ViperMan

You didn't respond to the point I'm making though. I'm not disputing these things: Property tax may be an unethical manner for states to tax inhabitants - I have not challenged this in my previous post. California (and most other governments) absolutely misallocate their funds on social projects, climate "justice," saving the fish/squirrels, et al. They do this to the massive detriment of other, more important spending - like infrastructure. So on those topics we can agree - or at least not disagree directly. No, my point is that prop 13 has been a boon for certain property owners to the detriment of others, which is why it has become so entrenched. And the unintentional side effect of this has been to create a massive deficit in CA's budget, one which is mostly hidden, because people who don't live there don't understand how CA's unique property tax exclusions work. And others don't understand how much more expensive it would be to live there if tax burdens were equalized. For instance, take two properties and compare them side-by-side. They're neighbors in San Francisco. 45 Liberty 23 Liberty Google street view If you compare them on google maps, you'll see they're effectively the same property. One of them pays a yearly tithe to the state of $50,400. The other pays a yearly tithe of $1,800. That differential, of $48,600, accumulates over time, but it never shows up on any balance sheet. This is the actual, real, deficit I'm talking about. In the next 10 years it'll amount to a half a million dollars (more with interest) - and that's just between two neighboring properties. The aggregate effect of this massive, marginal under-taxation, is to generate insurmountable, unimaginable debts. I bet if you integrated a function like that, the total, hidden, debt would be in the hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars over the last number of decades. These are the type of debts that insurance companies can't pay. The type of debts that lead to increased insurance premiums for people who don't even live in California. The type of debts that lead to the cost of eggs tripling and people wondering 'why'. The type of debts that lead cities and towns to make system level choices when it comes to allowing their infrastructure to collapse. The type of debts that bankrupt states. In essence, CA has been writing checks its politicians couldn't cash. Yes, CA budgets their money incorrectly. It is also true that prop 13 has turned the state into a real estate cartel. One in which long-term owners are the ones pocketing property taxes that would otherwise go to fund the state's infrastructure, or would otherwise operate to prevent people who live in CA currently from living there because they can't afford its actually cost thereby preventing the debt from accumulating in the first place. // Break // I am not arguing that taxes need to increase in CA. I am not arguing that property taxes are fundamentally 'fair' or 'unfair'. Those are separate discussions. I'm pointing out that the property tax system in CA is fundamentally and uniquely different than in every other state I'm aware of wherein people who own similar properties pay massively different (10X or sometimes 100X) tax bills. See the above for proof. So no, prop 13 is not ethical - it's one of the most insidious, discriminatory, and unethical laws in operation in our society, and we're witnessing it bear fruit right now. But because it has complex, hidden effects, grants certain people massive (and legal) $ arbitrage, it's simultaneously a very easy law whose effects are easy to obfuscate and also one that gets a lot of people to stand in defense of because they benefit from it directly. It's also a reason I scoff when people say that CA contributes more to the federal tax base than any other state. Yeah, right, so long as you ignore the enormous hole they dig themselves deeper and deeper into year after year by passing and keeping laws like prop 13.

I don't disagree, but focusing on what's listed on paper is missing the point. I'm sure if I looked through their books the majority of their expenditures would be misallocated. That doesn't address the collection problem, however, or the actual deficit that is reflected in the way this disaster has unfolded. Much of CA's property tax base winds up in the pockets of private owners due to prop 13. No other state I'm aware of has a property tax policy which directly and systematically under funds their government quite like this one does. That has consequences over the long run - ones we are seeing right now. The point I was making was more along the lines that if you design a tax policy around not collecting taxes from the people that live in your state, you're going to eventually run into the consequences of said tax policy. In this case I'm just pointing at prop 13 as having the largest / outsize impact on creating a massive accumulated deficit CA has avoided contending with. They may have had a "surplus" on paper for numerous years. Maybe now they have a "deficit." Politicians may have touted said surplus and maybe even some of them felt pretty good about themselves and got some kudos from their voter base. I bet it felt good to them. Maybe they had a $100 Bajillion dollars surplus in their Excel sheets or PowerPoint slides. Cool. It's an illusion. It's a number on a piece of paper. It means absolutely nothing. Reality keeps the actual balance sheet. The truth is that there is a real, actual, physical, literal deficit buried in the ground, reflected by their crumbling infrastructure, empty reservoirs, ineffectual government, understaffed agencies, man-made drought due to policy choices favoring industries over citizenry, etc, etc. It took many 10s of years to create a problem this big. Running California properly costs a lot more than they spend. Too many people live there who "tax" the system without paying into it. That's what I'm talking about. That's the deficit that builds and builds over decades due to tax policy like prop 13 and which allows the party to continue right up until the balcony collapses. This is that kind of deficit. Or, if you like, you can look at it like this: all the insurance money and construction costs that are going to be incurred over the next number of years "rebuilding" CA was the actual deficit they weren't carrying on the books. At a minimum. Now start doing that math on all the other mismanaged forest or grassland in CA that's all still waiting to go up in smoke. You'll start to get an idea about how far behind they truly are. *Note: nothing in this post should be construed as desire to increase taxes on "us" - we all pay too much as it is.

