Greed Over People That is the problem the GOP stands for stealing from their base, keeping people ignorant so they are not questioned, and for propaganda - and fear, making people afraid of folks whose skin is a different shade than theirs. It is embarrassing really - that there are still about 30% of the people that won't deal with kids getting shot in schools or infected in schools because they are on a team - and lack critical thinking. DD
I’m going to keep saying it…when a politician makes a blatantly false statement they should be required by law to publicly recant it. There is no accountability currently.
Kids getting shot in schools is just not a major issue. It is statistically insignificant and not a good use of resources to address it. Kids getting infected in schools is even less of an issue. An unvaccinated elementary school aged child is less at risk of death by COVID than a vaccinated adult. Critical thinking says to ignore those issues and deal with over-taxation, wasteful spending, entitlements, over-regulation (especially in building), lack of data/science driven policy, and crime in specific communities. Those are the real problem areas. Propaganda is the name of the game for both major parties, the Democrats are just even worse about knowing/focusing on the real problems than the Republicans.
This is stupid - kids getting shot and kids getting covid are major issues......for reasonable people who care about others. DD
Nah. Republicans are definitely worse at focusing on real problems. Lack of science/data driven policy would be policy that benefits the fossil fuel industry. The dynamic system climate models that I'm sure are above your understanding tell us we need to stop relying on them. Currently we have a tax system where someone who made 20 million dollars in capital gains has the same federal tax rate as a family with a household income of 50 grand. 50 years ago the median CEO made 20x the income of the median worker. Today it's 264x. Gen Z and millions are on track to. Have the lowest rates of homeownership compared to their predessesors. And you think "entitlements" agree the issue. Yes efficiency in government spending is a problem but I'm confident we disagree where the inefficiencies are and why the exist. They exist because of the revolving door and campaign donations. Only one party has members in it that aggressively try to end those things. The GOP fights over mask mandates, vaccine passports, Dr. Seuss, transgenders in sports etc. Those are their pet projects.
I wouldn’t call 470 covid death in children not a major issue, insignificant and not worth addressing especially when addressing it isn’t that hard. We should do what we reasonable can to protect children - get vaccinated when eligible, wear masks. Almost all of covid death among children and every age group can be prevented once nearly everyone is vaccinated.
No no no... that doesn't align with republican party thinking. Kids needlessly getting sick and dying is not important and the reasonable steps(masking, vaccinations, social distancing, gun regulations) to address those things go against their partisan positions, so of course he thinks they are unimportant. Instead, he lists off republican talking points... surprised he didn't mention people driving to the welfare office in their Cadillacs and women giving birth to more children so they can get food stamps. Oh, and immigrants, since every problem is caused by immigrants.
Don't want to speak for him, but the statistic number I see thrown out there is that a very small % of children infected die. That's true. But a small % of a large # is still very deadly. I see too many people gross over that simple fact. Kids will eventually be able to get vaccinated. In the meantime, it's not too much to ask that people around them (and kids themselves) do reasonable things such as being vaccinated and wearing mask. It's not hard.
I care much much more about kids getting shot in schools than wasteful spending. If you created a national poll I promise that the vast majority of people would agree with me.
To expound on my rather snarky reply all of the issues that you say from "critical thinking" are very important appear to be issues that you ideologically agree with. While yes those are issues if you look at them critically versus the issues you dismiss I don't think they are as essential as you think they are where as the other issues might. On school shootings yes those are a very small amount of deaths when compared to total deaths of children from all causes but when you compare the US to most other industrialized countries the US is far higher in both mass shootings and total gun deaths than countries with a similar per capita income and development. Also while mass shootings are a very small percent of deaths doesn't mean that they shouldn't be an issue. Deaths from plane crashes are statistically insignificant when compared to deaths from automobiles. That doesn't mean that a plane crash should be ignored or that aviation safety shouldn't be taken very seriously. Yes children are very unlikely to die from COVID infection but that doesn't mean that they are immune and can't be transmit it. While it is rare there still are deaths and other complications for children getting infected with COVID-19 and we don't know what the long term developmental effects of getting COVID-19 will be. At the same time given the number of unvaccinated people and the potential of breakthrough infections it's still not a good idea to be transmitting the virus. Since we are talking about the state of the Republican party this isn't directed towards you but this is the bizarre philosophical contortions that that the party is doing. On one hand they are proclaiming they are the party of life to the point they are putting in dubious laws to "protect the unborn" while they are literally up in arms over measures to protect life and leaders in the party are declaring that "there are more important things than life".. On the issues you site as important as someone that works in the building field yes I agree there are some onerous regulations but I don't think overall those are holding back construction. If anything demand for construction is high and the amount of hours I'm working / billing for is greater now than it has been in 4 years. What's holding things back isn't regulations but the lack of labor and shortages of materials. What we saw with the Florida Condo collapse is that building codes are truly a matter of life and death. Codes can be pain in the ass but the alternative to far less safe buildings would also be a drag on the construction industry as there wouldn't be standards that could be followed but uncertainty about the safety of construction. As far as overtaxed in general we are undertaxed compared to other countries and historically. My own feeling is that our tax system isn't a problem of overtaxation but that our system is horribly inefficient, overly complicated and rife with corruption and evasion. That is why I support a flat tax and vast simplification of the tax code. Not because we are overtaxed but because too many people and businesses exploit the tax code to evade paying more taxes. On wasteful spending yes there is a lot of it but it's difficult to define. People like to bring up things like research funding for things like studying plants listening to Jazz but those are very very negligible parts of the US budget. As for the frequent target of foreign aid that is less than 1% of the US budget. Further what some consider wasteful others consider essential. Farm subsidies might be considered wasteful by those living in cities but for family farms and to maintain food security those are considered vital. You're right entitlements are far and away the biggest part of our budget but good luck trying to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. No one in either party is going to seriously consider taking those on.
