#biden does good things

[rabbiteclair]

i think light novels are really going somewhere

[tittyinfinity]

my food stamps got cut by $14 more??? After it was already cut by $60 a few months ago???

I'm now receiving $185 less a month in food stamps than I got a few years ago. And food prices have nearly doubled. This is bullshit.

[lesbianpetecampbell]

I relate so strongly to that "Is chat a fourth person pronoun" post right now watching everyone fail to understand the definition of the word fascist. No, the Democratic party is not fascist. No, the founding fathers were not fascist. Yes, Donald Trump is fascist. Fascist is not a word for "political ideology I don't like" or "when the government does bad stuff" its a defined term based off of the ideology and policies of Mussolini's fascist movement in Italy. This is like how liberals will call Putin a communist because they don't like him and Russia was in the Soviet Union 35 years ago.

[definitelyforsurenotbees]

name 10 good things Biden did that actually had a tangible effect on everyday people particularly marginalized people.

Listen. I’m not a political science major by any means (STEM kid) but I do know this: you want tangible effects? Look at your local government. That’s where policies are being made that you’ll feel like have tangible, daily effects. Things that affect your commute, your neighborhood, hell even your trash pickup schedule.

But I get it, you want to know what this old fart in office is even doing. What’s the point in voting for him when he doesn’t do anything for you? The thing is, presidential acts are a lot more big picture. There’s plenty of info online but Biden’s actions absolutely have far reaching impacts, just not the immediate, acute kinds you might be thinking of. Here are some examples JUST FROM ONE SINGLE PRESIDENTIAL ACT (America Rescue Plan)

provides relief directly to low and middle income families via child tax credit act

Reduced child care costs for black families

Cut black child poverty in HALF.

Greatly increased SNAP benefits.

Emergency rental assistance

Homeowner assistance fund

Foreclosure protection

Provides funding for folks recovering from or at risk of homelessness

State small business credit initiative

Grants to expand, diversify, and improve access to registered apprenticeships for underserved communities.

Remember, when it comes to $$, Biden can pass these acts. It’s up to state and local governments to actually work out the nitty gritty of funding distribution. Pay attention to your local politics, and for the love of god please vote blue.

[powerfulkicks]

idk i'm really tired of people being angry and bitter all the time. like it gets exhausting to constantly be yelled at and guilt-tripped and to see passive aggressive posts passed around, even when the posts aren't directly addressed to me.

at a certain point it's like is this behavior actually helping anything or do you just like the feeling of righteous anger?

[dashiellqvverty]

one thing people online are going to do is attribute things to taika waititi that he has literally nothing to do with (from that post abt wwdits where they are interviewing the SHOWRUNNER who is NAMED in the article and is very much not taika)

[spacedouterri]

.

[hideandseaking]

I'm not going to go in on all your points here but I want to talk about the student loans thing quick. Basically, Biden's stance on the student loan forgiveness was about the Public Student Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF) which is a program where if you do public service for 10 years and make all payments on time for all 10 years then you can have your qualifying loans forgiven.

This program was around before Trump and, when Trump got into office, people who were following the requirements of the PSLF and were at their 10 years to get their loans forgiven were suddenly getting denied in huge numbers. It was an extremely low percentage of people who were getting approved for their student loans to be forgiven. And, while they were waiting to be denied, they still had to pay their student loans. And then they would get denied. So lots of people were wasting 10+ years and a lot more money for these student loans to be forgiven.

So Biden's student loan promise wasn't about forgiving everyone's student loans en masse. It was actually about the PSLF and the people who were being denied when they followed every step under Trump and still had to stay at a lower income job while paying these loans off in the hope that they could get approved for their loans to be forgiven. When Biden got into office the number of approvals skyrocketed. So, a lot of student loans did get forgiven, just not in the way you knew because you didn't know the exact details of the issue that he was campaigning for.

And that's with all of his points. Biden actually is one of our most progressive presidents who did accomplish a lot of things. You just don't read the correct news sources.

im gonna be honest it's kind of hard to watch all the shit trump and his admin are pulling without getting even madder at biden for doing jack shit about his campaign promises. student loans, minimum wage, reproductive rights... and i know some picrew icon who voted for the first time last year is already rushing to the reblog button to write a YA protagonist monologue about how those would have been/were blocked by congress/the senate/inclement weather/etc. but the thing is that at this point i literally do not care about "established legal and political processes" and "working within the system", i just want my views enacted into law. which would be childish if it wasn't the exact strategy that has been working unbelievably well for republicans for the last decade!

i want to grab a democrat career politician by the shoulders and scream in their face: do something good for once in your god damn life! fuck "checks and balances", fuck "legal precedent", just keep packing the courts and gerrymandering districts and throwing shit at the wall until something sticks! fucking fight back god dammit! where's your dignity? your rage? your humanity? you're playing checkers against someone eating your pieces while adding their own to the board and you're trying to give an impassioned speech about how "they go low we go high" while they simultaneously piss on you and shoot your dog!

