I wouldn’t say justified, buuuuuuuuuut where else could he have gone? China is about the only other possibility.

To be clear, I think he should be pardoned, and thing USA-Patriot act should be overturned.

Yeah, we’re doing the same in the US… :(

The essential problem is that the people working now are paying for the people that are retired. It would make more sense for the gov’t to have taxed the people prior to their retirement, and have invested those taxes, so that in their retirement they would be getting out what they had previously paid in. And switching over to a system like that would require double taxation on the population now, which will make such a proposal very unopopular.

But if your retired population is growing, and you have fewer people working, then you either need to increase the retirement age–so that more people are paying into the system–or increase the taxation overall. If I recall correctly, Denmark has been seeing a negative population growth; that’s a real problem for retirement schemes that rely on current taxes paying for retirees.

Is this fair to people that have been working in trades and have beaten up their body for 40 years? No. Likewise, it’s not really fair to people that have working in white-collar jobs that may still be more than capable of excelling at their job, and still want to work. (My dad had mandatory retirement at 72 due to company policy; he immediately got re-hired as an on-site consultant, and has been doing that for over a decade.)

EDIT - this is a huge problem in the US. The social security taxes now on working people are immediately paid out to retirees. SS benefits go up to account for inflation, but the amount coming in is decreasing because population growth has slowed. Without major reforms, social security in the US won’t be solvent by the time I retire, IF I ever retire.

Linemen for the power company will always stay busy regardless of the economy, and it pays stupid well.

My boss is a former lineman; he quit because there was a lot of bullshit dealing with the power company. I gather that the pay in my area wasn’t that great either. When storms roll through, shifts are going to be long and brutal.

No. It’s a basic silver PPO, and my employer would pay more per month than I do. And HDHP (bronze level) would have a higher individual deductible, and lower premiums.

The poor and middle class neeed large tax increases and the wealthy need to have their taxes lowered

Good news, that’s what Trump is already doing.

Our outcomes are not always worse. It’s a mixed bag.

The only–ONLY–medical metric that we lead the world on is per capita spending on healthcare. In 2022, we spent an average of $15,222 per person in the US. The next worst country–Switzerland–spent about $8000 per capita. When you compare outcomes, Switzerland gets very nearly identical outcomes to the US, but spends far less per person. And Switzerland does NOT have single-payer healthcare. Canada spends $6000 per capita on healthcare coverage, and leads the US in most outcomes.

would require much larger taxes on the middle and low class

Yes, more in taxes, less (none) in paying premiums, co-pays, or deductibles. So as far as income in your pocket goes, and in terms of medical outcomes, you come out ahead in a single-payer system. Think about it for a second; what’s your annual deductible? The insurance I can get through my workplace has an annual deductible of $7000 per person. That means that, aside from visiting my GP, I need to spend $7000 before insurance covers anything at all. That’s on top of the $6500 I would have to pay in premiums. After I hit my deductible, insurance covers 80% of my costs, until I’ve paid a total of $11,000 out of pocket, then it covers everything. So I would have to pay at least $17,500 in a calendar year before insurance picked up everything. If I don’t have insurance because I can’t afford $250 every two weeks? Then I get the whole hospital bill for everything, which, in most cases, means people declaring bankruptcy. What I’m saying is that you can take that –OR– you can take $50 out of everyone’s paycheck (scaled to income level probably, and based on a risk pool of 330M people) and just be covered, period, no copays, no deductible, no worries that you’re gonna be bankrupted by a hit-and-run driver that sends you to the ER.

We pay far, far more, as a proportion of our income, for medical care than any other western country, and that’s when you consider the taxes that other countries pay. We also have, by far, the worst medical outcomes. Socialized healthcare costs less, and has better outcomes, than paying on your own or using private insurance, and allows for better control over ballooning healthcare costs.

Your belief that it would cost more proves that you fundamentally don’t understand how medical care is priced. We’re paying Bugatti prices and getting Yugos. We have hundreds of insurance companies negotiating prices with thousands of medical groups, and a handful of massive pharmaceutical companies; they simply don’t have the leverage to control costs or negotiate better rates, and none of them have a risk pool large enough to make the costs truly cheap for every single person.

