Any new regulation the EPA introduces results in litigation. Some of the previously introduced PFAS regulations weren't done in accordance with how the Safe Drinking Water Act says they should be (regulations were introduced without the necessary public consultation), so they're applying to partially vacate the previous ruling. Notably, they're _not_ applying to vacate the regulation of PFAS chemicals where they say the process was followed correctly.
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.
> So, the legal reasoning might be to cut their losses litigating to defend rulings they think they'll lose due to the administrative error.
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.
There's a lot of outrage inducing judicial rulings that boil down to poor rule following. The main question winds up being: do we get to a good end point eventually or do these rulings look like steps backwards?
If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
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.
> If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
And why would they want to do that?
Bonus challenge: Without relying on antisemetic tropes
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.
just purely as a thought experiment and devil's advocacy: to create new avenues of growth and control for the oligarchy. The fall of the Soviet Union, for example, turned out to be a boon for them and they were able to replace the politburo with their own fiefdoms. By destroying the US goverment functions they will be able to privatize the profits (for their companies) and socialize the costs (pollution and shitty water) for the rest of the population. The price of clean water will go up and the people that can afford it will buy whatever anti-PFAS tech they're selling (providing growth for their companies), and the poor well...who cares. They will obtain greater leverage with the US government because they will be seen as saviors since the government will have no competent agencies left, including the military. And the government will helplessly cede more and more power over to them.
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.
What if instead we could all collectively agree that access to some amounts of fresh, running water is a fundamental human need? We figure a number, and the first N units are free. Additional units cost money, and perhaps you have two or three usage tiers where heavy users are disincentivized through additional cost.
You calculate the figures such that the higher usage tiers subsidize the costs of the basic needs users.
Stricter (but not looser) standards can be imposed on state level. Canada has no binding national drinking water law, they leave it to territories/provinces to decide how to implement guidelines.
The answer is likely that the treatment is expensive, and most people aren't drinking tap water anyway.
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.
Is this a regional thing? AFAIK everywhere I’ve lived most people drink tap water. Certainly they cook or make coffee/tea with it. But I’ve been lucky enough to live in places with pretty good tap water.
That's from a non-representative online poll for people already searching the internet for information about whether or not their tap water was safe to drink.
> 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.
Most people low and middle class people I have met my whole life drink unfiltered tap water unless there is a reason not to (safety or particularly foul taste). you might be in a bit of bubble. Not that it matter though as most bottled water is just bottled tap water anyway.
The buyer doesn’t know which company is responsible and which company’s suppliers are responsible etc. This is why we need legislation and enforcement.
Imagine another scenario. You are my neighbour. I spill some poison on the ground. Your child gets ill. Am I at fault?
The companies who care will fund 3rd party certification orgs that will check whether the standards are met. They do it already for car safety, responsible raw materials sourcing, recycled content etc.
If it is a feature the customers care about they will market it. But frankly customers just want a better price today.
A number of markets have few competitors which means it's beyond easy for all the companies to externalize everything.
Further, some products have deep supply chains that are easy to mix. Consider copper as an example. A responsible company will want to use recycled copper as much as possible because it's cheaper. However, can anyone realistically validate that none of that copper came from stolen cables or bad mining practices?
No, you're falling for the efficiency market fallacy. Demand does not always create supply. Markets are not some type of super-classical computer, they are bound by the same stickiness as any NP-hard problem.
How do you suggest this is implemented for mains water supply? Should miles and miles of new water pipe be laid down for every new water supply company on the area and the customer is given a key from Water Corp to turn on their Water Corp supply valve and Water 4 U Corp sends a guy to turn off their valve?
Have you ever even paid a water bill in your life or spent a few seconds thinking about how water is actually supplied?
Are we just not teaching The Jungle, Silent Spring, etc… in school anymore?
Also, please enlighten me on where I can shop around for alternative tap water.
I’m being petty, and understand the linked article is more fear-mongery than what the actual situation is, but simply eliminating all regulation is not the solution, as history has shown.
The market isn't free, so it cannot decide - even Adam Smith was pretty freaking clear about this. And I don't mean we need less regulation, I mean companies have complete control over laws, whether or not there's an even playing field, and about their transparency to customers - there's no market at all.
Also known as the, "I got mine. F*** you." philosophy. Maximize exploitation in the short run because by the time the long run comes around, they'll already be dead.
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.
Ironically, PFAS levels have been found to be higher in wealthy people. People with money own more furniture and clothing with stain resistant treatments, for example.
I'm not convinced that this is the correct answer. These policies also affect wealthy individuals and wealthy individuals want to be healthy (I assume).
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.
>These policies also affect wealthy individuals and wealthy individuals want to be healthy (I assume).
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??
This debate style is pretty frustrating to me. Use a talking point for the other side and act like it is why the reason it the decision is made. It really does not lend itself to getting to the root of issues and finding what compromise is.
In my opinion this added nothing to the conversation when in theory the op asked for a real answer.
I understand this may look dismissive or blamey, but sometimes (actually a shocking amount) there aren’t equal merits to both sides…
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.
There is also a social water cooler like aspect. Historically brakes were only provided to those that smoke so people took up smoking so they could get a brake. Some companies still follow this asinine ideology and do not provide brakes to non-smokers.
Well, the facts are that this administration will always, without fail, without a single exception, do the opposite of what has been shown to be good for the US people. This isn't a property of authoritarianism either, no other authoritarian state is so uniformly across the board against science, medicine, and technology.
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.
The populist wave is global and its causes are complex. But in the case of the US on top of it all, our populists happen to be clowns and morons.
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 seems like the PFAS rules were set in prior administrations [1]. In fact, even in the article you've linked above, the text states:
> 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.
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.
Trumps first term and his second term are entirely different beasts. His first term, although widely regarded as bad, still had mostly competent people across the board running things. This term is absolute lunacy, with tv show hosts cosplaying as government officials.
> 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.
You've lost sight of the comment I responded to, in which the poster asserts, in so many words, that there can be no explanation for easing any restrictions other than for profit and authoritarianism, etc. Right? Clearly there is an explanation if you search for a few minutes. So I stand by my allegations of bias against that comment specifically.
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.
Fair, but I'd like to clarify that in my comment I had asked specifically for any sources indicating that the PFA limits were put in place by the prior administration, since you had made the claim:
> 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.
Giving municipalities more time and money to enact change aligns just fine with what I think most people would call good faith. You just can't please some people, I guess.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that one side of a issue is not acting in good faith. If that's the case, compromise isn't really a viable option; trying to work with someone within a system doesn't work if they literally don't support the system itself. Obviously not everyone agrees that's what's happening here, but not everyone agrees with your premise that there's guaranteed to be some reasonable compromise to every possible issue either.
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).
I think it is just venting, rather than debate. Realistically we’re locked in for about a year and a half of full Republican control of every branch of government before literally anything at all can be changed (and even then the main achievable goal for the midterms would be for Democrats to take the House, right? Which gives them at least some ability to do some oversight, but is pretty limited).
The media would have a much harder time collecting ad dollars if they didn't use strawman arguments and misrepresentation to lock in an audience.
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.
What are the current ideals of so-called conservatives? Being a libertarian who can entertain both left and right approaches to problems, I thought I had a decent handle on where they were coming from. But then they seemingly went bat-shit insane during Covid. I try to appeal to what I thought were some of the underlying values (eg belief in institutions, America as a force for good in the world, individual liberty, slow and measured change), and always get written off like I just don't understand or something. But never any explanation for what I'm actually missing. The best I've been able to come up with is that they've set aside actually living those values in favor of thinking that we need some massive societal cataclysm to get back to a place where those values have more of a draw, but that's clearly not itself conservative.
Im sorry if you’re naive about life but the Republican Party has shown nothing but contempt for life in general. Ideological coherency is not something they have cared about, hence debating them as if their arguments has any weight whatsoever is not useful.
Whenever they propose something, just ask yourself which lobbyist stands something to gain. That will be a sufficient explanation.
This nonsense meta comment is pretty frustrating to me. Use a counter argument rather than wringing your hands and whining with no apparent critique other than “I don’t like that this person is being mean”
Take one step backwards. Do cockroaches debate with the boot heel that comes to squish them? The billionaires are not “debating” anything with the “little people”
What's up to debate here? It's crystal clear: they removed important health regulations so that a few companies could make slightly more money not having to clean up after themselves. What's not to hate there?
It is frustrating. Rolling back forever chemical regulations is analogous to reintroducing leaded gasoline. Should we be expected to debate and weigh the pros and cons of leaded gasoline? Some things require nuance, but some things are clearly and unambiguously bad. PFAS have well known health risks, they're persistent, bio-accumulative, and linked to cancers and endocrine disruption. We should err on the side of caution. An angry reaction against this is justified. It's insanity.
That’s the argument—yes. Consumers are supposed to educate themselves about all the industries in their backyard before buying a house to make sure that none of them have ever dumped PFAS in the last 100 years. And also they need to move to a place where it doesn’t rain, because PFAS is also in the water cycle. If nobody does that then the free market has spoken.
The problem is people are so trained that there must be both sides to every issue and you must steel man every other debater when sometimes the guy is coming at you with a knife.
There's no two sides to deregulating every business to poison us all, its just profit over people in the most direct and obvious way. There's no complex plan, there's no 4d chess, its just a transparent power grab for ideologues that really have either no interest in the outcomes of their terrible agenda because it ends in power for them or are literally in the pockets of those who desire the end of America.
> The problem is people are so trained that there must be both sides to every issue
Other people are culture warrior and intentionally poison the well (pun nit originally intended) so their side doesn't look bad, because the discussion has devolved into an ideological spat and not about the topic at hand
An insurance company CEO was famously shot in broad day light just before he went into a meeting to celebrate his accomplishment of denying people healthcare for his company's profits. Nobody felt bad except other CEOs and the people they directly pay because everyone has a story of the insurance company putting profit over people. They did not get rich by treating more people.
USA HealthCare insurance companies are the _Death Panels_, run by CEO, accounts, and investors, that work to maximize profit over keeping people health. They pay _specialist_ to contradict the actual practicing doctors on why some procedure or medicine is needed.
A firm's sole responsibility is to increase profit and a maximize returns for shareholders. [0]
Then you'd be wrong. Insurance companies are limited to the amount they can collect without paying back out.
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.
Also, there's likely to be a few years between the policy being enacted and people having health issues, so the chances are that the people pushing for this won't be around to catch the blame.
I don't get the environmental poison stuff. These rich people and their families breathe the same air and drink the same water as everyone else. Why would they poison themselves and their families with environmental pollution?
> If companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up.
I don't support the proliferation of PFAS in the environment, nor am I a Republican, nor do I even live in America.
Having said that, you should consider how asinine this sounds, and you should ponder whether the actual reason for this change in the law is more nuanced and less comically ridiculous than something so simplistic. I'm not saying the actual reason is a good one, but strawmanning every political opinion you disagree with is lazy and suggests an inability to use critical thinking about a world that is often quite complex.
Indeed, you sound like you're just as far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole as 'they' are, just on the other side of the political spectrum.
They did cover it up. But there was no evidence that they used PFAS in order to make people sick, which is what the original commenter said. There's a massive difference.
What does their perspective have to do with whether the distinction is real or not?
It's a matter of logic and also a matter of what is most likely to be true. The language used is obviously in relation to the rather important legal dichotomy between those two things; victims of PFAS toxicity and their opinions are irrelevant. What does matter is what the executives and people making the decisions at the corporations knew, thought, and intended by doing certain things, like covering up studies that demonstrated the harms, continuing to ship products they suspected were harmful, or suing whistleblowers to keep them quiet about putative harms. The original commenter was insinuating (I've quoted it throughout this thread) that the corporations were intentionally poisoning people, as if making them sick was itself a motive for shipping these products. Whether that is true or not is to be determined from the mental state of the executives I just talked about. There is no evidence I've ever seen that any of the corporations, like Dupont or Marlboro, ever intended to poison people and give them diseases for some underlying profit motive. To suggest they had was, as I said, lazy thinking and a caricature.
That certainly doesn't mean those corporations weren't negligent. But, as has been my point this entire time, intention is everything - intention is literally the entire difference between a murder charge and a manslaughter charge. It's not trivial at all. And imputing intention to cause harm (ie., the opposite of using Occam's Razor) because you dislike a corporation or person is just sloppy thinking.
> But there was no evidence that they used PFAS in order to make people sick, which is what the original commenter said
No, the said
> If companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up
Which has played out again and again in history. It's a lot cheaper to dump industrial solvents out the back door than pay for proper disposal, and if there's no legal repercussions stopping it, someone can just do it and watch profits go up.
If I run a business that produces pollution through a pair of smokestacks, and I know that the pollution is harmful and will give a few of the surrounding residents lung cancer, is that the same thing as intending that they will get the cancer? Or would it be reasonable for me to see the harm as an unfortunate externality that I wish could be avoided but can't be given whatever technological limitations there are currently.
So no, it's not 'exactly that'. You guys hate corporations so much that you are going a step beyond mere negligence and pretending that they are actually out to harm people as the very raison d'etre for their products, as opposed to the harm being a byproduct of their business. I'm not saying PFAS should be legal (they definitely shouldn't be); I'm saying it's lazy thinking that lacks evidence to suggest the harm itself is somehow the motivation, which is what the original commenter suggested.
Do you guys also think all the old asbestos manufacturers hoped/intended that their miners and others working with their sheeting would get mesothelioma?
I'm not sure why you keep spinning this as a valid response to anything.
This is the full quote of the parent:
> As for people getting sick and dying, they either don’t care, or they want people to get sick and die.
Lets break it down. Lets say some of your actions are causing harm, there's basically three options:
1. you don't know this is happening
2. you know, but continue because you don't care, and you can make money not caring
3. you know, and somehow this is beneficial to you, unlikely but possible
(The default option, which is always available, is to stop operations, which they have obviously also not done.)
Since DuPont obviously knew this was causing harm, #1 is out, so #2 and #3 remain. This is just deduction by elimination, not a value judgement.
No amount of spinning this argument is going to change this. I think your last line here makes it obvious who's straw-manning.
Sorry I don’t know who you’re grouping me with, but I don’t hate corporations. I hate people intentionally harming others for their own profit.
> Do you guys also think all the old asbestos manufacturers hoped/intended that their miners and others working with their sheeting would get mesothelioma?
Again, not speaking for a group here since I’m just some guy. But I think when evidence started to appear that “holy crap this is killing people like crazy”, then choosing to allow it to continue - yes is equivalent to killing people intentionally.
I don’t consider “disguising your killing through statistics” to be a reasonable defense. If I have 100 miners that I’ve hired in a room, and I know that 10 of them will die as a direct result of my actions, such as not taking precautionary safety measures… It doesn’t matter which 10 it is, I’ve still chosen to kill 10 of those people.
I wonder if you misunderstood what the commenter was saying. It isn’t that the goal of the companies is to make people sick as you suggest, it’s that the goal of the companies is to increase profits, and they don’t want concerns over people’s health to be a constraint on that goal.
Do you own shares in companies which are in the chemical manufacturing business? Or are you somehow otherwise invested in having ultra-lax environmental regulations? Genuine question.
The other explanation for not wanting to call a spade a spade is in the category of actually hating other people and wishing them to die a prolonged, painful death.
I own no shares, nor do I work in any industry that would be affected by this. I'm fully against PFAS and related chemicals being used in consumer/cooking products or being released in the environment. They should be outlawed and not used, end of story.
Now that that's out of the way, I don't think corporations are actively trying to make consumers sick so they can recoup the profits through their investments in the healthcare sector (or whatever insane conspiracy theory you guys are suggesting here).
This is the part I've been referring to from the original comment.
Also, once again, you should be careful how you use intention here. Even in the case where they knew about the harms or the risk, you can't impute intention without more evidence. Without that evidence, you should stick to negligence, since that's what it would be and indeed that is what separates a simple negligence claim from criminal negligence (intention).
