Every time I think of moving somewhere with a lower cost of living, stuff like this happens and reminds me why I pay a premium.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Speaking as someone who lives in a lower cost of living area, yeah it is not worth it.
I'm in one of the cheaper parts of Hungary, and it's near impossible to find a job here. Your best luck is to apply awful jobs outside of the county, which will also mean 12 hour workdays with 2-3 hours commute, with the extra of if you go to sick leave, you'll only eligible for a minimum wage for months due to losing the "work presence bonus". (Yes, this was also true during the worst months of COVID, leading to people going in sick to work and a lot of needless deaths.)
I call it red state bullshit. I'm glad I don't have to put up with it.
For what it's worth, Virginia did have 8 years of Democratic governorship, with all 3 levels of government flipping entirely blue for a few years. It's been a solid purple state for 2 decades, and a purpleish-blue state the last decade.
Where this all fell apart was the Democrats put in a former fairly corporate type in who was doing okay, but he wasn't really exciting. His pre-election likeability dropped when he said something along the lines of that parents shouldn't dictate what their kids learn in school or something, and that's exactly the fodder the Youngkin campaign used to win.
The living costs vary significantly on area -- Northern Virginia is fairly expensive (let's call it... $2200ish for a 1br?)
To be fair parents don't know what's best for their children. Don't tell parents that though they take it personally.
Oh I agree. He just said the quiet part out loud which didn’t help.
It shouldn't be quiet though. It should be extremely obvious why giving parents a curriculum veto can't possibly work.
I'm a parent. I have no fucking clue what's really best for my kid, aren't we all just winging it?
I'm just winging it at being an adult, as long as you view your child as an individual and not an extension of yourself your at least doing that part correctly.
I mean he was right though. How the fuck would a consensus based curriculum even work? It's completely illogical. Unless you are a shockingly stupid suburban parent, I suppose.
I want to leave the PNW because of how much it costs, then I look at the political climate anywhere cheaper and decide that $2.5k/month is acceptable for renting a 1br
It’s really not acceptable, there shouldn’t be that trade off. There is, right now, but we need to take our power back and hold elected accountable. The number of people who have battered voter syndrome that would absolutely be un-understanding with zero compassion for battered partners being in that mindset is astounding. They victim blame the partner with less power in a relationship, especially when there are a few kids involved, but they keep the rest of us ~340.5 million trapped in an abusive relationship some of us want to exit.
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What do you mean? Some places in Virginia have a pretty high cost of living, especially the areas within the National Capital Region area. Not as bad as places like NYC or SFO, but still not exactly cheap unless you're living in the boonies (which can be said of literally any state, excepting very small ones like Hawaii).
For middle incomes in the NCR in DC or MD it's usually cheaper to get the same thing in VA, on an income tax basis alone.
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Virginia has many of the wealthiest counties in America, as it's part of the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia).
I'm sure the COL goes down a bit in the rural parts, but it's definitely not known as a low COL state.
West Virginia on the other hand...
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New Hampshire welcomes you blue state refugees.
Please... there are too many Trump signs for a state that's supposed to be educated.
The governor of Virginia's son committed voter fraud, got caught and turned away, waited half an hour, came back, and tried to commit voter fraud a second time. The governor said that there would be no legal consequences for his son despite having committed voter fraud twice.
So, for those of you keeping score at home, if Governor Youngkin likes the way you vote you can try to vote illegally as many times as you want, but if he doesn't like the way you vote he won't let you vote even if you're legally allowed to.
Any plans to actually do something about this now that we're all officially aware of it?
"What's done is done. What we need to do now is focus on coming together as a nation. Let me direct your attention to something irrelevant. Feel better? Good, now fuck off."
Thousands of voters disenfranchised.
This shit is happening in every fucking state for every fuckin election. Fucking traitors silencing the voice of the people
GOP traitors, you mean?
Nobody should lose the right to vote. Even Charles Mason, Timothy McVeigh, and the Unabomber deserve the right to vote while incarcerated because they are still part of society and their opinion on who should lead is as valid as some neo nazi that hasn't been convicted of a crime yet.
I would agree, with maybe two narrow exceptions. 1) Participation in a coup or insurrection against the federal or any state government, and 2) any action with intent to fraudulently deny any other person's right to vote or have their vote counted.
Would usually be hard to prove intent on the second one, but just the threat of it would probably stop a good bit of this nonsense. If you're trying to block others from having their fair say in our democracy, then you shouldn't have a say yourself, anymore.
While that sounds good in that specific context, there are two considerations.
If the number of people convicted is small, it only serves to set a precident for removing the right that could be applied to other criteria while not really having any impact on the voting results.
Having something like that allows for it to be weaponized against political opponents and their supporters. We can already see that with removing felons right to vote, which goes along with discriminatory convictions intentionally designed to negatively impact minorities.
bUt tHaT UnFaIrLy tArGeTs rEpUbLiCaNs!
Would usually be hard to prove intent on the second one, but just the threat of it would probably stop a good bit of this nonsense.
Well, any felony currently blocks you from voting, so I don't see how a more selective block with the same consequences would do anything at all to discourage what they're already doing.
Revoke their citizenship. Drop them down to documented aliens. Let them earn their citizenship back the same way immigrants do, after a probationary period, of course. And in addition to prison time.
Can imprisoned persons legally naturalize anyway? Normally they would just get deported.
I upvote for your belief in universal rights, but it's not hard to coerce people who aren't free, under some influence or aren't in their right mind. My country had voting posts on military bases, in prisons and in asylums. They also had encouragement or even boss-checks-if-you-voted campaigns in many goverment's institutions. That's a big number, especially if regular voters won't put their ballots in.
You can guess what country it ended up being. Zat iZ Very eaZy.
That is important to keep in mind to make aure their rights arent stepped on.
The chance of that happening is not an argument against the guarantee that they cannot vote who they want when they lose the right altogether. Hell, one of the arguments against women getting the right to vote in the US was that they would be forced to vote in step with their husband, which of course ignored all the single women on top of just being a reason to make it easier to vote anonymously.
This one is a great point.
And then it means there should be a combined effort both to elevate voting restrictions and inspect obvious points of abuse.
It's not easy to ask the gov do that if it was elected with these conditions. But maybe a civil iniciative to oversee the process then?
Holding the government accountable is far more likely to be successful with a positive outcome than private individual stuff like pollwatchers who exist to undermine the system.
If a group wants to improve things, they should be supporting the efforts of election officials to have fair elections.
How convenient
Oopsy doodles, I guess you don't get to vote. Oh well, better luck next time. - Making a joke of it, but crap like this should result in jail time for those responsible.
It should also result in the election being invalidated if the number of people disenfranchised is enough to possibly affect the outcome.
Along these same lines, why does the group who gerrymandered the voting map get to redo that map. shouldn't they each individually be barred from creating voting maps for ever more?
It's been a long time since this country even resembled a real democracy.
Get involved in local politics then; while the table is invariably skewed towards the rich and powerful, local politics is often the spawning ground for candidates. The global perspective of catastrophe fuels the feeling of powerlessness and robs the more actionable problems in our community of the focus they should be getting. To clarify, you have every right to complain and I don’t mean to insinuate that you don’t if you aren’t involved; just offering a possible solution to the problem you mentioned.
The secretary of state saw a black mark on the voter rolls and he felt a darkness and it colored his viewpoint which is why those specific voters, none of whom have any skin in the game anyway, got struck from the rolls. And they don't have a single thing in common.
I couldn't get through the article after the second "had had". i understand what they are saying, but it still sounds like a child wrote it.
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