Summary
The Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a memo prioritizing federal funding for communities with marriage and birth rates above the national average.
The directive, which applies to grants, loans, and contracts, also prioritizes projects benefiting families with young children.
A congressional aide criticized the policy, saying, “Considering fertility rates when prioritizing federal grants? We obviously have no idea what the full impact of that will be… It’s absolutely creepy. It’s a little ‘Chinese government.’”
The memo also blocks mask mandates and requires compliance with immigration enforcement.
Remember how all the protest voters told us how Harris would have been the exact same? Something about the DNC not offering a candidate that would be any better than trump?
Yeah… Don’t believe them when they try to tell you that they didn’t go out of their way to help make this happen.
Yep. Quite a few of them have gone quiet, I’ve noticed. Not one of them has apologized for their cloying sanctimony before the election, no matter how wrong it was.
They have gone quiet because the project is now wound down. Dufus is in the white house, so they have been moved to a new task.
They’ve moved on to directly attacking trans people and bipoc
Yep. Well, most of them. Some seem to still be sticking with, and even doubling down, on the stupid and immoral position, although they frame it as being morally superior to everyone else. 🤣
They just moved back into their underground slayers where naysayers are immediately banned.
They will never apologize because they insist they are right and we’re wrong. Further they hold the actual left wing voters responsible and claim we are allowing this to happen, we are complicit and we need be held to account. I’ve been assured that liberals are The Enemy.
For all intents and purposes they need to be placed among the cult of the right. They aren’t a logic based lovely. They are not progressives. They are a flavor or authoritarian. They literallly believe their flavor of idealism is the only valid flavor.
They actually remind me of libertarians, where everyone has maximum freedoms for to as they wish so long as they don’t use that freedom to form a government. Neither has any doubt. They are 100% they are correct and as any inllectual has told us, that’s 100% nonsense.
I sincerely hope that each and every one of them is at least capable of feeling guilt. Because I so badly want them to suffer the guilt of having helped caused this. I don’t even care anymore that they refuse to admit it. They know it, I know it- them admitting it doesn’t make it better.
Knowing they feel the full weight of guilt pressing on them for being partially responsible for everything that will happen as a result of their ignorance?
Yeah… That does make it a little better.
The trolls, etc., on places like Lemmy? I doubt many of them were even genuine in this kind of sentiment - I’m sure some were even foreign actors working to stir up division everywhere, most especially on the left. And if they really hold this position, I have no idea.
It’s the people I know IRL that are the ones I’d like to see wake the fuck up. And apologize for their useless bullshit and their tiresome lectures about gEnOcIdE and “bothsides” and just let it all burn down so we can rebuild America in some wholesome perfect way kind of dorm room talk. Yes, American foreign policy is shit and has been for decades before I was even fucking born, and yes, Democrats are often complicit in this. Gaza is hardly anything new, as shocking as it is. Yes, the Democrats are not offering up a perfect pretty pony for them on every single issue.
But now we are going to be blasted with fucking sewage for the next four years, with actual harm coming to at-risk people (which is going to be nearly everyone if it gets bad enough) HERE and foreign policy is going to be much worse, and we can point at people like this and thank them for their part in making it happen.
Yeah, this is all the voters’ fault!
Quite the naive take you have there, playing right into the divide and conquer strategy which fascists love to employ.
Many of those protest voters have been intensely pressuring the DNC to make serious changes to their leadership to signify they do actually intend to learn something from their defeat and do better next time. So far, Dems have largely refused to do so. In fact Dems seem intent on making the same mistakes again in the next election cycle - so buckle up for an even more devastating loss next time. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow find a way to forego a democratic primary again in ‘28, if we make it that far. It will be alright though, for them - they have been assured the donor checks will keep coming, and they can continue grifting with insider trading through the next term. Just like these fossils have been doing for the past 50 years.
Dems/Liberalism can not save us from fascism.
Intensely pressuring who?!? The DNC who think they have “good billionaire” bankers???
Get over yourself; your deluded fantasies have no impact on reality.
🤣 Well, I see someone has learned no lessons.
Anyway, YES, it IS the fault of some of the voters. Absolutely. Just because you don’t get a pretty pony doesn’t mean you absolve yourself of everything.
