I was very happy when I heard Affirmative Action was ending. The only friend of mine who was happier was the one whose husband is from Africa, and whose kids have even more to lose than my little (huge) mutts.
“To lose?” You say. “But Affirmative Action gives preference to people of color! Surely the fact you were so happy means you want to hold minorities down!”
You — the imaginary voice in my head, or the liberal reading this post to try to figure out the depths of my evil — really need to stop making me hit my head so hard on this here desk that I leave dents.
Affirmative Action meant that people were advanced on the basis of color or declared/perceived ethnicity, yes. But what that meant, in actual fact, is that people got advanced without the least interest in their competence.
And because this started with colleges — or earlier, to look good on paper — it was harder for people who tanned to get decent educations. (Or women. Of course women — white women — were the largest contingent to benefit from AA! Which is how “the lady’s A” became a thing in a lot of places, and women crumpled when faced with a real challenge. Put a pin in that.)
The truth is that Affirmative Action, being a numbers game, isn’t a matter of giving preference to someone who is otherwise the same as every other candidate but has a slightly deeper tan or happens to be a woman.
No, being run by the government, it is the bluntest of instruments, so they will promote anyone with the irrelevant characteristic and since the random person isn’t particularly competent well, there you have it.
So what it does is sort of establish a nobility of birth — anyone born with this characteristic gets a leg up despite merit or lack there of — reduce the overall competency EVERYWHERE, cause resentment in people who know they are more competent than those advanced above them (whose work they often have to do) and oh, yes, multiply “victim categories” as everyone wants to get a piece of the AA pie. As part of it, of course, since the people advanced are unlikely to be competent (picking for any reason other than competence dilutes competence) it also increases racism and racial tensions. And of course those who feel themselves resented will attribute it to racism — which it is, even if incited by the stupid rule.
What it does, in fact, is fracture American society, men against women, people who tan against the pale, the pale against those who tan, the varying shades of tan against each other. It also makes everyone concentrate on everything BUT the mission. if you’re counting heads, you’re not thinking about your main work objective.
Look, we’ve had over sixty years of this. If it were going to bring about magical integration and an erasure of race, we’d know by now.
Instead it has multiplied “ethnicities” and a sense of resentment, victimhood, and people hating each other as general classes of human widgets.
Turns out the way to make sure there’s no racism is to stop talking about race, thinking about it, or even considering it. And if you are a liberal and thinks not noticing race makes one a racist, you’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed you have not a hint of a glimmer of a link to reality.
Yes, I do know that a lot of people are scared by the end of AA. That’s because they’ve been extensively lied to.
As my friend told me when we heard of this, “Finally, Dr. King’s dream is coming true, and people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”
And it’s about d*mn time.
Free of being lumped into arbitrary categories at last. Free of thinking of each other as arbitrary paint chips or what is between our legs. Free of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Free to advance as far as our minds and ability and willingness to work at last. Free to be Americans at last.
Thank G-d Almighty, all of us, free at last.
According To Hoyt 
what can’t go on, won’t.
speaking of things that can’t go on, the oligarch’s AI dream is foundering. As we speak now that China has successfully shown how to steal the whole thing. All you need is $1.5Billion in NVDA boxes and presto. Where the sanctions fit in to this is … interesting. Still, gonna be a wild day on the street. Don’t have any of it myself, but … gonna be a wild day.
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and yes, Cramer had just called a buy on NVDA, which is down 12% pre market. No word on whether Pelosi took a short position. I’ll let you know if I find out she did,
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NVIDIA will be fine. Their product just became much more valuable.
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There’s this defense and security teat sucking PhD named, IIRC, Corr who is proposing export controls on the whole of open source software, as a remedy.
This is actually wildly insane.
There are relatively few PhDs or academics in academia who deal much with ITAR, which is one of several possible regulatory regimes for technology export. So your go tos for places to hire randos to be expert on this are mostly not going to have the experience to reason out the effects using common sense. (Not that common sense is frequent in academia, but the alternative is lawyers who practice technology export control law.)
So, not many academic organizations actually have ITAR controls in place, nor also have spaces they manage to allow international students to access related technology that is not export controlled.
You might think, from the publication carve out in ITAR, and EAR, that export controls would not be that much more costly for academics to deal with, if they are already only doing basic and fundamental applied research. From what I hear, it absolutely is costly, if they take the liability at all seriously.
The first element of the insanity, open source is actually an enormously wide category. Even I can pull any of a number of algorithms from literature, and implement them in a programming language. The way current programming copyright law works, stuff like the Tukey ‘FFT’ discrete fourier transform algorithm might not be IP, but if I write some implementation, I have the copyright for that implementation, and can assign it, or license it, as I see fit. Open source is an extremely broad and very frequently used category of licenses.
FFTW (the fastest fourier transform in the west) is an open source library that implements FFT. It is used by many other FOSS and commercial codes, including the frequently used in academia commercial software Matlab. There are a number of FOSS (free and open source software) packages that are similar to matlab, including the python programming language with the scipy adn numpy FOSS libraries.
The second element of the insanity, is that this amounts to a back door ban on PRC students in participating nations, and maybe international students more generally in technology programs. That might be a good thing to do officially and purposefully, but is terrible to do by accident while doing stuff in a stupid panic. Export controls come into play whenever you or I ‘export’ a technology by teaching it to someone who is not a US national (because we are US nationals), or put it on the internet (1) , or fail to take steps (2) to control access to that information. Universities would have an easier time shutting down entirely (3) than they would either removing open source software from engineering or teaching engineering without exporting ‘open source’ technologies, or getting rid of international graduate students.
The third element is that open source licenses have proved extremely convenient in academic speech about engineering and other software technologies. Lots and lots of software academics like the way that these licenses have eased academic speech, made research more easily reproduced, and reduced training times and costs. Which explicitly includes a lot of physics, mathematics, engineering, chemistry, biology, etc., faculty. Academic fields need some very specialized software, and very specialized algorithms, and they need access to standard references mdoels or implementations.
The technocratic oligarchs behind Biden, maybe behind the Effective Altruism cult, and definitely behind some big name AI software companies, are hugely panicking over this new development, and maybe dangerously insane.
