As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
from the boom-goes-the-dynamite dept
I'm sorry, but those of you looking forward to riding the Friend Feed Flume at Zuckland or the Search Engine Shuffle at GooglePark are probably out of luck. Florida's new social media law (and its theme park owner exemption) is not going to become law.
We've written a few times about Florida's blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional social media content moderation law -- complete with its special carveout for Disney*. The legal challenge to the bill had a hearing in court on Monday, and as we expected, Florida's arguments in favor of the bill were not well received. I listened to the entire hearing and, to put it mildly, the judge was not impressed by Florida's arguments. At one point, he literally asked the lawyer defending the bill if he had ever come across a more poorly drafted piece of legislation. That's generally not a good sign.
And, now, with just hours to go until the law was supposed to go into effect, the judge has granted the preliminary injunction blocking the bill, and the ruling makes it pretty clear that this bill is not going to survive. Of course, Florida will likely appeal the ruling, and it'll be up to the Appeals Court to go into more depth. During the hearing, the judge, Robert Hinkle, more or less admitted this would be the case, and said that his ruling wouldn't go that deep, because what the Appeals Court says will be more important in the long run. Even so, the ruling is worth exploring, as it smashes the law to bits in a variety of ways.
The State of Florida has adopted legislation that imposes sweeping requirements on some but not all social-media providers. The legislation applies only to large providers, not otherwise-identical but smaller providers, and explicitly exempts providers under common ownership with any large Florida theme park. The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards—speech they otherwise would not host—and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would. The Governor’s signing statement and numerous remarks of legislators show rather clearly that the legislation is viewpoint-based. And parts contravene a federal statute. This order preliminarily enjoins enforcement of the parts of the legislation that are preempted or violate the First Amendment.
So, let's start with ye olde 1st Amendment. As we predicted, it's pretty clear that this law violates it. The judge agrees. For all the talk of how the law supposedly "protects" the 1st Amendment, the judge recognized it absolutely does the opposite. I've tried to highlight the key bits if you want to skim:
First, the State has asserted it is on the side of the First Amendment; the plaintiffs are not. It is perhaps a nice sound bite. But the assertion is wholly at odds with accepted constitutional principles. The First Amendment says “Congress” shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. The Fourteenth Amendment extended this prohibition to state and local governments. The First Amendment does not restrict the rights of private entities not performing traditional, exclusive public functions. See, e.g., Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1930 (2019). So whatever else may be said of the providers’ actions, they do not violate the First Amendment.
Second, the First Amendment applies to speech over the internet, just as it applies to more traditional forms of communication. See, e.g., Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 870 (1997) (stating that prior cases, including those allowing greater regulation of broadcast media, “provide no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied” to the internet).
Third, state authority to regulate speech has not increased even if, as Florida argued nearly 50 years ago and is again arguing today, one or a few powerful entities have gained a monopoly in the marketplace of ideas, reducing the means available to candidates or other individuals to communicate on matters of public interest. In Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), the Court rejected just such an argument, striking down a Florida statute requiring a newspaper to print a candidate’s reply to the newspaper’s unfavorable assertions. A similar argument about undue concentration of power was commonplace as the social-media restrictions now at issue advanced through the Florida Legislature. But here, as in Tornillo, the argument is wrong on the law; the concentration of market power among large social-media providers does not change the governing First Amendment principles. And the argument is also wrong on the facts. Whatever might be said of the largest providers’ monopolistic conduct, the internet provides a greater opportunity for individuals to publish their views—and for candidates to communicate directly with voters—than existed before the internet arrived. To its credit, the State does not assert that the dominance of large providers renders the First Amendment inapplicable.
The court then explores various precedential cases regarding the ability of the government to compel a private company to host speech and finds that the arguments of Florida are lacking. Since there are speech issues at stake, the law must be subject to strict scrutiny -- and as such it fails the 1st Amendment test. Indeed, public statements made by Florida's governor Ron DeSantis, grandstanding about this bill, are part of what helped to sink it (it would have been sunk anyway, but it's amusing to see his public statements used by the judge here):
The plaintiffs assert, too, with substantial factual support, that the actual motivation for this legislation was hostility to the social media platforms’ perceived liberal viewpoint. Thus, for example, the Governor’s signing statement quoted the bill’s sponsor in the House of Representatives: “Day in and day out, our freedom of speech as conservatives is under attack by the ‘big tech’ oligarchs in Silicon Valley. But in Florida, we said this egregious example of biased silencing will not be tolerated.” Similarly, in another passage quoted by the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor said, “What we’ve been seeing across the U.S. is an effort to silence, intimidate, and wipe out dissenting voices by the leftist media and big corporations. . . . Thankfully in Florida we have a Governor that fights against big tech oligarchs that contrive, manipulate, and censor if you voice views that run contrary to their radical leftist narrative.” This viewpoint-based motivation, without more, subjects the legislation to strict scrutiny, root and branch. See, e.g., Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 829 (1995) (“The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.”) (citing Perry Ed. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 46 (1983)).
Moreover, these statements are consistent with the statutory definition of “social media platform,” which extends only to, and thus makes the legislation applicable only to, large entities—those with $100 million in revenues or 100 million monthly participants. As the Supreme Court has recognized, discrimination between speakers is often a tell for content discrimination. See, e.g., Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310, 340 (2010) (“Speech restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are all too often simply a means to control content.”). That is the case here. The state has suggested no other basis for imposing these restrictions only on the largest providers. And even without evidence of an improper motive, the application of these requirements to only a small subset of social-media entities would be sufficient, standing alone, to subject these statutes to strict scrutiny. See, e.g., Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm’r of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575, 591 (1983); Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U.S. 221, 229 (1987).
And, yeah, the Disney carveout is seen as a tell as well:
Finally, the same is true of the exclusion for social-media providers under common ownership with a large Florida theme park. The State asserted in its brief that the provision could survive intermediate scrutiny, but the proper level of scrutiny is strict, and in any event, when asked at oral argument, the State could suggest no theory under which the exclusion could survive even intermediate scrutiny. The State says this means only that the exclusion fails, but that is at least questionable. Despite the obvious constitutional issue posed by the exclusion, the Legislature adopted it, apparently unwilling to subject favored Florida businesses to the statutes’ onerous regulatory burdens. It is a stretch to say the severability clause allows a court to impose these burdens on the statutorily excluded entities when the Legislature has not passed, and the Governor has not signed, a statute subjecting these entities to these requirements.
The judge then goes even further, by noting that even if you applied intermediate scrutiny (a lower standard) the bill still wouldn't live up to 1st Amendment requirements:
The provisions at issue here do not meet the narrow-tailoring requirement. Indeed, some of the disclosure provisions seem designed not to achieve any governmental interest but to impose the maximum available burden on the social media platforms
The judge also follows up on his comments during the hearing about how poorly drafted the law is to note the many problems in the law for being vague and open to wildly different interpretations, but notes that given the other reasons to block the law, he doesn't need to use the vagueness issue for the injunction.
In the end, the court recognizes that this bill was really all about punishing a few companies, and that's not how the law is supposed to work:
The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest. And even aside from the actual motivation for this legislation, it is plainly content-based and subject to strict scrutiny. It is also subject to strict scrutiny because it discriminates on its face among otherwise-identical speakers: between social-media providers that do or do not meet the legislation’s size requirements and are or are not under common ownership with a theme park. The legislation does not survive strict scrutiny.
There is also, extremely briefly, a recognition that the law is likely pre-empted by Section 230, basically highlighting that the law clearly violates 230's prohibitions on allowing platforms to moderate as they see fit:
Florida Statutes § 106.072 prohibits a social media platform from deplatforming a candidate for office and imposes substantial fines: $250,000 per day for a statewide office and $25,000 per day for any other office. But deplatforming a candidate restricts access to material the platform plainly considers objectionable within the meaning of 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2). If this is done in good faith—as can happen—the Florida provision imposing daily fines is preempted by § 230(e)(3). Good faith, for this purpose, is determined by federal law, not state law. Removing a candidate from a platform based on otherwiselegitimate, generally applicable standards—those applicable to individuals who are not candidates—easily meets the good-faith requirement. Indeed, even a mistaken application of standards may occur in good faith.
The federal statute also preempts the parts of Florida Statutes § 501.2041 that purport to impose liability for other decisions to remove or restrict access to content. See Fla. Stat. § 501.2041(6) (creating a private right of action for damages for violations of § 501.2041(2)(b) and (2)(d)1; id. § 501.2041(2)(b) (requiring a social media platform to apply censorship, deplatforming, and shadow banning standards in a consistent manner); id. § 501.2041(2)(d)1 (prohibiting a social media platform from deplatforming a user or censoring or shadow banning a user’s content without notifying the user); § 501.2041(2) (making any violation of that subsection an unfair or deceptive act or practice within the meaning of § 501.204—and thus providing a private right of action for damages under § 501.211).
Claims based on alleged inconsistency of a platform’s removal of some posts but not others are preempted.
That last line needs to be repeated over and over again for every state considering these kinds of laws.
Anyway, Florida is almost certainly going to waste more taxpayer dollars and appeal this ruling, but it's really difficult to see how the law survives. It was a garbage unconstitutional bill from the very beginning -- a point that many, many people made clear to both Governor DeSantis and the legislators who pushed this bill. But, of course, the goal was never to get this bill into actual law. It was all a big theater production -- to let them pretend to be culture warriors against "the libs" who they claim run social media platforms. It's just unfortunate that they get to throw away taxpayer money on their theatrical grandstanding.
* By the way, if you'd like to see a fun moment in the Florida legislature during the debate over the bill, check out this fairly incredible video of the discussion between Rep. Blaise Ingoglia -- who inserted the Disney carveout -- and Rep. Anna Eskamani who wants to get him on record explaining why. Ingoglia flat out admits that it's to protect Disney, though his argument is so hilariously dumb it's hard to believe it's real. He argues that they need to protect Disney+ reviews (Disney+ doesn't currently have reviews) and that it shouldn't apply to other sites, because Disney creates its own content. This ignores, of course, that the entire bill is about the moderation of 3rd party content (such as, uh, reviews, which are not created by Disney). It's almost as if he doesn't understand what all of this means, and is just making sure to do a favor to Disney, just because.
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, florida, injunction, section 230, theme parks
Companies: ccia, facebook, google, netchoice, twitter
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Oooh, right in the anti-conservative bias. The “repeal 230” trolls are gonna feel that one in the morning.
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'You wanted to stick it to the libs, have fun paying for it'
But, of course, the goal was never to get this bill into actual law. It was all a big theater production -- to let them pretend to be culture warriors against "the libs" who they claim run social media platforms. It's just unfortunate that they get to throw away taxpayer money on their theatrical grandstanding.
I have no sympathy for any florida residents who supported this bill having their tax money wasted like this, stupidity should be painful after all, though I am sympathetic to any florida residents who don't have a burning hatred for the first amendment having their money wasted defending this unconstitutional dumpsterfire of a PR stunt.
That said I suspect that this loss was not only expected but planned for by the bill's supporters, with the goal to use it to play up the persecution complex/fetish of it's supporters about how those dastardly liberal judges(since why else would someone be against this bill?) are against them and people really need to donate more money to heavily conservative politicians as a result.
