The only thing that pissed me off more than Trump winning, was seeing how many good Props failed, and bad ones passed.
I’m glad we made LGBT marriage part of our constitution, but jesus christ the voting base here is NIMBYs, NeoLibs, and Conservatives.
Exactly right
“Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds.” Makes you question if Californians really care for the marginalized.
America is falling apart, but not because some people’s pet issue is miscasting prison convict work as “slavery”. Fasten your seat belts.
Always enjoy your posts, ozma.
Thank you. I try.
California is the USA in a bottle. You got progressive cities, conservative suburbs, rural areas and industrial hotspots, poor folks as well as the obscenely rich. Ronald Reagan was Governor in California for 8 years before becoming the blueprint of conservative candidates for the presidency.
This. Larger population than all of Canada = smorgasbord of different ideologies and classes.
Land of the
free
Land of the fee,
Home of the slave.
I thought the bear in their logo had two heads
Soon
The bear in the flag was over-hunted and had its habitat destroyed so it’s no longer found in California. It’s a great metaphor.
Same here, the only bears still in Toronto are all on Church Street
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
I bet the mutated Canada Geese look the same, they couldn’t get any fiercer
That comes after 2077
Why that bear don’t have 2 heads?
Because it isn’t 2189 yet.
Also, please use the spoiler tag.
The urge to re-install New Vegas grows…
Crazy that you uninstalled it in the first place tbh
If I don’t, I can’t remod it fresh and new after seeing all of the wonderful mods coming out all the time these days. Plus, I’d never play anything else!
The American prison system is designed to make money. Prisons get paid based on how many people they house. Making sure people don’t wind up in prison is literally the last thing the warden wants to do. Anybody thinking America is gonna change it’s ways out of the goodness of its heart is fucking delusional.
It’s worth noting that California did abolish private prisons a while ago.
I watched a video of a random streamer who ranted a bit about the elections. He had some great points, and he was basically saying what most people are thinking. He talked about voting and the people that refused to vote. He then added: how can you become president as a criminal but you are not able to vote as a criminal. And then continues with, he agrees that criminals shouldn’t be able to vote, because they are criminals with bad intentions. Fucker, the system is designed that most people ARE criminals. You can go to jail because a copper doesn’t like your face.
Literally every single person is one police encounter away from being a criminal, unless you’re rich that is.
Oh it’s worse than that. California voted to make more homeless people, expand the three strikes system by turning some misdemeanors into felonies, and voted itself a slave state to take advantage of all that new prison population.
All that’s left is to privatize the pipeline.
But it’s okay, they removed the defunct ban on same sex marriage so they’re still progressive! Yay!
One person was arguing that they shouldn’t be able to refuse to do “chores” in prison, but the things they do there are things like making license plates, furniture, and fighting wildfires. A bit far from mopping up and taking out the garbage.
Is that person wrong though? Would they be able to refuse “chores”?
Edit: This is not a rhetorical question. I want to know if they are factually correct or not.
They’re in prison. Forcing them to do anything is wrong. We’ve already taken their freedom. Using them as labor is morally wrong. Especially when you look at the punishments like solitary.
That was not a rhetorical question. I am asking if that argument is or is not factually correct.
They can’t refuse any job short of firefighting. They will be punished for doing so. Reports from former inmates indicate punishments range from solitary to beatings.
Let me rephrase: would the proposition, if it had passed, prohibited prisons from requiring prisoners to perform domestic duties within the prison?
I’d argue that simple chores can be used to help inmates get used to structured work as part of a reintegration effort. Of course that only makes sense if reintegration is the main goal of the prison system, which isn’t the case in the United States.
In any way, if inmates were to do labor, they’d have to be subject to labor law including worker protections and minimum wage provisions. That would probably require the United States to abolish slavery first, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Man…. The disconnect here
Prisons are almost entirely run by prisoners. There are no “labor laws”
Prisons are almost entirely run by prisoners. There are no “labor laws”
That’s what they’re saying.