(1) technically it is possible to do security so that something on a computer or the internet is not pretty much automatically considered exported, but you have to understand security and computers
(2) difficult and expensive
(3) okay, open to discussion whether the universities should be shut down, but it should be on purpsoe, not by accident
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I agree it would be better were we to do what we do on purpose as opposed to accidentally. Still, a lifetime studying economics has taught me that we cannot foresee the outcome of the simplest actions whilst we act as though our simple, crude actions can change everything to what we want it to be. Prudence is the rarest of virtues. Self awareness among economists, rarer still.
One thing that does often holds true, and what Altman and the AI bros are finding out, is that the person who invents the tech, seldom reaps the rewards from that tech. Did the inventor reaped the rewards, Gates would be an obscure computer programmer and Zuckerberg would be a dentist.
To give some idea about how big a thing NVDA is. It’s opened as the largest company in the world with a market cap of $3.59 Trillion. It’s off 11.54% as I’m typing. To pick a meaningful metric, that’s an Exxon or 2 Johnson and Johnson’s. The price was stupid to begin with, but that’s how it goes.
Still, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it finish up on the day, because that too is how it goes. If I wanted a restful life, I would have done something else with it than work in the markets.
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The Reader finds it interesting that valuations of ‘AI companies’ are so fragile that a report from China (don’t believe China, China is asshole) was enough to tumble the market this morning. And while the Reader’s read on the history of Moore’s Law is that no hardware architecture company will hold a long term monopoly competitive position, the fact that the drop spilled onto TSMC amazes him.
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The reader’s reader notes that a fool and his money are soon parted.
As for TSM, the bull case for TSM is essentially the same as NVDA: chip sales are going to breed like rabbits without the physical constraints and grow outward from the earth at the speed of light until they consume all the matter in the universe. That too, is how it goes.
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The head of the semiconductor group at Agilent (spun off from Hewlett-Packard) circa 2000 preached the “ever-expanding market” until the dot-com bubble burst in 2001. Curiously, the company switched to selling off divisions (of which his group was the first) to maintain profitability. He talked his way into the CEO chair, though his tenure seems to have ended when Agilent finally sold off all the divisions they could dispose of.
(I was among the first to be RIFFed in 2001. The severance deal was generous for us, perhaps because a) we were older/long term and b) then they could avoid age discrimination lawsuits. Followup waves got less benefit as the operations were moved offshore and then sold off. TSMC was the final(?) owner of the HP/Agilent semiconductor products, though KKR was the first to buy the product line.)
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’96 sell off of the West Coast Timberlands of IP was to give the out going CEO a bonus quarter. Initially proposed as selling the division intact, or spinning it off. Options A or B. Instead got hit with option C. Sell the assets. Severance was 2 months in lieu of shutdown notice + outstanding vacation & sick + 2 weeks/year service + dislocated (because timber) workers program and “education/training” money + started unemployment benefits as soon as job shutdown (which for most of us was 1 month after notice). For me amounted to about 6 months of double dipping + two seminars. I hadn’t been with IP for 20 to 30 years like some.
Now ’02 bankruptcy of PSC, sucked. It was two weeks severance + outstanding vacation (forget outstanding sick days, those went bye-bye), and sign non-compete or nothing. Did not matter when you went.
Sister’s and BIL’s severance from HP was similar to yours. Those who went for the initial “Golden Parachute” (they did), did a lot better than the ones who waited to see if the offer would get better. The ones finally forced out, to make up the wanted reduction numbers, “chose poorly”.
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This is classic closed-source vs open-source economics.
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Yep, no moat. No sustainable competitive advantage. I would have thought Grok would have popped the bubble, but that too is how it goes. It’s down over 15% now. $557 Billion. More than a Mastercard and a little less than a Visa.
This is fine.
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At the close, NVDA down 16.97% or $609 Billion. Broadcom off 17.4%. TSC off 13.33%. A trillion here and a trillion there and soon you’re talking about real money. The boutique chip makers were off 30-40%, but the rest of the AI data center bubble appears intact. It’ll be interesting to see if it all reverses tomorrow.
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here’s the thing and why Input this here What’s more likely, that China managed to duplicate Chat GPT for $6MM or that China had $1.5 bIllinois in NVDA boxes they shouldn’t have had and the whole thing is just another lie. Note that open source only if you have a Chinese telephone number and China is a—ho
in either case NVDA would be in big, big trouble.
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The Reader notes that Qualcomm, which is heavily into wireless, wasn’t impacted. And Arm has had its own roller coaster over the last 5 days but finished where it was five days ago. He is still surprised at TSMC – as long as the fabs are running at capacity, they make money.
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Yep. Learned that in business school. It’s why I sometimes remind my beloved when he’s looking at stock in something new that it’s the second guy who often makes big.
OTOH he’s pretty good at picking winners and he fully understands the philosophy of, “win some, lose some.”
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“One thing that does often holds true, and what Altman and the AI bros are finding out, is that the person who invents the tech, seldom reaps the rewards from that tech.”
Ironically, the Transformer itself was a Google invention that other companies have run with. Google has Bard and Gemini, but they’re nowhere close to dominant in the space they helped create.
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With respect to export controls on open source software, I find it amusing that both my operating system and main browser are both open source and maintained by people in Europe. OTOH, I gave up on the French search engine, though since I’ve made some adjustments, it may be worth a retry.
I am not a Europhile, but “minor” things (like Linux–remember Linus Torvalds?) would get interesting with open-source controls. (OTOH, MS has been trying to body-check Linux out of the market from time to time…)
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Yeah, the big technomancers thought they were creating the Replacement of Man, when in actually they’ve only managed to create an Infinite Ninja Spigot.
Thing is, when you are starting from nothing, even incompetent ninjas are useful if they’re borderline free and endless.
Ref:
High Employee Turnover – Penny Arcade
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/02/20/high-employee-turnover#
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My concern is what did China embed in that software? Better give that gift horsey a thorough dental exam.
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Amen.
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Followed by a thorough colo-rectal exam, x-rays, and bomb dog sniffing.
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There was a woman (of color) on X complaining that people couldn’t believe she’d gotten into Harvard on her own merits.
