In November 2016, American conservatives stood on the verge of greatness. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency was a triumph that offered the best chance to reverse the left’s incessant march of progress for its own sake. Many of the best accomplishments, though, happened only in the last year of the Trump administration, after our political appointees had finally figured out the policies and process of different agencies, and after the right personnel were finally in place.
They have been moving on this path since Regan, they just have the court and the rigged voting maps now they feel comfortable being open about thier intentions. While people like me was derided as alarmists they were building the engine that got us here
Really they’ve been on this trajectory since Nixon. They were talking about playing the long game to get right-wing media established back then. I imagine they also wanted to take other steps to make sure no other Republican went through the humiliation of having to pay for their crimes. Like rigging the judicial system, and everything else we’ve seen the past 50 years.
Dude, they fucking are Hydra. Post Red Skull the aim of the organization was “humanity cannot be trusted with its own freedom” if you add “except for me” to the end of that it’s effectively the entire conservative platform
I started, mostly jokingly, predicting a schism/Balkanization in 2011 on acid with some friends. But the whole thing can be traced back as far back as the 30s depending on which thread you decide to follow
Jesus fuck that Mandate for Leadership is an interesting read. Uncomfortable but it really gives you specific examples of what they plan on doing. 900 pages worth. Wish I had time to read it all as I bet it would help to understand what this fight is all about
reverse the left’s incessant march of progress for its own sake. Many of the best accomplishments, though, happened only in the last year of the Trump administration
This has got to be a troll, George Lucas had better dialogue in the prequels.
The last year of the Trump administration also happened to be where he started a violent insurrection against democracy.
The crazy thing to me is that they said their goal is to stop progress. Sure, they tacked on "for its own sake" to give the base something to latch on to, but if you ask any person impacted by LACK of progress it's for very real sakes and stakes for very real people. Fuck these assholes.
I also thought it was hyperbolic until I saw the source. Apnews, along with Reuters, are my gold standards for news. If they are reporting it then I believe it is very real and very serious.
I would love to see Democrats acknowledge this and take some action to fight against this.
Has anyone done so yet or are we peons pretty much on our own as usual?
We need more normal progressives to run for local offices. I would run … but I have the charisma of cow dung and the schmoozing ability of a turnip.
And I would probably want to harm myself dealing with politicians who don’t prioritize solving problems over money, power, and other useless bullshit.
But I see an awful lot of selling out to corporate interests and not much of a call to fight against rising fascism … except as a tool in spam emails and texts to get more donations. I volunteer where I can because I genuinely give a shit. And then I get bombarded with two dozen spam bullshit fundraiser emails a day from this, that, or the other democratic PAC. Certainly doesn’t give me much hope that there’s any authenticity behind any of it.
Meanwhile, we’re an election away from a full takeover that puts the lives of my friends and family and co-workers in jeopardy.
It worries the shit out of us peons but nobody at the top of the Dems is concerned enough, if you ask me.
But I guess that’s how the story played out for Mussolini, Hitler, and other fascists so why not repeat history: the pro corporate, center right portion of the Democratic party (ie the vast majority) sits on their thumbs because what have they got to lose when they have power and money?
The Republicans are going to keep chipping away at democracy like they have since Nixon (50 years ago) until they make the country into their own sick image.
Idk what the fuck needs to happen exactly but fucking somebody do something. Lead the charge. Idk?
Watching Twitter crash and burn under musk has been so much fun. It being a haven for all the worst dregs of humanity and an advertiser’s worst nightmare is just the cherry on top. Old Twitter before mush for brains musk was still salvageable. He’s somehow done everything to make it worse.
I’m not sure I’d call it fun, but there’s definitely something soothing in the thought that no matter how much I fuck my life up, there’s no way I can ever make a 44 billion dollar mistake. So there’s that.
The new name alone isn't what made Twitter crap, but it is symbolic of the massive changes made to the site by the new management. I like to think of it this way: Twitter is dead. X is the reanimated corpse.