If you say they intended to harm people or the environment, that's very different from saying their negligence or coverup resulted in harm to people/the environment. Intention is a subjective state of mind of the executives/board/'The company', and while it can be imputed in certain circumstances, it's a high bar. Dumping toxic waste somewhere because you think nobody will ever notice (which they did, in remote bodies of water), and then having some campers come along and jump into the water for a swim (which also happened), doesn't mean they intended to harm those campers or indeed that they intended to harm anyone. It was negligent but not obviously intentional. This really isn't hard to understand. It's also why there were never any criminal charges, not because the execs were long gone. In the US, corporations can be held criminally liable regardless of whether the original execs are still there or not.
> you can't impute intention without more evidence
If I’m aware that eating too much chocolate will kill my dog.
But it’s annoying for me to get up and walk to the trash can.
So I just throw the chocolate scraps to my dog to avoid inconveniencing myself.
Is this the same as wanting my dog to die? Being completely unbothered by the fact that I’m killing my dog sounds about equivalent to wanting it to die. I’m choosing to harm it to avoid a small inconvenience.
Maybe I would prefer it not to die, but I’m actively making a choice to do something that kills it, so really there’s not such a difference.
I mean, if we're talking about intention then yes there's a huge difference, that's the entire point.
But more to the point, your example is (as I'm sure you know) laughably simplistic. Cigarettes and PFAS play a probability game: the stats guys come to you and say, 'Hey boss, so if we sell 100,000 units of this product, there's a 20% chance than 5 people will be genetically susceptible to this particular novel molecule we're using, and 1 of them has a 10% chance of going on to develop bone cancer within 25 years. Should we sell it anyway?'
If you put it that way it isn't so obvious what the answer is. Most products have the potential to cause harm to some segment of the population. It's absolutely true that cigarettes and PFAS are two examples where the harms are much more rigorously established (especially with cigarettes, going back half a century), but the point stands: it's not a matter of chucking a chocolate bar at your dog. Again, you could plug the actual numbers in for the potential harms of PFAS and I don't think you'd be able to say that Dupont 'intended' to harm anybody, notwithstanding that they were clearly negligent.
PFAS were first determined to be harmful by internal industry scientists in the early 1960s, with documented evidence showing animal toxicity (including liver damage) and warnings of human health risks by the late 1960s and 1970s.
Whether I have a reasonable explanation for this change or not doesn't change the fact that that comment was a simplistic caricature. I never claimed to know the full answer. But I am nearly certain it doesn't begin with those evil corporations literally trying to make people sick. Merchants of Doubt, which is a great book related to this subject, is full of stories about how cigarette and PFAS corporations like Dupont pulled all sorts of shady shit to cover up the harms their products caused consumers. At no point has it ever been suggested, either in that book or anywhere else that I'm aware of, that corporations did it on purpose to make people ill so they could what, make money through the healthcare industry? Touch grass.
That's not the same thing as literally trying to make people sick, as the original commenter said and as I was replying to initially. Being negligent is not the same thing as being malicious; intent matters. Even if I try to cover up a harm, that doesn't mean the harm itself was my intention. If you guys can't understand the nuance there then I dunno what to tell you.
It's not negligence. Negligence is when you don't test product safety and ship an unsafe product without knowing it. You can reasonably argue this was the case in the early days of cigarettes.
If you continue to ship a product after you know it is harmful you are deliberately causing harm.
You clearly misunderstood what "if companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up" meant. It's not that the rich are poisoning people for its own sake and laughing manically to themselves. It's that removing regulations and lowering safety standards allows companies to recoup the money they were legally required to spend on upholding them, hence increasing their profits at the cost of public health. Which, I hope you'll concede, is a morally terrible thing to do.
Not sure how telling me to read a satirical work of fiction, by an avowed Socialist by the way, is particularly helpful here. I'm a fan of Orwell, but I don't think he'd have such a simplistic view of the actual (as opposed to fictional) world either.
if someone thinks Animal Farm is a "simplistic work of fiction" that teaches nothing due to its author being an "avowed Socialist", that's a pretty poor "fan" of Orwell. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism no matter what the purported ideology is.
You told me to go read a satirical work of fiction to understand why real life executives might make certain decisions. This is like telling me to read Lord of the Rings to understand, by analogy, what insert politician you hate here is thinking and how it's informing his use of policy.
Fiction is fiction. I prefer non-fiction for informing what I think about other (actual) people and their decision making processes.
Animal Farm uses metaphor to make statements and observations about non-ficticious events.
a non-fiction version of Animal Farm might be: "Authoritarianism is bad. Consider the case of the Russian Revolution leading to the rise and rule of Stalin. Imagine it's like the story of a farm taken over by authoritarian pigs: <insert existing Animal Farm text here>"
the word "fiction" here is doing work for your argument that it's not qualified to do.
the US Government is making the decisions they are in order to crush the population into submission. This is the simplest and most consistent explanation with many historical parallels and an approach (known as fascism) that is described by a tremendous amount of written literature, both academic and non-academic, fiction and non-fiction. The actions of politicians must be observed and the net effect of these actions forms the basis of the rationale.
> the US Government is making the decisions they are in order to crush the population into submission.
Now we have what you're really trying to get at here: some tinfoil hat conspiratorialising where the US government is out to mind control/'crush' its population (or something). At least if you aren't telling me to read a subversive Socialist novel instead of just saying it outright it saves us both the time of trying to figure out what you really mean. I get it, big oppressive authoritarian government bad.
Look, I'm not a fan of much that the Trump admin is doing (certainly not this), I've never voted for him (I haven't lived in America in 20 years), and I'm fully aware of the US government's long history of pulling dodgy shit vis-a-vis medical research (pretending to treat syphilis in black people, anyone?) Nevertheless, I don't see everything that happens in the world, whether it involving US law or even ethically questionable administrations), as necessarily emanating from farsighted and ingeniously devious governmental planning. If anything, the last 10 years have demonstrated that federal governments are less competent and more inept than we ever thought they could be in the modern Big Brother world.
this all just says you're not really reading much about what's going on right now, or you're only reading right wing news sources
there is broad consensus among academics and journalists who study/cover authoritarianism that that's exactly what this is. it has a predictable path. this includes that individual authoritarians don't have to understand what they're doing at all. Trump does what he does due to deep narcissism and other personality disorders, he can't even spell "fascism". He's an obvious ignoramus. Bur the effect is, authoritarianism. The administration's next moves can be predicted and understood based on the study of this phenomenon.
Someone making decisions “in order to crush the population into submission” definitely does have to understand what he’s doing. That’s what “in order to” means. Indeed, the public has to understand it too; how else will someone with a PFAS-weakened immune system know who they’re supposed to submit to?
It's a response to municipality associations' requests. People appear to have forgotten that Trump's EPA created these rules in his first term. Here is a summary directly from the organization pushing for this.
This is probably a big part of it. Environmentalists are not their voters. Basically attacking everything "leftists" are for, whether it's a good idea or not.
It used to be that environmental conservation was a part of conservative ideology, but MAGA isn't anything like what conservatism used to be in the US.
Are PFAS's a by-product of stuff like teflon and plastic production and the like? I know big oil is evil but I'm not sure that they're the boogieman in this case.
In this specific case, no they aren't the main villain. They are more the catalyst that turned the republican party into the anti-environment party (and thus anti-clean water).
The EPA regulating PFAS means it can also regulate the effects of fracking.
That's the context to understand how Republicans went from the Nixon party who created the EPA to today's party that hates all parts of the EPA.
Many european, asian and african countries benefited handsomely from exploiting other human beings and many of these countries have better environmental protection laws. So I don't think this is the reason.
While the reason is not stated, Occam's razor demands we look for the simplest explanation that ties together all actions of this administration.
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.
The reason is stated! The source article links to the request they sent to the court, explaining in detail why the EPA is doing this. Perhaps you think they’re not being honest, but Occam’s Razor doesn’t demand that we should spin grand unifying theories of government behavior in preference to evaluating the stated motivations of individual actions.
Look to a better source for some nuance. You may still disagree, and the court might as well, but there is more complexity here than "Trump bad, Zeldin worse, poison everyone".
Veritasium had video explaining about PFAS and environment protections that were needed to keep people/animals from being sick. Somewhere around minute 23 in video.
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
PFAS is short for 'Per- and poly- FluoroAlkyl Substances'. The Teflon that's used on your pans, which are 'poly-' materials, comes in extra long chains (hundreds of thousands of molecules). Most of its chemical bonds are hidden behind the extremely reactive Fluoride atoms (so if Fluoride is bonded onto that position, it's hard to take it off) and are extremely inert, so they don't interfere with typical biological reactions, thus are perfectly safe.
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.
C6 has a highly similar chemical property akin to C8 (it's a carboxylic acid, and has all atoms covered by fluoride), so is equally harmful.
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.
We’re going to end with a strong red/blue state divide on regulatory frameworks. I wonder if the vaccine guideline coalitions point to emerging regulatory consistency among blue states on this as well.
I like this actually - let different states try different things, and see how they work out. As the results become more certain, states will feel pressure to adopt the policies that are working well. And there's still room for different states to retain different policies that are better suited to them individually.
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.
Well pre COVID, Silicon Valley had one of the highest non-vaccination rates amount kids in day-care. So at least then it wasn't a red/blue thing at all.
I am suddenly quite bullish on California real estate. The “good people” will flock from all around the world so that they can be in one place with the other “good people”. It’s about shared values. California will be the last refuge for people around the world who have these shared values.
I assure you there are places in the world with good people and shared values outside of one state in one particular country. Pretty wild comment frankly...
> The Cookware Sustainability Alliance, an industry group formed by major cookware companies, urged lawmakers to oppose the bill.
“The proposal risks taking safe, affordable, and reliable kitchen essentials off the shelves, leaving customers with fewer options for the products they use every day,” the group said in a statement.
> 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.)
Do restaurants even use Teflon? I get the sense that most restaurants use stainless steel, carbon steel, or cast iron for practically everything, because nonstick pans will last all of a week under heavy use.
(And if you’re a good cook, you definitely don’t need nonstick for an omlette.)
In Sweden a local village near an airbase has been struggling with the long term effects of the PFAS from the fire fighting foam used in exercises. Although the connection to the awful health outcomes seems established I don’t think they are getting compensation.
The equivalent in the US is Vint Hill Farms, Virginia. Cold War CIA base used as a listening post primarily, but also to test things like fire suppression and rumored to be a home of Agent Orange. It was an EPA Superfund site (aka so horribly polluted that they needed to do something about it) decided to do nothing and then build a ton of home on and around the heavily contaminated area. I don’t have data but anecdotally cancers here are insanely high in prevalence.
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.
Zeldin in March[0], announcing climate change rule rollbacks:
> "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?
No. EPA merely concedes that the process used to establish the new rules was not lawful. TFA implies that EPA means to restart the rulemaking process and -presumably- make roughly the same rules as before.
At this point we should just create programs to promote RO filtration at home. If it's not lead then it's PFAS or some other thing. Then we have the issues with the chlorine and chloramine byproducts inhernet even in properly treated water - stuff that we already know as possible, probable, or known carcinogens.
It sounds like a great way to reduce the standard further with the justification that RO will solve the problems, leaving an even wider class divide having clean drinking water, creating haves and have nots in something so basic it's part of the table stakes to be considered a civilized country.
I say this knowing that many developed nations still struggle with this in specific circumstances, but it shouldn't be an issue nation wide.
I agree that a flat of water bottles a month is a poor solution, but giving every house and apartment dweller a free RO system and then ensuring those system are maintained seems highly infeasible.
Replacing the pipes can take years. There needs to be some sort of good medium-term solution. I think it's reasonably feasible to use bottles as a very short term solution while implementing the RO systems for a medium-term solution. It's possible that you could even focus on providing apartment buildings with commercial RO systems for the whole building if the pipes inside the building are not lead. The maintenance is not that much of a concern with the filter life indicators. It would seem the people who couldnt stay up on replacing filters would also not be able to plan for how many water bottles they need, meaning they likely have (or need to have) someone to help them with their life.
No, it is not a band aid, it is the gold standard for water filtration. And not all water issues stem from bad governance. Sometimes there is just unwanted minerals in the water for natural reasons.
The gold standard for air filtration might be a military grade gas mask or a compressed oxygen tank, but if everyone had to wear those to breathe the air outside, I'd consider it a band aid solution.
How is that a reasonable comparison? You don't have to carry the RO filter on your back. You think about it maybe a couple times a year when you replace the filter. Plenty of people use water filters every day. If you told them that was like wearing a gas mask whenever you go outside, they'd look at you funny.
Until you remember that now nobody is going to be able to drink water from restaurants or their workplace or the tap at the park. And that you can't filter the vegetables you eat that have been watered with contaminated water.
Keep in mind, these restrictions have nothing to do with the environmental pollution but only the water treatment. So those veggies would still be contaminated with or without the regulation. If we moved to a paradigm of point of use purification, then the park, work, restaurant, etc would all have filters too.
Because I have no say in the plumbing used to get the water from the source to my home. Some of that infrastructure is older than I am. Whole home RO systems would still possibly flow through plumbing I wouldn't be happy with. Undersink RO systems at the primary place providing water that I ingest seems like the best place for me knowing the details about the plumbing from this new source.
And how do you treat water that needs to travel through questionably maintained pipes without chlorine etc? Seems a much cheaper and efficient fix to utilize point of use filtration.
The pipes are also bad governance. If they are your own pipes you certainly can opt for filtration instead of replacing them but as I said sounds like a band-aid.
In Germany chlorine is used to treat water in the plant but it's removed before it goes into the pipe. There is a tiny residue but that's residue and not intentional to prevent issues with the pipes.
What does Germany use to manage microorganism growth in it's water distribution system? As I understand cloramine/chlorine is used to keep the small amounts of microorganisms that will always be present in water and pipes from growing into a problem while it travels/sits in the distribution system.
Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria with Czechia and Poland also transitioning to a high source-water protection and multi-barrier treatment like ozone, UV, and carbon filtration system.
Reducing pollution in the environment is good, but this discussion is about water quality mandates for drinking water. These are more at the water treatment facility level whereas reducing the environmental levels would happen upstream of this process.
This is what I find so interesting about the MAHA "movement". Kennedy is making some good (and many bad) points about food and nutrition. But then he is part of an administration that promotes pollution and wants to remove safeguards against chemicals that harm people. I have no idea how this is supposed to fit together but in today's political climate it's not necessary for things to make sense.
It’s hard to take Kennedy and the MAHA movement seriously about food and nutrition when they attack vaccines, which are basically as close to a home run you can get with medicine for saving lives.
Elections have consequences, many people say both sides are the same, but there's one side that constantly does things like this, on top of giving tax cuts to rich people that need it the least. Please go vote on 2028 if you don't want more of this.
Where we set our eyes don’t matter. The US electorate has shown we care more about “owning the libs”, “anti-woke” and what bathroom people use than our own health and welfare.
Absolutely no one who voted for this mess went in blind.
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.
One of my “friends” on Facebook who is a devout evangelical Christian that I went to school with between elementary school at a private Christian elementary school, a magnet middle school and she was one of the few white people at my majority black high school and even one of the fewer that didn’t segregate herself and made friends with everyone claimed that Charles Kirk was a good Christian and said I was insensitive for quoting his words after his death.
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.
I didn’t realize until after social media how a lot of people’s whole lives revolve around the community of the church and how lost they would be without their church community. That’s not by itself meant to be an insult.
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.
You didn’t need “sources of information”. Trump was in office for four years before he was re-elected. It’s copium to think that people aré ignorant when in actuality, they are actively hostile to minorities, non straight, the college educated and non Christians.
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.
I think it's rather the choice we are given at this moment in history. But I may be wrong.
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.
You're giving something away by suggesting that a balanced framing is: (1) destruction of our world, health, and lower/middle classes vs. (2) brown people bypassing an insane bureaucracy that prevents us from effectively receiving the tired, poor, huddled masses that we explicitly invite on the country's figurative doormat. You can be against the latter, sure, but suggesting these sides are anything close to equal is a choice.
I actually think he was telling the truth (from his pov). Conservatives see the world in a very us-vs-them fashion. Makes it very hard for them to even notice nuances like in-group enemies (nevermind actually deal with them). It sounds like an oxymoron.
