What does a minimum wage hike have to do with COVID relief?

[blastula]

Yeah, I mean who cares about actual rules? If you have a slim majority you should be able to do whatever you want, right?

well, this is what republicans have been doing since the early 80s, and so conservatives are the ones who set the stage here - they have used any and every trick they could to strong arm and bully the government to their will, while the democrats have sat back and passively let toxic authoritarian libertarianism infest this country.

The Republicans are subject to the reconciliation rule too, that's why they couldn't overturn the ACA for example.

this is the republican's fault - they set the precedent of stuffing unrelated bills with riders for their pet causes. they set the standard of never compromising and making every single bill into a political theater stunt.

Both parties do this all the time. Where are you getting that the GOP started this?

 

[blastula]

The 2020 Covid stimulus bill, back when the Republicans controlled the Senate, contained a peculiar provision to cancel plans to build a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs, and instead rebuild on the current site on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the existing FBI headquarters is literally crumbling to pieces.

What about that? What did that have to do with Covid stimulus, hunh? Wudddaboutit? Wuddaboutit, Derec?

Decision makers both inside and outside the FBI agreed that a new HQ in the suburbs would make more sense, and much money had already been spent planning that project. What-about-it, Derec?

Is the location of FBI HQ related to Covid stimulus? Whataboutit? Spoiler alert:

Show

The existing FBI building is to be demolished in any event. If a new HQ is built in the suburbs instead of on the existing site, the existing site will be sold and is likely to be used for a ... hotel! There's already one 5-star hotel on Pennsylvania Hotel.

Show

the Trump International Hotel

What about that, Derec?

Who cares, since that wasn't included in the final bill that passed. And it was Trump's pet wish not a Republican wish. Even McConnell and Graham spoke against it for not being related to covid relief.

 

[TomC]

The 2020 Covid stimulus bill, back when the Republicans controlled the Senate, contained a peculiar provision to cancel plans to build a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs, and instead rebuild on the current site on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the existing FBI headquarters is literally crumbling to pieces.

What about that? What did that have to do with Covid stimulus, hunh? Wudddaboutit? Wuddaboutit, Derec?

Decision makers both inside and outside the FBI agreed that a new HQ in the suburbs would make more sense, and much money had already been spent planning that project. What-about-it, Derec?

Is the location of FBI HQ related to Covid stimulus? Whataboutit? Spoiler alert:

Show

The existing FBI building is to be demolished in any event. If a new HQ is built in the suburbs instead of on the existing site, the existing site will be sold and is likely to be used for a ... hotel! There's already one 5-star hotel on Pennsylvania Hotel.

Show

the Trump International Hotel

What about that, Derec?

Who cares, since that wasn't included in the final bill that passed. And it was Trump's pet wish not a Republican wish. Even McConnell and Graham spoke against it for not being related to covid relief.

So, what happened? Did the FBI build what they thought best, suburban HQ? Or did Trump find another way to protect his interests at the expense of the American people?
Tom

 

[TomC]

Both parties do this all the time. Where are you getting that the GOP started this?

FULL DISCLOSURE. I'm not [MENTION=86]prideandfall[/MENTION];

But I'll go there.
I don't think the Republicans started it exactly. It's been happening for a long time. But the Republicans did start ramping up the misuse of the concept back in the 90s.

Capitol Hill, at the time, was far less partisan. Bills generally were crafted to win a majority of popular support which would result in Congressional support. However, the Republicans were losing steam, both in popular support and ideas to improve America. They increasingly resorted to tricks like adding a totally unrelated item to a popular bill in order to get it passed without an actual vote on it's merits.

So, while I agree that they didn't start it and aren't the only ones to misuse it, they did make it standard operating procedure. The Democrats mostly just followed them in the race to the bottom.
Tom

 

[blastula]

Citation needed.

 

[TomC]

Citation needed.

[MENTION=51]lpetrich[/MENTION]; is good at this stuff.
Maybe he cares enough about your opinions to do your research for you.

All I can say is that I watched it happen, during the time period I went from being a studiously bipartisan independent voter to straight ticket Democrat voter.

Tom

 

[blastula]

Citation needed.