Well, no kidding, My entire lifetime we’ve been giving preferential treatment to people based on their plumbing and melanin level, and in the last decade or so we added their perceived plumbing, and the plumbing (and species) of their preferred partners. The only people we can be sure made it into Harvard purely on merit are Asian men and White men without family connections. Everyone else is suspect to some degree.
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I believe that’s the worst effect of AA; it fosters the assumption among the non-preferred that every member of the preferred advanced through “special treatment”. Even if they’re the most competent among the candidates, how can that be proven at the time when they get the prize regardless?
I just hope it can stay gone.
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Well, Kamala Harris and Karine Jean-Pierre are pretty much proof of the failure of AA.
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No kidding.
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To be fair, there have always been dumb people in high places, or heavily drugged/drinking people who started out brilliant, or lazy people with connections. I think “connections” had more influence on the career paths of Harris and Jean-Pierre.
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100%
I can name some. None of which are DEI related. Some could be perceived to be, but aren’t. Some, are “of coarse they are in those positions because”:
*BIL owns business
*FIL owns business
*Dad owns business
My response to all three of the above is “They earned where they are.” Will said businesses continue on with the next generations? Probably not. None are interested.
OTOH we have a small established business locally that is working their 4th generation into the business. We’ll see if they have any willing to take over management when it is their turn. (Gilbert Center, Sports Bar, Putters: Pizza + Laser Tag + Putter Golf + general computer games, and Strike City Bowling, all part of the business). Another local long term business (also Pizza + Putter Golf + Merry Go Round), is on first or 3rd generation, Roaring Rapids. Grandpa built it in the late 50’s or early 60’s (was there when I was 5 in ’61). Pizza + Merry Go Round + old western facade with old west movie theme town could see into various rooms out front. None of his kids interested in taking over, so everything sold. Was a corporate Pizza with bar adults only in back building and families in front building. Decades later (mid-’80s) few of the grandchildren got together and bought the buildings and land back from the failing pizza corporation. Never brought back the old western theme area, but did add two 18 hole golf putt putt coarse, and brought back the old Merry Go Round. They should be having their children running the place by now. We go to Putter’s more because Gilbert Center is just down from us on hwy 99. Roaring Rapids OTOH is south through downtown down hwy 99 and Franklin, down past UofO, just north of the bridge into downtown Springfield.
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Or Sonia Sotomayor, who’s actually admitted that AA was required for her.
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I’ve been thinking that AA would tend to concentrate productivity among white men. It’s turning the old discrimination argument around, If, as is said, women and minorities have to work harder and better because they are purportedly discriminated against, it would follow that white men, who are discriminated against, no purportedly here, must work harder and better or they wouldn’t be in the positions they are. Over time, AA would have to be extended further and further because the surviving white men would be better and better. Sort of a reverse Gresham’s Law. This would explain why those areas where AA is pushed the hardest are the least functional.
Paradoxically, or not, it punishes the hard working and productive among the favored class, but that’s another argument, It certainly rewards the lazy and the useless. Funny how Elon cut all the little blonde girls and nothing bad happened.
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It does. And small companies not working for government have been hiring accordingly for 30 years.
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My beloved made it company policy to never go after government contracts. It worked out OK.
One of our favorite charities, Midwest Distribution Center’s founder had the same policy. Take no government money. They have a nice endowment now.
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THIS
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Pretty much this – every more or less competent woman or person of color has to know (and it has to eat at them!) that everyone assumes at first glance that they got to where they are because of their sex or color — not their competence. It has to eat at those who are totally incompetent even more. It honestly must be soul-destroying for tokens like Karine Jean Pierre, the worst presidential spokes-mop in recent history.
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THIS THIS THIS
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I can see why a normal person would be affected, but I wonder if people like KJP are sufficiently narcissistic/psychopathic for it to be seen as their due. Self awareness is rare anywhere and rarer still in DC.
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Some of the DEI hires are definitely “sufficiently narcissistic/psychopathic for it to be seen as their due”. See Claudine Gay for example.
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And Karen “Bigmouth” Bass, the Castrophilic mayor of Los Angeles….
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I read that as “catastrophilic”. Both work, I suppose.
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Most of the people I’ve worked with have been pretty sharp, even if they’re not book-smart. It’s very disconcerting when you run into somebody who’s dumb by choice, or by complete and total lack of effort and caring. And when those kinds of persons come along, they come in both sexes, all colors, all nationalities, and all religions.
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There’s also the obnoxious thing where you are clearly a token, so here’s the nonsense timewasting work that a chimp could do– oh, but you’re still assigned the normal work.
:raises hand in got stuck doing her work, the scutt work, cleaning up the guys’ paperwork, and being picked as the space-filler for ship events so the photographs looked more diverse:
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Your fault. There aren’t very many dwarven-Americans…. (Runs.)
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Yeah, yeah, trouble goes down hill, and I’m down hill….
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:puts on sunglasses:
Underhill.
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LOL
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Glorious.
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Story I read–I thing it was one of the introductory bits in one of the anthologies Jerry Pournelle edited–where the teller was approached and given a badge “SOPOAHWG.” When explained that this meant “Society of People of Average Height with Glasses” he looked up at the person handing out the badges and said, “average height?” The giver of the badges then said “I am prepared to prove that eighty percent of the human race consists of dwarves.”
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The Reader has noted elsewhere that the DEI / AA presence is like a bedbug infestation. It will take repeated doses of legal and cultural DDT to eradicate it.
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I know this isn’t true now — they did admit David “Camera” Hogg, the Florida school shooting “victim” and now a poster child for leftist ‘thought’, but not for merit; he had been TURNED DOWN by at least 2 or 3 other schools, and he hadn’t even considered Harvard until they invited him.
Why did Harvard want him? Virtue signaling, pure and simple. By letting this doofus in, and thus excluding a merit-based applicant, Harvard has further watered down the social capital it has had for years.
I am thinking that this kind of acceptance certainly predates Mr Hogg– I bet at least 30 years, if not more.
“Veritas” (Harvard’s motto) my ass…..
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“Boss” Hogg didn’t have family connections, but the MSM connections he did have were even more valuable. He got in in spite of his skin tone, simply by being a mouthpiece for The Narrative.
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I feel compelled to insert the old truism.
You can always tel a Harvard man.