If prisoners are to do manual labor, labor laws should apply, but that would require the USA to abolish slavery.
Don’t blame me! I voted Yes!
The baffling thing is that the other side didn’t even file an argument against the measure in the voter guide… and it still lost!
Like, if your side can’t even be bothered to come up with an argument for or against particular legislation, I’m voting with the other side, full stop.
Edit: As roscoe comments below, I’m a bit stupid, tho I still feel like the logic used in the latter part is a bit faulty. The following is the original bullshit I wrote.
Lol, that’s some serious “I’m not a fascist” cope. Really? If you want people to debate you over why slavery is bad, you’re part of the problem, or like really young, which I’m hopefully doubtful of. It’s like me pointing a gun to your head, asking why I shouldn’t shoot you and then pulling the trigger because instead of making a sound argument, you just got mad at me.
Lol, that’s some serious “I’m not a fascist” cope.
TIL it’s fascist to not want prison slavery
I think you’re misunderstanding them.
A “yes” vote means no slavery. This was a prop to make forced prison labor illegal. Our voter guides contain arguments for and against propositions and rebuttals to those arguments, usually. No group even bothered to make an argument against the prop or a rebuttal to the argument for. They’re also saying, in general not just this prop, if no one can even be bothered to make an argument for one side, they’ll probably go with the only side that did make one. In this case that would be no slavery.
This was weird. There are always arguments both ways unless it’s just some editorial change to some law that for whatever reason has to go before the voters. This was totally non-controversial, or at least it seemed that way. I don’t understand how it didn’t pass.
There are artifacts organisations that refuse to argue against fascist organisations in order to not give them attention. Instead they argue in favor of others. So in a convoluted (and contrived) sense you just voted for a fascist.
Edit: This refers to your generalisation in the last paragraph and was meant as a joke and reference to a meme.
So in a convoluted (and contrived) sense you just voted for a fascist.
Voting against prison slavery is a vote for fascism, apparently.
This refers to your generalisation in the last paragraph and was meant as a joke and reference to a meme
A “yes” vote means no slavery. See my comment in reply to lanik2000.
This refers to your generalisation in the last paragraph and was meant as a joke and reference to a meme
California is not the most progressive state. It’s just so big that it being progressive makes the news more.
I know it has that reputation but I really don’t think California is the most progressive state. Maybe Oregon? Vermont? Not sure to be honest.
It’s pretty much just basic liberals here. And lots of fascists but they hide out away from everyone else most of the time.
Voting for democrats more overwhelmingly doesn’t necessarily mean more progressive, just more acceptance for the Democrats in California, who are generally establishment neoliberals.
And yet in local races, primaries, ballot initiatives, progressive candidates and issues all lost. Almost every issue I voted on went the other way. So that has been my experience with California, that it is not very progressive. Admittedly this was a particularly bad election but similar things have happened before.
Yep. Cali is ideologically very neoliberal, from the SanFran techbros to the large presense of the Military Industrial Complex. People’s ideas are guided by their material conditions, which includes their class interests. I made an introductory reading list for Marxism if you are interested, the section on Dialectical and Historical Materialism as well as Scientific Socialism goes over said phenomena in further detail.
I realize I misunderstood what you were saying. Yes I agree.
I don’t find Marxism very compelling personally but I agree that material conditions certainly do have their influence on many things, perhaps including this issue.
I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, whether it be here or in general, but what is it about Marxism you don’t find compelling? I can either offer clarification or contextualization, if you want. I’m a big Marxist theory nerd.
I also feel like people forget how fucking enormous California is. It’s really just a few big liberal areas separated by a giant wasteland of racist rednecks that spans nearly the entirety of the United States from north to South in between. It’s huge. If you start in San Diego and drive north for 12 hours you’ll be…almost to the top of California. If you do that on the East coast you can drive through nine states.
It’s not even racist rednecks in most of those in-between areas. It’s a lot of Hispanics, and let me tell you… there’s a whoooolllleeeeee lot of racist Hispanics in this state and a lot that are happy they got in and fine with no one else coming in behind them.
