I'm sure I could come up with a less sarcastic version of that steelman but that's what it boils down to.
It doesn't speak well of their feelings about their own children, but, well, there isn't a lot speaking that well of them in general.
Healthcare providers and insurance companies are corporations too: you can get rich by treating more people.
A firm's sole responsibility is to increase profit and a maximize returns for shareholders. [0]
It's a fixed percentage. That means the more expensive treatment gets, the higher they can raise rates, and the more revenue they get from that fixed percentage.
So they go buy the providers and clinics and pharmacies so they can raise the prices and juice that percentage.
In my opinion this added nothing to the conversation when in theory the op asked for a real answer.
Whenever they propose something, just ask yourself which lobbyist stands something to gain. That will be a sufficient explanation.
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.
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
a confused, sickened and desperate population is easier to control and manipulate. end of story.
Do you think you have a better one?
I’ve looked into this a lot and there isn’t any strong argument I’ve seen that this is good for humanity, and let’s not pretend every political action is a sincere attempt to improve the world for all equally.
If you look into all the abuse heaped upon the man who discovered leaded gasoline was bad it helps give context on just how far some people will go for their own profits.
In some ways, you're kind of arguing the same thing but in reverse by claiming that the comment you're responding to isn't being made in good faith. You're certainly entitled to hold that opinion, but only because of the exact same logic that entitles the parent commenter to hold the opinion that they express in the first place (and for what it's worth, I don't think it's actually being made in bad faith; not everyone will agree about where to draw the line, but at least to me it seems like we're long past the point of giving the benefit of the doubt on policies like the one described in TFA).
If you have any other suggestion than the reason they do this is something related to money, please be my guest and volunteer. Because otherwise it is the most baffling and self destructive policy making that has ever been documented in the history of humankind.
Here is the statement from the organization pushing for this.
It really wasn't hard to find either.
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
> retaining its maximum contaminant levels for PFOA and PFOS but pulling back on its use of a hazard index and regulatory determinations for additional PFAS
Key word being "retaining," indicating the maximum contaminant levels were already in place prior to the change mentioned here. Putting aside allegations of "political bias," can you point to a source which clearly indicates the PFA limits were put in place by the current administration? Would like to learn if I'm wrong.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration...
I think the reasonable mind struggles to deal with the current obvious stupidity even within a populist frame, and hunts for a hidden explanation. It’s a lot scarier to believe that the world’s biggest economy and military and nuclear arsenal are somehow in the hands of not just authoritarians, but crooks and morons.
But it’s true. Britain did it too, it happens.
So why do they do it? To play out some idiotic meme-driven culture war, reduced through these people’s small minds to caricature. They don’t think about second order effects, they lack the sophistication for that.
It’s terrifying.
People will dismiss it as "talking points" or "too ridiculous".
And then they will continue to do it, fully aware that people will just not believe what is happening.
Ask a liberal about conservatives or a conservative about liberals and they have abso-fucking-lutely no idea what the ideals of the other side are. None whatsoever. Thanks silo'd media.
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.
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.
Ordering the valve be opened is malicious.
If you continue to ship a product after you know it is harmful you are deliberately causing harm.
then ask yourself if the pigs had any "nuance" to what they were doing.
Fiction is fiction. I prefer non-fiction for informing what I think about other (actual) people and their decision making processes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
There is not really much difference from the perspective of those harmed, is there?
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.
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.
Actually this is what he said, and what I was referring to.
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?
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.
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.
An examination of the individuals in the EPA pushing this change might reveal something. Perhaps it's ideological? I don't know, I'm at a complete loss.
They get to move to whatever enclave they want and buy expensive RO filters.
Or, they don't believe in science broadly and believe they won't be impacted. If scientists are so smart, why aren't they rich like me and exploiting everyone and everything to the maximum potential profit??
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.
Get enough money and you can buy a party position.
Think of the cost savings!
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 it doesn’t affect rich people, the government doesn’t seem to care anymore.
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.
While I understand the argument, I also understand that the vast majority of people will always pick the cheapest option if the final product is almost the same.
Imagine another scenario. You are my neighbour. I spill some poison on the ground. Your child gets ill. Am I at fault?
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?