[MENTION=51]lpetrich[/MENTION]; is good at this stuff.
Maybe he cares enough about your opinions to do your research for you.

It's not my job to back up your claim.

 

[lpetrich]

I can't find any numbers on crossover votes for bills, how polarized votes are (D yes, D no, R yes, R no). But if one has such numbers, one could do chi-square calculations to test for departures from perfect bipartisanship:
N(party,agreement) = N(total) * f(party) * f(agreement)

where the f(party) values add up to 1, as do the f(agreement) ones. Chi-square is zero for perfect bipartisanship.

The polarized Congress of today has its roots in the 1970s | Pew Research Center

Partisan polarization, in Congress and among public, is greater than ever | Pew Research Center

Reps and Senators had a lot of overlap in ideology in the early 1970's, but they had much less by the early 1990's, and by the early 2010's, they had essentially none.

In the House, the two parties tracked each other until the late 1970's, slowly moving leftward together. But after the late 1970's, the Republicans took a sharp turn rightward, going rightward faster than the Democrats went leftward, going leftward at the same rate as before.

In the Senate, the picture is less clear.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Citation needed.

[MENTION=51]lpetrich[/MENTION]; is good at this stuff.
Maybe he cares enough about your opinions to do your research for you.

All I can say is that I watched it happen, during the time period I went from being a studiously bipartisan independent voter to straight ticket Democrat voter.

Tom

I'm not arguing with the substance of your claim, but I think it goes back to the 80s, under Reagan and those congresses. It really started to be more blatant in the 90s, though (and I think Bush I actually tried more than his predecessor to be more bi-partisan), but the rest of the GOP was starting to go further off the rails already by then.

 

[lpetrich]

Chi-square: start with numbers n(i,j) with i being the index in the first set of categories and j for the second set.

Calculate the fractions: f1(i) = (sum over j of n(i,j))/ntotal, f2(j) = (sum over i of n(i,j))/ntotal

Find the predicted values: npred(i,j) = ntotal*f1(i)*f2(j)

Find the chi-square value: xsq = sum over i,j of (n(i,j) - npred(i,j))^2 / npred(i,j)


Congress members literally cross the aisle less often than they used to - "New research forthcoming in Political Analysis finds U.S. legislators have been literally crossing the aisle less and less since the 1990s."

Author Bryce Dietrich, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Iowa, analyzed the biggest video collection of the U.S. House of Representatives ever used in political science research — 1,413 hours, about two months’ worth of video, covering January 1997 to December 2012. The clips are overhead shots from cable network C-SPAN showing representatives’ movements about the chamber.

Dietrich found representatives have physically crossed the aisle less and less to interact with opposing colleagues over time since the late 1990s. The ideological rift in Congress began in the 1970s and mirrors a broader partisan split in America over recent decades, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Anecdotally, reporters and members of Congress have all noted this, so to be able to say with some rigor now there is evidence, I think that’s important,” Dietrich says.

Using Motion Detection to Measure Social Polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core

Author Bryan Dietrich also authored this bit of research:
Pitch Perfect: Vocal Pitch and the Emotional Intensity of Congressional Speech | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core - "Applying our measure to MCs’ floor speeches about women, we show that female MCs speak with greater emotional intensity when talking about women as compared with both their male colleagues and their speech on other topics."

 

[lpetrich]

As to numbers on votes on bills, someone might have collected the numbers in some big fat spreadsheet somewhere, but I can't find such a spreadsheet in the limited amount of searching that I did.

Perhaps blastula could take up that search.

 

[blastula]

Lol, why should I? I don't even see how what you're proposing would support Tom's claim, which he should be defending himself anyway.

 

[lpetrich]

Lol, why should I? I don't even see how what you're proposing would support Tom's claim, which he should be defending himself anyway.

Or if not you, then TomC.

 

[blastula]

What for? Your proposal has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

And it's not that I don't think Republicans are worse at governing, but I don't see it on this particular issue.

What I think they're worse at, and it's also just my impression, is that they will block votes they are afraid will pass by support from their own party. For example, Merrick Garland or Medicaid expansion.

