Your quote is irrelevant. The vast majority of mass shooting are still NOT gang-related. You act like you wish it were, maybe in order to deflect from the fact that the vast majority of shooters are young white men.
Reason #2 is why the tax code is so complex and long. It is subject to a lot of abuse and corrupt practices which result in a lot of carve outs, exceptions, and differential rates for "favored" groups and activities. Most of this stuff does not rise to the level of general public awareness (especially the not-so-attractive and more corrupt stuff) or when it does, the awareness is very simple in context and content and subject to (and used for) a LOT of misleading information.
One of the things that could clean a lot of this stuff up is separating #2 from #1. IOW, divorce #2 from the tax code and change it to normal appropriations (open payments/subsidies to the "favored" groups).
Of course, this is unlikely to happen as it would make a lot of this stuff more visible, open, and understandable to the public.
The government (and society) also has a decided interest in limiting and controlling wealth disparity (note I do not say eliminating nor do I intend that). The problem is that the people in government do not have that interest nor do the major donors that fund their election and re-election campaigns.
Wealth disparity = power disparity--and a greater disparity in one area leads almost inevitably to an equivalent disparity in the other area. The Founders understood that there needed to be limits placed upon the power of government and of individuals/individual offices of the government (which we have increasingly ignored over time)--but they did not extend this to the private sector, where it is just as much if not more of a problem. This is particularly true when you combine the power of wealth in the private sector with the power (because of that wealth) to subvert the government.
Reducing the power disparity would be good (I believe) for society at large. It would also be good for our politics and governance. The revenue that resulted would also potentially help with a lot of the socio-economic problems that have given rise to our political problems (because people feel that both the government and the private sector are kind of screwing them over--and they would not be wrong).
It would take a better class of people than we currently have running things--people with better character, less beholden to and more independent from the wealthy. It is another pipe dream that I have.
In my opinion, our American culture began to break down when we stopped insisting that Americans learn English. That doesn’t mean that people couldn’t also speak a second language as is common in the rest of the world. We remember having a flag in our classrooms, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and learning reading, writing & arithmetic first. Some people even recall winning the “golden wastebasket” award for helping pick up classroom trash. Understanding other peoples cultures is key for having friends and often relatives. It’s just that I believe when you lose a common language, you fray the tapestry of a culture.
Hi, I know exactly what you mean. With 2 grandsons, age 20 and 17 I worry constantly especially since they are avid concert goers and love group scenes. Not how I expected to spend my grandparent years. My situation is pretty much what you describe and the feeling of hopelessness is pervasive because there is nothing I can do to protect them. I can just hope that they and their friends are safe and that they [and we] vote to make the changes needed. It is their world and we’re leaving them a mess. I never thought I would live in a country where a major political party is doing everything that they can do to take our rights, destroy the environment and threaten our children as a result of their belief that guns are more important than people. My slogan for the GOP is - Guns Over People. Sadly.
While I wouldn't say that I dislike America or that I'm ashamed to be an American, I long ago went from someone who teared up at the National Anthem to someone who no longer believes the hype about America being the greatest nation in the world.
Thanks to almost everyone to some extent but mostly to the Republican Party, we are the worst industrialized nation when it comes to dealing with a pandemic, providing affordable health care for all, addressing climate change, educating our children, protecting our children from being slaughtered, and so on.
There are still great things about America, but I've long since abandoned the illusion that America is the best just because. Frankly, after the last few years and considering where I think we're headed, I'd jump at the chance to move to one of several other nations that are much healthier than ours is.
“While we wait, leadership must come from fathers and mothers, teachers and nurses, priests and rabbis, businessmen and businesswomen, journalists and pundits.”
Indeed. And we need to elect people of principle and character. We are living in silos and we are led by people who are power hungry
You're surprised by how few people knew who we declared independence from, I'm much more surprised at how many people thought Trump was a fair President.
As for the debt, I've not seen any party lower the debt.
As for illegal immigrants. They are connected to inflation. Costs are high because wages are at a 40 year high, as is employment. If you want lower prices, you need illegal immigrants to do the menial jobs at half the minimum wage. You can't have high wages and low prices. It's not logical.
The survey you reference is of 1000 people conducted by a website called lawsuit.org. I can't seem to find any more information on the survey, but I'm going to take the results with a huge boulder of salt. Charlie, you are essentially just pushing a bad poll here...
The survey you reference is of 1000 people conducted by a website called lawsuit.org. I can't seem to find any more information on the survey, but I'm going to take the results with a huge boulder of salt. Charlie, you are essentially just pushing a bad poll here...