You just can’t tell him much.
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I wish it was that easy. Unfortunately it’s going to take a LOT more work to rip this out root and branch in the private sector. ESG has taken very strong roots in corporate America and it’s going to take one hell of a lot of Roundup to kill it off. Witness the fact that my employer, a company comfortably in the bottom half of the Fortune 500, has a large and extremely vocal DEI/ESG organization led by a senior VP in charge of “culture and inclusion”… Which for some reason never bothers to Include your garden variety Cultureless Man, White, Mk 1. And our current C-suite is tripling down on making all the right “diversity and Inclusion” noises while allowing in-group nepotism to run wild in hiring (coughIndianscough).
This past week has been a whirlwind and Trump has been moving at “warp speed” (pun intended) and I’m here for it. It’s a great start and the end of AA in governmental hiring and contracting is massive to be sure. But it’s only the opening salvo in a very long struggle. Let’s get to it.
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The announcement that Target was dropping DIE included a BTW that the shareholders in Costco voted to retain DIE by an announced 98%. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given the wokeness of the place, particularly in the Covidiocy era, but I also wonder if they borrowed the 2020 ballot processing people.
I’m down to Costco visits twice a year (requires an overnight stay, and one coincides with a medical appointment), but there are items which (right now) are sole source. OTOH, I’ve found second sources for a lot of stuff. Might need to look further.
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The Costco vote was really disappointing.
OTOH at the store level not seeing DEI in obvious action. If there was there would be a lot more people of obvious tanning and foreign languages spoken of the staff (shoppers – yes, staff – no).
Maybe DEI voted to retain, because it really has no effect at the lowly retail level?
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At my local one, I’ve never seen a lanyard-bearer that wasn’t hustling at full tilt. Now, whether they’re hustling to do the RIGHT thing, I can’t say – but I’ve had no complaints with the service.
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For a while, we had memberships in both Costco and Sams’. Then we let the Sams’ lapse, because … why? Much of a muchness, at that point. And we really do like the Kirkland’s brands of various commodities. But we may just go back to Sam’s and drop Costco altogether, when the membership comes up for renewal.
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Sam’s Club isn’t an option north of the California-Oregon border, and crossing that boundary isn’t something I need, nor plan to do. (They’re not in Washington, either, and Idaho Falls is just too far.) So, kind of stuck, though we buy regularly at US Food’s Chef’Store, and they have a lot of stuff we used to get at Costco.
Generally*, I’ve had positive experiences at Costco. There are things like
Foster FarmsKirkland boneless/skinless chicken breasts that aren’t in reasonable sized packages locally. (We are not a restaurant. We do not have a walk-in freezer. We are not buying the 60 pack… :) )((*)) Modulo the junior manager who insisted my face diaper had to cover my nostrils. Lasted until I was out of his sight, then switched back to the “Breathing Enabled” position.
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Yes. Covid tied Costco into knots. OTOH Oregon was breathing down their necks, in Eugene at least.
Not to mention the beep, blank, bleep, repeat, local non employee Karen who gleefully pointed to anyone not wearing their mask (properly). As I took a tiny nibble out of whatever was being handed out that I could actually eat. Or took a drink of my Pepsi. Same problem with a small service dog (she’s retired now). Never mind that the gatekeeper employees had already asked the two questions they are legally allowed to ask on the way in.
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I have membership at both.
samsclub has free shipping, so I don’t have to struggle with heavy/awkward items.
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My employer has announced-but-not-really-announced (if you know what I mean) that they will be effectively doubling down on our corporate DEI and ESG initiatives. At least part of that is so we can secure government contracts: there are few states where, by law, if the contract is over a certain amount, a certain minimum percent of the spend has to go to certified Minority- and/or Women-owned Business Enterprises. Those are (generally) very lucrative contracts, and if we want to get them we need to establish a healthy network of MWBE-certified subcontractors.
But most of it, I think, is just baked into the company culture. We brag on our website about the demographics of our workforce, and how the majority of our C-suite is women. And we publish a corporate ESG report every year where we brag about our DEI and Green initiatives. There’s more (though thankfully my team is fairly insulated from it, but that said I’m the only male on the team), but suffice to say I don’t see us shifting away from DEI and ESG any time soon.
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You will. First slowly, then very suddenly.
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The number of minority owned/woman owned businesses I’ve encountered that exist as a paper cutout to qualify for a contract is substantial.
If you’re an auditor at the SEC, say, the rules about beneficial ownership are comparatively clear. But many jurisdictions do not apply that level of scrutiny to their own procurement process.
Net result? One job we worked on had twice the paperwork due to minority business requirements, so we had two separate contracts. The compliance paperwork went to the same address for both. The general contractor’s wife had a Certified Woman-Owned Business, that just happened to be in the same industry. And building.
—
I wonder about that Certified Woman language. Is there a test? Can a trans qualify?
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The end of federal preferences for MWBE is going to put a lot of these cut-out businesses out of a job. I know of many who bid for contracts and then subcontract the actual work to the real beltway bandit company (SAIC etc.). Of course now the beltway bandits are going to have to do the tedious bid registration paperwork themselves so maybe they’ll just hire the MWBE proprietors to do that for the, just not at the same commission they got when they were the lead contractor
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Libs of TikTok posted about the good news — but reminding everyone to keep an eye out for re-branding and promising to publicize it what is brought to her attention.
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I am reminded how counterfeits drive out real products, always.
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Seems that Air Force decided on malicious compliance to the “No DEI” order. Name changes of DEI to “corporate culture”. Banned the topics of Tuskegee Airman and WASPS from Basic Training.
I am seriously hoping we see “Report to office of secdef by 0900 Tuesday from the CPT/NCO that did these up the entire chain to the head General of the AirForce. Followed by “relieved for cause” and “arrest pending court-martial for mutiny”.
Not your fault General? You allowed it to happen. You fermented a culture where this sort of thing was even thinkable. Your chain of command just told the Commander in Chief “Go F(HONK!) yourself and your lawful order.” Thus it is -you- who are going to get f(HONK!)ed.
They can argue degree of culpability at trial. ALL of them are -done- no matter what. Because the very next thing is either “This better never ever happen again. or “There is going to be a whole lot more of this.” And that latter option will mean cleanup by firing squad.