X is modern New Coke. At this point, I’m not even sure which of the worst CEOs I’d compare musk to. He’s like all of their worst traits rolled into one. I have no doubt there’s some weird financial accounting going on at Tesla, just that they haven’t been found out just yet. His involvement into the crypto sphere and with doge should have thrown up regulatory alarm bells already.
I think what we really want is to have it restored to pre-musk-ownership level of functionality. But that doesn’t make for a nice four syllable group chant. Also I doubt the douche is capable of ever admitting how wrong he was.
Police dogs should be abolished. They only exist to intimidate people and give police a free pass to violate the rights of people by giving them an excuse to search people that is somehow not considered bullshit despite being as reliable as a dowsing rod.
Sucks that this one died because the police couldn’t even take care of their job pet.
They’re not even good for search-and-rescue? I remember them getting out the dogs to look for lost hikers with decent results but maybe that’s just us mountain people shit. You’re on the money about the aggression / intimidation stuff though.
A friend of my mom’s used to train dogs for search and rescue and he became an fbi agent. He had great success stories about his dogs working along the waterways in eastern Tennessee.
Search and Rescue dogs are generally owned and trained by specialized dog trainers, not the cops. The scent-tracking skills for following people are differently trained from drug and explosives detecting dogs Basically a search dog needs to walk towards and follow what they smell, and a detecting dog needs to sit down when they catch a smell so they have different training methods.
Source; Hung out with Search and Rescue dog trainers and listened to them carefully not directly talk shit about the police dogs.
It’s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.
Well, of course it’s not selfishness. Having children is a purely selfish act, because who else are you reproducing for? You can’t do something for someone that doesn’t exist, and bringing existence to someone who hasn’t asked for it, knowing what the world looks like, doesn’t strike me as a kindness. So who else is benefiting? The capitalist machine?
Despite negative perceptions on the state of the economy, people are losing money a lot slower than its June 2022 peak of losing a shit ton of money per quarter.
I think it’s a perception thing? Maybe people feel like they are earning more money than ever before but things cost more so they feel like they are losing money rather than earning less? I don’t know the answer but yea…. Prices are going up and they are still going up, and even if inflation is under control it feels like prices are going up faster than they were before….
Eating at a fast food restaurant I remember my first job I could get a burger for way less than one hour of work at my lowest wage I worked for I could get a whole combo meal at the fast food place next to one of my first jobs for about one hour of work…. Wages have gone up a bit but it’s not keeping pace so if i look at what my same job would pay per hour now it’s still not going to get me a meal for one hour of work, maybe only the burger.
I think you were being downvoted because while you may be technically correct, that means little to the daily life of your average person.
The last time I saw data on wages (pre COVID, so sometime between 2015 and 2019), when adjusted for inflation, wages for the average worker had actually dropped about 5% since then. Add to that that prices have increased faster than inflation across the board, even before COVID, and people are losing money simply keeping afloat. The price of a taco at Taco Bell is now twice what it cost in the 90s when adjusted for inflation. College tuition is up something like 1,500% since the 70s (thanks, Reagan). Something like 60% of houses are considered unaffordable to the average American today, compared to 30% roughly 20 years ago.
All this means that purchasing power has dropped, but “purchasing power” and “earnings” means absolutely nothing to people. The number in their bank account dropping instead of going up matters. The fact that people can’t get a mortgage for a house even though the rent they currently pay is more expensive matters. The fact that people have to take on debt to afford essentials is what matters. To the average person, any of that is a clear sign that they’re losing money.
Yeah but did you hear fast food workers make $15 bucks an hour now in at least one state? Plus people surely haven’t gone through all of their COVID stimulus savings yet.
My favorite excuse for not paying fast food workers more is, “that’s not supposed to be someone’s permanent job, that’s supposed to be a teenager’s job.”
Great, but we don’t live in your supposed to world and it is a permanent job for a lot of people now.