In 2025 winner takes all ans monopolizes all
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.
Have you ever even paid a water bill in your life or spent a few seconds thinking about how water is actually supplied?
Strangling economic growth also kills, as indirectly as PFAS in drinking water.
Neither "regulate everything" nor "allow everything" is a good idea.
(no opinion about this specific one, I had no motive nor opportunity to build informed opinion on this specific one)
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/us-seek...
So, the legal reasoning might be to cut their losses litigating to defend rulings they think they'll lose due to the administrative error. I also suspect that being seen to roll back some regulations likely gives Lee Zeldin (the EPA admin) some political room to maneuver. He's historically be associated with anti-PFAS efforts (in Congress he represented a district with contamination problems and he voted for anti-PFAS legislation), but he's also part of an administration with a strong anti-regulation agenda, so he needs to walk a fine line.
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
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.
If you are ambitious and inclined toward the Team Red side, then doing or saying things which Team Red's Fans won't much mind - but which will anger Team Blue's Fans - is a game that never stops paying off. The Blue Fans never stop getting angry, the clicks-pay-the-bills press on both sides never stops giving you free publicity, and the Red Fans never get tired of watching you anger the Blue Fans.
Back in 2016, playing that game was Trump's #1 tactic for going from being a bizarre joke candidate to the Oval Office.
> "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...
Edit: Here's a start: Be more critical of the news. Content a bit; the scope of topics that are discussed more importantly.
The problem with undermining trust in the news media is that people will just replace that with blind trust with something else, and we have no way of really knowing if that something else will be worse. This is what happened with conservatives and led to the rise of Infowars.
Part of problem is that the most unproductive and unpopular and poor ideas are the most loved ones among their elites.
Well, at least some of them left (or some part of it) started entirely on its own.
The only purpose they seem to serve is strengthening the far right by imposing counter productive purity tests and pushing people to vote for the far right options over more centrist ones.
Strongest economies are from blue states. Poorest are red states. Same with crime. Health out comes(Life expectancy, infant. mortality). Who was the only president to run a surplus in recent history.
Anyway, instead of being dedicated to achieving change, the American left CONSTANTLY gets distracted, e.g., complaining about those successful Democratic presidents (or candidates) who drive meaningful change as "incrementalist", "too moderate", or, my absolute favorite, "liberal" as if the European use of the word has ever mapped to the American use. I've even seen people on the left criticize AOC for selling out, when what she is doing is practicing effective politics.
Harris’s written support was turned into an ad campaign for Trump. You can agree or disagree with the policy but it isn’t a great hill to die on if you want to win elections.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harris-gender-surgeries-ja...
I also agree that it feels like Democrats don’t stand for anything. But I think by leaving that space open they let ads like this paint what they stand for.
My issue with what you said is the claim <some issue> is not a hill to die on. They are not dying on any hills at all.
One can agree or disagree on the question of whether transgender care is medical care, but I think the sensible position for any political party (on virtually any such question) is to defer to the scientists and medical experts who spend all day working on this stuff.
AFAIK, the then-current science said that this was one of the only effective treatments for gender dysphoria, and under our Constitution inmates can't be denied medical care, even if it gives somebody the ick or would be politically inconvenient at the next election cycle.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree with this policy but the point of politicians is to advance policy one way or the other which requires agreeing/disagreeing.
If you think we're going to amend the Constitution to ban gender affirming care for inmates you're living in outerspace, but I suppose your position is that politicians are supposed to just say shit that has the correct hate-valence and then it's as-good-as-accomplished?
Inmates received this care under Trump 1 (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/us/politics/trump-prisons...
They've tried stopping it in Trump 2 but have been enjoined by courts (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-judge-temporaril...
Your reaction proves the point that this is a purity test.
I’m not taking a stance one way or the other but you aren't able to engage without arguing against points I didn’t make.
Your argument: It is a purity test for politicians to say that transgender inmates should receive care (which Kamala passed, to the detriment of her electability)
My argument: It is actually SCOTUS who decides this (or would require a Constitutional amendment, which is obviously absurd)
I never said that. There were many far-leftists who sat out in 2024 due to Palestine, proclaiming that Kamala would've been just as bad or worse than Trump on that issue which is ludicrous. Needless to say, I'm not opposed to progressive ideals but the reality is that they're more focused on principles than getting elected.