Mark my words. Mark this date. -This- is the fate of the nation if not smashed flat ASAP.
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I saw quotes of a memo telling people that if they witnessed such chicanery, they would get whistleblower protections as needed. The second part of the memo mentioned that if they didn’t do such, they could be prosecuted/sanctioned for letting it go on. I don’t think they’re kidding.
Somebody’s going to get HONKed, and I don’t think it’s going to be POTUS and SECDEF.
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Gee. Failure to obey a lawful order.
Time to start handing out some courts-martial.
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If the only place those historical items appeared were in heavily DEI lessons, then pulling them would have been following a lawful order, and you’re all talking about punishing people for doing what we want them to do.
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Not from what I have seen of the details. They had been modules in the course for some time; additional DEI lesson modules were added. When told to remove the DEI elements, they didn’t simply return to the previous format; they yanked the whole course, and then leaked it to the press that they had removed teaching about the Tuskegee Airmen / WASP women ferry pilots due to Trump’s DEI removal.
We’ve seen this crap before in FL and TX.
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Some female,who should have known better, put out a long tweet about how to resist Trump’s military plans. Made it sound almost like a sacred duty.
She left her name on the tweet….
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Ooh, that one’s gonna hurt.
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As Insty quoted, just below her name she wrote: “pick your battles carefully and leave no trace.”
They don’t make them smart, do they?
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No, they go to great lengths to make ’em stupid.
‘Idiots like that are not born, they are made.’
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Libs of TikTok made her name on such people.
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Courts-Martial’s while under a declared state of emergency. I think that is a multiplier for penalties, as well as grounds for expediting the process.
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The doctor who blew the whistle on a hospital secretly performing trans surgeries had charges dropped Friday. With prejudice.
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I would be extremely surprised if that turned out to be what it was reported as.
Because, y’know, Media
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Hegseth squashed that one already, but I’m sure he’ll have to whack-a-mole. And fire-a-general.
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I’m good with that.
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Fermented. . . I like! Much better term in this context than fomented. This has been brewing for much too long.
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Early in the “discussion” about “Affirmative Action”, the defenders of AA would claim that it didn’t include “quotas”.
Yet, how did the government know that a company wasn’t following AA?
Answer, the government (or other busy-bodies) would look at the percentages of “minorities” actually working for the company.
Note, while filling out applications for companies, I also had to fill out a paper stating what “groups” I belong to. Of course, I was told that the information wouldn’t be used in deciding to hire me. Mind you, I didn’t have to fill out my name on that paper. But I suspect that the companies felt they need to know “how many minorities” applied for jobs. Thus, they had the “information” to tell the government how many minorities applied for jobs compared to how many non-minorities applied. IE Covering Their Rear-Ends.
Another problem was that “Human Resources” (terrible name) was really “working for the government” not the business that paid their salaries.
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Since Fourier the mathematician was mentioned, I found out this weekend that there’s also St. Pierre Fourier the saint. He was big on education, and also founded the order of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Canonesses Regular of St. Augustine, who took a fourth vow to educate girls. (The cofounder was Bl. Alix le Clerc, whose name in religion was Mother Teresa de Jesus, after the famous Carmelite.)
And those women teachers allegedly invented the blackboard, sometime in the early 1600’s.
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Oh, please, could we see a bit less advertising with coal-black men posed with snowy blonde women? It’s fine once in a while. David Bowie and Imam were beautiful together. But when I see it in every ad, always the minority male with the very Nordic woman, it gets creepy. Suggestive, even. I hope Madison Avenue catches up quickly.
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Imani. (Bad spell-correct, bad, bad!)
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Yep. It’s now in movies and series. Same as in England. SO TIRED of the fake.
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This is the advertisers’ and ad companies’ way of appeasing the protestors by showing how very non-racist they are. In the “bad old days,” it was severely tabooed for a black guy to be “with” a white woman, so they’re demonstrating how much they disapprove of that. Kind of like how, in the old Communist bloc, a well-advised writer would pepper his writings with quotes from the Marxist saints. Particularly if what he was saying might get him into trouble.
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Kind of like when I hear about the actor who plays the Falcon/Captain America 2 in the MCU saying silly things in a press conference about how for him Captain America isn’t really about America, and I think “huh, they’re still making that Falcon dude pay for that time he shot down the Bucky/Falcon shippers, aren’t they?”
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Basically, yeah.
That guy’s under contract and they went full-on “let’s gut the IP” with him as the actor.
I heard the theory– and believe it– that he’s giving an accurate idea of what the movie is going to be like, on purpose, because that will sink the thing.
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How unpopular is AA? Even here in California the left can’t muster enough votes to overturn a ’90s era ban on racial preferences at public institutions.
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But since they’ve been ignoring it ever since it passed, maybe they aren’t really trying.
Just like CA voters passed a ballot initiative in 2014 directing that new reservoirs be built and filled. Governor just ignored actually building any in favor of “studies”.
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Public institutions haven’t been ignoring the ban. Instead, they found substitute variables that track in similar fashions but aren’t explicitly tied to race. For example, neighborhoods are often grouped by ethnicity, so things like zip codes are used.
It’s not perfect, though,since it’s not explicitly based on ethnicity, and exceptions slip through.
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Yep. University I used to work for, in WA, had (probably still has) a program that offered sizable scholarships on the basis of race — basically, if you didn’t look white and qualified for admission (a state school that bragged about being “exclusive” when their acceptance rate dropped into the mid 80s, so admission wasn’t any kind of a barrier), they’d throw a ton of money at you.
When the law said they couldn’t award scholarships based solely on race, they just switched to an invitation-only campus visit event where they treated people like visiting athletes and awarded $$$ if you subsequently enrolled — using the data they already had to invite only people of the approved ethnicity and covering for it by sorting & correlating the data post facto according to metrics other than the one they had actually used.
It worked. They got a LOT of the people they targeted that way, even more than the old honestly racist way, because they could message it to make students feel like they were wanted due to being great students. (I had to write that messaging; the whole thing made me feel dirty.) “Diversity” numbers went way up, and the people who perpetrated the scam basked in praise.
