> Of course, voter ID proponents have let out the private partisan internal logic lots of times when they thought only people aligned with their faction were listening
etc etc, this is just what immediately came up in the last year. Among "the right sorts" they'll occasionally get complacent admit it's all about partisan advantage and not actually about fraud at all.
Without looking at the transcript, I would assume that the context of the discussion at the Supreme Court was standing. At best his point only lays bare the intrinsic unseemliness of quasi-institutionalized party politics. I could easily see Democrats make the same point in other cases, and I'm sure they have.
The Chairman of the Arizona's Gov't and Elections Committee is simply expressing what has been a common conservative sentiment for ages--that voting is a responsibility, not just a privilege, and one that shouldn't be exercised lightly. Rand Paul, at least if we're being charitable, is making the same argument.
None of those sentiments are inherently discriminatory, neither conceptually nor in practice, which is fundamentally what matters. The belief that the government should actively "Get Out the Vote" is a policy preference, not a constitutional imperative--at least not in the U.S., which lacks mandatory voting laws. "Get Out the Vote" is just a pithy statement of one's preferred policy.
Though, without rigorous oversight it's quite easy--almost trivial, even--to apply those sentiments in a discriminatory manner. AFAIU, Thomas Hofeller, the infamous Republican strategist and redistricting consultant whose personal papers were revealed by his daughter after his death, approached voter ID laws this way--drafting them in ways that were inherently, knowingly, deliberately discriminatory, supported by reams of empirical data, though I'm not sure if racially or otherwise illegally discriminatory on their face. Some of his gerrymandering proposals, by contrast, were explicitly racially discriminatory. ("Hofeller's hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.", https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-files-of...)
Disclaimer: I got two shots of Moderna some time ago.
Your source shows just how strongly anti-vax Biden was, making the case that the vaccine can't be trusted because of political influence. Since Biden can't give us any credible assurances that politics aren't involved in FDA approval or CDC recommendations, nor can he address his own concerns about the vaccine's development being politicized, then, by his argument, the American people should not have confidence.
> The following week, Biden restated his concern about politics intervening in vaccine development:
> "Americans have had to endure President Trump’s incompetence and dishonesty, when it comes to testing and personal protective equipment. We can’t afford to repeat those fiascos when it comes to a vaccine. … Let me be clear: I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump, and at this moment, the American people can’t either. Last week, Senator Harris and I laid out three questions this administration’s going to have to answer to assure the American people that politics will not play a role whatsoever in the vaccine process. If Donald Trump can’t give answers and the administration can’t give answers to these three questions, the American people should not have confidence."
PolitiFact is one of the most biased outlets I've seen.
The statistic is on the high side of the range, but it is accurate.
> When exploring the makeup of Ivy League institutions and universities in New England, results, such as the case with Brown University, were as high as 60:1 in favor of registered Democrats among professors.
So the most liberal single university (out of a group picked one of the most liberal regions in the country) matches a statistic that was claimed to be across all universities in the country. I don't know that that's strong evidence that the "statistic [...] is accurate". Even the source you linked indicates that the statistic is far from accurate (and again has the same pattern where for economics professors it's even less).
It's not the best use of statistics that I've ever seen by a long shot, but I just wanted to point out that your claim that it was "bullshit madeup" was inaccurate flamebait.
He didn't say which subset of universities he saw that statistic for. The group of "most liberal universities in the country" includes what, all of the most wealthy and important ones? It's certainly a reasonable subset to consider. The 98% figure is pretty close here (for the group as a whole, not just one like you claim).
You need stronger evidence to attack someone like that, and you don't have it, partially because we don't even know what exactly the scope of the claim was. You could certainly criticize the vagueness of the statement without being toxic.
I keep seeing this brought up on HN. Isn't it telling that you have to go back 70 years to find a good example? At that time, the Democratic Party was still in bed with the KKK. It's not relevant to today's politics.
Mothers Against Dungeons & Dragons certainly tried to cancel role-playing games in the 1980s and they were just the largest group to try and do so. The Dixie Chicks were cancelled in the 2000s for a single instance of political speech.