> that also poll extremely well with the general public
If that's the case, why don't we see more candidates like Bernie/AOC/Mamdani being elected across the country? I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
And you don’t have to look for second order effects to see how progressive issues poll — look at recent polls on Palestine, single-payer health care, housing affordability, and plenty of other progressive policies, by reputable non-partisan sources.
Centrism is just as much of a political perspective as being anywhere else on the spectrum and can color political perspectives just as easily — it just biased in favor of the status quo so it’s got a much easier job.
Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’ is the first line of defense for people unwilling to take a hard look at the efficacy of the people that are supposed to be mobilizing and representing those voters. If your politician doesn’t represent the voters’ values enough to gain their vote, the problem is the politician. The mainstream dems have just run out of leverage to coerce people into candidates they don’t align with using the “vote blue no matter who” tactic.
If you could link them, that'd be great because I don't know exactly which ones you're looking at. My guess is that these ideas sound great on paper: who doesn't want more affordable housing? But, the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Affordable housing sounds great for example, but the plans from Bernie et al. seem to include a lot of government spending on building public housing and implementing rent control on private housing. I can personally see why someone might be opposed to voting for even more government involvement in housing which we already have quite a lot of and look where we're at.
I concede that the DNC (and their donors by extension) resist far-left candidates but I don't believe that, if the proposals are so popular, it would be consistently suppressed by higher powers in that manner. Basically, I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
> Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’
My point was that they're not voting at all. No one in politics will take those people seriously because that doesn't get anyone elected. Maybe you don't personally purity test or sit out elections, but that kind of behavior certainly exists and turns off people outside the circle.
Let me be clear, the Dems didn't lose the 2024 election due to progressives sitting out. I just think they could be taken more seriously as a bloc by not abstaining because they're mostly aligned with the objectives of the Democratic party. There are only two options we have in elections, and working with what we have is the only option to get out of this mess.
Google, for example “Israel poll,” and look for organizations like Gallup, Pew and other reputable sources.
> the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Come on. This is a much bigger citation needed than finding a poll about a national political topic.
> I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
There isn’t a lack of progressive candidates. They’re in local positions— municipal, local representative— all over the place because city representatives are too close to the metal for that kind of interference. Unless you’re in a place like New York with an overwhelmingly large number of progressive voters, for the past couple of decades, there’s a zero percent chance of advancing to a national position without DNC backing. And they have announced that they’re directly fighting third party candidates.
> My point was that they're not voting at all.
Progressives vote in the primaries when candidates represent their viewpoints. The democrats refuse to give candidates that inspire their support nationally, which is their only job if they want to represent the people. If they don’t run candidates that people are willing to vote for then people won’t vote for them. That’s how this works. And if they’re actively suppressing third party candidates, expecting people to say “oh well, I don’t support 60% of what this candidate supports, including a core issue of morality, and pretty sure they’ll back down on most of the rest… but I don’t support 85% of what this candidate supports” is a losing strategy to get people to the polls. And then telling those have the “wrong priorities” and it’s their fault the country is on fire is an absolute fantastic strategy to alienate people, permanently.
> 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 in responsible for whether they win or lose the election. The democrats 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 aren’t willing to represent people on the left by letting whoever is most popular get elected, they shouldn’t proudly harpoon third party candidates. Whether they’re arrogant enough to assume they know better than registered voters, or are just power hungry, they’ve been more focused on staying in their offices than wielding their power as a party.
Most lefists/extreme right/far-left/far-right are not the “far right” or “far left” caricatures depicted by the media, internet comments, or the mouth of the political party conventions.
> I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
Of course the DNC suppresses their campaigns. Most NY Dem leaders have not even backed Mamdani even after winning the primary (not to mention that Cuomo has an entire billionaire backed Super PAC still funding him after he lost the primary badly). You being able to guess that doesn’t make the idea false. The idea being a talking point doesn’t make that truth less valid.
It’s those dang progressives and their policies that moderates push through for election appeal then turn around and partially implement and defund and finger point and blame when those policies then fail after being setup to do so.
