This speech was a capitulation by Biden. He basically said 'no, executive isn't going to check the judiciary.' His response is 'people need to vote's? What? Where's the vision or game plan to overturning this?
It's so fucking simple to grasp the shortfalls here.
I’m hoping he’s just giving us a chance to correct this. That will do good in the long run if we manage it. Should we fail it is also my hope that he uses his remaining time in the chair to abuse those executive powers to all hell.
The way I read all of this and th decision is that they are saying that this law specifically only applies to bribery. They define it as a quid quo pro in advance of an act.
In this particular case, you can’t charge the guy with bribery because it doesn’t meet the definition.
That doesn’t mean a “tip after the fact” isn’t corrupt. That doesn’t mean that’s not in violation of some other law. It’s saying that you can’t apply this law to this case. This court is threading a fucking needle in an attempt to make this a state issue and say the Fed law can’t apply.
Justice Jackson’s dissent is amazing though:
Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love."
The Court’s reasoning elevates nonexistent federalism concerns over the plain text of this statute and is a quintessential example of the tail wagging the dog," Jackson added.
Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions. Greed makes governments—at every level—less responsive, less efficient, and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve,"
“At every level” she’s making specific reference to a specific certain level in the US judicial system here… Some pretty good, brave activism three - good luck getting your mom a house from a billionaire now Justice Jackson
Their formatting was dog dukey, but I was still able to parse what they were saying fairly easily. They’re saying “good job judge Jackson. Too bad you won’t be able to get a free house from insert evil billionaire here (/s)”. While I agree with your sentiment, the way you go about pointing these things out can backfire, if done with a rude tone, such as the way you chose to do it. There you go; an unsolicited constructive criticism for an unsolicited constructive criticism. :)
SCOTUS has routinely bent over backwards to protect politicians from corruption and bribery charges though so the message is clear. You cannot charge a politician with bribery except in extreme circumstances. Like them being a democrat.
Good for him - he’s less innocent than folks like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden but a heavy prosecution of him would definitely have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers. Did he release things at politically convenient times? Yes. Should that be illegal? Fuck no.
2016 Assange was a very different person than who he was in 2009. The espionage charges relating to the Chelsea Manning leaks were always bogus, but his involvement with the Trump campaign solidified him as a huge asshole in my mind.
Even back then, WikiLeaks was telling trump to claim the election was rigged and stolen. These are not the actions of a whistleblower, and it’s clear he was not a whistleblower (or working with whistleblowers) during this period and likely a mouthpiece for Russia to sow division in the US.
What a terrible article. The solution is throwing more subsidies? Of course it’s not! The solution is making it illegal to own more than a few properties. It really is that easy.
that will make it easier for people to buy, and even harder to rent. Ie. that will worsen the problem.
EDIT: it’s apparent that Lemmy users don’t understand why someone would actively want to rent, and think everyone wants to buy. This makes the entire topic very difficult to discuss.
Wait a second. You think that if large-scale landlords have to sell property, that will magically make it harder for other people to buy it? Now now. You can do better.
There’s very few cases where renting is the best option, and for that group they usually are well off enough to have options.
Society is concerned with folks who can’t afford to buy a home right now, even with the mortgage price being less than the cost to rent in some cases. That group has no other options, and because that group is expanding at the moment, its increasingly likely to be affected either personally or via those in your community.
I was having trouble understanding what you meant because you didn’t think about the obvious implications of millions of properties being unloaded in a short time.
If the number of landlords drastically increases, which would happen when you have mass property sales, then there’s more competition, and rent goes down.
Or, depending on your setup, the government seizes some of the properties that people refuse to sell, and turns them into public housing. This also drives rent down.
So then, what happens? Oh yeah, both buyers and renters win. Was that clear enough? Perhaps I should write in all caps.
The point is that it doesn’t solve the problem. The problem is one, we don’t have enough housing supply, and two, the housing supply is largely controlled by parasites (big and small) who profit off their ownership.
Getting rid of landlords solves half the problem but you still have a large group of people who cannot afford to buy homes. You might think that’s good because housing prices will crash but who’s going to build homes when no one can afford to buy them?
I’m not saying I have all the answers but I know for sure that getting rid of landlords is not a silver bullet solution.
Well mortgages and rent costs are pretty close these days aren’t they? Its the down payment and closing costs that price people out of buying a home then? Why not take away the down payment requirements so that renters could participate in the buying market. Maybe there can be deals where someone sells you there home for 1-2 years for 50% market rate but they have to give the house back at the end of the term?
