117th United States Congress: #CancelGate

[Byrthnoth]

Can we get an election audit on aisle Kentucky?

[Byrthnoth]

Manchin is the difference between literal trillions of dollars of D priorities and zero. It sucks that the skin-of-their-teeth D majority left Democrats able to govern but not govern well, but the alternative was more years of Republican leadership.

We will see how that plays out in 2023, I bet.

[Zealot]

Manchin is the difference between literal trillions of dollars of D priorities and zero. It sucks that the skin-of-their-teeth D majority left Democrats able to govern but not govern well, but the alternative was more years of Republican leadership.

We will see how that plays out in 2023, I bet.

Well, we'll see.

There's going to be a difference of a lot of dead Republican voters between 2020 and 2022.

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[Meresgi]

Well, we'll see.

There's going to be a difference of a lot of dead Republican voters between 2020 and 2022.

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Now they got a covid pill to pop while also saying they don't believe in medicine though!

[arus2001]

Manchin being worse than Shaq on the free throw line isn't really what we need right now, and it's him consistently choking on the big plays being what gets him reviled. I've said it before, but trying to justify he has to act like a Republican to get votes is exactly why (young) Democrats have fled the state. When your representatives don't actually represent you, there's no fucking point in pretending to support them because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy of disappointment.

As otherwise noted, it's not like his money origins a la the yacht make him easily fought against, either. The median income of a West Virginian is a little over 25k. You can't hope to run a campaign on that on top of other needs. Fundraising only goes so far when everyone else is broke as shit. There's also the perpetual spectre of GOP shit slingers like Morrisey or Blankenship that think they can just buy their way into office every cycle and get irksomely close to pulling it off, too. Probably a fair argument that Justice succeeded in this regard, too. There are also distinct culture differences the moment you get outside the radius of Charlestown, Morgantown, or even Wheeling, which unironically tend to fall into that category of voting against their own interests because the propaganda machine works (LeT's BrInG bAcK cOaL aNd StEeL) while the aforementioned disenfranchised youth just try to GTFO ASAP as they watch opioids, alcoholism, and angry racist boomers fuck everything up as infrastructure continues to decay and schools go to shit. And even if you just divide the roughly 1.65m voting-capable population in half (numbers may be old here, forgive me), one could say that's about 825k holding the rest of the country hostage relative to Getting Shit Done(tm) because they don't want compromise, but nonetheless need to be pandered to.

Suppose if we ever needed a textbook example of how our system doesn't work, the status of WV would be a good place to start.

[Kaslo]

I’m pretty sure young people are leaving WV for reasons other than Joe Manchin

[arus2001]

He's a guy in the position to help fulfill the needs of people in the state and he doesn't. This isn't just an overnight happening, either. The affected may not recognize his influence or lack thereof directly, but for anyone hoping for any sort of progressive democratic policy, they've been stuck with a DINO for a while now with his tenure as both a governor and senator. All those failures snowball into reasons to leave if you're fortunate enough to be able to do so.

Mind you, I'm critical because this stuff has affected my family, and by extension, me. We had to bury my sister's husband a couple months back because he went missing and was found OD'd in his car in a cemetery. Our suspicions of this being a murder because he didn't have the car keys on him aside, we knew he had problems he couldn't get help for because the state is fucked. Now my niece doesn't have a dad, my sister's a mess, and she can't find anything resembling a job good enough to take care of her kid alone so she's presently staying with my other sister. Can't forget the shit roads fucking her car over and adding yet more expense with a blown tire recently, too.

