Unfortunately the republican party seems to excel at convincing a huge percentage of their membership to vote against their best interests. The less educated republican voters you refer to have been manipulated to benefit the 'club' that Beau talks about in the video.

This holds for education, but also for plenty of other subjects, like universal healthcare, taxation, and even foreign military policy.

please. communist?

think about this: one of the cons of communism is if one person is getting all the benefits of working as not working - incentive is nixed.

w/all the mergers of segments of the business world - oil, media suppliers, etc - the effect mirrors communism. w/o serious competition, these companies have less incentive to improve products, increase efficiency, or reduce consumer costs.

to wit: most of the conservative policies are closer to communism than ideas like trust-busting, fair employee compensation, reasonable taxation for high earners, etc.

most of the 'progressive' ideas would spur capitalism, thus the blue is more about the green than the red is about keeping markets stable and healthy.

prefer the idea of regulated capitalism over death through fascism.

what led to '08?

anyway...if you're money is on Tesla*, good luck. good to see a body putting their money where their mouth is. and great to see you in favor of moving away from fossil fuels. investing in the future.

if we can get there.

FYI: interesting article about the marketing of tesla
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/tesla-masculinity-study?utm_source=digg
from the skinny on the CEO, it is an absolute match.


BTW: keeping up w/the Jan 6 spankings? hard to buy the love of a loon, versus the safety of a nation. shakes a person to the core. all those serene conservatives w/o one iota of spine. if this is your idea of quality leadership - no Tesla stock is gonna fill the void of losing a homeland


*what did E.M. do for Twitter? taught some folks the meaning of 'cozener'.

You have to take into account of the population difference (AUS ~25.6 mil vs USA. ~328.5mil), standard of living, GDP, taxation, etc. etc. to make a fair comparison. Going by a straight currency exchange & population diff. of 1 AUD = ~ .73 USD, a very generalized equivalent would be about asking a 3.7~3.8 trillion war chest budget for the USA.

Nonsense. Utter nonsense.
"Steal whatever you want and it's no longer a crime." "Stealing is now allowed." Utter bullshit. Stealing a steak is no longer a felony, it's still a crime. Repeat offenders can be charged with felonies for petty theft. Groups can be individually charged with the entire amount the group steals. Going back repeatedly to steal more doesn't reset the amount stolen. Just so much hyper exaggeration and outright *lies in this anti-California hit piece. What this stopped was 17 year olds being charged with felonies and as adults for stealing one $1 taco, like my friend was in the 80's.

Hilarious they denounce this as causing "violence in America" when the reason it passed was non violent petty criminals were filling the prisons, causing violent criminals to get reduced or no sentences. It was passed to combat violence in America. It does not effect the penalty for any crime involving violence, and frees up space to incarcerate violent criminals.

They lied so many times in this video, in so many ways. Is there a problem, yes. Is prop 47 the main cause? Absolutely not. Is theft not a crime in California?
No, it's absolutely a crime still today.

Poverty in high cost of living areas are the main cause. Lax policing, only wanting to go after felonies because it helps their careers is another. Prison overcrowding is another. Little security in stores with expensive easily resellable small items in bad/impoverished neighborhoods is another. This is not just a California or Bay Area issue, these group store invasions have been a regular occurrence nation wide for years if not decades.

Odd how these people love to bemoan all the anti business laws in California, but don't want to recognize that California is the biggest, most robust economy in America, the fifth largest in the world if it were a country, with the second largest growth in the world if it were a country, only beaten by China in growth. Also hilarious that, when compared with TOTAL taxation, average residents of Texas ($60-$80k per year) pay MORE in taxes than the same earning level in California.
Also hilarious that, while many if not most states are sliding deeper in debt, California has a $70-$80BILLION dollar surplus. ...but by all means, right wingers, move out, it's a failed state. 🤦‍♂️

The problem is, it's complicated.

First off, is the legacy of historical damage still scarring aboriginal communities in Canada.

Even disregarding that complexity though, current structure of governance in Canada makes the problem harder to identify and resolve.

Singh's return question is what would you do if Toronto faced the same problem? The answer is the federal government would by and large do nothing, because water supply is a municipal responsibility and the Mayor and city council of Toronto are responsible for fixing it, and thus federal funds don't go in and instead municipal tax money is used to keep the water supply going. Across Canada that model is working pretty decently, by and large.

The real question then is why are reserves having a harder time? Well, afore mentioned historical trauma aside, reserves represent small communities directly comparable in size and make up as municipal communities. However, the reserves are NOT managed like municipalities. Instead Canada still has a two tiered system of governance, one for reserves and another for municipalities.

In term so governance municipalities report to the provinces and the provinces report to the federal government. Reserves report directly to the federal government.

The affects everything related to governance and is responsible for a host of confusion and difficulty.

Services: Education and Health are provincially funded, and so the federal government transfer money to the provinces and tells them to figure out education and health services. Municipalities then just get those services. Reserves however sit outside that, and get entirely different intermediaries.