 

[Swammerdami]

The 2020 Covid stimulus bill, back when the Republicans controlled the Senate, contained a peculiar provision to cancel plans to build a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs, and instead rebuild on the current site on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the existing FBI headquarters is literally crumbling to pieces.

What about that? What did that have to do with Covid stimulus, hunh? Wudddaboutit? Wuddaboutit, Derec?

Decision makers both inside and outside the FBI agreed that a new HQ in the suburbs would make more sense, and much money had already been spent planning that project. What-about-it, Derec?

Is the location of FBI HQ related to Covid stimulus? Whataboutit? Spoiler alert:

Show

The existing FBI building is to be demolished in any event. If a new HQ is built in the suburbs instead of on the existing site, the existing site will be sold and is likely to be used for a ... hotel! There's already one 5-star hotel on Pennsylvania Hotel.

Show

the Trump International Hotel

What about that, Derec?

Who cares, since that wasn't included in the final bill that passed....

You guys never cease to astound! When discussing "What does a minimum wage hike have to do with COVID relief?"^* which wage hike will NOT be enacted as part of the final bill, it is off-limits to compare with the decision on FBI HQ because that was NOT enacted as part of the final bill. Do you guys even think before posting?

(Could this be a dialect problem? I've linked the first NOT to an audio of "Not" with a U.K. accent; the second to U.S. pronunciation.)

^* The minimum wage hike has little to do with Covid relief, but has SOME connection: it helps bring financial relief to Americans, some of whom have been financially stung by the pandemic. The FBI, otoh, has NOTHING to do with it. — Or are Hannity and Jones still pushing ther meme that Covid was a plot by Antifa, George Soros and/or Stormy Daniels and we need to get the FBI cracking on that?

 

[blastula]

Sorry but it is a bad comparison, that wasn't in the final bill, there was no fight for it to be in the bill, and that bill wasn't being passed under reconciliation, which is the only reason it's an issue with the rules here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

$15 /hr doesn't provide any sort of ALL CAP support. It just moves minimum wage into the 21st century. I haven't worked for less than $15 an hour in over 20 years!

The minimum wage was implemented to keep blacks out of the labor force.

Raising the minimum wage is about keeping more of them out of the labor force.

 

[laughing dog]

$15 /hr doesn't provide any sort of ALL CAP support. It just moves minimum wage into the 21st century. I haven't worked for less than $15 an hour in over 20 years!

The minimum wage was implemented to keep blacks out of the labor force.

Not according to this site https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/164635. Do you have a link to support your claim of intent? Or are you confusing intent with outcome?

Raising the minimum wage is about keeping more of them out of the labor force.

Again, do you have any data or a link to support your claim?

 

[KeepTalking]

$15 /hr doesn't provide any sort of ALL CAP support. It just moves minimum wage into the 21st century. I haven't worked for less than $15 an hour in over 20 years!

The minimum wage was implemented to keep blacks out of the labor force.

Raising the minimum wage is about keeping more of them out of the labor force.

GPS was implemented to aid the military in troop movements.

Anyone using GPS today is doing so to aid the military in troop movements.

Such reasoning is ridiculous on it's face, and that doesn't even touch on your not supporting your contention that "The minimum wage was implemented to keep blacks out of the labor force."

Another problem with that phrasing: to which minimum wage do you refer when you say "The minimum wage"?

 

[TomC]

You guys never cease to astound! When discussing "What does a minimum wage hike have to do with COVID relief?"^* which wage hike will NOT be enacted as part of the final bill, it is off-limits to compare with the decision on FBI HQ because that was NOT enacted as part of the final bill. Do you guys even think before posting?

(Could this be a dialect problem? I've linked the first NOT to an audio of "Not" with a U.K. accent; the second to U.S. pronunciation.)

^* The minimum wage hike has little to do with Covid relief, but has SOME connection: it helps bring financial relief to Americans, some of whom have been financially stung by the pandemic. The FBI, otoh, has NOTHING to do with it. — Or are Hannity and Jones still pushing ther meme that Covid was a plot by Antifa, George Soros and/or Stormy Daniels and we need to get the FBI cracking on that?

There's something irritating about the TFT quote system. For some reason, quotes from someone else get attributed to me.

I didn't post any of that.
Tom