I don’t think Biden/Harris campaigned on increased SocSec benefits. Stagnant isn’t the way I’d describe benefits that are indexed to inflation.
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Messengers matter, but …
Nader doesn’t say anything about LGBTQ issues. Or black and maybe Hispanic issues. Or, immigration. Or inflation. Or, exactly which taxes he is going to raise to pay for all that.
I think that’s what the Rs ran on.
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Biden certainly talked about raising the income limit for SS taxes, and Harris didn’t get specific, but she has always supported keeping it solvent by finding more revenue instead of raising the retirement age. It would have been nice if she had time to articulate her plans, but it was a short campaign and attention was focused elsewhere for various reasons.
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I was focusing on the benefit amount side, as opposed to the taxation/solvency issues. From a political point of view I’d prefer to work on solvency first, and benefit adequacy addressed thru means tested programs outside OASDI, in part, because I think OAS is pretty progressive as it is.
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Fair enough, but I don’t think you can fault dems for not wanting to approach the problem in the way you prefer. There is a fruitful discussion to be had there, but it’s hard to find anyone in our current crop of Republicans who would be willing to engage with the issue in good faith. And even if they did, it wouldn’t rise above the noise created by the insane talking points on trans panic or whatever culture war they want to fight.
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Maybe they can still be big tent but emphasize different aspects of their platform in the mid-terms depending on the geography. I like a Mamdani-type Democrat but his policies wouldn’t be electable everywhere? Conversely, a more centrist candidate could be successful in other districts or states? The candidate has to fit the geography. Sounds easy on paper.
Subsidized healthcare and stronger OASDI funding should be universally attractive policies though. But avoid culture wars everywhere.
I don’t have much hope for reasonable political discourse in the current environment, which is a shame, because it doesn’t leave much time for a non-desperate response. And the desperate response will most likely be worse.
I would hope that an argument like “make SS sound for current benefit levels by removing payroll tax cap” (and other possible steps) would be more appealing to populist-leaning Rs than a “SS benefits as a poverty reduction tool even for those who haven’t paid in”. My guess is that the more progressive folks would like poverty reduction not related to work earnings more entwined in OAS to make it more resistant to reduction by future political environments.
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I have been arguing for decades that taxpayer handouts to the car companies are a mug’s game. Even when the jobs are actually saved or created the cost per job is in the millions. Hoping that we have seen the end of such subsidies.
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Keith Urban covered Pink Pony Club at Mar a Lago last weekend for a party Trump was at. Do these people not listen to lyrics?
I don’t think they’ve been to West Hollywood either. 
Someone in Massachusetts has shared on Reddit that they had FOIA’d a few thousand records from a single Flock camera.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthShore/comments/1ozt971/flock_ai_surveillance_update/
Maybe we should have a thread on Trump corruption/graft, but since we don’t I’m parking this here:
I couldn’t find the precise article that screen grab came from, but the story does seem to exist in several places. E.g.: Man named JD Vance sent to prison for threatening to kill VP, Trump | New York Post
This story is now gaining a lot of traction in Europe.
Seems that the current Serb Govt is likely implicated.
I had never thought of vagueness as a political tactic for autocrats. Makes sense though.
I have. Vagueness is the reason that I think the Commerce Clause needs a clarification amendment. Since “interstate commerce” isn’t defined in the Constitution, all Congress has to do is feel like deciding that something qualifies as interstate commerce, and boom, instant federal intrusion with regulating the shit out of the thing in question.
Similarly, the 14th amendment needs clarity amending, since the “equal protection” line is similarly vague. Courts need to stop using it as an excuse to improperly create public policy when it decides that the legislature is taking too long to discuss something.
Change is supposed to be a slow and deliberate process that has broad support, not emotion-based I-want-it-now-ism that takes advantage of such vagueries to get around such deliberation.
Maybe the vagueness adds some wiggle room, but in many cases these days that’s not necessary. The Emoluments Clauses seem pretty clear, but basically irrelevant to SCOTUS if their guy is in office.
One of my more non-woke beliefs is that schools should have more power to hold back students who cannot perform up to a reasonable standard. Allowing kids to graduate from high school, let alone attend highly rated schools, while not having basic math and literacy skills ultimately harms them.
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Wondering what their majors are. I sure hope it is not Mathematics. THAT would be embarrassing (and my nephew is of that cohort).
What are the SAT Math portion scores of these who fall below middle school level?
I mean, it doesn’t have a football team. it does have other sports teams that can affect admission of low-scoring students.
From the article (only 4 free ones left):
In the 2025 fall cohort, one in eight students placed into math below a middle school level, despite having a solid math GPA.
Huh, what about SAT Scores?
“This deterioration coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on education, the elimination of standardized testing, grade inflation, and the expansion of admissions from under-resourced high schools,” the report states. “The combination of these factors has produced an incoming class increasingly unprepared for the quantitative and analytical rigor expected at UC San Diego.”
Oh.
And…
Within the UC system, the San Diego campus isn’t alone, but its problem is “significantly worse,” the report states. This is partly because the university has, since 2022, admitted and enrolled more students from low-income schools that saw greater COVID-era learning loss than other UC campuses. Many other UC campuses are seeing similar, though smaller, declines in student preparation. About half of UC campus math chairs responded to a survey saying that the “number of first-year students that are unable to start in college-level precalculus” increased twofold between fall 2020 and fall 2025, and the other half said the number increased threefold.
High school grade inflation is not helping the university evaluate students’ math skills, the report states. In 2024, the average high school math GPA for students in Math 2, the middle school–level remedial math course, was 3.65—an A-minus.
So, they “did great” in high school.
The group also recommended establishing feedback mechanisms with high schools and requiring math placement testing by June 1 for incoming students, among other things.
My school X decades ago had a math placement test, and I bet they still do. It, however is not a UC School, where such things should not be needed. It is a school for those who cannot get into a UC School.
I’m on the front lines of this issue since I teach at a UC school. Definitely seeing lots of students who can’t do basic algebra or even arithmetic. Been a problem forever, but seems much worse than a few years ago. There is a math placement test, but I’m not sure if our math department is planning on bringing back the pre-calc class they used to offer. Until then I’m stuck picking up their slack.
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