Democrats correctly understand that immigrants are out-group benefactors. But they have blind spots too. We all do.
> Absolutely no one who voted for this mess went in blind.
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.
The presidential debates were the most watched tv last year beating out football. Trump was in office for four years. No matter how filtered the news is, people knew exactly who Trump was.
And one hundred million more people voted than watched that debate. And of the people that watched it, I’ll bet most people couldn’t name half the topics discussed that weren’t in their list of top voting issues. I’m not saying they were deceived or didn’t have access to the information, I’m saying that the things they didn’t care about were easily drowned out by what they did. That’s how the human brain works. Nobody’s seeking out reasons to dislike someone they’re excited about and being emotionally validated by. Saying someone supports something just because it didn’t stick out enough to kill their support for someone doesn’t make sense. That’s no different than saying anyone that voted for Harris because trans rights were extremely important to them also supports Israel’s massacre. The world just isn’t that black-and-white.
For a decade, the mainstream left has painted them like simple-minded maniacs foaming at the mouth driven by blind hate with no valid concerns or perspectives, while also fruitlessly attempting to not challenge them too much in the legislature, assuming that some day they’ll be kind and return our civilized decorum. We’ve simultaneously been marginalizing any populists that bubble up on the left, in a futile attempt to return to the Obama era status quo. We’ve seen where this approach takes us— repealed rights, messed up economy, etc etc etc.
Time for mainstream dems to challenge their assumptions.
Only ~60% of people eligible to vote in 2024 did vote with ~30% of eligible voters voting for the idiotscape we currently have.
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.
Because of the electoral college. It didn’t matter who didn’t vote. If 0% more people voted in Mississippi or Alabama and every single eligible voter voted in New York and California, it wouldn’t have mattered.
That's some bullshit. If everyone voted the electoral college would be dwarfed across the board. If 50% more people vote the difference won't be in just AL, MS, CA, NY -- it will be across the board. Stop trying to fuck with our elections by discouraging people from voting.
If 30% more people vote it won't just be people in "blue states". That's the goddamn point. It'll mean we, as a country, get closer to the things we have 60%+ agreement.
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 30% more voted in Alabama , Mississippi, Texas or Florida, do you think they would have voted democratic? Do you have any evidence that the demographics of people who don’t vote are disproportionate to the people who do in any of those states?
If you know anything about American history, despite what Michelle Obama says “this is exactly who this country is”
Well then maybe it's time to cut some dead weight from the left platform... Many centrists want clean water and sane society and bathrooms and woke ideology maybe needs to take a back seat in discourse for a while
Isn't this what they have been doing? What nationally prominent democrats are vocal proponents of progressive social policies now? I certainly don't remember harris running on any of the things being implied here.
> 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.
Harris lost the popular vote by less than 2%. I know that popular vote is not what gets a president elected, but you make it sound like nobody voted for Harris and the entire American electorate liked Trump's views and voted for him.
That's the thing. Trump would be eminently beatable if the democrats bothered running good candidates and had the courage to stand for something. But they are perfectly content collecting tons of money which probably goes to connected "consultants" who then spend 20 million on figuring out how to talk to people.
I think Harris was a good candidate who did stand for something, but she didn't get enough time to run her own campaign :)
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.
If Harris had been a good candidate she would have gone on different podcasts without hesitation. That’s where the audience is these days. Her TV interviews were so scripted and inauthentic it wasn’t even funny. Despite all these she almost got half of the votes so imagine how a more likeable and authentic candidate would have done.
It all started because Biden didn’t announce he wasn’t running again after the midterms and the Democrats tried to hide that he wasn’t losing his mental faculties.
> but there's one side that constantly does things like this, on top of giving tax cuts to rich people that need it the least.
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.
Kindly stop supporting a nation built on genocide and enslavement. The ethical path to engineering a system that's not intended to kill people is to stop it when it does and dismantle it, evolving the foundational principles used to design it in the first place. And to do all that without sacrificing more lives. Electoral reform is impossible because there's no way to say no to the entire system.
I live in the USA. You can put all your skills to work on designing systems of collective liberation to replace the existing systems of oppression this country was founded on & requires to persist. A collapse is coming, so now is the time to prepare so we have something liberatory to fill the predictable power vacuum with. The wealthy are already doing this.
The right managed to succeed with their electoral reforms. Gerrymandering is legal, and the president is now above the law.
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:
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.
As a democratic voter I don't like this either. I vote because I want rule of law. It's not as clear cut to me that discarding rule of law to beat the GOP is the best option. There is a chance they can be defeated without undermining having a functional electoral system
This went out the window as a viable approach when McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat. We’re at minimum-two justices being on the take, post a coup attempt with the leader of said attempt back in the Oval Office, and Republicans have already declared intent to gerrymander their way to victory with no roadblocks to that in sight. And this is not an exhaustive list of ailments.
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.
One possible solution is to get all the liberal/progressive voters to register as Republicans and run liberal/progressive candidates as Republicans. Built on the Eisenhower platform of 1956 and his record as a military commander. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-p...
Granted, it's not ideal, but coming in the back door may be necessary.
> get all the liberal/progressive voters to register as Republicans
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? :-)
It depends on the state (in some you can register as a democrat and ask for a republican primary ballot), but I did this so I could vote against George W three times. (If only we could have him again instead of Trump…). You can register for whatever party you want, but some states have early deadlines.
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.
They can be "defeated" that way in the sense of a classic Pyrrhic victory, exactly like in 2020, sure. That's the absolute worst out of all options available. "Losing" in 2020 would have been much better. You need to start thinking about the game, realpolitik, and the patterns that have been happening. And the long-term. You think you're thinking long-term by prioritizing the things you do, but it's the exact opposite.
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.
> 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.
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.
The most frustrating thing about leftists is their focus on tearing down and self-flagellation over actually doing anything meaningful to make the world a better place.
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.
Maybe it's not as dualistic as you portray things. I'm literally designing and building a system for collective liberation and meeting needs to replace systems of oppression.
Countless lives over the next decades are going to be lost due to decisions being made by this administration. Deaths and illnesses that otherwise would have prevented using existing frameworks and systems had they not been destroyed.
I don't understand why the left puts up with it. They are too easily distracted by hot-button issues. These are some of the most important issues facing the present and future of our civilization and biosphere. I wish I had a solution, or knew the step to take. I suspect one of the root causes is the narrative, e.g. from news agencies, is being controlled by the propagators of the problem.
Our system is not set up to be able to resist things like this. Once one party has control over all three branches of the federal government, all we can do at the federal level is wait for elections.
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.
The last time you voted in The United States of America may be the last time you get a vote in The United States of America.
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.
The human brain can not handle social media. It has melted our brains and completely controls the Main Signal with its algorithms. The right is better at controlling the media in such a system, and is ascendant. We live in meme world now. Nothing is serious. It's all just memes.
It does feel like this. I remember this moment clicking for me with my dads family who was typically more rational. "did you hear California is going to outlaw bacon now"; everyone laughs.
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).
Well, also our adversaries have a vested interest in tilting those systems toward MAGA in particular.
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.
The American left is one of the most impotent political entities.
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.
until people starting giving a shit to form alternatives, they're the only option that exists. Were not in a college classroom debating ideals, this is a real life triage situation
“The Left” as educated elites clustered in cities has and will always be fairly impotent (at least electorally, maybe not culturally)
“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.
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.
I agree with this assessment, and Mamdani's popularity in NYC provides some credence to this. Voters have wanted the Dems to move left since at least 2016, but the Democratic establishment routinely punishes those who aren't moving rightward.
Party has moved been moving left since Clinton. Clinton was more conservative than George W Bush. Balance Budgets(fired a bunch government workers), welfare reform,NAFTA etc.
The base has been, the representatives have been sclerotic. A good number of them came in with clinton and have had essentially the same politics as clinton.
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.
Identity politics. Rejecting identity politics for economic justice. Rejecting economic justice for economic revolution. It goes on and on. There are so many overlapping and contradictory purity tests among the various branches of the left, that meaningful opposition from the left is more of a coincidence than anything one can plan for.
The conservative masquerading as an independent blaming the left for fake issues of why as you can't support them. Trope is as old as time.
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.
Ha, I'm neither conservative nor independent nor particularly moderate. I'm firmly, vigorously left in ideology. It's delightful that your conclusion upon receiving criticism of the left's approach is that the speaker must be a conservative. Thank you for illustrating the purity test issue!
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.
A visible example is the ACLU questionnaire which covers support for transgender medical care with state resources for detained immigrants.
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.
You can agree or disagree with inmates having a right to medical care? That would require going to SCOTUS, at the very least. This right is well-established in the US.
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.
Yes, politicians can agree or disagree with policy. That is their job. E.g., “here is a good policy we don’t have which we should enact,” and “here is a bad policy we should get rid of.”
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.
That link refers to decisions made based the US Code and the constitution. Politicians write those. Courts have responsibility in interpreting them. It’s still a politicians job to take a stance and decide what they should be.
Correct, which as I said: "At least a SCOTUS decision," where "amend the Constitution" is a significantly higher bar to meet.
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?
> 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
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)
It wasn't a hill to die on. If it was she would have made support for trans rights a central part of her campaign. Trump made it a central part of his campaign.
"Never say anything that the right can play in an ad" is not my idea of effective campaign strategy.
It was a hill to die on in the sense that her campaign was getting killed and she said nothing. The ad was actively damaging her campaign so doing nothing was dying.
Frankly it read to me more like Harris had a totally moderate response that was blown up by the right as something she is a die hard believer in. No one is dying on the hill of trans rights except for trans people as far as I see on the political stage. Republicans talk way more about trans people than democrats. Republicans pass way more laws about trans people than democrats. Republicans raise way more money on trans people than democrats. Democrats literally don’t seem to stand for anything as a unified force: government shutdowns over roe v wade overturn, start reading Epstein files into congressional record, refuse to cooperate with a single republican bill until they get some red meat for their base. I haven’t really seen anything and I’m not even particularly leftist. I just can’t imagine a single time democrats threw a massive shitfest for red meat, but I hear it nonstop in republican spaces.
I agree that she had a moderate response. I think it appeared that she was dying on the this hill because she didn’t address it in her 2024 campaign yet it received so much air time in Republican ads.
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.
Do you believe that if she had gone on camera and said "I was wrong, trans people shouldn't receive this care in prison" that it would have stopped the GOP ad campaign? No chance.
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.
The people making up that appearance are actually republicans, though, and I think it is utterly bizarre to feed into that appearance as the fault of democrats. It’s the republican strategy to say and do extreme histrionic shit as red meat for their base and then blame the democrats for doing it.
I’m not sure what your point is. This still seems like a purity test. Whether democrats wanted it to be a purity test or not republicans were able to successfully paint it as one.
My point is that it is bizarre to blame democrats for making purity tests when republicans are making up purity tests. It’s like I deleted db in prod and then said how dare my co worker be pro prod db manipulation, when the co worker in question had stfu the whole time.
Because it’s framed differently. The Democratic base don’t consider themselves to have thrown a “shitfest” over Keystone XL, and don’t consider Biden’s day 1 executive order killing it to be “red meat”.
Biden day 1 executive order was over 4 fucking years ago. About a week ago a bunch of Koreans were rounded up and deported out of the country. Less than 48h ago republicans were saying the Charlie Kirk killer was a trans and his body wasn’t even cold yet. Cmon bro, these are not comparable. The democrats simply don’t do red meat shitfest fight stuff.
It's not comparable because you agree with the Democrats' positions! When it comes to immigration, for example, I'm sure you'd agree with me that Trump's efforts to end various TPS designations are "red meat shitfest fight stuff" - if he succeeds, he'll get to deport quite a lot of people. But Biden's extensions of those very same TPS designations (some of which have been "temporary" for decades now) weren't "red meat", because you agree with Biden that the designations are correct and the people protected by them should not have to leave the US. The Democratic base just isn't very interested in framing politicians as brave disruptive fighters for doing the right thing.
No I don’t agree with the positions I just literally don’t see them throw shitfest red meat for their base at all. Biden is over, bro, what are the democrats doing right now it’s been over 9 months. I hear things constantly from republicans about the trans issue, immigrants, etc. Seriously, point me to the same volume of laws being passed in blue states banning Christians books from school or something the way republicans are banning woke stuff from school. Or blue states banning white people or arguing white rich people need to be rounded up in camps the way republicans are doing to poors or immigrants. Idk. NYC has a ton of finance bros, arrest a bunch of them for being racist and declare you’re eliminating racism from nyc.
Again, the problem is that this concept of "shitfest red meat" definitionally excludes anything the Democratic base actually supports. The median Democratic voter doesn't want to ban Christian books or round white people up in camps.
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?
Yes I think this is fine red meat stuff. It’s probably less extreme of declaring the catholic hospitals to be murdering women by denying them care or whatever histrionics would be comparable but sure. Thanks. I just don’t see nearly the same sorts of things happening. Your example was from over a quarter ago back in May. Whereas I can point to stuff happening within 48h comparatively (again, calling Charlie Kirk’s killer a trans, although I think that’s the killer’s roommate now or something; either way pinning the assassinations on the trans people)
You're referring to very far left circles that definitely don't represent liberals or more moderate Dems. I agree though, those circles consist of single-issue voters (e.g. palestine) that harm actual progress.
Yeah the centrist dems— the vast majority of currently elected democrats— are really knocking it out of the park. It’s the tiny handful of actual progressives that snuck through the DNC’s fortress walls that are messing everything up with their pesky fringe principles… that also poll extremely well with the general public.
Moderates being the majority platform on both sides blaming their minority “extremeist” wing for their failures is step one of most US political debates.
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.
> tiny handful of actual progressives ... that are messing everything up
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?
… did you see how many mainstream popular national politicians came out of the woodwork to support Cuomo despite being the less popular candidate by a significant amount? Did you catch the coordinated drop-out/endorsement of Clinton in 2016 which killed Sanders’ lead? Did you see all of the people in the party rushing to make an issue of Mamdani supporting Palestine in a race for mayor of NYC which is definitely not near Israel or Palestine, physically or through policy, and legally can’t even interact with those countries as a delegate of the US? Yes there is resistance to progressive candidates from the DNC leadership. No, it’s not a conspiracy theory.
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.
I mean insinuating that a sect of a political party is “extremist” or “far” into some ideology because they see the current political atmosphere is futile is not discussing politics in good faith.
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.
The "Palestine" issue is single-issue on the surface, but it is often used because it is a succint way to package a broad set of desired foreign policy changes: more cooperation with the Islamic world, less aggression/hegemony, and less money fed to insatiable MIC.
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 reason we can afford it is due to our GDP. We aren't that far ahead of other developed countries when you look at it as a percentage of GDP. The real issue is our debt, for which the interest payments are almost as much as our defense budget while adding nothing to the economy. But neither side is serious about tackling this issue.
This is also a key part of it. People should explore the complexity instead of treating this as team sports. I think we have a genetic disposition to this sort of thinking, but can overcome it.
Rolling back PFAS protections would not simply affect "the other half of the team", it would affect everybody. If there isn't some context missing here, this is an action that would be ubiquitously unpopular, let alone when contrasted against the goals of MAHA.
Gerrymandering has no effect on the Senate or Presidency making this largely a non sequitur. Furthermore, administrators of independent agencies (such as the EPA) need to confirmed by the Senate. Up until 2013, appointees could be blocked by a minority with a filibuster. That rule was changed in 2013 by a Democrat majority Senate under Obama, to make it such that a simple majority could force through any appointee.
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.
This is true in a world of balanced power between Congress, the judiciary, and the executive.
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!)
hi there! i'm not sure you read the comment you're replying to!
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?
i mean the right literally voted for epsteins BFF and also the most prominent partner in child trafficking. Hiring minor under pretense of internship, drugging/spiking then and then trafficking them to private island. The difference between right and left is like night and day.
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
The left doesn't hold power in any branch of government right now. The most they can do before midterms is cause a government shutdown, but that can backfire unless messaging/demands are perfect.
