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Maybe I'm missing something but doing good things and getting rewarded by the popular vote seems like the way the system should work. Contrast that with doing

Maybe I'm missing something but doing good things and getting rewarded by the popular vote seems like the way the system should work. Contrast that with doing bad things and then trying to prevent people from voting so you can cling to power.

b112 4y ago
I don't get the complaint. If anything, it is far more risky now. A parole action, at the start of a term, incures low risk. It will be years until midterms, and the action will be dim, distant in people's minds. Doing it now, means that any voter who is opposed, will have this very fresh in their minds. Even if 20% is opposed, that's still a 20% potential vote loss! And contrary to what twitter and facebook media try to claim, there are swing voters. So taking a stance now, is very much the most democratic thing to do.
- mootzville 4y ago
  I'd argue this is one of the last things people will be thinking about in this election. No one is changing their vote over this...the economy and abortion will drive this cycle.
  - b112 4y ago
    My point wasn't about the issue, but the timing of any issue.
roenxi 4y ago
I suspect they are just being political. It is a good move. Keep up the good work, I say. That being said, Joe Biden has been a key player at the highest levels of US policy for decades. He only narrowly missed out on entering the US Senate to vote on the original Controlled Substances Act of 1970 that it seems people are being pardoned for violating. 1973-2009 he was part of the exact group of people helping build up the war on drugs. 2022 elections he throws out a bone to deal with the symptoms. You can see why people like Obama or Trump do so well vs incumbent politicians. These ex-Congress people are, by and large, responsible for all the messes they campaign on fixing. The internet is making it harder for them to escape their own decisions. The US really needs to look back and get rid of some of the people with the more appalling track records. I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq. They shouldn't be allowed to tell people what to do any more. It is hard to do worse than that.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq. Nothing bad about supporting Afghanistan in itself, the problem was (the same as with Iraq...) that the US lacked a "post-invasion" plan to rebuild the nation.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    "How could we have known that sending in the army would result in the country becoming a war zone?" The fine minds in Congress have to grapple with this sort of inscrutable mystery every day. Which is why their competence is a question of the debate. Armies and random occupations do not build thriving countries. There was never any reason to believe it would. The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders. And they'd still have been better off without being invaded - armies don't build valuable things.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders. The reason why Germany is where it is now is that the US sunk billions upon billions into the Marshall Plan and had shown the commitment that they would stay in the country and provide it perspective and security if it would become and stay a healthy democracy that respects the rule of law. The US had done everything precisely opposite in Afghanistan: they marched in and got rid of the Taliban government, but they failed to enforce a rule of law in the country and instead let local warlords and other undesirables deal with that. Corruption was rife everywhere, and there was no economic perspective for the people of Afghanistan to be a somewhat self-sufficient country. Hell even after 20 years, 75% (!) of the budget was foreign aid [1]. As a result of that lack of perspective, why should the Afghani people have any respect for its "government" that barely had any shred of legitimacy? At least Iraq has natural resources. What the West should have done in Afghanistan was to do the same thing it had done in Germany half a century before: invest in nation building, in providing the citizens a path that is not violence, poverty and crime. [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/taliban-takeover-how-frozen-assets-foreign-aid-impacts-afghanistan/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/taliban-takeover-...
moritonal 4y ago
I suppose the logic is that he delayed his good deed till now so it'd have good media timing, rather than doing it earlier and helping people sooner. Edit: Not that I agree with this assessment!
roydivision 4y ago
It's all in the timing.
- Terretta 4y ago
  Assuming some value is delivered every month, should the party in office stop delivering value during election season? Otherwise, there will, certainly, be some value delivered, that can be accused of being political, as it coincides with elections. Seems better to have a steady delivery, than having to stop the government for election season.
Ekaros 4y ago
So should each administration send a check for let's say 10 000$ before each election just to so that people will be more likely to vote for them.
- dpatterbee 4y ago
  Unironically not a bad idea.
- tchaffee 4y ago
  Why not? Sounds like the start of UBI, which is increasingly becoming a popular idea.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    And the start of a major inflationary move in the middle of an inflationary crisis. I’m not convinced that sending out such checks won’t largely result in the purchasing power of that money being instantly eroded by massive inflation.
    - tchaffee 4y ago
      > And the start of a major inflationary move in the middle of an inflationary crisis. Based on what evidence? The current inflation in the US was caused by both very high employment levels along with supply chain problems. Sending out unemployment checks went way down over the past few years. People need things like UBI far more when the economy is not booming. The opposite of inflation. In a recession what you want is for people to spend money. You want to get back to normal levels of inflation. > I’m not convinced At the end of the day you don't need to be convinced. What matters is if all the top economists in favor of UBI are actually right or not. As machines automate more and more of the boring work we need done, there is no rational reason that people shouldn't have more leisure time and have to work far fewer hours.
      - cudgy 4y ago
        Student loans provide some evidence whereby tuition rates increase as student loans flooded the college market. Another example is hyper-low interest rates (essentially increasing money supply), which are largely responsible for the inflation of housing which is a major portion of inflation for consumers. Therefore a better way to handle UBI (which I believe may be needed by the way) is to gradually phase it into the system to avoid shocks like giving everyone $10,000 all of a sudden. There would still be inflation, bit it would hopefully be less dramatic.
Vaslo 4y ago
If it was a good thing why not do it first week of office? Why did people languish in jail for months just for an inept president to buy votes for his party?
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Maybe they just now have realized how much money from illegal drugs flows to sanctioned countries and are moving towards full legalisation to stop it.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  It's really hard for me to read this and not think of a child, shouting, "BUT I WANTED THE ICE CREAM AN HOUR AGO, NOT NOW! WAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The irrationality of this sentiment, combined with your assertion that President Biden is "inept," suggests to me that your statement is entirely political, since it seems to run contrary to the facts as I observe them.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    “ … since it seems to run contrary to the facts as I observe them.” Are there any other reasons that a statement could be political in your mind or are you the sole determinant for a politically driven statement?
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
  Because people have a short attention span and republicans have moved so far right that mundane things like affordable healthcare/college, providing aid to old or disabled people, providing nutritious and affordable food, ensuring that working people of all social strata can lead dignified lives, responding with empathy and evidence backed treatments to drug addiction, etc are responded to with unhinged screeds about socialism communism and fascism and groomers. So Biden needs to respond, rationally, to the propaganda that’s endemic among conservatives which results in cynically timed actions as a part of the effort to lead a nation tearing itself apart. Don’t like it? Stop voting for self interested obstructionists like McConnell, DeSantis, Sinema, manchin, mtg, etc. and don’t fan the fire with conservative dog whistles calling Biden inept when republicans have shown themselves to be shockingly tolerant of their members that routinely and flagrantly act against their stated principles while leaving the consequences of their incompetence for a democrat to clean up.
nurettin 4y ago
> Maybe I'm missing something I think you are. Your suggestion could only work well if there was a perpetual voting season. Otherwise parties will just abuse their leverage only once every four years just to get more votes.

