- cross-posted to:
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
The United States’ poverty rate experienced its largest one-year jump on record last year, with the rate among children more than doubling from 2021’s historic low of 5.2 percent to 12.4 percent according to new numbers from the US Census Bureau out today. They’re the latest data to reflect the devastating effects following the expiration of nearly all pandemic-era relief programs. That includes the end of Medicaid rules that protected recipients from getting kicked off because of administrative errors, an end to rental assistance policies, and the restart of student loan payments.
These policies might seem like a distant memory at this point. But they’re worth recalling with the arrival of every new report. Each demonstrates what happens when politicians long hostile to caregivers, universal health care, and the welfare state, for a brief moment, acted to create powerful, federally-backed safety net programs aimed at helping everyday Americans. One of the most effective programs to emerge was the expansion of the child tax credit, which provided families monthly checks of up to $300 per child and broadened eligibility rules for qualifying families. In turn, child poverty rates plummeted; the extra income allowed caregivers to quit grueling second and third jobs; parents were able to buy their kids decent clothes and help stop taunting at school. The Census Bureau previously reported that food insecurity dropped dramatically after just the first extended payment, from 10.7 million households reporting they didn’t have enough food to 7.4 million.
But as the pandemic receded, Republicans with the help of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who in private remarks reportedly warned that families were using the extra income to buy drugs, appeared to remember the country’s longstanding pre-pandemic hostility. Their opposition ultimately tanked President Biden’s agenda, and along with it, the brief life of the expanded child tax credit. That’s something worth remembering today as the predictable crowd is likely to cry about Democratic-engineered inflation.
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Because of it’s truth?
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what the hell is the point of holding a seat if the guy holding it does whatever he wants.
West Virginia has gotten more and more conservative over time. It used to be more of a blue state. In 2020, Trump got double the votes that Biden did. Manchin is going to struggle to hold the seat if he runs again, let alone some left wing upstart without name recognition who is poorly matched to the state's politics.
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Joe Manchin is conservative for a Democrat, but he is no Republican. Any replacement will be a right wing Republican that the Democratic Party has no influence over. Manchin highlights his independence from either party. A replacement would highlight their mindless opposition to any proposal by the left or Democrats.
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WV was a blue state because unions. When Dems started attacking the largest union industries in the state, and started emphasizing identity politics over labor that was pretty much it.
yes. the democrats are so good at protecting marginalized peoples. that is clearly where their effort goes. just ask anyone trans who lives in joe biden's america how much fun they're having~
Identity politics are the liberal nothingburger approach to pretending to care about marginalized groups
The real version of this is intersectionality. If you hear “identity politics” think worthless liberalism like naming a road after George Floyd
i am aware of that, but i'm also not assuming good politics outside hexbear
you know what thats a good point
Never said they were successful at that. What I'm getting at is that there's a shift in Dem rhetoric that happened about 20 years ago where the emphasis stopped being on labor, and started being on identity groups. This is very convenient for their corporate sponsorship, as silly things like worker's rights and labor unions are not things said sponsors want to support, for obvious reasons. By comparison, something like which bathroom trans people shit in is a perfectly fine topic from the perspective of the corporate masterminds, because it doesn't impact their cash flow.
This is the same reason why the Dems are comically bad at getting anything done - half their policies are pro-worker ones kept eternally on the back burner only to be brought out in a pre-compromised form and then compromised further on when the calls from the base get too loud, and the rest are ones where they try to keep various minority groups on the edge of existential terror by suggesting that if you don't vote for them then you'll be one step closer to being marched off to the death camps.
actually I disagree with the existence of stupidpol and patsoc types
By not conrinuing to support and fund them.
By doing literally anything.
But anytime anybody says that we get a lecture on how dems have to keep supporting him otherwise he'd do the exact same things as a republican.
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maybe they should dral with Manchin the way they deal with the socdems: by funding their primary opponents.
Speaking as a non-american, the only way to avoid burgerlands nosedive into fascism would take so much more work and would definitely involve losing the senate. To me, you have to completely remake the Supreme Court and senate, and part of that is to always attack them and their legitimacy. Every democratic spokesperson should be bring up how corrupt and unaccountable these institutions are
Like, open up criminal cases against Clarence Thomas and Alito over their corruption. Same with manchin. Every one of these ghouls have done criminal acts. Even if you don’t win the court cases (and you won’t), you’ve dragged these peoples names into the mud and will help expose the flaws in both Congress and the courts. Get a majority of people mad enough that they shut down the country through strikes and demonstrations and you’ll suddenly find the remaining judges and congresspeople a lot more amenable.
Now, you’ll have thought up a ton of reasons why this won’t work. So have I, and the major reason to me is that most of the democrats are the same kind of garbage as the republicans, along with Americans being incredibly docile except when they’re murdering each other plus a million other reasons. So fuck both parties, vote or don’t, I don’t really care, but don’t expect me to be impressed by joe Biden
Ok here's some actual examples.