Left wing politicians and media figures try to impact the media narrative (just like all media figures and politicians). It is part of the skill set. Like yeah, it would always be better for an engineer to get better at quickly understanding large codebases. Better for a soccer player to get better at aiming the ball. But that’s the game they are all playing, they are doing it as well as they can (in the case of left wing politicians, either they are bad at it or they are at some systemic disadvantage).
Being critical of the news is good, but I don't think we want the lefty equivalent of the "Do Your Own Research" conspiracy crowd.
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.
I agree. I wish there was a more organized "left" but from what I've seen it's just many many random groups that are not on the "right". If there was an organized left, then they should focus only on improving the well being of the average US family through improving the economy and healthcare to work for everyone. The left let's itself get baited into these culture wars. If everyone's lives improved then I believe a lot of these culture war issues would improve as a byproduct of a happier populace who would be more forgiving to those around them.
We are soldiers in revolt for truth,
And we have fought for our independence,
When we spoke nobody listened to us,
So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm,
And the sound of machine guns as our melody
> They are too easily distracted by hot-button issues.
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?"
The just-released MAHA report[1] mentions PFAS limits for drinking water to be enforced by EPA. Hopefully the unusually extreme contradictions in policy force a change.
I think because “The Left” in the US - The Democratic Party - is actually a big tent, center-left party with a lot of different issues and stakeholders. They look more like a political party has historically in the US (big, messy, inconsistent)
It's called anacyclosis. A long cycle that has repeated throughout history. The US is the final step before the cycle repeats, Ochlocracy or "mob rule".
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)
Short of some January-6th style insurrection, I'm not entirely sure what "the left" [1] could actually "do" here. I am absolutely not advocating for a January-6th domestic terrorism event, I think that would be a very bad idea, but I also have no idea what we could actively do.
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.
Normalize factual focused news that covers the topics that right (and center) news doesn't cover. This doesn't need to be biased and shouldn't be denigrating - I would like to believe that the liberal bias of reality is sufficient. Personally, I don't want to listen to angry people of any political bend. Name calling sounds childish.
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 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 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.
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.
They're also coopted by their donors and the thinking they can't be mean to their "colleagues", look at all the democrats saying they're "waiting for the republican party to come back". They want the same status quo they had in the past because it serves those already in power there, they can continue to collect donations and salaries if it all stays the same without doing much work.
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.
There is no left in America, in any historical or contemporary manner.
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.”
My friend pointed out yesterday that the left has lost its "evangelical spirit". It seems to have become political dogma that you can't persuade people to your side -- you can only turn them out to vote.
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?
I don't like him anymore because I think he's a perverted creep, but in the streaming space Destiny was reasonably good at this. I haven't watched him in years, but I remember reading about a few people that he managed to talk out of the more radical conservatism.
I’d add that the act of debate never convinces opponents, but serves as a performance which can make your ideas look good to an audience. Plenty of lefties do debates online, not to say that’s identical.
I think this is the core of the issue for the Democra)ts. Conservative groups are focused on figuring out what actions are effective in gaining power and executing on that. They don't shy away from unethical methods like spreading misinformation and gerrymandering. They've understood this for a very long time and have been planting seeds for decades, such as taking over AM radio to entrench a conservative mindset in rural populations.
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
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.
Currently, if there were any resistance, they would swiftly be gunned down in the street. Hasn't the orange goon made that clear enough to you? The problem is we didn't enforce justice after the civil war or the coup on January 6. The cult of domestic terrorists has a monopoly on violence.
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.
Are there any labs in the US that a regular joe could use to get their water tested? I’ve got quite a few properties with natural springs and I can send the water to get tested for bacteria and mineral content but I don’t know of anywhere that tests for PFAS.
Bit of research suggests even counter top filters help, though with very wide range of opinions as to how much it helps and which PFAS it does work against (there are thousands)
They do, but the vast majority of fluids the average person consumes comes in products made elsewhere, along with restaurants, etc. So you can RO your home water, but unless you don't eat anything made elsewhere, water your own crops, etc, you need comprehensive protections to avoid them.
> 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.
I'm not at all surprised that the majority of top level comments are saying things in the spirit of "Trump is trying to kill us to make money!" when if you were following along this _multi decade long regulatory battle_, and knew about the not-so-recent Chevron Deference rulings you could have predicted this. You wouldn't even need to leave HN to keep up, it gets posted here all the time!
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!
I understand that these dumb decisions are mostly profit motivated. But nobody stops to think that the reaction abroad may be: do not eat anything produced at USA?
Cane sugar and corn syrup are both just sugar. Your health isn't going to be any better drinking cane sugar coke than corn syrup coke.
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.
> The reason corn syrup is demonized is because it is cheap, enabling lots of foods to pack sugar without much cost.
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.
Incorrect. There is more fructose in HFCS used in Coke, HFCS 55. Fructose is metabolized in the liver, and stored as fat there. Glucose is directly metabolized by cells throughout the body.
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.
It turns out the acidic environment in most beverages inverts the sucrose in cane sugar to form a 50:50 mix of fructose and glucose. In the end, the fructose/glucose ratio in cane-sugar-sweetened drinks becomes similar to high-fructose corn syrup, which is about 55:42. And the reaction is quick: about half the sucrose gets inverted in about three weeks. [1]
Exactly. To remind us - it's the fructose which is a metabolic problem in amounts over a certain value - worth checking out why. Cane sugar and beet sugar both contain sucrose which is one glucose linked to one fructose molecule so you get half the fructose.
> Same for American coke w/ Cane Sugar instead of actual 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?
I'm American and I've decided at least with cookware that I'm only buying European made products. I don't have a choice with ingredients but at least I can buy European pots and pans knowing it's more regulated.
> US typically gets the cheaper and worse option (less safe)
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.
Perhaps they are strictly traditionalist and only accept beet sugar, and none of that new-world cane stuff that doesn't grow well in European climes ./s
That's pretty interesting. Were there different flavors in each country as well? My friend brought me some paprika pringles from iceland and they were delicious. So good that we ordered them online but the online versions shipped terribly and were delivered as pringles dust. I used it to bread chicken which still was pretty good. But if you are in iceland get the paprika pringles!
That is mostly because the same brand made for Eastern europe tastes like shit compared to the stuff for western. Worst offenders are nutella and coca cola. but there are many others.
If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
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.
I'm an American who's been living outside the US for a very long time. I always check where food is from at the grocery store before I buy it. Whenever possible, the US is one of a few countries where I avoid almost all ingredients. When it comes to meat, it's a 100% absolute refusal to purchase. The quality is so different that the taste is immediately obvious, and it's not good.
Yeah, but we’re doing great at avoiding mad cow disease recalls.
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.)
They can force foreign countries into importing by threatening tariffs. Though I guess they cannot force-feed it to international consumers in the end.
I think there’s a deep fundamental psychosis of the right wing to get the world back to “survival of the fittest”. If you die of PFAs, poverty, other pollution, well then that’s just bad luck for you.
They just don’t believe in a society that cares for the weak and needy.
Survival of the fittest should apply to businesses above anything.
If a business can't handle the regulations to not pollute water then it's a clear cut case.
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.
> Survival of the fittest should apply to businesses above anything. If a business can't handle the regulations to not pollute water then it's a clear cut case.
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.
>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.
>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.
What you say is true in general, but there are execeptions: for example, the Republicans judge the harm done by heroin, fentanyl, amphetamine and cocaine to be very high -- probably higher than the average estimate of the harm as judged by the Democrats. Ditto street crime.
My understanding (without data, sorry) is that the conservative position blames drug addiction on bad choices and evil, rather than circumstances. As well the focus is on authoritarian policing as opposed to “harm reduction”.
They will think this right up until these things affect them or their community. Then it will be someone else's fault--someone outside of their tribe--that it happened.
Dear god. Why is this administration actively trying to fuck everything up? Like, how does it hurt anyone to require companies to, you know, not fucking poison us?
If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
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.
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.
I have no doubt that the administration's motivation are weird and Russia-oriented.
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.
Dismantling the us in its current state would be a massive opportunity to gain more power/wealth/control/etc.
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
Sure but how much longer could it be the most powerful? There's a mass exodus of our scientists leaving to other countries where the funding is.
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.
Would have been better titled “EPA politicized leadership seeks to…”. I’m sure the actual workforce at the EPA doesn’t appreciate its hard work being trashed by the current leadership taking its orders from Trump and his minions.
It would actually be good if this Administration would enact capitalist free trade policies, because they often lead to more growth and better quality of life for everyone.
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.
Ever since you were born, the factory bagging the food you eat have been lubricated with PFAS. Also perhaps youve seen the HDPE label on plastic food containers? That’s fluorinated. Basically everything is and always has been. It’s only recently there’s been a move to say hey this is probably bad for us. We can stop. But it’s expensive and there’s no good alternative so things are just going back to the way they always were.
For those looking for the rest / other side of the story: the Trump EPA is actually the same EPA that established these PFAS rules to begin with. Municipal water associations have pushed back because they need more time to comply with some of the rules. EPA is responding to that, still adding additional requirements, but giving more time to comply with others.
Does anyone know why this is done? What is the reasoning here? Is this defendable in any way?
Any new regulation the EPA introduces results in litigation. Some of the previously introduced PFAS regulations weren't done in accordance with how the Safe Drinking Water Act says they should be (regulations were introduced without the necessary public consultation), so they're applying to partially vacate the previous ruling. Notably, they're _not_ applying to vacate the regulation of PFAS chemicals where they say the process was followed correctly.
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.
> So, the legal reasoning might be to cut their losses litigating to defend rulings they think they'll lose due to the administrative error.
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.
Thanks for this balanced take. This makes more sense.
There's a lot of outrage inducing judicial rulings that boil down to poor rule following. The main question winds up being: do we get to a good end point eventually or do these rulings look like steps backwards?
If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
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.
> If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
And why would they want to do that?
Bonus challenge: Without relying on antisemetic tropes
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...
just purely as a thought experiment and devil's advocacy: to create new avenues of growth and control for the oligarchy. The fall of the Soviet Union, for example, turned out to be a boon for them and they were able to replace the politburo with their own fiefdoms. By destroying the US goverment functions they will be able to privatize the profits (for their companies) and socialize the costs (pollution and shitty water) for the rest of the population. The price of clean water will go up and the people that can afford it will buy whatever anti-PFAS tech they're selling (providing growth for their companies), and the poor well...who cares. They will obtain greater leverage with the US government because they will be seen as saviors since the government will have no competent agencies left, including the military. And the government will helplessly cede more and more power over to them.
I think it's a combination of things.
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.
Balancing protection against water bills - https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-it-will-keep-...
What if instead we could all collectively agree that access to some amounts of fresh, running water is a fundamental human need? We figure a number, and the first N units are free. Additional units cost money, and perhaps you have two or three usage tiers where heavy users are disincentivized through additional cost.
You calculate the figures such that the higher usage tiers subsidize the costs of the basic needs users.
Or would that be socialism?
Well shit, we can really lower water bills by getting rid of all clean water regulations and simply stop water treatment.
Think of the cost savings!
Stricter (but not looser) standards can be imposed on state level. Canada has no binding national drinking water law, they leave it to territories/provinces to decide how to implement guidelines.
Watersheds don't follow political boundaries.
sometimes they do.
the Alberta/British Columbia border is defined by which direction water drains off the mountains
That sounds like the political boundary follows the watershed.
It also doesn't actually refute the actual point they were making.
I would guess normal corruption. Companies making a profit here simply fund the politicians in power and are getting their kickbacks.
Corruption is normally illegal. There is nothing normal about this legalized form of corruption. It is a core structural failure.
Most elected representatives are too old for this to affect them personally, and nobody else is a real person.
The answer is likely that the treatment is expensive, and most people aren't drinking tap water anyway.
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.
Is this a regional thing? AFAIK everywhere I’ve lived most people drink tap water. Certainly they cook or make coffee/tea with it. But I’ve been lucky enough to live in places with pretty good tap water.
Only about 25% of Americans drink straight tap water.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2022/05/ewg-f...
That's from a non-representative online poll for people already searching the internet for information about whether or not their tap water was safe to drink.
> 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...
Most people low and middle class people I have met my whole life drink unfiltered tap water unless there is a reason not to (safety or particularly foul taste). you might be in a bit of bubble. Not that it matter though as most bottled water is just bottled tap water anyway.
> Not that it matter though as most bottled water is just bottled tap water anyway.
With added microplastics!
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The buyer doesn’t know which company is responsible and which company’s suppliers are responsible etc. This is why we need legislation and enforcement.
Imagine another scenario. You are my neighbour. I spill some poison on the ground. Your child gets ill. Am I at fault?
The companies who care will fund 3rd party certification orgs that will check whether the standards are met. They do it already for car safety, responsible raw materials sourcing, recycled content etc.
If it is a feature the customers care about they will market it. But frankly customers just want a better price today.
This only works in competitive markets.
A number of markets have few competitors which means it's beyond easy for all the companies to externalize everything.
Further, some products have deep supply chains that are easy to mix. Consider copper as an example. A responsible company will want to use recycled copper as much as possible because it's cheaper. However, can anyone realistically validate that none of that copper came from stolen cables or bad mining practices?
No, you're falling for the efficiency market fallacy. Demand does not always create supply. Markets are not some type of super-classical computer, they are bound by the same stickiness as any NP-hard problem.
How do you suggest this is implemented for mains water supply? Should miles and miles of new water pipe be laid down for every new water supply company on the area and the customer is given a key from Water Corp to turn on their Water Corp supply valve and Water 4 U Corp sends a guy to turn off their valve?
Have you ever even paid a water bill in your life or spent a few seconds thinking about how water is actually supplied?
Are we just not teaching The Jungle, Silent Spring, etc… in school anymore?
Also, please enlighten me on where I can shop around for alternative tap water.
I’m being petty, and understand the linked article is more fear-mongery than what the actual situation is, but simply eliminating all regulation is not the solution, as history has shown.
The market isn't free, so it cannot decide - even Adam Smith was pretty freaking clear about this. And I don't mean we need less regulation, I mean companies have complete control over laws, whether or not there's an even playing field, and about their transparency to customers - there's no market at all.
Adam Smith's thought is more about 1 000 000 farmers farming the same commodity pototatoes
In 2025 winner takes all ans monopolizes all
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Also known as the, "I got mine. F*** you." philosophy. Maximize exploitation in the short run because by the time the long run comes around, they'll already be dead.
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.
Ironically, PFAS levels have been found to be higher in wealthy people. People with money own more furniture and clothing with stain resistant treatments, for example.
Also brand new items versus used items. When you buy a used item, someone else has already absorbed the PFAS, and the depreciation for that matter.
I'm not convinced that this is the correct answer. These policies also affect wealthy individuals and wealthy individuals want to be healthy (I assume).
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.
>These policies also affect wealthy individuals and wealthy individuals want to be healthy (I assume).
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??
This debate style is pretty frustrating to me. Use a talking point for the other side and act like it is why the reason it the decision is made. It really does not lend itself to getting to the root of issues and finding what compromise is.
In my opinion this added nothing to the conversation when in theory the op asked for a real answer.
I understand this may look dismissive or blamey, but sometimes (actually a shocking amount) there aren’t equal merits to both sides…
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.
Or the companies selling cigarettes. The only positive is that cigarettes alleviate the stress caused by being addicted to cigarettes.
There is also a social water cooler like aspect. Historically brakes were only provided to those that smoke so people took up smoking so they could get a brake. Some companies still follow this asinine ideology and do not provide brakes to non-smokers.
(You mean “break”, not “brake”.)
Yes, unable to edit to fix typos.
And no I do not condone smoking. It was to point out system design flaws in the business world.
So without smokers, there wouldn't be any workers rights at all?
Well, the facts are that this administration will always, without fail, without a single exception, do the opposite of what has been shown to be good for the US people. This isn't a property of authoritarianism either, no other authoritarian state is so uniformly across the board against science, medicine, and technology.
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.
The populist wave is global and its causes are complex. But in the case of the US on top of it all, our populists happen to be clowns and morons.