b112 4y ago

I don't get the complaint. If anything, it is far more risky now. A parole action, at the start of a term, incures low risk. It will be years until midterms, and the action will be dim, distant in people's minds. Doing it now, means that any voter who is opposed, will have this very fresh in their minds. Even if 20% is opposed, that's still a 20% potential vote loss! And contrary to what twitter and facebook media try to claim, there are swing voters. So taking a stance now, is very much the most democratic thing to do.

mootzville 4y ago
I'd argue this is one of the last things people will be thinking about in this election. No one is changing their vote over this...the economy and abortion will drive this cycle.
- b112 4y ago
  My point wasn't about the issue, but the timing of any issue.

roenxi 4y ago

I suspect they are just being political. It is a good move. Keep up the good work, I say. That being said, Joe Biden has been a key player at the highest levels of US policy for decades. He only narrowly missed out on entering the US Senate to vote on the original Controlled Substances Act of 1970 that it seems people are being pardoned for violating. 1973-2009 he was part of the exact group of people helping build up the war on drugs. 2022 elections he throws out a bone to deal with the symptoms. You can see why people like Obama or Trump do so well vs incumbent politicians. These ex-Congress people are, by and large, responsible for all the messes they campaign on fixing. The internet is making it harder for them to escape their own decisions. The US really needs to look back and get rid of some of the people with the more appalling track records. I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq. They shouldn't be allowed to tell people what to do any more. It is hard to do worse than that.

mschuster91 4y ago
> I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq. Nothing bad about supporting Afghanistan in itself, the problem was (the same as with Iraq...) that the US lacked a "post-invasion" plan to rebuild the nation.
- roenxi 4y ago
  "How could we have known that sending in the army would result in the country becoming a war zone?" The fine minds in Congress have to grapple with this sort of inscrutable mystery every day. Which is why their competence is a question of the debate. Armies and random occupations do not build thriving countries. There was never any reason to believe it would. The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders. And they'd still have been better off without being invaded - armies don't build valuable things.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders. The reason why Germany is where it is now is that the US sunk billions upon billions into the Marshall Plan and had shown the commitment that they would stay in the country and provide it perspective and security if it would become and stay a healthy democracy that respects the rule of law. The US had done everything precisely opposite in Afghanistan: they marched in and got rid of the Taliban government, but they failed to enforce a rule of law in the country and instead let local warlords and other undesirables deal with that. Corruption was rife everywhere, and there was no economic perspective for the people of Afghanistan to be a somewhat self-sufficient country. Hell even after 20 years, 75% (!) of the budget was foreign aid [1]. As a result of that lack of perspective, why should the Afghani people have any respect for its "government" that barely had any shred of legitimacy? At least Iraq has natural resources. What the West should have done in Afghanistan was to do the same thing it had done in Germany half a century before: invest in nation building, in providing the citizens a path that is not violence, poverty and crime. [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/taliban-takeover-how-frozen-assets-foreign-aid-impacts-afghanistan/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/taliban-takeover-...

