This is exactly what the leadership wanted. And as they won the election. Not like in 2016 (where more people voted for the other guy but they won due to the difference in power of votes), or in 2020 (where they lost), they won a clear outright victory, it's exactly what the USA wanted.
I'm not sure it's fair to characterize 49.8% of the vote as a "clear outright victory". Harris got 48.3%; that's a pretty close to even split. The majority of voters didn't vote for this.
It is nonsensical to consider popular vote numbers in an election not decided on the popular vote. How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable. I'm all for the presidency being decided by popular vote, but until it is there is no point using those statistically-flawed numbers in any debate.
> How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable.
Just to add on, not voting in decided states is appealing for the winning party as well as the losing party.
Personally, I think a nationwide popular vote would be a logistical disaster, especially in the modern era of alternative facts.
The majority of voters who voted for president got the president they wanted. With a president comes admin of all these agencies. So yeah they voted for this.
In theory the US has checks and balances. Ask 10 years ago if you could have a president selling national secrets via an api and you'd be laughed out of the room.
Carter had to sell his peanut farm. Trump makes billions each year.
Is there a word for this behavior where a politician wins by the slimmest of margins in a first past the post election and then spins it as a mandate from The People instead of an incredibly tight split?
If you are talking about the billionaires and trillionaire who spent as much as they could to get this elected then you are correct it is what THEY wanted.
Okay? That has nothing to do with what I said, what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide? Was that not a case of putting profits, the military industrial complex, above people?
What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?
I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.
Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.
I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.
There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:
We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.
I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
"what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide?" in a thread about the Trump EPA is pretty much the textbook example of whataboutism.
Allowing more carbon dioxide sources is going to be distinctly harmful to profits in the mid-term. As with racial bias, strict gender roles, anti-vaxxing, and being anti-science, being pro-carbon burn is ultimately a foolish anti-truth stance as silly and ill-outcomed as any three year old insisting that they can stay up all night.
Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything? Do they yearn for the mines and coal dust of early industrial England?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything
No because they were extremely rich and lived in massive houses set far back from the city streets filled with polluting cars and well away from factories spewing poison into the air. They've lived perfectly comfortable lives in climate controlled and filtered spaces and traveled around to beautiful remote areas where poor people can never go and the pollution had barely touched. They know that they and their families can buy a comfortable and safe life no matter how miserable and sick they make the rest of us. They will always have healthy food and clean water no matter how many of us don't.
Our government works best when it's "of the people" but instead the octogenarians in power have almost nothing in common with us (even most of us here, in a forum filled with very wealthy people) and so their interests are not our interests and our concerns are not shared by them.
Ethanol cost more at the time, doesn’t help seal valves, lowers energy density, and eats certain kinds of plastic and rubber that are often used in fuel systems.
Leaded gasoline caused colossal harm, but it did a good job of solving problems with fuel at the time.
> and lead was standardized only because it was patentable
That doesn't make much sense to me. It would be more profitable to sell gasoline without lead tetraethyl because you wouldn't be forced to buy a patented product. Just pour a shot of pure grain spirit in your tank on every refill (or however much is needed).
It's more plausible that engine technology today has improved to the point that ethanol alone can eliminate knocking.
The link you provided gives more context.
> One already-known remedy was replacing a substantial proportion of the gasoline fuel with ethanol – though ethanol’s lower energy content made the engines less efficient...[General Motors and Standard Oil] claimed that ethanol – often used in automobile fuels before the war – was an unsatisfactory alternative.
and
> Unless the fuel producers themselves get into this work of investigating the properties of their fuels, there is a good chance that they may have to pay tribute to others
Translation: anti-knock compounds was a good business for Standard Oil to be in themselves. Instead of paying another company for a patented product.
Most of those octogenarians weren't responsible for any of that. Their parents did it for them. If you're 80 you came of age in the 60's, and you wouldn't have been eligible for the Senate or the Presidency until 1970 or 1975. The decline of the US started pretty much when the baby boomers came to power and the people who fought WWII were all retiring.
The law was specifically written to exclude things like independent power sources and backup generators etc...
From 42 U.S.C. § 7651a(17)(A) [1] which defines the power generation units that are covered by the law:
"(17)
(A)The term “utility unit” means—
(i)a unit that serves a generator in any State that produces electricity for sale, or
(ii)a unit that, during 1985, served a generator in any State that produced electricity for sale."
The key phrasing there is "for sale". The clarification from the EPA simply restated that these units don't fall under the regulatory authority because under a plain reading of the law, they are not generating power for sale. [2]
The EPA certainly cites Trump's power agenda several times, but that doesn't make the plain text interpretation of the law wrong.
