In my limited understanding of California property taxes, I believe property values are only reassessed on the sale of the property, so if he was living in a house deeded to him by his parents, he might have been paying taxes on a decades-old appraisal. So even if they bought his exact house back for him, he’d still be stuck with significantly higher taxes, which he’d have to fight to be compensated for as well.
How do you think smoking went from something nearly everybody did to being taboo? Maybe the labels don’t do anything for the last 10% of the population who still smoke today, despite the taboo, but those labels played a big role in reinforcing public awareness of the health effects of smoking.
Pretty low, actually. Viking_Hippie is actually a pretty legit Lemmy contributor, despite having some utter garbage takes on American politics and making occasionally disingenuous arguments for them, as above. Pretty sure he’s Danish though, not Russian.
And Obama broke the legal Occupy Wall Street protests and killed civilians in Yemen with drone strikes. So he takes the title instead? “Most progressive” is a comparative qualification, and he does not need to BE a progressive to take the title.
While I agree that the strike shouldn’t have been broken and that the rail workers should have the right to stop as much work as they control in order to make their demands heard, Biden also became the first president to walk a picket line during that strike and ultimately got the rail workers a deal that their unions all were reportedly happy with. He may not be everything you want, but he IS the most pro-union president of my lifetime. Again, not a high bar to clear. Recognize progress when it happens, even if it’s not your dream come true.
Furthermore, with all the terrifying examples of actual rising fascism that surround us right now, don’t muddy the waters with BS like that. It just makes you look like a troll.
Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton, W Bush, Obama, Trump. Take your pick.
“Most progressive” is not a high bar to clear. It's a reasonably fair claim that Biden has been more progressive than Obama, and definitely isn’t outrageous enough to justify ranting about crack smoking and traumatic brain damage.
As the holder of roughly $45 worth of Tesla stock, I voted against his pay package and every other shady, bullshit proposal on the ballot. My vote counted for almost nothing and I’d probably be considered an “activist shareholder” anyway, but it was worth the money I’ve lost to get to click that button anyway.
Not that it changes your point about representation in this case, but I’m pretty sure that photo is at least 20 years old. This is the current, equally diverse Oklahoma Supreme Court:
Then, 15 years later, when I rejoined the world of modern PC gaming, those games were all still available for download from my Steam account just because I bought the physical Orange Box back in 2007.
Are you in the US?
I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from being an organ donor, it’s obviously a great necessity and saves thousands of lives, but I’m always amazed that the bottomless skepticism of our for-profit healthcare system dries up on certain topics.
We all love to moan about greedy health insurance companies and hospital administrations putting profit above the actual health of patients and outcomes of procedures, so why is it taken for granted that, when faced with a decision to go to extraordinary lengths to save a badly injured, uninsured person, or get expensive organs for 3 or 4 insured people at the top of the recipient list, that the responsible parties will make the right decision? Hell, even without a profit motive, that can be a difficult decision that can be influenced by personal beliefs and biases.
I certainly don’t know enough about exactly how these decisions are made to have a strong opinion, but I don’t think it’s fair to characterize potentially warranted skepticism as moronic.
That’s certainly not a flaw in the philosophy. As it pertains to the voter, you’re not expected to know the future, but you do have a civic duty to be informed when voting. If you have made a good faith effort to understand the context of the choice and the most likely outcomes of the options available, you can’t be faulted for not foreseeing the exact outcomes that unfold. If nothing else, because you can’t possibly know exactly what the outcomes of the alternatives would have been. Ignoring the most likely outcomes in favor of the most desired outcomes is what seems unethical. “Letting perfect be the enemy of good” and all that.
I genuinely “Kant” see how someone can justify a moral framework where only the action has intrinsic morality and the consequences are completely irrelevant. Sure, the morality of an action should be considered, but ultimately, real-world choices have to be made from a holistic consideration of the entire situation.
Similarly, I also reject the idea of perfectly objective morality. There are extreme shades of grey, but never black and white. No action can be said to be universally good regardless of both intent and context, except in religious moral frameworks.
I’d hardly call that comic a middle finger. Just a succinct way of expressing my disagreement. But since you asked, here’s the empathetic version:
Please appreciate that you’re not the only disappointed idealist. Everyone wants things to be better and I genuinely understand the desire to only vote for what you can defend to yourself morally. However, that’s not the framework we have to work within. The realities of American politics require pragmatism that is incompatible with stubborn idealism.
My argument is that the deontological approach is unethical because it prioritizes how the voter feels about their vote over reducing total harm to the greatest number of people. Votes aren’t love letters and they aren’t prayers. To the extent that any of us as individuals have any influence on the mad, chaotic world that we all have to live in, consequences are more important than intentions.
Not surprising. Musk has referred to the entirety of Bellingcat as “a psyop” before.