US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7146

In the suburbs of Minneapolis–St Paul, friends gather around a backyard campfire to discuss how to turn their Donald Trump anger into action.

In San Francisco, California, an all-female crew eats Middle Eastern food and reads the constitution.

In Decatur, Georgia, a silver bell gets rung if anyone in the group of mainly suburban moms starts speaking off-topic during their monthly get-togethers.

Political “salons” are popping up in living rooms, bars and backyards in response to the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Some have wine; some have a set agenda; all are scheming how to fight against this presidency.

Salons first gained fame in France during the Enlightenment, with citizens gathering to engage in political conversations and arguments; they acted as a place to plan revolution and discuss philosophy. The concept has continued ever since, with the author Gertrude Stein and the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright both known to have hosted them.

“I used the term salon to evoke old gatherings of artists and intellectuals in a hostess’s home,” said Mary Huber, founder of the Progressive Salon of Decatur. “Yep, Paris in the 1920s, recreated here in Decatur, Georgia,” she quipped.

The 2017 salon is more often marked by groups of friends and neighbors organizing specific political actions, from raising money to educating each other about the refugee ban, while hanging out and making new friendships.

“I used to meet friends at the gym; now I meet them in brainstorming sessions,” said Huber.

At 7pm on a Sunday night once a month, a crowd of about 20 people pile into the semi-retired attorney’s lounge room, with the dining chairs set up around the couches in a semi-circle.

“We are not here to sit around around and complain,” explained Huber. The group is a mixture of people from the middle-class neighborhood of Chelsea Heights, including folk musicians, stay-at-home moms, lawyers and a former nun.

They are focused on three key topics: the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the April special election for the sixth congressional district in Georgia (vacant after Tom Price became head of health and human Services in the Trump administration), and the 2018 midterm elections (the governor of Georgia is up for re-election).

At their last meeting, a woman gave a presentation on refugee work in the area. Another presented on training she’d received about the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare. Two members had attended town hall meetings and met with local senators’ staffers.

Their official group mascot is the mosquito. “We need to be like mosquitoes, and literally bug the hell out of them,” said Huber.

It’s enormous fun, says Huber, although it’s not a party. “I am not letting people sit around and get buzzed – they will not get anything done,” she said.

“Maybe I should add snacks,” she laughed.

Regina Feltner, a retired nurse, was recovering from side effects of radiation therapy when she got the notice that her heat would be cut off. It was a bone-cold January day. The snow was so high that her daughter had to come over to take the dog out.

“I have lung cancer and it’s the dead of winter,” she remembers thinking. “What am I going to do?”

Help came in the form of a heating subsidy: money from the federal government, delivered by the Highland County Community Action Organization, a small nonprofit in rural southern Ohio, where Ms. Feltner lives.

Now, that program is on the chopping block. It is one of many cuts in President Trump’s new budget proposal that would inflict the deepest pain on the most vulnerable Americans — a great number of whom voted for him.

“I understand what he’s trying to do, but I think he’s just not stopping to think that there are people caught in the middle he is really going to hurt,” said Ms. Feltner, 57, who was a nurse for 25 years and voted for Mr. Trump. “He needs to make some concessions for that. I was a productive citizen. Don’t make me feel worthless now.”

As news of Mr. Trump’s budget begins to sink in across the country, Americans are trying to parse what the changes to the government’s spending plan might mean for them. It is only a proposal, an opening bid in what is likely to be a protracted public argument over national priorities. But it is important because it signals what the new president is thinking, his wish list for the size and shape of government.

In two days of interviews with beneficiaries of programs at risk in 11 states, many people said they did not see themselves reflected in Mr. Trump’s vision for the government. And some felt surprise at what has been left out.

Ms. Feltner said that without the heating subsidy she would probably have to move in with her daughter and two teenage grandchildren. “I’d still like to have a little dignity left, and not have to move in with someone else,” she said. “I used to be the one packing up the food in the food pantry for people,” she said. “Now I’m the one in line.”