Also, the idea that you shouldn’t pay a teenager a decent hourly wage either is pretty offensive, but that’s a whole other issue.
They’re not missing it at all. In normal circumstances, we’ve always got some low amount of inflation. If prices fell, we’d have an entirely different and much worse set of issues.
If prices fell, we’d have an entirely different and much worse set of issues.
No, it would be a lot worse for the wealthy
Deflation causes people to save money and accumulate wealth.
The wealthy say this is bad because we won’t buy products, but now we don’t buy products because we have no money. Which is worse than not buying products because we’re saving money for a thing like a house or planning to have kids.
Except for the wealthiest who want all the money and can’t get what people are saving. They want everyone broke and all the money they don’t have already, being in circulation so they can take it.
Like, come on bro, it’s not complicated but there is generations of capitalism propaganda repeating that inflation is a good thing, it’s just not true for 99.99% of us. If it still doesn’t make sense, feel free to ask for clarification.
We have history that we can learn from where we’ve had deflation and could observe the effects. The wealthy are the ones not buying products in deflationary environments, or otherwise big ticket purchases for the rest of us. Those big purchases involve a lot of money changing hands, but above and beyond that, there’s also a lack of capital investment, because the investor has no incentive to do anything except to put their money under their mattress, once again not circulating it. If there’s constant low inflation, the investor is guaranteed to lose money keeping it under their mattress but has a good chance at making more money by investing it into companies who use it to hire people and produce things that people want to spend money on.
Do you think that every article written about inflation just happens to forget that prices are still rising? Or do you think there’s a reason there are basically no economists anywhere arguing that deflation is what we should have instead?
What you might call a memo, I’d call a poor explanation to confirm your biases. Do some reading on how economists came to their conclusions, and you’ll see why we arrived at an ideal environment of some low inflation. If economics reporters were only serving at the behest of billionaires, we’re in an age of unprecedented access to information, and economics is almost entirely math. If someone wanted to be a whistleblower and show the math to back it up, it would have gone viral by now, and that still would have to contradict a working model of reality that makes sense for what we all understand about inflation. There will always be some percentage of people who don’t thrive in whatever our economic conditions are, and that sucks, but I don’t think anyone’s been able to show a system where we can save literally everyone, because as human beings, our flaws tend to get in the way of that. Still, that low amount of inflation tends to be the best we can do.
I mostly agree with you, but economics is at best a heaping tablespoon of math and a sack of human behavioral psychology. Those guys really only know what’s going on 6 months after it happened.
I mean, that’s what this comes to, right? If he ordered Seal Team Six to storm Mar-A-Lago to recover classified materials with deadly force, then he’s operating in order to maintain national security via his authority as Commander in Chief. That would be legal under this ruling, correct?
I get that would lead to an actual civil war, and I get that their argument is important to shield the office from neverending frivolous lawsuits, but in being forced to rule so explicitly on this it seems like they’ve opened the door to political assassinations. All a President would need is a willing wing of the military and a superficial rationalization and there’d be nothing a court in this country could do about it.
You’re missing that the Supreme Court is taking the piss and the District Court they’re kicking this back to has already done their homework and defined the official acts versus unofficial acts. They’re ret-2-go but the Supreme’s did their job of punting this until at least October, since that’s when they come back from vacation. So when the District Court punts it back up the chain to the Supreme Court, they have to wait for the Supreme Court to reconvene. It’s fucking stupid, but it accomplished getting Trump nothing but a legal time-out.
Oh, ALSO:
Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.
They literally fucked us out of a ton of evidence with this part of the ruling.
But national security is. All they would need is a flimsy justification that the person was stealing state secrets (like Trump) or organizing a terrorist attack, which could include any contact with an armed or paramilitary group that’s planning a protest. They could use state influence to coerce that group to take action, and the records of that planning process would be inadmissible per this ruling. It’s not hard to come up with superficial reasons that do align with Constitutional obligations.
