EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections
earthjustice.org
earthjustice.org
It doesn't speak well of their feelings about their own children, but, well, there isn't a lot speaking that well of them in general.
Healthcare providers and insurance companies are corporations too: you can get rich by treating more people.
A firm's sole responsibility is to increase profit and a maximize returns for shareholders. [0]
It's a fixed percentage. That means the more expensive treatment gets, the higher they can raise rates, and the more revenue they get from that fixed percentage.
So they go buy the providers and clinics and pharmacies so they can raise the prices and juice that percentage.
In my opinion this added nothing to the conversation when in theory the op asked for a real answer.
Whenever they propose something, just ask yourself which lobbyist stands something to gain. That will be a sufficient explanation.
a confused, sickened and desperate population is easier to control and manipulate. end of story.
Do you think you have a better one?
I’ve looked into this a lot and there isn’t any strong argument I’ve seen that this is good for humanity, and let’s not pretend every political action is a sincere attempt to improve the world for all equally.
If you look into all the abuse heaped upon the man who discovered leaded gasoline was bad it helps give context on just how far some people will go for their own profits.
And no I do not condone smoking. It was to point out system design flaws in the business world.
In some ways, you're kind of arguing the same thing but in reverse by claiming that the comment you're responding to isn't being made in good faith. You're certainly entitled to hold that opinion, but only because of the exact same logic that entitles the parent commenter to hold the opinion that they express in the first place (and for what it's worth, I don't think it's actually being made in bad faith; not everyone will agree about where to draw the line, but at least to me it seems like we're long past the point of giving the benefit of the doubt on policies like the one described in TFA).
If you have any other suggestion than the reason they do this is something related to money, please be my guest and volunteer. Because otherwise it is the most baffling and self destructive policy making that has ever been documented in the history of humankind.
Here is the statement from the organization pushing for this.
It really wasn't hard to find either.
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
> retaining its maximum contaminant levels for PFOA and PFOS but pulling back on its use of a hazard index and regulatory determinations for additional PFAS
Key word being "retaining," indicating the maximum contaminant levels were already in place prior to the change mentioned here. Putting aside allegations of "political bias," can you point to a source which clearly indicates the PFA limits were put in place by the current administration? Would like to learn if I'm wrong.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration...
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019- 02/documents/pfas_action_plan_021319_508compliant_1.pdf
Trump's first term. February of 2019. Andrew Wheeler's EPA.
You'll also notice that the document lays out planned action dates bleeding generously into Biden's term, and for which Biden later took credit in the document you shared. This is shameful, and sadly normal presidential behavior, taking credit for their predecessor's wins.
If you'd truly like to learn if you're wrong, it's recommended to seek information that disproves your hypothesis rather than proves it. Both this and the previous article I shared were very easy to find and within the first 2 or 3 results.
Firstly, this is a completely unnecessary comment. My searches were specifically regarding finding the enactment of specific PFA limits. I will acknowledge to not spending that much time looking at it, as you claimed to already have a source and I was curious to see what it was.
But to the point, this document does not outline or set limits on PFAS in drinking water. It's an action plan for measuring and creating limits, but does not itself enforce anything. In fact, every subsequent search I've done has shown that the 2024 Final Rule was the first point at which any limits were put into action.
Quoting directly, the document states that one of the steps being taken is:
> Initiating steps to evaluate the need for a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS);
In other words, it outlines a plan for the research that is used to 1) determine if MCL should be set, and 2) what, if any, it should be set to. Notably, it does it not itself set that limit or come to a conclusion about what it should be.
Further, this research appears to be a continuation of research released in 2016 [1], which was the first time that a guideline (but not a mandate) was set. This would, of course, be prior to Trump's first administration. This is suggested in the document itself, where it outlines that this document is part of a series of actions beginning in 2015/2016, as well as callouts to specific research in the 2016 article linked below.
So the facts seem to show that: 1) The first guideline was set in 2016. It was not a law at this time. 2) Research continued to identify next steps for setting a standard, which were codified and shared in the 2019 article you linked 3) The 2024 Final Rule put a MCL into action for PFAS.
Take from that chain of events what you will, but the initial accusations of "political bias" seem unfounded here.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-05/documents/pf...
Here, you've read and revised the approach to the issue. This last comment does not warrant any allegation of bias, and I make none about it.
The bigger picture is that both parties are interested in clean drinking water. I guess that's obvious to me, and I'm shocked that's not obvious to everyone. Look how many people on this thread actually believe that the Trump administration is literally trying to poison them. That's not crazy to you? It is to me.
> Trump's EPA created these PFAS rules
Your response was what I perceived to be a snarky comment that if only I had bothered to look, I'd have found the evidence, followed by a link that didn't say what was suggested.
> Look how many people on this thread actually believe that the Trump administration is literally trying to poison them. That's not crazy to you?
The claims made all over the place are insane to me. Yes, I doubt the Trump administration is actually trying to kill me. The world is not as polarizing and extreme as people on the internet want to make it sound like it is. Most people are far more docile in the real world, but the collective hive of the internet exacerbates tension. I have no clue what side of the political aisle you're on, but my guess is we probably agree about more things than we disagree about, if we could detach bullshit labels from it all.
But FWIW, the allegation that I wasn't bothering to learn or see if I'm wrong just raised tension further. I was genuinely trying to determine if the claim was true, the evidence I had found suggested it wasn't, and it seems like it in fact wasn't quite true, but perhaps that wasn't the point you were trying to make anyway.
All fine. My hope is that we can all turn down the tension and hostility a level or two. Might be the only hope we have.
You can see, per Congress's orders, Trump's EPA would have authored the rules before Biden's term. They were ordered by the PFAS Action Act of 2019.
So while the rules weren't officially enforced during Trump's term, we can deduce that they were drafted and in motion under Andrew Wheeler's EPA, the same one Biden left in office into 2021!
That is to say, Trump's EPA guy wrote them and saw them into enforcement.
That all really is available from the citation I gave. The date is there. You can Google Wheeler's term. You can see when the rules went into effect. You for sure know rules take time to write.
You really didn't think to ask these questions? Honestly, I don't believe you.
You weren't trying to find that you were wrong like I recommended. You were trying to find that the citation by itself could be dead ended to disprove my point if you simply ceased your search.
Think about it for a few minutes and really be honest with yourself. I'm right, not just about you. That's just normal human behavior.
That's okay, but I don't think it's snarky to assume you're also human.
I think the reasonable mind struggles to deal with the current obvious stupidity even within a populist frame, and hunts for a hidden explanation. It’s a lot scarier to believe that the world’s biggest economy and military and nuclear arsenal are somehow in the hands of not just authoritarians, but crooks and morons.
But it’s true. Britain did it too, it happens.
So why do they do it? To play out some idiotic meme-driven culture war, reduced through these people’s small minds to caricature. They don’t think about second order effects, they lack the sophistication for that.
It’s terrifying.
People will dismiss it as "talking points" or "too ridiculous".
And then they will continue to do it, fully aware that people will just not believe what is happening.
Ask a liberal about conservatives or a conservative about liberals and they have abso-fucking-lutely no idea what the ideals of the other side are. None whatsoever. Thanks silo'd media.
As a non-american it's becoming more and more difficult to tell the two sides apart with all the shit flinging going on.
An examination of the individuals in the EPA pushing this change might reveal something. Perhaps it's ideological? I don't know, I'm at a complete loss.
They get to move to whatever enclave they want and buy expensive RO filters.
Or, they don't believe in science broadly and believe they won't be impacted. If scientists are so smart, why aren't they rich like me and exploiting everyone and everything to the maximum potential profit??
Think of the cost savings!
the Alberta/British Columbia border is defined by which direction water drains off the mountains
It also doesn't actually refute the actual point they were making.
