In '83 I was flying nearby when the New Jersey fired their 16" bullets at the hills above Beirut. Spectacularly impressive. The famous photo overhead was taken by Tony Morales. Can’t remember who he was flying with. (His camera use while he was flying was one of his quirks-“Tony, what the hell?” “FU, I like history.”) I was flying, heading back to the Guam away from the NJ, heard the guns go boom through the insane noise from the overhead transmissions, turned toward the NJ to see more volkswagens hurled towards the hills.
The end of the day BDA was 100%. Yay!!! Three days later after eyeballs saw what they hit, it was zero.
Luck being such a lady, I flew CSAR on the morning in December when 38 Navy jets circled for twenty minutes over their target area in the mountains northeast of Beirut before doing their bombing raids on Syrian gun positions. My Navy classmate, Mark Lange was killed and the lead A7 pilot, who was the CAG, got shot down and we got to rescue him in Juniyah while pissed off Syrians lobbed mortars at the soccer stadium where we landed to get him.
That day BDA was reported as 100%. Yay!! About four or five days later after eyeballs saw the hits, it was 30%.
I know that’s antecdotal but until eyeballs go underground and come out with pictures, there’s no way to know. Their guesses via satellites and Mossad’s reports might be right but they’re guesses.
I’m more inclined to think that the problem lies with those who have administratively decided that they are entitled to a cut of other peoples’ money, wealth, resources.
That earned income is taxed higher than unearned is just part of the problem. A bigger issue is the extreme wealth some have acquired, allowing their unearned income to far surpass what over 90% of working people make.
Not only is this inherently unfair, it’s a major contributor to the corruption in politics, as a few wealthy people have become wealthy enough to buy politicians.
Also, unearned income is mostly generated by working people, but the rewards are diverted to shareholders.
To be fair, the argument involves claims that Iran has multiple proxy armies in the area, primarily geared toward Israel. They also may have Sunni-Shia clashes over time, since 1979 at least.
I’ve seen similar claims about “mostly peaceful” places like North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, and China never attacking neighbors or invading. That’s debatable if we include covert methods.
And it ignored the elephant in the room that authoritarian systems, whether communist or Islamic theocracy or other, trod over the rights of its citizens. That alone is sufficient to lose any claim to moral legitimacy of its government.
A government is moral only to the extent that it protects the rights of its citizens. That is the only moral purpose of a government.
Yes to this point. I don’t know enough about Iran to truly conclude anything about Iranians or their government.
I do not like to see even legit concerns about the behaviors of heads of sovereign nations towards each other overwriting your point. If governments of any stripe are careless about or openly harming their citizens, they’ve lost the plot. That’s all of them, using multiple methodologies, it seems.
I don’t know how to fix it, but I don’t have to pretend it’s a minor detail. Everywhere, I see governments forcing their will on citizens, harming and destroying them. How do we keep letting this happen? Is any of this on us? Is there any kind of shift in the way we citizens are that would let us stand the power-addicted down?
So true in many cases. I have myself wondered why I pay normal( like earned income) income taxes rates on CD interest or rent, but would pay differently if I owned and sold stocks, bonds or real estate.
But Perhaps this is where “complex systems” thinking kicks in, because it’s not always apples to apples comparison
Some of those investments are taxed at a lower rate to the individual investor, however there may have been many layers of tax paid on that investment income depending on the location and industry Corporate taxes, licensing fees, sin taxes, excise tax, etc etc.
I really like the idea of a greatly simplified system perhaps an even a flatter system of some kind.
I left an air-conditioned DMV waiting area in Florida to nap in the car being transfered to a friend, because there are hundreds of folks in that space. Taking a nap in the car is preferable to being in that room and I am not needed for the transaction. In my work as a mail carrier, law runner and courier at various times, I learned to take a power nap even in a hot car without leaving it running. (This 15 second window trick…)
I started the signal hour podcast, I remember grinning as Evie mentioned the single AC’d room in the house. Been there done that and was also as grateful. I also remember freezing to death in the summer in that same area a couple years back.
I dosed off only to be awakened to “Bomb Iran”. When my eyes opened there was a rainbow of people, on the sidewalk in front of me and it seemed that the music was far louder than the speaking volume and I found myself grabbing the phone out of my bag to turn it down.
At this moment t-storm conditions are forming and it’s actually pleasant so back to sleep until it rains. I feel blessed for the sudden shift weather, and for the tiny DMV where I live that has had the same cheerful and helpful employees since I moved there in 2008, and everyone in the short line knows at least a few of the others and we all get to hear the local news.
To be fair to AOC, she is mainly addressing monopolistic practices, using the meat industry (JBS, Tyson, Cargill, Smithfield) and retail (Walmart, Amazon) as examples. I think we can all agree that she is (mostly) correct here and that antitrust laws are important to maintain competition, but have been underenforced for a long time. She gives examples of Walmart Supercenters suppressing both wages and employment. I don’t trust her and would need to verify, but it does make sense. She also describes their anti-union actions. There’s a lot more nuance and potential for her to manipulated the union topic, so it deserves scrutiny.
Protecting unions as a solution seems naive. I would say that actually enforcing antitrust laws and cracking down on regulatory capture would be far more effective.
Finally, the “tax the rich” movement, through focusing on income tax is (mostly) barking up the wrong tree. As best I can tell, AOC and Mamdani are both wedded to the focus on income tax. Capital gains taxes on passive income for those who have no stake in the businesses they invest in other than the money they invest is perhaps a better idea. Perhaps a more aggressive approach to short-term gains, with very high taxes on HFT type of profits, somewhat smaller on holding stocks, etc. for periods of days to a few months or a year, and a lower rate to those who make their capital available long enough for the corporations to count on it for longer term planning would be good. Perhaps a very low rate to those who execute a binding agreement not to sell their shares for at least 5 years would help as well. One issue I see with this is that there would probably be a shift from stock options to even higher salaries and/or bonuses for C-suite types.
As for inflation, her argument is mostly irrelevant. Inflation is primary caused by monetary policy and can be mostly blamed on the Federal Reserve Bank. Of course, said “monetary policy” is also a significant factor in the great wealth transfer, perhaps even more significant than lack of antitrust enforcement. At stores, I pay mostly with cash, $50s and $100s. I use them as a conversation starter, opening, with “The 50 is the new 10” or “the 100 is the new 20”, or better yet, “Grant is the new Hamilton”, or “Franklin is the new Jackson” or even “Ulysses is the new Alexander” or Benjamin is the new Andrew". Most cashiers agree with me, although I suspect some are having a door opened in that moment.
Guess we need to agree on a definition of progressive. I’ve always considered it to be for policies and actions that benefit the majority of citizens, but I could be off on that.
this is the central theme of the Frankfurt School for spreading communism through Europe.
Destroy cultural institutions. Leave people not knowing to whom they belong. A gray slurry of humanity without culture, cohesive religion or traditions.
