Joe Bidden

The most concrete loss of agency is your refusal to vote.

 

But the people get to vote for our Senators and Congresspeople. That's representative democracy versus direct democracy.

 

This feels like a discussion about voting held by a bunch of people who've never voted before.

Y'all know there's other stuff on the ballot too right? School levies? Ever heard of those? Tax increases for libraries and social welfare programs? Local politicians, whom have a million times more impact on your day to day life and your tax dollars. Judges & Sheriffs?!? Y'all think the legal system is unfair what judges have you been voting for?

 

Exactly... Your democracy is undermined by low participation and your refusal to engage.

Systemic oppression in America has included making voting times suit people who could take time off work with the express interest of pulling the voter demographics away from the working class.

Noam Chomsky was absolutely correct when he said that the media was to democracy what a military is to a dictatorship, and this farcical, clownworld view that your right to vote is disenfranchising seems so alien to me in a country where voting is compulsory and we can see how broken your democracy can be at times due to low engagement, that I can only think it's one of those lies which is repeated ad nauseum in the media.

I'm genuinely alarmed by the sentiment and the lack of an actual reason why you would refuse to engage in the democratic process and use your voice. Make an actual argument. You aren't using all times of ebery day to do something as important as voting. Not voting, here, carries a fine of a few hundred dollars. You have to do it. It's important. The government wants to be well-informed and know what you actually think, even if it's an indecisive 'donkey vote'.

They aren't trying to buy your half hour for any nefarious reason. It isn't a waste of time. It may even be your most important half hour of your entire month.

Indirect democracies are justified and work better than direct ones.

 

Exactly, get out there and vote, and vote down ballot. Our railroad commissioner won by something like 6 votes. Imagine how easily that could have swung the other way. Senators, Congresspeople, you're right, they generally don't care about what's happening in our own backyards. It's not their job. The water quality, whether the roads have potholes, our public schools, how much funding the police or public hospitals have, your local government handles that. Your county officials and city council are there for a reason. The problems in your community generally don't change based on who is in the Oval Office. So vote by mail or vote in person wearing a mask, but the point is to vote so your voice makes a difference.

 

Ah, another day of reading the comments on a political forum on a mobile app. ☕️

 

Trump’s extravagant declarations about helping African Americans rest on one fact: For two years of his presidency, a record number of African Americans – more than 19 million—were employed. That fact is not the whole story. To properly gauge Trump’s record on jobs and African Americans, we can track the job gains and losses by African Americans from the month Trump took office to February of this year, before the pandemic hit home, and compare the results to what happened during comparable periods under other presidents.

Let’s consider what happened under Obama from January 2013 to February 2016 and under Clinton from January 1996 to February 2000. Then, we can compare what happened under Trump from January 2017 to February 2020. The data show that Trump runs a clear third, especially compared to Obama. To start, job gains by African Americans were 34 percent larger under Obama than Trump—1,748,000 compared to 1,304,000. Further, the number of unemployed African Americans fell three times as much under Obama as under Trump—by 895,000 compared to less than 278,000—and the unemployment rate for African Americans fell 5.2 percentage-points under Obama, compared to 1.7 points under Trump.

Clinton also beats Trump. African American employment jumped by 1,497,000, or 10.9 percent, under Clinton from January 1997 to February 2000, compared to the gains of 1,304,000, or 7.1 percent, during the comparable period for Trump. The decline in unemployed African Americans was fairly close during the two periods: 321,000 under Clinton versus, the 278,000 under Trump. But the African American jobless rate fell 2.7 percentage points under Clinton versus 1.7 points under Trump.

Only in an alternate universe could these results demonstrate that Trump has “done more for Black Americans, in fact, than any President in U.S. history.”

Source: Washington Monthly

If you repeat a lie over and over I guess you start to believe it yourself eventually. Bills that support gentrification and that further systemic racism may be "for black people" but they do not HELP black people. Please learn the difference.

Also, as far as the reparations bill:

On September 30th, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law historic legislation that paves the way for African Americans and descendants of slaves in the Golden State to receive reparations for slavery.

The bill, authored by California Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, establishes a nine-person task force that will study the impact of the slave trade on Black people.

It does not commit to any specific payment, but the task force will make recommendations to legislators about what kind of compensation should be provided, who should receive it, and what form it would take.

Source: Dallas Weekly

Trump has no involvement in this and often takes credit for things he had very little to do with. Those are democrats. I know you didn't know that and while I don't endorse a political party I am giving proper credit where it is due. There is no Trump Foundation set up on the south side of Chicago however, there is an Obama foundation there that does help African Americans in Chicago.