You calculate the figures such that the higher usage tiers subsidize the costs of the basic needs users.
Or would that be socialism?
And that seems to be dismantling the US as a military and technological superpower - a self-inflicted Morgenthau plan, if you will. We are left to speculate why a US government would want to dismantle the US, and who would benefit.
Then it can be seen as no longer a disparate collection of seemingly random political, social, and economic moves, but rather as a directed, intentional movement.
And why would they want to do that?
Bonus challenge: Without relying on antisemetic tropes
Some people are genuine psychopaths who derive satisfaction from destroying things or by hurting people who don't want them to destroy things.
Others are driven to destroy because they believe that there's some sort of higher purpose to this destruction, either religious or political in nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...
Strangling economic growth also kills, as indirectly as PFAS in drinking water.
Neither "regulate everything" nor "allow everything" is a good idea.
(no opinion about this specific one, I had no motive nor opportunity to build informed opinion on this specific one)
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/us-seek...
So, the legal reasoning might be to cut their losses litigating to defend rulings they think they'll lose due to the administrative error. I also suspect that being seen to roll back some regulations likely gives Lee Zeldin (the EPA admin) some political room to maneuver. He's historically be associated with anti-PFAS efforts (in Congress he represented a district with contamination problems and he voted for anti-PFAS legislation), but he's also part of an administration with a strong anti-regulation agenda, so he needs to walk a fine line.
But they didn't start proper administrative procedures to reestablish the regulations, proving that these regulations are being removed on principle, whatever that is, while the "administrative error" is just an excuse.
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
Trump's EPA pulls back the rules they themselves introduced: "This is proof Donald Trump is trying to weaken this country"
My town completed it's pfas filtering system and water bill costs increased about 25% to cover it. I don't know one person in this town though who doesn't drink filtered water.
That being said, I do still support the filtering.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2022/05/ewg-f...
> Those are findings from a recent survey of 2,800 visitors to EWG’s landmark Tap Water Database, updated in late 2021 [...] Although EWG ran the survey for only a few days, responses came from 2,800 people in about 1,580 unique ZIP codes in all 50 states and D.C., and even some from Canada and Mexico.
Here's an article, also from 2021, based on an academic study which suggests "Nearly 60 million Americans don't drink their tap water", which (US population being 331.9M in 2021) would still leave over 80% who do.
[0] https://theconversation.com/nearly-60-million-americans-dont...
With added microplastics!
They don't want to put the cost on the consumer, but there is no other choice. If our government was smart (it's not) they would make these rules and fund the changes.
For the first half he seems to constantly mix up C8 and Teflon. After a long section explaining that C8 is some carrier molecule used to make Teflon - he then explain C8 is used in factories and kills cows. But it's not clear C8 is anywhere other than the factory and the town around it
They then extrapolate from two chemical (C8 and C6) to just anything that remotely similar (PFAS)
Later they walk it back and say it's only a few chemicals. Actually your Teflon pan is safe. But then say thing "Blah blah was used to make waterproof..." is it in the final product? or is it part of the chemical procedure to make the product?
Is the problem the final consumer goods? Or is the problem the chemical manufacturing? (and subsequent dumping in the environment) Is this residue from after making the Teflon-like material?
The last parts I couldn't follow at all b/c it was a acronym soup of a ton of chemicals that aren't really explained. At this point I'd lost all faith in the presenters impartiality. Seems like he's just trying to stoke outrage for engagement
(the central point may still be right!)
C8 is known as PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid). Per for its chained molecule shape (no carbon side chains), 'fluoro' for the F part, 'octanoic' for the 8 carbon atoms, and 'acid' for its chemical property. Unlike Teflon:
- C8 has a really small molecular mass, making it easier to flow around your body participating in all kinds of biological operations;
- It is an acid (having the carboxylic '-COOH' group) and can pretend to be all kinds of acids and actively take part in reactions. Once they start to get inside, the consequences can be unpredictable and devastating.
- All other atoms on C8 except for the last -COOH group are covered by fluoride atoms. This means that C8 is not biodegradable (no enzyme can break apart the C-F covalent bond since it's bond energy is really too high), and when it gets into the environment, it stays that way.
It's clear PFAS contains chemicals that are likely dangerous (like C8) and chemicals that are likely not - like Teflon. So, unless I'm misunderstanding, as an umbrella term for dangerous chemicals it's useless from the get go.
I understand the potential danger of C8 and similar acids.. it's explained in detail. But the part that's not explained is why is it in final consumer products. It seems like a chemical that only forms a step in the processes of making Teflon (and I'm guessing other similar products). Is the problem they were just dumping it into the soil at the plant? How is it getting to polar bears? (they keep talking about polar bears)
1. Any substance that has most atoms covered by Fluoride are 'PFAS'. 2. C8 is strictly speaking PFOA (by-definition). 3. C6, and all other acids that has similar chemical properties to C8, can all be generically classified as PFOA-like materials. But for ease of communication people also call them PFOAs or just short for PFOA.
4. PFOAs are crucial for manufacturing Teflon. 5. The problem is manufacturers just dump waste water from PFAS production plants (containing PFOA) without post-processing into natural water bodies and let these toxic substances participate in the food chain and eventually land in our own bodies.
How is the PFOA ending up in food? Is it from contaminated groundwater near the plant? Isn't the solution to not consumer agricultural products from that limited area?
And.. how is it ending up in polar bears?
The video just seems sensationalist. Somme chemical use in a step to make teflon is pretty toxic.. big surprise. But then it's ending up everywhere... somehow? And it's never really explained. But lots of hangwringing
Give it couple of decades of these cycles and you get trace amounts of those chemicals everywhere. Even where human may haven’t been.
Same as CO2 (and other gasses) affect not only immediate area of the factories and cities, but globally.
> Give it couple of decades of these cycles and you get trace amounts of those chemicals everywhere. Even where human may haven’t been
I skeptical this is factory run-off that goes down the rivers, dilutes in the vast gigantic ocean, and then ends up in a polar bear. Maybe that's what's happening.. but they're not dumping gigatons of this stuff and the ocean is infinitely large in volume. You'd have vastly different orders of magnitude for anyone near the river vs at the north pole..
So things aren't adding up. I'm not saying these chemicals aren't a problem. I'm just saying the discussion is disingenuous and just doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny.
Video clearly states - factories did not care about cleaning it as it was uneconomical. I assume with existing “chemical whack-a-mole” current plant will not care as long as substance is not obviously banned. Secondly, video also states that even if those products are collected - they leach from landfills.
Personally I could bet that trace amounts of chemicals from “manufacturing process” still end up in final product anyways.
> Or only the non-dangerous long chains are in products?
IMHO, we should drop “non-dangerous” as a myth from teflon commercials of the 70s. As also from the video - due to heat you can consume harmful chemicals, even with acute consequences.
PFAS, from my understanding is a group of thousands of chemicals, most of them with no research on harmfulness. Though we know that some of them are directly linked to increasing some cancers or some other illnesses.
> they're not dumping gigatons of this stuff and the ocean is infinitely large in volume.
As per videos - we are talking about ridiculously miniscule amounts. Amounts in terms of couple parts per trillion of PFAS are considered harmful.
There were examples - PFAS is everywhere. Food packaging, hygiene products, tooth floss, fire extinguishers, clothes, kitchen appliances, etc. It’s manufactured all over the globe in multiple factories for seemingly everything.
It gets into the water cycle and trace amounts of PFAS is now found in polar circles and remote mountain tops from rain and snow.
We are exposed to it through water and through the things we use that contains it.
If you look for it in Mariana trench - maybe you won’t find it, but everywhere we do find it and that’s just a fact.