Ninety million people didn’t vote. That’s over one third of the voting body of the country. Third party votes made up another three million. Don’t even try to offload the responsibility non-voting had in the mess we’re in.
And don’t pull that “divide and conquer” bullshit here. We all tried to get you to join us in solidarity against trump. You refused. So no, that shit isn’t going to play here at all and you should be embarrassed for even thinking about mentioning it.
Hypocrite.
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Ok well keep blaming voters and shouting down voices of logic and reason, and enjoy your new dictatorship, ya dick. Liberalism still won’t save you from this mess, you’re either going to have to wake up and accept that reality or lose again.
I don’t blame just third party voters. I blame people that entrenched themselves within their blind stupidity and refused to try and stop a tyrant felon and ignored him when he told them what he would do.
- I blame people that willfully plugged their ears from the months and months worth of warnings of what would happen if they didn’t stop their entitled stubborn bullshit.\
- I blame the idiots that spread propaganda freely to one ignorant child to another.\
- I blame the idiot children that believed the propaganda.\
- I blame the people who stayed home with folded arms while the rest of us tried to do everything we could to save the a lot of American citizens from becoming political targets- from becoming less-than.
I don’t give a fuck that the DNC propped up a lame duck. I don’t give a fuck what they thought was going to happen. They were warned by people that know better what will happen if trump won. And they were told what they could do to stop it.
They didn’t.
So they can take a bow. They fucking did this.
Do you realize that compared to 2020, Dems lost more voters than the total amount of third party voters in ‘24? By about 3 times. It made 0 difference. Those voters exercised their constitutional right to vote for the party they thought best represented them. What right do you have to demand they vote democrat instead?
It is the responsibility of the party to win the votes, not the responsibility of the voter to support “their team.” You coming on here and attacking people for not wanting to further entrench the oligarchy’s grip on our society is precisely the divide and conquer effect I’m talking about. I get that you’re upset because of how things are going, but you have to realize that demanding something different is our only way out of this mess.
No amount of side-stepping your refusal to do a simple thing like voting is going to absolve you of your responsibility in helping get trump elected.
Regardless of how you twist things around, you’re not the victim here. You’re the cause.
actually they can. by not doing it. see its the hey lets have the facists win to stop facism that does not work.
Biden admin had 4 years to stop fascism in its tracks. They didn’t even begin to pretend to do something until 2 years in. And you expect people to vote for more of that? Interesting strategy, but sadly doomed to fail.
Unfortunately for Dems, many Americans are no longer under the spell of mainstream media running cover for their corruption. Americans deserve actual representation in their government. Dems can either stop accepting bribe money and start fighting to improve people’s lives, or they can continue to lose. When the only choices are Hitler vs Hitler lite, the last election has shown people will just vote Hitler, or perhaps not vote at all. I’m not claiming this is a good direction for the country, rather pointing out facts concerning the election which could be useful learnings for Dems if they care about winning. Here’s another fact for you: they don’t.
I’m sorry to tell you this but there will be fewer workplaces in the future.
There have been three significant developments throughout human history:
- agricultural revolution
- heavy industrial revolution
- information technology
I’m afraid there won’t be a third wave, and technological progress will slow down. I’m sure it will lead to a decline in well-paying employments, and wages will go down. An effective counter-measure would be if the number of workers in the country would also drop, as that would lower supply in workforce and increase prices for labor (a.k.a. wages).
Extraterrestrial maybe? If we don’t become a dust bowel first and starve
And instead of life being improved for everyone, all of the fruits of technological innovation are being given to the people who already have more than they could ever possibly use in thousands of lifetimes while everyone else is left to starve.
Total economic collapse
Is there some problem with underpopulation? The qons were always saying “America is full” when it comes to refugees.
They’re just going to need more people in general, so they can let us die sooner and replenish the workforce.
Gotta be the rwhite color…
“I was told there would be a medal”.
Shamelessly clipped from History.com:
This Day In History: December 16
1938 Hitler establishes Mother’s Cross to encourage German women to procreate
On December 16, 1938, Adolf Hitler institutes the Mother’s Cross, to encourage women of “pure” German origin to increase the size of their families and grow the population of the Third Reich.