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.
Trump's EPA created these PFAS rules. Now re-read your comment and look how politically biased you are so much as to be seen as crazy.
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-...
It seems like the PFAS rules were set in prior administrations [1]. In fact, even in the article you've linked above, the text states:
> 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...
Absolutely.
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.
Trumps first term and his second term are entirely different beasts. His first term, although widely regarded as bad, still had mostly competent people across the board running things. This term is absolute lunacy, with tv show hosts cosplaying as government officials.
> 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...
You've lost sight of the comment I responded to, in which the poster asserts, in so many words, that there can be no explanation for easing any restrictions other than for profit and authoritarianism, etc. Right? Clearly there is an explanation if you search for a few minutes. So I stand by my allegations of bias against that comment specifically.
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.
Fair, but I'd like to clarify that in my comment I had asked specifically for any sources indicating that the PFA limits were put in place by the prior administration, since you had made the claim:
> 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.
The first administration had some people acting in good faith even if you disagreed with them. This second term does not.
Giving municipalities more time and money to enact change aligns just fine with what I think most people would call good faith. You just can't please some people, I guess.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that one side of a issue is not acting in good faith. If that's the case, compromise isn't really a viable option; trying to work with someone within a system doesn't work if they literally don't support the system itself. Obviously not everyone agrees that's what's happening here, but not everyone agrees with your premise that there's guaranteed to be some reasonable compromise to every possible issue either.
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).
It's not a debate style, this is the actual explanation.
Do you think you have a better one?
Ok, what is your counter argument?
I think it is just venting, rather than debate. Realistically we’re locked in for about a year and a half of full Republican control of every branch of government before literally anything at all can be changed (and even then the main achievable goal for the midterms would be for Democrats to take the House, right? Which gives them at least some ability to do some oversight, but is pretty limited).
Thanks for calling this out. I share your frustration.
As a non-american it's becoming more and more difficult to tell the two sides apart with all the shit flinging going on.
And this is in part why these things are happening.
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.
The media would have a much harder time collecting ad dollars if they didn't use strawman arguments and misrepresentation to lock in an audience.
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.
What are the current ideals of so-called conservatives? Being a libertarian who can entertain both left and right approaches to problems, I thought I had a decent handle on where they were coming from. But then they seemingly went bat-shit insane during Covid. I try to appeal to what I thought were some of the underlying values (eg belief in institutions, America as a force for good in the world, individual liberty, slow and measured change), and always get written off like I just don't understand or something. But never any explanation for what I'm actually missing. The best I've been able to come up with is that they've set aside actually living those values in favor of thinking that we need some massive societal cataclysm to get back to a place where those values have more of a draw, but that's clearly not itself conservative.
Im sorry if you’re naive about life but the Republican Party has shown nothing but contempt for life in general. Ideological coherency is not something they have cared about, hence debating them as if their arguments has any weight whatsoever is not useful.
Whenever they propose something, just ask yourself which lobbyist stands something to gain. That will be a sufficient explanation.
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these are fascistic decisions. fascism is well understood, and it is the root of the issue here.
a confused, sickened and desperate population is easier to control and manipulate. end of story.
This nonsense meta comment is pretty frustrating to me. Use a counter argument rather than wringing your hands and whining with no apparent critique other than “I don’t like that this person is being mean”
Take one step backwards. Do cockroaches debate with the boot heel that comes to squish them? The billionaires are not “debating” anything with the “little people”
You're assuming people in here want actual debate, when really the purpose of this comment thread is just a modern two minutes of hate session.
What's up to debate here? It's crystal clear: they removed important health regulations so that a few companies could make slightly more money not having to clean up after themselves. What's not to hate there?
It is frustrating. Rolling back forever chemical regulations is analogous to reintroducing leaded gasoline. Should we be expected to debate and weigh the pros and cons of leaded gasoline? Some things require nuance, but some things are clearly and unambiguously bad. PFAS have well known health risks, they're persistent, bio-accumulative, and linked to cancers and endocrine disruption. We should err on the side of caution. An angry reaction against this is justified. It's insanity.
That’s the argument—yes. Consumers are supposed to educate themselves about all the industries in their backyard before buying a house to make sure that none of them have ever dumped PFAS in the last 100 years. And also they need to move to a place where it doesn’t rain, because PFAS is also in the water cycle. If nobody does that then the free market has spoken.
The problem is people are so trained that there must be both sides to every issue and you must steel man every other debater when sometimes the guy is coming at you with a knife.
There's no two sides to deregulating every business to poison us all, its just profit over people in the most direct and obvious way. There's no complex plan, there's no 4d chess, its just a transparent power grab for ideologues that really have either no interest in the outcomes of their terrible agenda because it ends in power for them or are literally in the pockets of those who desire the end of America.
> The problem is people are so trained that there must be both sides to every issue
Other people are culture warrior and intentionally poison the well (pun nit originally intended) so their side doesn't look bad, because the discussion has devolved into an ideological spat and not about the topic at hand
> As for people getting sick and dying, they either don’t care, or they want people to get sick and die.
Healthcare providers and insurance companies are corporations too: you can get rich by treating more people.
An insurance company CEO was famously shot in broad day light just before he went into a meeting to celebrate his accomplishment of denying people healthcare for his company's profits. Nobody felt bad except other CEOs and the people they directly pay because everyone has a story of the insurance company putting profit over people. They did not get rich by treating more people.
USA HealthCare insurance companies are the _Death Panels_, run by CEO, accounts, and investors, that work to maximize profit over keeping people health. They pay _specialist_ to contradict the actual practicing doctors on why some procedure or medicine is needed.
A firm's sole responsibility is to increase profit and a maximize returns for shareholders. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
Wrt to insurance companies: You can get rich by insuring more people. Treatment is not profitable.
I'd argue the insurance companies prefer to collect premiums and not treat people.
Then you'd be wrong. Insurance companies are limited to the amount they can collect without paying back out.
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.
> Then you'd be wrong. Insurance companies are limited to the amount they can collect without paying back out.
So they go buy the providers and clinics and pharmacies so they can raise the prices and juice that percentage.
Also, there's likely to be a few years between the policy being enacted and people having health issues, so the chances are that the people pushing for this won't be around to catch the blame.
I don't get the environmental poison stuff. These rich people and their families breathe the same air and drink the same water as everyone else. Why would they poison themselves and their families with environmental pollution?
> If companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up.
I don't support the proliferation of PFAS in the environment, nor am I a Republican, nor do I even live in America.
Having said that, you should consider how asinine this sounds, and you should ponder whether the actual reason for this change in the law is more nuanced and less comically ridiculous than something so simplistic. I'm not saying the actual reason is a good one, but strawmanning every political opinion you disagree with is lazy and suggests an inability to use critical thinking about a world that is often quite complex.
Indeed, you sound like you're just as far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole as 'they' are, just on the other side of the political spectrum.
So why did Dupont and 3M cover up their own evidence of PFAS toxicity for decades? (This is a known fact. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever... ) Why did they do that, if not for their own profits?
They did cover it up. But there was no evidence that they used PFAS in order to make people sick, which is what the original commenter said. There's a massive difference.
You’re debating the difference between criminal intent to negligently harm and criminal intent to harm.
There is not really much difference from the perspective of those harmed, is there?
What does their perspective have to do with whether the distinction is real or not?
It's a matter of logic and also a matter of what is most likely to be true. The language used is obviously in relation to the rather important legal dichotomy between those two things; victims of PFAS toxicity and their opinions are irrelevant. What does matter is what the executives and people making the decisions at the corporations knew, thought, and intended by doing certain things, like covering up studies that demonstrated the harms, continuing to ship products they suspected were harmful, or suing whistleblowers to keep them quiet about putative harms. The original commenter was insinuating (I've quoted it throughout this thread) that the corporations were intentionally poisoning people, as if making them sick was itself a motive for shipping these products. Whether that is true or not is to be determined from the mental state of the executives I just talked about. There is no evidence I've ever seen that any of the corporations, like Dupont or Marlboro, ever intended to poison people and give them diseases for some underlying profit motive. To suggest they had was, as I said, lazy thinking and a caricature.
That certainly doesn't mean those corporations weren't negligent. But, as has been my point this entire time, intention is everything - intention is literally the entire difference between a murder charge and a manslaughter charge. It's not trivial at all. And imputing intention to cause harm (ie., the opposite of using Occam's Razor) because you dislike a corporation or person is just sloppy thinking.
> But there was no evidence that they used PFAS in order to make people sick, which is what the original commenter said
No, the said
> If companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up
Which has played out again and again in history. It's a lot cheaper to dump industrial solvents out the back door than pay for proper disposal, and if there's no legal repercussions stopping it, someone can just do it and watch profits go up.
> or they want people to get sick and die.
Actually this is what he said, and what I was referring to.
Its not what you quoted, and its also still not supporting your point (it starts with or, maybe there's something before the or?).
Isn’t “doing something that causes people to get sick and die for your own small financial gain” exactly that?
If I run a business that produces pollution through a pair of smokestacks, and I know that the pollution is harmful and will give a few of the surrounding residents lung cancer, is that the same thing as intending that they will get the cancer? Or would it be reasonable for me to see the harm as an unfortunate externality that I wish could be avoided but can't be given whatever technological limitations there are currently.
So no, it's not 'exactly that'. You guys hate corporations so much that you are going a step beyond mere negligence and pretending that they are actually out to harm people as the very raison d'etre for their products, as opposed to the harm being a byproduct of their business. I'm not saying PFAS should be legal (they definitely shouldn't be); I'm saying it's lazy thinking that lacks evidence to suggest the harm itself is somehow the motivation, which is what the original commenter suggested.
Do you guys also think all the old asbestos manufacturers hoped/intended that their miners and others working with their sheeting would get mesothelioma?
I'm not sure why you keep spinning this as a valid response to anything.
This is the full quote of the parent: > As for people getting sick and dying, they either don’t care, or they want people to get sick and die.
Lets break it down. Lets say some of your actions are causing harm, there's basically three options: 1. you don't know this is happening 2. you know, but continue because you don't care, and you can make money not caring 3. you know, and somehow this is beneficial to you, unlikely but possible
(The default option, which is always available, is to stop operations, which they have obviously also not done.)
Since DuPont obviously knew this was causing harm, #1 is out, so #2 and #3 remain. This is just deduction by elimination, not a value judgement.
No amount of spinning this argument is going to change this. I think your last line here makes it obvious who's straw-manning.
> You guys hate corporations so much
Sorry I don’t know who you’re grouping me with, but I don’t hate corporations. I hate people intentionally harming others for their own profit.
> Do you guys also think all the old asbestos manufacturers hoped/intended that their miners and others working with their sheeting would get mesothelioma?
Again, not speaking for a group here since I’m just some guy. But I think when evidence started to appear that “holy crap this is killing people like crazy”, then choosing to allow it to continue - yes is equivalent to killing people intentionally.
I don’t consider “disguising your killing through statistics” to be a reasonable defense. If I have 100 miners that I’ve hired in a room, and I know that 10 of them will die as a direct result of my actions, such as not taking precautionary safety measures… It doesn’t matter which 10 it is, I’ve still chosen to kill 10 of those people.
I wonder if you misunderstood what the commenter was saying. It isn’t that the goal of the companies is to make people sick as you suggest, it’s that the goal of the companies is to increase profits, and they don’t want concerns over people’s health to be a constraint on that goal.
Do you own shares in companies which are in the chemical manufacturing business? Or are you somehow otherwise invested in having ultra-lax environmental regulations? Genuine question.
The other explanation for not wanting to call a spade a spade is in the category of actually hating other people and wishing them to die a prolonged, painful death.
I own no shares, nor do I work in any industry that would be affected by this. I'm fully against PFAS and related chemicals being used in consumer/cooking products or being released in the environment. They should be outlawed and not used, end of story.
Now that that's out of the way, I don't think corporations are actively trying to make consumers sick so they can recoup the profits through their investments in the healthcare sector (or whatever insane conspiracy theory you guys are suggesting here).
1. The executives know that chemicals are poisonous to wildlife, plants and humans
2. The executives don’t care because proper disposal would be costly and they are heavily incentivized to increase profits as much as possible
3. Executives order chemicals to be dumped or vented into the environment
4. Company gets caught
5. Executives order a coverup
6. Company eventually pays for cleanup, but the executives are already long gone
7. Nobody goes to jail
What part of this scenario is not intentionally poisoning people?
> or they want people to get sick and die.
This is the part I've been referring to from the original comment.
Also, once again, you should be careful how you use intention here. Even in the case where they knew about the harms or the risk, you can't impute intention without more evidence. Without that evidence, you should stick to negligence, since that's what it would be and indeed that is what separates a simple negligence claim from criminal negligence (intention).
If you say they intended to harm people or the environment, that's very different from saying their negligence or coverup resulted in harm to people/the environment. Intention is a subjective state of mind of the executives/board/'The company', and while it can be imputed in certain circumstances, it's a high bar. Dumping toxic waste somewhere because you think nobody will ever notice (which they did, in remote bodies of water), and then having some campers come along and jump into the water for a swim (which also happened), doesn't mean they intended to harm those campers or indeed that they intended to harm anyone. It was negligent but not obviously intentional. This really isn't hard to understand. It's also why there were never any criminal charges, not because the execs were long gone. In the US, corporations can be held criminally liable regardless of whether the original execs are still there or not.
> you can't impute intention without more evidence
If I’m aware that eating too much chocolate will kill my dog.
But it’s annoying for me to get up and walk to the trash can.
So I just throw the chocolate scraps to my dog to avoid inconveniencing myself.
Is this the same as wanting my dog to die? Being completely unbothered by the fact that I’m killing my dog sounds about equivalent to wanting it to die. I’m choosing to harm it to avoid a small inconvenience.
Maybe I would prefer it not to die, but I’m actively making a choice to do something that kills it, so really there’s not such a difference.
I mean, if we're talking about intention then yes there's a huge difference, that's the entire point.
But more to the point, your example is (as I'm sure you know) laughably simplistic. Cigarettes and PFAS play a probability game: the stats guys come to you and say, 'Hey boss, so if we sell 100,000 units of this product, there's a 20% chance than 5 people will be genetically susceptible to this particular novel molecule we're using, and 1 of them has a 10% chance of going on to develop bone cancer within 25 years. Should we sell it anyway?'
If you put it that way it isn't so obvious what the answer is. Most products have the potential to cause harm to some segment of the population. It's absolutely true that cigarettes and PFAS are two examples where the harms are much more rigorously established (especially with cigarettes, going back half a century), but the point stands: it's not a matter of chucking a chocolate bar at your dog. Again, you could plug the actual numbers in for the potential harms of PFAS and I don't think you'd be able to say that Dupont 'intended' to harm anybody, notwithstanding that they were clearly negligent.
PFAS were first determined to be harmful by internal industry scientists in the early 1960s, with documented evidence showing animal toxicity (including liver damage) and warnings of human health risks by the late 1960s and 1970s.
What's your reasonable explanation, then? A whole lot of words for saying nothing.
Whether I have a reasonable explanation for this change or not doesn't change the fact that that comment was a simplistic caricature. I never claimed to know the full answer. But I am nearly certain it doesn't begin with those evil corporations literally trying to make people sick. Merchants of Doubt, which is a great book related to this subject, is full of stories about how cigarette and PFAS corporations like Dupont pulled all sorts of shady shit to cover up the harms their products caused consumers. At no point has it ever been suggested, either in that book or anywhere else that I'm aware of, that corporations did it on purpose to make people ill so they could what, make money through the healthcare industry? Touch grass.
DuPont pulled shady shit because executives were heavily incentivized to maximize profits in the short term.
Ok? No shit?
That's not the same thing as literally trying to make people sick, as the original commenter said and as I was replying to initially. Being negligent is not the same thing as being malicious; intent matters. Even if I try to cover up a harm, that doesn't mean the harm itself was my intention. If you guys can't understand the nuance there then I dunno what to tell you.
Leaving a valve open by mistake and accidentally venting toxic gas into the neighborhood is negligence.
