The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, currently provides 23 million low-income Americans a $30 broadband discount. While it didn’t get m…

In short Republicans are going to screw over 23 million poor Americans because they don’t want Democrats getting political credit for helping them during an election season. And because our press is generally broken and afraid of calling a duck a duck, this is going to get dressed up as a genuine concern about wasteful spending by a party that’s long been a huge fan of no shortage of wasteful spending.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4219·
    1 year ago

    Meanwhile Biden wants applause for giving this same discount to one single battleground state…

    49 states lose it, one gets to keep it. And moderate Dems want us to congratulate them for it.

    It’s this kind of strategy that makes “moderate progress” an oxymoron. The result isnt just less progress, it’s a slow backslide because gains never outpace setbacks from conservatives.

    Moderates might not be the ones breaking shit, but when they’re the only other option “not breaking shit” isn’t good enough, they need to actually fix shit.

    If they can’t, maybe that’s a sign 30 years of the neoliberal experiment just shows that it doesn’t work and we need FDR style Dems again…

    • FrickAndMortar@lemmy.world
      281·
      1 year ago

      I feel like the current establishment wouldn’t allow an FDR-style candidate to succeed, they’re making too much money from protecting the status quo.

      But I’ll still grudgingly support them if Trump is the other option. I’ll vote progressive in my local elections, but as long as we still have a first-to-the-post election process, it’s always the lesser of two evils.

      Isn’t it the case that whoever wins this one, they’ll be the oldest president in US history? Gross.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        152·
        1 year ago

        Obama was probably out last best chance…

        But the party made a lot of changes after 08 to prevent anyone except their favorite from winning.

        And they put a lot of pressure on Obama to not actually be progressive, and paired him with Biden to show donors everything would still be ok.

        12 years later trying to pretend Biden was/is a progressive was just a huge slap in the face. He was literally the opposite of a progressive, a sign to boomers that the young Black man who talked about “change and hope” would get all the “guidance” he needed.

        But like Heinlein said:

        Surely the game is rigged, but don’t let that stop you. If you never play, you’ll never win.

        We have to be at them at their own game, there’s no other option.

        But it’s not the first or last time the good guys didn’t get a fair fight and fought it anyways.

        Win or lose, we still have to keep trying.

        Creating a third party isn’t really an option unless the DNC goes full nuclear and ignores a primary vote to nominate their favorite.

        • Xhieron@lemmy.worldEnglish
          158·
          1 year ago

          Are you playing to win though? I ask because Lemmy is absolutely loaded with faux-progressive astroturfing designed with no other end than to demoralize Democrats, progressives, moderates, “centrists”, and anyone else who might stand even the most remote possibility of voting for Joe Biden in November. Why should the GOP bother attacking the administration? They have you to do it for them.

          Look at this thread. This program was part of Biden’s infrastructure package, passed by Democrats at President Biden’s urging, to give free or reduced-cost broadband to low-income families, and the Republicans in Congress defunded it because they hope that when their constituents suffer they’ll blame Democrats. And would you look at that! Nearly every comment in this thread, including yours, is a criticism of the administration. No shit, the game is rigged, but from here it sure looks like you lot are playing for the other team.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
            105·
            1 year ago

            Because problems dont go away if you ignore them.

            And it’s harder for politicians to ignore problems if people talk about them.

            And if more people are talking about them, it’s more likely the politicians actually address them.

            Which is good for the people suffering from the problem, and helps the politician get elected.

            So tell me. What’s so wrong about asking for more from the only rational choice I have when I vote for president?

            What do you think will happen if dek voters aren’t allowed to criticize Dem politicians?

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      1012·
      1 year ago

      Never fails to amaze me how y’all can tie literally any news to how fucked up Democrats are. Like this article is literally about republicans being fucked up and yet somehow that was a prompt to say democrats are.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        84·
        1 year ago

        Really?

        Are you surprised when people criticize the police?

        Do you think we should only criticize the criminals, or that it’s ok to criticize police when they’re not doing enough?

    • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      46·
      1 year ago

      "Biden has already achieved more in three years than most presidents in eight:

      The biggest investment in the middle class since Franklin Roosevelt,

      The biggest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower,

      The biggest investment in health care since Barack Obama

      And the biggest investment in climate change and chip technology in history.

      Then there’s the biggest expansion of veterans’ benefits since World War II.

      The first gun safety law since Bill Clinton

      And with last month’s jobs report, the lowest US unemployment rate since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the moon."

      https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        1 year ago

        How the fuck hasn’t an admin banned that username yet?

        Edit:

        I’ve explained this to that account at least three times now, so I’m just blocking them and leaving the same evidence as the other times for everyone else.

        Yet, the most infamous records of intentionally spreading smallpox to Native Americans occurred in 1763 at Fort Pitt (present day downtown Pittsburgh). On June 24, 1763, William Trent, a fur trader commissioned at Fort Pitt, wrote in his journal after a failed negotiation between the British and the Delaware tribe. He stated that they had given the emissaries food, and as Trent wrote, “Out of our regard to them we gave them 2 Blankets and an (sic) Handkerchief out of the Small pox (sic) Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.”

        Later that year, the Delaware, Shawnee and Mingo Tribes laid siege to Fort Pitt. The fort’s commander wrote to his superior officer, Colonel Bouquet, that he feared the disease would overwhelm the fort’s inhabitants. After hearing of the outbreak, Bouquet’s superior officer, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, sent a suggestion from New York: “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox (sic) among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them.”

        Bouquet responded, “I will try to inoculate [them] with some blankets that may fall in their hands and take care not to get the disease myself.” It is important to understand that before Jenner’s safer practice of vaccination, the term inoculation specifically meant deliberate infection. While this method was the main way of producing mass immunity, it was also known to be just as likely to start an epidemic as to end one. The timing of an outbreak of the virus that struck the Ohio Valley later that year and lasted well into 1764 coincides very closely with the distribution of infected articles from Fort Pitt.

        https://asm.org/Articles/2023/November/Investigating-the-Smallpox-Blanket-Controversy

        And as that article states, the main reason for lack of evidence is Native populations had no written language and were stripped of their own languages later.

        So the only evidence we have, is when the people doing it flat out wrote down that they were doing it.

        And we’ve got plenty of examples of that.