My personal biggest takes are:
- It’s not only c6/c8 that are harmful, there’s GenX and others thar also are and a plethora that haven’t even been tested, and they all are under PFAS umbrella;
- Most of those chemicals accumulate and don’t deteriorate. You get part per quadrillion there, part per trillion there, maybe permille next to a factory or a landfill. Give it 70 years and all animals and humans have >1 ppb of most harmful known PFAS in their blood. When we know that at 30ppb you get double chance of getting kidney cancer (and that’s just one cancer);
- The nature of indestructability is the main problem of cleaning it up. It doesn’t matter if something is “only used in manufacturing process”. It’s already somewhere, in the product, on the packaging, in the water that cleans the factory, in the landfill that collects it;
> It’s already somewhere, in the product, on the packaging, in the water that cleans the factory, in the landfill that collects it
If the chemical is used during manufacturing.. why would it do anywhere outside the factory? Why would it not be infinitely reused? It's just used as part of the way they deposit the harmless teflon
> IMHO, we should drop “non-dangerous” as a myth from teflon commercials of the 70s. As also from the video - due to heat you can consume harmful chemicals, even with acute consequences.
It doesn't say that in the video. They clearly say it's not harmful
> PFAS, from my understanding is a group of thousands of chemicals, most of them with no research on harmfulness
> PFAS is everywhere. Food packaging, hygiene products, tooth floss, fire extinguishers, clothes, kitchen appliances, etc. It’s manufactured all over the globe in multiple factories for seemingly everything.
I think you didn't watch the video. Or maybe you're just hearing what you want to hear. They explain it's from a small handful of factories. It's not explained why it's in floss (if that's even true?). If it's some byproduct, then maybe the solution is not to stop using PFAS, but understanding how to eliminate the contamination from manufacturing byproducts.
They make a clear distinction between substances like teflon and stuff like C8.
> PFAS, from my understanding is a group of thousands of chemicals, most of them with no research on harmfulness
It's clear from the video some are found to be harmful while others are not. Therefore it's absurd to conclude anything about this category. The category doesn't tell you anything about safety. I'm sure an onion has thousands of chemicals "with no research on harmfulness".
The point is the starting point of this conversation is already disingenuous and poorly communicated
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/california-lawmakers-propos...
The US of A are not "the World".
There are countless places around the World that make California look like a conservatism heaven.
You'll be glad to hear it already is!
Now please stick to your containment zone, and NEVER leave. We have enough of your ilk that have fled to neighboring states already.
We should embrace diversity and mutual respect - not simply assume that other people doing things differently are wrong and need to be fixed/corrected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Regarding vaccines, if you live in a red state you probably won't be able to get one unless your a senior citizen, travel to another state, or possibly with a doctor's prescription.
> The alliance says PFAS is a category that includes some chemicals—such as fluoropolymers used to coat nonstick cookware—that have been deemed safe for uses in food preparation by the Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority.
> “They are non-toxic and inert, they do not bioaccumulate, and importantly, they are not water soluble,” the alliance stated.
Wow, what a lie-by-outrageous-omission. I would believe that the fluoropolymers in nonstick cookware are, in their intact state, inert and rather harmless (if quite persistent). I would even believe that most of the definitely-not-safe stuff that’s used in manufacturing them don’t end up in the pan.
But these things are in cookware, where they are regularly heated to high temperatures, and a lot of fluoropolymers start to degrade at temperatures that are well within the reach of the average stove. Have any of these people ever contemplated the state of an omelette pan at a restaurant? Or basically any Teflon pan that has gotten any sort of regular use without extreme care taken not to overheat it? Heck, overheated PTFE is so non-inert that it rather imfamously kills birds.
I will he delighted to see Teflon pans phased out at California restaurants. You can buy perfectly fine PFAS-free “ceramic”-coated pans these days at reasonable prices. (You can also buy non-PFAS-free “ceramic” pans these days — read labels carefullly, consider looking up the listed patents, and keep in mind that if it doesn’t see its PFAS-free then it probably isn’t. PFOS/PFOA-free does not mean free if other PFAS.)
(And if you’re a good cook, you definitely don’t need nonstick for an omlette.)
3M lied about the effects of PFAS and firefighting foam polluted their drinking supply. But the terms of the agreement forces the government to defend 3M.
> "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more"
Does any of that list look like the goals of an Environmental Protection Agency?
[0] https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-launches-biggest-deregu...
https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/en/topics/drinki...
https://www.blog.foma.net/en/brass-and-drinking-water-the-re...
"Additionally, to protect vulnerable population groups, especially pregnant persons, babies and young children, the last remnants of lead pipes that were installed more than 50 years ago are to be removed from house connection pipes or domestic distribution systems by 2026 unless already done"
So in the mean time, because you refuse to have an in home filtration system, enjoy the free lead additives until your government gets around to your pipes. Or, use an in-home system and enjoy unleaded water now. If you can't understand that, then you are just being willfully ignorant yourself
I say this knowing that many developed nations still struggle with this in specific circumstances, but it shouldn't be an issue nation wide.
Absolutely no one who voted for this mess went in blind.
They would rather feel the fallout of Republican policies as long as it doesn’t help or actively hurts people not like them. In my former home state GA, the Republican governor spent years and tens of millions of dollars trying to get the Hyundai plant to GA that would have created 8500 jobs directly and no telling how many indirect jobs.
ICE invaded the plant and the opportunity is now lost potentially. The governor still can’t bring himself to criticize the President and the Republicans in GA are cheering the raid. The engineers from Korea were training Americans.
If you abstract away any other problems and boil it down to environment, health and work protections on the one hand, and restriction of unlimited immigration from countries with very different sets of values no matter the sociological developments that will likely follow you can only choose one.
I just tried to summarize what we hear and see from voters in analyses as fairly as I could, not present my own opinion. If that did not work out, let me know.
But in this case you choose the one problem that appears bigger or makes you more angry probably.
Do you think we're stupid here?
Democrats correctly understand that immigrants are out-group benefactors. But they have blind spots too. We all do.
This works just like holocaust denial, and there's a reason that's criminalized in Germany and a lot of other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
Not giving enough of a shit to learn about… in some cases, seemingly anything, doesn’t mean you get to later claim “oh I didn’t want this, how could I have known?”
I’ve given a lot of leeway on that stuff over my life, and after this last election, that’s over. Anyone who doesn’t get it at this point has raised stupidity to such an art form that they’ve achieved immorality. That’s aside from the ones who just outright want bad things to happen, which is a lot of people.
I honestly had never heard of him before he was shot and looked up things about him thinking from all of the things said about him by her and other conservatives was that he was a traditional pre 2016 Republican who I might disagree with around the edges. But I could have a beer with him.
I then looked up some of the things he said, showed her with links to videos, verified sources etc and she refused to even read the links because they would have forced her to confront her cognitive dissonance.
For the record, she isn’t one of the fire breathing conservatives and 99% of her posts are quoting scriptures and family oriented.
https://bigthink.com/articles/how-tribalism-overrules-reason...
But I saw it in real time with her. Everything I knew about her as a person was at odds with her support of the current MAGA movement. I thought she would be bemoaning that Republicans didn’t choose another of the candidates last year like Pence who was a traditional religious conservative Christian and she would at least admit that she held her nose and voted for Trump because she thought Kamala was worse. I could have respected that if not agreed with it.
I do have a good friend who is slightly on the other side of the aisle than I am. But he doesn’t demonize anyone. He is the good ol’ boy that I could have a beer with.
Try a fun experiment: ask your guy friend about ARPA-E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPA-E They usually love that government program after learning about it. Then ask him about government investment into education, and watch his tune change. Education is one of the highest ROI govt programs, just below like roads and plumbing. Way higher than ARPA-E. But no, they only see poor black people using it.