I think the point being made is that this landlord stuff almost rarely works out well these days so why not change?
What do you think drives the price of rentals? Not being able to afford to buy keeps people stuck in rental living where they can be price gouged. If the price of houses drops due to an oversupply, more renters will buy, which reduces demand for rentals, which will drive down the price of rent making it more affordable to rent.
Landlords hording property reduces the supply to people who want to buy. This shortage reduces the supply:demand ratio, which drives prices higher. Higher house prices informs the price of rent which is controlled by the people creating the shortage.
People aren’t suggesting to abolish investment property, they are simply saying we should remove the abuse investment.
The entry cost of the housing market is a greater driver of rent than vacant rental properties. The laws even encourage property owners to leave a property empty than lower the rent.
I’m down with anything. The point is that your rent is not high because Bob has two houses. It’s because the real estate speculators own five thousand.
To be fair, everyone doesnt want to own housing all rhe time (say you study somewhere for a year for example, you might want to rent. Or when you try out anew city) so some landlording is needed. We don’t need landlords having lots of homes though.
Landlording should never be done for profit. Socialize the fuck out of it. My water, electricity and healthcare is socialized, why do parasites profit off my home?
Profit, profit, I’d say reasonable profit and mandatory standards.
For example, when I lived in sweden I knew a landlord, he was stopping because you beeded around 50 appartments (might be inflated from his side, but in many countries you can live off of 2 so …) to make a decent salary.
In sweden you cant rent out a shitty appartment, you cant set the rent as you like it, and youre taxed etc. etc.
I mean it should be like a normal job, not granting you robber rights.
I mean I agree with the notion that corporations shouldn’t be buying up entire neighborhoods, but at the same time if a corporation is building neighborhoods then I think it’s fine if they own them. We need more units ultimately
That’s stupid. If a company is buying up already existing units to manipulate prices then there’s clearly an issue with that, but if a company is buildings new units to sell or rent, then where’s the problem? They’re literally introducing new units to the market. God, people on Lemmy are so brain dead.
There’s nothing wrong with the concept of renting. It only becomes a problem when companies are manipulating the market or price gouging. If companies are renting out units are peak market rate, then the issue there’s way more demand than supply. The solution is fairly easy, build more units to flood the market and bring down the prices. It’s a tried and true method. Want to see in action? Look at how Texas managed to get all of its major cities to have a big decrease in their average rents compared to last year:
Austin managed to slash rent prices by 9.3%, San Antonio by 8.2%, Dallas by 3.7%, Houston by 3.2%. It’s not just Texas, Nashville managed to slash prices by 8.3%, Atlanta by 5.2%, Baltimore by 5.5%, and the list goes on and on. What’s the thing common with all these cities? They build more units. They flood the market with so many units that landlords have no choice but to bring rent prices down.
It’s not just rents, housing prices are also down in places that build more:
Home prices went down by 11.2% in Miami, Denver by 6.3%, Seattle by 5.5%, Kansas city by 4.9%, and the list goes on and on.
Want cheaper rents and houses? BUILD MORE HOUSES. Can’t do that? Update the outdated zoning laws to allow for multifamily buildings, mixed zoning properties, and higher density. This is the path forward.
These articles are speculative on the cause. I don’t see any data on the supply increases.
Some of these cities, didn’t increase supply. For example San Francisco saw similar decreases it they offer to exploration there.
The rents decreases are year over year but are flat over a two or three period of time, it’s just as likely the rent increases were a bubble that popped and not because of some unspecified change in supply.
I mean every city is different. In the case of San Francisco, it could be that city is shrinking and that is driving down prices. However, in the case of the Texan cities, which are all growing, the decrease in rents is indeed due to flooding the market with new housing units:
Though the price housing has gone up considerably which is slowing down construction, which might bring up the rents again. However, this still shows that building new housing units in mass does bring down prices.
I feel that you missed one basic aspect of economics. Competition is one reason prices might go up. There are other reasons, which are relevant here. Monopolies, collusion, price fixing, goods that people can’t live without, speculation, those are also reasons that prices go up.
In the housing market, it’s not fair, it’s not free, this isn’t a basic supply and demand situation.
Non-profit / below market housing is crucial. Without it, the people who actually keep cities functioning and interesting, service workers, artists, etc get pushed out.
