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[Telgin]

We can't get most conservative politicians to agree to spend money on repairing our ancient infrastructure.  Hell will freeze over and start a new ice age on Earth before enough would agree to just give people money to ever see it implemented in the US.

[JoshuaFH]

We can't get most conservative politicians to agree to spend money on repairing our ancient infrastructure. 

It doesn't help that America is riddled with highways, probably the most expensive to maintain piece of infrastructure available. Roads are weirdly expensive to maintain, and we have tons of them everywhere. That isn't to say the governments over America couldn't come up with the money, they could, but simple and pragmatic promises like infrastructure repair don't win many votes.

[MrRoboto75]

A massive infrastructure program is basically what the New Deal was, which pulled us out of economic depression.

And then we did almost zero infrastructure after that.

[Telgin]

Naturally.  People would rather get tax cuts or see the money spent on something more interesting than roads like... I don't actually know of anything Americans are happy to see taxes spent on as a whole.  Maybe the military in a sense.

I'm just a bit bitter because I've seen multiple news headlines about how Biden's infrastructure bill is going to destroy America somehow, probably because it's not being spent on The Wall, and it just reminds me of how dysfunctional our government has become.  Even a bill with practical benefits to the majority of the country is labeled as an evil by those who are part of the opposing political party.

I even tried to read the Fox News article to see why they thought that, but it started rambling about how Nancy Pelosi has turned into a dictator instead of explaining and I just didn't have the heart to dig the reasoning out of the article after that.

[JoshuaFH]

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[Micro102]

Taking a quick look at r/conservative shows me that they think the bill is filled with "pork" (money going to things it doesn't need to as a bribe), but of course no one ever cites anything specific.

[None]

Try not to take any looks over there, they're all looking for something to be persecuted by or drumming up a story about how a white guy got shot and why isn't the news reporting it when the justice system took the shooter through every step of due process and justice is actually done or how the epoch times says donald really did win or there were some dozen stinky ballots caught by hand by the ballot checking system that were not counted.

It's all pork, always is pork, but never you mind the multi-billion dollar submarine on order from the covid stimulus bill, they want six million dollars to refit the insulation in government buildings or somesuch and it's going to break the budget but never mind the deficits they run up

[MrRoboto75]

but never mind the deficits they run up

what no a democrat's in power, the deficit is everything now

[Starver]

A massive infrastructure program is basically what the New Deal was, which pulled us out of economic depression.

And then did almost zero infrastructure after that.

But I recall that virtually every other week of the last presidency was Infrastructure Week! Surely that meant that something was actually done about it..?

[dragdeler]

If king mansion is ok with it I wouldnt expect much.

[McTraveller]

There are some concerning things in that infrastructure bill, like directives to lay the framework for requiring devices in vehicles to prevent "impaired driving" - so think cameras and other things that measure your attention.  There are things like mandating GPS monitoring of vehicle movement for road taxes.

Those things worry me more than just "fix the roads, dammit."

I haven't seen anything in there that is immediately good for the average citizens, only things good for various industries which may result in indirect benefit to individuals.  There's a lot in there that can easily be abused.

[dragdeler]

Itīs not a bug its feature.

None should be surprised if in the end it turns out that even the incompetent orange man managed to pass more legislation.

[da_nang]

A federal judge has issued an injunction on a Florida law that prohibits corporations from requiring vaccination documentation in order to provide service, partially on the grounds of the First Amendment, and partially on the grounds of the dormant commerce clause.

The relevant Florida law:

2) A Florida business entity, as defined in s. 606.03 to include any business operating in this state, may not require patrons or customers to provide any documentation certifying COVID-19 vaccination or post-transmission recovery to gain access to, entry upon, or service from the business. This subsection does not otherwise restrict businesses from instituting screening protocols in accordance with state or federal law to protect public health.

Injunction order

Laying aside the commerce clause for a moment, the judge is saying that regulation or prohibition of the following conduct is violating the First Amendment:

• Customer wants to purchase a service.
• Business asks for a vaccine passport or other proof of full vaccination.
• Customer refuses to provide proof.
• Business denies the customer service.

This apparently violates the First Amendment because it's "content-based" regulation, according to Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., and others. It was considered "content-based" because the customer could voluntarily still provide the documentation, and the business could still require antibody tests or oral attestation (while conveniently ignoring the point of the law: no discrimination on the basis of vaccination status).

This got me thinking, couldn't this logic be used as an end run around the Civil Rights Act? Replace "vaccine passport or other proof of full vaccination" with "proof of religious affiliation membership", "proof of positive skin color", or "proof of sex". The "proof" is still information i.e. speech and thus under the First Amendment logic above it should be unconstitutional to regulate or prohibit it, right? The dormant commerce clause wouldn't even be violated since the Civil Rights Act is federal law.

The first thing I could think of to salvage this is to plainly legislate that "no customer shall be denied goods or service, or equal quality thereof, on the basis of vaccination status." This would have the downside of having to slowly hash out the details in court since the law is so broad and vague, but that still wouldn't give assurance that the law couldn't be similarly challenged under the First Amendment.

Could this be the end of the Civil Rights Act?

[McTraveller]

Vaccination status isn't a protected class.

Society has decided that it is acceptable to mandate vaccinations (schools, anyone?) because it's way better for society to not allow that type of freedom.

Maybe there's a slippery-slope argument here for current protected classes, but I think that's just looking for things to be worried about.

[da_nang]

Protected classes are legislative fiat. There's no reason why a government can't create more.

In fact, California has done just that by preventing employers from firing employees on the basis of political activity or beliefs outside of work hours.