You don’t have to be white to be racist or a redneck. Go to places like Fresno or Victorville and you’ll meet plenty of both. A huge proportion of Hispanics regularly vote against their own interests in California
California has the second largest population of Republicans in the US after Texas.
California also has the largest population of all states. A direct numerical comparison is disingenuous, a statistical comparison would be more valid.
Of registered voters in California, about 25% are Republican. In Texas, 38% are Republican.
https://independentvoterproject.org/voter-registration-by-state
I have huge skepticism about the Texas number.
Texas DOES NOT have voters register for a party.
Wait… only 38% of voters in Texas are registered republican, yet they win every single time?!
A lot of people don’t register for a party
46.5% are registered democrats
Texas doesn’t do voter registration by party so uh
How did they get these
And a ton of people choose not to participate at all.
Gerrymandering is an art form in Texas
That’s not an issue for state-level elections or national elections, the answer is that many don’t vote and many don’t register for a party.
Willy Wonka, but the chocolate factory is Texas:
🎵 Come with me and you’ll be
In a world of pure voter suppression 🎵
I think it’s probably one of those two. California is a bit too diverse idiology when you look at the individual level because it’s a huge state, just like Texas (which might go purple under better circumstance). Drive through central valley to know what I mean. Plus we’re the state that gave the country Reagan!
As for the slavery, dem voter turnout was fairly bad like in the other states, so that probably had some impact. Some red house seats got flipped though, although that is pretty specific to those communities (turn out lead by house members, believe it or not).
This is a spin on the truth. Slavery has
never not been illegalalways been legal per the US constitution, as long as the slaves are prisoners. We had a prop on it to disallow mandatory labor in prisons in California. We voted against it because Americans have a hard-on for punishment. Personally I think being caged is punishment enough, ESPECIALLY when you consider the sheer volume of for profit prisons in the US. Hurray, private business can keep doing slavery in the state -_-It has been and still is legal in federal law across the US
How is it a spin on the truth? Forced labor sounds a lot like slavery and they voted in favor of it. Just because some people justify slavery with a reason like “criminals deserve it!” or “but look at their skin color!” doesn’t change that they’re voting for slavery. Just because the criteria isn’t directly skin color (80% of prisoners are not non-hispanic white… so its pretty much is still forced labor based on skin color) doesn’t change it at all.
Wow you really put a lot of cheap assumptions on what my point was instead of just waiting for me to answer (especially when I said exactly why it was a spin the first time…), you kind of suck. Stop assuming the worst as step 1 in how you deal with other people.
The spin is they took the truth “this will continue to be legal in California and the US” and spun it into something that makes it sound like its just California, like were upholding some accent California law. It is a shifting of the narrative that this is legal across the entire country, which is much more concerning, and making it seem like this is a California only problem.
Also the title saying the US is collapsing, being active tense, implies that this decision is part of the cause, like this hasn’t been in the US Constitution since 1864.
But yeah were definitely collapsing, just for other reasons lol
Slavery has never not been illegal per the US constitution
???
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States
deleted by creator
I think that was pretty clear and correct. Slavery is still very much legal in the USA.
Edit: actually the triple negative makes it say the opposite of that lol, carry on.
And yet, California voted affirmatively to be a slave state in 2024. I did not have that on my 2024 bingo card.
continue to be a slave state*
Like the rest of the entire country already is*
My point being that it should be more shocking to people that this is the way of the country as a whole instead of framing it as a California only problem.
It takes a 2/3rds majority of both legislative chambers, and 2/3rds of the states to pass a new amendment. There’s not any question as to why we’re still stuck with that line in an amendment passed in the 1860’s.
California has never before held a referendum on slavery and was admitted as a state in 1850 as a “Free State” because of a compromise on the national level.
In 2024, they voted for slavery. They can no longer hide behind the onerous process of editing the 13th amendment. They specifically voted in favor of slavery.
That’s fucking huge.