Taxation and funding: municipal, provincial and federal governments all gather taxes and distribute funds up and down. Reserves only deal with funding though directly to the feds, again cutting out the provincial intermediary.

Both of the above mean making an apples to apples comparison of communities to try and ensure both are treated 'equally' is impossible. It also means that solutions that work on one side don't in the other.

It's a big mess, and just throwing money at the system and saying that will fix it is just wrong. Not only that, it's been TRIED and failed. The above mentioned differences also apply to rules surrounding transparency, accountability and fraud prevention. Meaning there are a great many more loopholes available on the reserve funding side for anyone involved or attached to providing services(be that council members on reserve, or any number of external entities hired in good faith to perform services). That in turn means the amount of money lost to direct and indirect corruption is harder to find/stop.

So fix all that is the next obvious response. The problem is still complex though because when does 'fixing' becoming simply white folks making aboriginals do things the 'right(white) way that was already the source of lingering historical damage I didn't even consider yet...

It's a hard problem to solve and Singh's just trying to score cheap political points peddling easy and false answers to a complex problem.

To be fair, if it were a real power grab, they would also be pushing HARD for Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa too. If they were "red", we all know Republicans would have pushed for their statehood. I say they should live under the revolutionary mantra....no taxation without representation. That's the country I grew up thinking I lived in, time to make those history lessons a reality for all Americans.

I disagree that just because it would politically benefit them that means Democrats are ONLY doing the right thing as a power grab, but I do agree they likely wouldn't be trying to give these citizens the right to vote if they were more likely to vote Republican.

I know you're joking, but you aren't wrong.

As a Canadian I am pretty sick of hearing some of the very snide attitudes up here about look at us and how we afford public healthcare at similar taxation to the US. How dumb are you guys to be spending so much money on evil killing machines. snicker snicker

The thing of it is though, we spend as good as nothing on military spending by comparison, and yeah, by saving that money we get to cheap out on taxes and still afford the public health program we have. However, we 100% are earning that luxury on the backs of US taxpayers funding a military that protects BOTH our country and theirs.

We are getting a free ride and mocking the driver for spending so much on their car that we absolutely rely upon because our car is missing two wheels and the engine needs to be rebuilt and we're too cheap to be bothered.

Congress controls the purse strings. The president has no control over budget or taxation or whatever.

Veto is a good thing. We have too many laws (~10'000 roughly wherever you set foot), and we get more every year. Start repealing.

Correct. I will not be complaining about Biden, I will be complaining about congress. President can't sign a law that isn't handed to him by congress.

The treason accusations are subjective. It's not like he sold out defense secrets to an enemy state. He *may* have pressured Ukraine to divulge why the investigation into Hunter Biden was dropped without explanation.

Knowing why is a good thing. I also think it's fishy that a politically connected American who doesn't speak Ukrainian and is not 'an energy man' is sitting on the board of a foreign energy company in a country we helped commit a coup in and getting paid a few million+ 50k/month.

It's not that Republicans don't dare to cross him - they infight with him all the time. They also have no alternative to him right now that doesn't involve giving up power entirely.

-scheherazade

@newtboy

That'd be an obvious no to taxation strawman, and the "cherry-picked list" wasn't made by myself, but rather the guy in the video so I think it a fair list to use as a critique of his point. I'm not narrowing or selecting anything to help me out, he did.

My 'logic' was not your taxation throw away, but rather as I stated: "being able to profit of your own ideas and grow your own business and keep the profits from it is just maybe a contributing factor in all that."

Innovation being connected to the ability of the inventor to profit from innovation? Doesn't seem a huge leap, and something that is far more pronounced under capitalism than socialism. So, yeah, when 100% of the examples the guy arguing here came up with all grew out of a nation with an underlying capitalist economy isn't a huge surprise, and makes a bit of case that maybe innovation IS encouraged by that factor of self-interest.

newtboy's on point again, thanks.

Using bcglorf's logic, it is TAXATION that invented the internet. Name me a country (capitalist/communist/socialist or otherwise) that doesn't tax its people, bcglorf. Makes no sense to me. The video's intent is about defining the "who" invented the (early) internet, it's about credit where it's due, not blindly attributing everything to the almighty "capitalism". The video is saying IS IT NOT IT (capitalism).

I wouldn't say the inventors didn't take advantage of its research, it's just that for them it's not (only) about profit. The military benefits with precision-guided missiles, drones & satellites, universities got their connected & online classrooms.

China is ALREADY doing R&D on 6G (https://www.techradar.com/news/china-has-already-kicked-off-its-6g-research)... "capitalism" better catch up, bcglorf!

What MUST be said though, is that the world really should thank the USA to open the tech & infrastructure up to the public (including the world) to make the world a more connected place (even with its many social warts and all).

Yeah, that's what he said. The Government, Military and Education systems mentioned received 100% of their revenues from taxation of a capitalism based(not pure) economy. That same government and military rely heavily on issuing contracts for R&D, supplies, and equipment all to companies operating in a capitalism based economy. That education system relies heavily on private investment and grants from corporate and private entities all generating their incomes from within a capitalism based economy.