Otherwise, 2 of 3 significant major roadways in our area here have been shut down at major points because things have fallen apart that much with a timeline on an actual fix a mystery. The traffic of the drilling industry is mutilating the remaining roads by driving oversized vehicles that have no business being on them, with their promise of fixing said damages just being a big wink and nod to this day. So, yeah, I'm salty people here can't get the healthcare and help they need, find a worthwhile job, or just get anywhere without significant detours on already shitty rural backroads. I see greater visibility of WV local issues between the news and social media feeds than probably anyone else here. And it's not like there aren't people trying to do good and get needed change, but the money wall is real, the majority population is only getting older, and the boogeyman of change just lets it all fester and perpetuate. And when the leaders don't want change and bark from their yacht in a non-coastal state, you're fucked.

[Koyangi]

As a Senator your actual ability to help the state you represent is far less, as you're doing things on a Federal level at that point. It's your State Congress and Governor whom have the power to fix or not fix most of the things you mentioned.

[Yabby]

As a Senator your actual ability to help the state you represent is far less, as you're doing things on a Federal level at that point. It's your State Congress and Governor whom have the power to fix or not fix most of the things you mentioned.

Not true for someone that is in Manchin's position. At this point, he could ask for a nice amount of that money to be directed to his state for XYZ. Mcconnell does this every time he is about to come up for re-election for his state. To arus's point, people might not leave the state directly because of Manchin, but he is part of it. I know I didn't leave Oklahoma because it was super Republican, shit when i left i wasn't into politics at all. The state was just a shithole and I knew staying would not lead to a life i considered worth living, so the second I could i moved away.

[Kaslo]

He's a guy in the position to help fulfill the needs of people in the state and he doesn't.

Except maybe the people in his state don't want the "help" you think they need.

[Tyrath]

Except maybe the people in his state don't want the "help" you think they need.

Hmm

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...g-plan-popular

In deep red West Virginia, Biden’s $3.5tn spending proposal is immensely popular


Elizabeth Masters isn’t a natural Joe Biden supporter. A self-described conservative who lives in Parkersburg, in deeply Republican West Virginia, she said she registered to vote in the last election so she could cast a ballot for Donald Trump.

Masters says she doesn’t approve when people “just stand for a handout” – she doesn’t think the United States should be spending money on undocumented immigrants, for example – but says anything that will “help people that are trying to do for themselves, I’m all for it”.

To that end, Masters has found herself supportive of efforts by the Biden administration to pass a $3.5tn budget proposal that is full of ambitious plans to help poorer and working class Americans on a range of social issues from childcare to healthcare.

Though vehemently opposed by Republicans and West Virginia’s own Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, there is some evidence that the proposals contained in the spending plans – which some have likened to the 1930s New Deal – are more popular among grassroots Republicans than their political representatives. That may be especially true in West Virginia, which is a poor, largely white and working class state whose residents would stand to greatly benefit from the Biden effort.

That is why Masters says she supports the Child Tax Credit, the monthly payments from the IRS given to families with children making less than $200,000. The Build Back Better plan would make the credits permanent.

Masters and her husband recently took out a loan to repair the roof on their house, only to lose the home in a fire. They did not have insurance, so they are still paying on the loan. The Child Tax Credit payment she receives each month for her nine-year-old son covers that loan every month.

Biden’s budget bill includes his Build Back Better plan, which would cut taxes for most Americans, raise taxes on the rich, train more workers and lower costs for healthcare, childcare, education and housing.

When the nonpartisan nonprofit WorkMoney surveyed more than 50,000 of its 2 million members nationwide, it found 81% of respondents said they supported this plan. That includes 90% of liberals who took the survey, 81% of moderates and 66% of conservatives.

Conservative backing appears even more robust in West Virginia, home of Manchin, a moderate Democrat who is one of the critical holdouts on the budget bill and whose efforts could derail the entire plan – or see large chunks of it scrapped as he balks at the budget’s price tag.

But according to the survey, 80% of more than 800 people surveyed in his home state believe he should vote to pass the bill. That includes 77% of conservatives who responded to the survey.

Amy Shafer of Elkview, West Virginia, has also seen the benefit of the tax credit. She’s a single mother with three kids who works as a part-time cashier. She recently missed weeks of work after a cancer diagnosis. Shafer had surgery to remove the tumor but then, after she recovered, she and two of her children got Covid-19 and had to be quarantined for 10 days.