Edit to add: Hell, just look at the McCarthy era, or the Iraq war. It’s not hard at all for a sufficiently shameless group of politicians to gin up a moral panic about national security. They don’t even need evidence, they just need motive. We’re real fucking close to the government being able to legally assassinate purported communists for subversion.
Just because national security is the domain of the Executive doesn’t mean they can use lethal force on anyone they wish in any scenario they wish in lieu of effecting arrests for alleged crimes.
I mean, they have to sign some paperwork to make it an official act, but otherwise what’s the difference? They don’t have to arrest anyone according to this ruling, if I’m reading this correctly. Sure, us normal citizens probably do, but according to the court, presidents don’t have to follow the law if it’s an official act. That’s kind of the basis of the dissent. It separates the rules we follow and our leaders have to follow.
You might want to reread the syllabus of the opinion. They differentiate between actions that may be official and ones that can’t. About halfway down pg 4.
The Constitution is the highest law of the land. If it explicitly says the president can do something any law stopping him from doing that would be unconditional and voided, at least as applied.
Otherwise it would be like they amended the Constitution without going through the correct process.
The syllabus only says that SCOTUS can’t decide the line between official and unofficial acts because it’s a court of final review, and they offered a list of guidance to lower courts who they charged with making the distinction. They point to pp 16-32 for more detail on that guidance.
The guidance says:
Courts cannot consider motive
An act is not unofficial simply because it violates a law
Courts cannot consider negotiations with DoJ
Courts cannot consider negotiations with or influence of the VP if the VP is serving an executive branch function, but may consider influence of the VP if the VP is serving a legislative branch function (i.e. supervising the Senate)
Engagement with private parties is not an official act
Public communication of the person serving in the role of President is official, but public communication of the President serving in another role is not
Prosecutors cannot use a jury to indirectly infringe on immunity unless a judge has already ruled that immunity does not exist
So again, if a President sends a branch of the military to a) assassinate a terrorist or b) recover national security secrets, none of the allowable court considerations above come into play. Nor do they if the assassinated individual is a SCOTUS justice or a political rival. The executive branch and military are the only entities involved, no public communication happens, murder is OK if it’s done in an official capacity, and planning records are inadmissible. A prosecutor would have no authority to bring a case, and a court would have no precedent to allow consideration of the charge even if they were brought.
The ruling says that INTENT cannot be questioned. The President can say whatever he/she wants after the assassination, and it cannot be questioned by courts. The Pres can say that the killing stopped an imminent terror attack. They can say the person was in the middle of committing a crime and had a (totally not planted) gun on them.
I get what you are saying, that extrajudicial execution is not a faculty given to the executive branch. In the US, the judicial system is supposed to have the power over adjudicating crimes. And US citizens have the right to trial by their peers. But the government has shown repeatedly in the past that when it comes to terror that they are more than happy to waive rights. See: Guantanamo, drone kills of US citizens, cops killing people who are only suspected of being a threat, etc.
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
Of course that’s only for Republican presidents. The Supreme Court has already shown that they don’t care about precedent, so if Biden does something, it’ll come back up and they’ll find it was not an official act and can be prosecuted, no matter what it was.
The main thing you’re missing is that the words of the court are meaningless. They’ll always be able to use the next ruling to bend the outcome to the conservatives’ whims.
This is a government of men, not laws. Always has been.
“When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” Sotomayor wrote.
One justice put that out there during oral arguments, but I’ve read the majority ruling and it doesn’t mention assassinations. The dissenting opinion does mention the question of what acts fall within official duties, including political assassinations.
He didn’t want to pack the court so I’m not holding out hope that he’d empty the court either. Obviously assassinating justices would completely fuck the country up, but one could argue that the current justices are slow playing us into a fascist dictatorship.
Honestly, the quickest way out is to officially order the summary executions of the judges who established this new immunity - then pass a second law ordering that SCOTUS must always evenly represent all major parties, one out, one in.
Then get new judges in that will reverse the immunity ruling. That way this sort of problem won’t come up again.
