techwooded

Fairly far left myself. I agree with the person who said that

The left is loyal to ideals, not people

To me, one of those ideals is being anti-death penalty. I believe that no matter what the crime is, a government that claims to represent all people, as a democratic government theoretically does, can never justify the killing of one of those people by their hand. Were it up to me, they would be removed from office, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and tossed in jail for the rest of their natural life (which judging by the age demographic of the federal government, wouldn’t be too long).

The prospect for an impeachment for treason raises some interesting questions about how the legal and political systems of the United States interact though. Because impeachment is a political process, impeaching a government official doesn’t constitute that a crime was committed, and committing a crime doesn’t necessarily impose grounds for impeachment. If the Vice President was impeached and removed from office due to committing treason and let’s say criminal proceedings were brought, there’s no precedent as to whether any of the evidence brought in the impeachment trial or the successful removal would count towards evidence of the treason trial itself. In the most extreme of cases that would likely never happen, a government official could be arrested, tried, convicted, and (under current law that I disagree with) executed without ever being impeached and leaving office.

Also wanted to note that impeachment doesn’t just apply to the President, it applies to

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States

Which means federal judges, cabinet officers, etc. Though most notably, no one in Congress

I feel that way whenever I finish a reread of Wheel of Time or the Broken Earth trilogy that makes me have to avoid the genre for a bit afterwards

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It’s the same stuff with all these programs that have the trapezoid structure (income phase-ins). What the designers of the program are really looking to do is to not spend a lot of money, so the phase-ins move a large group of people (or children) from just below the line to just above the line so everyone can pat their back, they’re not actually interested in

Also actually having evidence that people just want to take care of children breaks the “moral hazard” narrative down which people don’t like

The problem isn’t socialism in the countries I’m sure you’ve seen (Soviets, etc), it’s totalitarianism. Leaders have used the guise of socialism to get the initial public support to gain power, and they make a show of it, but the real game in town is the power structure. Look into Pinochet’s Chile for a similar example with a hardcore capitalism as the economic system

Correct me if I’m wrong, OP, but it sounds like you’re talking about retreating to the axioms of the particular belief system, as in there is a point where reason breaks down because you get to things that you (the person whose expressing their opinion) have accepted that’s different than me.

To me this is a bit of a Motte and Bailey fallacy as your question was whether or not you have a good argument and then someone replied to that and then moved to the set of assumptions which has nothing to do with argument.

For me personally, the other person has to demonstrate some level of critical reasoning for me to respect their opinions, even if their assumptions are different than mine. Beliefs that are entered into using reasoning are more useful than ones without because they can be changed which is what discourse is all about

This is interesting. I’ve been wanting to sign up for something like this, Incogni, or DeleteMe for a while, but haven’t done any research yet

Link for people who, like me, spent 10 minutes trying to get links other than Barnes & Noble and publishing houses: https://hardcover.app

I also recommend StoryGraph for this same purpose

Don’t forget the Baha’i, the Babs, and the Druze. Don’t know if they’re considered people of the book or not. Same with the Samaritan Israelites

Daniel Abraham & Ty Frank. The Expanse series evolved out of a D&D-like game they hosted together. Abraham also has a good sized Fantasy catalogue to check out too

Stopped drinking soda, started walking daily. 60 lbs over the course of a year a few years ago, haven’t gained any back

Main problem with this is that unemployment isn’t handled by the IRS, it’s a program under the Department of Labor and administered by the States and federal agencies notoriously don’t talk to each other.

There’s also nothing wrong with just giving them unemployment benefits, but you structure your tax system so that the rich people, when they end up needing to claim unemployment, are paying more or equivalent in taxes paying into unemployment than they’re getting in the payout. You simplify both sets of laws, the IRS is in charge of collecting revenue and the subdepartment of Labor tasked with this only has to worry about dishing out your cash so the administration of the benefit is simplified, and you still get your desired result of exceedingly well off people not “dragging” the system

Would just like to pop in here and say that terms like “millionaires” and “billionaires” typically refer to net worth/wealth, not income. This is why Jeff Bezos was able to claim some of the federal COVID aide because, despite being a multi-billionaire, his income in that year was below the threshold (I think it was sub-$100k) as income from investments didn’t qualify under the structure of the plan.

While I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment of people whose net worths are upwards of a million being able to claim unemployment, actually calculating net worth is extremely difficult to do, especially among the wealthy. That would put an unreasonable burden on the unemployment benefit system that would probably end up costing more in administrative costs than the money saved by not including to the ultra-wealthy in the benefit. Preventing the latter is the main benefit of universal programs

About time in my opinion, but “later next year” sounds to me like this will be iOS 18. Hopefully I’m wrong with that though

Think it’s just a familiar form factor for the product given that most are used to how the former birdsite’s apps (both first and third parties) looked and operated. A few of them are even made by the same developers who had made third party apps. May eventually drift towards something else, but at least for the time being, telling people “instead of logging into this website, you log into this website” and everything else works and looks the same is an easier sell especially during the mass adoption and scaling phase of the platform

I’m still soured by how the primary shook out in 2020. Before any votes were cast, all everyone said about all the candidates were that anyone could beat Trump. Bernie won the first 3 races, and the Democratic establishment fought anyway they could to kill the movement, including pressuring flailing campaigns to back out. Biden finally won and the only message is for the left wing of the party to get in line. Kind of a hard pill to swallow when the Democrats claimed to be the party of the youth, but the youth voted 80%+ for Bernie in the primary. Ended up voting Green in 2020. Will I do so again in '24? Who knows, but at this point it isn’t looking good. I don’t like that the right wing of the Democrats (center-right overall) expects the left to follow along no matter what they do.

I’m not sure I buy this whole “third party votes are wasted votes” or “third party votes are a vote for the opposition”. The US system heavily heavily biases towards having a two party system, but third parties exist, and just because Democrats and Republicans are the two major parties right now, doesn’t mean they will be in the future. The Whigs were one of the two major parties for 25 years of US history, even winning the Presidency a few times, but now they’re not. It took people not willing to accept the party line and jumping ship to change that, which again the system biases against, but it still happened. Democrats aren’t the end-all-be-all of lefty politics. The next left wing party won’t be the end-all-be-all either. Democrats have no incentive to change the current system. By continuing to vote for them, whether you believe it or not, you’re approving and perpetuating the behavior. It isn’t a useful method of change to say “I don’t agree with anything the Democrats say, but that’s the world we’re in”. That’s how you end up in a situation where 70% of the country supports universal healthcare, but only 5-6 members of Congress do. Voting for a further left party than the Democrats will cause the Democrats to wise up to what their traditional base wants.

Politics in Democracy is not a passive system. Passivity leads to what we have now, two parties that write the rules for the states and the governments that represent the interests of almost no one, but have convinced us that they’re the only and best options. There are agents of the Democrats currently in jail for breaking election law in their efforts to keep the Greens off the ballot. I’m sure the same is true for Republicans. Don’t tell them its okay by giving them your vote. Don’t give in to the political version of the Paradox of Thrift.