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 think so, and just to clarify in case I'm unclear here, it's not just that it's not prioritized, but in my experience I've heard from professionals actively arguing against the idea.
Sophistry? The US government is in a really bad place right now, and unless we are clear about what happened, we are not going to be holding to account the politicians who are responsible for putting us in this place.
This is important stuff!
We keep reelecting politicians who keep screwing up, and unless we correct the record and stop letting them point fingers elsewhere, we're just going to get more of the same, more of this over and over.
The politicians that promised spending without actually funding their programs have really put us in a bind now, but we reelected most of them because we never call them out for what they have done.
Let's change that, and get better government officials in place.
No a limit does not question the validity of the debt. Exactly the opposite! The limit makes very clear what is valid debt, exactly so that people don't have to question it.
Nobody is talking about stopping borrowing here. The entire question is about whether there can be more borrowing, even as existing borrowing continues.
The president wants more power to borrow, and as per the Constitution, he can't have that power without permission of Congress. That's all we're talking about here, the expansion of the president's power.
Our representatives are skeptical of expanding the president's power, so they are negotiating that expansion, exactly as the Constitution calls for as part of the checks and balances design of the federal government.
They're not stopping him from borrowing, though. The Treasury will continue to borrow as it has been authorized previously. This is a question of new borrowing power.
There is no panacea. But at least it would be nice to at least be able to say, senator I am pretty sure this video is real and not a deep fake seeing as it has a signature that matches your personal key.
Was his key hacked? Did he give it to a staffer that abused it to embarrass him? Did a quantum computer simply bypass it? Maybe. But at least it's something other than simply hearing him deny that it really is him in a deep faked video.
A Band-Aid on the festering wound that is humanity is still an improvement :-) Well, that's probably darker than I really would put it myself.
Constitutionally (and financially) they are two different processes, though, authorizing spending versus authorizing borrowing.
The last Congress approved a bunch of spending, but they didn't provide funding for it. We really need to call out those politicians for doing that and putting us in this situation.
Yes, now the president is constitutionally required to pay debts, and I really wish he would stop threatening to default as that would be an impeachable offense in my opinion. The 14th Amendment is clear that he does not have that option.
They sure have made a mess of things.
Of course the debt limit is in the Constitution. It's right there in Article 1, which assigns to Congress the authority to borrow against the credit of the United States.
And that's a pretty important issue! If we are going to be obligating generations of Americans to paying back debts we want to make sure the democratic process confirms that we really want to do that.
The debt limit is merely the term we use to describe the amount that, as per Constitution, our representatives have authorized to be borrowed.
I absolutely can blame Biden and the last Congress for not authorizing borrowing to provide money for the spending the authorized. They 100% had that ability, and they 100% didn't provide that funding, leading us to this situation.
They promised to spend more money than there was, and they chose to do that freely, as they had the full authority to authorize borrowing along with their appropriations bill. Congress has that power. They didn't bother using it.
I can blame that fact on Biden and the last Congress because that's exactly what they did, willfully.
We are here in this position because of the legislation that the last Congress chose to pass and that Biden chose to sign, even though this disconnect between spending and funding was obvious. It was right there in the math for all to see.
Sounds like the case was pretty weak, quoting from the lower court:
"What’s more, neither of the two plaintiffs who has had an abortion contends that a third party’s cremation or burial of fetal remains would cause her to violate any religious principle indirectly. What these two plaintiffs contend is that cremation or burial implies a view—the personhood of an unborn fetus—that they do not hold. They maintain that only human beings are cremated or buried. This is questionable. Dogs, cats, and other pets may be cremated or buried, sometimes as a result of legal requirements not to put animals’ bodies in the garbage."
The thing about #Trump is that he thrives on people getting energized around him, including calls for boycott. That's the sort of thing that keeps him in the game.
I'm not watching, nor am I boycotting, simply because I'm not going to play his game and keep him around.
If we'd ignore him he'd get bored and go home. "Trump who?" should really be the bumpersticker slogan if we want to move past the guy.
He WANTS us to boycott him.
PS: I truly believe that we would elect better people to serve in government if we all knew the rules better, if we had more education in civics.
It's always sad to me to see, every four years, people simultaneously eager to vote and also asking for a reminder on how we elect presidents.
It's a dangerous game to play if it's full of people who don't know the rules.
It's a weird thing to say, considering the trust fund is already, by law, deposited into the general fund of the Treasury to be spent like anything else.
That money is already accounted for.
For years I've been beating a drum that we should normalize the cryptographic signing of mainstream content, for example politicians signing with their own identities to certify that a quote or video clip is real and accurate.
Not only would that help assure that a quote wasn't taken misleadingly out of context, but in this new age it would help protect against outright deepfakes.
Unfortunately, I've often heard journalists respond that such a norm would interfere with journalistic independence, and lead to people being skeptical of journalists.
I think such responses get it exactly backwards.
In any case, yep, I'm still beating the drum, but sadly I think the ship has sailed and we're now entering the more dangerous waters without that protection in place.
Wow, that's quite the conspiracy theory you have there.
But in the end this crisis was set up by the last Congress that appropriated money out of accounts that wouldn't have enough to fund the appropriations, thus leading to the crisis.
I hardly think the Democrats who passed that legislation were focused on helping out the fossil fuel industry. I'd say they were just bad at their jobs.
@VuAustern
Welcome to democracy.
Ha, CRs don't pass themselves!
The problem isn't the CR. The problem is politicians that we elect that promise spending they don't actually fund, run by bragging about that, and then we reelect because we don't pay attention to the problem they've set us up for.
The problem isn't the CR. The problem is the politicians, from the last Congress, who actively voted us into this position.
You're missing the point that the appropriations didn't come with funding to appropriate.
Yes, they appropriated money out of an account that didn't have money.
The debt ceiling is absolutely a real thing, right there in the original Constitution, that requires it since in Article I it gave to Congress authority "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States"
That's your debt ceiling right there, the amount that Congress has chosen to borrow.
Yeah, but Democrats have a history of rejecting this exact issue, refusing to get behind legislative efforts to make birth control OTC.
Also, it's one of my gripes that this administration in particular was ignoring FDA advisory panel conclusions during COVID.
I figure they will follow this advice, but I still wish they were held accountable for their past actions.
The GOP voted for giving the president authority to borrow more money.
Democrats have not, meanwhile the Democratic president is still threatening not to pay the country's debts.
Given those facts it is pretty silly to say it's the GOP holding the US economy hostage.
Sure.
The Electoral College has very few constraints on who they can choose for president. Being convicted of a civil crime is definitely not in the list of disqualifiers.
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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