moritonal 4y ago

I suppose the logic is that he delayed his good deed till now so it'd have good media timing, rather than doing it earlier and helping people sooner. Edit: Not that I agree with this assessment!

roydivision 4y ago

It's all in the timing.

Terretta 4y ago
Assuming some value is delivered every month, should the party in office stop delivering value during election season? Otherwise, there will, certainly, be some value delivered, that can be accused of being political, as it coincides with elections. Seems better to have a steady delivery, than having to stop the government for election season.

Ekaros 4y ago

So should each administration send a check for let's say 10 000$ before each election just to so that people will be more likely to vote for them.

dpatterbee 4y ago
Unironically not a bad idea.
tchaffee 4y ago
Why not? Sounds like the start of UBI, which is increasingly becoming a popular idea.
- cudgy 4y ago
  And the start of a major inflationary move in the middle of an inflationary crisis. I’m not convinced that sending out such checks won’t largely result in the purchasing power of that money being instantly eroded by massive inflation.
  - tchaffee 4y ago
    > And the start of a major inflationary move in the middle of an inflationary crisis. Based on what evidence? The current inflation in the US was caused by both very high employment levels along with supply chain problems. Sending out unemployment checks went way down over the past few years. People need things like UBI far more when the economy is not booming. The opposite of inflation. In a recession what you want is for people to spend money. You want to get back to normal levels of inflation. > I’m not convinced At the end of the day you don't need to be convinced. What matters is if all the top economists in favor of UBI are actually right or not. As machines automate more and more of the boring work we need done, there is no rational reason that people shouldn't have more leisure time and have to work far fewer hours.
    - cudgy 4y ago
      Student loans provide some evidence whereby tuition rates increase as student loans flooded the college market. Another example is hyper-low interest rates (essentially increasing money supply), which are largely responsible for the inflation of housing which is a major portion of inflation for consumers. Therefore a better way to handle UBI (which I believe may be needed by the way) is to gradually phase it into the system to avoid shocks like giving everyone $10,000 all of a sudden. There would still be inflation, bit it would hopefully be less dramatic.

Vaslo 4y ago

If it was a good thing why not do it first week of office? Why did people languish in jail for months just for an inept president to buy votes for his party?

eurasiantiger 4y ago
Maybe they just now have realized how much money from illegal drugs flows to sanctioned countries and are moving towards full legalisation to stop it.
pwinnski 4y ago
It's really hard for me to read this and not think of a child, shouting, "BUT I WANTED THE ICE CREAM AN HOUR AGO, NOT NOW! WAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The irrationality of this sentiment, combined with your assertion that President Biden is "inept," suggests to me that your statement is entirely political, since it seems to run contrary to the facts as I observe them.
- cudgy 4y ago
  “ … since it seems to run contrary to the facts as I observe them.” Are there any other reasons that a statement could be political in your mind or are you the sole determinant for a politically driven statement?
Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
Because people have a short attention span and republicans have moved so far right that mundane things like affordable healthcare/college, providing aid to old or disabled people, providing nutritious and affordable food, ensuring that working people of all social strata can lead dignified lives, responding with empathy and evidence backed treatments to drug addiction, etc are responded to with unhinged screeds about socialism communism and fascism and groomers. So Biden needs to respond, rationally, to the propaganda that’s endemic among conservatives which results in cynically timed actions as a part of the effort to lead a nation tearing itself apart. Don’t like it? Stop voting for self interested obstructionists like McConnell, DeSantis, Sinema, manchin, mtg, etc. and don’t fan the fire with conservative dog whistles calling Biden inept when republicans have shown themselves to be shockingly tolerant of their members that routinely and flagrantly act against their stated principles while leaving the consequences of their incompetence for a democrat to clean up.

nurettin 4y ago

> Maybe I'm missing something I think you are. Your suggestion could only work well if there was a perpetual voting season. Otherwise parties will just abuse their leverage only once every four years just to get more votes.