Oh, and let's talk about the first step act, that was a Bi-partisan supported bill by the way. It was signed in 2018. Yes, it’s true that Trump—the same man who recommended heavier enforcement of stop and frisk policing, and whose administration brought back the federal death penalty and fueled the expansion of private prisons—signed a much-heralded bill in 2018 to reform the federal criminal justice system, with broad bipartisan support. The First Step Act made changes that have reduced the federal prison population, and it was the first criminal justice reform bill to pass Congress in a generation.

But as Trump claims credit for freeing people from prison, there’s one very big problem that he’s not mentioning: His Justice Department is actively pushing to send some of these same people back behind bars, and to prevent others from reducing their sentences—which greatly limits who can benefit from the law that Trump has touted as one of his signature achievements.

Compared with past presidents, Trump has been shockingly slow to grant clemency to incarcerated people. So far, he has made decisions on only 204 requests for commutations or pardons—and has only approved 24 of them, according to another Washington Post investigation. For comparison, Barack Obama granted a record-setting 1,700 commutations during his tenure.

"I also have to state that, it's not okay to spread false information just because you dislike someone." -Jacob

This you?

 

Samesies. Democracy is a myth created to make average people argue with each other while all the rich ppl laugh togedder behind closed doors

 

Wikipedia is one of the most impressive encyclopedias on the planet and anytime someone alters things, it has to be approved with references/sources. Back in the day it was sketch because people weren't monitoring as well as they could but now it's actually better than books because of its ability to be constantly up-to-date. And it's easy to double check what's written because the sources are all at the bottom of the page. Js

 

To US registered voters: Oml. Please vote. Do not listen to anyone that has never voted in any US election. Review all of the voter materials sent to you and research the major issues affecting your locale as well as the stances of the candidates running for office. Decide on candidates, measures, and propositions that mirror your ideals or that you think would do something in office you would support.

Cast your ballot. Believe it or not, you, as a citizen and resident of a US state, can create a petition, and gather signatures, and use that support to work with elected officials representing your jurisdictions, to get legislation passed to appear on the ballot.

Less than half of all registered voters, voted in the last election. That is a terribly small representation of US citizens deciding who will be the person to hold the highest office. The clear issue in that election WAS the lack of voter participation ESPECIALLY from the working class. In the entire history of the electoral college representation of the states popular vote, only 5 times, has the decision on who was president been different from who would have won the popular vote without that representation anyway.

Should there ever have been a difference? That is certainly debatable. Is treating every state equally, regardless of population, or way of life, when it comes to the way votes are accounted for, the best solution? That is certainly debatable. There are arguments for, and against, both approaches that make a lot of sense. However, pushing this narrative to "don't vote because it doesn't really matter or count" and yet do nothing but spend time and go out of your way to complain about issues that plague your community is counterproductive. Especially when talking about a country you've never been a citizen of.

If a person truly wanted to protest the US system there has always been the option to cast a ballot with a "no vote" or "protest vote". You could even vote for Kanye, who is on the ballot, representing the American Independent party, or preferably, Jo Jorgensen, rather than throw away the vote completely. In certain situations, you could even write in a candidate of your choice that isn't currently listed. If you felt so strongly about changing things, you could rally the support of the people you are trying to convince that every candidate running is a certain level of evil, for someone you think is more suitable for the job, and vote for them.

If you really really felt so strongly, you could become a community leader or activist and work with the people that are sponsoring legislation that supports your community. You could put your money where your mouth is and donate, volunteer, peacefully protest, spread awareness, and educate people on issues that you feel hinder your communities development or increase disparities between various metrics and demographics. You could support people that you think would make a difference so you actually know the candidates better before they are in the position to hold an office which makes decisions that affect your lives for an unpredictable amount of time.

 

It's like all that hubbub about suffrage for blacks and women was a waste of time. Bunch of goons. You may as well spit in their faces if you refuse to represent yourself and your community's interests.

 

Trust me when I say that was not purely the parties that created that flip. The Bull Moose Party had a lot to do with that. Introducing a third party with a viable base behind it turned our core party 'values' on their heads.

I highly suggest everyone read up on the impact. It's a pretty wild ride.

 

Lol you guys know that both trump and Biden are puppets and powerless, right? Their masters run the world

 

"I also have to state that, it's not okay to spread false information just because you dislike someone." -Jacob aka honorary Proud boy

 

whos crying now? trump🤣