The Nazis started such encouragement early. When members the League of German Girls (a wing of of the Hitler Youth movement) turned 18, they became eligible for a branch called Faith and Beauty, which trained these girls in the art of becoming ideal mothers. One component of that ideal was fecundity. And so each year, gold medals were awarded to women with eight children or more, silver medals to women with six to seven, and bronze medals to women with five. The crosses were distributed between 1938 and 1944.
Prioritize funding for places with higher birth rates, you say? So… Communities with loads of immigrants. Got it.
the “white” was implied
They don’t even have to imply it!
They can just define it with congressional districts or some arbitrary measure that clusters their desired groups and fragments their undesired groups.
Even if this wasn’t the actual, real end to even the charade of U.S. democracy, it would take at least a generation or two to “prove” those policies are hurtful in the courts.
What then? The damage is done. Infrastructure built. Certain groups given generational advantages, certain groups left behind.
They were removed from the calculation after Elon was given network access and privs to the US government.
I feel like they’ve buried the lead.
In addition to its directives related to marriage and babies, the Transportation Department’s memo blocks recipients of federal money from implementing “mask mandates,” a reference to requirements that transit agencies followed to limit the spread of infection during the height of COVID-19.
The memo also requires recipients to comply with federal immigration enforcement in order to receive funding — the latest effort by the administration to target undocumented immigrants, conduct mass arrests and deportations, and deny federal transportation funds to so-called sanctuary cities.
So (1) no ability for public transport systems to implement measures to stop pandemics (which will be important since avian flu is around the corner) and (2) no federal funding for transport to sanctuary cities (of which Washington D.C. is arguably one).
Both of those are illegal. The president cannot impose extra strings on federal funding.
I know it’s possible for conditions to be tied to federal funding (like how interstate funds were withheld from Louisiana until they raised their drinking age to 21), so is it just that the Executive branch can’t impose that? (Genuinely asking since I’m not sure.)
So, fun fact, that was also illegal. The MADD campaign was just so pervasive that nobody cared. Extra fun fact, it wasn’t a teenager problem, it was an education problem and is much reduced. The remaining people who drink and drive, or drink underage, just don’t care about the laws, so there’s no reason to keep the drinking age laws except for tradition at this point.
(just fyi, it’s “buried the lede”)
Both spellings are correct and do not impact the meaning. “Lede” has only this one meaning whilst “Lead” can mean a few different things.
For more context, the phrase started as “lead” then was changed by journalists to “lede” in the 70’s to help differentiate between “lead”, “lead”, and “lead”.
In the US, yes, definitely. Across the globe it’s more of a mixed bag. I encounter both regularly.
But “burying the lede” is a common term in journalism for exactly this kind of thing. “Burying the lead” is common only in that it’s a mistake people say because it’s phonetically similar (plus “lede” is an uncommon word, I’ll admit)
Kind of like should’ve vs should of. Have and of are both words, but one is very wrong.
No. I’m sorry, you are wrong. Both spellings are equally valid. In English-speaking newsrooms across the globe either spelling is acceptable.
Thanks. Just did a quick search and it seems that spelling is more prominent in the US than elsewhere, which is probably why I’m not familiar with it.
The right wingers are just so chock full of rage-filled idiots. Wearing a mask IS annoying, but you aren’t some kind of freedom-fighter to not wear one and go out of your way to disrupt public health, FFS.
But that’s how all of these assholes see themselves: vanguards of “freedom”. By completely ruining any chance of a sane response to a pandemic.
dont’ forget to add in the effect of the back to office hardons.
Not gonna fix old broken roads unless y’all fucking and making babies like rabbits. Florida? NO ROADS FOR YOU! Texas? NO ROADS FOR YOU!
The memos of this administration will go down in history as the dumbest shit ever penned. Even worse the nupties who wrote them will get cushy private sector jobs lobbying or something later.
dumbest shit since Bush
which was dumbest since Reagan
which was dumbest since Nixon
you’d better believe it can get worse.
If Nixon had listened to his advisors about the potential impacts of climate change the state of the world could be in a completely different place. So many people know Exxon knew about the potential impacts of fossil fuels in the 70s, but what many over look is that the White House Science and Technology advisor who approved (and it never happened) of the monitoring of greenhouse gases caused by such was Edward E. David Jr. When he left the white House he went to work for Exxon as well and set up monitoring tools on vessels from within the company. That information of course would get blanketed and kept internal to the company, but they very existence of people knowing the real dangers, asking to monitor them and getting turned down by our government for what would amount to maybe about $150m-$200m in todays costs is absurd.