Shafer did not receive a paycheck during this time.

The Child Tax Credit “helped me keep my house,” she said. “It helped pay my electric, it paid my water and it paid my sewer.”

The CTC also paid for her children’s back-to-school clothes when the family’s state-issued clothing vouchers didn’t arrive in time.

Shafer has voted for both Manchin and Trump in the past, though she isn’t affiliated with either party at the moment. She is frustrated by elected officials in Washington who, she says, are dragging their feet on programs that would help working class people like her.

“I would want any of them to take one day in my shoes,” she said. “Do what I do and see if it’s anything like their lifestyle.”

John Findlay, executive director of the West Virginia Republican party, denied that Biden’s efforts are popular in his home state. “If it was close to reality, the bill already would have passed,” he said.

Findlay says his office has fielded lots of calls and emails about the bill and everyone seems to share the same opinion. “No one’s calling in favor of it. Literally, of the emails and phone calls we get, every one we get is opposed to it,” he said.

But Joseph A Scalise of Terra Alta, West Virginia, says politicians are out of touch.

“We’re dealing with people who are wealthy. What do they understand about people like ourselves who are trying to keep their heads above water?” said Scalise, who says he is a conservative Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. “It’s time for them to stop having these little wars among each other and start thinking about the American people again.”

Scalise, 67, once worked as a welder in the coal mines, a good-paying job. Now he is a health aid for children with disabilities, making $13 an hour. He says he supports the Build Back Better plan because its proposed changes to healthcare will help the families he serves and improvements to the nation’s infrastructure will get more people back to work.

[Meresgi]

Except maybe the people in his state don't want the "help" you think they need.

They do, a huge majority of people in deep red places want this type of shit. One major issue is Dems fucking suck ass at branding anything. Like even this bill being called BBB for build back better or something? They didn't need to strive for some catchy name or acronym and they suck at telling people exactly what is going on, especially without sounding way too pompous at times.

Same thing with universal healthcare, it's all about how the question is framed to people and how it's framed on the ballot. Fox news and the GoP do very very well at marketing anything the dems want as going against a person's freedom of choice or stepping all over "muh rights" and the counter point is usually "Well that's silly and you're being dumb thinking that". I mean...they are, it's fucking stupid to think that but we need to brand it way better and we need our own propaganda arm. CNN and MSNBC are too "We gotta not take sides guyyyyyyyyys"

[Kaslo]

They do, a huge majority of people in deep red places want this type of shit. One major issue is Dems fucking suck ass at branding anything. Like even this bill being called BBB for build back better or something? They didn't need to strive for some catchy name or acronym and they suck at telling people exactly what is going on, especially without sounding way too pompous at times.

Same thing with universal healthcare, it's all about how the question is framed to people and how it's framed on the ballot. Fox news and the GoP do very very well at marketing anything the dems want as going against a person's freedom of choice or stepping all over "muh rights" and the counter point is usually "Well that's silly and you're being dumb thinking that". I mean...they are, it's fucking stupid to think that but we need to brand it way better and we need our own propaganda arm. CNN and MSNBC are too "We gotta not take sides guyyyyyyyyys"

But they are going to regulate my cow farts man.

[Meresgi]

But they are going to regulate my cow farts man.

My delicious cow farts?! What the fuck I didn't see that in the bill....time to get my 50cal!

[synistar]

The human infrastructure bill is called The American Families Plan. But obviously no one knows that unless they read deeper into just BBB or "Human Infrastructure"

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1445830292430893056

[Mertron]

ethics violation! i had to take a stupid compliance seminar on this! ethics violation!

[Tyrath]

Better than building prisons I guess?

[synistar]

Or a wall.

[Vaspinne]

Like, modern education is just pretty much a prison anyway man