Take him off all committees stop giving him any money or support for relecrions and start closing military bases in his state.
Why are Democrats giving money to "Democrats" who won't support their agenda? Why did the DNC support Manchin and Sinema financially, but actually give money to Republicans over Progressive Democrats? You can't be against Fascists, but still financially support them over Social Democrats...An unemotional look at the DNC's behaviour shows that even if you got 70 Senators, the things we want would not get done. The Democrats are closer to the Republicans than any Socialist/ Communist/Anarchist in here..
I know I sound old school, but back in the day, people would just try to kill the fascists, not govern against them
Lmao
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Did Biden fight tooth and nail to push through his agenda? Nope.
So it's completely reasonable to say that Biden allowed childhood poverty to double under his watch.
What can we do Jack, if we had to change the rules of the senate to allow majority votes then we might be able to do something
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Actually political parties can and should enforce political discipline on their members, and there should be reprisals for going against the party and its leadership.
But the reality is, letting Manchin trash this legislation is probably more the plan than an opposition to it
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If they can't control him then they've already functionally lost a seat (unless of course, they actually like having him block legislation they don't actually want to pass)
Parties exert control on their members in this country, they always have, and generally not through violence or torture. Usually its through taking away party support from them and their personal agenda. It could be attacking political pork to West Virginia, close military or other government facilities there, and support challengers/kick him out of the party so he can't run on their ticket. It could possibly include more strong-arm tactics, not violence, not even anything necessarily illegal, that's speculative but possible.
What you're asking people to explain, is something that is the norm. You're the one actually making an outrageous claim of how do we expect a political party to control and discipline its members. And pretending that the Democratic Party or the President just have no power in this situation is ludicrous
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I don't think elections hold a lot of promise of fixing anything. I think Manchin and Sinema are exactly where their party wants them. I don't think that this legislation failing is something that the Biden Admin or the DNC are against.
I think they're happy about it, and thats why there's no discipline exerted on either of them. That's what i meant by you making an extraordinary claim about party discipline. Theres no party discilple or reprisals because the party doesn't care about this legislation. They like having these scapegoats. The Democratic Party leadership does not share your view, that these people shouldn't be there. That's why elections in this system will not fix it
That ain't a democracy chief
I'm gonna put on my political scientist hat, and point out that almost every political party on this planet enforces internal discipline in a multitilude of ways, a handful of which have been mentioned in this discussion thread already.
The idea that parties are these big tents where you can't possibly enforce any kind of internal discipline is both a uniquely America-brained take, and also not entirely true.
Like, there are literally people called "Party Whips" who's job it is to pressure the party members vote along party lines.
There's literally positions in Congress for party members called a whip for enforcing party discipline
What difference would that make when the guy is already voting like a republican?
what would change?
He'd be using republican money for re-election instead of taking money from potential progressive politicians before getting elected and voting against the dems entire platform.
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idk but the GOP seems to have no problem getting their entire party to vote as a single bloc so it can't be that hard.
Sure. Democrats just have to become a party of rigid ideological purity instead of the big tent party they've been for a hundred years.
If you think Republicans can sustain that behavior, I invite you to pay attention to the way they're eating each other in the House right now.
I guess it's good that Biden didn't really try to get leverage on manchin then. Its good that Biden saw all the damage manchin was doing and said "well I guess I gotta give up now"
People who really care will try everything even if it might not work. Biden didn't try shit because he doesn't care
So Democrats should turn into Republicans. Yup, that'll really fix the problem! Clearly I was mistaken that the goal here was good governance instead of seizing and holding power.
Good governance is when you let your country fall apart because you’re too scared of getting your hands dirty to reign in rogue senators who are putting your country’s population at risk of starvation
Having different ideas of what constitutes being a good public servant and how to do the job doesn't make them the enemy. Neither is following the rule of law. We can agree that more needs to be done and Biden's not doing everything right, but not that he's the bad guy because he's not doing everything we want him to do.
The rule of law is a dumb concept and should be ignored. The laws we are talking about were written by monsters and no one with a soul should respect them
Republicans get things done and Democrats don't. I don't want dems to pick up Republican social ideals but I do want them to pick up Republican political strategies that actually produce results. Why do you want the party of the "good guys" to be so feckless? Isn't it a HUGE problem when the "good guys" are weak and the bad guys are strong?
"Not funding the very same fascists you use to scare people into voting for you" = "rigid ideological purity"
I for one do not find it difficult or stringent to not work with fascist parties
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You asked and he answered, sometimes AuThoRiTaRiAnIsM is how you actually get things done.
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Enjoy your democratic child poverty 👍
Also the US is not a democracy
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lol, I bet you think killing Nazis is bad too and there's some kind of rule that states you have to have reactionaries in your politics instead of just getting rid of them.
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Imagine having elected officials doing what you like. Instead they do whatever corporate donors pay them to.
Best to let capital sort it out - wouldn't want to enforce the will of the people or anything.