Imagine those conversations, “Sir, this could impact all life and species on earth, global changes to ocean and weather patterns, and could end in mass starvation, floods, large hurricanes, droughts and more”.
“Yeah let’s ignore that one for now” “That would cause it to get worse faster” “Yeah let’s ignore that one for now”
Do you suppose Democrats will ever get better instead of chasing worse? Because I’ve pretty much lost hope.
Whoa! No fucking allowed, you sick fornicator. You better have those babies without any pleasure involved
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2069436850145993
50 States, 50 Protests, 1day
Feb 5 @ your downtown.
Pass the word!
For all those asking, the Facebook link didn’t even work for me, so I just searched and there looks to be an active r/50501 group.
It doesn’t seem like an organized thing, just be at your state capital. Here’s a few posters from the reddit:
why the hell do they plan these during the week, DURING the work day?? Saturday would be too convenient??
I’m not sure if the work distribution is part of the point or not. The protests would have to be huge though for that to make a dent I’d think though.
Part of what these protests are against is the removal of protections for employees, so having people risk employment during this time does seem a bit problematic.
I really don’t know what we’re supposed to do anymore, especially living in a time with surveillance everywhere. I’m just volunteering in my community and letting people know I’m on their side should they need me.
I had the same thought. States are huge, too, so state capitols are going to be a healthy drive for a lot of folks. Short notice, far off location (I mean, take Cali; San Francisco and LA are NOT close to Sac), and middle of the workday/school day timing. If you were planning a fake protest to show how little enthusiasm there is to push back against Trump, it’d be hard to do better than this.
I didn’t know anything either. I just got overly pissed this morning because they removed Transgender from all government websites. Like dude, that’s us! Who’s next? Who will protest when there’s no one left to speak up?
They are really going full speed on the destruction of near everything. I thought it would be more methodical, but it seems scorched earth is what they’re going for.
My heart goes out to you, it seems like trans rights were just starting to catch on and now it feels like you’re in more danger than ever. But none of us that do support you did so just because the gov told us it was ok now, so we won’t stop just because of crap like this. Millions are still on your side.
I get it’s still more popular than Fedi apps but using Facebook kind of feels like we’re asking the King permission to revolt.
Meta can suck all the ass, but you have to admit that abandoning it entirely will just enforce the echo chamber. I think we should at least try to continue the fight inside. I almost never use it, and have disabled all the settings and tracking that allow it to make the most money off of me.
I feel like there’s at least some importance to meeting people where they are.
I just feel like hosting the info on Facebook is a bad move. Sure, pass notes about unionizing at work but don’t have a meeting at the loading dock.
I feel like I gotta make a new account and nuke my old one if I want to do this at all. I have been thinking about this too.
Is there a non-Meta link for that?
Lol. Nothing. I was pissed I wanted to see if anyone was organizing something and it looks like there is such a thing happening. Feb 5 at your downtown.
That looks important. Too bad I can’t read or upvote it because it’s a link to a fascist platform.
Make your own link in here and pas the word so it happens! Yeah I got no Facebook or reedit account. I’m just not gonna ignore it when the government wants to ship my mom off to India or Quebec.
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, TRUMP?
Why are you giving the guy a hard time? He’s just doing all the awful stuff he said he was going to do plus maybe a little bit of extra awful stuff that he should have been expected to do.
What are the legal consequences of ignoring an executive order?
Ive heard they force you to convert all your holdings to dogecoin.
Sounds like something drafted by President Musk
The stunlock continues
I know we like to shit on Trump for his dumb ideas, but why is this idea bad? I would remove the marriage rates, but prioritizing communities with many children, especially families with young children seems to me like a sane idea, this is where help is needed the most and where you make the most impact for the future generations or am I missing something?
and where you make the most impact for the future generations or am I missing something?
Yeah you definitely make an impact, if by making an impact you mean flooding the future labor market with quasi-slaves.
Gay marriage will be used against areas. Fertility rates are higher in rural and conservative areas because of a lack of access to proper sex ed and contraception. Everything about this screams punish blue states, funding only for maga.
To summarize what everyone else is saying: It can (and therefore will) be abused to only benefit “the right people”.
