Moms for Liberty, known Nazi sympathizers

[bill_g]

Visitors to Australia be prepared.

Banks have actively discouraged actually entering a bank, for any reason, for decades.

Since covid they are reducing the number of ATMs. And the number of branches. All suburbs used to have branches from all 4 big banks and some smaller ones. Now many suburbs have none. Its killing small towns.

Most retail transactions are electronic nowadays. The newsagent I do 4 hours a week at is probably less than 30% cash. I've been carrying around the same two $50 notes for 3 weeks at least.

Yep. I got forced to full credit card use during covid too. Every payday I'd draw $100 in twenties for lunch and incidentals for the next two weeks. What didn't get spent was put in an envelope in the desk. When that hit $500, I'd seal the envelope for a rainy day, and start a fresh one. By the end of covid I had a couple grand in the drawer and stopped pulling cash from the ATM altogether. I'm still working off those envelopes.

[noblepa]

Sometimes I wonder if the anti-self check folks go into the bank and get their cash from a teller instead of using the money machine. Some of my friends hate self check and that's fine, but it's certainly nice to have a choice.

I think that they do. I frequently find myself in line at Menards (a building supply store ala Home Deport) behind someone making a purchase of several hundred dollars. When the cashier tells them the total, they whip out a stack of $50 or $100 bills.

Virtually all ATM cards double as debit cards, meaning they can be used just like a credit card. It these bozos had an ATM card, they could have paid with that, and not risked carrying that much cash around.

I've met people who insist that they refuse to have even one credit card and that they either don't have or refuse to use their ATM/Debit card. To me, that is very stupid, in this day and age. I understand that one can get in deep financial trouble with careless use of a credit card, but you should have one. You don't have to use it. Once in a while, take your wife or husband to dinner and use it to pay the bill. Then, pay the bill in full when it comes.

If you find yourself stranded somewhere, with a broken down car and are confronted with a $1,000 repair bill and you need to be somewhere, if you don't have the cash, your car is staying where it is. Say it happens on a Sunday evening. No banks are open for you to get cash. It is almost impossible to rent a car without a credit card. They will rent you a car (using a credit card) and allow you to cancel the card transaction and pay in cash, but you aren't driving the car off their lot unless you have a cc.

So, everyone really should have a credit card, just for emergencies. Use it just often enough that the cc company doesn't cancel it for non-use and don't let a balance accumulate, if you wish.

[Dave from down under]

Our credit cards are set to auto deduct amount owed before interest is charged on it.

Been doing that for 30 years - not 1c in interest.

[Slim Cognito]

Wow! I wonder if the cc companies get pissed about that, or do they notice?

[Dave from down under]

They make enough money from those that don’t do it that they aren’t losing much with us.

[Slim Cognito]

[Sam the Centipede]

They make enough money from those that don’t do it that they aren’t losing much with us.

Dunno about US or Oz, but there's a reasonably large margin taken by credit card operators from the vendor. So they're filling their pockets regardless of interest payments.

Debit cards attract a much, much smaller charge, possibly only per-transaction for some contracts. So debit cards can be very attractive to vendors as they reduce the amount of cash handled and the risk of errors in dispensing change or receiving dud notes.

In some rural locations, shops have difficulty finding banking services which won't charge them a hefty percentage for banking cash, so the cost of the debit cards to them can be very low.

If I were opening a shop or similar customer-facing now, I would accept only cards because that cuts out the entire cash-handling issue and means the books will always balance at the end of the day.

Downside? Difficult to completely hide one's turnover from the tax people. No problem if one is honest.

[jcolvin2]

They make enough money from those that don’t do it that they aren’t losing much with us.

I likewise pay for almost everything via credit card, full paying the balance before interest is charged. I have been doing this for more than 35 years.
While the credit card companies charge fees to the merchants (often 2-3%), the card company also rebates a significant portion of that fee to me via credit card points, which I then use to buy more stuff.
I primarily use a Chase Visa that gives me 3x points on Amazon.com purchases and 2x on restaurants, which are my largest purchase categories.

[northland10]

If I were opening a shop or similar customer-facing now, I would accept only cards because that cuts out the entire cash-handling issue and means the books will always balance at the end of the day.

For those companies who get uptight with the fees don't realize they make up for it by not having to have staffing to take care of all the checks and cash counting. It is always a balancing game. Some restaurants in at least Evanston have decided to go credit card only, though I am not sure I agree with that one and could turn away some (though most college kids are not cash-only types especially if the restaurant takes the Wildcard).

I have not paid interest for a CC in many, many, many years because I always pay the full balance. I don't, however, feel like I am punishing the bank for this. They may not get interest payments directly from me, but they can now take that money and put it out on other loans where they will make interest, or on a nightly investment (commercial paper, etc.) and make interest on it that way. In either case, they make money on it.

[Sam the Centipede]

[…] I always pay the full balance. I don't, however, feel like I am punishing the bank for this.

Two points: banks can look after themselves without any of us shedding any tears on their behalf. And it's not the banks who are paying for you using your credit card, it's the vendor, the shop, restaurant, etc.