Another proposed cut would defund the Appalachian Regional Commission, which was founded in 1965 to strengthen economic growth in a 13-state swath of the country. Of the 420 counties in the commission’s footprint, 399 voted for Mr. Trump.

“I hate to see him cut us,” said Chris Farley, 32, of Delbarton, W.Va., who was laid off from his job operating a drill at a surface coal mine in 2015 and is now in a jobs and education program partially funded by the commission.

Mr. Farley worked in coal for 11 years. When he was 18, his father, a miner, helped get him a job driving a truck that carried rocks. The pay was good: He was making $20 an hour when he was laid off — a punch he did not see coming.

The only work he found afterward paid minimum wage. With a wife and 3-year-old daughter, he struggled to pay the bills. “I tried everywhere to get a job,” he said. “I mowed lawns. I cut weeds. I hauled trash.”

Last year, his mother texted him about a job in farming through a local nonprofit called the Coalfield Development Corporation, which is partially supported by the Appalachian Regional Commission. It pays him $11.50 an hour for 33 hours a week growing cucumbers and raising chickens and pigs. It also pays for him to attend community college six hours a week where he working toward an associate degree. His grade point average is 4.0.

“I never dreamed I’d be going back to school,” he said. “I love it. It’s amazing. College is totally different than high school. Back then I was young and I didn’t care.”

The farm had its first full year last year: a good cucumber harvest, a lot of eggs sold. Mr. Farley was reminded of eating beans and tomatoes at his grandparents’ farm as a boy.

“I blew up the mountains,” he said, “and now I’m reclaiming the mountains.”

Another worker in the Coalfield Development jobs program is Tracy Spaulding, 19, the son of a longtime miner. When his father was laid off after nearly 30 years, he made ends meet by buying an industrial saw and cutting lumber. The younger Mr. Spaulding has skipped the mine altogether: He works in a wood shop making things like TV stands, cabinets and headboards for beds.

In November, Mr. Spaulding cast his first vote for president. He chose Mr. Trump, something he tries not to talk about with his friends who didn’t. “They get really sore about it,” he said. “Honestly, I like Donald Trump. That’s just how I feel, I like him. A lot of people don’t and I understand that.”

When asked what he thought about the proposed cut to the commission, he thought for a bit. “He ain’t pulled nothing on us yet,” he said.

He thought more. “I believe I’d be a little bit mad about it if he made that cut and I lost my job and schooling, you know? But things happen. People get laid off every day. I’ll make it one way or another.”

In Staten Island, N.Y., Raymond DeNozzo, 53, a carpenter who has lived in Sutton, W.Va., for 28 years, was back home visiting his father on Friday. He, too, voted for Mr. Trump. He believes his adopted state’s coal industry was decimated under President Barack Obama. He supports increased spending on veterans and on the military, and, at least in theory, cuts to some social programs. He thinks that welfare discourages people from working, for instance.

“We need to teach our children to work and go out and be independent,” he said.

But his wife is a schoolteacher, their health insurance is through her job, and Mr. DeNozzo worries about the potential cuts to schools that could result from Mr. Trump’s budget. School consolidations are already overburdening teachers, he said. And they can also harm students, he said.

“That’s a concern,” Mr. DeNozzo said. “Will he keep the little schools open?”

Some of the programs in Mr. Trump’s sights are like unloved stepchildren, with alphabet soup acronyms unfamiliar to anyone except fiercely dedicated do-gooders. But they can have outsize effects on people’s lives.

Money from a Community Development Block Grant helped pay to remodel Shantell Swenson’s bathroom and kitchen in Salt Lake City, making it easier for her to use a wheelchair in her home and allowing her to cook on a stove for the first time. There have been other benefits, too. “Now instead of spitting my toothpaste into a cup I can roll under the sink,” said Ms. Swenson, 33, who has cerebral palsy.

Tired of lifting her legs into and out of a standard bathtub and begging landlords to change it, she scraped together her savings to buy a small house last May. The bathroom was finished in September, and the kitchen is on track for April. She calls the work life changing. “I would be old and gray and partially retired before I could have been able to afford this on my own,” she said.