I have a career that enables me to pay a lot of money for housing but I don’t want to live in a neighbourhood that only consists of people like me, cause I’m boring as fuck. I also don’t want to be part of the reason those people get displaced.
The solution is making it illegal to own more than a few properties
This problem does not have a single solution. Get rid of landlords and you’re still left with a large group of people fighting over a limited supply. Better zoning laws, removal of parking minimums, better transit + micro-mobility infrastructure, and more below market not-for-profit housing.
It’s not a simple problem, even if the motives that created the problem are.
I think we agree, with the caveat that you need to be careful when stating a position like yours, because it’s often used as an excuse to do nothing at all.
Yeah. Do you have any idea how much societal damage money hoarding does across the world?
Tens of millions of people dying needlessly every year from lack of resources hoarded by a few people who’ll never be able to spend it all.
And that’s not even getting into all the underpaid and overworked people who have acted as anonymous stepping stones on his path to obscene overabundance.
Or the fact that the richest 10% in the world, which includes all billionaires, are responsible for 48 times as many tons of CO2 per capita as the other 90%
I wouldn’t count Mr Beast as abusive. But have it your way.
He just got rich because he’s very good at what he’s doing. He didn’t have to abuse anyone for that. Maybe you are not good enough to be as rich as he is. Have you considered that?
He just got rich because he’s very good at what he’s doing. He didn’t have to abuse anyone for that
Bullshit. You don’t become a billionaire by just being good at what you’re doing. You seem to not grasp the enormous difference between being successful and being one of the 3000 or so richest people on the planet.
Just like you don’t become a millionaire by working really hard and well at a paper route, you don’t became a billionaire without doing a lot of sleazy and selfish stuff to amass more wealth than would otherwise be possible.
Besides, even if you hypothetically COULD become a billionaire by ethical means only, keeping that much unneeded wealth in a world where artificial scarcity is killing millions is in itself extremely unethical.
Maybe you are not good enough to be as rich as he is. Have you considered that?
Ah, the old “you’re just jealous” adage of the worshippers of unethical success 🙄
You’re just framing people without actually knowing them. You probably never talked to some of those. You probably never talked to MrBeast either.
Like my grandma who worked 60 hour weeks for 30 years as a weever and living in poor conditions long after the war eventhough she wouldn’t have to. She did all of that to save up 10 years to buy land and build a house. Starting from nothing as a war refugee from (now) poland. Everyone in our family did it that way and she outlived everyone at 91, which means she inherited all the homes. She is no billionair of course but these homes amount to quiet something these days with the high property prices and people might call her wealthy for that.
However, this doesn’t make her a cutthroat. She and her family worked extremely hard in bad post-war conditions and got lucky to outlive everyone.
Hearing you say these things is a disgrace to my grandma and to everyone who is like her. To honest people doing hard work and getting a bit of luck. If that solves your world view then good for you. But you don’t need to say these things on the internet.
You’re just framing people without actually knowing them.
I don’t need to know them to know the harm of their actions.
my grandma who worked 60 hour weeks for 30 years as a weever and living in poor conditions
Was NOT a billionaire or anything even remotely comparable. I don’t have anything against people who work hard and honestly achieve wealth of non-absurd proportions like her.
However, this doesn’t make her a cutthroat.
Again, you can work hard without being cutthroat about it. Not so with becoming and remaining a BILLIONAIRE.
Hearing you say these things is a disgrace to my grandma and to everyone who is like her. To honest people doing hard work and getting a bit of luck.
No. If anything, the disgrace to her and everyone like her, who achieve wealth and success honestly, is to compare them to billionaires.
As I expected, you have no understanding of the vast difference between millions and billions, so here’s a visual aid:
The first two, and even multiples of them are within the limits of “hard work and a bit of luck”. The obscene hoard that is the third isn’t.
If you still don’t understand it, it’s probably because you don’t WANT to understand or are pathologically UNABLE to, in which point there’s no point continuing to waste my time explaining what is obvious to a third grader but not an adult with decades of brainwashing to erase all sense of proportion.
Not so kind he won’t slap his name on any product he can in order to make more money.
Don’t get me wrong, he does good things, but a lot of the good things he does are done in order to make him more money than he gives out.
He also says some super sketchy things about his finances.
“I don’t have access to any of my bank accounts,” he said. “I have a CFO and everything, but [my mom is] the one who has access to the master bank account.”