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One does wonder how the heck any of these mental giants have managed to avoid getting covid.
Its that weird thing where somehow after saying hold my beer they never manage to self remove from society.
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Hey Koby, are you now going to admit you were wrong about the 1st amendment and this Florida law?
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So basically, the court affirms what everyone who wasn't deliberately lying * has been saying all along.
*(i.e. not Koby, Jhon, lostinlodos, Portent, cynoclast, chozen, woody, Melvin Choadwater, restless94110...
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Re:
Nah. Translated to their language, the quoted statement turns into: "As a liberal judge I'm also liberally trying to liberally suppress the conservatives with this liberal ruling and my anti-conservative liberal bias."
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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week
This week, by far the funniest thing out of Florida: some anonymous coward that goes by "MM" pointed out
I'm sorry, but those of you looking forward to riding the Friend Feed Flume at Zuckland or the Search Engine Shuffle at GooglePark are probably out of luck. Florida's new social media law (and its theme park owner exemption) is not going to become law.
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Re:
"everyone who wasn't deliberately lying"
Whether the specific people here are lying or actually that stupid, the fact remains that this is the theatre it was always intended to be. Keep the issue in the headlines to fool the inattentive into thinking there's a real problem, grift from the true believers and keep people angry until it's time to go back to the polls - when hopefully they will be inspired to vote Republican while the voter apathy that usually happens in unremarkable times deters their opponents supporters.
This isn't about Florida leadership genuinely thinking that a direct attack on the First Amendment has a chance of becoming law. It's to ensure they regain some of the election losses in the mid terms, in places where gerrymandering and voter suppression won't already guarantee it. In this case, they didn't want to risk losing support from their major economic drivers while doing so, hence the exceptions for Disney.
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Looks like Facebook won't need to open that theme park after all, it's a shame because the Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino mascot costumes sure were something, as were the hourly white pride parades, and Joel Kaplan's Grandparent Radicaliser was a hell of a ride. They'd go in as sweet old dears who like photos of the grandkids and come out the other side believing said kids are part of a pedophile cannibal cabal because they believe in germ theory.
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Re:
"The “repeal 230” trolls are gonna feel that one in the morning."
Ah, yes, the benighted yokels who felt compelled to swing around and air their dunning-kruger for all to see when they stalwartly tried to claim a nakedly obvious attempt by state legislature to circumvent 1A was anything but...
If they weren't such malicious morons I'd feel pity for them. Because until someone rewrites 1A and property rights they certainly won't see a world where platform owners are unable to evict deplorable assholes.
If the legal paradigm shifts to where that is possible, as I keep saying, liberals and sane people may face some issues, but the alt-right as a whole will never be able to obtain a commenter's account on any platform ever again, and stormfront will have to shut down.
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Re: 'You wanted to stick it to the libs, have fun paying for it'
"...with the goal to use it to play up the persecution complex/fetish of it's supporters about how those dastardly liberal judges(since why else would someone be against this bill?) are against them and people really need to donate more money to heavily conservative politicians as a result."
Naturally. The alt-right in modern times thrives on the myth of simultaneously being the Chosen Superior Few To See The Light, and the Permanent Victims Exploited By Everyone. I'd go as far as asserting that the US alt-right of today can't survive without someone telling them they're being martyred.
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Re:
Of course he won't. He'll shut up completely then come back and repeat his spiel as if this latest brick through his facade never happened.
He's well aware that what he's saying is garbage. He's only here to repeat that garbage until it starts sticking as a normal point in the debate, when people have stopped bothering to correct him.
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Re:
Does this mean they really are the Chosen Few? My brain is about to explode! Wait!
Oh, thank God. My brain almost decided to leave for Mars. So which of the above are the Florida politicians... definitely not children, so what does that leave... ;)
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Re: Re: 'You wanted to stick it to the libs, have fun paying for
If they lost the ability to blame all their woes on some Other then they might start wondering how much of it's their fault whether directly(thanks to being so odious no-one wants to be around them) or indirectly(via opposing any of those filthy socialist things like financial safety nets and regulations) and/or start looking at the rich and powerful people telling them how oppressed they are who for some reason never seem to face the same problems as those who's fears they're constantly stoking.
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Re: Re: Re: 'You wanted to stick it to the libs, have fun paying
You don't understand zealotry. When you are on a losing streak of incompetency, the right direction is not to back up but double down. That way you either get your losses back or enough rightful anger to burn and loot the one who thought to profit from your ongoing stupidity.
During the Middle Ages, financial responsibility was not really en vogue. Predominantly Jewish moneyhandlers were tasked with making things work and occasional pogroms and levies and whatnot made sure that the class created in that manner was kept subdued.
But xenophobia (if you insist on calling someone a "foreigner" whose ancestors may have lived for longer in your country than yours) has not been an invention of the Middle Ages: it's an evolutionary trait pervading human history as long as there was a perceived sparseness of resources: "why them and not us?" always had the simple remedy "let's take what clearly we are more deserving of because we are us and they are only them, so they must have deprived us of what really was intended to be ours".
You can invoke some God as proof, or your clear genetic or intellectual superiority, but obviously if someone else is better off than you are in spite of looking or thinking or speaking differently, they are cheating.
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“Dig up, stupid!”
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Can someone provide a link to a recording (or at least a transcript) of the hearing? It sounds hilarious, and I'm sorry I missed it.
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And then whining that the other person pushed them in of course
It's like watching someone argue that all bridges should be immediately destroyed because a person they don't like uses bridges... while standing in the middle of a bridge and the other person is merely at the entry to one. Yeah the other person is going to have to jump back a bit and then find another way across but they are going right into the river/ravine if they ever get what they claim to want.
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Actually kinda surprised that the theme park loophole wasn't phrased something like:
"Companies owning theme parks in Florida as of mm/dd/yyyy are not subject to this law." where the date specified includes Disney, but prevents Facebook and Google from purchasing a theme park and using the loophole.
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Re: Re:
If they weren’t deliberately lying they’d be here to eat that crow while it’s young and tender.
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Re: And then whining that the other person pushed them in of cou
The blind adherence to GOP talking points does make for a bizarre outcome. Section 230 keeping platforms from assuming third-party liability over what users posts is the only thing which makes Parler and Stormfront capable of function. Without it the very second any of those jokers, anonymous or not, posts something anyone could reasonably use as a grievance, that platform dies under a thousand lawsuits.
Liberals, being far less given to make "being offensive" a way of life may have to observe more care - but people like Shel10, Restless94110, Chudwater, Baghdad Bob, Portent/Chozen and yes, even Koby...wouldn't be able to post anything anywhere within US jurisdiction. No platform would dare to bear them.
Ironically if I was the same sort of unprincipled asshole they turn out to be I'd be all for section 230 going away, just so I could enjoy a world where those unpleasant asses never got to post online again outside of a darknet.
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Re: Re:
"So which of the above are the Florida politicians... definitely not children..."
I'd make the argument that a great many of the alt-right are indeed just entitled man-children refusing to grow up and face the reality where they somehow aren't "special" just because of the color of their skin.
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Not Going to Hold Up
The judges claim centers around the "strict scrutiny" standard which will not stand on appeal as it violates Time Warner v. FCC by applying strict scrutiny instead of intermediate scrutiny.
Strict scrutiny can only be applied on acts "that compel speakers to ... distribute speech bearing a particular message." That is not the case in the Florida law. The law itself is clearly content neutral and designed to compel Big Tech to remain content neutral.
The judge is trying to argue that because the motivation to pass the law came from bias then the law itself is biased. That is not how the scrutiny standard works.
If the speech regulation is content based then it is subject to strict scrutiny. What this judge is trying to argue is that since the motivation for passing the law was content based then its subject to strict scrutiny.
This basically makes it impossible for the public in the public interest to force neutral legislation on anyone being a biased bad actor.
An industry is acting out of bias.
The state passes a law to require industry to be neutral.
The court says that the law despite being neutral is biased because it originated from a motivation of bias.
In effect bias against bias.
This reasoning has a low chance of standing in the long run.
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Civil Rights Law Apparently Illegal
Reading the judges decision I guess all Civil Rights are no illegal.
While the Civil Rights acts are racially neutral their passage was clearly out of bias and intended to specifically protect black people. Therefor strict scrutiny need be applied.
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“Of course, Florida will likely appeal the ruling”
Great.
See, I told yall this was gonna be fun to watch!
“Anyway, Florida is almost certainly going to waste more taxpayer dollars and appeal this ruling”
I wouldn’t call it wasted money. This is an issue that needs to be solidified permanently. Hope it goes all the way to SCOTUS.
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Re:
Oh? I always said it would probably fail.
And that it would be interesting and entertaining to watch.
Mainly because the Dems would trip over themselves regarding evidence of bias AMD Republicans would fall all over the place to defend forcing private companies to host a peace.
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Re:
The 1st amendment permanently solidified this argument long before social media existed.
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Re: Re:
[Hallucinates evidence not in evidence]
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Re: Re:
Not completely. Not under US law. Congress can pass any law it wants. The governor/president can sign or veto it, and if anyone challenges it it will be put before the courts for hearing or declaration.
You can’t support the way the system works when you want, and ignore it when you want.
Every one gets the opportunities afforded by the structure of the system.
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Re:
"See, I told yall this was gonna be fun to watch!"
You predicted that Florida Republicans might do something stupid to grandstand to their base? Sure, but I don't think you deserve a medal for that.
"I wouldn’t call it wasted money."
Well, you wouldn't, but we've established you credentials in other threads.
Wouldn't it benefit you to support laws that aren't explicitly unconstitutional if you don't want to waste money?
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Re: Re: Re:
"Every one gets the opportunities afforded by the structure of the system."
Unless they're the lower middle class, then you demand their money gets funnelled to the 1% because it's inconvenient that the people with 1/3 of the wealth pay toward the society they benefit from.
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Re: Re:
"Oh? I always said it would probably fail."
Everyone said that. You just happen to be the one saying that means the time and money should be wasted instead of being used on something productive.
"host a peace"
Did you mean "piece", or is this some Murdoch meme I haven't seen in the wild yet.
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Re: Re: Re:
Bold of you to assume they would be that intellectually honest.
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Re: Re: Re:
I don't know which version of the 1st amendment you are thinking of, but the 1st amendment of the US constitution makes it quite clear:
There exists years of case law upholding the 1st and striking down laws that encroach it, such as this unconstitutional law passed in Florida.
So I wonder why you think it hasn't been solidified. Every challenge has ultimately lost, mainly on 1A grounds. I could say that each and every case, such as the one discussed here overturning FL's stupid social media law, further solidifies the 1A w.r.t social media moderation.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I see, paying 10% of your income as an income tax isn’t paying income tax.
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Re: Re: Re:
I guess you don’t believe in the process of law creation here?
I explained how it works. Congress writes… signs… court… etc.
“ meme”
Piece typo.the only Murdoch source I consume is the Fox News feed and they don’t post memes.
I don’t use facetwit or other social junk either so, I have no idea if there’s a meme about it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I haven’t see my a Supreme Court case that covers this specifically.