As an atheist sick and tired of having to pretend in public that various religious dogmas and scientific knowledge are equally worthy of respect, and fully aware of how much monstrous evil can be lain at the doorstep of religious belief and believers, I nevertheless am not sure the Court's opinion in the football prayer case is wrong ... in detail. No question the entire community (and state) is entirely god-addled, but it also seems a school district administration failed to grasp that what they tried to do was only going to raise a mob of peasants eager to storm their castle. And as a consequence, now it's nationalized. We are only months away from prayers in classrooms all over America, mandated by state legislatures and anti-enlightenment courts.
The question in my mind is -- is your exercise of religious "freedom" about your religious freedom or is it something you want to shove in my face and down my throat?
My idea of religious freedom is much like my idea of how loud someone in a public park or campground should play his music: if others can hear it in their space, it's too loud.
We've moved away from "keep your religion pooping on your own lawn" to something else. It's not enough to spew it out onto your own turf. It needs to be on public property too, and waft its fragrance into everybody's nostrils.
The coach seems to have initially agreed to keep the meetings private and unperformative, then changed his mind and decided he was going to do it in others' face.
Everybody needs to be an asshole from now on. Failing to be an asshole is unconstitutional.
Who Nelly on this purported survey by Lawsuit.org. alleging, yet again, that young people are downright stupid. I do not see evidence of such a survey on the website for Lawsuit.org, nor excepting its blog, do I see surveys of this type to be anything resembling their interests. My instincts tell me it is a fake survey, or at best, one that is very poorly conducted and biased. I attempted to write to Lawsuit.org using their "contact us" form, but the message bounces back. I am not even convinced that Lawsuit.org is anything other than a hyped up lawyer referral service.
Your quote is irrelevant. The vast majority of mass shooting are still NOT gang-related. You act like you wish it were, maybe in order to deflect from the fact that the vast majority of shooters are young white men.
Movie reviewer Ty Burr perfectly describes my feelings on patriotism.
https://tyburrswatchlist.substack.com/p/jerry-and-marge-go-to-the-revolution?r=2cs92&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct
WRT Taxation (after looking at some of the comments posted here):
Governments usually use taxation for two things:
1) To generate revenue; and
2) Socio-economic engineering/economic manipulation.
Reason #2 is why the tax code is so complex and long. It is subject to a lot of abuse and corrupt practices which result in a lot of carve outs, exceptions, and differential rates for "favored" groups and activities. Most of this stuff does not rise to the level of general public awareness (especially the not-so-attractive and more corrupt stuff) or when it does, the awareness is very simple in context and content and subject to (and used for) a LOT of misleading information.
One of the things that could clean a lot of this stuff up is separating #2 from #1. IOW, divorce #2 from the tax code and change it to normal appropriations (open payments/subsidies to the "favored" groups).
Of course, this is unlikely to happen as it would make a lot of this stuff more visible, open, and understandable to the public.
The government (and society) also has a decided interest in limiting and controlling wealth disparity (note I do not say eliminating nor do I intend that). The problem is that the people in government do not have that interest nor do the major donors that fund their election and re-election campaigns.
Wealth disparity = power disparity--and a greater disparity in one area leads almost inevitably to an equivalent disparity in the other area. The Founders understood that there needed to be limits placed upon the power of government and of individuals/individual offices of the government (which we have increasingly ignored over time)--but they did not extend this to the private sector, where it is just as much if not more of a problem. This is particularly true when you combine the power of wealth in the private sector with the power (because of that wealth) to subvert the government.
Reducing the power disparity would be good (I believe) for society at large. It would also be good for our politics and governance. The revenue that resulted would also potentially help with a lot of the socio-economic problems that have given rise to our political problems (because people feel that both the government and the private sector are kind of screwing them over--and they would not be wrong).
It would take a better class of people than we currently have running things--people with better character, less beholden to and more independent from the wealthy. It is another pipe dream that I have.
In my opinion, our American culture began to break down when we stopped insisting that Americans learn English. That doesn’t mean that people couldn’t also speak a second language as is common in the rest of the world. We remember having a flag in our classrooms, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and learning reading, writing & arithmetic first. Some people even recall winning the “golden wastebasket” award for helping pick up classroom trash. Understanding other peoples cultures is key for having friends and often relatives. It’s just that I believe when you lose a common language, you fray the tapestry of a culture.