[the-physicality]

this election discourse reminds me so much of finals discourse…. (Obviously much higher stakes but)

[thoughtportal]

Opinion Here’s how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it

When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.

Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people — including pharmacists — are aware of it.

I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars — or even the full list price — to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldn’t be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. “We wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,” the representative said.

Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriber’s name and address and select their insurance type.

All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.

But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)

Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.

Pfizer’s representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.

The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.

Several readers have attested that Paxcess’s process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.

Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.

This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, it’s hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.

Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.

Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But that’s not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.

{source}

[doux-amer]

I'm sorry, I usually ignore inflammatory posts like the one I just saw, but the amount of condescending lecturing by op and everyone in the tags was unreal and made me see red. How dare you say that to care about people suffering and dying is a privileged stance? To be in a position where you can dismiss people's feelings like that is actual privilege. Marginalized people aren't being heard so abstaining from voting is one of their only tools left to them. That is what it means to live in a democracy (I'm saying this as someone who encourages people to vote now and previously worked as an organizer in getting people registered and getting people to vote). You can't dismiss that.

And you can't "this guy's not that bad except he wants to exterminate people/doesn't care about exterminating people" your way into a better society. If you don't understand either of these things, you are unbelievably privileged af and you've been fortunate enough not to be in a position where you can't exercise the right to vote and/or live in an authoritarian regime, no offense (full offense intended).

I'm going to be real with you. If you're announcing to the world that you're going to vote for Biden this year, don't lie to yourself. Saying that publicly has little impact on influencing anyone reading your tweet/Tumblr post, particularly if you run in liberal and/or progressive circles. Like I said in the tags in the previous post, you're just doing it to guiltsplain to your leftist friends and followers to make yourself feel better about your choice. If you weren't driven by that guilt, you'd just shut up and vote for him quietly, fully aware of what you're doing and how you feel about it. There's no reason to be so loud about it because if you were that worried about democracy dying or whatever, then do something that has a real impact like directly working in the community.

[rederiswrites]

I am not unaware of the negatives of Biden's presidency, and I am not trying to elide or forgive them. I'm reblogging posts about the Biden administration because I think it's really important that potential voters in the US realize that there is, in fact, a very big difference between the two parties, and voting for Biden is not just damage control--it actually does good. It's okay, you can actually feel a little excited about making meaningful progress, and not just hold your nose.

He's been very unflashy. He's not a great leader, he's not charismatic and he knows it, but he's an adroit politician and administrator, and he's been getting things done. Letting Trump win at this point would be tantamount to throwing the entire country on the bonfire. It's not a choice between bad and bad, it's a choice between meaningful, if imperfect, progress and fucking doom.

[lamplightjuniper]

hmm not really sure how calling out 84 tumblrinas who are specifically Not Voting is more useful than idk contacting 85 apathetic real-world people and trying to get them to vote instead.

it’s SIGNIFICANTLY easier to convince people to move from the middle or neutrality towards your opinion compared to people who already have strong opinions.

it looks like this:

neutral -> mild conviction -> your opinion

versus

strongly held conviction -> weakly held conviction -> neutral -> mild conviction -> your opinion

and it requires a LOT of energy to get from every single step to the next. Swaying someone once they’ve made up their mind is difficult under ideal circumstances.

there are so many apathetic and non-voters who can be reached with much less effort than people who are adamantly not voting.

If you are in the US and really care about the presidential or any elections, take a quick pause from posting on tumblr and google:

<county name> phone bank democratic party

(or <state name> if you are in a rural or very red area)

and link up with people who are actually trying to mobilize potential voters. posting can be useful but it isn’t boots on the ground.

And phone banking can be done from home in a lot of cases, you don’t physically need to knock on doors (although if you can that also has an impact) but you need to put your energy where it actually matters if you want people to vote.

[fenrislorsrai]

Justice 40

Joe Biden is boring and often bad at tooting his own horn, but by god, he is good at process.

Justice 40 is simple but powerful application of that. its a shift in how the executive branch works. 40% of money from a bunch of existing programs should go to census tracts that are overburdened with pollution, at higher risk for climate change, and have been historically underserved.