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That is so horribly Orwellian. And they thought they were doing the right thing, too…
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Par for the course when dealing with these kinds of people. When they’re told not to follow a particular course of action that they want to pursue, they blatantly violate the spirit of the directive.
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Worse– it’s enforced by the government, so this is the least bad option.
Think like CS Lewis’ essay on The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, specifically the most quoted bit, and go down to where he talks about what happens in real life with folks who don’t mean well.
Apply the same sort of “Ok, so what if someone is not a good person?” to the “Chosen One status is relevant for qualification for the job”?
Well, then you have a ready-made excuse to pick someone who is not competent, based on other characteristics– “Agrees With Me” on the innocent end, and “Is giving physical favors as the public girlfriend of a married man in public office, who then pays with public positions” on the not innocent end. To use an example that is nationally known and accepted.
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I wrote an article about this once for L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise (RIP). I compared it to the “purchase system” of obtaining officers’ commissions in the old British Army, and with Mafia corruption.
Lord Cardigan and Doctor Taza | The Libertarian Enterprise
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Hey, send me that to two initials last name at hotmail. I know it’s old but it’s timely to link on instapundit.
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Sent. As long as I am credited as author, anybody who wants may re-distribute it.
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Somewhat related: Second time I was on Kwajalein, the Masonic club (not enough members on hand to constitute a Lodge) worked with the RMI (Republic of the Marshall Islands) public health service to provide transportation once a quarter for a medical team to one of the outer islets in the atoll. As the only Freemason with a small boat license from the recreational marina on the island, I ‘got’ to be the skipper on the voyages.
The team was headed by a couple from the Philippines who would alternate excursions. When Dr. Husband was on team, there would be a very active day in the clinic. When Dr. Wife was in charge, crickets. After observing this for a couple of cycles, I asked my native shop assistant what was going on. He told me that Dr. Wife had a reputation as a Doctor Death, especially to pregnant women and neonates. Apparently she came from a very prominent family in the Philippines and was able to skate through medical school . . .
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Two wrongs don’t make a right but , three lefts do.
This statement has always been correct, on more levels than just the surface.
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My biggest fear?
We’re going to have a lot of commissars with no work to do coming on the market, especially if the Affirmative Action/DEI policies get hard-wound back and companies realize that they don’t need that kind of millstone around their neck.
Millions of professional Karens with nothing to do.
Cleaning them out is vital.
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well, according to the left, there’s a lot of jobs that will go unfilled after Homan deports all the illegals…
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I wouldn’t trust those useless buffoons to pick vegetables, either. :-(
Maybe after a lot of training. Special High-Intensity Training.
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Does the world need more telephone sanitizers?
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I pity anyone in a HOA with them sitting around unemployed looking for targets…
It will be like Harry Mudd’s ex-wife android times a jillion… :o
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There’s a white liberal chick on tiktalk commanding other white liberal chicks to go full ‘karen’ on any ICE officials they see in their neighborhoods because it is their duty to be a distraction and a physical obstacle to keep that person from doing their job.
A lot of people are egging them on and saying they should totally do that, mostly because they want to see the psychos hauled away in cuffs on obstruction charges.
It’s freaking white savior mentality, which is part and parcel of the whole racist AA schtick.
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Leftists on social media are certainly going crazy(er) on ICE actually doing their job and enforcing immigration laws. You have the performative piety pieces of “I’m going to have my send my hispanic daughter to school with her birth certificate now so she doesn’t accidently get deported!” To the unsubstantiated stories of some Puerto Rican guy from New Jersey or member of the Navajo nation in Arizona being detained and questioned. (“Where do you deport Native Americans too?!” Is the “clever” snark of the moment.) Were watching illegal aliens getting deported it’s just like Nazi Germany…somehow.
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It’s very clever, that ICE under the Trump administration is deliberately rounding up and deporting the violent criminal illegal aliens … and if you think that wasn’t calculated to spike the ‘poor widdle crying cheeeeldren’ media narrative, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Kind of makes it hard for the bleeding heart liberal Karens to go all out, defending the deportation of violent criminals, rapists, gangsters and murderers. They will try, reflexively, of course – and look even stupider than normal.
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Lol I LOVED going onto every post of “Look at these poor brown women and children crying at the border becuase of Trump!” attempted guilt trips and responding with “Whew, it’s a good thing these poor oppressed folks are being kept away from a country ruled by an evil, racist, fascist Literally Hitler President, amirite?”
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You are a bad person. well done.
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Meanwhile, uncle carries his passport anytime he and his wife go anywhere. Not a single drop of Latin or black (um, *circle back to that), anything. But black hair (with white/gray these days) and tans dark. This has not changed even during the Obama or Biden years. (FWIW, uncle despises both with passion, and I remember when he was true blue democrat … he got better.)
*Given maiden name, it is tied to a southern plantation. Not many pale people with that last name, anywhere. Given when great-great-grandparents got to Oregon (during or just after CW), given the number of grandchildren and great grandchildren that have tendency to tan very dark, and have dark hair, I suspect that great grands were light enough “to pass” (plantation family apparently got to keep it). But two things wrong with the family history (short of 23&Me), is that side of the family history is lost to history. Grandfather died when I was 2. Plus, no way would anyone prior to, say ’80s, even admit that. Couldn’t prove it by me. My hair was dark, but not black. I tan a nice light brown. Now my son? He has his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s black hair, but does not tan super dark.
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I’m blonde and my brother had blue eyes. My mom was blonde/hazel. Her eldest sister got the black hair and dark brown eyes.
I remember when my dad found an item in the paper about the revocation of SC’s miscegenation law. (I was 12.) Dad thought it very funny and commented that it was lucky they had a second wedding ceremony out of state.
And yet, we’re “white”, for certain values of “some of us tan, and some of us glow in the dark.”
An awful lot of rural whites in the south are borderline qualified to join a tribe, if we had the paperwork to.figure out which one.
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My parents were both from Florida. Like many Southerners, both family trees vanish around 1830.
Once the Fed started “relocating” the tribal Indians, people started wondering how long it would be before they started coming after the half- and quarter-Indians. Or the part-Negros, because why stop with the Indians?
Lots of pages from family Bibles, court records, etc. vanished about that time.
