I'll admit I haven't been paying as much attention - which is, in its own way, a plus, at least compared to the 4 years prior. But in general I'd say I'm satisfied so far. I've been most impressed...
I'll admit I haven't been paying as much attention - which is, in its own way, a plus, at least compared to the 4 years prior. But in general I'd say I'm satisfied so far. I've been most impressed by the degree to which the first 1.9T bill passed - I really expected it to be cut down quite significantly, but it only suffered some minor cuts from Manchin and passed relatively quickly. That includes things which were not really pandemic related, but I think are good policy anyway, like the child tax credits - getting that through is good politicking.
In general I think it's good that the administration is not so petrified of inflation and overspending as Obama's was in 2008.
Reading through the article, it seems that most people who are dissatisfied think that's he's reneging on "bipartisanship" - but it takes two to tango - and foreign policy, which I do not have enough research to comment at right now.
Personally, I think there should more pressure on Breyer to retire and more pressure on filibuster reform but it's not like generic "pressure" is likely to do much so it's not much of a loss in a practical sense.
To me, bipartisanship is more about passing things that the majority of the country wants/believes in. Not just trying to get the majority of the people in Washington. In that sense, it seems like...
it seems that most people who are dissatisfied think that's he's reneging on "bipartisanship"
To me, bipartisanship is more about passing things that the majority of the country wants/believes in. Not just trying to get the majority of the people in Washington.
I agree with you. The focus on bipartisanship centers the party machines in the discussion when the real thing we should care about is governing around broad-based consensus positions. If one of...
I agree with you. The focus on bipartisanship centers the party machines in the discussion when the real thing we should care about is governing around broad-based consensus positions. If one of the parties has given up on representing an appreciable amount of the electorate it's not a bad thing to cut them out.
I think he’s doing okay, but I mean the bar has been set incredibly low over the past 4 years. I want to see proper student loan forgiveness no less than $50,000, free community college, free...
I think he’s doing okay, but I mean the bar has been set incredibly low over the past 4 years. I want to see proper student loan forgiveness no less than $50,000, free community college, free school lunches year round not just the summer, National basic internet plans that provide at least 15-25Mbps download and 10Mb uploads, and federally regulated net neutrality with basic network quality requirements for ISP’s with a National quality rating based on network and customer service quality. I don’t want to be cynical about this but I’m fairly certain anything that could potentially hurt a lobbyists bottom line which includes most of my needs above, unfortunately won’t pass.
As for the student loan forgiveness, I’m really tired of reading the whole “I had to pay mine so you should pay yours!” mentality because it’s simply idiotic and selfish. I could put that money back into the economy, or pay to fix up my home or lawn, or purchase a new vehicle for work, it’s not about you getting punished and me not getting punished, it’s about benefiting all Americans but some people are just too selfish and childish to understand.
Very disappointed that he hasn’t reversed Trump’s orders that made climate worse. It appears that the only “done” items, are items that are talk, not action.
Very disappointed that he hasn’t reversed Trump’s orders that made climate worse. It appears that the only “done” items, are items that are talk, not action.
Unless monarda's comment has been changed, I'm confused at what any of those things have to do with climate action beyond talk? While I'm not sure I would argue as much, I do know people who would...
Unless monarda's comment has been changed, I'm confused at what any of those things have to do with climate action beyond talk? While I'm not sure I would argue as much, I do know people who would argue that none of those things is important, by comparison to action on climate.
I made a huge mistake by missing words I meant to say, read them as if they were there, but now see they are not there. Bolded the missing words.
I made a huge mistake by missing words I meant to say, read them as if they were there, but now see they are not there.
Very disappointed that he hasn’t reversed Trump’s orders that made climate worse. It appears that the only “done” items on climate, are items that are talk, not action.
I think the challenge with Climate Change action is that because it's a slow, looming threat, it doesn't get as much attention as the immediate problems that are directly screaming at you. But if...
I think the challenge with Climate Change action is that because it's a slow, looming threat, it doesn't get as much attention as the immediate problems that are directly screaming at you. But if we don't make extremely aggressive changes and quickly, we will suddenly find ourselves with many more more screaming immediate problems to deal with.
Agreed though, it seems like it should be pretty easy for him to at least reverse Trump's exec orders.
I'm already happier with him than I was at any time in Obama's 8 years. There are 2 bills on voter reform that are stalled in the Senate. IDK how much the Biden Admin can do to push them thru, but...
I'm already happier with him than I was at any time in Obama's 8 years.