In freedom democracy burgerland, the average citizen has 0 influence on their elected officials decision making, and must resort to hoping they do something effectual. This is good and rational.
In authoritarian, freedom-hating China, a recall vote can be initiated against a politician at literally any time by their constituents if they feel the will of the people is not being enacted. This is horrible and bad.
why should it take force when their power allegedly comes from the people? i thought this was a democracy!
Crylaugh emojis are not the flawless cover for being flustered that you seem to think they are.
You live in a democracy? When is the last time you and everyone else in your workplace got together to make a decision democratically instead of that decision being made unilaterally?
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we literally have the largest per-capita incaceration rate in the history of the modern world what the fuck are you talking about ACTUAL dictatorships
What's even worse is that the person we're replying to is likely fully aware of how the US has been sending its military and intelligence forces all over the world for the last 70-80 years to violently crush any movement that ever so slightly opposes its hegemony, and yet they still believe that the US is somehow not "authoritarian"
These people live in a fantasy world.
Not just psr capita. US has the largest prison population period
At this point someone should probably dig up that research paper that shows that what the US public wants has no influence on what is actually carried out by the US state.
bud, you could literally rub their noses in the most solid evidence and they won't accept it in the same way you can drag a mule to water but you can't make the jackass drink
Oh I know this clown would never get it, but still
You live in the US which has the world's largest prison population by both total numbers and percent of the population. Is this the non-authoritarian democracy you're talking about here? We have so many people in a cycle of poverty, bad health, and prison because we all got together and decided that this is how we want to allocate resources? Billionaires, private prisons, private healthcare, unaffordable housing, and child poverty?
Okay so address the point without latching onto the most extreme conceit they made. God forbid anything happen to a coal baron senator.
With all of the power of the executive branch, the democratic party apparatus, and the leadership of the body they are members of, you can excuse zero attempts to coerce their votes?
You've just described grounds for impeachment and removal of the president. The full House and Senate would turn on them at that point.
We had a president literally try to overturn an election in his favor and the Senate still failed to convict him. 43 Republicans had their lives put in danger by his actions but still voted him not guilty. If that's not enough to remove a president from office then what makes you think this would?
Because they voted that way for tribal reasons. They refused to hold one of their own accountable. Democrats have before and will again. We don't cover for someone's crimes just because they belong to the right party.
lmao remind me again the last time a president was tried for war crimes? Obama literally bombed hospitals and the Dems still haven't done a damn thing about it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+hospital+bombing&newwindow=1
Just in case your fingers were broken.
Oh shit, a 6000 dollar payout? That’ll surely make up for their innocent relatives being blown up for no reason!
Way to miss the point about Obama acknowledging the incident and no one finding any evidence that he deliberately ordered the hospital to be bombed. War crimes are deliberate. Better if we're not bombing anyone at all, but his actions didn't rise to the level of criminality which is why even Republicans didn't try to get him on that. It's not like they weren't looking for an excuse to impeach him and put him on trial. They tried really hard with Benghazi, and still couldn't manage it.
So if somebody kicks your door in and shoots you in the head then gives your family $50 that's all good as long as the murderer didn't have a handwritten note saying "I know this is an extra judicial killing and don't care" in his jacket?
Don't forget they also have to say the magic words: "I have been held accountable."
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No thanks. You claim to speak for the people, but really you only want power for your fringe ideology.
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Our "fringe ideology" has the largest political party on the planet.
Only because other parties are banned. Can't stand real competition.
There are eight politcal parties in the PRC
Oh, sorry. Every party that is not subservient to the CPC is banned. And those that are left are tiny with no real influence.
If they ban other parties, they're a one-party state. If they don't ban other parties, actually yes they do and it's all a secret scheme to convince us they're not a one-party state.
There are literally 8 parties represented in the legislature
The other ones are a joke. The largest has 58 out of 2980 seats.
Democracy is when no political party dominates, and the more power doesn't consolidate around a very justifiably popular party the more democratic it is.
If the democrats started doing good things the last time they had concrete control over all three branches and jumped to something like 80 percent popularity and got 80 percent of the vote, that would be undemocratic. Just like how the CPC has an above 90 percent approval rate according to international observers and holds almost all political offices in China.
LBJ certainly found a way
Easy. Threaten them. Remove them from committees. Cut their funding from DNC. Many many things could have been done.
You would learn more if instead of asking "what could they have done" but instead asking "why didn't they do anything".
They didn't do anything.
you can tell how little attention Democratic Party apologists like this pay attention to the Democrats, because they never seem to see any of the absolutely dirty tricks they pull against popular progressives to enforce discipline, that are somehow never ever deployed against these sineating right-wing assholes like Sinema and Manchin.
In order to hit the rule of three you included "you still have your opinion even after I called someone else stupid" for your reasons why someone's comment was stupid.
The Biden administration has overseen the sharpest rise in child poverty in America in decades. It's the responsibility of the governing party to figure out how to get results, not how to take a feels-good position.