There were 26000 child deaths in 2020, and less than 500 were reported as COVID related. So maybe 2%. In 2019 (since the numbers are way down in 2020 with distance learning, I don't want to give a false impression of the scope of the problem) there were 5 children killed in school shootings (that is per edweek.org). Wouldn't resources be better spent focusing on things that cause the 98% of deaths, rather than the 2% caused* by COVID or the 0.02% of child deaths caused by school shootings. There were 991 firearm homicides with minor victims per gunviolencearchive.org. As stated before, 5 of them were in school shootings. The other 986 were not. No, the real problem in the area of child death is not school shootings. It isn't kids getting COVID. It is kids being raised on the streets in gangs and murdering each other. One person dying is a major issue to anyone who is connected to that person. I lost one of my dearest friends to COVID in March. From a nationwide, policy analysis perspective, children dying of COVID and especially school shootings are statistically insignificant. I disagree. 470 puts it between overdose and fire in terms of causes of death in minors. For comparison, motor vehicle crash claims almost 10 times as many. Homicide by firearm 4 times as many. Suicide by suffocation three times as many. It is worth noting that suicide and suicide attempts increased substantially during COVID lockdowns and school closures. This article More “Covid Suicides” than Covid Deaths in Kids – AIER claims that there were more COVID response related suicides than COVID deaths among kids, so it would seem at least for school age kids our treatment plan may have been worse than the disease. The vaccine is already available to everyone for free. Some people choose not to get it. I don't think we should be in the business of involuntarily medicating people, generally speaking. Also, it appears that natural immunity from those who have already survived COVID may be more effective in preventing infection, hospitalization, and death than vaccination is. Ultimately, I expect we will just have to live with COVID like we live with the seasonal flu, and get yearly updated vaccines. All this to say, what policies are appropriate to protect children from COVID have already been done. Unless you are advocating either indefinite masking or indefinite distance learning, the issue is as solved as it is going to get. Once you eliminate most taxation and public spending, immigration essentially becomes a non-issue. It is already a relatively minor issue anyway. Many illegal immigrants are net contributors to the economy, because they pay in but avoid relying on government services. People rarely go to the welfare office anymore, the money is just sent to them electronically. Policies were put in place in an ideological manner. Of course addressing those that are terrible is going to seem ideological. Most people agree with whatever they are fed by whichever major news outlet (or worse, social media influencer) they decide is going to teach them everything. A good number of people are out in the streets protesting things that don't even exist. I have very little care for what most people would agree with. 5 kids were shot and killed in schools in 2019. That is five tragedies, but it should not move a single policy. There are 30-50 fatal dog attacks in the United States annually. Based on that, you should devote 6-10 times the resources preventing death by dog bite that you do on school shootings.
So it is the issues that you ideologically agree with that are critical? Got it. The thing is, death from school shootings in America is not far higher than in other countries. There were 5 in 2019. There will be an aberrant year here or there where there is a Columbine, Virginia Tech, or MSD that makes the number spike that year, but even then it won't hit 50. As I pointed out above, that is just not a statistically significant number. School shootings, from any dispassionate analysis, are a non-issue. VT was the deadliest at 33 people killed. There are, on average, 62 deaths annually by hornet, wasp, or bee stings in the United States. Unless you are far more concerned about the terrors of bees and wasps, you don't need to worry about school shootings. I addressed this above. There were more than 600,000 abortions in the United States in 2018 (the most recent numbers I could find and at the end of a downward trend). For those who consider that the killing of a human life, it is the second leading cause of death in the United States, barely trailing heart disease. It shouldn't be surprising that it is considered more important than gun control, police misconduct, etc. Construction in California has been restricted for the past 30 years, not the past 18 months. Obviously this is more of a state issue than a national issue. What we saw with the Florida condo collapse is one anomalous incident. It was sensational, but hardly a sign that we as a nation are not paying enough attention to building safety. I support eliminating federal and state income tax. Then you don't have to worry about people evading it. Everyone gets to evade it. Yes. Also, the less taxes people pay and the more services they get, the more likely they are to see they spending that applies to them as essential. As someone who pays plenty in taxes and gets very little in terms of services, I see a lot of wasteful spending. A boy can dream.
If you want to discuss all this from a logical perspective then there is a simple solution that would eliminate the majority of gun violence that plagues this country just as it has done in Japan and Australia. And no before you bring up but car accidents kill more people let’s get rid of cars! Cars are a necessary part of life and we take that risk because of it. Guns are not necessary for protection and their presence has the opposite effect of deterring violence.
666 new Texas Republican bills, yet no care about Covid spread prevention, no care about enforcing stricter gun laws, no care about affordable healthcare, no care about the piss poor minimum wages, no care about stricter safety standards, inspections, and lacking protection for oil and chemical industry workers, no care about enforcing the penalties for chemical companies that should have and could have prevented spills and waste in our waters or environment, no cares about enforcing laws to prevent employers from working people like slaves, as many days in a row as they want, and no care about the homeless situation. It's all about corporate tax cuts, tax loops for the rich, spurting lies and propaganda, catering to the NRA, and big oil company owners. Screw the little man. Screw the weak. Screw the sick and needy.
Russell Means argued anyone born in the Western Hemisphere was Native American https://compusci.com/indian/
