President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Our father was a compassionate man. Sometimes he would let us ride the horse. But it was so old that we’d have to carry it home from school.

 

They kinda already have. RFK 2.0 dropped out because at the end he was polling slightly better than the Hawk Tuah girl.

 

Not everybody has that privilege.

 

Cue Devo chantin' "Crack that whip!" ... while I'm bouncin' along with the mule cart.

 

On one hand, it is illegal to do a mass purge of the voting rolls this close to Election Day. On the other, it sparks joy for Republicans. Tough call.

Republican Party leaders seek to purge 225,000 NC voters ahead of 2024 elections, citing worries dismissed by state officials

 

I, uh, don't think we cahn do that at this, uh, particular time.

 

If the GOP of today were a company, instead of "competing" with a better product, they would create an unfair marketplace where customers could only buy their product by making it very challenging to find or purchase products from another supplier, limit the hours the other businesses were allowed to operate and make customers travel miles out of their way to buy from other suppliers. And maybe even if customers patronized other businesses, they would make it illegal, and charge the competing company with fraud.
Seems like it would just be easier to put out a better product.

 

"WTF Wisconsin?"

Wisconsin is split ideologically two ways, by racial and urban/rural divides. Milwaukee is widely regarded as the most segregated city in the United States. White flight has created the suburban "WOW" counties (Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee) that regularly produce 80% overwhelmingly Republican voter turnout. The collar counties have grown dramatically since the 1980s, when the metro area's economy became more diffused with the decline of heavy industry.

Economic change has affected rural areas even more. Wisconsin historically has had a large share of its economy in industrial production. That's not only in the big city, but also in smaller communities, where a home-grown factory might have been a major employer. Globalism killed off a lot of those hometown industries, along with large corporations that bought them up, slashed payrolls and ultimately left behind an unproductive shell.

Add in automation, and between 1970 and 2015, the share of manufacturing employment in the state fell from 28% of the total workforce to 14%. It's not a story unique to Wisconsin, but the impact is greater because of the economy's historical reliance on manufacturing.

Out in the country, a farmer might have been supplementing the family income with a factory shift. With that extra income unavailable, farming became unsustainable. Meanwhile, factory farms have popped up, keeping 1,000 cows or 1 million chickens inside confined areas to improve efficiency. It comes down to "get big, or get out." From 2017 to 2022, the state lost 30% of its dairy farms. Milk production is so high, farmers are often dumping it.

There are a few management-type jobs that employ local citizens on these big dairies, like herdsman, as well as the unenviable job of trucking liquid manure out of the place in 18-wheelers. But the majority of the workers on the farm are Hispanic -- 63%, according to a study concluded in 2015, before the shift to CAFO farming became a landslide in the last decade. With every new factory farm, the share of the immigrant workforce has increased. A large proportion is undocumented, and the farmers know it. But brain drain has reduced the younger demographic in the area, and the immigrants work their asses off for little pay. A lot of them live right on the farm, like serfs.

The smaller cities in the state have histories as cultural islands. Every summer there's a Norwegian fest, a Swiss fest, a Bavarian fest, a Czech fest. Latino fests are a lot less common. There's one in Green Bay called "Estamos Aqui!" The name says it all.

That said, the main streets of smaller towns across the state may have a Mexican bakery or grocery, possibly with services where people can send money back to family south of the border. Fun fact: in 2023, Mexico received over $63 billion in remittances from sources in this country. In Guatemala, remittances equal 19% of the country's GNP.

Anyway, the state has seen a lot of economic and cultural upheaval. It's cultural core remains intact, and the quality of life, IMO, is relatively high. Illicit drug use hasn't addled the working class as badly as in some states, primarily because we're so into alcohol. At any rate, looking around I wouldn't consider living anywhere else, except maybe Minnesota. Or Canada, if TFG gets re-elected.

 

That's a thoughtful, well-researched piece full of insight and perspective.

You must be new here.

 

Just ask these folks. Or these folks.

Because we live in a community.