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
Well right, and Congress has already appropriated it, but more directly, the president HAS TO pay off debts.
The Constitution is specific, there is no choice, the president doesn't get to decide, he has to pay the debts.
I know Biden has spent months threatening not to, as if he has a choice, but he does not, he has to pay them. Or face impeachment.
Yeah but I'm trying to emphasize sort of the next level higher: without an understanding of civics for example it's hard for a person to even know who the powers that be ARE.
If some guy straps on a badge and makes a big show of suggesting what you should do if you don't want something bad to happen, unless you have an understanding of civics, you can't really know whether that guy even has a way of enforcing his "suggestions", Even if we assume he's utterly corrupt.
Is this person part of the powers that be? Does the lady at the DMV with a loud enough actually have a force that might come break your teeth? Or are they just a minor paper pusher? Got to know the civics to know whether they can follow through on threats!
No, the Treasury reports that it has plenty of money to cover the debt, regardless of what the politicians are selling, so Biden just needs, and is constitutionally required to, have the Treasury service its debts as they come due.
The Treasury brings in trillions of dollars but the debt servicing only costs something like $500 million, so it has the money. It just has to pay the debts, as it is constitutionally obligated to do.
This wouldn't even be a discussion except that the president is pushing for more power to borrow.
Firstly, let me emphasize that part of civics is knowing whether or not a police officer can legally detain you. I think that sort of thing is very practical knowledge.
But anyway to your point, there's more to democratic engagement than merely voting. There is the overall discourse, the overall perception of government, and just for example, a protest may have impact even if that impact is not direct and visible.
I would even say that pretty often a protest might fail to have much impact specifically because the asks of the protesters are misguided, based on ignorance of how government actually functions.
Anyway, there are just so many sides to this, so many ways that people interface with government outside of voting, and so many ways that civics education, or lack thereof, does impact people's lives.
@parker For any country that aspires for any sort of democratic engagement they absolutely have a say in, and it's pretty darn important that they know what they are talking about if they are to exercise that say.
We live in a time when people ranging from politicians to TV hosts to social media influencers are vociferously making statements about government, but if the population doesn't know how their government works then they are unprepared to either be one of those speakers or judge whether those speakers are telling them correct things.
That's not to mention giving people the knowledge they need to protect themselves, whether it's knowing whether a parking fine is valid or knowing the limits on how they can be approached by police.
#Civics is so important even practically in any governmental system that goes beyond just telling residents to shut up and let officials do whatever they want. Which is an option, but not one I would go for.
volkris
boosted
Sculptures of Dante and Homer from the front of the former Albany Academy in the Woodlands area of Glasgow. Dating from 1875, the sculptor is unknown.
#glasgow #sculpture #dante #homer #architecture #glasgowarchitecture #glasgowsculpture #stonework
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.
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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