Hope I'm wrong about your male friend specifically, but overall there's a reason Trump is the president. Your female friend's perspective is usually how it goes in my experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0
My stepson was 14 when we moved there but had been living in the burbs all of his life. The outer burbs where we stayed saw a lot of development and had become one of the most affluent parts of Atlanta and was still conservative. But not MAGA conservative. There were only around a dozen other black kids in his entire high school. He is 23 now. He’s dated exclusively White girls - that’s all who has been available - and we have met plenty of parents. There has never been a problem with parents. He’s actually engaged to a white girl now. I haven’t met her. But my wife has a couple of times when she flew back in town and they talk.
We have since moved - he is still lives around the same area. Not because of any discomfort. We downsized in 2022 after he graduated in 2020, I started working remotely and we wanted a change of scenery from GA and moved to a state tax free state with better weather.
But I'm not interested in having a "she wasn't pure enough for my brand of politics" debate, I was only pointing out that almost half of those who voted did in fact vote for her – not Trump.
Instead all signs point to her loss being something as mundane as the economy:
> Further, nonvoting Democrats were more than twice as likely as voting Democrats to report feeling the economy is worse now than a year ago (46 percent vs. 22 percent) or that their incomes had recently decreased. And, perhaps not surprisingly given their economic precarity, Democratic nonvoters were substantially more likely than voters to support increased state welfare spending (61 percent vs. 52 percent). These class characteristics show nonvoting Democrats’ economic attitudes in a clearer light.
Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democratic-nonvot...
¹ Have young voters really abandoned the Democrats? https://sites.tufts.edu/cooperativeelectionstudy/2025/04/17/...
Edit: I think we both dislike Trump and would have preferred anybody would have won over him, so all of this speculation on what she could have done differently is probably just navel gazing now. If going on podcasts could have won her the election then I'm all for it.
Dan Carlin says it best. Political parties are built to win, and Democrats sometimes forget that.
I think it depends. I suspect that political messaging has become so tailored that the Mercola/Natural News crowd that voted primarily because of RFK’s anti-vaxxing platform could have been getting so heavily hammered with the “this is the ’chemicals are bad’ administration” messaging that the anti-regulatory stuff seemed pretty quiet in comparison. And I’m pretty sure they also had things they disagreed with Harris about constantly rammed down their throats. I also think that democrat voters had negative things about Trump shoved down their throat, and that messaging difference is probably the main reason many on the right wing are absolutely mystified that people can hate Trump so much, even in spite of the ‘own the libs’ culture war garbage.
I have a list of news sources I hit weekly from Dissent and Jacobin to mainstream TV news and newspapers, to Hot Air and Town Hall. Most are pretty politically homogenous, but discuss all sorts of topics. Then I see how laser-focused a relative’s Facebook feed is on topics that are important to her… not just the political platform on a whole, but those specific things. It’s forgivable that she’d think her primary concerns were representative of most people’s primary concerns, and why she’s thinks people that are heavily focused on other topics are kind of weird.
Time for mainstream dems to challenge their assumptions.
> cut some dead weight
This "dead weight" is the rights of minorities to participate in public life plain and simple. This is exactly why leftists are so skeptical or even hostile to "centrists." Once you're calculating whose rights you can drop for political convenience you share a lot more ideologically with the far right than with historic liberalism.
Reality is you sometimes have to drop some dead weight for 2% of people to protect and further the lives of the other 98%.
Turns out it would have been better to find alternative solutions for those 2% back when they were only 0.2%, but instead Dems made them the center of attention and is now staking the future of our country on continued pacification of an increasingly violent 'underserved' social blight.
Drop the T. Protect children. Enforce laws in our urban murder cities... Or continue to lose the culture war. If you turn to violence during this process it will be worse for many more people than the 2% being staked for protection currently.
Protect children from what? Our what cities? What do you believe is centrist about these stances? These are straight up verbatim right wing talking points. Stand up for your beliefs and join your actual allies instead of pretending to be mine.
You should know from history that real human beings won’t cower before this sort of unhinged saber-rattling.
So if that’s the take of your political cohort, you might as well just skip the niceties prepare for the worst. Things will get really, really bad for everyone. Perhaps your kids will get to live in a pleasant country again. Maybe the blood-rendered lesson from our grandparents that didn’t seem to stick to our generation will be able to stick to theirs.
"continued pacification of an increasingly violent 'underserved' social blight"
There is one demographic that is implicated in the vast majority of shootings, comprising far more than the 2% you’re hatefully denigrating.
So, I think OP message was for the folks who didn't vote. Especially given the people against going backwards on environmental protection is a large majority of the population.
If everyone voted, we wouldn't be dealing with this. Excluding future success of social media propaganda campaigns.
We all need to fucking vote. Otherwise you get folks like Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Laura Loomer puppetting an orange shell.
You're discouraging voting with failures of logic, Mr 4 Month Raw Anon. "BuT wHaT iF tHeY OnLy vOtE iN bLuE sTaTeS?!" Seriously? ffs, a child could see through you.
To everyone else -- remember this. Vote in numbers that can't be eclipsed by nihilist propaganda asshats like this tool.
Let's make the margins huge in blue and purple states, miniscule to none in red states. The US can show the world a massive rejection of Trumpism if we all vote.
If you know anything about American history, despite what Michelle Obama says “this is exactly who this country is”
Damn Skippy, people in Alabama and Mississippi are going to be voting more blue in 2026 and 2028.
If there is “60% consensus” and those people are in a state that’s already Blue, it doesn’t make a difference. We haven’t even brought up the fact that every state has 2 Senators meaning that the most populous states are represented by the same number of people as the least populous. The Senate decides the Supreme Court judges and the Cabinet.
The votes of the more left leaning part of the electorate are disadvantaged and diffused because of it. California and New York are represented by the same two Senators as North and South Dakota.
There is a whole archetype of person that would rather verbally jerk off to thoughts of defeatism and disgust and criticizing everyone else than do anything useful themselves.
Why people argue against that is beyond me
The left should use the same tactics: Focus on state and local elections then use those positions to fix elections so that the national majority of voters decide who runs the federal government (instead of the current 25-30% of voters).
Doing this is completely legal now that the Supreme Court has gutted the rule of law.
For starters, all states should aggressively gerrymand. That’ll basically guarantee the house goes democrat in 2026:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/democrats-can-win-the-redistric...
If the democrats fail to do this, it’s not mere incompetence. It’s probably because their financial backers actually support the changes being made by Trump.
You can’t go in with legal gloves and no hitting below the belt et c. while your opponent is bare-knuckle and going for nut shots and headlocks. You’ll just get your ass kicked, every time, no matter how morally pure you feel about it.
Meanwhile, fixing gerrymandering almost certainly means getting Republican votes to do so. The only way to do that, in this environment, is going to be to make them believe their odds are better without gerrymandering, than with it. That means using it against them, until it’s made illegal.
Granted, it's not ideal, but coming in the back door may be necessary.
Sorry, didn’t quite follow that! You can vote for anyone regardless of who you Registered for? Or, was that suppose to give a misleading signal to Republicans that they have way too many voters? :-)
One problem with creating real change with this approach is that the party elites get to decide who are on their ballots.
A while back, Colbert (?) tried to run as a republican and documented all the roadblocks he hit.
To get an idea of how it went, imagine a popular candidate going to a southern plantation to kiss the rings of the great-grandchildren of slave owners.
After deciding there is no personal upside to them, they decide to keep the candidate off the ballot and ask a servant to freshen their mint julep.
