volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
I would emphasize civics especially considering how many adults these days really have no idea how their government functions, or even what their own role is in the governmental system.
You're looking at the wrong branch of government.
Paying things, whether it's debts or buying fighter jets or anything else, is an executive branch function carried out by the Treasury. It's not up to Congress because they are the legislative branch. It is up to the president to have his Treasury pay the debts, and Congress has no say in that.
This is why we really need to call out the president for threatening not to pay debts. He keeps using that as spin to point the finger at the other branch of government when in reality it's 100% up to him.
Meh, if her constituents believe this is the best representation for them, well, that's there prerogative.
It's really between her and the people she is hired to represent.
Sure I will circle on top of your image from before, circling in blue even just tax receipts versus interest paid in servicing the debt.
The #DebtCeiling narrative that most have bought into is so backwards from how the federal government is actually designed, and so what's actually happening here.
And the reality is much more interesting and dramatic.
Fundamentally, this is a president requesting more power, power to borrow. Alright, what does he want to use to convince the Congress to expand his power like that? Well, his rhetoric has been to offer nothing: he demands that power without proposing anything in exchange for it, not even checks on how he's to use the power.
But to give his position SOME oomph he's been on a tear in the public, threatening to order the US Treasury, his executive branch department mind, to default on US debt, which would be unconstitutional and, IMO, impeachable.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have voted to give him expanded power to borrow, and they're the only group who have done so, and yet THEY'RE the problem? The only ones that have responded to the president's request?
Oh, and let's not forget that this president signed the legislation to put the US in this position in the first place, almost like he set the stage for this power grab.
It's quite the dramatic story, that most people seem to be missing.
Yeah, I think it would be worthwhile to standardize a tag that could mark content as advertisement/commercial, assuming such a standard doesn't already exist.
I could imagine a bunch of people being upset by the proposal, though, seeing it as enabling spam, which I'd say is misguided as it would do more to empower users to deal with spam.
Well it's not really about extending ActivityPub. It'd be about servers/instances declining to act on such content as it comes in.
Instance owners are free to do with their computers as they wish.
What this quote misses is that this IS the normal process of legislation.
The president wants more power to borrow, and that requires legislation, so the House passed the legislation our representatives could agree on, and they await the Senate passing its proposal, so they can then go to conference and find consensus.
That is how the normal process of legislation works.
We can disagree about whether they show bias. IMO they're bias is just dripping from them, but that doesn't actually matter here. We can speak purely about the magnitude of the funding, whether it is significant or not.
Is the funding significant?
Again, questions about how they are trying to spin it in the PR, their strategies to get money out of individual donors, all of that, is beside the simple question, is their level of government funding significant or not?
It's great that they are trying to downplay it. I think it's funny that you acknowledge that representation as a positive thing, but whatever.
It all comes back to the question of whether the level of funding is significant or not.
But House GOP are the only ones so far to have addressed the issue, having passed legislation to authorize borrowing.
The last Congress really left a mess here, that Biden signed off on to be sure, promising to spend money that they knew didn't exist and that they declined to provide. We really need to call these politicians out for having created that mess in the first place.
And now Biden is threatening to order a default unless he's given additional power to get out of the crisis he signed into law?
No, Biden is the slime here. The rest of us are just trying to figure out how to deal with his crisis.
Of course there's a conflict of interest! They are reporting on the government that is giving them money. That is absolutely a conflict of interest, regardless of whether it was intentional or not.
Whether they are or are not is a separate question.
I just focus on the simple fact that they are accepting funding from government, and if the amount is so small has to be irrelevant then why take it at all? Unless it's enough to be significant, in which case why deny it?
They are trying to have it both ways, and we should call them out on that.
If they are accepting a significant amount of government funding then they should own it, they should proudly say that the public is supporting them and they are doing good work with that public funding.
Or if they are not accepting a significant amount of government funding then why accept it at all?
It's in Article I section 8:
“The Congress shall have Power [..] To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;”
The debt ceiling is simply what we call the arbitrary amount that Congress has ordered to be borrowed.
So you can see on the left hand side the treasury reporting $1.4 trillion in tax receipts alone, while on the right hand side it's spent less than $400 billion servicing the debt.
$1.4 trillion is a whole lot more than the $400 billion It took to pay those debts.
Treasury has the money.
Oh no I am happy to publicly say it sounds like you are a bootlicker based on what I understand that term to mean, somebody who is really trying hard to support authoritarian efforts.
And based on what you are saying, you are trying hard to support authoritarian efforts.
So yeah, maybe I'm wrong, maybe boot licking isn't supporting authoritarian efforts the way you are, but it is worth a shot. I think it is. Maybe I'm wrong. But for goodness sake stop bootlicking.
You don't think it's kind of silly the phrase you've misunderstood yourself?
You don't see any irony in that?
I mean that's nice, but if this money is so irrelevant then they should let it go.
But if it is so important for them to keep, then they are beholden to the government.
You can say whatever you would like, but I'm just talking about the conflict of interest involved in this funding.
Ha! Sounds like you are saying that you don't want to be casually referred to the information that disproves whatever it is you believe.
Just because it's easy to debunk what you've been told, well, why should that stand in the way?
@professorhank@sfba.social
It ends up being an exercise in gaslighting as I am literally reading the health care plan even as I have the radio on where journalists are letting me know that the plan that I'm reading doesn't exist.
Journalism is in a really bad place these days, flat out denying reality, and unfortunately a lot of people get misled because of it.
Although, just a little aside, the idea of "boot licker" does come to mind when I hear somebody trying so hard to justify the nonsense coming out of such an authority.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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