If you can’t blame progressives then you can’t get elected in this country.
Personally I do not see how we can afford to maintain the MIC for much longer, so these issues are very important to me.
The american left by and large is simply unrepresented. Democrats have represented center right positions since clinton.
If anything, it's those centrist democrats that use purity tests as much as possible to eject the left from the party.
As a good example of that, consider the case of Al Franken vs Andrew Cuomo. Franken was pretty progressive, so when it came out that he had a picture in bad taste where he mocked squeezing boobs, gone. 24/7 news about how he's really a monster and the worst person in the world.
Meanwhile, Cuomo has multiple credible allegations of sexual harassment and who does the party STILL back even after he lost the primary? He literally got endorsements from Democrats who shed tears because of the Al Franken photo.
The same thing happened to Bernie Sanders. The centrist dems and media started circulating garbage about how he was sexist over a comment he didn't make.
Biden had a decent representation of left cabinet picks. But otherwise, the party has been pretty slow to change. Obama, in particular, gets remember as being progressive yet he truly was not. He took some antiwar stances and then failed to deliver on those promises. That was about the end of his left leaning policies.
And hell, just look at how first the Tea Party and then MAGA managed to yeet a lot of what used to be "moderate" Republicans out of the party alright.
“The Left” as defined by a broad, working class based coalition independent of urban/rural has historically been formidable. But as the closest example of this in recent history - Obama coalition - erodes, and GOP eats into working class voters, it becomes less formidable.
Really The Left (the Democratic Party) needs to rebuild an electorally successful coalition. The leaders that could lead that aren’t obvious to me yet.
> EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections
> The move continues to expose communities across the country to toxic forever chemicals in tap water
If this really were a "team sport", one half of the team wouldn't be set on undermining the health of the other half of the team.
i guess you reject their request to stop trying to defeat the other team. but you also object to the use of the word "team" to describe a political party?
could you explain?
Also the baseline GOP today exists in a different reality (e.g. where Trump won the 2020 election and Democrats did the COVID lockdowns)
That was one of countless examples of where powers passed by one side with a majority invariably end up coming back to bite then when they become the minority. The Founding Fathers designed our political system to be largely dysfunctional without widespread consensus. That was clearly wiser than the path we are increasingly choosing in modern times.
in case someone's feeling got hurt. Throughout the history of world not USA, right ideology has also blindly supported deregulation that people will die but regulation will naturally take place( ? ) like free markert
But Charlie Kirk went to the most left places he could think of, debated people, and won some converts.
Who on the left does that? Why doesn't anyone drive out to rural football games or country music concerts, have conversations, and put them on YouTube?
Sanders and AOC. Look at the stops on their Fighting Oligarchy Tour. It’s just that the DNC leadership will do everything in their power to fight actual progressives.
From my observations the liberal and progressive groups seem to take on strategies where they claim the moral high ground and treat anyone not following their way of thinking as opponents and not as potential allies/converts. So even in cases where they are technically or morally "correct" in their stance, they aren't effective in bringing outsiders to their side. One example was the "recognize your (white) privilege" thing. While it was arguably based on sound ideas, proclaiming an entire demographic is receiving more than they earn is never going to bring people over to your side.
I don't have much confidence that the Democrats will be able to turn things around in short order. The Democratic leadership seem stuck in their ways with no long term vision
It's easy to say "reject the news agencies", and sure that might be a good idea, but that carries the risk of "substituting bullshit with different, more dangerous bullshit". This has already been somewhat demonstrated; the conservatives spent decades undermining trust in news media and that led to the rise of assholes like Alex Jones and conspiracy theories becoming normalized by American conservatives. It's easy to say "well the left wouldn't do that", but you have no way of knowing that any better than I would.
I don't want to be cynical or hopeless, but I genuinely have no idea what I could do to help fix any of the shit going on right now.
[1] whatever that actually means, I've heard about a dozen definitions.
As to conspiracy theories on the left, they're there. Some of the anti-vax conspiracies came from people who would be considered on the (I'm going to apologize of this is seen as denigrating considering my earlier statement) granola side of the left. There's a fair bit of populist anti-corporate conspiracies and attribution of active malice rather a dispassionate corporate approach to trying to maximize profits.