Also, running as a republican gets past the automatic "reject liberal/democrat" reflex
The first thing you need to come to terms with is that losing in 2020 would've been better for the long-term. Once you've gained that freedom, realizing that simply winning an election can be the worse option, you can start thinking about what would instead be better.
This has been clear for very long. Hence why they're still not doing it, and have for the last 9 years been and still[1] continue to push for Clinton-like candidates rather than whatever candidate has the biggest chance of winning elections. It isn't incompetence, and it hasn't been for ages. They're nearly just as captured. It's true that they're slightly less captured than R overall, but not to an extent that is actually meaningful.
Stating it as an "if" is copium. They have failed to, are failing to, and will continue to fail to do this, and it's intentional. What you're saying is so blindingly obvious that there is no other explanation - no Hanlon's razor for this one, the incompetence angle is not realistic.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/17/politics/2028-presidentia...
Or if you want more of this also go vote.
That side is consistently good at pushing uneducated voters to care about nothingburger issues like transgender bathrooms and mass immigration.
the reality is that the average american is an uninformed moron made complacent through excess and enteratinment but thats not something that can be easily fixed.
Edit: Here's a start: Be more critical of the news. Content a bit; the scope of topics that are discussed more importantly.
The problem with undermining trust in the news media is that people will just replace that with blind trust with something else, and we have no way of really knowing if that something else will be worse. This is what happened with conservatives and led to the rise of Infowars.
Part of problem is that the most unproductive and unpopular and poor ideas are the most loved ones among their elites.
Well, at least some of them left (or some part of it) started entirely on its own.
The only purpose they seem to serve is strengthening the far right by imposing counter productive purity tests and pushing people to vote for the far right options over more centrist ones.
Strongest economies are from blue states. Poorest are red states. Same with crime. Health out comes(Life expectancy, infant. mortality). Who was the only president to run a surplus in recent history.
Anyway, instead of being dedicated to achieving change, the American left CONSTANTLY gets distracted, e.g., complaining about those successful Democratic presidents (or candidates) who drive meaningful change as "incrementalist", "too moderate", or, my absolute favorite, "liberal" as if the European use of the word has ever mapped to the American use. I've even seen people on the left criticize AOC for selling out, when what she is doing is practicing effective politics.
Harris’s written support was turned into an ad campaign for Trump. You can agree or disagree with the policy but it isn’t a great hill to die on if you want to win elections.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harris-gender-surgeries-ja...
I also agree that it feels like Democrats don’t stand for anything. But I think by leaving that space open they let ads like this paint what they stand for.
My issue with what you said is the claim <some issue> is not a hill to die on. They are not dying on any hills at all.
To die on a hill means that you stand on the hill and get killed rather than leave it. It means having a conviction so strong that you will never walk it back. That's the polar opposite of the establishment dems right now.
There are many things Harris could have done to improve the situation like publicly stating a balanced position. Doing nothing was dying on the hill.
What do you think she should have done?
California, for example, is currently pursuing a lawsuit (https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...) seeking to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. That's a controversial position on a high-profile issue whose opponents consider it to be outrageous persecution. Would you say this is an example of "shitfest red meat"? Or do you think that it's just an ordinary lawsuit, because you're not personally outraged by it, because you think California's position is reasonable?
One can agree or disagree on the question of whether transgender care is medical care, but I think the sensible position for any political party (on virtually any such question) is to defer to the scientists and medical experts who spend all day working on this stuff.
AFAIK, the then-current science said that this was one of the only effective treatments for gender dysphoria, and under our Constitution inmates can't be denied medical care, even if it gives somebody the ick or would be politically inconvenient at the next election cycle.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree with this policy but the point of politicians is to advance policy one way or the other which requires agreeing/disagreeing.
If you think we're going to amend the Constitution to ban gender affirming care for inmates you're living in outerspace, but I suppose your position is that politicians are supposed to just say shit that has the correct hate-valence and then it's as-good-as-accomplished?
Inmates received this care under Trump 1 (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/us/politics/trump-prisons...
They've tried stopping it in Trump 2 but have been enjoined by courts (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-judge-temporaril...
Your reaction proves the point that this is a purity test.
I’m not taking a stance one way or the other but you aren't able to engage without arguing against points I didn’t make.
Your argument: It is a purity test for politicians to say that transgender inmates should receive care (which Kamala passed, to the detriment of her electability)
My argument: It is actually SCOTUS who decides this (or would require a Constitutional amendment, which is obviously absurd)
"Never say anything that the right can play in an ad" is not my idea of effective campaign strategy.
Why do you think she didn’t say anything?
I never said that. There were many far-leftists who sat out in 2024 due to Palestine, proclaiming that Kamala would've been just as bad or worse than Trump on that issue which is ludicrous. Needless to say, I'm not opposed to progressive ideals but the reality is that they're more focused on principles than getting elected.
> that also poll extremely well with the general public
If that's the case, why don't we see more candidates like Bernie/AOC/Mamdani being elected across the country? I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
And you don’t have to look for second order effects to see how progressive issues poll — look at recent polls on Palestine, single-payer health care, housing affordability, and plenty of other progressive policies, by reputable non-partisan sources.
Centrism is just as much of a political perspective as being anywhere else on the spectrum and can color political perspectives just as easily — it just biased in favor of the status quo so it’s got a much easier job.
Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’ is the first line of defense for people unwilling to take a hard look at the efficacy of the people that are supposed to be mobilizing and representing those voters. If your politician doesn’t represent the voters’ values enough to gain their vote, the problem is the politician. The mainstream dems have just run out of leverage to coerce people into candidates they don’t align with using the “vote blue no matter who” tactic.
If you could link them, that'd be great because I don't know exactly which ones you're looking at. My guess is that these ideas sound great on paper: who doesn't want more affordable housing? But, the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Affordable housing sounds great for example, but the plans from Bernie et al. seem to include a lot of government spending on building public housing and implementing rent control on private housing. I can personally see why someone might be opposed to voting for even more government involvement in housing which we already have quite a lot of and look where we're at.
I concede that the DNC (and their donors by extension) resist far-left candidates but I don't believe that, if the proposals are so popular, it would be consistently suppressed by higher powers in that manner. Basically, I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
> Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’
My point was that they're not voting at all. No one in politics will take those people seriously because that doesn't get anyone elected. Maybe you don't personally purity test or sit out elections, but that kind of behavior certainly exists and turns off people outside the circle.
Let me be clear, the Dems didn't lose the 2024 election due to progressives sitting out. I just think they could be taken more seriously as a bloc by not abstaining because they're mostly aligned with the objectives of the Democratic party. There are only two options we have in elections, and working with what we have is the only option to get out of this mess.
Google, for example “Israel poll,” and look for organizations like Gallup, Pew and other reputable sources.
> the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Come on. This is a much bigger citation needed than finding a poll about a national political topic.
> I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
There isn’t a lack of progressive candidates. They’re in local positions— municipal, local representative— all over the place because city representatives are too close to the metal for that kind of interference. Unless you’re in a place like New York with an overwhelmingly large number of progressive voters, for the past couple of decades, there’s a zero percent chance of advancing to a national position without DNC backing. And they have announced that they’re directly fighting third party candidates.
> My point was that they're not voting at all.
Progressives vote in the primaries when candidates represent their viewpoints. The democrats refuse to give candidates that inspire their support nationally, which is their only job if they want to represent the people. If they don’t run candidates that people are willing to vote for then people won’t vote for them. That’s how this works. And if they’re actively suppressing third party candidates, expecting people to say “oh well, I don’t support 60% of what this candidate supports, including a core issue of morality, and pretty sure they’ll back down on most of the rest… but I don’t support 85% of what this candidate supports” is a losing strategy to get people to the polls. And then telling those have the “wrong priorities” and it’s their fault the country is on fire is an absolute fantastic strategy to alienate people, permanently. It’s cynical emotional blackmail to shift the blame from the people who failed at their job to mobilize voters onto the voters they failed to mobilize.