Sometimes the tree of liberty needs to be watered with blood. This is may be one of those times.
I said, 'Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters. And then you have the champion of your league – these are the greatest fighters in the world – fight the champion of the migrants. I think the migrants’ guy might win, that’s how tough they are.
Dana White said it was a joke but also mentioned:
Trump added that White didn’t like the proposal, but he said it was “not the worst idea I’ve ever had,” calling migrants to the United States “nasty, mean” and “tough people.” White confirmed Trump’s comments at a news conference in Saudi Arabia Saturday.
I do like how their argument basically boils down to “You obviously don’t understand how much it will cost us to clean up the giant toxic mess we spent so much money trying to hide.”
It would surprise me only in that, even though most people seem not to have noticed, Mr. Mars Colony has never volunteered to go up in a SpaceX rocket.
He hasn’t even been to space. Period. Which surprised me after looking it up reading this comment because I thought he had at least gone to space with someone else’s rockets on just one of those PR stunt trips that barely even can be called “going to space.” Ya know, like Bezos did.
That’s what makes the AI memes that one of his lackeys posts every day on twitter all the more hilarious. Weird uncanny valley images of him standing triumphant on Mars like a new Roman emperor, in a city he built with his own hands, toiling with his own blood and sweat, with claims that this will all become reality in a mere couple of decades, within our lifetimes. His response to these wild delusions? A laconic, lackadaisical “Yeah”
If he’s really dosing ketamine, it feels odd that he can’t seem to develop any sense of oneness with the universe, awareness of the innate value of other people, empathy for them, and self-humility. I guess it affects people differently, but what’s it actually doing for him?
He wants to give himself 10’s of billions of dollars of their money already. You literally couldn’t fit enough money in the room at the shareholder meeting for such an act to bother them.
Elon has reached a level of financial and material entanglement across such a broad cross section of key economic sectors that I’m having a hard time seeing any institutional mechanism or structures being able, or willing, to take him down.
Unless the powers that be were somehow able to ensure his assortment of ponzi schemes and pump and dump operations wouldn’t collapse and start a chain reaction that would, in economic terms, fuck our shit up, far and wide.
But even if they could, I doubt those capable would want a precedent that the existing system was able to takedown such a powerful and wealthy person.
The only way I see him checking out anytime soon is himself. Unless he knows the secret ritual rights for a proper Moloch summoning, no amount of adrenochrome boosters or infant blood infusions can compensate for his insane drug use and poor personal health habits. You can’t be that old, that out of shape, and take that many hard drugs without it significantly reducing your life expectancy.
That also provides an out for the scenario I mentioned above. If the impact of his downfall on the wider economy could be mitigated, his incredibly unhealthy habits provide an obvious vector for his removal, without it setting a public precedent.
Tl;Dr: Hope he doesn’t get sober, or learn to summon Moloch.
When the Tesla stock price finally corrects we will see Elon crumble. Right now it’s being shorted by too many massive hedge funds, which causes other hedge funds to bet against them.
This unfortunately lead to the price being massively inflated with Elon taking all the credit.
Ok, second generation nouveau rich. Old money are people who were aristocrats 1,000+ years ago. Elon had to work and still works like every other worker. Old money don’t know what work is for centuries. The gap between the poor and Musk is about the same as between Musk and some old duke family from England.
But he’s way too old to avoid the significant health impacts of constant hard drug abuse.
It’s a catch-22: if he wasn’t that rich, he both couldn’t afford, or survive, the same levels of drug abuse for a man of his age, and with a body that looks like spring thawed goose shit warmed over.
Dudes among the richest people on the planer and you think he’s going to kick the bucket any time soon?
Dick Cheney is still lurking around at 83 with a fake heart and you think muskrat is going to leave the earth in a reasonable time frame? He’ll be 80% machine and trying to upload his consciousness by the time he’s dead.
it would never have happened in the first place. if roles were reversed, there would have been adequate forces in place to prevent it from escalating.