Ordering the valve be opened is malicious.
It's not negligence. Negligence is when you don't test product safety and ship an unsafe product without knowing it. You can reasonably argue this was the case in the early days of cigarettes.
If you continue to ship a product after you know it is harmful you are deliberately causing harm.
You clearly misunderstood what "if companies can freely poison everyone, profits go up" meant. It's not that the rich are poisoning people for its own sake and laughing manically to themselves. It's that removing regulations and lowering safety standards allows companies to recoup the money they were legally required to spend on upholding them, hence increasing their profits at the cost of public health. Which, I hope you'll concede, is a morally terrible thing to do.
read Orwell's "Animal Farm".
then ask yourself if the pigs had any "nuance" to what they were doing.
Not sure how telling me to read a satirical work of fiction, by an avowed Socialist by the way, is particularly helpful here. I'm a fan of Orwell, but I don't think he'd have such a simplistic view of the actual (as opposed to fictional) world either.
if someone thinks Animal Farm is a "simplistic work of fiction" that teaches nothing due to its author being an "avowed Socialist", that's a pretty poor "fan" of Orwell. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism no matter what the purported ideology is.
You told me to go read a satirical work of fiction to understand why real life executives might make certain decisions. This is like telling me to read Lord of the Rings to understand, by analogy, what insert politician you hate here is thinking and how it's informing his use of policy.
Fiction is fiction. I prefer non-fiction for informing what I think about other (actual) people and their decision making processes.
Animal Farm uses metaphor to make statements and observations about non-ficticious events.
a non-fiction version of Animal Farm might be: "Authoritarianism is bad. Consider the case of the Russian Revolution leading to the rise and rule of Stalin. Imagine it's like the story of a farm taken over by authoritarian pigs: <insert existing Animal Farm text here>"
the word "fiction" here is doing work for your argument that it's not qualified to do.
the US Government is making the decisions they are in order to crush the population into submission. This is the simplest and most consistent explanation with many historical parallels and an approach (known as fascism) that is described by a tremendous amount of written literature, both academic and non-academic, fiction and non-fiction. The actions of politicians must be observed and the net effect of these actions forms the basis of the rationale.
> the US Government is making the decisions they are in order to crush the population into submission.
Now we have what you're really trying to get at here: some tinfoil hat conspiratorialising where the US government is out to mind control/'crush' its population (or something). At least if you aren't telling me to read a subversive Socialist novel instead of just saying it outright it saves us both the time of trying to figure out what you really mean. I get it, big oppressive authoritarian government bad.
Look, I'm not a fan of much that the Trump admin is doing (certainly not this), I've never voted for him (I haven't lived in America in 20 years), and I'm fully aware of the US government's long history of pulling dodgy shit vis-a-vis medical research (pretending to treat syphilis in black people, anyone?) Nevertheless, I don't see everything that happens in the world, whether it involving US law or even ethically questionable administrations), as necessarily emanating from farsighted and ingeniously devious governmental planning. If anything, the last 10 years have demonstrated that federal governments are less competent and more inept than we ever thought they could be in the modern Big Brother world.
this all just says you're not really reading much about what's going on right now, or you're only reading right wing news sources
there is broad consensus among academics and journalists who study/cover authoritarianism that that's exactly what this is. it has a predictable path. this includes that individual authoritarians don't have to understand what they're doing at all. Trump does what he does due to deep narcissism and other personality disorders, he can't even spell "fascism". He's an obvious ignoramus. Bur the effect is, authoritarianism. The administration's next moves can be predicted and understood based on the study of this phenomenon.
Someone making decisions “in order to crush the population into submission” definitely does have to understand what he’s doing. That’s what “in order to” means. Indeed, the public has to understand it too; how else will someone with a PFAS-weakened immune system know who they’re supposed to submit to?
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It's a response to municipality associations' requests. People appear to have forgotten that Trump's EPA created these rules in his first term. Here is a summary directly from the organization pushing for this.
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
Trump's EPA introduces new rules: i sleep
Trump's EPA pulls back the rules they themselves introduced: "This is proof Donald Trump is trying to weaken this country"
Yeah. LOL. They aren't even pulling them back, they are delaying them to allow time for municipalities to get funding and come into compliance.
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This is probably a big part of it. Environmentalists are not their voters. Basically attacking everything "leftists" are for, whether it's a good idea or not.
It used to be that environmental conservation was a part of conservative ideology, but MAGA isn't anything like what conservatism used to be in the US.
Wasn't the EPA started by Nixon? Why are they so against it? It doesn't seem like some hyper-woke thing to me, but I guess I'm a dumb lefty.
Because big oil money juices right wing media and guess what industry finds keeping water and air clean to be a negative in their bottom line?
Get enough money and you can buy a party position.
Are PFAS's a by-product of stuff like teflon and plastic production and the like? I know big oil is evil but I'm not sure that they're the boogieman in this case.
In this specific case, no they aren't the main villain. They are more the catalyst that turned the republican party into the anti-environment party (and thus anti-clean water).
The EPA regulating PFAS means it can also regulate the effects of fracking.
That's the context to understand how Republicans went from the Nixon party who created the EPA to today's party that hates all parts of the EPA.
Yeah, no argument there. Spending decades trying to undermine the EPA has other consequences.
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Many european, asian and african countries benefited handsomely from exploiting other human beings and many of these countries have better environmental protection laws. So I don't think this is the reason.
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While the reason is not stated, Occam's razor demands we look for the simplest explanation that ties together all actions of this administration.
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.
If you want to know, just look at the list of nations exempt from the current tariffs.
The reason is stated! The source article links to the request they sent to the court, explaining in detail why the EPA is doing this. Perhaps you think they’re not being honest, but Occam’s Razor doesn’t demand that we should spin grand unifying theories of government behavior in preference to evaluating the stated motivations of individual actions.
Look to a better source for some nuance. You may still disagree, and the court might as well, but there is more complexity here than "Trump bad, Zeldin worse, poison everyone".
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/us-seek...
As EU and it's love of regulation demonstrated - you can regulate too much, with harmful effects.
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)
Veritasium had video explaining about PFAS and environment protections that were needed to keep people/animals from being sick. Somewhere around minute 23 in video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC2eSujzrUY
Minute Earth has one that’s more concise: https://youtu.be/H3aFzQdWQTg
What a muddled video
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!)
PFAS is short for 'Per- and poly- FluoroAlkyl Substances'. The Teflon that's used on your pans, which are 'poly-' materials, comes in extra long chains (hundreds of thousands of molecules). Most of its chemical bonds are hidden behind the extremely reactive Fluoride atoms (so if Fluoride is bonded onto that position, it's hard to take it off) and are extremely inert, so they don't interfere with typical biological reactions, thus are perfectly safe.
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:
C6 has a highly similar chemical property akin to C8 (it's a carboxylic acid, and has all atoms covered by fluoride), so is equally harmful.So TL;DR,
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.
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The State of California is moving in the exact opposite direction: banning these things completely.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/california-lawmakers-propos...
We’re going to end with a strong red/blue state divide on regulatory frameworks. I wonder if the vaccine guideline coalitions point to emerging regulatory consistency among blue states on this as well.
I like this actually - let different states try different things, and see how they work out. As the results become more certain, states will feel pressure to adopt the policies that are working well. And there's still room for different states to retain different policies that are better suited to them individually.
Going to? We do. Virtually all red states are poor, uneducated and unhealthy compared to blue states.
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.
Well pre COVID, Silicon Valley had one of the highest non-vaccination rates amount kids in day-care. So at least then it wasn't a red/blue thing at all.
That could lend itself well to studies about the effects of some of these regulations. Maybe not the most ethical way to approach this, though.
I am suddenly quite bullish on California real estate. The “good people” will flock from all around the world so that they can be in one place with the other “good people”. It’s about shared values. California will be the last refuge for people around the world who have these shared values.
> California will be the last refuge for people around the world who have these shared values.
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.
> for people around the world who have these shared values
The US of A are not "the World".
There are countless places around the World that make California look like a conservatism heaven.
What about EU
I assure you there are places in the world with good people and shared values outside of one state in one particular country. Pretty wild comment frankly...
> The Cookware Sustainability Alliance, an industry group formed by major cookware companies, urged lawmakers to oppose the bill. “The proposal risks taking safe, affordable, and reliable kitchen essentials off the shelves, leaving customers with fewer options for the products they use every day,” the group said in a statement.
> 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.)
Do restaurants even use Teflon? I get the sense that most restaurants use stainless steel, carbon steel, or cast iron for practically everything, because nonstick pans will last all of a week under heavy use.
(And if you’re a good cook, you definitely don’t need nonstick for an omlette.)
I’ve seen Teflon-looking omelette pans at diners and hotels quite frequently.
In Sweden a local village near an airbase has been struggling with the long term effects of the PFAS from the fire fighting foam used in exercises. Although the connection to the awful health outcomes seems established I don’t think they are getting compensation.
The equivalent in the US is Vint Hill Farms, Virginia. Cold War CIA base used as a listening post primarily, but also to test things like fire suppression and rumored to be a home of Agent Orange. It was an EPA Superfund site (aka so horribly polluted that they needed to do something about it) decided to do nothing and then build a ton of home on and around the heavily contaminated area. I don’t have data but anecdotally cancers here are insanely high in prevalence.
From the UK, the island of Jersey: https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news/focus-government-legal...
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.
So the Environmental Protection Agency is now asking the courts to help them... not protect us?
Zeldin in March[0], announcing climate change rule rollbacks:
> "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...
No. EPA merely concedes that the process used to establish the new rules was not lawful. TFA implies that EPA means to restart the rulemaking process and -presumably- make roughly the same rules as before.
At this point we should just create programs to promote RO filtration at home. If it's not lead then it's PFAS or some other thing. Then we have the issues with the chlorine and chloramine byproducts inhernet even in properly treated water - stuff that we already know as possible, probable, or known carcinogens.
Sounds like a band-aid solution for bad governance.
It sounds like a great way to reduce the standard further with the justification that RO will solve the problems, leaving an even wider class divide having clean drinking water, creating haves and have nots in something so basic it's part of the table stakes to be considered a civilized country.
I say this knowing that many developed nations still struggle with this in specific circumstances, but it shouldn't be an issue nation wide.
Hence the part about programs to help facilitate it. I'd rather see RO systems being handed out in Flint, MI vs cases of bottled water for months.
I agree that a flat of water bottles a month is a poor solution, but giving every house and apartment dweller a free RO system and then ensuring those system are maintained seems highly infeasible.
Replacing the pipes can take years. There needs to be some sort of good medium-term solution. I think it's reasonably feasible to use bottles as a very short term solution while implementing the RO systems for a medium-term solution. It's possible that you could even focus on providing apartment buildings with commercial RO systems for the whole building if the pipes inside the building are not lead. The maintenance is not that much of a concern with the filter life indicators. It would seem the people who couldnt stay up on replacing filters would also not be able to plan for how many water bottles they need, meaning they likely have (or need to have) someone to help them with their life.
No, it is not a band aid, it is the gold standard for water filtration. And not all water issues stem from bad governance. Sometimes there is just unwanted minerals in the water for natural reasons.
Like all of those yummy chemicals introduced to your well water after your neighbors allowed gas wells to be drilled on their property.
The gold standard for air filtration might be a military grade gas mask or a compressed oxygen tank, but if everyone had to wear those to breathe the air outside, I'd consider it a band aid solution.
How is that a reasonable comparison? You don't have to carry the RO filter on your back. You think about it maybe a couple times a year when you replace the filter. Plenty of people use water filters every day. If you told them that was like wearing a gas mask whenever you go outside, they'd look at you funny.
I still don't understand why you would opt for individual home filter systems. Doesn't make sense if you are not off the grid.
Until you remember that now nobody is going to be able to drink water from restaurants or their workplace or the tap at the park. And that you can't filter the vegetables you eat that have been watered with contaminated water.
Keep in mind, these restrictions have nothing to do with the environmental pollution but only the water treatment. So those veggies would still be contaminated with or without the regulation. If we moved to a paradigm of point of use purification, then the park, work, restaurant, etc would all have filters too.
I can't follow why would you opt for filtration in individual homes?
Because I have no say in the plumbing used to get the water from the source to my home. Some of that infrastructure is older than I am. Whole home RO systems would still possibly flow through plumbing I wouldn't be happy with. Undersink RO systems at the primary place providing water that I ingest seems like the best place for me knowing the details about the plumbing from this new source.
Just use your own well! Sheesh.
And drink the chenicals that have leeched in from all of the fracking going on? Not without me RO filter.
That's also a bad governance problem.
To eliminate the distribution network risks.
And how do you treat water that needs to travel through questionably maintained pipes without chlorine etc? Seems a much cheaper and efficient fix to utilize point of use filtration.
The pipes are also bad governance. If they are your own pipes you certainly can opt for filtration instead of replacing them but as I said sounds like a band-aid.
Show me a nation with perfectly maintained pipes that doesn't use chlorine etc. If you can't show me that, then your proposed solution is invalid.
In Germany chlorine is used to treat water in the plant but it's removed before it goes into the pipe. There is a tiny residue but that's residue and not intentional to prevent issues with the pipes.
What does Germany use to manage microorganism growth in it's water distribution system? As I understand cloramine/chlorine is used to keep the small amounts of microorganisms that will always be present in water and pipes from growing into a problem while it travels/sits in the distribution system.
https://utilityweek.co.uk/the-future-of-chlorine/
If there is residue of the chlorine then wouldnt there be residue of the harmful compounds it reacts to create?
Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria with Czechia and Poland also transitioning to a high source-water protection and multi-barrier treatment like ozone, UV, and carbon filtration system.
True but doesn’t PFAS impact ecosystems and agriculture as well?
Reducing pollution in the environment is good, but this discussion is about water quality mandates for drinking water. These are more at the water treatment facility level whereas reducing the environmental levels would happen upstream of this process.
That's such a good idea. Why didn't the people of Flint, Michigan just do that in their homes? /s
This is what I find so interesting about the MAHA "movement". Kennedy is making some good (and many bad) points about food and nutrition. But then he is part of an administration that promotes pollution and wants to remove safeguards against chemicals that harm people. I have no idea how this is supposed to fit together but in today's political climate it's not necessary for things to make sense.
It’s hard to take Kennedy and the MAHA movement seriously about food and nutrition when they attack vaccines, which are basically as close to a home run you can get with medicine for saving lives.
Elections have consequences, many people say both sides are the same, but there's one side that constantly does things like this, on top of giving tax cuts to rich people that need it the least. Please go vote on 2028 if you don't want more of this.
Let’s set our eyes on 2026 first, so that we can end this madness sooner.
Where we set our eyes don’t matter. The US electorate has shown we care more about “owning the libs”, “anti-woke” and what bathroom people use than our own health and welfare.
Absolutely no one who voted for this mess went in blind.
They absolutely did, because many listen to the absokutely rank propaganda the right puts out and seek no real sources of information.
If they went in blind, they chose to.
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.
One of my “friends” on Facebook who is a devout evangelical Christian that I went to school with between elementary school at a private Christian elementary school, a magnet middle school and she was one of the few white people at my majority black high school and even one of the fewer that didn’t segregate herself and made friends with everyone claimed that Charles Kirk was a good Christian and said I was insensitive for quoting his words after his death.
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.
It's actually about tribal belonging.
https://bigthink.com/articles/how-tribalism-overrules-reason...
I didn’t realize until after social media how a lot of people’s whole lives revolve around the community of the church and how lost they would be without their church community. That’s not by itself meant to be an insult.
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.
But they were open about wanting to do this stuff.
They were extremely open. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
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
You didn’t need “sources of information”. Trump was in office for four years before he was re-elected. It’s copium to think that people aré ignorant when in actuality, they are actively hostile to minorities, non straight, the college educated and non Christians.
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.
I think it's rather the choice we are given at this moment in history. But I may be wrong.
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.
You're giving something away by suggesting that a balanced framing is: (1) destruction of our world, health, and lower/middle classes vs. (2) brown people bypassing an insane bureaucracy that prevents us from effectively receiving the tired, poor, huddled masses that we explicitly invite on the country's figurative doormat. You can be against the latter, sure, but suggesting these sides are anything close to equal is a choice.
