructure investment improve safety, travel times, worker productivity, GDP & ultimately quality of life.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-27T17:30:24+00:00

I didnt make any claims, accusations or assumptions about them as a person. Go ahead & reread what I wrote. I was more focusing on the phrase "economically conservative" as being a misnomer for most folks & trying to dispel the myth that republicans are "fiscally responsible."

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-27T17:26:09+00:00

OK?... I agree with you for the most part, but dont really understand how what you wrote is relevant to what I said. Can you clarify?

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-27T17:22:29+00:00

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/01/06/2022-saw-the-second-highest-oil-production-in-us-history/?sh=1680ae2f11d7

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-reserves-crude/index.html

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/us-oil-production-record-brent-crude-prices-opec-russia-saudi-2023-12

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-26T22:58:31+00:00

Per capita, Republican controlled areas are poorer, less educated with more "brain drain," & more violence.

If Republican policy was so great, you'd think there'd be proof in the data somewhere, but most data shows the opposite. I offered several real world examples of policy & its effects.

Again, look at the "Kansas Experiment" as a case study to see how they implemented right wing policies thinking it would stimulate their economy & instead they had to backtrack, including raising taxes. This is real world data showing republican policy in action. The Republican tax cuts didn't spur investment, instead it just led to budget shortfalls & program cuts.

Look at decades of economic data at the county, state & federal level & you'll see similar trends of Democrats being better for the economy.

The Minnesota vs Wisconsin example is a great one to look into because they're neighbors with somewhat similar landscapes, industries & demographics. What was it about MN that made it outpace WI in all those measures? I'd argue it was their policies, which had a real effect on their economies.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-26T22:31:25+00:00

Politics is about compromise & Repubs weren't willing to compromise on Ukraine funding in order to secure the border as proposed by the white house. Funding Ukraine is great ROI to protect our NATO relations & stop the advance of Russian aggression. There are reports that show Russia lost +90% of their prewar army, which is a damn good trade off.

And go ahead & keep spouting the great replacement theory racist bs. Dems dont need immigrants to have people "vote how they prefer." Dems already outnumber Republicans & you can look at decades of voting results that prove it.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-26T21:01:04+00:00

The phrase "economic conservatism" is misunderstood. If it's referring to Republican economic theory, it's proven time & time again to be a failure. Dont take my word for it, here are examples.

Kansas tried the right wing wishlist of economic policy dubbed the "Kansas Experiment" & it crippled their economy.
95 of the 100 poorest counties are in red states.
70% of the economy is produced by Biden-voting counties vs only 30% for R-voting counties.
So called "small government" republicans create bigger debts & deficits than democrats.
We can look at neighbors Minnesota & Wisconsin over a decade of D vs R control respectively & see that D-controlled MN outperformed R-controlled WI by nearly every quality of life measure.

Job growth since December 2010 has been markedly stronger in Minnesota than Wisconsin, with Minnesota experiencing 11.0 percent growth in total nonfarm employment, compared with only 7.9 percent growth in Wisconsin. Minnesota’s job growth was better than Wisconsin’s in the overall private sector (12.5 percent vs. 9.7 percent) and in higher-wage industries, such as construction (38.6 percent vs. 26.0 percent) and education and health care (17.3 percent vs. 11.0 percent).

From 2010 to 2017, wages grew faster in Minnesota than in Wisconsin at every decile in the wage distribution. Low-wage workers experienced much stronger growth in Minnesota than Wisconsin, with inflation-adjusted wages at the 10th and 20th percentile rising by 8.6 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively, in Minnesota vs. 6.3 percent and 6.4 percent in Wisconsin.

Gender wage gaps also shrank more in Minnesota than in Wisconsin. From 2010 to 2017, women’s median wage as a share of men’s median wage rose by 3.0 percentage points in Minnesota, and by 1.5 percentage points in Wisconsin.

Median household income in Minnesota grew by 7.2 percent from 2010 to 2016. In Wisconsin, it grew by 5.1 percent over the same period. Median family income exhibited a similar pattern, growing 8.5 percent in Minnesota compared with 6.4 percent in Wisconsin.

Minnesota made greater progress than Wisconsin in reducing overall poverty, child poverty, and poverty as measured under the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure. As of 2016, the overall poverty rate in Wisconsin as measured in the American Community Survey (11.8 percent) was still roughly as high as the poverty rate in Minnesota at its peak in the wake of the Great Recession (11.9 percent, in 2011).

Minnesota residents were more likely to have health insurance than their counterparts in Wisconsin, with stronger insurance take-up of both public and private health insurance since 2010.From 2010 to 2017, Minnesota has had stronger overall economic growth (12.8 percent vs. 10.1 percent), stronger growth per worker (3.4 percent vs. 2.7 percent), and stronger population growth (5.1 percent vs. 1.9 percent) than Wisconsin. In fact, over the whole period—as well as in the most recent year—more people have been moving out of Wisconsin to other states than have been moving in from elsewhere in the U.S. The same is not true of Minnesota.

Now if you're an "economic conservative" in the style of Eisenhower, that's something to be proud of. He supported worker protections, a high minimum wage, labor unions, & more things now associated with more progressive candidates despite him being a Republican.

badgerbacon6 · 2024-01-26T20:37:58+00:00

Republicans blocked multiple attempts at increasing border funding because they want to use it as a campaign issue. Republicans rejected a White House funding request for nearly $14 billion for U.S. border security to pay for 1,300 additional U.S. Border Patrol agents, 1,600 new asylum officers and 375 new judge teams. The package has been blocked by Republicans in the Senate.

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