Until they rule, it’s not decided.
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Gee, I can’t imagine why a law intended to protect the civil rights of marginalized peoples was written in a way that would show bias towards the idea of protecting the civil rights of marginalized peoples~.
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The First Amendment is the law in the United States, you insufferable dick.
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The ruling gave you an example:
And in case you need reminding of what that ruling said, let’s go to the words of Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh:
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Quick question for you: For what reason should any and all interactive web services be forced by law to host all legally protected speech, regardless of whether the people who own and operate the service want to host that speech? Please note that I said “interactive web service”, not “cable TV provider”, and that “legally protected speech” includes racial slurs, anti-queer propaganda, and any speech you might find offensive (e.g., “Black Lives Matter”).
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We believe in the process. We believe in it more when it isn’t used to pass blatantly unconstitutional laws that a state government will spend taxpayer monies to defend even when they’re all but told such laws are bound to be overturned in the courts.
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Re:
It is up to the courts to decide if a law violates the constitution. And the Supreme Court is the supreme decider of that precedent.
Let the system do what it’s supposed to. Unless your worried about something: but I don’t see why you would be. The law is bound to be dead in the end.
Doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the back and forth.
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Re:
Not one I’m familiar with. I’ll need to read the ruling and dissent but the Wikipedia page on it says they made the ruling quite narrow.
“ Prior to the Court's decision, analysts believed that the case had the potential to determine whether limitations on free speech on social media violate First Amendment rights. However, the Court's narrow holding avoided that issue.”
~ Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Corp._v._Halleck
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Re: Not Going to Hold Up
Uhm.. Not really... That case is about vertical limits and channel occupancy, which really doesn't have anything to do with social media and UGC.
Let's check the complete text from which you got your quote:
U.S. Const. amend. I, subject only to narrow and well-understood exceptions, does not countenance governmental control over the content of messages expressed by private individuals. Courts apply the most exacting scrutiny to regulations that suppress, disadvantage, or impose differential burdens upon speech because of its content. Laws that compel speakers to utter or distribute speech bearing a particular message are subject to the same rigorous scrutiny. In contrast, regulations that are unrelated to the content of speech are subject to an intermediate level of scrutiny because in most cases they pose a less substantial risk of excising certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.
Here's the thing, the law in question forces speech upon some select social media, that means that they now have become disadvantaged according to the above - which is why strict scrutiny is applied.
I'm afraid you are wrong. Perhaps you should have looked up the case-law the judge referenced, see Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310, 340 (2010).
Let's use the judge's own words here: And even aside from the actual motivation for this legislation, it is plainly content-based and subject to strict scrutiny. Here's a translation for you: The law obviously regulates content and content is speech, hence it's subject to strict scrutiny.
Well, isn't that a mouthful. I'm surprised you could say that with a straight face, since the law in question isn't neutral at all, it has explicit conditions in it to regulate speech for a specific group of companies plus it even has special exemptions for other companies. That is as far as you can get from "neutral legislation".
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Even if the ruling doesn’t directly apply to social media, the reasoning could easily be applied that way. The law doesn’t generally give the government a right to make content-based regulations; trying to force a certain kind of speech onto a privately owned platform that doesn’t want to host that speech is a content-based regulation, regardless of whether the regulation is written with overtures to “the public good” and “neutrality”.
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That you see the process of dragging out the overturning of an obviously unconstitutional law (and the spending of taxpayer funds to do exactly that) as a form of entertainment might be more twisted than your property rights fetish.
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"Gee, I can’t imagine why a law intended to protect the civil rights of marginalized peoples was written in a way that would show bias towards the idea of protecting the civil rights of marginalized peoples~."
Civil rights law doesn't just protect marginalized peoples. Its a neutral law. It protects all peoples. The motivation for passing it was to protect specific racial minorities but the law itself had to be and is neutral. The Civil Rights acts protect a a male white Anglo-Saxon protestant from discrimination just as much as they protect a female black Muslim.
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"Please note that I said “interactive web service”, not “cable TV provider”
You don't get to make that requirement..
You are on a thread praising a judge for issuing a preliminary injection where he based on Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC 1994. Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC 1994 is case involving a cable TV provider.
Can you understand how asinine your entire argument of not “cable TV provider” when you are defending a decision that relied on a case about a cable TV provider?
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Not proportionately, no. But, you don't believe that wealth distribution is bad so long as it's being funnelled toward them instead of the people who have to choose between rent and food, so I don't expect you to understand.
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"I guess you don’t believe in the process of law creation here?"
No, just noting that just because a piece of legislationwas so obviously unconstitutional that even you recognised it, that doesn't mean that you're unique in that regard.
"the only Murdoch source I consume is the Fox News feed"
Again with the lies. You have claimed to at least consume NYP and WSJ, which are both Murdoch properties, and from your regular comments I suspect he has more fingers in your personal pie.
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"It is up to the courts to decide if a law violates the constitution"
It's up to the lawyers to come up with an excuse for a law that explicitly tries to violate the first amendment rights of a handful of specific targets while leaving exceptions to preferred targets is not unconstitutional.
"The law is bound to be dead in the end."
Yet, you oppose forcing people to pay for the public expense if they manage to funnel it through the right shell corporations first.
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I believe redistribution is bad.
I have supported a flat tax on individuals and social healthcare since the 90s.
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“ You have claimed to at least consume NYP and WSJ”
I’ve also pointed out that that I haven’t had access to WSJ since they moved the news feed behind a paywall, and the NYP hasn’t had a correctly working feed for quite some time.
On the Post I started to bitch about it back in April and May.
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“Yet, you oppose forcing people to pay for the public expense if they manage to funnel it through the right shell corporations first.“
You’re very good at extracting your own nonsense out of clearly stated opinions.
Nowhere did I support funnelling anything through “shell” corporations.
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"I believe redistribution is bad."
No, you don't. Your reaction to my link showing that the 1% had increased their share of wealth by nearly 10% while the lower 50% owned less than 3% was to continue to argue that the rich should pay less taxes. 59 Americans own more wealth than the lower 50% of the country. That's redistribution, but you seem to think that it's bad to suggest that it be returned to the levels it was back when the US was at its most prosperous.
"I have supported a flat tax on individuals and social healthcare since the 90s."
Yet, you still haven't understood why this is a terrible idea that is totally regressive and damages the entire economy. There's no version of flat tax that doesn't punish people who earn less while funnelling money to the already wealthy.
Also, tax on social healthcare? Do you mean the healthcare that's paid by taxes in the first place, or are you thinking of something else? Because it sounds to me like you're saying that in the country that pays way more per capita on public healthcare than anywhere else in the world needs to tax the people fortunate enough to have access to it when they use it.
If that's not what you mean then please explain yourself, but the words you used see to imply that after they pay for a social program, the people who need to use it need to pay more to access it. I hope I don't need to explain why this is a bad idea, especially in a time where there's a public health crisis where people being discouraged from accessing healthcare is a very bad idea.
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How Ironic
Mike Masnick, spends post upon post arguing that Big Tech is not like a cable company, Beg Tech is not like a cable company, blah blah blah he is like Pavlov's Dog at this point.
Judge makes a decision he agrees with which cites as its primary justification Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC 1994 which is a decision about cable company regulation and suddenly Mike has no problem treating Big Tech like a cable company.
Mike you are a disingenuous sophist.
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Missing comma
individuals, and social
Meaning supporting government funded healthcare
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Let me reword that:
I have supported a flat tax on individuals
and
I have supported social healthcare
since the 90s.
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OK, thanks for the clarification, grammar can be important in this medium.
But, this is what I don't get. You support social healthcare, something that's largely already in the US, just in the least efficient way possible. You claim to be a Trump supporter, yet he wanted to dismantle the only major reform of it with no plan for a real replacement. But, most such social systems that exist elsewhere allow for private healthcare to add to the public option - meaning the people pay for things they don't use, but pay for the system as a whole to function for even the least affluent and benefit everyone overall.
On the flipside, you support a regressive tax system that guarantees that the lower to middle class have a higher burden (in terms of actual affect, not pure dollar amount), that wealth will continue to be redistributed upwards and that people should not pay for what they use.
I'm just trying to understand how someone can support a healthcare system that protects the poor and a tax system that ensures they will remain subjugated at the same time. Especially since you claim to have done so for a few decades yet voted for someone who promised to destroy at least one of them. before it had been properly implemented.
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You may as well give up trying to explain the flat tax thing to him. I tried, and he bit back with the “but the rich pay more money so it’s still fair” bullshit. He either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care to understand the law of diminishing utility.
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I'm intrigued as to how he includes the new wrinkle about socialised healthcare, since by definition that involves people paying into a system they don't necessarily use. Although, if he can't understand why a billionaire uses more resources than a poor person, and why taxes hurt poor people more than the rich when they're at the same level, i'm not expecting a sensible answer.
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“ You support social healthcare, something that's largely already in the US, just in the least efficient way possible. ”
What whnhsve right now is a minimally governmentally subsidised system the created one of the largest nightmares in actual insurance usage we’ve seen. Likely ever.
You’ve read my commentary on it. Good try Obama, you did your best, too bad you kicked it in the wrong goal. But it happens.
I get it, I accept it, time to move on.
“ supporter, yet he wanted to dismantle the only major reform of it with no plan for a real replacement”
This is simply inaccurate. At least from his words. He had called for repeal and replace since the day he came down the escalator and announced his run.
Neither you nor I have any knowledge of how he would have responded to a repeal without a replacement.
We each have opinions, but nothing more.
“ On the flipside, you support a regressive tax system that guarantees that the lower to middle class have a higher burden”
I’m simply not following you.
Right now people pay 10% at $14,499.
All of the flat tax plans I’ve read over the last 25+ years have eased the minimum taxable rate. 19,999-29,999 tends to be the range they fall into.
There may be other plans out there but I have not seen them.
So we start by reducing the burden on the poor.
From there I don’t see how everyone paying the same rate is a problem?
Property taxes are flat rate.
Gas taxes are flat rate.
Utility taxes are flat rate.
Sales taxes (ignoring crazy categorical compartmentalisation, CCC) are flat rate.
Everyone pays the same percentage.
Why should personal income be any different?
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What’s the first half of that phrase, again?
Considering how he had no replacement plan at the time Congress came the closest it ever got to repealing Obamacare in its entirety and didn’t seem to give a damn about introducing an actual replacement plan at any point after that failed vote? I doubt he would’ve “responded” with anything but “WE WON, SUCK IT LIBS” or some variant thereof.
I’m going to try explaining this again. Try to keep up.
Assume the flat tax is 10% of all income, regardless of any deductibles or whatever. For someone making $30,000 a year, that comes to $3,000; for someone making $30 million a year, that comes to $3 million.
The person with the $30k income needs that $3,000 with far more urgency and utility than the person with the $30 million income needs that $3 million. The poor person might run into a bad run of luck and that $3,000 could be the difference between, quite literally, life and death. They can’t afford to lose that much money to taxes because they need that money in the here and now. The rich person won’t miss $3 million any more than they’d miss $3,000 because they’ll have $27 million to play around with. They don’t “need”, or can at least afford to lose, that $3 million to taxes because their needs are already met and they can afford luxuries that the poor person could only dream of renting, never mind owning.