Do you think we're stupid here?
I actually think he was telling the truth (from his pov). Conservatives see the world in a very us-vs-them fashion. Makes it very hard for them to even notice nuances like in-group enemies (nevermind actually deal with them). It sounds like an oxymoron.
Democrats correctly understand that immigrants are out-group benefactors. But they have blind spots too. We all do.
> Absolutely no one who voted for this mess went in blind.
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.
The presidential debates were the most watched tv last year beating out football. Trump was in office for four years. No matter how filtered the news is, people knew exactly who Trump was.
And one hundred million more people voted than watched that debate. And of the people that watched it, I’ll bet most people couldn’t name half the topics discussed that weren’t in their list of top voting issues. I’m not saying they were deceived or didn’t have access to the information, I’m saying that the things they didn’t care about were easily drowned out by what they did. That’s how the human brain works. Nobody’s seeking out reasons to dislike someone they’re excited about and being emotionally validated by. Saying someone supports something just because it didn’t stick out enough to kill their support for someone doesn’t make sense. That’s no different than saying anyone that voted for Harris because trans rights were extremely important to them also supports Israel’s massacre. The world just isn’t that black-and-white.
We see that Trump is about a cult of personality. They didn’t care about the “issues”. He hates the sane people they hate
For a decade, the mainstream left has painted them like simple-minded maniacs foaming at the mouth driven by blind hate with no valid concerns or perspectives, while also fruitlessly attempting to not challenge them too much in the legislature, assuming that some day they’ll be kind and return our civilized decorum. We’ve simultaneously been marginalizing any populists that bubble up on the left, in a futile attempt to return to the Obama era status quo. We’ve seen where this approach takes us— repealed rights, messed up economy, etc etc etc.
Time for mainstream dems to challenge their assumptions.
Only ~60% of people eligible to vote in 2024 did vote with ~30% of eligible voters voting for the idiotscape we currently have.
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.
Because of the electoral college. It didn’t matter who didn’t vote. If 0% more people voted in Mississippi or Alabama and every single eligible voter voted in New York and California, it wouldn’t have mattered.
That's some bullshit. If everyone voted the electoral college would be dwarfed across the board. If 50% more people vote the difference won't be in just AL, MS, CA, NY -- it will be across the board. Stop trying to fuck with our elections by discouraging people from voting.
Really? Do you not know how the electoral college works? What do you think happens if there was 30% more participation in Blue states?
If 30% more people vote it won't just be people in "blue states". That's the goddamn point. It'll mean we, as a country, get closer to the things we have 60%+ agreement.
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 30% more voted in Alabama , Mississippi, Texas or Florida, do you think they would have voted democratic? Do you have any evidence that the demographics of people who don’t vote are disproportionate to the people who do in any of those states?
If you know anything about American history, despite what Michelle Obama says “this is exactly who this country is”
Well then maybe it's time to cut some dead weight from the left platform... Many centrists want clean water and sane society and bathrooms and woke ideology maybe needs to take a back seat in discourse for a while
But then you alienate some of the most vocal part of the party and end up like in 2016 where they blame the Bernie bros instead of the dnc leadership.
Isn't this what they have been doing? What nationally prominent democrats are vocal proponents of progressive social policies now? I certainly don't remember harris running on any of the things being implied here.
> 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.
Harris lost the popular vote by less than 2%. I know that popular vote is not what gets a president elected, but you make it sound like nobody voted for Harris and the entire American electorate liked Trump's views and voted for him.
That's the thing. Trump would be eminently beatable if the democrats bothered running good candidates and had the courage to stand for something. But they are perfectly content collecting tons of money which probably goes to connected "consultants" who then spend 20 million on figuring out how to talk to people.
I think Harris was a good candidate who did stand for something, but she didn't get enough time to run her own campaign :)
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.
If Harris had been a good candidate she would have gone on different podcasts without hesitation. That’s where the audience is these days. Her TV interviews were so scripted and inauthentic it wasn’t even funny. Despite all these she almost got half of the votes so imagine how a more likeable and authentic candidate would have done.
It all started because Biden didn’t announce he wasn’t running again after the midterms and the Democrats tried to hide that he wasn’t losing his mental faculties.
> but there's one side that constantly does things like this, on top of giving tax cuts to rich people that need it the least.
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.
Kindly stop supporting a nation built on genocide and enslavement. The ethical path to engineering a system that's not intended to kill people is to stop it when it does and dismantle it, evolving the foundational principles used to design it in the first place. And to do all that without sacrificing more lives. Electoral reform is impossible because there's no way to say no to the entire system.
I live in the USA so I don't have the choice to just leave, at least not now. So I must do what I can to make this country better.
I live in the USA. You can put all your skills to work on designing systems of collective liberation to replace the existing systems of oppression this country was founded on & requires to persist. A collapse is coming, so now is the time to prepare so we have something liberatory to fill the predictable power vacuum with. The wealthy are already doing this.
The right managed to succeed with their electoral reforms. Gerrymandering is legal, and the president is now above the law.
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.
As a democratic voter I don't like this either. I vote because I want rule of law. It's not as clear cut to me that discarding rule of law to beat the GOP is the best option. There is a chance they can be defeated without undermining having a functional electoral system
This went out the window as a viable approach when McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat. We’re at minimum-two justices being on the take, post a coup attempt with the leader of said attempt back in the Oval Office, and Republicans have already declared intent to gerrymander their way to victory with no roadblocks to that in sight. And this is not an exhaustive list of ailments.
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.
One possible solution is to get all the liberal/progressive voters to register as Republicans and run liberal/progressive candidates as Republicans. Built on the Eisenhower platform of 1956 and his record as a military commander. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-p...
Granted, it's not ideal, but coming in the back door may be necessary.
> get all the liberal/progressive voters to register as Republicans
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? :-)
Sorry, you have to register as a republican so you can vote in the primary. Primaries are frequently the only competitive race in an election.
Also, running as a republican gets past the automatic "reject liberal/democrat" reflex
It depends on the state (in some you can register as a democrat and ask for a republican primary ballot), but I did this so I could vote against George W three times. (If only we could have him again instead of Trump…). You can register for whatever party you want, but some states have early deadlines.
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.
This attitude is exactly what the far right is banking on to make sure there is never another liberal gov elected fairly.
They can be "defeated" that way in the sense of a classic Pyrrhic victory, exactly like in 2020, sure. That's the absolute worst out of all options available. "Losing" in 2020 would have been much better. You need to start thinking about the game, realpolitik, and the patterns that have been happening. And the long-term. You think you're thinking long-term by prioritizing the things you do, but it's the exact opposite.
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.
> 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.
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...
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The most frustrating thing about leftists is their focus on tearing down and self-flagellation over actually doing anything meaningful to make the world a better place.
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.
You could change left to right and that would be an honest statement.
Maybe it's not as dualistic as you portray things. I'm literally designing and building a system for collective liberation and meeting needs to replace systems of oppression.
Why people argue against that is beyond me
>Please go vote on 2028 if you don't want more of this.
Or if you want more of this also go vote.
If you want more of this, please vote in 2027 and 2029 instead.
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Countless lives over the next decades are going to be lost due to decisions being made by this administration. Deaths and illnesses that otherwise would have prevented using existing frameworks and systems had they not been destroyed.
I don't understand why the left puts up with it. They are too easily distracted by hot-button issues. These are some of the most important issues facing the present and future of our civilization and biosphere. I wish I had a solution, or knew the step to take. I suspect one of the root causes is the narrative, e.g. from news agencies, is being controlled by the propagators of the problem.
Our system is not set up to be able to resist things like this. Once one party has control over all three branches of the federal government, all we can do at the federal level is wait for elections.
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.
The last time you voted in The United States of America may be the last time you get a vote in The United States of America.
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.
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Right. My fear is that the rules of the elections will be significantly changed as well soon, by this party.
Already happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Texas_redistricting
The human brain can not handle social media. It has melted our brains and completely controls the Main Signal with its algorithms. The right is better at controlling the media in such a system, and is ascendant. We live in meme world now. Nothing is serious. It's all just memes.
It does feel like this. I remember this moment clicking for me with my dads family who was typically more rational. "did you hear California is going to outlaw bacon now"; everyone laughs.
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.
Well, also our adversaries have a vested interest in tilting those systems toward MAGA in particular.
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.
The American left is one of the most impotent political entities.
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.
until people starting giving a shit to form alternatives, they're the only option that exists. Were not in a college classroom debating ideals, this is a real life triage situation
“The Left” as educated elites clustered in cities has and will always be fairly impotent (at least electorally, maybe not culturally)
“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.
This is hogwash.
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.
I agree with this assessment, and Mamdani's popularity in NYC provides some credence to this. Voters have wanted the Dems to move left since at least 2016, but the Democratic establishment routinely punishes those who aren't moving rightward.
Party has moved been moving left since Clinton. Clinton was more conservative than George W Bush. Balance Budgets(fired a bunch government workers), welfare reform,NAFTA etc.
The base has been, the representatives have been sclerotic. A good number of them came in with clinton and have had essentially the same politics as clinton.
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 what purity tests are those?
Probably the identity politics stuff if I had to guess.
Identity politics. Rejecting identity politics for economic justice. Rejecting economic justice for economic revolution. It goes on and on. There are so many overlapping and contradictory purity tests among the various branches of the left, that meaningful opposition from the left is more of a coincidence than anything one can plan for.
Name a purity test. Stop dancing around the question.
This is a setup to fail a purity test. We'll skip the formalities and you can just preemptively consider this a failure.
Name a meaningful victory of the American left's approach in the last 25 years. Stop dancing around the question.
The conservative masquerading as an independent blaming the left for fake issues of why as you can't support them. Trope is as old as time.
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.
Ha, I'm neither conservative nor independent nor particularly moderate. I'm firmly, vigorously left in ideology. It's delightful that your conclusion upon receiving criticism of the left's approach is that the speaker must be a conservative. Thank you for illustrating the purity test issue!
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.
A visible example is the ACLU questionnaire which covers support for transgender medical care with state resources for detained immigrants.
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...
You can agree or disagree with inmates having a right to medical care? That would require going to SCOTUS, at the very least. This right is well-established in the US.
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.
Yes, politicians can agree or disagree with policy. That is their job. E.g., “here is a good policy we don’t have which we should enact,” and “here is a bad policy we should get rid of.”
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.
Again: this is not in any "politician's" hands. It's in SCOTUS's. Inmates have a right to medical care in this country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estelle_v._Gamble
That link refers to decisions made based the US Code and the constitution. Politicians write those. Courts have responsibility in interpreting them. It’s still a politicians job to take a stance and decide what they should be.
Correct, which as I said: "At least a SCOTUS decision," where "amend the Constitution" is a significantly higher bar to meet.
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...
> 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
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.
What?
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)
It wasn't a hill to die on. If it was she would have made support for trans rights a central part of her campaign. Trump made it a central part of his campaign.
"Never say anything that the right can play in an ad" is not my idea of effective campaign strategy.
It was a hill to die on in the sense that her campaign was getting killed and she said nothing. The ad was actively damaging her campaign so doing nothing was dying.
Why do you think she didn’t say anything?
Frankly it read to me more like Harris had a totally moderate response that was blown up by the right as something she is a die hard believer in. No one is dying on the hill of trans rights except for trans people as far as I see on the political stage. Republicans talk way more about trans people than democrats. Republicans pass way more laws about trans people than democrats. Republicans raise way more money on trans people than democrats. Democrats literally don’t seem to stand for anything as a unified force: government shutdowns over roe v wade overturn, start reading Epstein files into congressional record, refuse to cooperate with a single republican bill until they get some red meat for their base. I haven’t really seen anything and I’m not even particularly leftist. I just can’t imagine a single time democrats threw a massive shitfest for red meat, but I hear it nonstop in republican spaces.
I agree that she had a moderate response. I think it appeared that she was dying on the this hill because she didn’t address it in her 2024 campaign yet it received so much air time in Republican ads.
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.
Do you believe that if she had gone on camera and said "I was wrong, trans people shouldn't receive this care in prison" that it would have stopped the GOP ad campaign? No chance.
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.
Idk where you’re getting that quote from. No one would say that.
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?
Right, that’s what I’m saying. This is the opposite of a democrat dying on a hill. They cede everything and are killed for it on the spin.
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.
Fair enough. It’s the appearance of dying on hills.
The people making up that appearance are actually republicans, though, and I think it is utterly bizarre to feed into that appearance as the fault of democrats. It’s the republican strategy to say and do extreme histrionic shit as red meat for their base and then blame the democrats for doing it.
I’m not sure what your point is. This still seems like a purity test. Whether democrats wanted it to be a purity test or not republicans were able to successfully paint it as one.
My point is that it is bizarre to blame democrats for making purity tests when republicans are making up purity tests. It’s like I deleted db in prod and then said how dare my co worker be pro prod db manipulation, when the co worker in question had stfu the whole time.
Because it’s framed differently. The Democratic base don’t consider themselves to have thrown a “shitfest” over Keystone XL, and don’t consider Biden’s day 1 executive order killing it to be “red meat”.
Biden day 1 executive order was over 4 fucking years ago. About a week ago a bunch of Koreans were rounded up and deported out of the country. Less than 48h ago republicans were saying the Charlie Kirk killer was a trans and his body wasn’t even cold yet. Cmon bro, these are not comparable. The democrats simply don’t do red meat shitfest fight stuff.
It's not comparable because you agree with the Democrats' positions! When it comes to immigration, for example, I'm sure you'd agree with me that Trump's efforts to end various TPS designations are "red meat shitfest fight stuff" - if he succeeds, he'll get to deport quite a lot of people. But Biden's extensions of those very same TPS designations (some of which have been "temporary" for decades now) weren't "red meat", because you agree with Biden that the designations are correct and the people protected by them should not have to leave the US. The Democratic base just isn't very interested in framing politicians as brave disruptive fighters for doing the right thing.
No I don’t agree with the positions I just literally don’t see them throw shitfest red meat for their base at all. Biden is over, bro, what are the democrats doing right now it’s been over 9 months. I hear things constantly from republicans about the trans issue, immigrants, etc. Seriously, point me to the same volume of laws being passed in blue states banning Christians books from school or something the way republicans are banning woke stuff from school. Or blue states banning white people or arguing white rich people need to be rounded up in camps the way republicans are doing to poors or immigrants. Idk. NYC has a ton of finance bros, arrest a bunch of them for being racist and declare you’re eliminating racism from nyc.
Again, the problem is that this concept of "shitfest red meat" definitionally excludes anything the Democratic base actually supports. The median Democratic voter doesn't want to ban Christian books or round white people up in camps.
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?
Yes I think this is fine red meat stuff. It’s probably less extreme of declaring the catholic hospitals to be murdering women by denying them care or whatever histrionics would be comparable but sure. Thanks. I just don’t see nearly the same sorts of things happening. Your example was from over a quarter ago back in May. Whereas I can point to stuff happening within 48h comparatively (again, calling Charlie Kirk’s killer a trans, although I think that’s the killer’s roommate now or something; either way pinning the assassinations on the trans people)
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At least our "purity tests" don't end up with dead people. By the current state of information, the CK killer was a Nick Fuentes follower.
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.
You're referring to very far left circles that definitely don't represent liberals or more moderate Dems. I agree though, those circles consist of single-issue voters (e.g. palestine) that harm actual progress.
Yeah the centrist dems— the vast majority of currently elected democrats— are really knocking it out of the park. It’s the tiny handful of actual progressives that snuck through the DNC’s fortress walls that are messing everything up with their pesky fringe principles… that also poll extremely well with the general public.
Moderates being the majority platform on both sides blaming their minority “extremeist” wing for their failures is step one of most US political debates.
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.
"/s" to the point of "/S!!!"
> tiny handful of actual progressives ... that are messing everything up
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?