[pipistrelle]

Except in this case the "Mom for Liberty" didn't pay at all.

[Volkonski]

Moms for Liberty Mobbed by Protesters During NYC ‘Town Hall’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/moms-for- ... -town-hall

Moms for Liberty’s New York City event drew a large protest from local parents and the LGBTQ community Thursday evening—as well as guests including disgraced former Rep. George Santos and Rudy Giuliani’s son Andrew.

Protesters flocked to Manhattan on Thursday to oppose the right-wing extremist group, which hosted a “town hall” for “an honest conversation on the state of education” that featured anti-trans and school choice activists.

But most of the airtime was spent listening to panelists stoke fears about the usual conservative bugbears: transgender care for minors and critical race theory.

For about 15 minutes at the end, a handful of people in the crowd were able to ask questions, which resulted in anger and several fraught interactions.

This, despite an event flyer claiming that “all viewpoints are welcome.”

Panelists included “Billboard Chris,” a frequent Moms for Liberty collaborator who travels the continent railing against gender-affirming care for minors, and Nicholas Giordano, a community college professor and occasional Fox News contributor.

Other “parents rights” adherents included NYC community education council member Maud Maron, who called trans-identifying children “a social contagion” and Paul Rossi, a former private school teacher fired for challenging antiracism lessons. He is now a consultant for affluent parents concerned about “woke” ideology, the New York Post reported.

Another participant, Wai Wah Chin of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York, was reportedly instrumental in ending affirmative action.

[raison de arizona]

No nekkid bebes!

Replying to @JuddLegum
2. Since its initial publication in 1970, millions of children have read In The Night Kitchen.

The book is about a young boy who has a surreal dream about baking a cake

@Moms4Liberty challenged the book in Indian River County Florida, claiming it was pornographic

3. As a result, In The Night Kitchen was removed from school libraries. Jennifer Pippin, the local @Moms4Liberty chair who filed the challenge, says she then met with the district Superintendent. They agreed to resolve the complaint by adding clothes to Sendak's drawings.

[neonzx]

So sad.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-moms ... or-liberty

The last three members of the Lehigh County chapter of Moms for Liberty met on Tuesday at the Starbrite Diner in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The membership had dwindled from a high of 200 in the feverish days of 2020, when Janine Vicalvi first formed this local branch of what the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an extremist hate group that grew out of heedless opposition to COVID mask and vaccine mandates.

She decided she had reached an end point.

“Between homeschooling and working two jobs, it’s just a lot,” she said. “And I guess there wasn’t as much willingness to do the work that’s required to propel the movement forward.”

The other two at the meeting felt the same and they voted unanimously to dissolve the chapter. She posted an announcement on the group’s Facebook page:

“So we had our meeting this evening and are going to dissolve our chapter.”

---

The Lehigh PA chapter of the Moms for Liberty dropped from 200 members to 3 and then disbanded. As the last member said, "I couldn't keep making sextapes by myself"

[Rolodex]

They met at a diner but could have met in a phone booth.

[keith]

They met at a diner but could have met in a phone booth.

What is this "phone booth" thing you mention?

I suspect it might be those things that Australia removed from public spaces 15 or 20 years ago. If I'm right, there might be something like it in extremely remote communities I suppose.

But I suppose you could be talking about pockets and/or backpacks, hey?

[bill_g]

He may have been pointing out that MFL is now like phone booths - a thing of the past.

[Sam the Centipede]

Off Topic

I was amused by the scene in the 1978 Superman film where, for the first time, Christopher Reeves' Clark Kent comes out from the Daily Planet office building wearing his office suit. He needs to change! – there is a fleeting shot of him glancing and grimacing at a clear phone hood (what are they called?) on the sidewalk before he changes in a whizzing revolving door. The flash of the phone hood was enough to amuse the oldies who noticed it and got the allusion but brief enough not to register for young 'uns or break the tension.

It's ironic how a segment about datedness is now itself dated! Ok, we are almost half a century later

[Ben-Prime]

They met at a diner but could have met in a phone booth.

What is this "phone booth" thing you mention?

I'm told it's like a T.A.R.D.I.S. but not bigger on the inside.

[Rolodex]

He may have been pointing out that MFL is now like phone booths - a thing of the past.

I appreciate this generous interpretation (rather than the fact that I'm just old as shit; someone who use to check pay phones for abandoned change and remember when they went from 10¢ to a quarter). And let's hope those nazis go the way of those piss-odored phone booths.

[bill_g]

He may have been pointing out that MFL is now like phone booths - a thing of the past.

I appreciate this generous interpretation (rather than the fact that I'm just old as shit; someone who use to check pay phones for abandoned change and remember when they went from 10¢ to a quarter). And let's hope those nazis go the way of those piss-odored phone booths.

No worries. I'm right there with you. Worked on more than my share of the things. Had a whole parts catalog to order from. It was amazing what the public could do to those phones. In the 80's as we started commissioning cell sites, we knew phones booths were dinosaurs.

[raison de arizona]