A flat tax would punish the poor by making them give up an amount of money that could mean the difference between making rent and having to find a homeless shelter while letting the rich pay an amount of money that will barely affect their life in any way.
And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. (Mark 12:41-44, King James Version)
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“ What’s the first half of that phrase, again?”
What’s the second?
‘Tax’
Ohkay, I understand now how you’re approaching this.
Here’s where I get lost: they’re paying 10% now, today. And would still do so under 10%
I don’t follow how lowering someone else’s tax rate changes anything (other than mandating fiscal responsibility in government).
The 30k family pays the same $3000 under both plans.
Btw, a family making 30k today, or under the multitude of 10% plans would still be eligible for the minimum standard deduction of $1,200 per self and dependent. So a family of three filing separate (assume $15,000 per person) would have one payment of $300 and one payment of 0.
The parable doesn’t work since the minimum maximum threshold is far higher than the rates burden.
Am I missing something?
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The part of the plan that Trump and the GOP never came up with. “Repeal” was always the primary goal; “replace” was something they didn’t worry that much about, or else they would’ve had an actual plan ready at any point in the near-decade between the passage of the ACA and the fateful repeal vote during the Trump administration. Or did you forget that the GOP tried a few dozen times to repeal the ACA even before Trump took office, each time with no real replacement plan ready to go? And the plans they did have only ever yanked back parts of the ACA; none of them offered any solutions for the problems still plaguing the American healthcare system even after the passage of the ACA. (To wit: the Amercian Health Care Act, which was so unpopular that it was considered the primary factor in numerous Republican losses during the 2018 midterm elections.)
The point, you callous asshole, is that poor people can’t afford to pay as much into public funds as the rich can. Someone with a few thousand bucks in the bank at most—money which they’re saving as a buffer in case of a financial emergency—can’t afford to give a single cent of that up. Someone with a few tens of millions in the bank can give up a small fraction of that without their lifestyle changing in the least. A flat tax would tax them both at the same rate, but the poor person would need the money they’d be paying far more than the rich person.
As income grows, so does general comfort. Someone making $30k a year is going to be scrimping and saving and cutting corners on everything from food to clothing just to pay for rent and utilities. Someone making $30 million a year could literally pay $30k in taxes per month for a year and still not have to worry about food, clothing, shelter, transportation, or anything else they need to survive. The poor person will always have to worry about a doctor’s visit or a car problem or some other out-of-nowhere problem sinking their finances; the rich person never really has to think about any of that.
Sure, it sounds like a nice idea to make everyone pay “a fair share”, but “a fair share” isn’t fair to those who need their money in a far more acute and direct way. I know for a fact that those deductibles you keep mentioning as if they’re a financial miracle that prevents all poor people from paying taxes don’t always result in lower payments (or refunds!) when the taxes come due. And since the government—especially a conservative-controlled government, kinda like the one you helped vote into office in 2016—loves to cut the tax rates for the rich and refuses to close loopholes that would make the rich pay more into the public treasury, trying to force poor people into paying more because “it’s fair to the rich” or somesuch bullshit sounds like you’re in favor of socialism for rich folks.
A flat tax is like trickle-down economics: People who haven’t been brainwashed into believing those ideas would work know those ideas don’t work because those people aren’t “poverty is a moral failing”–believing conservative assholes. The appeal of a flat tax is a millimeter thin; your being unable to see that, for whatever reason, is a “you” problem.
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Sure, it sounds like a nice idea to make everyone pay “a fair share”, but “a fair share” isn’t fair to those who need their money in a far more acute and direct way.
If the goal is to make people pay a 'fair share' then a core part of that must be to consider what the amount asked for means to the person you're asking it from so that the amount is actually 'fair'. As you noted $3,000 from someone who makes $30,000 is going to hit them way harder than $3 million from someone who makes $30 million which shows that an equal percentage is anything but fair as the impact is going to be vastly different, something which certainly doesn't strike me as 'fair' in the least.
'Everyone needs to chip in $50 to help pay for electricity for the building' may seem fair at first glance since everyone is paying the same amount but if $50 is the difference between whether or not one of those people can eat that week because they have to watch every penny and it's nothing more than pocket-change for another person because they have enough that they could pay the entire bill and not even notice the cost the 'fairness' is exposed to be anything but.
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"What whnhsve right now is a minimally governmentally subsidised system the created one of the largest nightmares in actual insurance usage we’ve seen."
What you have right now is a compromise that was created because doing what's been successfully in every other developed nation was too hard or too "socialist" to work in the country that already spent vastly more per capita on a system that failed to cover a significant number of people while exposing them to dangers such as medical bankruptcy that don't exist elsewhere. So, rather than pushing for the single payer option that many were hoping for, Obama agreed to a Republican plan in order to get at least some progress that could be built on later on.
"Good try Obama, you did your best, too bad you kicked it in the wrong goal"
Yeah, it's hard to progress when a bunch of states attach Obama's name to what was essentially a bipartisan bill based on a Republican idea - which most Americans agreed was fine until you told them that Obama's name was attached - leading to red states refusing the parts of the bill such as Medicare expansion that made it work. Then, it's failing hard in the places that deliberately blocked the things that would aid its adoption.
"He had called for repeal and replace"
OK. Can you link to the plan he was proposing to replace it?
"Right now people pay 10% at $14,499"
Yes, then they ay more at higher levels, but only on the income above that level. Everyone pays that amount on their first $14,499, no matter what they earn afterwards. You're proposing people don't ever reach the higher levels - how are things that the higher levels currently fund going to be funded under your plan? It's not going to be due to whatever "trickle down" nonsense you have in mind, as evidenced by the last 40 years.
"From there I don’t see how everyone paying the same rate is a problem?"
Because you don't understand how progressive tax systems work, and why lowering the burden on the mega rich increases the burden on the middle class.
I'll not that you only have mentioned lowering the amount paid, not how the things the taxes fund are to work after you remove their funding.
"Property taxes are flat rate."
They're set by country normally, meaning the people in a richer area may pay different rates to people in poorer areas.
"Why should personal income be any different?"
Because the thing that's being taxed is different.
"ignoring crazy categorical compartmentalisation, CCC"
This seems to be trend with your arguments - so long as you ignore things that invalidate my argument, my argument is sound!
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"The 30k family pays the same $3000 under both plans."
Which tax brackets are you currently looking at? Because the family that earns $30k in my research pays 12% on the income over $14,101, up to the next bracket where they pay 22% on income over $53,701 if they get there.
When you mandate everyone pays 10%, who makes up this shortfall?
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"A flat tax is like trickle-down economics"
Yes, something that was mocked as "voodoo economics" in the 80s and has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt not to work for the majority of Americans or their economy in the long term.
As a side note - I recently tried switching my search engine in one browser to Bing to try and collect some extra points in the Microsoft Rewards problem, and I just noticed that searching the term "voodoo economics" in Bing leads you a vastly different set of results with a higher emphasis on right-wing blogs rather than first hand accounts or neutral sources returned by Google. That's... interesting to me even though that small sample size isn't enough to draw a proper conclusion yet. The different between those two engine and other competitors when I just tried is rather notable, though.
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Sure. I’m happy to call the Republican Party idiots.
Trump himself has always focused on replacing the program. That nobody came up with anything… is unfortunate.
We can’t, however, known with the ‘certainty of god herself’ what Trump would have done with a repeal only plan.
Since you don’t like the current threshold income, and you don’t like the higher threshold that flat tax plans begin at,
At what point should a person begin paying federal income tax?
50k? 100?
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“ which most Americans agreed was fine until you told them that Obama's name was attached”
Maybe. I began bitching when I couldn’t modify my plan outside the tiny little enrolment window.
“ It's not going to be due to whatever "trickle down" nonsense you have in mind, ”
Not interested in that bull, it doesn’t work.
Actually with less taxIncome would force the government to prioritise programs.
CCC
This is state bull in some states that have sales tax.
You have a tax for basic food, not basic food, prepared food, goods, services, materials, supply, bonus taxes, luxury taxes.
Hard time understanding 1% on a can of juice, and 7% on the same juice if they print energy on the label. And 11% on energy drink: juice based.
So yes, sales tax, in some states, falls to CCC and most people in those states are now arguing against it.
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He didn’t come up with anything other than saying “we’re gonna have a great plan” over and over (was that going to happen before or after Infrastructure Week?), so how about you say he fucked up, too.
The whole point of every vote to repeal the ACA—including the vote on the AHCA—was to repeal the ACA in its entirety (or close enough to that). None of the plans put forth by the GOP or Trump had any solid ideas for what to do about the healthcare system they were prepared to throw into complete disarray (with the side effect of kicking millions of people off their healthcare plans, to boot). They didn’t have a plan to counter the rising costs of drugs or the fact that poor people couldn’t afford even basic-ass healthcare without nearly bankrupting themselves. They just wanted to get the scary Black man’s healthcare plan off the books and feed that red meat to their voting base.
We might not know what Trump would’ve done if the repeal had passed. But we can make a hella-educated guess based on his entire life history up to (and after) that vote: He would’ve celebrated the repeal as a massive accomplishment for the American people while offering nothing to help those his “accomplishment” would’ve kicked off their healthcare plans. (“They’re all in states that didn’t vote for me anyway,” he probably would’ve said at a post-repeal cult meeti—I mean, rally.)
Everyone above the poverty level should pay some form of income tax. The trick is figuring out what percentage of their income should be taxed based on how far above the poverty level they are. A flat tax would fuck over the less well-off by making them give up a far more useful (and needed) amount of their money than a rich person would ever have to give up. As I’ve said before: The person making $30k would need $3k in a far more acute, direct, I’m-fucked-without-it way than the person making $30 million would likely ever need $3 million in the same way. If you seriously can’t understand (or care) how that works, I don’t know what the hell else anyone can tell you to make you understand (or care) about how a flat tax fucks over the poor.
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And which programs do you think they’re going to prioritize: the ones that help poor people or the ones that help protect rich people’s profits at the expense of poor people’s lives? Do you really think enough people in the federal government give a shit about poor people to change the priorities of those in charge, who want to keep the ruling class happy by making sure their profits aren’t touched in any way?
Tax the rich. Tax the fuck out of them. Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral, anyway.
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I wouldn’t support cutting social services. I’d start with cutting military spending. That would greatly reduce expense and save lives too!
I’d cut international aid programs. We have poor in our own country. We can help other country’s poor when we don’t have any of our own.
I’d redefine our NATO and UN expenditure. Much like trump pushed for. We still pay the largest chunk of the purse.
I’d set a series of graduated taxes in corporate income. Starting at 15% with companies earning 10mil or more. And rising to 49% at the Billion mark.
I’d end all loss adjustment deductions in both corporate and individual taxes.
I’d push to tax religious institutions.
Far more than any rich man, churches, temples, etc collect vast wealth and distribute a tiny fraction of it for “charity”.
How about we start with those.
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Trump himself has always focused on replacing the program. That nobody came up with anything… is unfortunate.
