“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”
–Virginia Woolf
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Really good – The radically simple changes that helped lawmakers actually get things done
I DON'T READ ABOUT POLITICS ON THE INTERNET TO FEEL HOPE, DAVID! (Kidding. That was a cool read.)
One can find that stuff in any good book on collaboration and collaborative efforts. I've participated on a couple citizen based collaborations, over the years, dealing with management of public lands. Those have their own intricacies. But the basic premises are still the same: 1) be respectful, 2) listen before speaking, once things get started.
I associate the Woolf quote with a Tom Clancy book where some bad guys screwed up the stock exchange and since folks couldn't figure out how to fix what happened they just decided to reset it to the previous day.
Imagine an America with steep billionaire taxes — and without Amazon, Pixar, SpaceX, and Tesla (essay repost)
This makes a really good point. All the profit I made at Windward I put back into the company. So all those taxes I paid every quarter, that was all money that otherwise would have gone to hiring more people.
Yes we need taxes to fund the government. But we need to balance where we raise those taxes vs the negative trade-off of getting them from that source.
A better way is to get rid of most corporate subsidies. Here are several to consider:
1) depletion allowances for big oil
2) high tariffs on imported sugar that protects US sugar producers
3) artificially low fees to graze domestic livestock on federal public lands. Compare to fees charged for grazing on state owned or private land.
Visit the Citizens Against Government Waste's website.
A resounding YES on all three. But who’s going to house the Bundy gang when they’re homeless?
Milk Boards.
Peanuts price support.
Turning food (corn) into motor fuel.
Jones Act.
So the gist is we need to have billionaires like Elon Musk so they can (maybe) fund cool projects? Without these magnanimous oligarchs we can't have nice things? How about we nationalize those industries and fund them ourselves? Seemed to work pretty good for getting to the moon before the big privatization boom(s) of the last 40-50 years. You know, where we took our national investments and cannibalized them to make more billionaires…
Amazon is a terrible example of a good thing. So by allowing Jeff Bezos to be a billionaire we have benefited…. how? Faster shipping? At the cost of thousands of businesses and better paying jobs? Creating monopsonies in countless industries, forcing suppliers all down the chain to cut costs (usually labor). Seems like a bad deal, unless you are a well-off person who just wants their gadgets, like, yesterday.
And the Pixar argument is just beyond stupid. So if we don't have an angel billionaire investor we won't get to have movies anymore? I don't even know where to start with that. I thought supply was supposed to be driven by demand, not the whims of the ultra-rich?
You posted the same comment twice.
"at the cost of thousands of businesses and better paying jobs……."
Using some of your logic, manufacturing buggy whips would still be a viable business (most Amish make their own). Too many generalities. Not everybody is into buying the latest gadgets. I drive a 16 year old car. My washer/dryer combo is 30 years old. Etc.
Yes, sorry. I can't find a delete option.
I don't understand your response. How does my logic imply that we should or shouldn't have technological improvements? I'm pushing back against the concept that having billionaires is a prerequisite for driving beneficial change. That has nothing to do with personal consumption choices?
maybe there is confusion. My comment was supposed to be in response to DavidThi808 above, but it would not stick there even though I was clicking the reply button. That's how we ended up in this duplicate comment debacle.
Historically governments have been horrible at managing the economy and that is what you're proposing.
That's not to say every capitalist is brilliant at it. Not does that mean that everyone who hits the jackpot then does good things with their money.
But…
The amazing advances we've seen in new devices, more efficient production, new approaches, etc. – that all has come from a relatively free market with appropriate regulation and the rule of law.
An awful lot of the amazing advances were people making a large bet with their wealth. And doing so when most large bets failed. That has been the most effective way to gain all this.
Oh my … you are going to offend the socialists on here.
One of the “best devices” ever made was done by the Benevolent Socialist Workers Paradise of Yugoslavia. The product was the Yugo car.
It was also one of the safest vehicles ever made. Example, if you were in a wreck, the engine go one way and You Go the other way.