I've got some legit questions for the "Elon's a Nazi" crowd: What are you concerned he's going to do? Is he expressing a desire to ethnically cleanse the country? Is the concern here more that he is "signaling" to a certain sub-element of our society? All of the above? I genuinely want to know. Best I can tell is he is a guy who is building electric cars, rocket ships, brain-body computer interfaces who is also pretty eclectic. I saw plenty of kids like that in public school growing up. They weren't Nazis. I can "get" that it wasn't a good look, but do any of you hold a serious concern out there that he's going to attempt to reboot the 3rd Reich? What direction are you concerned he's moving in?

From your keyboard to God's ears.

I watched it and I agree. I'll keep my eye on him going forward. Seems like one of those guys that has a true grasp of what the hell he's talking about. Which is surprisingly rare (and refreshing) these days. Talking to a family member, it's apparently the case that many of these home catch on fire from the inside. An ember will float into an air vent or the like and then ignite flammable material on the inside of the home and so on. I certainly agree that building codes and insurance have a big role to play going forward. As an aside, I can't help but also point at prop 13 as a contributing factor. This is perhaps one of the consequences of serially under-funding your state based on a property tax law that all but guarantees your local governments will be unable to fund basic services. The way I see it, this fire was a decades-long policy decision in the making.

The problem is that if it is the case that there are unstoppable fires, then we need not build in those areas. Ask me how much sympathy I have for New Orleans - you don't rebuild a city next to the ocean that is below sea level - or if you do, you accept the inevitable consequence of being underwater. Else, if the fire is stoppable, through preparation, forest management, etc, we should have been preparing for them. Said another way, the conditions that enabled this fire to happen should never have been allowed to manifest. It hearkens back to the Smoky the Bear commercials from when I was a kid: "only you, can prevent forest fires." It's almost like prevention has been on the menu for some time...hmmmm.

They'll probably do something along these lines, but it won't be available if you're over any reasonable income limit. See the following: https://www.ebikeincentives.org/eligibility/ They did the same thing with electric bikes, but they made sure that anyone who actually contributes to the tax kiddy isn't eligible. LOL. Someone who barely makes $45K per year ain't spending $2,000 on a bicycle, and hence probably doesn't benefit from the credit. It'll be the standard democratic "this feels and looks good" vs "it is good." True climate emergencies would necessitate removing all barriers to addressing "existential issues" - yet another reason (#69) why I don't take their "climate change" rhetoric seriously.

All the "could work" discussion begs an obvious question: why weren't we doing it before? Not to say that we can't do things better; we can and should. This is clearly driven by the times, however, and is yet another loop in the reactionary merry-go-round. I'm suspect for this, and this reason alone.

You can always "soft cancel" like I'm currently doing. Have some Fidelity accounts now and am slowly transferring a lot of my stuff their way. I'll probably just keep USAA to pay all my bills, and maybe some insurance products I've had for a long time.

VPN or not, isn't all your traffic encrypted while you're on https???

Pffffft. How could I forget lol. I remember it was only a couple of years ago the Dems were charging hard to codify Jan 6th as the second coming of Sept 11th. Nary a peep today. Maybe sanity still has a chance.