Remember, Trump made sure to have a relatively light law enforcement presence in the capital. There were no unscalable barricades present. there was no call for the Nat Guard- despite assurances they were ready to go, and that was trump’s call.
the entire insurrection was planned by people who wanted to put trump back in the white house by any means necessary. I don’t know that it was entirely planned by trump- he’s a moron- but it was certainly done with his cooperation.
You sure about that? Seems to me his base is learning its history just fine, since they’re managing to speedrun Hitler’s rise to power even faster than Hitler did.
We’ve really got to quit underestimating the enemy and get serious about defending ourselves.
Most of his base are deluded into thinking he’s not actually like hitler. That he’s some how moral, and a really good guy who would never.
Most of his base are morons voting against their own interests.
As far as I’m concerned, that stark dichotomy is absolute proof in and of itself (let alone the pile of other evidence) that the coup was orchestrated from the very top.
As far as I’m concerned, that stark dichotomy is absolute proof in and of itself (let alone the pile of other evidence) that the coup was orchestrated from the very top.
Absolutely.
anybody who doubts it is either complicit or has been buried under a rock for the last… decade or so.
My favorite part was when corporations lied their asses off to the entire world for over 50 years while simultaneously telling is this is all our fault but if we recycled and didn’t use too much water, gas, or electricity we could undo the harm that we were personally responsible for.
Alright time for corporations to take responsibility and shut down all of their emissions. No more new cars, or gasoline for existing cars, or oil, or meat, a lot of the electrical grid is coming down, construction is halted, no more deliveries or shipping.
What do you wanna aim for, half? Cut all these things in half, prices skyrocket and only rich folks can afford. A quarter? There is no world where corporations take responsibility for their emissions and consumers get to continue the same lifestyles.
There is no world where corporations take responsibility for their emissions and consumers get to continue the same lifestyles.
This is true in the world we live in now. The powers that be like the way things are, They are mostly very old and very rich, they don’t give a fuck. This makes it easy for massive corporations that have created this mess to manipulate those in power so they don’t have to do anything to be apart of fixing the problems
But there is a world where we could put younger, more concerned people into power that could start to make some changes to how the world works. This won’t fix the problem, we are too far along for that, but it would at least (hopefully) not make this planet completely uninhabitable to every form of life.
I’m curious what your point is. I am not trying to be rude, just not sure what you’re getting at. Do you think there’s no solution so we just ride the whole mess out?
as you can see in the comment I was replying to, discussions of emissions always get derailed by putting responsibility on corporations when faced with the prospect of changing their own lifestyle to lower emissions. But the emissions people want corporations to take responsibility for are the same emissions coming out of their own tailpipes, and I dont mean that figuratively. An oil corporation isnt just pumping emissions into the air at the drill site, or the pipeline, or the corporate office. When researchers are talking about carbon footprint of oil companies, they’re literally talking about the co2 emitted from the process which is at the end point, your vehicle.
There is no world where responsibility is taken for emissions that doesnt cut off access to these high emissions products and services to people, either by corporations no longer providing it, or people no longer buying it, it doesnt matter which side you blame, you dont get to keep driving a gas vehicle, eat red meat, or use non-renewable electricity.
I kinda get where you’re coming from. I believe in personal responsibility and try to limit my own impact (no car, vegan) and just in my own life it’s frustrating talking to people who turn around and say ‘but corporations’.
But I still think holding them accountable would be helpful, it might force people to finally address these issues, money could go toward pedestrian infrastructure and subsidies for vegan businesses and foods. In a lot of cases it’s not as simple as people choosing, corporations have helped create a world where, for a lot of people, there is no choice.
