Or work to implement ranked choice voting. The more localities use it, the more comfortable people get with it (the primary anti-ranked choice argument is it's "too confusing for voters"), the more chance it has to be adopted by more states beyond the current Maine and Alaska beachhead.
Lyrl
joined 2 years ago
The Republican demands were to NOT do things, which can be moved towards by filibuster and delay. The Democrat demands are to DO things, and filibuster and delay would just get the Republicans what they want, while being able to blame the Democrats for all the negative effects that are surprising to their constituents. They need to find better messages and ways to get those messages out, absolutely, but it's not a mirror image to the Republican situation four years ago.
A lot of US benefits have "benefit cliffs" where making $1 more substantially reduces or even completely disqualifies a person from programs like SNAP (food stamps) or childcare subsidies or Medicaid. https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/introduction-to-benefits-cliffs-and-public-assistance-programs
It's not surprising people whose families are directly affected by, or who know people affected by, benefit cliffs think the lawmakers set up taxes the same way.
It's not coming from a centrist in this case: the article is written by someone who argues Bernie is insufficiently left.
Reading the article, the argument is that Bernie isn't left enough, and more radical candidates need to be run in primaries.
they’ve been shrinking as we ~~evolved~~ changed our diet
No genetic changes (evolution) happened. If as children we ate only very tough meat and lots of chewy vegetables - no bread or rice or potato softness - our same genetics would result in much larger adult jaws.
I have gotten a lot of social connections and philosophy learning through my congregation, consumed a variety of exercise safety and effectiveness tips, enjoyed discovering recipes that fit with my lifestyle and dietary preferences (many of which contribute healthy variety to my food intake), and get positive feelings finding spaces that share experiences and tips around specific health conditions I have. It's sad to see all of those experiences cast as me being a victim of grifting.
The in-your-face topics of "society and culture" and "comedy" are close to evenly split.
The shows the right is dominating in are things like sports and wellness and spirituality with political sprinkles. The left didn't even have one show in the article's survey of those topics.
The "society and culture" and "comedy" topics are only slightly right-skewed, which seems representative of the US voting behavior with Republicans winning more elections but not by much.
The non-political topics with political sprinkles are interesting, and where the right overwhelms the left. People don't listen to these shows because of the politics - they are there for the sports talk, or the discussion on getting and staying healthy, or for some inspiration and spiritual reflection - but the political sprinkles aren't enough to drive them away. Does anyone see a path to a left-leaning host attracting significant audiences for mainly sports or wellness or spirituality, with occasional progressive sprinkles?
The Netherlands has party-list proportional representation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation
Instant run-off / ranked choice voting is a different system, and where implemented I'm not aware of it leading to many parties. I believe it will make the two parties better, which is still a good and beneficial outcome.
Using the original meaning of a word and not chasing off on the euphemism treadmill is hardly shifting to the right.
And another 60 million (the Carboniferous period) to figure out how to break down lignin. Trees were the equivalent of our plastic pollution crises - no way to return the nutrients to the ecosystem or even deal with the mass other than burial or burning - for millions of years.
All fungi today that rot wood descend from just one fungal evolution event, and even today we don't really understand how they manage to digest the lignin. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mushroom-evolution-breaks-down-lignin-slows-coal-formation/