One could easily pull up stories of people in the 70s, 80s, or even 90s who were fired or ostracized for supporting homosexuality and gay rights. Left-wing causes like supporting unions or even more radical leftist politics was a firing offense deep into the 80s. The only thing that has changed over a couple of generations is that now those who were once on the receiving end of cancel culture have the power to turn the tables and people who grew up with the implicit assumption that their beliefs and behaviors were beyond reproach are learning what it means to face consequences for their speech or actions.
"Being fired for something" isn't the same as being cancelled. "Cancellation" implies a concerted campaign to pressure employers into firing employees. Being fired on the grounds that you've offended your employer or said something that is broadly unpopular are both awful, but they're different than "you've said something that offended a tiny minority of the population but they're threatening to call up our clients and slander us (and otherwise make business difficult) unless we fire you".
They did not fire you just because they disagreed, they did so because others would harass and complain until you were fired. Sorry if the attempt at making some sort of 'both sides' point went off the rails, but cancel culture was created by the right and was their exclusive domain for almost 60 years in post-war America. There was a large list of things that you were not allowed to say, to do, or even to be just because right-wing pressure groups and 'concerned citizens' would ensure that you had no job and no voice if they found out.
The only thing that is different now is that the shoe is on the other foot. I guess when some people find they no longer have license to be an asshole the transition can feel a bit uncomfortable and needing to learn about these things called 'consequences' that everyone else has been forced to endure must seem a bit strange.
This is substantially misleading. Due to the 2011 outage, the Texan regulations are stronger and more strictly enforced than the federal regulations. Additionally, the primary issue with natural gas was due to suppliers not being able to get gas to the generators. The natural gas suppliers are federally regulated.
Consumers were insulated from this because they only pay the price in their contract, not the wholesale price. There was one provider that offered lower rates in exchange for not giving that protection, which did not work out very well.
How would we fix it without building nuclear plants? I don't think building a bunch of fossil fuel plants is going to go over well. Even Texas hasn't built anything other than wind and solar in years.
Maybe we tolerate it because fixing it is politically impossible.
It's nearly all wind, whose output fell all the way to 12.5% of installed capacity over a three-day period when homes were freezing (February 15, 16, and 17). [0] Output consistently stayed in the 15-30% range while I was watching it in ERCOT's live stats. Solar plants are nearly a rounding error. Every other source maintained 60-75% of capacity even with insufficient winterization.
the comparison to installed capacity is interesting, but what really matters is a comparison to the projected supply from each of the sources, right? Was wind expected to be generating at 100% of installed capacity on those days, or was 15-30% in line with expectations?
The ERCOT projections I've seen are short-term [0], which means that after the most dismal days, the slightly less dismal 15-30% days "exceeded expectations". The fact-checkers reported this supposedly great performance without mentioning a single one of these details. I don't think these short-term projections are very useful for our analysis. It's as if your team finished the season 6-6, and all anyone mentions is how they won six games in a row so they're actually the best team in the league.
If you want to know "normal" output, you'll find that wind is very inconsistent. (I probably did find the mean at some point, but I don't have it at hand, and honestly don't feel that it matters). Wind is not "supposed" to carry the winter load, but ERCOT's record day for wind generation was set in February. Investors don't want to build power plants that could serve the expected winter load but will bleed money when wind has a good winter. Texas has built nothing but wind and solar for years because that's where all the profit is. ("Nothing but wind and solar for years" is according to D'Andrea's leaked phone call that got him fired, but I don't doubt his account of his own crony capitalism).
Wind is not "supposed" to be at fault for outages because it's expected to drop to as little as 1% output for short periods, but the reality is that we have built a power grid that does rely on wind. Our population is increasing dramatically, but we are not building any more reliable capacity because it's unprofitable compared to its subsidized competitors.
I'm happy that Texas is a world leader in wind generation, but we need a reality check. We have to build reliable capacity too. Winterization will help, but it's not going to do a thing to fix our problems during the spring and summer. We actually need more than that, because we occasionally have winter demand that matches peak summer demand. If we keep building so much wind, that will never happen unless wind happens to have a record winter in just the right year.
Can you give a good source or two please?