Renewable energy should be subsidized for any home owner/apartment building/business which has somewhere to put solar panels or wind turbines to augment the grid locally. Budget for battery backups and you have a solution for the majority of use cases. Next, why not make EVs an even better proposition than they currently are? Increase the number of level DCFC stations, put level 2 charging everywhere it’s feasible, including restaurants, the library, all public buildings, grocery stores. Battery size can be reduced if you can charge literally everywhere you go. Your third point with beef. Well, doctors have been saying for decades not to eat so much red meat. Now there’s a climate excuse for being able to replace all those burger chains with something healthier.
the point people are generally making when they complain about corporations comprising the majority of the emissions is that they have the majority of the actual control in the situation, there’s not really a real alternative that exists to a lot of these other options that’s viable for people to actually partake in, short of moving out into the countryside and deciding to start homesteading, which also takes a lot of resources to start up. And then also that, because the corporations have a lot of the control, and the consumers can’t realistically do jack shit, it makes more sense to put the focus on them and regulate what they do.
lots of people can’t live without a car right now because they don’t have access to public transit. lots of the food supply that exists right now is energy inefficient because it’s profitable for the corporations to rely on publicly subsidized highway infrastructure and underpaid non-union trucking and guarantee consistent delivery times compared to huge idiot precision scheduled rail operations. some people can’t switch over to a non-coal power plant without cutting out basically all electrical use from their life (not sustainable) or ponying up for solar panels on their roof (can’t be done everywhere, potentially makes the grid less stable, expensive even with tax credits, can’t do it if you’re renting).
none of that is shit that they’re really given any say on outside of occasional city council meetings which realistically affect very little about their local community, and like an election every couple years. I don’t think there’s an equal share of responsibility there, and I don’t think the people even really have the ability to take responsibility for it. even just looking at it pragmatically, even if they had the ability to do so, they probably won’t. it makes more sense to attack the head of the pyramid there, to attack the concentration of power.
But even if the pollution is all yours, the corporations do share responsibility.
The entire point of capitalism is to decide in your best financial interest, but your cheapest option is the most polluting and the corps biggest profit is what they can mass produce the most of. The whole system is resistant to change unless government looks out for the interests of its constituents and shapes the market for the constituents best interest.
I recently had reason to buy a car. I chose an EV for my investment into one little corner of our future, but it was not the best choice financially. I’m a bad capitalist. Government incentives did help a lot though. I know transitioning to EVs is important, but $11k incentives made it affordable. It’s not looking for a handout, it’s government looking out for our future by helping the transition along.
But there also needs to be EVs to buy and chargers to charge at. All of which are an up front investment that is good in the long term but poor financial decision in the short term. Yes the corps need to be pushed. They been pushed for years, over a decade and just keep resisting change. Given all the backpedaling this past year, legacy car manufacturers need to be pushed harder, maybe to the point where their existence is threatened if they still don’t do the right thing. But it’s not just pushing, incentives are important to growing the market and creating a profit incentive
I’m rather fond of the part where they admitted to those lies, and the US didn’t force them to pay restitutions equal to the cost of mitigating the damage they’ve caused.
In 2068, I’m sure some entrepreneurial politician will run on the “Prosecute the oil companies!” platform, long after a bunch of them have gone bankrupt and all the damage has long since been irreparably done.
Until then, we just need to keep looking for the Least Bad politician (the guy who has one hand out to fossil fuel and another to privatized wind/solar) rather than the guy who insists wind farms spread COVID with 5g, and hope we don’t live long enough to reap the whirlwind.
They are telling provocative things on purpose. It is needed to create the fake debate that traps the public between two falsehood.
The heated tones and the strong arguments are meant to enrage people, drag them into the battle and push them to take one side and accept the arguments of that side without a proper deep thinking.