Try 'disastrous and grossly and lethally irresponsible' instead, because that would be a much more accurate description of what even seriously considering moving forward with a plan to repeal the current healthcare system without having the replacement fully developed and read to roll out(ideally before the repeal so there was some overlap to avoid lack of coverage) would be.
If you don't think your vehicle's current brake system is working well you go in and get it looked at, potentially replacing it, what you don't do is have it removed with the idea that you'll figure out a replacement at some point in the future and as far as I'm aware that's basically how they were treating the 'repeal and replace' plan, gut the ACA now, figure out a replacement later.
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My god, you sound like one of us America-hating communisocialist lefty bastards (except for the international aid and NATO/UN parts).
Welcome to the party, pal!
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You are absolutely correct. This is exactly how the Republicans approached the situation. Thinking Trump would simply sign a repeal.
I don’t think he would have. That’s my opinion.
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Lol. I’ll probably ruin it if I keep going but why the hell not:
I’d gut the private contracting system of the federal government.
It’s outsourcing government control to private companies for government work. From staffing to military. Out goes the middle man. And another massive expense.
By taxing religious groups we can close loopholes in the hospital system where income is funnelled through religious reuse.
That extra money would be used to partly support single payer healthcare. With my much higher corporate taxes we now nip the majority of the cost.
I’d put in place a National recycling plan.
I’d fund the Arctic science tunnel.
See, I may Pisa of the left be not accepting the hypothesis of human influence on global warming. But I’m no Republican either.
Sites in Alaska are a key source for our core collection.
And as I said, over the past few years research in this State has lead to the first actual evidence humans are, in fact, speeding global warming.
That is not something to ignore.
I’d fund it through compromise.
I’d reopen north slope and Arctic Ocean oil drilling. With very specific rules. New contracts. A 10% tax (I like that percent, easy to work with) on every barrel pulled. Plus a $5 per barrel surcharge. Both of which would be directly and solely paid into the Arctic tunnel sites.
I’d push strict new regulations on ALL oil ships porting in, or from, the US. A mandatory 25% fee paid on the cost of cleaning the most expensive oil spill in our history: paid into public fund for oil cleanup m. An insurance plan of sorts.
A similar plan for pipe lines. Based on the most expensive pipe spill.
I’d raise the pump tax to 10% as well. (By pump I’m mean fuel distribution source, gas pump, tank pump, etc.)
That tax can be directed for clean energy source construction.
And all this redirecting of funding? I’d end it.
I’d push a bill that prohibits redirecting dedicated funds without a bill, signed to law, that allows for redirection.
No more grabbing money from that chest because “oops”.
When funding becomes finite The government will quickly learn to work within the constraints.
See I’m not as bad as you think I am. ;)
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One of the planks of his 2016 platform was “repeal Obamacare”. He shittalked John McCain after McCain sealed the fate of the AHCA. His administration fought to use the courts as a means of repealing Obamacare up until the end of his term. I can say without reservation that I believe Donald Trump absolutely would’ve signed a repeal of the ACA without a replacement plan.
Both Trump and the GOP in general couldn’t stand to let anything done by the first Black POTUS stand unchallenged—even if tearing down Obama’s accomplishments meant hurting millions of people in the process. The Republican party may not be a racist party per se, but it is the party most widely supported by racists and racist organizations. The GOP is also the party of lawmakers and politicians and pundits who use racial dogwhistles (and bullhorns, as of late) to stir up the voting base, and the party that literally depends on its voting base being racist as hell in their voting patterns. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. They’re hoping you won’t read up on the history of the party after the ideological switch of the GOP and the Dems in the wake of the civil rights movement, the Dixiecrats, and the creation of the Southern Strategy. Don’t let them make you a fool.
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My god, he really is one of us deep down.
WELCOME TO THE STRUGGLES, COMRADE! ✊
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Let’s do away with ICE. The agency was built out of multiple ones and needs to return to the old ones.
ICE unfortunately has the entire agency operating under the military style offensive from Border Patrol and Customs.
So we recreate the original agencies. Disband ICE in the process, and retrain the non-field officers and agents.
Well, let’s redo immigration all together.
We create an entry processing agency. Separate from all others and with a single task: processing immigration applications.
This will speed the system substantially.
No more waiting in cages, not Biden’s cages, not Trump’s cages, not Obama’s cages, no cages. How: to follow.
Finish the designated wall. But rethink it.
My biggest concern with a solid wall is the environment.
Literally millions of animals cross that border along with people.
So we create openings.
Rethink the entire border patrol.
Totally demolish the existing processing stations.
We have the technology. Motion sensors, cameras, satellite. We can be partly open without major free flow.
Let’s build state of the art self powered processing centres, comfortable beds for those waiting for legal processing.
Let’s rethink capture.
Let’s get rid of both catch and release AND catch and detain. We start with granting deportation immunity to those here.
Show up, admit your legal mistake, and get a card.
Get a date for a case to have your status heard. Only deport those with felony records and issue green cards to the rest.
However, if you willingly skip your appointment then the deal is off.
With that, anyone caught violating the border without a card after a set date gets deported. Driven back to the border and told to go. Come back through the, now much faster, legal point of entry tomorrow.
What’s up with pot? I mean, we have alcohol, tobacco, health pills in every store. All deadly.
Just make it legal, and tax it.
I’m neither opposed nor for this following idea, but you could just legalise some harder stuff too.
I know how legal opium worked out, but thing’s were left alone at the time.
With tightly controlled rules about intoxication: maybe. Why? Well, beyond the fact that people are going to do it any way…
We guarantee the sold product is clean of additives, thus saving lives.
We destroy the primary funding of both gangs in this country and cartels south of us.
With social healthcare we have feee access to addiction treatment.
Oh, and we can tax that too… how’s 10% sound?
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Re: Civil Rights Law Apparently Illegal
"While the Civil Rights acts are racially neutral their passage was clearly out of bias and intended to specifically protect black people."
Want me to point out the tell you just dropped on being a disingenious alt-right stormfront fucktard?
Naturally an act intended to prevent abuse of a minority is designed to protect said abused minority. This is pretty clear to most people. It's also considered a beneficial effect of said act, to most people.
And then there's the loud minority of inhumane fucktards who perceive any bill erasing some of the advantage of white people visavi non-white people as outrageous. Some of which are so dumb they then go on forums and flaunt their bigotry for all to see...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Yet, you still haven't understood why this is a terrible idea that is totally regressive and damages the entire economy. There's no version of flat tax that doesn't punish people who earn less while funnelling money to the already wealthy."
Not quite true. In the US a flat tax means you can streamline the tax codes something fierce - meaning that the top 100 earners may be paying a whole lot more than 0.
Progressive taxes are used all over europe to some degree and they work, for the most part. But only because they are sensibly written. The US tax code is so complex printing it out costs enough dead trees to alert the EPA.
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Re: Re:
Assume that the Government has a target income from tax, so if they go to a flat rate, the lowest rate of tax goes up, while the higher rate goes down. Net result, the tax burden on the poorest in society increases, as a the flat rate will be higher that the lowest rate in a banded rate system. A flat rate at the current lowest rate would reduce governments income, and that is not going to happen outside of a revolution.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
True that.
People against the flat tax proposals outright, tend to not read them in the first place.
We’re not discussing modifying the current tax system. We’re talking about tossing it out the window. Well, not literally, tossing the us tax code out window from the 50th floor would cause a catastrophic impact.
We are: Starting over.
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Re: Re: Re:
Not necessarily:
A flat tax system would also eliminate most businesses and hoarding deductions.
That means that the people in the top that currently pay little or no taxes would now pay 10% of their income.
Your focus, and it’s a legitimate concern, is on here a flat rate maintains a higher burden on the poor in dollar value.
That is true.
However, you miss two key factors.
1) the minimum taxable income jumps dramatically.
2) no deductions beyond single person credits.
A flat tax would guarantee the top 1% pay considerably more than they do no.
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Only if you can close out every tax loophole that allows them to keep most of their remuneration as being other that income.
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That’s just it.
Well, sort of.
These plans would close out all but the single person deductions for self and dependents.
No more writing off the 3mil Maserati as a “business” expense.
stop short of taxing non-transactionable money. But I have 0 issue taxing investment income. No more gains-to-loss deduction.
stop short of taxing actually invested money. Mainly because you’ll be holding it eventually. If not you, your descendants.
Don’t tax twice: wait for it to move.
That’s what most of these tax plans would do. Not all, but most.
100% of the money the enters the reach of your hands in a spendable way gets taxed.
Minus that personal deduction.
You don’t approach a 10% personal income tax plan as a modification, it’s a total replacement. Nothing present applies.
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Re:
"One of the planks of his 2016 platform was “repeal Obamacare”. "
Which, of course, is in itself a red flag because it's only called that because of right-wing propaganda aimed at getting people to dislike it. The program is not called that, and when people are interviewed about it by either naming individual parts or by referring to it as the ACA / PPACA it tends to get bipartisan support. It's only when people used the Republican nickname for it that cracks start to appear.
What a shock - the incompetent con artist obsessed by branding and holds grudges against those who anger him for decades was promising to destroy a brand associated with some he didn't like, and didn't think past his own ego as to what would happen when the protections it offered actually affected people.
"I believe Donald Trump absolutely would’ve signed a repeal of the ACA without a replacement plan"
There's really no doubt. Virtually any option that would work would still be "socialism" according to his supporters.
My guess would have been that he'd "dismantle" the ACA by changing a couple of words and officially renaming it "Trumpcare", but I very much doubt anything beyond that would have happened in terms of changing it. Even just reverting to what came before the ACA would have been a major disaster - and since Trump would have demanded his name on the bill, even the sycophants around him would have understood that's a very bad idea. But, there would certainly be no detailed plan - that's in the same folder as the evidence that the last election was stolen and that Benghazi was anything other than a sideshow to fool idiots into supporting their team.
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Couldn't Be Happier
After reading the decision more thoroughly and having had the time to go over Judge Hinkle I really couldn't be happier with the decision. The liberal plaintiffs were always going to win the first round as the plaintiff gets to all but pick their judge these days.
Judge Hinkle doesn't have a very good track record on his rulings standing up to an 11th Circuit Appeal. Jones et al v. DeSantis where much like this one Judge Hinkle applied strict scrutiny rather than the legally appropriate scrutiny. On appeal Judge Hinkle lost quite easily as the 11th Circuit which concluded that only a rational basis scrutiny, the lowest level of scrutiny and two levels below strict scrutiny, applied.
Judge "Strick Scrutiny" Hinkle stands little chance on appeal.
As if oft the case where with Stephen T. Stone citing the Halleck decision while not understanding it. While Kavanaugh didn't declare Big Tech a state actor because it operated a public forum, he did declare big tech a public forum and opened the door for regulation in the public interest. As he said in his decision he didn't want the courts to do it as that would be judge made law.
So I'm fairly Happy with Judge "Strick Scrutiny" Hinkle's decision. With Judge Hinkle the best you could hope for is another hanging curve ball. And that is what he threw one hell of a hanging curve ball.
'We got another "Strick Scrutiny" Hinkle decision again.' ~Says the 11th circuit.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I guess you don’t believe in the process of law creation here? "
Point of note, Lostinlodos. There are a great many non-americans here for which what just went down in Florida would be understood as "Grand Fraud" not "Law Creation".
