Wasn't the ballot initiative also deliberately confusing? I remember seeing something about it and reading it myself and going "what the fuck is the answer for no slavery?"
This was a result of election night that is underreported, but hugely telling and frustrating.
All this noise about California being liberal, progressive, and the resistance to Trump. But they kept slavery in prison legal. And I think the people who are predicting prison "labor" will be used to replace migrant labor if mass deportation does happen have it right. And California had a chance to make that impossible and decided not to.
This is why we need a "New California Republic", with rangers to protect the population, just don't listen those anti-mutties bigots...
They also still have the death penalty.
And all because 1950s McCarthyism incepted America with a seed that may eventually destroy it long after the USSR’s dissolution
I'd zoom out, Capitalism has a growth phase and decay phase, we are at the tail-end of the decay phase and need to jump to Socialism. Marx's analysis makes this more clear, I wrote an introductory Marxist reading list if you want to check it out.
The only thing that pissed me off more than Trump winning, was seeing how many good Props failed, and bad ones passed.
I'm glad we made LGBT marriage part of our constitution, but jesus christ the voting base here is NIMBYs, NeoLibs, and Conservatives.
My guess is that all those people who didn't show up to vote dem weren't around to vote for the other dem items.
Can you expand on that? Good news in American politics would be a nice change.
Exactly right
Always enjoy your posts, ozma.
Thank you. I try.
California is the USA in a bottle. You got progressive cities, conservative suburbs, rural areas and industrial hotspots, poor folks as well as the obscenely rich. Ronald Reagan was Governor in California for 8 years before becoming the blueprint of conservative candidates for the presidency.
This. Larger population than all of Canada = smorgasbord of different ideologies and classes.
"Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds." Makes you question if Californians really care for the marginalized.
I mean given what I've seen of their treatment of the homeless it's very obvious many if them don't.
Land of the
free
Land of the free is misspelled. It's land of the three. Trump, Leon, RFK.
Land of the fee,
Home of the slave.
I thought the bear in their logo had two heads
Soon
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
I bet the mutated Canada Geese look the same, they couldn't get any fiercer
The bear in the flag was over-hunted and had its habitat destroyed so it’s no longer found in California. It’s a great metaphor.
Same here, the only bears still in Toronto are all on Church Street
That comes after 2077
The American prison system is designed to make money. Prisons get paid based on how many people they house. Making sure people don't wind up in prison is literally the last thing the warden wants to do. Anybody thinking America is gonna change it's ways out of the goodness of its heart is fucking delusional.
It’s worth noting that California did abolish private prisons a while ago.
I watched a video of a random streamer who ranted a bit about the elections. He had some great points, and he was basically saying what most people are thinking. He talked about voting and the people that refused to vote. He then added: how can you become president as a criminal but you are not able to vote as a criminal. And then continues with, he agrees that criminals shouldn't be able to vote, because they are criminals with bad intentions. Fucker, the system is designed that most people ARE criminals. You can go to jail because a copper doesn't like your face.
Literally every single person is one police encounter away from being a criminal, unless you're rich that is.
Oh it's worse than that. California voted to make more homeless people, expand the three strikes system by turning some misdemeanors into felonies, and voted itself a slave state to take advantage of all that new prison population.
All that's left is to privatize the pipeline.
But it's okay, they removed the defunct ban on same sex marriage so they're still progressive! Yay!
One person was arguing that they shouldn’t be able to refuse to do “chores” in prison, but the things they do there are things like making license plates, furniture, and fighting wildfires. A bit far from mopping up and taking out the garbage.
Is that person wrong though? Would they be able to refuse "chores"?
Edit: This is not a rhetorical question. I want to know if they are factually correct or not.
Inmates shouldn't have rights. They are worse than animals, have no conscience, no reform measures have actually worked in terms of reducing recidivism, and victims matter more than offenders.
Having them do "Slave labor" is justified.
Trolling used to mean something, man.
It was an art form, subtle and truly beautiful to behold. Now look at what it has become. Truly makes you cry
The crime: smoked a joint
Do you.. do you really rhink that way?
I know it has that reputation but I really don’t think California is the most progressive state. Maybe Oregon? Vermont? Not sure to be honest.
It’s pretty much just basic liberals here. And lots of fascists but they hide out away from everyone else most of the time.
In every list I find online, it's Massachusetts
I also feel like people forget how fucking enormous California is. It's really just a few big liberal areas separated by a giant wasteland of racist rednecks that spans nearly the entirety of the United States from north to South in between. It's huge. If you start in San Diego and drive north for 12 hours you'll be....almost to the top of California. If you do that on the East coast you can drive through nine states.
Voting for democrats more overwhelmingly doesn't necessarily mean more progressive, just more acceptance for the Democrats in California, who are generally establishment neoliberals.
And yet in local races, primaries, ballot initiatives, progressive candidates and issues all lost. Almost every issue I voted on went the other way. So that has been my experience with California, that it is not very progressive. Admittedly this was a particularly bad election but similar things have happened before.
California has the second largest population of Republicans in the US after Texas.
California also has the largest population of all states. A direct numerical comparison is disingenuous, a statistical comparison would be more valid.
Of registered voters in California, about 25% are Republican. In Texas, 38% are Republican.
https://independentvoterproject.org/voter-registration-by-state
I think it's probably one of those two. California is a bit too diverse idiology when you look at the individual level because it's a huge state, just like Texas (which might go purple under better circumstance). Drive through central valley to know what I mean. Plus we're the state that gave the country Reagan!
As for the slavery, dem voter turnout was fairly bad like in the other states, so that probably had some impact. Some red house seats got flipped though, although that is pretty specific to those communities (turn out lead by house members, believe it or not).
Don’t blame me! I voted Yes!
