Where do you need a vaccine card to leave the house? There may be private business premises that you can't enter without a vaccine card, but entering those premises isn't a constitutional right, whereas voting is, so restricting one but not the other makes sense.
In any case, the resistance isn't against voter ID itself, it's against the policies that are inevitably put in place to make those IDs harder to obtain for supporters of one party in comparison to another. If there weren't so many recent examples of states selectively closing down polling places[0][1] then maybe you could claim with a straight face that the ID requirements won't be abused, but there is no excuse for such naivety now.
> In New York, isn't it mandatory to show your vaccine card to go into any building that isn't your house?
That doesn't prevent you leaving your house, and are people really checking the vaccine passes of friends who visit their home? I suspect the rules are much less strict than the original comment suggested.
> Which policies are these?
By making the issuance (and renewal) of IDs require attending a government building, and limiting the locations of those buildings and the times they are open, it can be made disproportionately difficult for poor and working people to obtain those IDs, just like the removal of polling places. A state can also invent entirely new types of excuses, like "paper shortages".[0]
I think the difference between being allowed to leave your house and being allowed to go into buildings that aren't your house is minor enough that the analogy still works.
> are people really checking the vaccine passes of friends who visit their home?
If bad laws are okay just because some people will ignore them, then even if voter ID is a bad law, then let's just pass it anyway and let the pollworkers ignore it.
> A state can also invent entirely new types of excuses, like "paper shortages".
The reason I asked if people are checking vaccine passes when their friends visit them is because I don't actually believe this law exists at all, not because I think people are breaking it. It's possible that New York does require this, but if it doesn't, I think "You're prevented from accessing some non-essential buildings" isn't fairly analogized to "You can't leave your house".
> If you needed that paper form to register to vote, then I'd agree that's a problem.
If people's right to vote is contingent on the availability and non-discrimination of a web service (which can and will change without the need for any further legislation to pass) then we've already lost the battle against disenfranchisement.
> The reason I asked if people are checking vaccine passes when their friends visit them is because I don't actually believe this law exists at all, not because I think people are breaking it. It's possible that New York does require this, but if it doesn't, I think "You're prevented from accessing some non-essential buildings" isn't fairly analogized to "You can't leave your house".
To be clear, just showing the vaccine card isn't good enough. You need to show a photo ID too, to prove that you're the person the vaccine card belongs to. And how much of society is it acceptable to lock people without IDs out of if we insist that it's necessary to let people vote without one?
> non-discrimination of a web service
How is a Web version of a form more subject to discrimination than a paper one is?
> How is a Web version of a form more subject to discrimination than a paper one is?
I'm sure it would be possible to "accidentally" introduce bugs where the fonts don't render on older platforms (owned by poorer people), for example, and there could be some geo-IP "caching" system that ends up slowing down requests for people in certain parts of the state.
In any case, the web version doesn't have to be more subject to discrimination, just as subject to discrimination as the (selectively available) paper form already is. Also, if the party in power found that their voters were more likely to register using the online form than the paper form, you can bet they would make the paper form harder to acquire (and vice versa).
Without debating Project Veritas specifically (I'm not a big fan), I will say that SourceWatch itself is extraordinarily biased. That doesn't make them bad automatically but, like most sources of information, it makes them a bad single source.
Government power is inherently corrupt. Everyone wants their government to step in and implement their pet preference, and very few people are willing to say: the less a government does, the better.
Edit: apparently I'm blocked from replying below, so: Saying that people who disagree aren't knowledgeable is the biggest thing making politics so hateful today. Small government works great. The smaller the better. For me, that's no dumb abortion laws or carbon taxes.
There are some rules on replying, I think. Timing, maybe, whether you're replying to someone who replied to you, maybe. I haven't worked them all out. But I will say that if the reply link does not show below the post, clicking on the timestamp link will take you to the post by itself, and on that page there will be a reply link. At least, every time I've needed to use it myself for that reason.
> and very few people are willing to say: the less a government does, the better.
A lot of people are saying that, and in most cases just out themselves as loud and not very knowledgeable people.
Governments exist for a bunch of reasons. Many things are only possible or can only work well if done centrally and without a profit motive (like most things infrastructure and utility, healthcare to name a few). Yes, people want their governments to do things said people want. What's the problem that? If i want more bike lanes in my city, you can bet your ass I'll petition and lobby the mayor for that. Who else could do it? A benevolent rich person? As if.
Same goes for many many many other things. Banning single use plastics? Carbon tax? Giving incentives so that energy generation and transportation switch to less carbon intensive ( nuclear, renewables, EVs, rail electrification) energy? Creating good public transit so that less people need polluting and space wasting vehicles? Etc etc etc.
The US libertarian "small government" dream simply doesn't work. And the best part is that state governments that ostensibly follow that dogma are still able to force their nonsense pet preferences ( like abortions in Texas) or ask for federal help when disaster strikes ( the recent Kentucky natural disasters). Off the top of my head i can't think of other places in developed countries that went so far on the "the less a government does, the better" thing, that's why I'm only giving them as examples.
I'm a professor and we're seeing drops in enrollment and huge drops in work being done, learning, and creativity. We need to say, hey it's been two years in March, we're done. March Onward, or something. No more.
Hah, this comment dropped 6 points in less than a second. This article will be flagged soon.
We do so many ineffective Covid rituals. If we just wore n95s when reasonable that would give us equivalent protection and eliminate the need for the other stuff. Outdoor making is so dumb.
Outdoor masking should be based on how likely it is you're breathing in someone's breath. At an empty park? Fine. At a sporting event? Probably want a mask.
It's very strange the way mask guidance hasn't evolved at all since mid 2020. I know people who are very careful, even wipe down their groceries, but still wear cloth masks. Usually because they're more comfortable or nicer looking or washable. If people knew how much protection they were getting for the extra discomfort it might be different.
Yeah it's really frustrating how long we've taken to acknowledge that covid is airborne. At least in the US, we should have had free n95s mailed to everyone. As much as I would love vaccines to be the end of this, we still need NPIs like high quality masks and not stupid stuff like 6 foot social distancing that everyone got sick of and no one follows.
Ravaging the population? It's this exaggeration of the disease that I'm saying we should stop. Just accept it like it's a weird sequel to the flu and move on.
Perhaps, I think the risk level for death or hospitalization may be acceptable, but I'd love to see data about the risk level for long covid after being vaccinated.
Netflix's user experience has always been bad, and it's worse than ever. Engineers also don't make content, so if they're doing any good, I guess it's backend.
You're insane if you think that either those nations would take any real action OR that the US couldn't take them all at once without breaking a sweat. The scope and quality of military power and technology wielded by the US is astounding. Probably just the Navy could take those countries.
It's interesting to ponder a world where, when Russia goes for Ukraine or Baltic states and China matches up their timing for Taiwan, the US bails on NATO and Pacific allies and goes North instead.
It's ridiculous on so many different levels, and that seems worth considering.
It sounds ridiculous because the US can't possibly size up its own territorial aims while it's busy committing cultural suicide. Russia and China aren't confined in that way.
Plus, when such large portions of the economy are exporting culture and currency, the US is basically in the business of selling cooperation. So that would fall apart pretty quickly, and with it the immigration the sustains population despite low fertility rates.
Plus it's just inconceivable that it would be a goal in the US. Maybe that's just good propaganda, but I think not.
Well, sure, if you consider America's empire as a flex of "softer" power, as in selling cooperation and Disney, then maybe it's just absurd to think of Canada being any more culturally American than it already is.
You can both understand that this is a serious, novel disease and also understand that the way those in authority responded was done to create an emergency with specific outcomes.