I've never been able to see the connection between term limits and resolving corruption. Am I to believe that a congress person can't engage in unethical behavior during their first term??? If anything, it just puts them under a time crucible to get all the goodies they're looking for run through as quickly as possible; it fast tracks whatever corrupt impulse is there in the first place. There's no inherent constraint placed on corruption by time. It may limit the time that someone has to become corrupt, but a good question to ponder is why don't we put 4-6 year term limits on officers? Why aren't we all corrupt by the time we're Lt Cols? I just don't see a connection there. The problem is lack of accountability and lack of transparency. When Nancy Pelosi was engaging in legislation that was going to benefit Nvidia and other tech companies while simultaneously purchasing stock options she knew would react positively to the actions she was taking, that all should have taken place within the public view. It wasn't classified. It wasn't secret. Basically I guess I'm effectively suggesting that congress people should be required to conduct all legislative business in full view of the public. I have no idea what that looks like, but body cameras would be a start. Drafting legislation? Put the computer screens on a YouTube stream. Meeting with a lobbyist? Have a camera crew there to stream it on X. Obviously this is ridiculous, but the core of the problem is our government is allowed to keep a lot of unsecret things secret.

I agree with you, but to be technical, Twitter changed dramatically. It mattered a lot who was in charge, and who was making decisions. Twitter got way fuckin' better. It's a clear example of how much modern organizational structure is literally useless / functions as a boat anchor. Personally I think we can extrapolate that same lesson to just about any organization you look at. Lockheed, military, government, McDonalds. You name it, there's probably a few departments of "workers" not contributing much. Probably the only orgs that don't suffer from that at some level are start-ups. The real tragedy is that all that wasted labor represents massive economic gains if it were to be rededicated towards actual productive pursuits.

Yet another misfire. No one has a problem with billionaires per se. We have a problem with certain billionaire's objectives. See the following: Bill Gates' climate / clean meat / no meat / spray vaccine efforts, etc George Soros' bank-rolling all manner of "grass roots" campaigns to modify society, wage lawfare, BLM riots, et al Peter Thiel and Elon Musk aren't trying to dismantle our sovereignty or take away any of our rights. See the difference? These conversations would be more productive if you'd come to terms with your oppositions' actual POV.

Wow, really surprised to see the lock-step agreement on paying congress people more, as if that was going to reduce corruption. Look at Pelosi. Just one data point. Got rich because she was in power and had access to a corruptible system, not because she was scraping by. Fine, pay Pelosi $650K/yr. Screw it, pay her $2M/yr. It'll always pale in comparison to what she made abusing her power. It simply isn't the panacea we're looking for. The solution isn't higher pay checks. It's a less powerful government. Axing massive Federal bureaucracy is a good first step. Forcing tax receipts to match expenditures is a good second one. Eliminating the ability of the Federal government to raise excess money without selling bonds directly to the American people would be a great final one. We used to have this direct veto power on what our government was doing. Things were much better then.

Soviet perspective. I think you meant to say Soviet perspective. Let's "re-imagine" that civil war being fomented, enabled, and supported by a neighboring superpower with a Communist ideology. Beginning in the early 1900s, with the help and assistance of that greater superpower, they begin undermining your democratic / nationalist / republican movement whilst simultaneously taking advantage of the chaos imparted by the second world war and a maniacal enemy that was running roughshod over your territory for the last 10 years. Now, "imagine" losing that war to said forces. This is not nearly as simple as you imagine it or as simple as your analogy presents it. You can argue that the US and USSR should have stayed out. Neither of us did. In the end, this is still about what it has always been about: opposing Communism and authoritarians.

Agreed. I have a feeling we'll see a lack of checklist execution and a rush to get the jet on the ground. If that's what happens when the checklist is executed and they set down at ~150 knots on brick 2, then holy shit, the 737 has some problems. I personally don't think this is the case. Obviously I stand ready to be corrected once the actual facts come in. /speculation I do wonder now, though, how far will a jet will (on average) skid on concrete like that with no gear. My gut tells me it's between 1.5 - 2.0 miles, but that's a pure guess. Anybody have any data on such a thing? Edit to add: my math says the plane went ~ 1600m in 13 seconds, so an average speed on the runway of about 240 knots. Off the end of the runway at around 150-170 knots. This is pure speculation.