The baffling thing is that the other side didn’t even file an argument against the measure in the voter guide… and it still lost!
Like, if your side can’t even be bothered to come up with an argument for or against particular legislation, I’m voting with the other side, full stop.
Edit: As roscoe comments below, I'm a bit stupid, tho I still feel like the logic used in the latter part is a bit faulty. The following is the original bullshit I wrote.
Lol, that's some serious "I'm not a fascist" cope. Really? If you want people to debate you over why slavery is bad, you're part of the problem, or like really young, which I'm hopefully doubtful of. It's like me pointing a gun to your head, asking why I shouldn't shoot you and then pulling the trigger because instead of making a sound argument, you just got mad at me.
Ballot measures have an “arguments for” and “arguments against” sections in the voter guide. I’d say over 95% of measures have an argument logged for both sides.
If one side of an issue decides not to log an argument, it’s my personal opinion that that’s a strong indicator I shouldn’t be taking that position.
There was a long argument as to why we should amend the state constitution to eliminate involuntary servitude as punishment, but no one bothered to defend keeping it as is….
I think you're misunderstanding them.
A "yes" vote means no slavery. This was a prop to make forced prison labor illegal. Our voter guides contain arguments for and against propositions and rebuttals to those arguments, usually. No group even bothered to make an argument against the prop or a rebuttal to the argument for. They're also saying, in general not just this prop, if no one can even be bothered to make an argument for one side, they'll probably go with the only side that did make one. In this case that would be no slavery.
This was weird. There are always arguments both ways unless it's just some editorial change to some law that for whatever reason has to go before the voters. This was totally non-controversial, or at least it seemed that way. I don't understand how it didn't pass.
Lol, that's some serious "I'm not a fascist" cope.
TIL it's fascist to not want prison slavery
There are artifacts organisations that refuse to argue against fascist organisations in order to not give them attention. Instead they argue in favor of others. So in a convoluted (and contrived) sense you just voted for a fascist.
Edit: This refers to your generalisation in the last paragraph and was meant as a joke and reference to a meme.
This is a spin on the truth. Slavery has
never not been illegalalways been legal per the US constitution, as long as the slaves are prisoners. We had a prop on it to disallow mandatory labor in prisons in California. We voted against it because Americans have a hard-on for punishment. Personally I think being caged is punishment enough, ESPECIALLY when you consider the sheer volume of for profit prisons in the US. Hurray, private business can keep doing slavery in the state -_-It has been and still is legal in federal law across the US
How is it a spin on the truth? Forced labor sounds a lot like slavery and they voted in favor of it. Just because some people justify slavery with a reason like "criminals deserve it!" or "but look at their skin color!" doesn't change that they're voting for slavery. Just because the criteria isn't directly skin color (80% of prisoners are not non-hispanic white... so its pretty much is still forced labor based on skin color) doesn't change it at all.
Wow you really put a lot of cheap assumptions on what my point was instead of just waiting for me to answer (especially when I said exactly why it was a spin the first time...), you kind of suck. Stop assuming the worst as step 1 in how you deal with other people.
The spin is they took the truth "this will continue to be legal in California and the US" and spun it into something that makes it sound like its just California, like were upholding some ancient California law. It is a shifting of the narrative that this is legal across the entire country, which is much more concerning, and making it seem like this is a California only problem.
Also the title saying the US is collapsing, being active tense, implies that this decision is part of the cause or a symptom of, like this hasn't been in the US Constitution since 1864.
But yeah were definitely collapsing, just for other reasons lol
Slavery has never not been illegal per the US constitution
???????
I think that was pretty clear and correct. Slavery is still very much legal in the USA.
Edit: actually the triple negative makes it say the opposite of that lol, carry on.
And yet, California voted affirmatively to be a slave state in 2024. I did not have that on my 2024 bingo card.
California is not the most progressive state. It's just so big that it being progressive makes the news more.
Which one do you think it is? HI? VT?
Basically because we're the 4th largest economy in the world, and thus, billionaires also run this state.
We also didn't get rent control adjustments, or a minimum wage hike. So yeah.
At least we already indexed minimum wage to inflation a while ago so it will still go up, just not by as much.
They haven’t called the results of the minimum wage vote yet, god dammit! Don’t take this from me yet!
The US is working exactly as planned
And will collapse as has been predicted.
I've seen this. Isn't it because of prisoner firefighters?
Fucking wild
You can absolutely still have volunteer programs like that. Volunteering to work time off faster shows a willingness to work on the problems that landed you in prison. Forcing it just creates misery.
That's what pretty much all prison labor is. They coerce you with "Good Time" and something to do.
It's still slavery, it's not like they have a real choice. Do I rot in my cell or work and maybe get out a year early? Of course I'm gonna work. I'm not getting (really) paid for it, I'm just getting punished less. Sounds a lot like indentured servitude to me, which we all agreed was slavery too.
All right I'll bite. I crave more information.
Some people think the language was confusing
Prop 6 Eliminates Constitutional Provision Allowing Involuntary Servitude for Incarcerated Persons. Legislative Constitutional Amendment.
America is falling apart, but not because some people's pet issue is miscasting prison convict work as "slavery". Fasten your seat belts.
if it's not slavery, then why is it specifically an exception under the constitutional ban on slavery?
miscasting prison convict work as "slavery"
Found the asshole voting against human rights, gross
Yep, we know those workers have a choice of employers and get at least minimum wage, regular increases for merit, regular holidays and personal days, the right to organize, and an assortment of benefits. Their pay is commensurate with anyone doing similar jobs, right? There’s no way that’s space labor
I have to do laundry too. 🙁
Yeah I was surprised about that too. I wonder if some people didn't bother to show up to vote because Kamala didn't say she'd support Gaza.