SallyJones
RE: A Crisis of Patriotism
An Arizona event organized by the Pima County Democratic Party to protest the SCOTUS decision on abortion rights:
https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6dad011c-7d99-49fb-8091-d182c9e3ca42_946x2048.jpeg (946×2048) (substackcdn.com)
A worthy cause, but maybe not a worthy look? Or message? Maybe? Possibly?
Can't imagine how some people might see this or what they might make of it. Oh. Wait.
Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I can...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/arizona-democrats-plan-4th-event-mourn-supreme-court-abortion-decision
Hi, I know exactly what you mean. With 2 grandsons, age 20 and 17 I worry constantly especially since they are avid concert goers and love group scenes. Not how I expected to spend my grandparent years. My situation is pretty much what you describe and the feeling of hopelessness is pervasive because there is nothing I can do to protect them. I can just hope that they and their friends are safe and that they [and we] vote to make the changes needed. It is their world and we’re leaving them a mess. I never thought I would live in a country where a major political party is doing everything that they can do to take our rights, destroy the environment and threaten our children as a result of their belief that guns are more important than people. My slogan for the GOP is - Guns Over People. Sadly.
While I wouldn't say that I dislike America or that I'm ashamed to be an American, I long ago went from someone who teared up at the National Anthem to someone who no longer believes the hype about America being the greatest nation in the world.
Thanks to almost everyone to some extent but mostly to the Republican Party, we are the worst industrialized nation when it comes to dealing with a pandemic, providing affordable health care for all, addressing climate change, educating our children, protecting our children from being slaughtered, and so on.
There are still great things about America, but I've long since abandoned the illusion that America is the best just because. Frankly, after the last few years and considering where I think we're headed, I'd jump at the chance to move to one of several other nations that are much healthier than ours is.
“While we wait, leadership must come from fathers and mothers, teachers and nurses, priests and rabbis, businessmen and businesswomen, journalists and pundits.”
Indeed. And we need to elect people of principle and character. We are living in silos and we are led by people who are power hungry
You're surprised by how few people knew who we declared independence from, I'm much more surprised at how many people thought Trump was a fair President.
As for the debt, I've not seen any party lower the debt.
As for illegal immigrants. They are connected to inflation. Costs are high because wages are at a 40 year high, as is employment. If you want lower prices, you need illegal immigrants to do the menial jobs at half the minimum wage. You can't have high wages and low prices. It's not logical.
The survey you reference is of 1000 people conducted by a website called lawsuit.org. I can't seem to find any more information on the survey, but I'm going to take the results with a huge boulder of salt. Charlie, you are essentially just pushing a bad poll here...
The survey you reference is of 1000 people conducted by a website called lawsuit.org. I can't seem to find any more information on the survey, but I'm going to take the results with a huge boulder of salt. Charlie, you are essentially just pushing a bad poll here...
they're yellow?
As an atheist sick and tired of having to pretend in public that various religious dogmas and scientific knowledge are equally worthy of respect, and fully aware of how much monstrous evil can be lain at the doorstep of religious belief and believers, I nevertheless am not sure the Court's opinion in the football prayer case is wrong ... in detail. No question the entire community (and state) is entirely god-addled, but it also seems a school district administration failed to grasp that what they tried to do was only going to raise a mob of peasants eager to storm their castle. And as a consequence, now it's nationalized. We are only months away from prayers in classrooms all over America, mandated by state legislatures and anti-enlightenment courts.
The question in my mind is -- is your exercise of religious "freedom" about your religious freedom or is it something you want to shove in my face and down my throat?
My idea of religious freedom is much like my idea of how loud someone in a public park or campground should play his music: if others can hear it in their space, it's too loud.
We've moved away from "keep your religion pooping on your own lawn" to something else. It's not enough to spew it out onto your own turf. It needs to be on public property too, and waft its fragrance into everybody's nostrils.
The coach seems to have initially agreed to keep the meetings private and unperformative, then changed his mind and decided he was going to do it in others' face.
Everybody needs to be an asshole from now on. Failing to be an asshole is unconstitutional.
Am I proud to be an American circa 2022?
No, I know too many other Americans.
Nice piece Mona!
Who Nelly on this purported survey by Lawsuit.org. alleging, yet again, that young people are downright stupid. I do not see evidence of such a survey on the website for Lawsuit.org, nor excepting its blog, do I see surveys of this type to be anything resembling their interests. My instincts tell me it is a fake survey, or at best, one that is very poorly conducted and biased. I attempted to write to Lawsuit.org using their "contact us" form, but the message bounces back. I am not even convinced that Lawsuit.org is anything other than a hyped up lawyer referral service.