> Let me be clear, the Dems didn't lose the 2024 election due to progressives sitting out. I just think they could be taken more seriously as a bloc by not abstaining because they're mostly aligned with the objectives of the Democratic party.
The fact that you think the mainline democratic opinion is so important that people need to worry about being ‘taken seriously’ by them is exactly the reason the only people that take centrist democrats seriously are centrist democrats. They have manipulated the electoral landscape to stay in power despite mostly losing for the last decade and still think they have some kind of moral or intellectual authority.
Come up with all of the blame-shifting, exculpatory framing you want, but ultimately, the people that run the campaign are responsible for winning or losing the election. The hard truth is that democrat leadership lost the election in 2024 because they failed to present a candidate that people were willing to vote for in a way that inspired those votes. If they care about the country, believe in our electoral system, and aren’t willing to represent people on the left by letting whoever is most popular get elected, they shouldn’t proudly harpoon third party candidates. Whether they’re arrogant enough to assume they know better than registered voters, or are just power hungry, they’ve been more focused on staying in their offices than wielding their power as a party.
Most lefists/extreme right/far-left/far-right are not the “far right” or “far left” caricatures depicted by the media, internet comments, or the mouth of the political party conventions.
> I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
Of course the DNC suppresses their campaigns. Most NY Dem leaders have not even backed Mamdani even after winning the primary (not to mention that Cuomo has an entire billionaire backed Super PAC still funding him after he lost the primary badly). You being able to guess that doesn’t make the idea false. The idea being a talking point doesn’t make that truth less valid.
It’s those dang progressives and their policies that moderates push through for election appeal then turn around and partially implement and defund and finger point and blame when those policies then fail after being setup to do so.
If you can’t blame progressives then you can’t get elected in this country.
Personally I do not see how we can afford to maintain the MIC for much longer, so these issues are very important to me.
The american left by and large is simply unrepresented. Democrats have represented center right positions since clinton.
If anything, it's those centrist democrats that use purity tests as much as possible to eject the left from the party.
As a good example of that, consider the case of Al Franken vs Andrew Cuomo. Franken was pretty progressive, so when it came out that he had a picture in bad taste where he mocked squeezing boobs, gone. 24/7 news about how he's really a monster and the worst person in the world.
Meanwhile, Cuomo has multiple credible allegations of sexual harassment and who does the party STILL back even after he lost the primary? He literally got endorsements from Democrats who shed tears because of the Al Franken photo.
The same thing happened to Bernie Sanders. The centrist dems and media started circulating garbage about how he was sexist over a comment he didn't make.
Biden had a decent representation of left cabinet picks. But otherwise, the party has been pretty slow to change. Obama, in particular, gets remember as being progressive yet he truly was not. He took some antiwar stances and then failed to deliver on those promises. That was about the end of his left leaning policies.
And hell, just look at how first the Tea Party and then MAGA managed to yeet a lot of what used to be "moderate" Republicans out of the party alright.
“The Left” as defined by a broad, working class based coalition independent of urban/rural has historically been formidable. But as the closest example of this in recent history - Obama coalition - erodes, and GOP eats into working class voters, it becomes less formidable.
Really The Left (the Democratic Party) needs to rebuild an electorally successful coalition. The leaders that could lead that aren’t obvious to me yet.
> EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections
> The move continues to expose communities across the country to toxic forever chemicals in tap water
If this really were a "team sport", one half of the team wouldn't be set on undermining the health of the other half of the team.
i guess you reject their request to stop trying to defeat the other team. but you also object to the use of the word "team" to describe a political party?
could you explain?
Also the baseline GOP today exists in a different reality (e.g. where Trump won the 2020 election and Democrats did the COVID lockdowns)
That was one of countless examples of where powers passed by one side with a majority invariably end up coming back to bite then when they become the minority. The Founding Fathers designed our political system to be largely dysfunctional without widespread consensus. That was clearly wiser than the path we are increasingly choosing in modern times.
It is not true anymore, as all power is centralized in the parties. The House’s impeachment power will essentially never be used against the dominant party’s President, which allows POTUS to act with impunity and strongly incentivizes him to secure his party’s House dominance — a dynamic we’re seeing very explicitly at play over the last few months.
POTUS keeps the House reps in power, the House reps let POTUS do whatever he wants. Both win by severing their need to have popular policies in order to hold political power, so that’s what they work to do. Gerrymandering is an absolutely critical tool in this effort which is why POTUS has been publicly pressuring “members of different parts of the government” to pursue it (and they are!)
So no, it’s not a non-sequitur.
For the normal balance of powers - the legislative makes laws, the executive implements them, and the judiciary ensures the latter matches the intent of the former as well as that they remain constitutional. The legislative can undermine the judiciary or the executive by passing new laws. The executive can undermine the legislative with vetos, and the judiciary by appointments. And the judiciary can undermine the legislative by deeming the laws unconstitutional, or the executive by deeming their enforcement unlawful.
No branch is particularly superior to the others. The executive has the strength of being headed by a single person, but that is tempered by it having relatively less power than the other branches.
Impeachment is intended for exactly what it says: "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Again: all of the balances you describe only work when party loyalties do not exceed loyalties to their own branch's authorities and responsibilities. In practice what we've seen (over decades) is Congress ceding power to their own party's executive, because in practice people's political fortunes are determined by "did I make the leader of my party happy" rather than "did I retain the power of Congress."
This is EXPLICITLY counter to the intended design of the Constitution. You can read the rationale for it in Federalist 51.
This is trivially provable. POTUS (of either party, but especially in the MAGA movement) can and does threaten to primary anyone in Congress who checks him, ergo you either cede power and keep your seat, or you don't and POTUS uses his extreme control over party loyalties to replace you with someone who will cede power anyway.
The two party system (natural consequence of first-past-the-post elections) is a fundamental design flaw in our Constitution which is why it doesn't exist in any government the US has helped architect since its own inception.
All of these things are related. They're an entire web of powers, as you can read about in the Federalist Papers. The founders feared factionalism and figured it would be inevitable, but did not foresee the natural equilibrium that would be found at only two parties and all the consequent pathologies we deal with today.
And I think that segues nicely into this issue as a whole. Because the Founding Fathers were extremely averse of parties and the dangers they could pose, but this is one of the few examples where they let idealism trump reality in their philosophy. They themselves almost immediately broke down into factional parties, the first being formed by Hamilton, the author of aforementioned Federalist paper, himself! And even from that early stage it became clear that parties would become the defacto norm of society.
I'd also add that there's a bit of a paradox with things like at large proportional representation. It effectively encodes parties into the system, yet remains [relatively] diverse in practice, especially without mandates on things like the minimum vote percent. While district based FPTP has no connection to parties and ostensibly maximizes competitiveness by minimizing geographic regions a candidate needs to sway. Yet of course in practice, like you said, FPTP invariably trends towards a complete bastardization of democracy with two parties at a 50/50 equilibrium.
in case someone's feeling got hurt. Throughout the history of world not USA, right ideology has also blindly supported deregulation that people will die but regulation will naturally take place( ? ) like free markert
But Charlie Kirk went to the most left places he could think of, debated people, and won some converts.
Who on the left does that? Why doesn't anyone drive out to rural football games or country music concerts, have conversations, and put them on YouTube?
Sanders and AOC. Look at the stops on their Fighting Oligarchy Tour. It’s just that the DNC leadership will do everything in their power to fight actual progressives.