That stands in contrast to the same governments, militaries and education systems elsewhere in competing countries like China and Russia, heck even the only slightly less capitalist EU too. Not a single one of the listed innovations came from any of those sources, but instead from within America. I think it is more than naive, but in fact dishonest, to ignore that being able to profit of your own ideas and grow your own business and keep the profits from it is just maybe a contributing factor in all that.

Since you are ignorant of the law and incapable of finding it yourself, here is section 7214 ....read it and get back to me, I'll explain how it applies.



26 U.S. Code § 7214. Offenses by officers and employees of the United States

(a) Unlawful acts of revenue officers or agents
Any officer or employee of the United States acting in connection with any revenue law of the United States—
(1) who is guilty of any extortion or willful oppression under color of law; or
(2) who knowingly demands other or greater sums than are authorized by law, or receives any fee, compensation, or reward, except as by law prescribed, for the performance of any duty; or
(3) who with intent to defeat the application of any provision of this title fails to perform any of the duties of his office or employment; or
(4) who conspires or colludes with any other person to defraud the United States; or
(5) who knowingly makes opportunity for any person to defraud the United States; or
(6) who does or omits to do any act with intent to enable any other person to defraud the United States; or
(7) who makes or signs any fraudulent entry in any book, or makes or signs any fraudulent certificate, return, or statement; or
(8) who, having knowledge or information of the violation of any revenue law by any person, or of fraud committed by any person against the United States under any revenue law, fails to report, in writing, such knowledge or information to the Secretary; or
(9) who demands, or accepts, or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly as payment or gift, or otherwise, any sum of money or other thing of value for the compromise, adjustment, or settlement of any charge or complaint for any violation or alleged violation of law, except as expressly authorized by law so to do;
shall be dismissed from office or discharged from employment and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both. The court may in its discretion award out of the fine so imposed an amount, not in excess of one-half thereof, for the use of the informer, if any, who shall be ascertained by the judgment of the court. The court also shall render judgment against the said officer or employee for the amount of damages sustained in favor of the party injured, to be collected by execution.


Edit: I'll save time, here's the other law he's violating which unambiguously states he had no choice but to turn them over immediately.

26 U.S. Code § 6103. Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information
(11) Disclosure of information regarding status of investigation of violation of this section
(f) Disclosure to Committees of Congress
(1) Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Finance, and Joint Committee on Taxation
Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure.

Edit: allow me to save time again, by not following 6103 (11) (f) and furnishing the return requested in writing by the chairman of the Ways and Means committee, he undeniably violates 7214 (a) (3), which comes with a 5 year sentence. Understand now?

You might have missed my original statement where the entire tax code was abolished. Income taxes go away. There are no loopholes, breaks, tax credits or deductions, etc. Rich people/businesses purchase more goods and services than poorer so they would pay more taxes proportionally (in sum not percent). I am not looking for wealth equality I am looking for taxation equality. Look at Amazon's taxes again this year.

Kind of an idiot (excuse me, simplistic) view of taxation - assuming the only purpose of taxes is to ensure that every citizen lives as well as every other one. It also ignores the reality that there is a good deal of self-interest and self-dealing in government agencies. Perhaps a more realistic view is to tax at rates that optimize productive economic activity within the system.

Perhaps you are ignorant of the fact that the vast majority cross where walls already exist. To answer your question, nearly all of them would still try. Do you really think a fence is deterrence when the alternative is go home and see your family raped to death before you're decapitated? Would you just say "oops, sorry, didn't mean to trigger you....let me just take my daughter back to the narcos for a life of sex slavery and just die then, so sorry."?

A better immigration policy that makes it easier to get a work visa or asylum at ports of entry instead of making illegal entry easier, simpler, cheaper, and faster would discourage people from taking the easier, but illegal path. We are moving the other direction, which is why illegal immigration is on the rise under Trump after falling steadily for decades.

This doesn't cost America except for fighting it, they make us money with cheap labor, taxation without representation or access to government assistance, and by lowering the per capita crime rates by being far less criminal on average than Americans. You want to deport a group that's well above average in criminality, that would be Republican politicians and or Trump associates...no one will miss a single one.

A $50 billion wall (Trump's never built anything that wasn't at least 100% over budget) that can be evaded with a ladder, shovel, car, truck, saw, torch, boat, plane, and in many many places, absolutely nothing (it's no longer a single solid wall from coast to gulf, it's now a fence in a few more places for your $50 billion.) is not just vastly more expensive, it's also uselessly wasting that money for almost zero return, the few places it might help will just see the migrant paths move a few miles over.

If we had a 40+ ft high, 20 ft deep, 4+ft thick reinforced concrete wall coast to coast that was somehow ladder proof, it still wouldn't stop most illegal immigration or drug trafficking, because the vast majority of both come through ports of entry. The wall is a useless solution to a non existent problem that's been solving itself for decades....side note: what do you think it was like in the good old days when America was "great"? Contrary to Chump's claims, operation wetback (that he wants to reimplement) was a failure....
https://www.cato.org/blog/enforcement-didnt-end-unlawful-immigration-1950s-more-visas-did