I'm guessing that guy doesn't watch Seinfeld? Or the general for that matter...

Confirm this is the Army you're talking about?

I agree with this in theory, and it is true if you assume everyone is a mature adult, but I will say that in my experience, there is only one type of actual leadership, and it's leadership by example. All the other ones espoused in our AF trainings (inspirational, transformational, etc.) are all bullshit. Thus, it makes it hard to enforce a standard on someone if you're not adhering to it yourself.

Honestly, I don't see a big problem with the SNCO corps. I think the mass of our problems are concentrated in the junior enlisted noner / shoe house. I can't tell you how often I run into pure ambivalence about not knowing how to do their job, and their mid-level managers (E-5 through E-7) being accepting of this lack of knowledge / competency. Pick your support field. It's all of them. Your one-off Chief policing reflective belts or the length of time you spend in a deployed shower are honestly just pure fun from my perspective. They're the spice of life.

I prefer something more along these lines.

Would.

Well I don't know what MIC is, and as the US we have business doing whatever the eff we want. We created and maintain the post-war order, and until the victor of the next world war emerges, we get to do as we please, seeing as how the entire Western world owes their existence to us. Anyway, moving on. That is precisely what their objective was but they failed. See: their attempt to move directly on Kiev in the first couple days of the war which stalled. Toppling their government meant they got to achieve all of their other objectives. They went for the throat but missed, now they're in a knock-down, drag-out Royce Gracie-style grappling fight they hoped to avoid. You remember that part of the war, right? Don't you? They attempted to go straight to Kiev to overthrow the government of Ukraine. Like you agree that happened? Or don't you? They failed at that, and re-directed their efforts to the eastern portion of Ukraine, the Donbas. But that's all in the past now. Russia was unable to overthrow their government, which would have enabled them to gain their primary objective: control of east Ukraine's oil and gas resources. They tried, and were unable to seize the capital. Instead, they settled for their secondary objective and re-directed all their combat power where it was actually needed. Partially because that's what matters to them strategically, partially to save face. You see, Russia is basically an oil supplier to Europe. If they don't have that leverage over Europe, they lose a lot of political power (and money). If they have to compete with Ukraine for who gets to supply Europe with oil and gas, that's bad for Russia. They don't want to do that, but admitting that you're going to war over oil is politically fraught, as we have learned over the last decades, so it's never the spoken reason. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b2201E#:~:text=However%2C additional source rocks possibly,unit were not estimated quantitatively. "The Dnieper-Donets basin is almost entirely in Ukraine, and it is the principal producer of hydrocarbons in that country." It's all right there for you if you care to look at it. This war is about economic power - i.e. it's like most other wars. This one is about oil and gas. And it is definitely in our strategic interest for multiple reasons: We don't need the majority of NATO beholden to Russian energy We don't need Russia at their full strength for whenever China decides to do whatever they're going to do - look at it as intelligence preparation of the battlefield. Grind them down now, so we can save the majority of our combat power for the Pacific I could go on, but if these obvious ones didn't occur to you, you can do some homework on those for a while. He is floating peace talks because he's hedging. Or he's doing it because he thinks it's feasible. Or he thinks our support for him will run out. Who the hell knows, he was the one who was attacked! He has every interest in stopping the violence against his country. I'm sure he would have sued for peace earlier if it was possible. For the record, I just want you to put it in writing: you think Russia's efforts thus far constitute success? Like for serious?

To have internalized this as "success" is the ultimate moving of the goal-post. To not recognize it as such? Well I can't even begin to grasp at the words that would be required to describe such a mental pretzel twist. Yet here we are. Vietnam was a larger tactical success for the US than this is for the Russians. And so is every other war we've ever fought in - including those we've "lost". There is no way that this can be considered a successful operation from any perspective. Russian, or otherwise. You not giving even the slightest inch on this - when it is obvious to literally everyone - lays bare how wholly captured you are by whatever your daily propaganda diet is. You are an ideologically bound to their "success". Winning is Losing. Losing is Winning. Every day this drags on, Russian objectives recede further and further.