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Mentioned this before. Son had a school mate (class behind him), who has the paperwork to prove tribal memberships. The problem is multiple tribes. If they could point to just one or two on a single reservation, they might have been okay. But no. It is like 8 or so over multiple reservations, plus that pesky Scot or Irish interloper (very much red head, and all that trait implies). Not a single tribe will recognize them. Some who got cut when numbers not needed for governmental subsidies, but the $$$$ were coming in and being shared out from the casino revenues.
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What are they getting their panties in a knot about? Even after illegal aliens are deported, the Democrats will still count their votes.
People don’t have to be dead to vote Democrat, it’s just simpler that way.
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Congressional Apportionment of Representatives relies on living resident bodies.
Absent the illegal aliens, some states might lose a significant number of representatives. This is why they fight tooth and claw to count them in the census, and why they will fight to keep them from being deported.
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They did the same thing way back when the Constitution was being written, resulting in the three-fifths compromise, which lasted nearly a century until the 14th Amendment got rid of it. And then their ideological descendants, ignorant of history, pointed at the three-fifths compromise as being an indictment against the free states! No, you ignorant, blinkered fools, it was the slave states who wanted slaves counted alongside free men, because that way their voting power in Congress would be much greater. Just like some states now want trespassers counted alongside legal residents for the same reason.
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The Founders knew they were making a devil’s bargain with the Southern slave states, but the Revolution was doomed without them on board. We barely won with their help.
Even with the 3/5 provision, and the later deal that saw states admitted in pairs, one free, one slave, the South was still losing ground due to demographics, economics and rising public sentiment against slavery. I suspect that the Founders saw the beginnings of those trends, and considered slavery a temporary problem that would eventually be rendered obsolete.
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Slavery got a big boost with the invention of the cotton gin; prior to that, it was slowly declining. I can’t fault the Founders for not foreseeing the unforeseen consequences of an invention decades in their future.
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And that only delayed the inevitable
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Apportionment is supposed to be based on living residents.
So is voting.
Apportionment should be based only on living resident U.S. citizens. Do that, crack down on election fraud, and you’d see the Democrats’ ‘compassion’ for illegal aliens evaporate when they can’t gain any advantage from them.
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That is why the suspect states sued the census process to prevent noting whether state residents were US citizens. Presume filling out the form per household meant that all entities in the household were not only living, but two legged humans. But maybe not. That is one process, *Only legal living US Citizens count toward the census*, I want to see codified into law by the legislature and signed by President DJT, even if the next census is years away and he’ll be out of office by then.
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Some guy on Substack going on a year long trip through Portugal. Link: https://substack.com/@lukeflunder?r=s4a41&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
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It’s none of my business. He’ll suffer enough.
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“And when he gets to Heaven,
To Saint Peter he will tell:
‘I’ve been to Portugal, you see,
I’ve served my time in hell.”
*grin*
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It’s not that bad. It’s just… confusing.
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A year? What’s he going to do, make sure he steps on every square foot of Portugese dirt? It’s not that big a country.
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Absolutely this.
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NOW Democrats like AOC and Fauxcahontas are squealing about high prices. “Trump promised to bring prices down! Prices are still high! Trump LIIIIEEEED!!“
After 4 years of BidenFlation, the damage is done. Even if Trump pulls off a miracle and cuts inflation to zero, that doesn’t mean those prices will go back down. It just means they won’t keep getting even worse. Bringing prices down would take DEflation, which causes its own set of problems. Which they would also blame on Trump.
I swear they are all stupid enough to support Directive 10-289.
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And has been pointed out (repeatedly), the price data they are quoting and whining about was published for December.
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Inflation is like a hurricane. There’s a lot of clean-up after.
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Heavens, yes.
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If Trump successfully replaces income tax with tariffs, and most especially if there is a big paydown of debt and trend to continue wiping out debt, then deflating currency very slowly has some advantages.
Note that Bitcoin has effectively deflated, making holders better off. A global trend to hold us currency, as if it was inherently valuable, like a stock, could be beneficial.
We are so used to the current paradigm we have all but forgotten 1873-1913. That era’s paradigm was valid, although it had its bumps. We got hornswoggled into believing in stupid, like “Fed”, income tax, and permanent inflation.
We have a chance to fix this.
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does anyone have numbers on what it costs to comply with and administer the fed income tax, vs the equivalent in tariffs? Seems to me there is a major potential savings there
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A quick search… The IRS consumed almost $21 billion in 2024. How much of that was for Biden’s 85,000 additional armed tax collectors is not disclosed.
The Democrats are still squealing over all the government ‘help’ Trump is ‘withholding’ from ‘needy Americans’.
IF THE GOVERNMENT HADN’T TAKEN THAT MONEY FROM THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, THEY WOULDN’T NEED ‘HELP’!!
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The government isn’t. Most of the withheld is from… NGOs There are exemptions for individual payments.
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Well, income tax is easier, and what it costs must include, for ex, my husband’s life being eaten by keeping track of my taxes because self employed.
He could be writing books and music in his spare time, otherwise. WE’d be much better off.
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Yes! Set 140 million Americans free from Tax Hell!
The 16th Amendment was touted as only affecting a few rich people who could easily afford to pay ‘Their Fair Share’. Income tax has crept up on us and grown until it impoverishes everybody who works for a living.
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It makes it genuinely hellish to be a business owner.
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There is a housebill to replace it with a national sales tax. if this passes….
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…they will ‘forget’ to abolish income tax and disband Infernal Ravenous.
Another tax is not the answer. Not a good one, anyway. Cut spending to what we can afford!
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A national sales tax has all the downsides of income tax, while also increasing the costs of each and every good and service that is sold.
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The one (and likely only) good thing to say about a sales tax is that it’s not a VAT.
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I hate all taxes, but we have legitimate functions of government that need to be funded.
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Income tax: the government takes your money before you spend it
Sales tax: the government takes your money when you spend it
Either way, they take your money. Or, they do both.
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Yes. But it lifts the “I work two months for the government” from self-employed. ALSO if it’s not VAT the increase is not ruinous.
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Think about it with an eye on cheating.
You think them being up in our business with income is bad, imagine every single “this doesn’t count” exchange of goods or services being recorded– or required to be recorded, and paid for.