This particular type of political shenanigans appears to be, still, an "only in america" issue.
From the european pov I'd have to say that the idea that half your politicians are con men and grifters sponging tax money while wasting government resources on errant nonsense for personal PR purposes is something which wouldn't even fly in France.
And that's pretty resounding condemnation. That you guys have normalized this...I mean, I'm hardly a libertarian but I can't imagine anyone being happy that a significant proportion of my earnings are going to funding bargain bin P.T. Barnum knockoffs.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Well, not literally, tossing the us tax code out window from the 50th floor would cause a catastrophic impact."
You might as well toss down the 50th floor. It's that complex.
Hence why, from my perspective, the US might do better with a flat tax which would be hard to leverage exceptions and loopholes in. Not impossible, to be sure, and given the way debts are held to be claimable assets when it comes to determining whether a bank will spot you a loan but as a net negative when it comes to calculating taxes the game is inherently rigged towards those who can afford to be a few billion dollars in the hole.
That said i still find it incomprehensible that today american taxation for the middle class is higher than what europeans pay once every tax item is tallied, while the truly wealthy in general pay 0.
The flat tax, for the US, won't be a solution either. Not unless you start truly funding the IRS and start closing the loopholes letting people copperfield away their extreme wealth and earnings as soon as the taxman comes looking.
And I'm afraid that strong government is an absolute necessity. And to keep it not beholden to private interests one which disallows private funding of political campaigns at that. Until you've gotten that part of it in the bag every other reform is a pipe dream.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I follow, Like you. My guess would be UK, probably British, based on structure of wording. Or influenced.
“ appears to be, still, an "only in america" issue.”
I believe it is.
Every aspect of our system is built on conflict from the bottom up. It’s simply our 300+ years of bucking the system.
We pass laws to test lines. Peck at the fence. Wind weak spots.
Both parties do it. And both complain when the other one does it.
But that’s the way it works here.
“ half your politicians”
Your a bit uninformed. It’s probably closer to 99%.
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Agreed.
The entire premise of the flat tax plans the come up every election cycle is to toss out the whole friggn code book and start over.
Some are better than others when it come to things like raising minimum taxable income. Some fail to see the point and add new deductions back in.
But I’d stand behind any plan that does away with loss write offs
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There still lies a significant question you need to answer vis-á-vis your flat tax proposal: Why should a poor person give up 10% of their income when they need that money in a far more acute, direct, “I need this to live in case of an emergency” way than a rich person will ever need 10% of their income? The poor can’t afford to pay into the public treasury in the same way as the rich—so why should they be punished for their poverty by having to give up more of the money they absolutely need to live? Aside from the purely mathematical fairness of “everyone pays the same rate”, what specific facet of a flat tax plan is fair to the poorest Americans?
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Re:
Because the bottom level would pay no tax at all.
Because the top few percent currently also pay no taxes due to deductions, write offs, losses, etc.
It would guarantee the rich pay. A flat rate with no way out.
And, because the poor already pay 10%. Their burden doesn’t change regardless of what higher income people pay.
Nearly All plans presented in my lifetime (that I’ve read) raise the minimum taxable rate considerably. Be it 20k, 25k etc.
I’ve never come across one that lowered it.
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Re: Re:
And how does the Government get the same income if they reduce the higher band down to 10%, other than raise the flat rate to compensate. All that money from the first few higher bands has to be made up from somewhere, and is a far higher sum that the tax that can be gained from the top 10% of the wealthy, whose wealth is often due to the valuation of a company that they built, and not very fungible.
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Re: Re: Re:
“ And how does the Government get the same income if they reduce the higher band down to 10%, other than raise the flat rate to compensate”
First off, elsewhere. The considerably higher corporate taxes. The 10% plans are personal income tax plans.
Second, by eliminating all of the write offs. The top 1% today pays less than the bottom 25% of taxable income.
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Then how is it a “flat tax” if everyone doesn’t have to pay it? Either everyone pays 10% or it’s going to be skewed—“unfair”, even—in one way or another.
And even assuming the bottom level on income doesn’t get taxed, what happens to people living just above the poverty line, who just barely qualify for the first level that does get taxed? What makes taking away 10% of their income “fair” even though, like the people in the income bracket beneath them, they may need a good chunk of that 10% for some emergency that they can’t foresee?
A progressive tax system makes more sense because we can afford to tax the rich at higher rates. They can afford to lose that much wealth and still have no worries about whether they’ll be able to buy a new car or go to the hospital without being bankrupted or pay for shelter for themselves and their families. Poor people have to make every last cent count, even if it means they go without something important for a few days—like, say, clean water or power or even food. Taxing the poor, even if they live right above the poverty line, places on them a burden that the rich can easily shoulder on their own.
Being a billionaire is immoral and unethical. (It should also be illegal, but that’s just me talking.) Taxing the poor is also immoral and unethical. Why should the government make people who are barely living above the poverty line pay more of the money they need to survive into the public treasury than rich people? Why should the poor and nearly-poor pay 10% of their income and continue to live in poverty while the rich pay the same percentage and continue to live in luxury they’ll never really have to worry about losing?
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Re:
The income tax idea here dates back to 1813. It paid for the war if 1812.
It has always had a minimum level taxable.
Today that income level is $15000. Most plans ease that to 20000, or 25000.
“ What makes taking away 10% of their income “fair” even though”
They already do today. Flat proposals, though, tend to move the bottom end up.
Also keep in mind the personal deduction is still included in every plan. Often as the only one. A single person making 20k would be taxed at 10% for 2000, -1200 deduction owes 800.
A family of two for 2000 -2400 deduction owes zero.
“ Poor people have to make every last cent count”
So what are you suggesting? The tax rate currently starts at 10% on income of $15000.
It jumps to 18% in the 80k range I believe.
I’m sure on the base rate, not the second one.
So do you want to raise the minimum taxable income ? To what?
“ Being a billionaire is immoral and unethical.”
I doubt you’d donate 900,000,000 of a surprise inheritance to be in the “average” holdings class. If you would, good for you. But I doubt it.
“ poverty line pay more of the money they need ”
There is no “more”, they would pay the same.
And on the bottom end less.
Nobody here is talking about taxing the “poor”.
30k is comfortable in more than 90% of the country.
Everywhere but the heavily taxed mega cities.
$50,000 is where a family of 4 actually starts paying taxes. 48,001 actually.
That’s a much higher entry point than today.
So supporting today’s tax is supporting taxing the poor: because today the tax kicks in, 15,000 for an individual. 2400 for a couple.
A person making 15,000 and being taxed 10% on it today needs his money even more than the individual making 20, 25k under the flat tax plan.
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What I am suggesting is that you’re so focused on the economics of a flat tax proposal that you’re not even bothering to look at the humanities. You’re not even trying to care that a flat tax would fuck over the poor and those close to the poverty line.
To paraphrase something I heard elsewhere (because I can’t be fucked to find the original right now): The average person is never as close to being rich as they are to being homeless. And to add onto that: Poverty and wealth both compound. But whereas wealth compounds into more wealth (the rich get richer), poverty compounds into even more poverty (the poor get poorer). A rich person who gets into a fender-bender can likely afford to pay for repairs and be back on the road the next day, if not sooner—and without suffering any major setbacks in their life. A poor person who gets into a fender-bender might not seek repairs because they need their car to get to work and public transportation in their area is virtually non-existent. The damage to the car comes back to bite that poor person in a couple of months when the car breaks down on their way to work; now they not only need to pay for the towing of their car, but they need to pay for either repairs or a new car, and that’s not even getting into whether they might miss time at work (thus driving their finances even further into a death spiral).
Taxing the poor person would only make things worse. The same goes for people who are living close to the poverty line. Under a flat tax program—deductibles be damned—they’d have to pay more into the public treasury than they should have to because “it’s fair”. Meanwhile, the rich person gets taxed the same amount and might not even notice because they don’t need that money in the same way a poor person does. Hell, tax a billionaire at a 10% rate, and chances are good that they’ll have made that amount back by the end of the year.
A flat tax punishes the poor and rewards the wealthy. It compounds poverty and wealth in (un)equal measure. The only reason you don’t seem to care is that you’re still so focused on the money—the property, if you will—that you’re looking past the humanity. But hey, that’s no surprise: Conservatives tend to look past the poor on the way to kissing wealthy ass.
The average American isn’t worth $100 million. And if a billionaire can’t live on $100 million dollars per year, that says more about their ridiculous behavior, their ego, and their incompetence with money than it does about anything else. Hell, give me $100 million and I could live comfortably for the rest of my life—with at least three-fourths of that amount still in my bank account by the time I kick the bucket.
I didn’t say they’d pay “more money” full stop; I said they’d pay “more of the money they need to survive”. A poor person might pay a few hundred bucks in taxes, but they might need that money down the line to pay a medical bill or a surprise car repair or some other unforeseen expense that could require more money than they have in the bank. A billionaire who pays $100 million in taxes will not need that money to live comfortably because they already have been and likely always will be.
The law of diminishing utility is a thing: As people make more money, the amount of comfort made possible by that money rises, until they reach a point where no amount of money can make them more comfortable than they already are. At that point, money becomes meaningless in all ways but as a status symbol. Billionaires do not need to be worth a billion dollars or more to live in comfort; at that point, money is but a symbol of their greed and their lust for power—a signifier that they’ve exploited the working class and the government alike to become arguably more powerful than the working class and the government combined.
Poverty isn’t a moral failing—obscene wealth is. That you think the right thing to do is tax the obscenely wealthy at the same rate you’d tax someone scraping by on the $8 an hour they earn in a warehouse owned by an obscenely wealthy asshole is…well, it’s telling everyone a lot about your priorities.
Are you sure you’re not a Republican?
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Re:
“ You’re not even trying to care that a flat tax would fuck over the poor and those close to the poverty line”
The flat tax wouldn’t kick in till well above the current beginning point.
“ Taxing the poor person would only make things worse.”
I agree. So do most flat tax plans. Making a family of four not pay any income tax below Apx $50k
“ they’d have to pay more into the public treasury than they should have to because “it’s fair”. ”
You’re flat out wrong. Today the bottom rate is 10% and starts at 15k
The poor would be paying less or the same.
“ more of the money they need to survive”
And yet. The same or less than they pay today.
“ At that point, money becomes meaningless in all ways but as a status symbol. ”
philanthropy Be damned.
“Poverty isn’t a moral failing—obscene wealth is“
Poverty is not, and I never said it was.
Nor is wealth obscene, or a failing.
Not in my view. You’re free to have your own view but you come across not as progressive or socialist, but communist.
And you will never get that fly in the US.
“ Are you sure you’re not a Republican?”
Republicans in general don’t support a flat tax because it would cause more of them to pay more money than they currently do. Because the flat tax eliminates all those deductions, or loopholes as others call them.
Nor do Republicans support the progressing rise on business taxes flat tax programs suggest. A tax rate of 49% at or above a certain gross, be it 1billion or 100.
When a company brings in a gross of of $1B and pays $490000000 in taxes they’re not going to be writing the CEO a $500000000 paycheque.