I heard it was incredibly safe because it was usually broken down. If you can't get out on the roads you can't get in a car accident 🙂
So the gist is we need to have billionaires like Elon Musk so they can (maybe) fund cool projects? Without these magnanimous oligarchs we can't have nice things? How about we nationalize those industries and fund them ourselves? Seemed to work pretty good for getting to the moon before the big privatization boom(s) of the last 40-50 years. You know, where we took our national investments and cannibalized them to make more billionaires…
Amazon is a terrible example of a good thing. So by allowing Jeff Bezos to be a billionaire we have benefited…. how? Faster shipping? At the cost of thousands of businesses and better paying jobs? Creating monopsonies in countless industries, forcing suppliers all down the chain to cut costs (usually labor). Seems like a bad deal, unless you are a well-off person who just wants their gadgets, like, yesterday.
And the Pixar argument is just beyond stupid. So if we don't have an angel billionaire investor we won't get to have movies anymore? I don't even know where to start with that. I thought supply was supposed to be driven by demand, not the whims of the ultra-rich?
Testing replying to this comment… my earlier reply attempts got posted down below instead of as replies.
weird. Can't reply above.
Told you so.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/08/seymour-hersh-claims-us-navy-behind-nord-stream-2-pipeline-explosion/
It's an interesting hypothesis and Seymour Hersh's article relying on a single anonymous source is absolutely credible…..
…. as credible as an 85-year old journalist who's drifted into the crackpot conspiracy realm in the last decade can be.
I especially like how it was a false-flag operations coordinated with multiple NATO partners, Sweden, all six military branches, the Girls Scouts of the USA, and the Pueblo Rotary Club Women's auxiliary .
Next up: Hersh's explanation as to the REAL reason why the Jewish space laser failed to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon.
Russian Propaganda. Fooled you once, fooled you twice, fools you every time.
That's a singular "you".
Seymour Hersh and the New York Post. Yeah, that all checks out.
Yeah. Pfruit has a high bar when it comes to sources he considers reliable. <snark>
The NY Post is a step up – but not much of a step – from the National Enquirer. Roger is trying to make himself sound more educated.
VOX and the Mountaineer more your speed?
Better than Newsmax. Or, you
CHB: you’re using false equivalents in your grazing fee argument. Private land available for grazing and charging higher fees has more to offer for those fees: fencing, water and abundant grass. Public land guarantees none of those and, in fact, any improvements put in by the rancher belongs to the federal agency, not the rancher. Consider discussing this with an actual rancher.
I have discussed this with actual ranchers (not all ranchers are bad. Many are rather enlightened stewards of the land). I’ve also tracked the State Land Board and its leasing program for a number of years. I stand by the statement. I encourage you to visit the Citizens website that I cited.
Here are some references worth a read. Not much has changed since publication.
1) Post-Cowboy Economics, Pay and Prosperity in the New American West. Thomas Michael Power Ph.D. and Richard N. Barrett.
2) The Western Range Revisited. Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. Debra L. Donahue.
3) Welfare Ranching, the Subsidized Destruction of the American West. Edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson
Native biodiversity can often be enhanced by grazing the lands in a holistic manner but that’s generally met with substantial pushback from the non-ranching community. I was part of such a project with The Nature Conservancy years ago. At the end of the research it concluded the increased stocking rates were a benefit. The anti-animal forces within TNC prevented the report from being published.
The name of the guy who pushed holistic ranching doesn't come quickly to mind. I recall he had some good points, but was controversial in some circles. There were also some studies of bison grazing as opposed to cattle grazing. Again memory is murky although I remember something about bison being better grazers.
Ok, this will make many individual's heads on here explode. Read Wireless Wars, which is a very well written book. And one conclusion you will come to is…
that the Trump Administration got it right on China in general and Haiwei in particular. They instituted a major change in direction for the U.S. vs. China and made some major hard choices.
The Biden Administration is doubling down on this, and correctly so.
But it started with the Trump Administration and this is something they got right.
Election Misinfo on Key Podcasts. TPM
I actually had a very anxious emotions on the days leading up to Jan 6. My "canary in the maga mine" mainlines Steve Bannon and was spewing his shit all over her facebook page, so I was full aware that trouble was coming.
Apologies for posting so much of this article: