Dear Democrats, curb your gerontocracy.

[Estebonrober]

Sin taxes disproportionately effect the poor though and maybe, MAYBE, discourage behavior. I'd argue the drop in tobacco use was less about the tax and more about the health reality when a generation finally came up seeing the images day in and out of its effects.

One of the primary reasons I've switched sides in the last two decades is this consistent propensity to punish the broken in our society. If someone has made a series of bad choices it seems logically unethical to make it tougher for them in general.

Of course I've long since given up on the idea that markets are rational and that was well after I woke to how irrational almost all people are. . .

Again the primary problem is the wealthy just aren't paying the same tax rate as everyone else on their assets.

 

[Kaitzilla]

If people want to pry the Speakership from Pelosi's ancient hands, they need to raise $660 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since 2002 like she did.

Whoa, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is doing the very opposite!
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...nst-dccc-blacklist-left-wing-democrats-uproar

“The @DCCC’s new rule to blacklist+boycott anyone who does business w/ primary challengers is extremely divisive & harmful to the party,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter. “My recommendation, if you’re a small-dollar donor: pause your donations to DCCC & give directly to swing candidates instead.”

I wonder how much negative dollars counts towards a Speakership?


Another one of the four new Democrats making waves is Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

It’s been a week of escalating tensions between various factions of the House Democratic caucus. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the influence of four of the House’s most liberal lawmakers—Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—in an interview with the New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez shot back, accusing Pelosi of “explicitly singling out newly elected women of color.”

“We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice,” Pressley said.
Some long-serving black House Democrats fiercely rebuked Ocasio-Cortez’s characterization. Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), for example, said she had played the “race card.” The exchange threw fresh fuel on a feud between members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Justice Democrats, the left-wing political organization that helped to recruit and elect the four women last fall. Justice Democrats have recruited Democratic primary opponents to challenge Clay and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), another CBC member, with the arguments that neither lawmaker has done enough to serve their black and brown constituents.

On Saturday morning, speaking during a keynote panel at the progressive Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia, some of the women lawmakers of color at the center of the controversy addressed it head-on. Without mentioning the black lawmakers by name, Rep. Ayanna Pressley spoke of the challenges they say they’re facing.

“We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice,” Pressley said. “We don’t need anymore black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need any more Muslim faces who don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need any more queers that don’t want to be a queer voice.”

Pressley, like Ocasio-Cortez, defeated a long-serving Democratic incumbent during her primary last summer. Though Pressley is black, the CBC threw its weight behind Michael Capuano, who is white, in the majority-minority district Pressley sought to represent.

It is nice to see the new people challenging the status quo!

 

[Narz]

I'd be happy with Tulsi (38) or Yang (44).

Your boy Trump is in his 73 and a fat ****.

 

[Commodore]

I'd be happy with Tulsi (38) or Yang (44).

Your boy Trump is in his 73 and a fat ****.

Body shaming doesn't seem like a very progressive thing to do.

 

[Hygro]

When has Narz been progressive rather than zoning similarly?

 

[El_Machinae]

Given that Trump must have assumed he was hot stuff when he pushed himself on Natasha Stoynoff, it's less body shaming in this place

 

[hobbsyoyo]

He still thinks he's hot stuff and regularly brags about his physical attributes. The rot is so deep that there are a lot of snippets of his sycophantic inner tribe describing in glowing tones how fit and trim he is. Then there is the outright lies put into his physical exams records.

I actually don't like dragging on Trump over this stuff. It's like how every time he says something wrong accidentally (calling Dayton Toledo is the latest hot take); it's stupid and counterproductive and childish on the part of the media.

 

[Narz]

Body shaming doesn't seem like a very progressive thing to do.

When has Narz been progressive rather than zoning similarly?

I'm an environmentalist therefore I have to be on the left because right-wingers are about about raping the planet and being raptured.

I'm not body shaming, but having extra weight at an old age increases mortality (and cognitive decline).

 

[Hygro]

Exactly my point!