Disappointed in the comments here so far. There’s a cardinal rule of improv that also works well for many other things in life, politics included: “yes, and”.
This is a great change that will save folks money and make the country just a little bit fairer. Celebrate that, and then use the momentum to push for more. This builds alliances and a shared vision, instead of devolving into petty squabbles around direction.
You can please some of the people some of the time, but none of the people all of the time.
Full disclosure: Trump bad! Biden GOOD!
You’re disappointed but personally, it’s hard NOT to feel a great deal of schadenfreude when:
the guy who, for his entire career, has openly accepted bribes in exchange for legislation that is economically violent toward his own constituents now presumably wants the exact same constituents he sold out to vote for him
and is using small, meaningless crumbs to gain that vote when he could have just NOT ENABLED A GENOCIDE.
If this situation doesn’t make you a true believer about there being no hope, I honestly don’t know what will. I lost hope in 2016 and have just been laughing through the bullshit since then. It’s exactly as real as pro wrestling at this point.
The problem is that supporters of the "business as usual politicians such as this (or pardoning federal inmates convicted of marijuana possession of which there were zero) hold things up like this whenever one criticizes them in order to claim that they’re doing so much to help the country.
Throwing scraps on the floor in order to get better polling numbers before an election isn’t serving the people.
Then criticize them then and have them stay on topic, and I’ll be right there with ya. Right now though, they’re not using it as a bludgeon. It’s just a nice win. Do you not see how your approach will lead to nothing but cynicism over time? Even if you strive not to, you will begin to view every win as some sort of maneuver to get one over on you.
Biden started the momentum for capping late fees over a year ago. He mentioned it in his State of the Union address. This is just how government works. I don’t think having some progress made in March of an election year after initiating desire to make progress over a year ago is scaps on the floor. It is competent governing.
How about fucking “convenience fees” when I do shit like pay my fucking rent?
Always real “convenient” that there’s a charge for paying your bills.
We used to pay our rent in 15-20 installments, one every day or two. The office of the apartment building we lived in was on the way to our apartment, so it wasn’t any inconvenience for us to just drop a check in their drop box when we passed by, but I like to think it was mildly irritating for them to have to deal with the book-keeping. They asked us not to on multiple occasions but their only online option had a small “convenience charge” attached, so… No, thank you. I’d be happy to use it if they paid me a “convenience fee” for not making them process 20 checks every month.
The real issue is that the apartment building is charged a fee by their payment processor to use electronic payments, and they didn’t want to pay it. It is a convenience fee for the bank customer (the building) because they have to do less work cashing checks.
It’s stupid to try to pass that to people living in the building. Most personal bank accounts allow you to pay automatically with a check that’s mailed for free. Paying by check is not inconvenient for individuals, it’s only inconvenient for the person cashing all the checks.
The issue is further up the chain but it’s an issue nonetheless. Banks want to go back to physical transactions about as much as people do, so in reality they should be charging for the physical to get people to move to digital.
It’s safer, faster, and encourages more spending, just like a credit card does.
Right but it saves labor in the office, and the cost of dealing with bounced checks, and the accounting is much easier when payments are made online, so the landlord ought not put the gross cost into the rent. It’s cost and savings to the landlord, likely netting out to nothing, or a savings on the online accounts.
In a small restaurant, I understand cash discount. They are gonna have to count the drawer at the end of the night either way. In an apartment building, no. That’s charging people for saving you time and effort, it’s a junk fee.
That sounds like a nightmare for bookkeeping… I’m not sure if it’s genius, evil, or both.
How did you keep track of which checks were cashed, and which ones were pending???
Our bank had a really nice web interface for that. We could just go to the website and see all of the checks, the amounts, and the dates they were cashed, and we weren’t using checks for any other purpose, so there wasn’t anything else diluting the list. They could have made it a hassle for us by selectively “losing” some occasionally, I suppose, but they never did.
Maybe you do know, but in case you don’t, the “convenience fee” is (usually) just the price the vendor has to pay to process a credit card transaction. Because in order to accept credit cards as payment in the first place, they have to pay the credit card network for the privilege.
Providing the exact same service to you is more expensive for them based entirely on the method you use to pay. You bet they’re going to pass that extra expense onto you. The alternative is raising their service charge to eat the cost and screwing over people who pay with check or cash. Which is what most retail stores tend to do.
Though, I agree, I’d rather they just do the fucking math and charge a rate that covers their operating expenses. It’s shouldn’t be my problem to pay their itemized expenses. Just know that if they did so, we’ll be charged the same total either way.
It’s a similar argument with tipping culture. “Oh, you have to tip, employees rely on it to make ends meet!” Sure, but why is that my problem? If the business can’t create a business model that properly pays for the expenses it needs to function, they should go out of business. Raise prices. I’ll pay the same as the tip, fine, just stop playing these frivilous smoke and mirror games with my bill.
Holy shit how are Boe Jiden’s consumer protection agencies so based all day long? Not only do we have this EXCELLENT SHIT from the CFPB, we also get the constant anti-trust lawsuits from QUEEN Lina Khan, who is making the FTC relevant again!
Antitrust has been dead for generations, and for the first time in my+grandparents lifetime we see the government trying to reign in the travesty that is American corporatism. Fuck damn I love to see it!
Also capped insulin prices and old people drugs. The man is speedrunning pothole legislation, oh yeah and he literally fucking made a national pothole fixing Bill.
Biden is definitely going down like Carter where 2 decades later everyone benefits from his presidency and are like “fuck he was actually pretty good”.
Lemmy leftie morons: JoE BiDeN hAtEs Us!
It’s like they ignore all of this news and act like all he’s ever done is beat the shit out of rail workers…
The banking industry opposes caps on overdraft and credit card late fees
I’m shocked
I love all the little things his administration keeps doing, and they’re good. I just wish he had some big initiative he could hang his hat on. Little things like this - while good - don’t really get people excited and aren’t the sea change(s) we need.
I know, a big part of that is congress.
But damn surely there’s a lot more ballsy stuff that could have been done by now. Weed not being federally legalized yet is stupid, for one thing.
There are a lot of big things that would be celebrated if our media covered it differently and if Biden was as self-aggrandizing as Trump.
But the little things are really what make me want to vote for Biden again. This is competent governing. In my field, I’ve seen how the little things lead to big things. Like the approval of off shore wind farms that were stalled under Trump are now approved and constructed leading to the first utility scale offshore wind farm in the US. A huge accomplishment from one little approval.
Like the approval of off shore wind farms that were stalled under Trump are now approved and constructed leading to the first utility scale offshore wind farm in the US.
And now I understand why my dad randomly decided to talk about “windmills killing whales.” As if he ever gave a shit about them before right wing media told him to be mad about it…
The Inflation Reduction Act is one of the most significant pieces of legislation in a long time
You’re right that it was a big deal.
What makes you say “of all time” though? That seems like an exaggeration but I’m interested in why I may be wrong.
Even if this is low hanging fruit, I love him doing stuff like this. I remember how infuriating it is to get some random charge on an account, call up the bank to report fraud, only to be told it’s because a savings account needs X dollars in it or some nonsense charge like that.
This is great and all, but yeah. This is “yay, the world is very slightly less crappy.”
