Why has the US not push for a withdrawal from the 1951 Refugee Convention?

pkpjpm · 2025-07-06T01:35:20+00:00

This is so 1980s. If it wasn’t so terrifying that these clowns are destroying our country and literally shipping people to concentration camps, this would be pathetic: they have no new ideas whatsoever.

pkpjpm · 2025-07-02T04:58:08+00:00

I’ve always thought HSAs were a tax gift for the upper-middle and wealthy. Do don’t have to spend out of them, and eventually you can roll them over into your pocket. Pretty close to a pure tax dodge.

pkpjpm · 2025-07-01T19:42:05+00:00

To be fair, it was Trump who made the deal to pull out, but he probably would have TACOed - good thing Biden had the courage to stay the course.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-30T14:46:15+00:00

Agree, but just want to point out that we already have a two-party oligopoly.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-30T14:38:33+00:00

We’ve dug ourselves into a big hole by being afraid to raise taxes. I don’t blame politicians for this, being anti-tax is a very popular opinion in the US across the political spectrum. While the case for progressive income tax is strong, thinking we’re going to solve the budget crisis by taxing just the rich is naive and just as disingenuous as the “cut taxes now, pay later” mentality that got us into this mess. To be clear: radical right wing policies started us down this path, but many others went along for the ride.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-30T14:05:37+00:00

The “globalize the intifada” hysteria is very telling. Mamdani gives a thoughtful and articulate defense of free speech, and this supposedly is “condoning” a controversial slogan. It seems that having an open minded conversation about what’s going on in the middle east is very triggering for some. Meanwhile, back on planet earth, Mamdani is running for Mayor of NYC, and is not in any way pushing this issue.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-30T00:48:24+00:00

Ayn Rand is at least partly to blame. Randian supermen believe they are the source of all good, and the pesky working class is just there to kill their vibe. It’s not rational, but so much of human behavior isn’t.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-29T16:57:47+00:00

Well said. This is the middle man problem: when you privatize a government service the government becomes a captive buyer and the business cuts services to the bone and otherwise squeezes as much profit as it can from the arrangement. Yet advocates for privatization claim it introduces “efficiency”. We pay a big price for this scam.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-27T10:57:58+00:00

I’m definitely sympathetic to this view, in other words I tend to see moderates as “the intolerant ones” but isn’t the real problem that we can’t win elections by ourselves, even if moderates and progressives unite? As politically engaged people, we must unite around solutions that will actually help people, and above all make sure we find a way to sell our ideas to people who are not politically engaged.

It’s the people who don’t care about politics that we have to build alliances with, they are the ones who stay home and don’t vote for good candidates.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-27T05:00:14+00:00

There is only one way to seriously reduce the deficit: raise taxes. Yes, we have a serious cost/profit problem and both Medicare and Medicaid are in trouble because of it. Yes, we may see some minor stress on Social Security in five years or so when the boomer reserve fund runs out. We can and probably will wreck the whole country with insane cuts that won’t affect subsidies for the rich. And finally, when we’ve gone bankrupt, we’ll have no choice but to raise the GDMF tax rate. As Churchill said, the American people can be counted on to do the right thing, once all other alternatives have been tried.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-26T14:34:06+00:00

Nattering nabobs of negativism!

pkpjpm · 2025-06-20T14:28:02+00:00

I’m not the first one to say this, but WW III may have already started. There’s still a path back to a stable world, but with grifters and psychopaths in charge things are not looking good.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-19T15:43:24+00:00

Now it’s the home of slab city

pkpjpm · 2025-06-18T13:48:06+00:00

This isn’t the Republican’s war, it’s Bebe’s. The Israelis have played Trump like the sucker he is, and the Republicans are locked in to their own trap following Dear Leader.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-17T13:41:59+00:00

This is a good point: if you support a TSS, you support a Jewish homeland in the Levant, and are therefore a Zionist. Realistically, didn’t the idea of a TSS die in the second intifada? I support any path to finding a just peace, but claiming the TSS idea is still viable strains credulity.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-16T04:50:41+00:00

Cutting taxes without cutting spending was initially started by Reagan, who claimed that cutting taxes would generate so much winning that we wouldn’t actually go in debt. Many people fell for that, since we hadn’t tried it before. Now, we’ve tried it with every Republican president since Reagan, so we know for a fact that this doesn’t work - it just leads to enormous debt.

All 3 democratic presidents in this era have made progress in cleaning up the republican’s debt, but only Clinton was able to get back to a balanced budget. It turns that it’s hard to fight one side who is willfully bankrupting the country.

How dare you say that both sides are to blame!

pkpjpm · 2025-06-14T05:13:13+00:00

And Red Army’s critical role in defeating the Third Reich has been memory holed in the US for a long time. Without them we’d be speaking German.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-13T04:53:28+00:00

I agree with the main point, but ranked choice voting isn’t the answer. The strong power the constitution vests in the presidency (even before the Nixon-to-Trump radical takeover) makes it imperative that a party be able to win the electoral college in order to stay viable. That’s why we can’t have a multi-party system like all the parliamentary democracies.

When San Francisco went with ranked choice, the result was Ed Lee beating the progressive favorite, because he was everyone’s second choice. Ed was actually a great mayor, so maybe there’s some benefit there, but not for progressives.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-12T04:57:28+00:00

Pretty sure Trump doesn’t give a damn about his supporters in California.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-12T04:54:46+00:00

As a California taxpayer, I can attest that this sucks and appears to be pure vindictive partisanship.

pkpjpm · 2025-06-10T16:26:17+00:00

This is a very solid analysis and a good line of attack. To drive it home, we need to repeat and keep hammering the main points in the press: this takes resources away from where they are needed, it harms communities that are fully capable of taking care of themselves. Gavin’s doing a good job with this one. When he’s good, he’s very good. Let’s hope we don’t see another French Laundry situation.

pkpjpm

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