I would suggest instead considering that it isn't "left vs right" conspiracies (though they have their own spectrum) but rather that there exists a "prone to conspiracies demographic" that is swayed by the left or the right at a given time and those conspiracies that are most in line with the political ideology of the swaying are more likely to be normalized. Politicians agreeing with the conspiracies speeds up its normalization and helps sway the conspiracy minded demographic.
I believe that the pro-science, pro-space, climate change is real, vaccines work of... lets put a range of 2008 to say... 2020 (its not that Biden abandoned it but rather that that congress was not advancing policies and the focus was more on "don't have it break more") significantly alienated the prone to conspiracy demographic from the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has embraced this demographic with the claims of a stolen election, supporting anti-vaccination positions, and openly accepting support of the various anti-{race} groups.
It wouldn't take too much for anti-capitalism or anti-government conspiracies to be normalized and spoken openly by "the left" if that is one's target demographic. It's that left leaning and conspiracy leaning is a slim demographic to try to target. If the conspiracy demographic was decoupled from the current Republican Party, then I would expect to see more left leaning conspiracy theories be espoused openly.
I would love to believe this, but I am not sure that I do anymore.
Anti-vax conspiracies have become extremely normalized in conservative circles and at least according to CNN, 70% of conservatives believed conspiracies that the 2020 election as stolen [1]. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split, 70% of 50% is about 35%; one third of the entire country. Maybe it's always been like that, but I don't think so, I feel like up until around ~2014 conspiracy theorists were largely on the fringes.
And of course, that 70% is people who are admitting to it. Famously, people were embarrassed to admit they wanted to vote for Trump which skewed the polling data. I suspect that the percentage of conservatives who believe in 2020 election conspiracies is actually a fair bit higher.
So I don't think I buy that "the conspiracy fringe was always there and conservatives were just more welcoming to them", I think that conservatives are actively creating new conspiracy nutes, and I think this is a consequence of their concerted effort to create distrust in media.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans...
I mention that sounds kind of click baity? look it up. California wants to impose more stringent minimum space standards for amimals bred to slaughter (prop 12). Seems maybe good, or at least worthy of a real discussion?
But everyone had moved on by then, ironically to how much they care about animal rights (spending significant time volunteering in shelters and such).
Its just too easy to dumb people down with memes.
Trump reneging on NATO, turning military attention toward (checks notes) Venezuela, and isolating ourselves in global trade is just an absolute dream come true for China and Russia.
States can try to do some things in some cases, but the Supreme Court will get in the way and now the National Guard and Marines.
All three branches of The United States of America has been captured by a tyrannical government. Rights are being eroded for inhabitants of The United States of America, including its citizens.
You have no right to: safe medicine, safe food, safe water, vote.
The sooner the people recognize this and take action, the shorter it will be to reverse.
Americans have a duty to act, and act quickly: what's already been taken will take generations to regain.
I disagree.
The issue is there's about 1000 fires burning all with somewhat critical importance.
But further, the left and the politicians ostensibly representing the left simply are not aligned (at least in the US). It's a rock and a hard place. Generally the politicians positions are better than the right, but far less than what the left actually wants. So they rely heavily on "what are you going to do, let the other guys win?".
Meanwhile, the right has adopted nearly the opposite position. On most positions when the base says "jump" they say "how high?".
A big reason for that is money in politics. What the rightwing base wants is generally pretty compatible with monied interests. It's no skin off the nose of a rightwing politician if they want to ban books, that doesn't ultimately harm Disney's bottom dollar.
For the left, what they want in almost all ways will negatively impact monied interested. Better regulations makes rich polluters mad. Nationalized healthcare makes every business (except maybe small businesses) mad.
That's why "left" politicians tend to only support initiatives which effectively do nothing like recognizing a MLK or saying it's ok to be gay. And even then, they are happy to ditch those positions to win more rightwing base support because, shocker, that rightwing base is likely to care less about their inaction on climate change.
You are right, though, news is a big problem. And that's because mainstream media is corporate captured. That's why left policy positions no matter the channel are always framed in the absolute worst way possible. For example, whenever nationalized healthcare comes up I can guarantee you the framing will be "How will you pay for this very expensive program that will eliminate choice and cost a lot of money which might make everyone sad and probably will bankrupt everyone?"