The shorthand here is basically "communities that don't have enough internal resources to deal with long term problems". So yes, communities that had been redlined for decades, ones that have Superfund sites, ones that have high rates of asthma from air pollution.

and this is by census tract. Not city. census tract. So parts of New York City qualify... but other parts don't. And the city HAS to use the money in the targeted part. it doesn't go into the communal pool. it's for THAT tract specifically.

Also all land federally recognized as belonging to a Native American tribe and all Alaskan Native Villages qualify, specifically.

And again, this is for existing programs that are already running and have existing staff and budgets. They're supposed to prioritize grants and projects for those areas specifically. And that's everything from Department of Agriculture, to FEMA, to Labor, to Environmental Protection.

Does it instantly get rid of all the baked in racism from decades past? No, not even close. But it puts in a countermeasure that has a concrete and measurable goal to aim for rather than a nebulous "suck less." even if the administration changes, many of those changes will stick.

And as things improve, some tracts may come off the list! Some may go on that weren't there before!

You can see a map here. Blue highlighted tracts are "disadvantaged" so qualify for that extra assistance! Check and see if you live in one or part of your town does. Because if you've been hearing constantly "we can't afford to fix X problem..." and you're in that tract.... there's money available. For you. Build that sidewalk, fix those lead pipes, get that brush truck your volunteer fire department has been asking for.

And tell your local officials that! "did you look at Justice 40 for funding". And even if they're doing their best, particularly people in little towns.... being a government official isn't their full time job. They may have missed it. Just asking them about the program may suddenly open a world of possibilities.

[grison-in-space]

Has Biden actually done anything at all? There's evidence going around and I think it's compelling, the alternate to voting is instead doing actual social work and participating in protests and organizing political action, which is a good idea i think

1) Yes. Inarguably this has been the most effective progressive domestic administration since I have been alive, and I'm in my thirties. What in the fuck are you talking about? It's not perfect, but it's better than we've seen in fifty years: Obama tried, but Democratic Congressional organization was just not yet used to working with a completely obstructionist GOP Congress in the wake of the tea party.

Even in terms of foreign policy, this is also pretty much as good as US involvement gets. Sorry. Our foreign policy has been shaped by monsters for decades, and that's even without dealing with our huge and active branch of Christian doom cultists. There ain't a candidate in the world that could stop the entire accumulated momentum of geopolitics with a snap of the finger, and I'm not really willing to pretend that Biden is particularly notable for not managing to fix Israel/Palestine relations.

2) In your own words, anon, what precisely does organizing political action entail without participating in the political process? Do you think that abstaining from the part of the gig where you, the citizen, get to say which official gets the job somehow makes your opinions matter more to your elected public officials? Have you ever organized to get so much as a municipal one-time library project budget expanded? Are you perhaps only skilled at political argument with people who already agree with you on the Internet?

What is your leverage, and could it reasonably be described as "extortion" or "blackmail" or "political corruption?" Because those are pretty much the only things on the table that can work more effectively to drive an elected official than a disciplined coalition of political allies (who can be purchased with, you guessed it, votes) or a reliable bloc of voter support. Your vote matters less than the ones you bring with you, sure. Do you think that not voting yourself somehow helps people organize to drive more votes? Have you perhaps replaced your complex reasoning skills with a rapidly dying jellyfish?

3) Holy passive vagueness, Batman! "Evidence is going around." What a masterpiece of a sentence! How it suggests everything while providing nothing! What evidence? Who collected it? Who is talking about the evidence "going around?" Who is listening? How many of them are there? What did they think before? The more I think, the more questions I have, and damn if they ain't predisposing me to be even less charitable.

Like, this is so catastrophically poorly supported that I have to confess that I not only believe this is probably an ask in bad faith (i.e. by someone who is expecting to piss me off or otherwise engage with me adversarially, probably spammed to a whole host of blogs at once with no expectation of response) but I actively hope that it is. The alternative is to have to grapple with the reality that some people are so uncomfortable with the responsibility of moral agency that they're willing to release useful levers of legal and social power just so that they never do anything problematic with that power. Much better, of course, to wash one's hands of anything that might have the stink of responsibility clinging to it. Might fall from the membership of the Elect if you actually get yourself all muddy by doing things, I reckon.

I don't even believe that voting is the only lever we have when it comes to our elected officials or that votes are necessary to secure change, and I am certainly not talking about the presidential ticket alone when I talk voting. What I do believe is two things: one, that voting is a potential lever of power on the emergent chaos of the society in which we live. And two, that anyone telling me to leave a lever of power on the ground without a damn good reason is either incompetent, malicious, or both.

[x-keeprunning-x]

The difference is you wouldn't have been paying attention

“Biden/Kamala would have been better”