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They already are. Trust me on this.
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They are trying to get this information, and they want this information, but they don’t have it, much less have the ability to destroy folks who won’t give it to them.
Right off the bat, a universal sales tax would mean they’d get all that venmo data– and my husband would stop saving his buddies $3/can on monster by just buying a flat and they pay him back.
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Honestly, the biggest advantage for tariffs or import-type taxes is that the enforcement is either relatively limited, or part of what we already have to do for physical and biological security.
…relative, compared to recording every sale or exchange of worth in the country.
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Not really responding here but springboarding.
Economically speaking, tariffs are bad. (Bear with me for a minute here.) They’re not a case of “leveling the playing field” but in doubling down on the harm done. However, income taxes, economically speaking, are bad. Sales taxes are bad. VATs are bad. Excise taxes are bad. Any taxes are bad.
The trick is figuring out what’s the least bad form to fund the essential functions of necessary government. Flip side, of course, is to reduce government to those essential functions so as to minimize the “bad” from that side.
Whether that least bad form is tariffs, income taxes, excise taxes, or some combination is…above my competence in economics. (A man’s got to know his limitations).
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:nod:
All actions have costs, basically.
We have to look at them and try to figure out what the immediate costs, adn the follow ons, will be.
Like the infamous Thor Powertool ruling that put in a wealth-tax on unsold goods, and made it so nobody buys and holds on to stuff anymore, it’s too expensive.
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The problem, of course, is that businesses see that as a desirable thing: look at how we can fine tune our marketing with that data.
And once they’ve done the heavy lifting already….
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No. It’s the bill. First abolish, then establish a sales tax. And obviously they’re cutting taxes. It’s just tariffs are too powerful a negotiation tool to use to finance government.
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Referring to the statement “the way to make sure there’s no racism is to stop talking about race”. In the mid 70’s the great William Rasberry had an article in the Newsweek saying that if you want to get rid of racism act and make decisions as if it does not exist. He made a compelling case, unlike the simplicity of my statement. I still have a copy of it stashed away.
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So, my own experience: When I first came to the US I lived in Charlotte, NC which was remarkably white or black.
I’d always considered — still do — myself white (despite more than one drop from Congo, specifically) because, well, I am. I mean, you’d think me Greek or Italian when I’ve been out in the sun, or French if I’m not out in the sun a lot.
I didn’t realize people were perceiving me as “Hispanic” and discriminating accordingly (Both black and white people) until I realized Americans think Hispanic is a race AND that people were inexperienced enough with people from South of the border, they thought I was… MEXICAN? (Bizarre, right? Though honestly I could be high class Mexican, but that’s not what they meant. they kept asking if I’d come over because I was poor. )
Once I figured it out, I also figured out a bunch of sheetheads (sic) were discriminating against me because I was “Hispanic” and had an accent. The last time I can tell you this happened in an absolutely glaring way, younger kid was in elementary.
Has it happened since? LIKELY. It happens. But I also notice people discriminate against husband because he’s short, overweight, dark haired, and I have to fight him to stop wearing stuff he loves that’s full of holes. (Cats. Claws.)
So at some point I decided I could seethe and be upset at all the bigots. Or I could ignore it and pretend they just didn’t like my face/voice/whatever, as happens.
I’ve been a lot happier and more productive since then, and if racism has affected me, it’s in a minor way. (Except from the publishing establishment that decided my “true voice” must be Portuguese, and I guess from Leftists at large. But I’ve avoided those as much as possible for a while now.)
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I’m sorry Charlotte left that sour taste behind. You would almost certainly not have that problem here now.
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It didn’t leave a sour taste, except we didn’t find our feet there. It wasn’t home. Colorado was home. Ah well.
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Well, leftists, right?
Forgive them, for they believe that the customs of their tribe are the laws of nature
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Affirmative Action carries the implicit assumption that certain groups of people can’t make the grade without help. Worse, for every member of that group, people will assume they were just a “diversity hire”, even if they could easily have managed unaided.
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Yep. And remember most of the people getting AA are white women.
I’m a spun gold woman (I paintchipped self) BUT I refuse to accept I’m not as capable as the blondest, largest of men. Sure, for wrestling I’d lose. (UNLESS he’s paraplegic.) BUT mind? I’ll beat him with half of mine tied behind my back, all day and twice on Sunday.
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Could I keep up with the guys? As as they were 5’4″ and their legs matched mine in length, I could. OTOH I do not know why, but I could keep going longer. Weight? Could I carry the weight that was half their weight? Um, no. That was 3/4 my weight. Luckily, not required. What was required for crew to move, sure they could move twice as much at once, but I could move 1/2 as much almost twice as fast; yes, if they’d bother, they could also move 1/2 as much faster than I could. The other problem I ran into, being vertically challenged, was sometimes when trails (kidding) had a lot of debris to step over, for them, more of a scramble over for me. Won them over by being persistent and never, ever, complaining. Note, I was NOT on a fire crew.
Programming OTOH. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. I had mine, they had theirs.
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Sigh. “As As”? More like “If they were …” Otherwise no. Outran me every time. Still could go longer until dropped.
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Our pastor read about a Georgia congresscritter allegedly saying Bishop Budde (she of the National Cathedral) should be deported and went down the following logic chain:
Bishop pleads for “mercy,”
Congresscritter says bishop should be deported,
Congresscritter (and by implication, the Administration/Republicans) is against mercy.
He is a good man and a good pastor. He’s also in his late 70s and despite time in the military he’s part of the generation that simply cannot believe the media would deliberately distort or misrepresent (using the nicest terms) a news item. After all, he would never do such a thing.
But I read el Gato Malo’s piece on, “Munchausen by mommy,” this morning and adding that to Budde’s prayer makes me a little sick.
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Yet Another clueless headline:
America’s vanishing public amenities: Starbucks changing bathroom policy
No, you idiots, the Starbucks bathrooms are not ‘public’. They are owned and paid for by the Starbucks where they are located. Starbucks chose to allow public access, until that caused problems for both the business and its customers. Which they were obligated to do something about to ensure their customers’ safety. So, once again, a few assholes ruined something for everybody and the Leftroids blame it on the Eeevul Business which was harmed as much as anybody.
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