Oregon isn't a red state overall. Almost all states, whether red, blue, or purple, allow felons to vote at some point.

Democrats sure don't. They want them to vote and everything.

The following red states allow felons to vote after completing their sentences (carceral sentences in some cases, or complete sentences and fines in others):

Alaska, Arkansas, Florida (1), Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa (2), Kansas, Kentucky (3), Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

That's the overwhelming majority of them. A couple of them have exceptions for certain crimes like rape and murder, but for the rest, if you can finish your sentence, you can probably vote.

(1) Sort of -- the state government has intentionally made a mess of the initiative that passed 65-35.

(2) While the Iowa constitution bars felons from voting unless they have applied to the governor to have voting rights reinstated, Gov. Reynolds (a Republican) has a standing executive order automatically reinstating voting rights of felons upon completing their sentences unless they were convicted of murder.

(3) Similar to (2), except that Gov. Beshear's executive order applies only to those convicted of non-violent offenses.

Socialism with American Characteristics

Iowa's rolling farm fields of coffee

Automatic salary increases have been part of federal law since 1989, as your linked article mentions. They haven't happened since 2009. The bill that the link mentions didn't pass, and the replacement bill didn't change the prior block, so no pay raises are possible until the new session in 2027.

I get that members of Congress are unpopular. But if we want regular people in Congress, people not coming in wealthy, they're going to face extra expenses that aren't covered from their office budgets, and they should be paid enough to not end up poor for doing their service. Maintaining a separate residence -- even sharing in renting an apartment -- in or around DC is expensive. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) was unable to rent an apartment in DC when he was elected last year because even with a guaranteed Congressional salary, he didn't make enough to overcome a poor credit rating coming in and the apartment complex rejected him. I'm all for the stock trading bans for them and their family. I'm fine with them participating in Social Security and the federal employee pension fund. I'm happy with them getting their health insurance off the DC ACA exchange. But at some point, the pay should increase so that we can send people who aren't already rich or who won't have extra temptation to bend or break the rules because they're about to go broke.

Indeed, I fully agree. The funny thing is, monthly numbers would help us move away from the distortions of the quarterly cycle. If key data reporting becomes frequent enough, you can't get into a cycle of "do adverse-numbers stuff early in the quarter and then cram positive-numbers stuff into the end of the quarter". You have to - *gasp* - just run your business normally.

Some businesses could still manage to switch to a monthly cycle, but anyone who deals significantly in transoceanic feedstocks/parts/goods shipments won't be able to.

BLS numbers aren't some sort of dark art. They're literally just the compiled numbers reported by companies. Numbers are what they are. To fight against jobs numbers is to fight against reality.

People get confused by the existence of revisions. The problem is that not all data gets reported in a timely manner. When late data comes in, it causes revisions to the earlier reported numbers, either up or down.

Firing the head of the BLS because you don't like what numbers US companies reported is just insane Banana Republic-level nonsense.

Yes, he fired the same person who was ultimately responsible for putting out crap numbers.

US reporting has always been the gold standard. Nobody has accused the BLS of "crap numbers" until Trump decided he didn't like them. It's is so way outside the norms it doesn't even resemble something that could conceivably happen in the US; this is banana republic-level stuff.

Yeah, as an investor, my reaction to this proposal was, oh HELL no.

TL / DR:

BLS chief: "Jobs are turning bad now."

Trump: "Fake news, you're fired. I'm appointing a January 6th rioter conspiracy theorist to head the BLS!"

BLS today: "Jobs were ALREADY bad!"

The fact that you take at face value a revision of Biden-era job numbers, immediately after Trump fired and replaced the BLS chief explicitly because he published jobs numbers Trump didn't like, is....

Well, it's certainly a choice.

I was thinking the same thing. What sort of an idiot will take US jobs numbers at face value right after Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief after he reported numbers that Trump didn't like?

Integrated thermal stores with nuclear is more difficult (limited temperatures and limited dT on storage = big storage needed with lots of heat exchange surface area), but if they can make it economical, it could be a game changer for nuclear's problematic economics. The ability of nuclear to switch from baseload (not matching the demand curve, let alone the curve of really-cheap renewables) to load-following and even peaking could make the mean sale value of its electricity much higher, and make it much more useful as a compliment to renewables.

The mean July maximum temperature in Helsinki is 27,1C (80,8F), and the record is 33,2C (91,8F). Combine this with the fact that the interiors of large buildings accumulate internal heat. Cooling is of utility. Let alone for industry (most industry is fine with cooling with ambient water temperatures, but some needs cooling beyond that).

I was wondering why. It's so frustrating - JPEGXL is an excellent format. Fast, too, compared to a lot of the alternatives (like AVIF), and less patent risk.