flipht

Journalists trying to convince each other that they can convince the world to stop bad actors.

But most of us are just trying to keep our heads down to survive, and a large minority is actively engaged in supporting authoritarianism. So it's all very performative.

Exactly.

They aren't giving their money to other people. They're giving their money to their own charities, either that they created or that they have some control over the board.

They get to take a deduction on their personal taxes the year that they move the money, so they move is slowly based on how much they want to limit their tax liability that year. Good year for amazon = move lots of money. Bad year where he can take a business loss = retain direct control over the cash.

Then when it comes time to spend it, they know what it's getting spent on. Vaccines for the poor like Bill Gates? Buy up pharma stocks. Climate change initiatives? Buy up stock in carbon capture companies, solar companies, etc.

They make this money back, and they get a benefit every time it moves.

Iran can sell their oil to whomever can buy it.

But this was apparently a US company violating US law, so...to your point...the US's sovereign right to enforce their law and confiscate contraband from their citizen.

There's a great book that highlights the systemic nature of these enforcement systems called The Poverty Industry.

I agree with you overall, but they are not "in adult prison" - they're in a separate section, fenced off from the rest of the prison. LA juvenile facilities have been in disrepair for years, and the kids often riot and wreck shit (I would too if I were in their situation, so I'm not judging), but that means the normal facilities often aren't suitable either. They're basically renting space from Angola.

We just had some major prison reforms, but we still need a lot of changes to the juvenile system.

And the rules won't change because most of the Senate loves that someone else can halt things, take the heat, and then they won't have to deal with unpopular decisions.

Not in this case, but they're literally willing to force the military fuck over career professionals so that they can keep their cushy plausible deniability.

Aka breathing. So intense.

Since so much of our social safety net is run by states, and since so much is based on poverty numbers, it's interesting to learn how that poverty threshold was originally calculated

Spoiler alert, it was just made up by some bureaucrat's personal beliefs about "expected costs" for a "normal family."

https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/about/history-of-the-poverty-measure.html#:~:text=The%20current%20official%20poverty%20measure,account%20for%20other%20family%20expenses.

It hasn't been adjusted for the insanity of today's expenses, not even counting inflation. In the 60s, they didn't have the same medical, educational, or transportation costs we do, let alone other stuff like rent and daycare.

It's literally a meaningless figure that is kept artificially low to limit who is eligible for assistance.

Same with the whole "social experiment" thing they accuse everyone of.

In fact, their childhoods were the biggest social experiment ever. Suburbs, nuclear families with mothers who needed uppers to do everything expected of them, easy access to free and cheap education and loans, etc. They act like it's the way things always were, and that it's the only way things should ever be.

It was all a fluke of the post war economy. Not normal, not sustainable, and trying to appease their fantasy is killing the world.

Yeah, well, when did we start using that term? Was it before billionaires? Because if you act like billionaires are normal individuals and ignore the fact that they can function as if they can force governance on others, then you're just begging for the corpo-state instead of an elected government.

This. We are over here wasting time thinking that all Americans are basically good and just need the right information to make better decisions, while tehressives laugh at us and love that we waste time trying to convince them of anything.

They are all using the wealth of a small nation to push their personal agenda.

So while some might have good intentions, and some might be cartoon villains, it is still a disproportionately powerful individual who is able to subvert all the rest of us without breaking a sweat.