There are 2 bills on voter reform that are stalled in the Senate. IDK how much the Biden Admin can do to push them thru, but if the US is ever going to recover from its current Banana Republic status (my opinion, of course), those bills need to become laws. In my mind that should be their absolute top priority. So I'm a bit disappointed that He/They don't appear to be working on those (although they could be doing a lot behind closed doors) ... right now, that is my only gripe with Biden.
I had low expectations, but I'm mostly impressed. I hope he doesn't let raising the minimum wage fall by the wayside and I hope he does some form of student loan debt forgiveness (despite having...
I had low expectations, but I'm mostly impressed. I hope he doesn't let raising the minimum wage fall by the wayside and I hope he does some form of student loan debt forgiveness (despite having paid off mine), but otherwise I'm surprised at how alright he's been.
In the way that bursting an already eroded and structurally unsound dam "gets a lot done" sure. But it doesn't really take any special talent to do. Especially not compared to restoring the dam to...
In the way that bursting an already eroded and structurally unsound dam "gets a lot done" sure. But it doesn't really take any special talent to do. Especially not compared to restoring the dam to function again.
Biden has been a good (albeit very limited by a borderline fake Senate majority and paper-thin house majority, or by Biden just not being that much of a leftist, regardless of his general...
Biden has been a good (albeit very limited by a borderline fake Senate majority and paper-thin house majority, or by Biden just not being that much of a leftist, regardless of his general willingness to work with leftists) president, so I'm gonna focus on one, at least for now bad-ish thing about his presidency.
You will notice even this is generally not as bad as anything Trump has done, which says a lot about how not-bad Biden's presidency is. I looked up his drone strikes policy and the implication from the headlines say "they're still there, but in lesser numbers." I looked up the thing about people in the Biden administration wanting no-knock warrants and fact-checkers say it is more complicated even if not necessarily wrong.
One thing Biden and the Democrats seem to be yet to do is meaningfully change the situation on the US border, albeit there have been some good changes:
President Joe Biden has urged migrants not to attempt to travel to the US border - "Don't leave your town or city or community," he said in a recent interview - but with Donald Trump out of office, some believe immigration to the US is now more possible.
On 22 March, a Texas lawmaker released the first photos of the child detention camps from the Biden era.
Here's a look at what Mr Biden has - and hasn't - done so far, and how it differs from Mr Trump.
Mr Biden has so far left a Trump-era Covid-19 emergency policy in place, which allows US authorities to expel almost all undocumented migrants seeking entry - bypassing normal immigration laws and protections.
But unlike Mr Trump, Mr Biden has decided not to refuse entry to migrant children or teenagers.
On Mr Biden's first day in office, DHS suspended a controversial Trump-era policy that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their US immigration hearings.
Biden's administration has taken several steps to reform the country's legal immigration system.
Even despite this, he has a plan for this:
He has proposed a major immigration bill that would offer an eight-year pathway to citizenship to the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the country.
The legislation would also provide permanent protection for young migrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, known as Dreamers.
I think he's benefiting from good timing on vaccines in the US (it was going to happen anyway) and some luck that we didn't see much of a fourth wave outside Michigan. It could have been quicker...
I think he's benefiting from good timing on vaccines in the US (it was going to happen anyway) and some luck that we didn't see much of a fourth wave outside Michigan. It could have been quicker if they had delayed second doses. But now that we're close to the end, people seem pretty forgiving. It could have been worse.
On helping other countries with COVID relief, they're starting to do the right things, in response to pressure. In a way, this is good: we have an administration that's responsive instead of doing stupid stuff. But it seems reactive rather than proactive.
I don't think this is luck, this is policy interventions to discourage people having large gatherings. India, for example, isn't unlucky. They just sowed the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind.
some luck that we didn't see much of a fourth wave outside Michigan
I don't think this is luck, this is policy interventions to discourage people having large gatherings. India, for example, isn't unlucky. They just sowed the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind.
I think in the US this was largely a matter of timing between the speed of vaccinations and the spread of variants, and if things went a bit differently, it could have been a lot worse.
I think in the US this was largely a matter of timing between the speed of vaccinations and the spread of variants, and if things went a bit differently, it could have been a lot worse.
I think Canada's a good example right now, where they've only recently started vaccinating people, and are overwhelmed logistically with a more dangerous variant that has been reinfecting people.
I think Canada's a good example right now, where they've only recently started vaccinating people, and are overwhelmed logistically with a more dangerous variant that has been reinfecting people.
Counterfactuals are difficult and we're not experts, but there's some reason to believe the speed of the rollout largely wasn't up to the government. It was supply-constrained, and I think the...