A flat income tax with a scaled corporate tax is far more fair to everyone.
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Why should we ever rely on the whims of what a rich person chooses to support with a mere fraction of their money when the government could tax the fuck out of the rich and better distribute the money where it’s needed the most? Or, to put it more bluntly: Why should their scattershot charity replace focused public funding?
At a certain level, wealth not only loses its utility, it becomes an obscenity. It proves that the person hoarding such wealth has exploited God knows how many other people—typically the working class, and especially the poor—to become so wealthy that to consider how much richer they are than the average American is like considering the size of the universe in comparison to the size of Earth.
That’s why I say “being a billionaire is unethical”: No one can exploit that many people for that long a stretch of time and not come out the other side of that particular shit tunnel smelling like a rose. To flaunt that wealth by hoarding it, doling it out in small fractions, and continuing to passively build it by doing nothing is fucking disgusting and the fact that you care more about “doing right by the rich” shows how much you value the approval of people who’d sooner step on your neck, choke you to death, and still make you pay them for the privilege of having been killed by your “betters”.
I don’t believe the government should own or control the means of production. But I do believe they should tax the everloving fuck out of the wealthy people who do.
No, it isn’t.
Let’s assume that you get your plan and that instead of taxing the poor, you waive all their taxes and start taxing people who make…let’s say, $50,000 a year. Right off the bat you’re being unfair because you’re giving people beneath a specific income bracket an “out” from having to be taxed—a fact about which I’m sure those who are barely on the other side of that bracket would complain. But that’s not worth exploring right now.
Now assume that the flat tax is 10% of all income, regardless of how much anyone makes (aside from the people beneath the tax line). That means someone making $50,000 gives up $5,000 every year; for someone making $50,000, $5,000 is a significant amount of money. As the income level goes up, the amount does as well—but the utility of that taxed amount lowers. Someone who makes $500,000 a year, for example, will feel the loss of $50,000 a year, but they can still live with few worries about paying the bills. Someone who makes $5 million might miss their $500k in taxes, but they’re not going to be sweating it that much, considering they can still live well on $4.5 million. Someone who makes $50 million a year would lose $5 million, and I can all but guarantee that unless they’re spending their money on hookers and blow all day every day, they’re not going to care all that much about losing that much in taxes.
At some point, the law of diminishing utility kicks in and people who get taxed a small amount of their income won’t miss it because they’ve got so much of their income left that they can still live well. The poor don’t get to experience that feeling because while they may pay the same percentage that the rich do, they’re paying more money than they can typically afford to give up because they need that money in a far more utilitarian way.
You’re so concerned with “fairness” in terms of percentages that you look past how much people who can’t hoard wealth need the money you think they should pay so rich people don’t have to pay nearly as much out of “fairness” to the rich. That’s the fatal flaw of the flat tax idea, and it’s a flaw you’ve refused to consider in its entirety by the way you keep cherrypicking things I’ve said and quoted them out of their full context to keep saying shit that ignores the humanities of the situation and holy shit you really are a Republican.
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Re:
“ a fact about which I’m sure those who are barely on the other side of that bracket would complain”
Yes. The same “out” we have now. Only flat tax plans widen that “out” from the low $20s to the upper $40s.
“ for someone making $50,000, $5,000 is a significant amount of money.”
Yes it is. But they already pay that today.
“you look past how much people who can’t hoard wealth need the money you think they should pay so rich people don’t have to pay nearly as much out of “fairness” to the rich. “
I’m not suggesting the poor pay. In fact, these plans increase the level of income you can have before you start paying taxes.
“ That’s the fatal flaw of the flat tax idea”
Why are you completely ignoring how the current system works?
Here’s the most recent set of regulation:
https://www.irs.com/articles/2021-federal-income-tax-rates-brackets-standard-deduction-a mounts
How is this more fair than the flat tax plan. Because right now the cost to the poor is atrocious, and I’d call THAT obscene.
This is the bipartisan solution? Looks like roast the little guy on an open flame to me!
Especially when you account for how the top 1% can pay zero taxes after deductions!
So where does the out for the poor happen in the current plan?
I’m looking at plans that come up on offer over and over and get shoved off to some committee because Congress would rather push bills for funding pet projects and their own pay raises.
Rather than hash it out, do YOU have a plan that would be more fair?
At what income bracket would you start at?
“ I don’t believe the government should own or control the means of production”
That’s not communist, that’s collectivist. It happens to be a key principle in communist implementation, but it’s not the core.
Communism is, principally, completely commonality of the non-ruling people.
‘From as they can, to as they need’ looks good on paper but in reality rarely works out.
It’s related to diminishing returns.
When gain is removed from the strive, the incentives to do more than minimal disappear.
If you have an idea for a tax plan that would protect the poor more than not taxing them? Share it.
Mind you taxing a billionaire 90% isn’t the answer.
All that does is greatly reduce incentive to produce.
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Re:
Here’s a question for you:
First guess, how much income do you think I have in a year. Post that. Cause your wrong.
Post your first guess, not the one you reconsidered after I said you were wrong.
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Re: Re:
Eliminate tax for all below that mark, and reduce tax for those above that bracket, then either those paying $5,000 end up paying $5.500, or everybody including the poor pay more as prices rise to cover increased corporate taxes. if you follow the money, taxes are paid directly or indirectly by the individual.
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My guess is I don’t give a shit. Even the poor can go to bat for wealthy assholes because they’ve been brainwashed to believe in the idea that “rich means good” and “if we tax the rich that’s socialism” even though all the tax breaks and loopholes are socialism for the rich—as would be a flat tax rate that keeps them from paying a lot more in terms of percentages than the poorest Americans. What’s so wrong about making a billionaire give 50% of his annual income to the public treasury if that means giving up $50 million of an annual $100 million take? I mean, is the billionaire really going to be worse off for not having that extra $50 million?
Again: You keep focusing so much on the “fairness” of the percentage that you’re ignoring the humanities of the situation—that you’re ignoring, time and time again, the idea of the law of diminishing utility. All your arguments go back to the percentage of the amount paid in taxes as if a poor person and a rich person both paying 10% of their income is “fair” because it’s “the same”. Mathematically, yes, it is the same percentage—but it isn’t the same in terms of utility to the person being taxed. You know that, you all but admit that, and yet you don’t seem to give a shit.
I can’t be fucked to care about how much money you make if you can’t be fucked to address the law of diminishing utility without going back to “tHe PeRcEnTaGeS aRe EqUaL”.
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No, he didn’t. If that were even remotely true, we wouldn’t even be talking about regulations for speech on social media because the government would already be able to make social media companies host all speech.
A forum being made available to the public does not make it a public forum. A forum taking over the mantle of the “public forum” in terms of being where lots of people gather to discuss ideas, events, and people doesn’t make that forum a public forum, either. A true public forum is one owned by the people/the government.
Hell, let’s go back to some of the most pertinent parts of Kavanaugh’s opinion in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck:
Here, Kavanaugh is saying that even if the government has performed a specific function, a private entity only qualifies as a state actor if it performs a function the government has exclusively performed in the past. Applying that logic to Facebook means Facebook can’t be a state actor because the government has never exclusively performed the function of “public fora” in the colloquial, “people gather here to discuss things” meaning of the phrase.
tl;dr: “Someone who opens a place for people to speak their mind isn’t a state actor only because they’ve opened a place for people to speak their mind.”
Even though Kavanaugh isn’t technically referring to services like Facebook and Twitter, the logic of this argument can easily apply to those services. Hell, the last sentence in that quoted block of text refers to the consequences people like me have said would happen to services if 230 were to be repealed/“reformed”.
And therein lies the conclusion of the argument: Being a “public forum” in the colloquial sense doesn’t turn a platform into a public forum in the legal sense.
You can misspell “strict” and mock Judge Hinkle all you want, child. Any court that overturns his decision is a court that is willing to overturn decades of jurisprudence in re: First Amendment caselaw and property rights for the sake of appeasing the hurt feelings of conservatives who are upset that their “views” (oh, you know the ones…) are being “censored” off sites they don’t seem to like all that much in the first place. Is that really the kind of court you think is good for this country?
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Yes I do. What are you going to do about it besides whine like a dog?
And? A judge referencing a case that involves a cable TV provider doesn’t turn an interactive web service into a cable TV provider. My god, how are you that ignorant?
I will ask you again: For what reason should any and all interactive web services be forced by law to host all legally protected speech, regardless of whether the people who own and operate the service want to host that speech? Please note that I said “interactive web service”, not “cable TV provider”, and that “legally protected speech” includes racial slurs, anti-queer propaganda, and any speech you might find offensive (e.g., “Black Lives Matter”).
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Yes, I’m well aware of that. But you said (and I quote):
Again: I simply can’t imagine why a law passed to protect the civil rights of a given group of people might be somehow biased in favor of that group of people, even if the language of the law is itself neutral~. It’s almost as if the majority group doesn’t necessarily need those protections on a regular basis because they’re not being marginalized on a regular basis~. Imagine that~.
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Re: What is your Point
"And? A judge referencing a case that involves a cable TV provider doesn’t turn an interactive web service into a cable TV provider. My god, how are you that ignorant?"
Perhaps you can explain why a cable TV provider can be subject to must carry laws without it being a violation of their 1st Amendment Rights but if interactive web services are subject to the same must carry rights it is a violation of their 1st Amendment Rights.
Either must carry is constitutional or it is not. Your reasoning either violates the First Amendment or it violates the 14th Amendment. That Big Tech is exempt from what is common regulation is a violation of equal protection.
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Re: State Actor is not Regulation
You keep confusing a state actor with being subject to regulation. The Florida law does not make big tech a state actor. It regulates Big Tech in the public interest the same way bars, taxis, shopping malls, lodging, cable, etc. etc. etc. are regulated in the public interest. In the ruling Kavanaugh admits that private public forums are in the public interest. Those two words "public interest" make them subject to regulation just like any other industry deemed to be in the public interest.
A state can legally require an industry to host content they don't agree with, if the industry is in the public interest, as is in the case of California where all people may peacefully exercise their right to free speech in private shopping centers. This isn't an enforcement of the 1st Amendment its is a regulation placed upon shopping centers, and it has withstood Constitutional challenges on both 1st and 4th Amendment grounds all the way up to the SCOTUS.
State Actor is another question entirely. That isn't an act of the legislature. That is a judge saying that the private entity is in that instance acting as the state of at the behest of the state. That is generally a case by case act by act basis. No operating a public forum doesn't make big tech a state actor. Just like a shopping center is not a state actor. That is what you don't get. Not being a state actor doesn't mean you cant be forced to respect customers free speech rights just like any California shopping center by law.
Now in the instance of "State Actor" yes big tech is towing a closer and closer line. When Zuckerberg is personally e-mailing Fauci, calling him Tony, giving Fauci his personal cell number, and ostensibly offering Tony access to Facebook's algorithm to censor content Fauci doesn't' like, that crosses the line of State Actor.
We saw a big line crossed in 2020 with Big Tech giving sectary of states offices back channels to flag content, back channels between state agents like Fauci and Zuckerberg. Yes in 2020 we clearly crossed the state actor line.