And, BTW, yes, I AM in favor of raising taxes. On everyone. Because we deserve more from our gov’t than what we’re getting. Things like a public education system that works, criminal justice that isn’t for-profit and actually reforms people, infrastructure that isn’t crumbling, public services that are owned by the public, and so on. Privatising everything has been a disaster; we pay more and get less.

Vampires can enter your home whenever they choose. They’re just all autistic and really hate going into someone’s house without being asked to come in first.

You know what would really do that? What would ACTUALLY do that?

Single-payer healthcare, AKA socialized medicine. Then you have the gov’t negotiating the price for ALL drugs for EVERYONE. That is exactly how every other first-world country does it, and that’s the reason why they all pay lower prices. Until 2022, with the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare wasn’t allowed to negotiate, and the IRA only allows the gov’t to negotiate some very high-dollar drugs.

And executive order does abso-fucking-lutely nothing. EOs can–at best–only directly affect gov’t agencies. You can’t use an EO to force a private corporation to give you better prices.

My experience certainly does.

I’ve worked with some really great people. But maybe 1 in 5 or so was a loudmouthed shitbag, and when you called them on being shitty, they either threatened you, or acted like it was all a joke or a big misunderstanding, and you were at fault for being upset, etc. I can’t guarantee that the shitty people I’ve known have harassed women, but the probability seems high.

Alan Dershowitz has turned into a right-wing hack, making ridiculous legal arguments to defend untenable positions.

Broadly speaking, failing to put in effort does tend to lead to worse outcomes.

…Unless your parents have the last name “Musk” or “Trump”.

Well, yeah, it would be.

We would need to drastically increase taxes in order to have UBI for the poorest people in the US. Right now, across the board, all of us are paying some of the lowest income taxes since income taxation was introduced. After you consider things like the EIC, a lot of poor people have a negative tax rate. As it is, we’re running a budget deficit every single year, and most of that deficit is entitlement programs (I’m not using that in a pejorative sense) like social security and Medicare.

(No, social security is not fully funded; people pay in far less than they end up getting paid back, and the system relies on a constantly expanding pool of people paying into it to fund the people that are currently drawing from it. To fix that, we would need to increase social security taxes, end the cap on those taxes, and probably set the retirement age higher.)

Even if we took every single penny that every billionaire in the US had, that would fund the federal gov’t for something like eight months. Total. And then it would all be gone. (Plus the stock and bond markets would crater, but eh.)

Yeah, we need to bring back the highest marginal tax rates for sure. And we need to increase corporate taxes and eliminate a lot of the corporate cash giveaways. But we also need to increase taxes on the middle class. I’m saying this as someone that’s at the lower end of middle class; I’m not paying enough in taxes for what i think this country should be doing for the citizens of the country. But man, if you told me my tax bill was going to go up by $8k, but I’d also get national single payer health care? And national public transit, and free public universities? I would cream my panties.

So, again: you’re posting this article because it validates your feelings, despite the article being devoid of any facts?

So, despite being entirely devoid of any factual information–and actually being deceptive–you like it because it validates your emotions? Is that correct?

Seems to me that I remember a certain conservative icon saying something about, “facts don’t care about your feelings”.

But you not liking something doesn’t make it unworthwhile.

Something not being rooted in objective facts does make it unworthwhile though. A personal opinion on a <<thing>> is irrelevant; factual information is relevant. The source that you keep insisting has value does not use objectively correct, verifiable, factual information. Since there’s no accurate information coming from the source, what, exactly, is the value proposition that it offers?

“Popular” doesn’t mean worthwhile. This is such a dumb argument; if fentanil is so bad for you, then how come so many people use it? If McDonald’s is such terrible quality food, then why do so many people eat it each day?

My dude, you don’t have to post it. There are a ton of good sources sources that lean solidly conservative. The Calgary Sun, The Wall St. Journal, National Review, Christian Science Monitor… Post trash that has no basis in fact looks every bit as frothing-at-the-mouth unhinged as it does when people on .ml post garbage from The Mint Press.

For fucks sake, learn some media literacy.

Conservatives and deeply questionable sources; is there any more iconic combination?

To quote the most famous questionable source: “Fake news.”

A substack written by one person, and an unverified claim reported in a second questionable source is not solid evidence. It’s not even shaky evidence, because it’s not evidence.

I think that holding the executives and BoD in criminal contempt of court is a good place to start.

EDIT: AFAIK Telegram doesn’t use warrant canaries.