Ms. Swenson said she did not “rage toward” Mr. Trump “like some people I know.” But when she heard about his proposed budget cuts, she said, she was “boiling with anger.”

One of those proposed cuts would kill the Legal Service Corporation, which funds 133 civil legal aid programs in the 50 states at a cost of $385 million. That funding stream makes up 40 percent of the budget for Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, whose lawyers saved Paula and Joe Frye from losing their nine-acre home.

The Fryes, who live in Warner, had missed a $14 tax payment four years earlier. They learned that their property had been put up for auction only when a man pulled up to their home and Mr. Frye asked him what he wanted. “The man said he wanted to look at the land for sale,” said Mrs. Frye, a retired turkey hatchery worker.

They were unable to resolve the unpaid bill themselves, but the land was sold at a county auction for $5,000. The Fryes could not match that, or afford a lawyer.

Only when they turned to Legal Aid did a lawyer there discover a technical flaw in the county’s handling of the tax arrears and the Fryes got their home back.

“This is all we had,” Mrs. Frye said. “If it hadn’t been for Legal Aid, I guess we’d just live in our car.”

The Fryes, who did not vote, said they were reserving judgment on Mr. Trump. Some things are probably beyond the president’s control, Mr. Frye said. Mrs. Frye said they would be watching.

“I guess until we see exactly what he does do, then I’ll know if I like him or wish he had lost,” she said.

On March 19 2017 02:45 IgnE wrote:
given that woman's comments at the trump rally about how her son's healthcare subsidies were a blessing from god, it seems like most republican voters actually just want cheap healthcare along with other government services for themselves AND low taxes. not much thought there

On March 19 2017 02:45 IgnE wrote:
given that woman's comments at the trump rally about how her son's healthcare subsidies were a blessing from god, it seems like most republican voters actually just want cheap healthcare along with other government services for themselves AND low taxes. not much thought there

On March 18 2017 21:16 m4ini wrote:


That's the dumbest "excuse" in that regard i've heard so far, i think. Especially considering that i live in the UK and actually talk to people on a daily basis.

That has nothing to with victim complex, or do you think i personally feel bad for what happened under the nazis? I don't give a shit. I, and no one from my generation, has done wrong. I don't feel like a victim because some backwards morons didn't get the memo as to what year it is.

Sidenote, the "german victim complex" as you call it really looks retarded as an argument considering that every fucking time germany does something others don't like, some certain buzzwords and pictures pop up. It's not germany not letting go of the past, and trying to argue otherwise makes you an idiot - literally any media outlet proves you wrong constantly. May it be hitler merkel in greece, turkey, poland - it's not the germans trying to victimise themselves, it's exactly as i said. Other countries can't let go of the past. Feel free to quote the sentence Nicholas Ridley said which led to him resigning.

Hell, even your own country just recently came to the conclusion that we should redraw the borders in Schleswig, which didn't really go down to well anywhere. Now imagine germany would've said "we should get North Schleswig back into germany", and what international/danish reactions would've been.

On March 19 2017 06:02 LegalLord wrote:
Honestly I think that the past few years has seen the "fuck socialism" sentiment slowly but surely recede. It was prominent in 08, slightly less so in '12, and it was only kind of relevant to Sanders in '16. Sooner or later people will actually realize that healthcare isn't best when it's run for profit.

On March 19 2017 07:07 Danglars wrote:

Only when much later people forget the health plans they were able to pick and pay for before Obamacare.

And that will be more of a mis-remembrance than an actual realization.

On March 19 2017 07:11 Gorsameth wrote:

You mean all the plans that didn't do much because the insurance company could drop you the moment you actually got seriously ill and you couldn't sign up somewhere else because you now have a pre-existing condition?

On March 19 2017 07:07 Danglars wrote:

Only when much later people forget the health plans they were able to pick and pay for before Obamacare.

And that will be more of a mis-remembrance than an actual realization.

On March 19 2017 07:07 Danglars wrote:

Only when much later people forget the health plans they were able to pick and pay for before Obamacare.

And that will be more of a mis-remembrance than an actual realization.