Counterfactuals are difficult and we're not experts, but there's some reason to believe the speed of the rollout largely wasn't up to the government. It was supply-constrained, and I think the pharmaceutical companies were manufacturing vaccines as fast as they could. They would have done so no matter who was president.
We know that the Biden administration was doing things to speed up manufacturing, but we don't know how much it helped or what the government would have done anyway. After all, despite all the other stupid stuff the Trump administration was doing, they also thought manufacturing large amounts of vaccines was important. At least that much isn't partisan.
Distribution is another problem and it seems the Trump administration wasn't doing much planning. That's partially up to state and local governments, though. I had a lot of criticism of this patchwork response, but we don't know how much worse it would have been.
When I say "reactive," I just mean COVID foreign policy, the vaccines sitting in warehouses and stuff like that. It seems like the Biden administration is reacting to outside pressure there, or maybe there are disputes within the administration about what to do and outside pressure helps one side win? But maybe it just seems that way because issues that I've been posting about for months eventually do seem to get resolved the way I was hoping?
Without the inside story, this is all guesswork, and even with more access, it seems like the sort of thing historians might argue about without coming to a consensus.
I see I kept reading the graph wrong, not my greatest moment. From the Washington Post, today there are 141 million vaccinated (first dose only). On the covid projections page they predicted 146...
I see I kept reading the graph wrong, not my greatest moment.
From the Washington Post, today there are 141 million vaccinated (first dose only). On the covid projections page they predicted 146 million today. That was on March 8th, which was their last update before they stopped doing updates. Not bad!
I'll admit I haven't been paying as much attention - which is, in its own way, a plus, at least compared to the 4 years prior. But in general I'd say I'm satisfied so far. I've been most impressed by the degree to which the first 1.9T bill passed - I really expected it to be cut down quite significantly, but it only suffered some minor cuts from Manchin and passed relatively quickly. That includes things which were not really pandemic related, but I think are good policy anyway, like the child tax credits - getting that through is good politicking.
In general I think it's good that the administration is not so petrified of inflation and overspending as Obama's was in 2008.
Reading through the article, it seems that most people who are dissatisfied think that's he's reneging on "bipartisanship" - but it takes two to tango - and foreign policy, which I do not have enough research to comment at right now.
Personally, I think there should more pressure on Breyer to retire and more pressure on filibuster reform but it's not like generic "pressure" is likely to do much so it's not much of a loss in a practical sense.
To me, bipartisanship is more about passing things that the majority of the country wants/believes in. Not just trying to get the majority of the people in Washington.
In that sense, it seems like he's doing that.
I agree with you. The focus on bipartisanship centers the party machines in the discussion when the real thing we should care about is governing around broad-based consensus positions. If one of the parties has given up on representing an appreciable amount of the electorate it's not a bad thing to cut them out.
I think he’s doing okay, but I mean the bar has been set incredibly low over the past 4 years. I want to see proper student loan forgiveness no less than $50,000, free community college, free school lunches year round not just the summer, National basic internet plans that provide at least 15-25Mbps download and 10Mb uploads, and federally regulated net neutrality with basic network quality requirements for ISP’s with a National quality rating based on network and customer service quality. I don’t want to be cynical about this but I’m fairly certain anything that could potentially hurt a lobbyists bottom line which includes most of my needs above, unfortunately won’t pass.
As for the student loan forgiveness, I’m really tired of reading the whole “I had to pay mine so you should pay yours!” mentality because it’s simply idiotic and selfish. I could put that money back into the economy, or pay to fix up my home or lawn, or purchase a new vehicle for work, it’s not about you getting punished and me not getting punished, it’s about benefiting all Americans but some people are just too selfish and childish to understand.
See also: Track Biden.
He's doing well.
Very disappointed that he hasn’t reversed Trump’s orders that made climate worse. It appears that the only “done” items, are items that are talk, not action.
Unless monarda's comment has been changed, I'm confused at what any of those things have to do with climate action beyond talk? While I'm not sure I would argue as much, I do know people who would argue that none of those things is important, by comparison to action on climate.
I made a huge mistake by missing words I meant to say, read them as if they were there, but now see they are not there.
Bolded the missing words.
Oh, that's absolutely my bad, I should have picked it up from the context.
I agree. The lack of climate action sticks out like a sore thumb.
I think the challenge with Climate Change action is that because it's a slow, looming threat, it doesn't get as much attention as the immediate problems that are directly screaming at you. But if we don't make extremely aggressive changes and quickly, we will suddenly find ourselves with many more more screaming immediate problems to deal with.
