anon_
23hr ago
I find that anything between 7 and 13mm is both acceptable to the wife and doesn't get in the way.
anon_
1d ago
If you left Italy in the late 1800s, you couldn’t easily get back routinely to see family (whereas now it’s maybe a days travel). You couldn’t FaceTime them at a whim. You couldn’t text message them. The populations were truly cut off.
This probably cuts the other way. Everyone everywhere is already partially pre-assimilated to US cultural hegemony.
anon_
2d ago
No, that’s kind of my point actually. Even employers that want to verify applicants aren’t able to do so accurately.
anon_
2d ago
Well there ya go -- now we're at the point of tradeoffs with respect to the functions that are absolutely necessary.
It would be kinda silly if we both had government as a necessary evil and it was too disempowered to actually accomplish those ends.
anon_
2d ago
We should revisit this in a year or two to assess whether Trump's ICE, plus all the funding it got from the OBB, was able to accomplish this easy task.
anon_
3d ago
This may be true, but the price of accepting that (for us in the US) is that our government will never get a handle around removable aliens.
anon_
3d ago
I think the libertarian right is coming around to the fact that government is a necessary evil, and to that end it needs the powers to effect those necessary functions competently.
anon_
3d ago
That aside, I am a big fan of national ID cards. The US should have one, and so should every other country. I don't understand why the right is so opposed to it. It's the easiest way to control illegal immigration.
Moreover, in many other democracies that the US left idolizes, every contact with the government ends up being a check for immigration status, similar to how in the US all police will run you for warrants.
anon_
3d ago
Well, yes, but the AF were largely outvoted at the Constitutional Convention.
Im also real sick of “the bill of rights mandates (whatever political platform I’m on today)”. When my side wins election, it’s a principle of democratic governance. When my side loses, it’s about minimum liberal rights. Even Scott succumbs to this in latest ACX.
anon_
3d ago
If you had asked the founding fathers about the NSA, the crazy levels of nepotism and corruption and how self-centred the American elite is, they wouldn't have called shooting them terrorism.
If you had explained that these were the product of a representative government, they might feel differently. The Founders were not of the opinion that one has the right never to lose an election.
The whole bit about violence against a government was about the fundamental lack of representation. That's what the DOI is all about. It's not an anarchist document that entitles anyone to pick up a gun because they don't like the NSA or the FTC or whatever else. Indeed, the DOI spends a lot of time explaining that very point.
anon_
3d ago
Laid out in a case against commandeering local police to enforce federal gun laws, no less
anon_
10d ago
Yeah, you try to bribe them with $50K and they're gonna laugh. Their annual bonus is 5x that.
anon_
10d ago
Give it a day or two, but I predict a lot of "Why did you spend $50K of taxpayer dollars to try to entrap a high-level Republican on the basis of 'an unrelated investigation'?" takes.
The obvious answer is that they did the same for Menendez and Jefferson, despite the D in their name.
anon_
10d ago
It's a good chunk of most Americans' annual income, but it's not a lot in the tier of people we assume are running the upper end of world's most powerful government.
Your landscaper probably does a lot more work for a lot less money in the normal course of business than a corrupt public official does
Indeed. But the idea that he's doing so with capital worth more than the corrupt public official costs is the jarring part.
anon_
10d ago
DHS Secretary Homan was alleged to have been caught on video taking a bribe from undercover FBI agents. In the fog of war politics, who knows if this is actually true, maybe eventually we'll see the video and can make an informed judgment.
But forgetting whether or not it happened, the thing that always gets me on these cases is the paltry sums involved: $50K. By comparison, my landscaper drives an F150 Raptor, an $80K truck. Hard to imagine that he's driving around in something more expensive than a Cabinet member in the US government.
That got me into a rabbit hole of bribery cases across the political spectrum
- MA State Senator Dianne Wilkerson: an amount of cash that fit in her bra (really)
- USC basketball coach: $4100
- Mayor of Portage, Indiana James Snyder: $13,000
- US Representative Michael Myers: $50,000
- US Representative William Jefferson: Found with $90K cash in his freezer
The lack of ambition here is starling. I've heard cases of embezzlement in the billions (e.g. 1MDB) or at least the mid-millions.
Not sure I have an actual point here, but I guess it's that if someone is going to bribe you, insist on a real sum.
anon_
11d ago
Still has Major Questions problems though
Which is silly because the law already allows the administration to set the salary floor for H1Bs and you can easily convince yourself that you can raise exactly the same revenue that way, using authority you already have.
One of the most common tools of effective leadership (LBJ was famous for this) is deciding what you want to do and then finding an existing legal authority for doing it.
anon_
11d ago
Indians were much more willing to put up with crappy conditions and lower pay
The solution to that is the salary floor. Given that the modal diploma mill graduate isn't that smart, if you put the floor in the right place, firms won't pay that for what they get.
anon_
11d ago
As usual, the Trump admin picks a real problem and then decides on the most retarded possible solution and executes it with the finesse of a linebacker. Plus half of it is walked back already.
If the goal was to raise $100K over the 3 year term of an H1B, then raising the salary floor to about $200K or so which would easily raise $35K/pp/y. That's far simpler, fixes the corruption around the marginally-paid and aligns everyone.
anon_
14d ago
it'll be a enjoyable hike indeed.
It will also be against the wishes of the Kirk, who notably thought South Park making fun of him was hilarious.
Not that the dead necessarily get a vote, but it's quite a strange thing to honor a man by doing the opposite of what he would have wanted.
Enthusiasm for beards doesn’t imply I wanna look like ZZ top
More options
Context Copy link