The Many Faces of US Politics...

[screenexile]

Trump is insane.

He's fúcked in the head alright.

Image all those Trump supporters having a good slurp of the old domestos to cure CV-19!.

Maybe not a bad thing 

How long will we have to wait??

"Florida man dies from drinking disinfectant after advice from Donald Trump"

[sid waddell]

Image all those Trump supporters having a good slurp of the old domestos to cure CV-19!.

Maybe not a bad thing 

Toilet Donald Duck?

[johnnycool]

Susie Dent's apt word for the day;

ultracrepidarian

[mrdeeds]

We have to get light into the body. Bleach too. Where do these rank in his stupidest statements? Noise causes cancer probably number one for me.

[J70]

He needs something to peddle to his followers. Especially after the malaria drug himself and Fox News and right wing Facebook were hyping for weeks was this week shown to be rather harmful in reality.

The state of Washington issued a tweet last night warning residents NOT to ingest or inject disinfectants! 

[Rossfan]

Trump's existence and the numbers of Yanks voting for him has to raise questions about Evolution or has it in fact begun to reverse?
5,000 or 7,000 years ago humans built Newgrange with all its complications.
Now you have a brainless form of life in the White House and countless millions slavishly supporting him.

[armaghniac]

He needs something to peddle to his followers. Especially after the malaria drug himself and Fox News and right wing Facebook were hyping for weeks was this week shown to be rather harmful in reality.

The state of Washington issued a tweet last night warning residents NOT to ingest or inject disinfectants! 

Surely there must be some sort of middle ground in the US who know this is bollix and who are less likely to vote for Trump as a consequence?

[J70]

They live in an alternate reality where their ignorant opinions are just as valid as those of professionals and experts. All that matters is sticking it to the libtards. Mitch McConnell is telling states hit bad by COVID that they can just declare bankruptcy. f**king commie cesspits.

Never mind what a bankrupt state of New York would mean for the national economy!

[whitey]

I'm all for helping out my neighbors during times like these, but why the fvck should the taxpayers of other states pay one cent to bail out a state like Illinois without them addressing their pension woes


https://www.news-gazette.com/coronavirus/jim-dey-illinois-bailout-could-come-in-form-of-bankruptcy/article_2a2f8404-d78c-5331-a51f-89790ded54fc.html

[J70]

I'm all for helping out my neighbors during times like these, but why the fvck should the taxpayers of other states pay one cent to bail out a state like Illinois without them addressing their pension woes


https://www.news-gazette.com/coronavirus/jim-dey-illinois-bailout-could-come-in-form-of-bankruptcy/article_2a2f8404-d78c-5331-a51f-89790ded54fc.html

That's fair enough.

We went through pension and benefits reform in NY about ten years ago. I started a few years work at a public agency at the time, and what I enrolled in paled in comparison to what the lifers were receiving and vested into as NY had to tackle the problem.

However, in the short term, without federal help, already stretched states with large COVID-related holes in their budgets are going to be laying off cops, firemen, teachers, reducing funding for health systems even more (at the worst time) and so on and on.

Is McConnell going to pull FEMA assistance when hurricanes hit the south this year? Or wildfires? Why should my NY tax money be spent controlling fires for communities built in wildfire zones or helping residents and local governments in the documented path of hurricanes or tornadoes? (I'm not seriously advocating for the abolition of FEMA or the vital work it does, just making the point that the Feds have a responsibility to their citizens).

[whitey]

And as I said I believe the government (and citizens) have moral obligations to help those less fortunate, including people who are here without documentation (believe it or not)

But read this article..... https://www.bettergov.org/news/cta-execs-ride-the-pension-express/

[J70]

And as I said I believe the government (and citizens) have moral obligations to help those less fortunate, including people who are here without documentation (believe it or not)

But read this article..... https://www.bettergov.org/news/cta-execs-ride-the-pension-express/

The government agency I worked for in NY back then had a few similar stories when they brought in early retirement for long term employees around 2010 in response to the economic crisis.

Part of it is a police force, and they had a practice at the time of piling up the overtime in their last three years as their pension payout was based on last three years of pay.

To this day, some of the tristate suburban towns surrounding NYC pay out very large salaries to their local police brass as well, well in excess of what senior management in the NYPD would be getting.

[GJL]

Trump is insane.

He's fúcked in the head alright.

Image all those Trump supporters having a good slurp of the old domestos to cure CV-19!.

Maybe not a bad thing 

How long will we have to wait??

"Florida man dies from drinking disinfectant after advice from Donald Trump"

Hopefully plenty of them try it before September.

[dec]

And as I said I believe the government (and citizens) have moral obligations to help those less fortunate, including people who are here without documentation (believe it or not)

But read this article..... https://www.bettergov.org/news/cta-execs-ride-the-pension-express/

Pensions are a huge problem in America. I read a book called While America Aged (How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis)

It discussed how easy it was for management and workers to agree to generous pension deals, secure in the knowledge that "other people" would have to work out how to deliver the promised riches. In NY, as well as the subways, Long Island Railroad (LIRR) has a massive pension problem, with huge numbers of people getting a disablity diagnois upon retirement to boost their pension.

[Eamonnca1]

Ah, the old "pensions are going to kill us all" trope. Another beloved argument of the right when they can't find a rebuttal to the facts about how Democratic jurisdictions consistently have better finances than Rethuglican ones.

Quoth the Brookings Institution:

We take a different perspective, gauging the fiscal sustainability of a sample of 40 state and local pension plans by looking at their cash flows over time and determining when (or if) they will require outside funding to meet their obligations. We then estimate the increased funding that would stabilize the pension plans in the long run—that is, keep their obligations stable measured against the size of the economy. The way we look at it, an unfunded pension liability is similar to a government having debt, and a government's debt is sustainable so long as its size relative to the economy isn't continuously increasing.

The message from these exercises is that for most (but certainly not all) plans, there is no imminent crisis in the sense that the plans are likely to exhaust their assets within the next two decades.

Source