From my observations the liberal and progressive groups seem to take on strategies where they claim the moral high ground and treat anyone not following their way of thinking as opponents and not as potential allies/converts. So even in cases where they are technically or morally "correct" in their stance, they aren't effective in bringing outsiders to their side. One example was the "recognize your (white) privilege" thing. While it was arguably based on sound ideas, proclaiming an entire demographic is receiving more than they earn is never going to bring people over to your side.
I don't have much confidence that the Democrats will be able to turn things around in short order. The Democratic leadership seem stuck in their ways with no long term vision
It's easy to say "reject the news agencies", and sure that might be a good idea, but that carries the risk of "substituting bullshit with different, more dangerous bullshit". This has already been somewhat demonstrated; the conservatives spent decades undermining trust in news media and that led to the rise of assholes like Alex Jones and conspiracy theories becoming normalized by American conservatives. It's easy to say "well the left wouldn't do that", but you have no way of knowing that any better than I would.
I don't want to be cynical or hopeless, but I genuinely have no idea what I could do to help fix any of the shit going on right now.
[1] whatever that actually means, I've heard about a dozen definitions.
As to conspiracy theories on the left, they're there. Some of the anti-vax conspiracies came from people who would be considered on the (I'm going to apologize of this is seen as denigrating considering my earlier statement) granola side of the left. There's a fair bit of populist anti-corporate conspiracies and attribution of active malice rather a dispassionate corporate approach to trying to maximize profits.
I would suggest instead considering that it isn't "left vs right" conspiracies (though they have their own spectrum) but rather that there exists a "prone to conspiracies demographic" that is swayed by the left or the right at a given time and those conspiracies that are most in line with the political ideology of the swaying are more likely to be normalized. Politicians agreeing with the conspiracies speeds up its normalization and helps sway the conspiracy minded demographic.
I believe that the pro-science, pro-space, climate change is real, vaccines work of... lets put a range of 2008 to say... 2020 (its not that Biden abandoned it but rather that that congress was not advancing policies and the focus was more on "don't have it break more") significantly alienated the prone to conspiracy demographic from the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has embraced this demographic with the claims of a stolen election, supporting anti-vaccination positions, and openly accepting support of the various anti-{race} groups.
It wouldn't take too much for anti-capitalism or anti-government conspiracies to be normalized and spoken openly by "the left" if that is one's target demographic. It's that left leaning and conspiracy leaning is a slim demographic to try to target. If the conspiracy demographic was decoupled from the current Republican Party, then I would expect to see more left leaning conspiracy theories be espoused openly.
I would love to believe this, but I am not sure that I do anymore.
Anti-vax conspiracies have become extremely normalized in conservative circles and at least according to CNN, 70% of conservatives believed conspiracies that the 2020 election as stolen [1]. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split, 70% of 50% is about 35%; one third of the entire country. Maybe it's always been like that, but I don't think so, I feel like up until around ~2014 conspiracy theorists were largely on the fringes.
And of course, that 70% is people who are admitting to it. Famously, people were embarrassed to admit they wanted to vote for Trump which skewed the polling data. I suspect that the percentage of conservatives who believe in 2020 election conspiracies is actually a fair bit higher.
So I don't think I buy that "the conspiracy fringe was always there and conservatives were just more welcoming to them", I think that conservatives are actively creating new conspiracy nutes, and I think this is a consequence of their concerted effort to create distrust in media.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans...
I mention that sounds kind of click baity? look it up. California wants to impose more stringent minimum space standards for amimals bred to slaughter (prop 12). Seems maybe good, or at least worthy of a real discussion?
But everyone had moved on by then, ironically to how much they care about animal rights (spending significant time volunteering in shelters and such).
Its just too easy to dumb people down with memes.
Trump reneging on NATO, turning military attention toward (checks notes) Venezuela, and isolating ourselves in global trade is just an absolute dream come true for China and Russia.
States can try to do some things in some cases, but the Supreme Court will get in the way and now the National Guard and Marines.
All three branches of The United States of America has been captured by a tyrannical government. Rights are being eroded for inhabitants of The United States of America, including its citizens.
You have no right to: safe medicine, safe food, safe water, vote.
The sooner the people recognize this and take action, the shorter it will be to reverse.
Americans have a duty to act, and act quickly: what's already been taken will take generations to regain.
I disagree.
The issue is there's about 1000 fires burning all with somewhat critical importance.
But further, the left and the politicians ostensibly representing the left simply are not aligned (at least in the US). It's a rock and a hard place. Generally the politicians positions are better than the right, but far less than what the left actually wants. So they rely heavily on "what are you going to do, let the other guys win?".
Meanwhile, the right has adopted nearly the opposite position. On most positions when the base says "jump" they say "how high?".
A big reason for that is money in politics. What the rightwing base wants is generally pretty compatible with monied interests. It's no skin off the nose of a rightwing politician if they want to ban books, that doesn't ultimately harm Disney's bottom dollar.
For the left, what they want in almost all ways will negatively impact monied interested. Better regulations makes rich polluters mad. Nationalized healthcare makes every business (except maybe small businesses) mad.
That's why "left" politicians tend to only support initiatives which effectively do nothing like recognizing a MLK or saying it's ok to be gay. And even then, they are happy to ditch those positions to win more rightwing base support because, shocker, that rightwing base is likely to care less about their inaction on climate change.
You are right, though, news is a big problem. And that's because mainstream media is corporate captured. That's why left policy positions no matter the channel are always framed in the absolute worst way possible. For example, whenever nationalized healthcare comes up I can guarantee you the framing will be "How will you pay for this very expensive program that will eliminate choice and cost a lot of money which might make everyone sad and probably will bankrupt everyone?"
If you look closely at the Ds they back Trumps policies, not that they come out and say so. Rather Bernie will come out and attack it. but Ds on so mnay fornts now remain silent and passive.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
The basic gist is that the left is too generous in its understanding of others' intentions, assuming good intentions from all actors long past the point where that's rational.
Look at how desperate they all were to leave DC and go on vacation, these people are not serious and they don't think there will be any consequence to them.
Edit: Also, most of the politicians in both parties get money from the same interests (oil, Israel, tech). So the leadership of Democrats basically wants the same thing as GOP, so there's only voiced resistance.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...
It blows my mind that people refuse to accept modern countries and societies still don't go through this cycle.
I truly think the US will have a Putin like dictator by 20230. (I don't think this is good or want that)
https://www.epa.gov/water-research/identifying-drinking-wate...
Then it can be seen as no longer a disparate collection of seemingly random political, social, and economic moves, but rather as a directed, intentional movement.
US typically gets the cheaper and worse option (less safe). Same for American coke w/ Cane Sugar instead of actual sugar.
Americans will regularly consume chemicals that are potentially carcinogenic and banned in EU.
EDIT: I meant high fructose corn syrup, not cane sugar. My bad!
I have tested this in Denmark, Poland, Cyprus, Ireland and Germany.
In all likelihood, they meant to say corn syrup.
I think you meant high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar (which is real sugar)
American Coke is sweetened with Corn Syrup. Maybe it's just me being a dumb American probably fooled by some green washing but isn't Cane Sugar better? What's "actual sugar" in the EU?
The reason corn syrup is demonized is because it is cheap, enabling lots of foods to pack sugar without much cost. The health concerns remain consistent across all forms of sugar.
Also there is no single reason that HFCS is demonized, there are multiple good reasons why it is harmful in the US. It is also not a singular cause to all US diet related pathologies.
Staying on topic, the chemicals the EPA will no longer enforce the laws for pollution for are demonstrably harmful.
The EPA has unilaterally decided not to do its job because it doesn't care about the health of the citizens of the US.
Even if coke was made with organic wild honey, it would still be awful for you.
This !
The OP made a bad point using coke as an example.