Who has marriage and birth rates higher than the national average? White evangelicals. This is a gift to the religious right.
Who’s that weird family with a ton of kids? They get all the money. Also, Utah.
I mean why not just say higher population density and leave room for abuse? because they want room for abuse.
Will it be implemented fairly across zip codes? Or are “Some pigs are more equal than others?”
Off the top of my head, it makes it desirable to cook the stats to get money, whether by banning abortion or simply prioritizing births vs children. Every funding metric is gamed, that’s why there’s arcane rules to enact change by hoping for a certain game strategy. In this case every strategy leads to misery.
Probably cause those are richer communities. If i had to guess.
Thank you for taking the heat of the hive mind, I genuinely didn’t understand the problems either.
If the criterion is to prioritise funding to areas that need the most why not just say higher population density? We already know republicans use “traditional family values” as a propaganda tool. Can you seriously not see how this can be abused by Trump administration after news like ordering to retract the word “gender” from medical articles published by CDC:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction
In my mind it was because children are expensive, so high birthrates - less “free” income, means higher reliance on public services like transportation. At least here in Germany highest birthrates are usually low income, low education, often immigrant areas that would profit greatly from having a broader support from the public.
Can you seriously not see how this can be abused by Trump administration after news like ordering to retract the word “gender” from medical articles published by CDC:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction
Well now I obviously do, but like I mentioned, I am from Germany, I try to keep up with rapid-fire bullshit machine that is governing the US right now, but unfortunately we are also in a dire situation here right now. And I wouldn’t expect the whole world to automatically understand all the details of what is happening in our government right now, for example how terrifying and dangerous the last three days were for our democracy. I am happy to answer that for anyone asking genuinely btw. Hence why I was happy someone asked the questions that I had in mind while reading the article.
yes but birthrate is the derivative of population over time. trying to base this prioritization on birthrate only is like claiming you can understand where a car is going by only looking at velocity and not knowing anything about its position.
obviously the best way is to base this on multiple relevant criteria which includes population, birthday and amount of development already present. but the more precisely you layout conditions for spending of course less open it is to abuse for popularism.
One thing to note about the US is that this funding directive means that funds will go to areas that oppose public transportation, as well as keeping funding from cities that could use it.
During the creation of the national highway system (which, apart from destroying much of the public transport in the country, destroyed many immigrant and black neighborhoods and replaced them with highways), there was a designer in New York City who expressly designed the bridges near his home to be too low for busses to go under to keep black kids from being able to take the bus to the beach near his house. His words, not mine. This funding will go to rural, conservative areas, who hate bikes, buses, trains, and outsiders.
Add in the marriage rate part (which goes hand in hand with the poor and uneducated), and the possibility of repealing gay marriage, and it’s obvious to everyone here that this is about denying funding to cities and liberal states, not actually improving communities.
🤦
Can you explain that reaction to me? OP posted a question that I also had about this thing, it didn’t seem disingenuous to me.
I forced some pushback on me by attacking the reactions as “hive mind”, which is lazy and combative, I understand that, fair enough.
What I fail to understand is the push back on the original question.
I think it is because for many, these tactics seem very thinly veiled and obvious, and so when someone says something like, “actually, I don’t see why eugenics is bad” the community, who knows history and to whom the answer seems obvious, can often assume that the person asking the question is disingenuous. We have all been on the internet long enough to have seen trolls and Nazi apologists pretend to be clueless to try to waste everyone’s time only to eventually just admit they hate everyone that isn’t an able bodied straight white man so the community just want to stop it in its tracks rather than engage cuz it just isn’t worth it.
First of all - thank you for taking the time!
I totally understand, we’re all on the edge right now, my antennas are also sensitive to that kind of “just asking questions” disingenuous bullshit. But this didn’t feel like it to me, it felt like a genuine question, because I had the same thoughts before someone explained it.
I am from Europe, I suppose OP is also from a non-US country and at least to me it wasn’t quite clear that the group with highest birthrates are white evangelical Christians for example, like now I know and it makes sense, but without that context it’s hard to understand.
For example here in Germany, if I would read about our DOT making the same policy, I would think (without looking too much into actual data) - yeah okay, highest birthrates here are usually low income, low education, often immigrant families who are very reliant on public transportation to manage their day-to-day life - totally makes sense to support those areas with a higher budget.