If you look closely at the Ds they back Trumps policies, not that they come out and say so. Rather Bernie will come out and attack it. but Ds on so mnay fornts now remain silent and passive.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
The basic gist is that the left is too generous in its understanding of others' intentions, assuming good intentions from all actors long past the point where that's rational.
Look at how desperate they all were to leave DC and go on vacation, these people are not serious and they don't think there will be any consequence to them.
Edit: Also, most of the politicians in both parties get money from the same interests (oil, Israel, tech). So the leadership of Democrats basically wants the same thing as GOP, so there's only voiced resistance.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...
It blows my mind that people refuse to accept modern countries and societies still don't go through this cycle.
I truly think the US will have a Putin like dictator by 20230. (I don't think this is good or want that)
For the first half he seems to constantly mix up C8 and Teflon. After a long section explaining that C8 is some carrier molecule used to make Teflon - he then explain C8 is used in factories and kills cows. But it's not clear C8 is anywhere other than the factory and the town around it
They then extrapolate from two chemical (C8 and C6) to just anything that remotely similar (PFAS)
Later they walk it back and say it's only a few chemicals. Actually your Teflon pan is safe. But then say thing "Blah blah was used to make waterproof..." is it in the final product? or is it part of the chemical procedure to make the product?
Is the problem the final consumer goods? Or is the problem the chemical manufacturing? (and subsequent dumping in the environment) Is this residue from after making the Teflon-like material?
The last parts I couldn't follow at all b/c it was a acronym soup of a ton of chemicals that aren't really explained. At this point I'd lost all faith in the presenters impartiality. Seems like he's just trying to stoke outrage for engagement
(the central point may still be right!)
C8 is known as PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid). Per for its chained molecule shape (no carbon side chains), 'fluoro' for the F part, 'octanoic' for the 8 carbon atoms, and 'acid' for its chemical property. Unlike Teflon:
- C8 has a really small molecular mass, making it easier to flow around your body participating in all kinds of biological operations;
- It is an acid (having the carboxylic '-COOH' group) and can pretend to be all kinds of acids and actively take part in reactions. Once they start to get inside, the consequences can be unpredictable and devastating.
- All other atoms on C8 except for the last -COOH group are covered by fluoride atoms. This means that C8 is not biodegradable (no enzyme can break apart the C-F covalent bond since it's bond energy is really too high), and when it gets into the environment, it stays that way.
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.
Then it can be seen as no longer a disparate collection of seemingly random political, social, and economic moves, but rather as a directed, intentional movement.
Or, you know, they actually had really racist reasons and are using the grocery prices thing as an excuse. Who's to say?
Take a look at the administration's first term and all the involvement and ties (financial, political, etc.) there are to Russia (and Russian-related objectives like Ukraine). It sounds bonkers, but the more you dig in and see how closely tied the relationships have been, and then see how totally soft Trump has been towards Putin/Russia - including direct actions towards Ukraine like removing the long-term diplomats, stopping weapons sales and aid, and recently killing USAID (whose #1 beneficiary was Ukraine) - it all coalesces into a single coherent view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...
I was referring to the voters. I think a lot of the voters claimed grocery prices were the reason, but a lot of them really wanted to get rid of Mexicans. Trump used a lot of racist rhetoric during all three of his campaigns.
The fact that conservatives seem unwilling to condemn the president and ICE for detaining naturalized citizens indicates this to me.
Risk reward is dead simple. You’re already rich and powerful, you fail and become slightly less rich and powerful. You succeed and have absolute control over the most powerful country in the world
I love America, and despite my wife being a naturalized citizen we are still tentatively looking to evacuate (basically determined by if the supreme court decides that the president can overturn the Fourteen Amendment with an executive order) because we are genuinely concerned that she might still be detained because of this administrations idiotic ICE quotas and overtly racist policies.
You might argue that me leaving is no significant loss, and that's fair, but I am college and graduate educated, and I work in a technical field, and I doubt I'm the only one considering this.
https://www.epa.gov/water-research/identifying-drinking-wate...