To be fair, it’s kind of hard to spot an i considering how narrow it is, so I understand. I actually had to look a few times myself when I pasted the new URL.
In the run up to WW2, the US government made a very big deal of socially incentivizing military enlistment. The GI Bill offered education and housing benefits. Military work was competitive with the private sector and you had lots of off-ramps into the civilian side of the government. Military families enjoyed local prestige, particularly in the officer’s corps, so it was a good stepping stone up the socio-economic ladder. And the military operated as a strong network for business advancement, both as a military contractor and as a civilian with a tight-knit social circle of ex-military friends and neighbors.
All of that has been dissolving since the Vietnam Era. Soldiering isn’t considered a particularly noble profession. The pay is shit. The benefits have been cut back enormously. Enlisted pay is worse than service sector work and military families often live in poverty. There’s no real path to career advancement and enormous liabilities that come with 5+ years working around dangerous military equipment.
40 years ago, you could make a litany of arguments for why military service was personally advantageous. Today? The only reason to join is because you’ve got a shot at some brass, and even then you’d be way better off angling for a high paying civilian role.
They tired to get me to join because I had to take asvab to graduate and got a good score. I’m really surprised I didn’t. Almost thirty years later I’m probably more poor then I would have been but I don’t have PTSD and I’m not a monster… So that’s nice
I can’t speak to everyone’s experience, but I did my 4 and got out in 2020 due to a physical injury. While I was in it wasn’t great, but my wife and I collectively made about 100k/year with her as a teacher, we lived pretty well.
Since I got out, I attend school for free, receive a housing stipend, don’t pay property taxes, receive free healthcare, and I’ll receive about $50k this year in tax free disability. My kids and wife will have tuition if they decide to go (back) to school and they all receive free health insurance.
I don’t think there’s a lack of incentives at all, but simply people don’t know of the benefits they can receive. No one sits down with them and explains it all and we end up with vets with PTSD on the streets because of it
There’s no doubt that I beat up my body while I was in the service, but no more than most tradesman do in their first years of life. I still train jiu jitsu regularly and am capable of doing most things (save for running).
You’re correct in assuming that I receive some of my benefits due to my disabilities, such as my property taxes and my disability payments, but lots of benefits are available to those without any disability rating.
Some of the non disability related benefits include:
Education benefits via the post 9/11 GI Bill cover 4 years of schooling and provide a housing stipend during your time in school.
Education benefits for your family via Chapter 35
Access to the VA Loan program, which is a federally guaranteed loan. I used one to buy my house and did not have to pay a down payment
Again I am considered a disabled veteran, so some of the benefits I gain from that are:
Education benefits via Chapter 31, which is what I’m using currently to receive my bachelor’s. It’s similar to the GI Bill, but will pay for trade school as well
Health benefits: I am 100% disabled, so I receive free healthcare from the VA, but I’m also eligible for CHAMPVA health insurance, which is what my family is under
Disability pay: I get paid at the 100% rate, which is about $50k a year. There are lower rates all the way down to 10%, which is $171.23/ month. You can be awarded 10% for something as simple as tinnitus, which I assure you everyone in the Army has.
Property tax exemptions: a lot of states will exempt you from some or all of your property taxes if you’re a disabled veteran, which lowered my house payment by $400.
All of my injuries are what I would call “wear and tear”, I have shin splints and back pain and what have you, things that everyone gets on their way to their 30s regardless. I’m just lucky enough to have been in a place where I can receive compensation for that wear and tear. The only exception to my injuries that most people won’t have is a genetic blood clotting condition that I’ll be on thinners for for the rest of my life, but they only awarded me 20% for that.
You also don’t need to be 100% disabled to collect these benefits, things like Chapter 31 are given out pretty liberally, and property tax exemptions are usually pretty well laid out.
All this to say that while yes some benefits are locked behind a disability rating, you will receive one for regular wear and tear on your body
I was in 2011-2016 (enlisted) and it was a great start to my career.
When I was in we made plenty to live on and save up. I got into a job that translated well to the civilian side and I now make over 250k a year without a degree. Not that I couldn’t pay for it, because that would also not cost me anything if I chose to do it.
Try recommending this to people complaining about their lack of options on Lemmy and you’ll get crucified because they don’t like the military.
If you are only ashamed of your actions after you were caught, you are not ashamed of your actions. Grade A trashy behaviour that has no place in the world.