Edit: this is a very serious PSA. If you are wasting people’s time and resources, they won’t pursue your leads if they are obviously false. They need to be realistic. But like… don’t waste their time, that would be mean and maybe illegal
If you’re not feeling particularly creative. Please don’t use any publicly available LLMs to generate data. An example of a prompt and response from ChatGPT is included below to prove that this is a bad idea:
Prompt:
You are a service designed to generate test data for an online form. The data should be as realistic as possible whilst not containing any actual useful information for the purposes of testing. It would also be useful to stress test our systems by making your answers as verbose as possible. To assist in creating realistic data, the form relates to. The state legislature passed House Bill 257 “Sex-Based Designations for Privacy, Anti-Bullying, and Women’s Opportunities” and enacted Utah Code §63G-31 (Code) in the 2024 General Session, which requires the State Auditor to receive and investigate alleged violations of the Code. With this in mind, please provide example input for each of the following form fields:
Who are the employees or officials at the government entity who were involved in the alleged noncompliance or who have the responsibility to remediate the alleged noncompliance or violation?
Please provide the following information about the alleged violation(s): 1) Where did the violation occur? Identify the specific government operated or controlled location, facility, program, or event; 2) When did the noncompliance or alleged violation(s) occur? Is it on-going? and 3) Describe any other relevant circumstances and details of the alleged violation(s). (REQUIRED)
We encourage citizens to make reasonable attempts to address and resolve concerns directly with the government entity when possible. Please describe any measures you have taken to resolve these concerns, with whom you have communicated, and any response provided by the entity.
How do you know about the alleged noncompliance or violation(s)?
What evidence exists to support your allegation? Please provide details
Example response:
1. Employees or officials involved:
The government officials primarily linked with the noncompliance include:
Jessica Henderson: Title IX Compliance Officer, responsible for ensuring that the school district adheres to the Code.
Matthew Lewis: Superintendent of Schools, accountable for district-wide compliance.
Sandra Wilson: Principal at XYZ Middle School, overseeing adherence at the school level.
2. Alleged violation details:
Location: The violation allegedly occurred at XYZ Middle School, which is under the management of the local school district. The specific incident took place in the school’s gymnasium and locker rooms during physical education classes.
Timing: The noncompliance reportedly began in early March 2024 and is still ongoing, extending over two months.
Details: Allegedly, the school has been allowing students to use locker rooms and restrooms not aligned with their biological sex, in direct contravention of Utah Code §63G-31. Furthermore, complaints have been raised that coaches were complicit by not intervening. Reports from several students and parents claim that girls have been made uncomfortable and expressed fear regarding privacy violations. Some students have allegedly been bullied or mocked for raising concerns.
3. Measures taken to resolve concerns:
Efforts to resolve these concerns included contacting the school principal, Sandra Wilson, who expressed sympathy but stated she was constrained by district policies. A formal letter outlining the issues was sent to the district superintendent, Matthew Lewis, but only a generic acknowledgment was received without concrete steps being taken. The Title IX Compliance Officer, Jessica Henderson, was also informed, but the response was limited to stating that investigations would be conducted, with no further details on potential actions.
4. Knowledge of the violation:
The complainant is a parent of a student at XYZ Middle School who learned about the incidents through their child and other parents. The child personally experienced uncomfortable situations and observed other students being bullied. This prompted further inquiries, revealing widespread dissatisfaction among students and parents.
5. Evidence supporting the allegation:
Evidence includes written statements from students describing specific instances where privacy was compromised, as well as testimony from parents corroborating the discomfort expressed by their children. Additional evidence includes copies of complaints filed with school authorities and a record of communication with district officials, indicating the lack of substantive follow-up actions taken to address the concerns.
She specifically asked if she could vote, they told her yes, then she still cast a provisional ballot just in case, then she was sent to prison for voting illegally.
It took 6 years of worry that a 5 year sentence would be handed down… fully broken Judicial system here in the US and I don’t see any solution other than …
Though she did also have to go through 6 years of appeals and hearings, legal costs, and spent some time in jail too. While she was in jail for a few months I believe she almost lost her house. She went through a whole trial and a jury even convicted her, it took an appeals court to over ride the jury verdict saying the jury erred. It’s pretty ridiculous that all that happened after just a provisional ballot was cast and the election worker told her she was eligible. Prosecutors obviously had a political agenda here.
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