… did you see how many mainstream popular national politicians came out of the woodwork to support Cuomo despite being the less popular candidate by a significant amount? Did you catch the coordinated drop-out/endorsement of Clinton in 2016 which killed Sanders’ lead? Did you see all of the people in the party rushing to make an issue of Mamdani supporting Palestine in a race for mayor of NYC which is definitely not near Israel or Palestine, physically or through policy, and legally can’t even interact with those countries as a delegate of the US? Yes there is resistance to progressive candidates from the DNC leadership. No, it’s not a conspiracy theory.
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.
> look at recent polls
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.
> If you could link them,
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.
I mean insinuating that a sect of a political party is “extremist” or “far” into some ideology because they see the current political atmosphere is futile is not discussing politics in good faith.
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.
People we call “far left” in the US would be mainstream labor candidates in most European political environments.
The "Palestine" issue is single-issue on the surface, but it is often used because it is a succint way to package a broad set of desired foreign policy changes: more cooperation with the Islamic world, less aggression/hegemony, and less money fed to insatiable MIC.
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 reason we can afford it is due to our GDP. We aren't that far ahead of other developed countries when you look at it as a percentage of GDP. The real issue is our debt, for which the interest payments are almost as much as our defense budget while adding nothing to the economy. But neither side is serious about tackling this issue.
Fair enough. Would you sit out an election over this issue, though? Especially where the other option is Trump?
Definitely not, I agree with you that it's counterproductive.
Again with the left vs. right. Are you really that easy to divide into two diametrically opposed groups?
This is also a key part of it. People should explore the complexity instead of treating this as team sports. I think we have a genetic disposition to this sort of thinking, but can overcome it.
From the posted article:
> 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.
Rolling back PFAS protections would not simply affect "the other half of the team", it would affect everybody. If there isn't some context missing here, this is an action that would be ubiquitously unpopular, let alone when contrasted against the goals of MAHA.
The beauty of gerrymandering is that the gerrymanderers don't need to be popular.
Also the baseline GOP today exists in a different reality (e.g. where Trump won the 2020 election and Democrats did the COVID lockdowns)
Gerrymandering has no effect on the Senate or Presidency making this largely a non sequitur. Furthermore, administrators of independent agencies (such as the EPA) need to confirmed by the Senate. Up until 2013, appointees could be blocked by a minority with a filibuster. That rule was changed in 2013 by a Democrat majority Senate under Obama, to make it such that a simple majority could force through any appointee.
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.
This is true in a world of balanced power between Congress, the judiciary, and the executive.
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.
hi there! i'm not sure you read the comment you're replying to!
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?
Due to gerrymandering, our elected officials are increasingly sorting themselves into left and right, whether that represents us or not.
i mean the right literally voted for epsteins BFF and also the most prominent partner in child trafficking. Hiring minor under pretense of internship, drugging/spiking then and then trafficking them to private island. The difference between right and left is like night and day.
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
The left doesn't hold power in any branch of government right now. The most they can do before midterms is cause a government shutdown, but that can backfire unless messaging/demands are perfect.
Messaging should probably be "follow the law". Until that happens, voting in the house is just charades.
What do you propose they do?
I would love to have an answer to your question!
Edit: Here's a start: Be more critical of the news. Content a bit; the scope of topics that are discussed more importantly.
Left wing politicians and media figures try to impact the media narrative (just like all media figures and politicians). It is part of the skill set. Like yeah, it would always be better for an engineer to get better at quickly understanding large codebases. Better for a soccer player to get better at aiming the ball. But that’s the game they are all playing, they are doing it as well as they can (in the case of left wing politicians, either they are bad at it or they are at some systemic disadvantage).
Being critical of the news is good, but I don't think we want the lefty equivalent of the "Do Your Own Research" conspiracy crowd.
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.
Drop counterproductive and unpopular Culture War issues and instead fight about very stupid ideas pushed by Trump et all.
Part of problem is that the most unproductive and unpopular and poor ideas are the most loved ones among their elites.
I agree. I wish there was a more organized "left" but from what I've seen it's just many many random groups that are not on the "right". If there was an organized left, then they should focus only on improving the well being of the average US family through improving the economy and healthcare to work for everyone. The left let's itself get baited into these culture wars. If everyone's lives improved then I believe a lot of these culture war issues would improve as a byproduct of a happier populace who would be more forgiving to those around them.
> The left let's itself get baited into these culture wars.
Well, at least some of them left (or some part of it) started entirely on its own.
[dead]
We are soldiers in revolt for truth, And we have fought for our independence, When we spoke nobody listened to us, So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm, And the sound of machine guns as our melody
> They are too easily distracted by hot-button issues.
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?"
The just-released MAHA report[1] mentions PFAS limits for drinking water to be enforced by EPA. Hopefully the unusually extreme contradictions in policy force a change.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...
I think because “The Left” in the US - The Democratic Party - is actually a big tent, center-left party with a lot of different issues and stakeholders. They look more like a political party has historically in the US (big, messy, inconsistent)
If you were an elderly high ranking Democrat, would you risk it all? Your power, your status?
It's called anacyclosis. A long cycle that has repeated throughout history. The US is the final step before the cycle repeats, Ochlocracy or "mob rule".
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)
Short of some January-6th style insurrection, I'm not entirely sure what "the left" [1] could actually "do" here. I am absolutely not advocating for a January-6th domestic terrorism event, I think that would be a very bad idea, but I also have no idea what we could actively do.
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.
Normalize factual focused news that covers the topics that right (and center) news doesn't cover. This doesn't need to be biased and shouldn't be denigrating - I would like to believe that the liberal bias of reality is sufficient. Personally, I don't want to listen to angry people of any political bend. Name calling sounds childish.
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 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 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 found this post useful in understanding this phenomenon: https://www.offmessage.net/p/how-liberalism-sabotages-itself
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.
They're also coopted by their donors and the thinking they can't be mean to their "colleagues", look at all the democrats saying they're "waiting for the republican party to come back". They want the same status quo they had in the past because it serves those already in power there, they can continue to collect donations and salaries if it all stays the same without doing much work.
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.
There is no left in America, in any historical or contemporary manner.
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.”
My friend pointed out yesterday that the left has lost its "evangelical spirit". It seems to have become political dogma that you can't persuade people to your side -- you can only turn them out to vote.
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?
I don't like him anymore because I think he's a perverted creep, but in the streaming space Destiny was reasonably good at this. I haven't watched him in years, but I remember reading about a few people that he managed to talk out of the more radical conservatism.
I’d add that the act of debate never convinces opponents, but serves as a performance which can make your ideas look good to an audience. Plenty of lefties do debates online, not to say that’s identical.
I think this is the core of the issue for the Democra)ts. Conservative groups are focused on figuring out what actions are effective in gaining power and executing on that. They don't shy away from unethical methods like spreading misinformation and gerrymandering. They've understood this for a very long time and have been planting seeds for decades, such as taking over AM radio to entrench a conservative mindset in rural populations.
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
> Who on the left does that?
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.
Currently, if there were any resistance, they would swiftly be gunned down in the street. Hasn't the orange goon made that clear enough to you? The problem is we didn't enforce justice after the civil war or the coup on January 6. The cult of domestic terrorists has a monopoly on violence.
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.
It’s okay though, as some brilliant minds have said, the price of a few deaths is acceptable for less regulation!
This is a form of political violence.
Are there any labs in the US that a regular joe could use to get their water tested? I’ve got quite a few properties with natural springs and I can send the water to get tested for bacteria and mineral content but I don’t know of anywhere that tests for PFAS.
This administration can’t end soon enough.
Do RO filters eliminate these chemicals?
Bit of research suggests even counter top filters help, though with very wide range of opinions as to how much it helps and which PFAS it does work against (there are thousands)
https://www.epa.gov/water-research/identifying-drinking-wate...
They do, but the vast majority of fluids the average person consumes comes in products made elsewhere, along with restaurants, etc. So you can RO your home water, but unless you don't eat anything made elsewhere, water your own crops, etc, you need comprehensive protections to avoid them.
This is what the EPA says in their filing:
> 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.
I'm not at all surprised that the majority of top level comments are saying things in the spirit of "Trump is trying to kill us to make money!" when if you were following along this _multi decade long regulatory battle_, and knew about the not-so-recent Chevron Deference rulings you could have predicted this. You wouldn't even need to leave HN to keep up, it gets posted here all the time!
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!
I understand that these dumb decisions are mostly profit motivated. But nobody stops to think that the reaction abroad may be: do not eat anything produced at USA?
In EU we by and large don’t eat what America produces though. The same products like Doritos etc will have different ingredients in EU compared to US.
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!
Cane sugar and corn syrup are both just sugar. Your health isn't going to be any better drinking cane sugar coke than corn syrup coke.
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.
> The reason corn syrup is demonized is because it is cheap, enabling lots of foods to pack sugar without much cost.
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.
You can go to the EU and generally find things like unsweetened granola. In the US these products basically don’t exist.
Incorrect. There is more fructose in HFCS used in Coke, HFCS 55. Fructose is metabolized in the liver, and stored as fat there. Glucose is directly metabolized by cells throughout the body.
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.
Corn syrup is 55% fructose and sugar is 50%. Functionally they are the same.
Even if coke was made with organic wild honey, it would still be awful for you.
It turns out the acidic environment in most beverages inverts the sucrose in cane sugar to form a 50:50 mix of fructose and glucose. In the end, the fructose/glucose ratio in cane-sugar-sweetened drinks becomes similar to high-fructose corn syrup, which is about 55:42. And the reaction is quick: about half the sucrose gets inverted in about three weeks. [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY66qpMFOYo
> Same for American coke w/ Cane Sugar instead of actual sugar.
I think you meant high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar (which is real sugar)
Woops, my bad, you are right!
Exactly. To remind us - it's the fructose which is a metabolic problem in amounts over a certain value - worth checking out why. Cane sugar and beet sugar both contain sucrose which is one glucose linked to one fructose molecule so you get half the fructose.
You don’t get half because nobody’s sweetening things with 100% fructose. The most common HFCS compositions are 42% and 55% fructose.
> Same for American coke w/ Cane Sugar instead of actual 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?
no opinion on the rest, but at least in western europe, "normal" white sugar derives from sugar beets.
Yeah, beet sugar is the “standard” to me. That said I meant to say “high fructose corn syrup” in my original post.
Ah, my only experience with sugar beets is in Farming Simulator! Thanks for the detail!
Fun fact: high fructose corn syrup has almost the same sugar content as honey.
I think they meant to say corn syrup.
> In EU we by and large don’t eat what America produces though.
The trouble is you do still find US products, and they should be avoided like the plague.
US-grown nuts for example. Pesticides galore.....
That’s fair, but alternatives are usually pretty easy to find.
I'm American and I've decided at least with cookware that I'm only buying European made products. I don't have a choice with ingredients but at least I can buy European pots and pans knowing it's more regulated.
> US typically gets the cheaper and worse option (less safe)
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.
Where does actual sugar come from?
Def not sugar canes :D
Perhaps they are strictly traditionalist and only accept beet sugar, and none of that new-world cane stuff that doesn't grow well in European climes ./s
In all likelihood, they meant to say corn syrup.
Doritos even have different ingredients between EU countries.
I have tested this in Denmark, Poland, Cyprus, Ireland and Germany.
That's pretty interesting. Were there different flavors in each country as well? My friend brought me some paprika pringles from iceland and they were delicious. So good that we ordered them online but the online versions shipped terribly and were delivered as pringles dust. I used it to bread chicken which still was pretty good. But if you are in iceland get the paprika pringles!
That is mostly because the same brand made for Eastern europe tastes like shit compared to the stuff for western. Worst offenders are nutella and coca cola. but there are many others.
Indeed, Doritos in Poland tasted garbage compared to those in Denmark, Ireland, and Germany.
I was with you until you said cane sugar vs corn syrup. What do you think the actual benefits or drawbacks of one over the other is?
If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
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.
I'm an American who's been living outside the US for a very long time. I always check where food is from at the grocery store before I buy it. Whenever possible, the US is one of a few countries where I avoid almost all ingredients. When it comes to meat, it's a 100% absolute refusal to purchase. The quality is so different that the taste is immediately obvious, and it's not good.
Yeah, but we’re doing great at avoiding mad cow disease recalls.
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.)
That is already a prevailing opinion
They can force foreign countries into importing by threatening tariffs. Though I guess they cannot force-feed it to international consumers in the end.
I think there’s a deep fundamental psychosis of the right wing to get the world back to “survival of the fittest”. If you die of PFAs, poverty, other pollution, well then that’s just bad luck for you.
They just don’t believe in a society that cares for the weak and needy.
Survival of the fittest should apply to businesses above anything. If a business can't handle the regulations to not pollute water then it's a clear cut case.
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.
> Survival of the fittest should apply to businesses above anything. If a business can't handle the regulations to not pollute water then it's a clear cut case.
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.
>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.
>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.
What you say is true in general, but there are execeptions: for example, the Republicans judge the harm done by heroin, fentanyl, amphetamine and cocaine to be very high -- probably higher than the average estimate of the harm as judged by the Democrats. Ditto street crime.
My understanding (without data, sorry) is that the conservative position blames drug addiction on bad choices and evil, rather than circumstances. As well the focus is on authoritarian policing as opposed to “harm reduction”.
These are generalities, sure
They will think this right up until these things affect them or their community. Then it will be someone else's fault--someone outside of their tribe--that it happened.
This is absolutely outrageous
MAHA! The US admin is 5 special interest groups in a trench coat.
===
To be clear, some of the Make America Healthy Again goals are quite reasonable to me. I wish they had started with those.
Nice job everybody. Totally owned the libs with this one
Dear god. Why is this administration actively trying to fuck everything up? Like, how does it hurt anyone to require companies to, you know, not fucking poison us?
If you view all this through the lens of the goal of administration being to weaken the US both internally and as a world power, it all comes much more clearly into focus.
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.
Still kind of baffles me that people voted for this, ostensibly to somehow lower grocery price by raising tariffs.
Or, you know, they actually had really racist reasons and are using the grocery prices thing as an excuse. Who's to say?
I think it's much bigger than racism.
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 have no doubt that the administration's motivation are weird and Russia-oriented.
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.
Dismantling the us in its current state would be a massive opportunity to gain more power/wealth/control/etc.
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
Sure but how much longer could it be the most powerful? There's a mass exodus of our scientists leaving to other countries where the funding is.
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.
Shooting yourself in the foot "to own the libs"
Is protecting people socialism? Do they want people to be free enough to do their own water testing? "Make up their own minds?"
Would have been better titled “EPA politicized leadership seeks to…”. I’m sure the actual workforce at the EPA doesn’t appreciate its hard work being trashed by the current leadership taking its orders from Trump and his minions.
Looks like the EPA is now determined to protect corporations instead of protecting citizens.
When people en masse remember what capitalist policies do
It would actually be good if this Administration would enact capitalist free trade policies, because they often lead to more growth and better quality of life for everyone.
Many of this administration's policies are more like Maoism
This is a such a false dichotomy, mate.
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.
So much for MAHA
Ever since you were born, the factory bagging the food you eat have been lubricated with PFAS. Also perhaps youve seen the HDPE label on plastic food containers? That’s fluorinated. Basically everything is and always has been. It’s only recently there’s been a move to say hey this is probably bad for us. We can stop. But it’s expensive and there’s no good alternative so things are just going back to the way they always were.
How can you measure the amount of PFAS in your body?
can you, do your own homework like just a google search ?
This country is so fucked. Thanks everyone who voted for trump. I truly hope your stock gains and lower taxes were worth it.
For those looking for the rest / other side of the story: the Trump EPA is actually the same EPA that established these PFAS rules to begin with. Municipal water associations have pushed back because they need more time to comply with some of the rules. EPA is responding to that, still adding additional requirements, but giving more time to comply with others.
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
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Someone get RFK Jr. over there.
He’s pro disease, and this will increase disease. Can’t see him doing anything but cheerleading here.
Wouldn't it be nice if the various cranks could at least slow each other down a bit?
Not how that works, sadly.
sincerely hope this is sarcasm
Forever chemicals are conspiracy-adjacent. I would think he'd be for getting rid of them.