He probably won’t be pennyless. People like this have offshore accounts and untraceable currency. But if he ever shows an inkling of having wealth after all this, then that’s an opportunity to claim more assets.
But how is the opposition, really? Eg. Péter Magyar frankly seems like a shrewd opportunist who’s liable to end up just being more of the same, being an ex-Fidesz flunky
That’s probably the least insane part about Project 2025
Project contributor Jeffrey Clark advises the future president to immediately deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and direct the DOJ to pursue Donald Trump’s adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy “finality” of such sentences.
Using the military to hunt dissidents and then recommending “speedy” capital punishment is pretty on-brand for conservatives.
It’s humorous (in a hopeless, resigned, utterly defeated nihilistic sort of way) how transparent the fascism has gotten. “Trump’s advisor recommends jack-booted thugs use legal pretext to punish political opponents without due process.”
At least give me some subtext to decode, don’t slap me in the face with it like a wet slice of bologna.
Hitler’s Germany has shown you only really need about a third of the people to be behind fascism for it to succeed (Hitler won with 35 percent of the popular vote). In the US, it looks like that percentage has already been reached.
That’s why they reference the Insurrection Act. Whether the current situation meets the criteria laid out does not matter to them.
It should be obvious by now that words on the books do not stop fascists. They intend to stack public institution far and deep with party loyalists so that nobody can say “no” to their will…legally, anyway.
I looked the Insurrection Act up. This kind of vague, old law is just the kind of thing that fascists love to leverage to install a brutal dictatorship. The GOP learned that they can do pretty much whatever they want and will get no meaningful resistance, so it would be pathetically easy for them to get rid of democracy once they have the Executive and Legislative branches again. The only saving grace is that they’re pretty incompetent at actually getting things done, but we can’t rely on that to save us again.
Well that’s interesting. When I was a teenager in Indiana, a bunch of us Jewish students asked if we could take Hebrew as our language elective off-site and were told no. I was an atheist (and still am), but I felt it was worth learning for the sake of my heritage more than Latin or German. It was going to be secular instruction. We were still told no.
I have a feeling Jewish kids would still be told no.
Nah, keep it Hebrew and really make them question their support for Israel. If talking about Israel is a controversial subject, make them explicitly say Hebrew studies isn’t allowed.
TST is fun to rile up the thumpers but having a real geopolitical hot potato land like a bomb in Terra Haute would be amazing. They aren’t ready for so much spice.
In a portion of her acceptance speech, she spoke about mothers who had lost babies during the war in Gaza, saying the award was “deeply personal” to her.
“It pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” Jabr said in the video of her speech that she posted online.
The hospital’s spokesperson in an email said Jabr had been warned in December, "following a previous incident, not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace.
She commented about the active genocide of her own people, and she was fired for it. Who is the coworker getting mad at someone discussing the genocide of their own people? Some zionist just couldn’t take it, had to run off to upper mgmt? And who’s the moron in charge who decided to fire their award winning nurse because she’s sympathetic to the plight of her own people??
This is only going to be considered by the swing voters come the election.
Die hard Trumpers will double down. Die hard Republicans would never vote for a Democrat, so better a felon than a Liberal. Die hard Democrats would never have voted for him anyway.
People who flip between the two parties now have another thing to consider when casting their votes, and only their internal compass will direct them to Trump or Biden
Die hard Cheeto suckers will find another scam to follow.
Less die hard cheeto fellators will simply not vote, rather than vote for a Democrat. Which is fine.
Another thing to consider? Fuck that. It’s 34, precedent setting felony convictions. You know anyone with 34 felony convictions? I don’t, and that’s just 34 for now. That number will be going up, up, and away to jail, home confinement, and obscurity until he’s dead of natural causes.
Nobody with an “internal compass” will vote for that felon criminal taken down by a porn actress. If they do, they never had an “internal compass”.
To your point about causing Republicans not to vote at all, I did see a post recently positing that this election might be different than in the past where voter suppression benefited the Republicans.
I dont have the source on that at the moment but I thought it was an interesting idea.
Trump voters have internal compasses. Very broken ones. Die hard Trump fans will say the trial was a liberal witch hunt and still vote for him. The conviction means nothing to them. Hell, if anything, it will emboldened them.
So the thought is that, sure they may have happily voted for someone found guilty of sexual assault, but felony fraud is the step too far? I’ll take it, but I’m constantly amazed at how this is still a competitive race.
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