Then it can be seen as no longer a disparate collection of seemingly random political, social, and economic moves, but rather as a directed, intentional movement.
US typically gets the cheaper and worse option (less safe). Same for American coke w/ Cane Sugar instead of actual sugar.
Americans will regularly consume chemicals that are potentially carcinogenic and banned in EU.
EDIT: I meant high fructose corn syrup, not cane sugar. My bad!
I have tested this in Denmark, Poland, Cyprus, Ireland and Germany.
In all likelihood, they meant to say corn syrup.
I think you meant high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar (which is real sugar)
American Coke is sweetened with Corn Syrup. Maybe it's just me being a dumb American probably fooled by some green washing but isn't Cane Sugar better? What's "actual sugar" in the EU?
The reason corn syrup is demonized is because it is cheap, enabling lots of foods to pack sugar without much cost. The health concerns remain consistent across all forms of sugar.
Also there is no single reason that HFCS is demonized, there are multiple good reasons why it is harmful in the US. It is also not a singular cause to all US diet related pathologies.
Staying on topic, the chemicals the EPA will no longer enforce the laws for pollution for are demonstrably harmful.
The EPA has unilaterally decided not to do its job because it doesn't care about the health of the citizens of the US.
Even if coke was made with organic wild honey, it would still be awful for you.
This !
The OP made a bad point using coke as an example.
The actual point is the HFCS and the fact that HFCS is used extensively in the US, often in places you would not expect it.
In bread products for example its common to find HFCS in it in the US.
The Europeans rarely put any form of sugar in their bread doughs unless they are explicitly baking a sweet product. And even then, the concentration is lower.
The trouble is you do still find US products, and they should be avoided like the plague.
US-grown nuts for example. Pesticides galore.....
Yes. EU has the precautionary principle: you may market the product after documenting its safety. In the US, it’s often the other way around: you can market the product unless/until someone can show it to be unsafe.
This is often a point of conflict e.g. when negotiating free trade agreements between US and EU, as the US often sees this as a technical barrier to trade and protectionism.
They just don’t believe in a society that cares for the weak and needy.
There is some truth to that, but I don't think that explains their position on PFAS because too much PFAS will disable even a strong healthy person. In this particular, it's more that they think that the harm is being exaggerated and that the actual, non-exaggerated degree of harm does not justify putting restrictions on business and commerce.
I struggle to find a topic where they don't think this. It seems the burden of "proof" is too high. They don't believe in risks to health, the environment, climate, or even functional democracy itself. They think all are fake and profit is more important.
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.
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.)
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.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/california-lawmakers-propos...
The US of A are not "the World".
There are countless places around the World that make California look like a conservatism heaven.
> 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.)
===
To be clear, some of the Make America Healthy Again goals are quite reasonable to me. I wish they had started with those.
https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/epa-announces-changes-to-...
Absolutely no one who voted for this mess went in blind.
They would rather feel the fallout of Republican policies as long as it doesn’t help or actively hurts people not like them. In my former home state GA, the Republican governor spent years and tens of millions of dollars trying to get the Hyundai plant to GA that would have created 8500 jobs directly and no telling how many indirect jobs.
ICE invaded the plant and the opportunity is now lost potentially. The governor still can’t bring himself to criticize the President and the Republicans in GA are cheering the raid. The engineers from Korea were training Americans.
If you abstract away any other problems and boil it down to environment, health and work protections on the one hand, and restriction of unlimited immigration from countries with very different sets of values no matter the sociological developments that will likely follow you can only choose one.
I just tried to summarize what we hear and see from voters in analyses as fairly as I could, not present my own opinion. If that did not work out, let me know.
But in this case you choose the one problem that appears bigger or makes you more angry probably.
Do you think we're stupid here?
Democrats correctly understand that immigrants are out-group benefactors. But they have blind spots too. We all do.
This works just like holocaust denial, and there's a reason that's criminalized in Germany and a lot of other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
Not giving enough of a shit to learn about… in some cases, seemingly anything, doesn’t mean you get to later claim “oh I didn’t want this, how could I have known?”
I’ve given a lot of leeway on that stuff over my life, and after this last election, that’s over. Anyone who doesn’t get it at this point has raised stupidity to such an art form that they’ve achieved immorality. That’s aside from the ones who just outright want bad things to happen, which is a lot of people.