The actual point is the HFCS and the fact that HFCS is used extensively in the US, often in places you would not expect it.
In bread products for example its common to find HFCS in it in the US.
The Europeans rarely put any form of sugar in their bread doughs unless they are explicitly baking a sweet product. And even then, the concentration is lower.
The trouble is you do still find US products, and they should be avoided like the plague.
US-grown nuts for example. Pesticides galore.....
Yes. EU has the precautionary principle: you may market the product after documenting its safety. In the US, it’s often the other way around: you can market the product unless/until someone can show it to be unsafe.
This is often a point of conflict e.g. when negotiating free trade agreements between US and EU, as the US often sees this as a technical barrier to trade and protectionism.
They just don’t believe in a society that cares for the weak and needy.
There is some truth to that, but I don't think that explains their position on PFAS because too much PFAS will disable even a strong healthy person. In this particular, it's more that they think that the harm is being exaggerated and that the actual, non-exaggerated degree of harm does not justify putting restrictions on business and commerce.
I struggle to find a topic where they don't think this. It seems the burden of "proof" is too high. They don't believe in risks to health, the environment, climate, or even functional democracy itself. They think all are fake and profit is more important.
These are generalities, sure
This is all the symptom of laziness of the mind. There is resistance to change, adapt and make the world a better place not just for this, but future generations.
There is no leadership in the US, no vision, no drive. The excessive wealth has created a leading class that happily rests on the laurels of prior generations while squandering the future.
This problem extends to all citizens, beyond the weak and needy, and permeates all levels of government from small to big.
I live in one of the best school districts in the US, and when I see the food the children are served I am surprised this is acceptable.
But this is what the US is, extract as much money from people while providing sub standard service. All in-the name of the free market and shareholder value.
People are an exploitable reaource.
See, there you go again, over regulating free enterprise out of existence. /s
To the main point—I guess we agree. Also: the right wing political movement in the US is an amalgam of conservative religiosity and (MFing) libertarianism. It’s frantic and fear-driven.
Every time a sample comes up positive, we cut the sample percentage by an order of magnitude.
Problem solved.
See also: Tainted meat from Boar’s Head.
We also have the “nitrate free” and “uncured” labels, which means the nitrate (pink curing salt) is called “celery salt” in the ingredient list, and the manufacturer is exempt from federal caps on the amount they added. (Celery salt is the same exact chemical, but with a different production process.)
> Now, after further reviewing the statute pursuant to a publicly announced reconsideration process, EPA agrees with petitioners that parts of the rulemaking process were unlawful and parts of the Rule are thus invalid.
This does NOT preclude lawfully making the same ruling later. It also does mean that Zeldin thinks we shouldn't reduce PFAS in our water.
It does mean that:
- had the EPA held to its previous position the court could have found the rulemaking process illegal and forced the EPA to start over
- the EPA retains the ability to restart this rulemaking and this time comply with the applicable acts of Congress.
TFA says:
> Separately, EPA previously announced that it will seek to extend the compliance deadline for PFOA and PFOS standards by two years from 2029 to 2031.
Well, yes hello!! Take these two bits of news in combination and what do we have? We have this:
- the EPA concedes that the previous rulemaking was illegal
- the EPA indicates that it wants to restart the process and get to roughly the same rules with compliance deadlines in 2031, and this delay is presumptively due of the delay in rulemaking due to the previous rulemaking process having been illegal.
And TFA and the commenters here are all screaming their heads off that Zeldin (and Trump) are trying to kill us all or something.
Maybe look at the details first? TFA certainly doesn't mention the details! After a fairly obscure first two paragraphs it launches into a diatribe.
Fortunately TFA did link the EPA filing, and the very first paragraph of that filing tells us the first half of the story: that the Biden EPA did not follow lawful process. Surely one could debate the lawfulness of the process followed by the Biden EPA, but if the court was on its way to ruling as much then the EPA getting ahead of it was a good thing. The second part of the story is less* clear from just TFA and this filing, but TFA gives us a clue that the EPA apparently intends to restart the rulemaking process, which presumably will lead to roughly the same rules.
And these comments have an air of erudite smugness about them that can only come from a person completely without doubt of their convictions - even while being completely devoid of any value to the conversation.
The title is at best hyperbolic and at worse at outright lie - in any case the pattern of the title was intended to stoke whatever mental illness we see at play here: "I speculate endlessly on my own world view to the theme of the article title so I can signal to my peers that I'm doing righthink.".
But this is what makes the article get engagement, so to hell with communicating ideas, let's stoke division and get those clicks!
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
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To be clear, some of the Make America Healthy Again goals are quite reasonable to me. I wish they had started with those.
Then it can be seen as no longer a disparate collection of seemingly random political, social, and economic moves, but rather as a directed, intentional movement.
Or, you know, they actually had really racist reasons and are using the grocery prices thing as an excuse. Who's to say?
Take a look at the administration's first term and all the involvement and ties (financial, political, etc.) there are to Russia (and Russian-related objectives like Ukraine). It sounds bonkers, but the more you dig in and see how closely tied the relationships have been, and then see how totally soft Trump has been towards Putin/Russia - including direct actions towards Ukraine like removing the long-term diplomats, stopping weapons sales and aid, and recently killing USAID (whose #1 beneficiary was Ukraine) - it all coalesces into a single coherent view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...
I was referring to the voters. I think a lot of the voters claimed grocery prices were the reason, but a lot of them really wanted to get rid of Mexicans. Trump used a lot of racist rhetoric during all three of his campaigns.
The fact that conservatives seem unwilling to condemn the president and ICE for detaining naturalized citizens indicates this to me.
Risk reward is dead simple. You’re already rich and powerful, you fail and become slightly less rich and powerful. You succeed and have absolute control over the most powerful country in the world
I love America, and despite my wife being a naturalized citizen we are still tentatively looking to evacuate (basically determined by if the supreme court decides that the president can overturn the Fourteen Amendment with an executive order) because we are genuinely concerned that she might still be detained because of this administrations idiotic ICE quotas and overtly racist policies.
You might argue that me leaving is no significant loss, and that's fair, but I am college and graduate educated, and I work in a technical field, and I doubt I'm the only one considering this.
Many of this administration's policies are more like Maoism
The capitalists see PFAS policies as anti-free-trade because it imposes "artificial" limits on production. They see PFAS policies as "big govt overreach". And that if consumers don't want PFAS they should vote with their dollars to remove it. This is their pro-capitalist justification for de-regulation.
And what you're doing is you want to conflate their money making policies, such as removing PFAS protections, with the exact opposite of what it is. You're confusing it with anti-capitalist policies when it is, in fact, benefiting plastic producers and was probably recommended by plastic producers and manufacturers in the first place.
Needless to say it cannot be both. This is not maoism, THIS is capitalism.
You drank the kool-aid on anti-govt thought and now you think the government is anti-capitalist when the capitalists hold almost a total monopoly on government functions and officials and have always had, since they control most of the nations wealth and production and can employ it to serve them. The capitalists control the government outright.
To further elucidate your position: the fact is you hate free trade policies because they put you and your loved ones in danger, but you have been convinced that they are, theoretically, better for all of us. That is because in pro capitalist theory/propaganda anything that helps them is seen as benefiting the population because of two things:
1. Capitalist see themselves as part of the population (even though they are the minority). 2. They conflate the "invisible hand" metaphor with literal evolution without even giving a forethought to how these dynamics play out. Especially in a monopolized environment.
They espouse these ideas through their think tanks and media outlets because it benefits them.
They teach this double-think through total hate of govt policies because they see many govt policies as hindering them.
Think about how our broke asses can influence government. Very slim pickings.... Now think about how a billionaire can influence government. Capitalists have always controlled government.
Not how that works, sadly.