Agreed though, it seems like it should be pretty easy for him to at least reverse Trump's exec orders.
I'm already happier with him than I was at any time in Obama's 8 years.
There are 2 bills on voter reform that are stalled in the Senate. IDK how much the Biden Admin can do to push them thru, but if the US is ever going to recover from its current Banana Republic status (my opinion, of course), those bills need to become laws. In my mind that should be their absolute top priority. So I'm a bit disappointed that He/They don't appear to be working on those (although they could be doing a lot behind closed doors) ... right now, that is my only gripe with Biden.
I had low expectations, but I'm mostly impressed. I hope he doesn't let raising the minimum wage fall by the wayside and I hope he does some form of student loan debt forgiveness (despite having paid off mine), but otherwise I'm surprised at how alright he's been.
He's done a hell of a lot more than the last guy did in four years....at least he's making progress.
I'd argue the last guy actually got an incredible lot of stuff done in his 4 years ... just not much I actually wanted done. I wish he had done less.
Didn't know we should count all the awful stuff as things considered he got done.
In the way that bursting an already eroded and structurally unsound dam "gets a lot done" sure. But it doesn't really take any special talent to do. Especially not compared to restoring the dam to function again.
Biden has been a good (albeit very limited by a borderline fake Senate majority and paper-thin house majority, or by Biden just not being that much of a leftist, regardless of his general willingness to work with leftists) president, so I'm gonna focus on one, at least for now bad-ish thing about his presidency.
You will notice even this is generally not as bad as anything Trump has done, which says a lot about how not-bad Biden's presidency is. I looked up his drone strikes policy and the implication from the headlines say "they're still there, but in lesser numbers." I looked up the thing about people in the Biden administration wanting no-knock warrants and fact-checkers say it is more complicated even if not necessarily wrong.
One thing Biden and the Democrats seem to be yet to do is meaningfully change the situation on the US border, albeit there have been some good changes:
Child migrants: What's happening at the US border?
What is Biden doing differently at the US border?
Biden's administration has taken several steps to reform the country's legal immigration system.
Even despite this, he has a plan for this:
* = this is my caption, not the BBC's.I think he's benefiting from good timing on vaccines in the US (it was going to happen anyway) and some luck that we didn't see much of a fourth wave outside Michigan. It could have been quicker if they had delayed second doses. But now that we're close to the end, people seem pretty forgiving. It could have been worse.
On helping other countries with COVID relief, they're starting to do the right things, in response to pressure. In a way, this is good: we have an administration that's responsive instead of doing stupid stuff. But it seems reactive rather than proactive.
I don't think this is luck, this is policy interventions to discourage people having large gatherings. India, for example, isn't unlucky. They just sowed the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind.
I think in the US this was largely a matter of timing between the speed of vaccinations and the spread of variants, and if things went a bit differently, it could have been a lot worse.
I think Canada's a good example right now, where they've only recently started vaccinating people, and are overwhelmed logistically with a more dangerous variant that has been reinfecting people.
Counterfactuals are difficult and we're not experts, but there's some reason to believe the speed of the rollout largely wasn't up to the government. It was supply-constrained, and I think the pharmaceutical companies were manufacturing vaccines as fast as they could. They would have done so no matter who was president.
We know that the Biden administration was doing things to speed up manufacturing, but we don't know how much it helped or what the government would have done anyway. After all, despite all the other stupid stuff the Trump administration was doing, they also thought manufacturing large amounts of vaccines was important. At least that much isn't partisan.
Distribution is another problem and it seems the Trump administration wasn't doing much planning. That's partially up to state and local governments, though. I had a lot of criticism of this patchwork response, but we don't know how much worse it would have been.
When I say "reactive," I just mean COVID foreign policy, the vaccines sitting in warehouses and stuff like that. It seems like the Biden administration is reacting to outside pressure there, or maybe there are disputes within the administration about what to do and outside pressure helps one side win? But maybe it just seems that way because issues that I've been posting about for months eventually do seem to get resolved the way I was hoping?
Without the inside story, this is all guesswork, and even with more access, it seems like the sort of thing historians might argue about without coming to a consensus.
SkyBrian argued it was going to happen anyway back in Jan 21 because distribution was being managed by companies not the government.
I see I kept reading the graph wrong, not my greatest moment.
From the Washington Post, today there are 141 million vaccinated (first dose only). On the covid projections page they predicted 146 million today. That was on March 8th, which was their last update before they stopped doing updates. Not bad!
If J&J didn't have the issues it had we may have hit that target.