I honestly had never heard of him before he was shot and looked up things about him thinking from all of the things said about him by her and other conservatives was that he was a traditional pre 2016 Republican who I might disagree with around the edges. But I could have a beer with him.
I then looked up some of the things he said, showed her with links to videos, verified sources etc and she refused to even read the links because they would have forced her to confront her cognitive dissonance.
For the record, she isn’t one of the fire breathing conservatives and 99% of her posts are quoting scriptures and family oriented.
https://bigthink.com/articles/how-tribalism-overrules-reason...
But I saw it in real time with her. Everything I knew about her as a person was at odds with her support of the current MAGA movement. I thought she would be bemoaning that Republicans didn’t choose another of the candidates last year like Pence who was a traditional religious conservative Christian and she would at least admit that she held her nose and voted for Trump because she thought Kamala was worse. I could have respected that if not agreed with it.
I do have a good friend who is slightly on the other side of the aisle than I am. But he doesn’t demonize anyone. He is the good ol’ boy that I could have a beer with.
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.
> 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.
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.
There is a whole archetype of person that would rather verbally jerk off to thoughts of defeatism and disgust and criticizing everyone else than do anything useful themselves.
Why people argue against that is beyond me
The left should use the same tactics: Focus on state and local elections then use those positions to fix elections so that the national majority of voters decide who runs the federal government (instead of the current 25-30% of voters).
Doing this is completely legal now that the Supreme Court has gutted the rule of law.
For starters, all states should aggressively gerrymand. That’ll basically guarantee the house goes democrat in 2026:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/democrats-can-win-the-redistric...
If the democrats fail to do this, it’s not mere incompetence. It’s probably because their financial backers actually support the changes being made by Trump.
You can’t go in with legal gloves and no hitting below the belt et c. while your opponent is bare-knuckle and going for nut shots and headlocks. You’ll just get your ass kicked, every time, no matter how morally pure you feel about it.
Meanwhile, fixing gerrymandering almost certainly means getting Republican votes to do so. The only way to do that, in this environment, is going to be to make them believe their odds are better without gerrymandering, than with it. That means using it against them, until it’s made illegal.
Granted, it's not ideal, but coming in the back door may be necessary.
Sorry, didn’t quite follow that! You can vote for anyone regardless of who you Registered for? Or, was that suppose to give a misleading signal to Republicans that they have way too many voters? :-)
One problem with creating real change with this approach is that the party elites get to decide who are on their ballots.
A while back, Colbert (?) tried to run as a republican and documented all the roadblocks he hit.
To get an idea of how it went, imagine a popular candidate going to a southern plantation to kiss the rings of the great-grandchildren of slave owners.
After deciding there is no personal upside to them, they decide to keep the candidate off the ballot and ask a servant to freshen their mint julep.
Also, running as a republican gets past the automatic "reject liberal/democrat" reflex
The first thing you need to come to terms with is that losing in 2020 would've been better for the long-term. Once you've gained that freedom, realizing that simply winning an election can be the worse option, you can start thinking about what would instead be better.
This has been clear for very long. Hence why they're still not doing it, and have for the last 9 years been and still[1] continue to push for Clinton-like candidates rather than whatever candidate has the biggest chance of winning elections. It isn't incompetence, and it hasn't been for ages. They're nearly just as captured. It's true that they're slightly less captured than R overall, but not to an extent that is actually meaningful.
Stating it as an "if" is copium. They have failed to, are failing to, and will continue to fail to do this, and it's intentional. What you're saying is so blindingly obvious that there is no other explanation - no Hanlon's razor for this one, the incompetence angle is not realistic.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/17/politics/2028-presidentia...
Or if you want more of this also go vote.
That side is consistently good at pushing uneducated voters to care about nothingburger issues like transgender bathrooms and mass immigration.
the reality is that the average american is an uninformed moron made complacent through excess and enteratinment but thats not something that can be easily fixed.
> 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.
avalys•4h ago
jfengel•4h ago
Not how that works, sadly.
brookst•3h ago
jtms•3h ago
odie5533•2h ago