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Re: You MIss the Point
"Yes, I’m well aware of that. But you said (and I quote):
While the Civil Rights acts are racially neutral their passage was clearly out of bias and intended to specifically protect black people.
Again: I simply can’t imagine why a law passed to protect the civil rights of a given group of people might be somehow biased in favor of that group of people, even if the language of the law is itself neutral~. It’s almost as if the majority group doesn’t necessarily need those protections on a regular basis because they’re not being marginalized on a regular basis~. Imagine that~"
Again you don't get the point. The judges reasoning in this case is that since the motivation for creating the law was biased the law even though it is neutral is not constitutional because of the biased motivation.
Under Judge Hinkle's legal reasoning the entire Civil Rights acts are equally unconstitutional.
“Laws that are facially content-neutral, but that cannot be justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, or that were adopted because of disagreement with the speaker’s message, also must satisfy strict scrutiny,”
He could as easily be talking about the Civil Rights Acts here.
Now I don't agree with the frequently overturned Judge Hinkle I'm pointing out the inconsistency in his legal reasoning.
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The law isn’t neutral, though. As the ruling itself points out:
The law is clearly meant to disfavor one group of service providers (“Big Tech”) over all others, exempts one group of service providers (those associated with large theme parks) from the law, and compels the hosting of specific kinds of speech (speech that the service providers wouldn’t host otherwise) that lawmakers believe deserve such privileged treatment. Compare that to civil rights laws, which—despite whatever intent they may have been written with—are worded in a way that make clear that they apply to all peoples of a given protected class (e.g., white people have the same legal protections as Black people in re: racial discrimination).
Let’s look at what you quoted and see if that’s true:
Anti-discrimination laws are neutral in application towards both the marginalized and the majority. Their existence can be justified without reference to whether a given group protected under such laws is the marginalized or the majority. They generally have no restrictions on speech, so “disagreement with [a] speaker’s message” is ultimately irrelevant. Anti-discrimination laws don’t need “strict scrutiny” in the same sense that laws purporting to regulate speech in some way need that level of scrutiny.
Your disagreeing with the ruling doesn’t mean his logic is factually unsound or hypocritical. Your saying the logic of the ruling is unsound or hypocritical when a proper reading of said ruling proves otherwise means your disagreement is rooted in bullshit reasoning that seems to favor whatever professional conservative grifters/victims say you need to believe about something or someone. And since you’re accusing the judge of basically overriding civil rights laws…well, the phrase “every accusation, a confession” comes to mind, and what you’d be confessing to probably isn’t a position you’d want to express outside of the Deep South.
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If this were true, the government could force Fox News—a major part of the news industry, which is clearly in the public interest—to carry all of Joe Biden’s speeches and press conferences. That the government hasn’t done so (and wouldn’t dare to try) is a clear rebuke of your flawed logic.
You have no such rights on the property of others. To say otherwise would be to upend an untold amount of jurisprudence for both the First Amendment and property rights. Besides, the Pruneyard standard has been significantly watered down since the initial ruling, if I recall right.
Unless Fauci personally instructed anyone at Facebook to act in the government’s interest, he didn’t cross a line that makes Facebook a state actor. Zuckerberg allegedly making the offer doesn’t do the job, either.
Then why hasn’t any state government or the federal government attempted to declare Facebook a state actor, which would force Facebook into becoming a true public forum and restrict it from both blocking anyone in the United States from using it and blocking any kind of speech Facebook otherwise wouldn’t host? Why hasn’t Joe Biden signed an executive order or a bill passed by Congress that makes Facebook a state actor and federalizes the company and its operations?
Deep down, you know damn well why that hasn’t happened:
This isn’t a communist country.
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Because any “must carry” laws for the Internet would apply to Internet access providers (or ISPs, if you prefer that terminology). They’re the ones who would, under Network Neutrality rules, be required to let users access any website on the Internet without favor (or disfavor). Facebook isn’t required to let anyone use Facebook; that people can use it is a privilege, not an entitlement.
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Re: Re: What is your Point
There’s no doubt must carry is unconstitutional. Oven though the SC upheld it.
It would be different if it applied to actual ‘greater good’ but that’s hard to define.
Not only is it a 230-style issue in forced hosting, we PAY for it. Often as a local broadcast fee or a related term.
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Re:
“ They’re the ones who would, under Network Neutrality rules, be required to let users access any website on the Internet without favor (or disfavor)”
I think the more accurate portrayal would be forcing them to carry and transmit all protocols.
While I would be happy to simply type in a gopher address in my terminal and not worry about an app to do it… it doesn’t make sense.
In supporting 230 you generally should turn your back on must-carry.
Must carry is something I’ve long been opposed to.
Mostly becau I pay a monthly fee for local stations I’ll never watch.
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Six of one; how you put it is ultimately irrelevant if it gets the point across.
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Re: Re: Re: What is your Point
*even
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Re: Re: What is your Point
ISP are a utility that doesn't involve producing or associating with your traffic. You might as well be arguing that electricity providers should have a choice over whether or not they allow you to plug in certain devices.
Whereas, not only are platforms not utilities, they are directly associated with material that appears on their property, and should have a choice as to whether or not they do, since allowing certain material can directly affect their business.
This isn't hard, unless you have some need to make it so, or are ignorant to the point where you shouldn't really be saying anything on the subject.
"Your reasoning either violates the First Amendment or it violates the 14th Amendment"
When did these companies become agents of the government, again?
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Re: How Ironic
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Re: Couldn't Be Happier
[Asserts facts proven as 100% projection by the sentence that follows]
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Re: You Just Don't Get it
"The law isn’t neutral, though. As the ruling itself points out:"
What he said
“Laws that are facially content-neutral, but that cannot be justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, or that were adopted because of disagreement with the speaker’s message, also must satisfy strict scrutiny,”
"The Governor’s signing statement and numerous remarks of legislators show rather clearly that the legislation is viewpoint-based."
He is saying that the law is neutrally written but motivated by bias. It is a completely incorrect opinion and will be overturned like many of this dolts other decisions. Your intentionally judge shopped the most biased judge but also got one of the most frequently overturned because he is too stupid to write a good decision that will withstand review. Like I said I couldn't be happier. There was no way Hinkle of all people was going to side with the state. The best my side could hope for was a poorly written decision that was just a hanging curve ball for when it goes to the 11th circuit. That is what we got. The question was never if Hinkle would issue the injunction. The question was if it would be competently written. It wasn't, it mirrors his decision in Jones et al v. DeSantis which was obliterated by the 11th circuit.
"Anti-discrimination laws are neutral in application towards both the marginalized and the majority. Their existence can be justified without reference to whether a given group protected under such laws is the marginalized or the majority. They generally have no restrictions on speech, so “disagreement with [a] speaker’s message” is ultimately irrelevant. Anti-discrimination laws don’t need “strict scrutiny” in the same sense that laws purporting to regulate speech in some way need that level of scrutiny."
Please go back to the 1960s and find justification for the Civil Rights act without reference to black people. The law is neutral the justification was not. The justification doesn't' make the law any less neutral. It is private actors acting from a place of bias that leads to the legislation to force neutrality. We generally do not force neutral regulations on industries that are already neutral. There is cause and effect. The cause is almost always private actors being biased.
"The law is clearly meant to disfavor one group of service providers (“Big Tech”) over all others"
That has to do with equal protection not content neutrality which is the issue of scrutinize.
The SCOTUS has always held that size and market power play a roll in regulation. The bigger you are the more regulation. Frequently regulations do not kick in until a business is of a certain size. For example the affordable care act only kicks in if you have 50 or more employees. This is very very common and is not a violation of equal protection.
"every accusation, a confession” comes to mind, and what you’d be confessing to probably isn’t a position you’d want to express outside of the Deep South."
I'm Hispanic you moron. Go to hell. That is the only response you deserve.
"If this were true, the government could force Fox News—a major part of the news industry, which is clearly in the public interest—to carry all of Joe Biden’s speeches and press conferences. That the government hasn’t done so (and wouldn’t dare to try) is a clear rebuke of your flawed logic."
The government hasn't done so? The Fairness Doctrine was FCC regulation for almost 4 decades, and before you spout Mikes "broadcast only" myth yes it applied to cable as well. In fact the early cable companies were in litigation over the regulation when it was repealed in 1987.
"You have no such rights on the property of others. To say otherwise would be to upend an untold amount of jurisprudence for both the First Amendment and property rights."
No it wouldn't actually. Not regulating an industry as much in the public interest as Big Tech would and is upending an untold amount of jurisprudence. Big Tech is the exception for no logical reason other than we don't want to. It is the lack of regulation and any attempt to thwart regulation common to other similar industries that upends the jurisprudence. We can go the mile to extend common carrier, a common law that originated as part of maritime law, to electronic communications. We can go that logical mile, but we cannot extend it an inch to social media?
"Then why hasn’t any state government or the federal government attempted to declare Facebook a state actor"
State actor means action done if the government "coerces, influences, or encourages" the action. The government is not going report itself.
"which would force Facebook into becoming a true public forum and restrict it from both blocking anyone in the United States from using it and blocking any kind of speech Facebook otherwise wouldn’t host? Why hasn’t Joe Biden signed an executive order or a bill passed by Congress that makes Facebook a state actor and federalizes the company and its operations?"
You clearly dont understand what you are talking about. They cant take control of Facebook because they have back channels with Fauci and secretary of states offices. A judge adjudicates on an action by action basis and fines, penalties, other restitution occur. The right frequently get state actor incorrect and doesn't get that its case by case action by action. You do too apparently.
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Even if he were saying that—and I don’t grant that he is—he’d still be right: The Florida law is motivated by a bias against, and unfairly targets, “Big Tech”. The “theme park” carveout and the fact that it doesn’t target smaller companies/services is proof enough of that.
Florida lawmakers probably wanted at least a shred of an argument of fairness to hide behind while it tried to force speech onto a given platform. In that case, they should’ve made its law apply to all interactive web services (including the ones attached to theme parks) instead of a mere handful of services that said lawmakers wanted to attack. But they didn’t. So they don’t.
When the decision is upheld, I will link back to your comment via this quote and I will laugh. Count on it.
And in regards to civil rights laws, the laws are neutral: They protect people from discrimination without regard for whether they’re in a marginalized group or the majority. In re: race, for example, civil rights laws protect white people the same as they protect Black people, even though white people rarely need to make use of those protections.
The Florida law isn’t written to the same standard of fairness, as I’ve pointed out already. That the law also attempts to force speech upon a platform—which is a strictly unconstitutional action—doesn’t help the law’s chances of survival.
Private persons can, have, and always will act from “a place of bias”. A business owner is allowed to kick out someone spouting anti-vax nonsense; that someone isn’t in a protected class by virtue of their sociopolitical views on vaccines, and they’re not entitled to act like a shithead and get away with it. The same goes for interactive web services: So long as they don’t discriminate in a way that violates the law of the state they operate in (or federal law), they can pick and choose what speech and which persons to host all the live-long day. If you’d like to argue otherwise, by all means, tell me why a privately owned open-to-the-public Black Lives Matter–centric forum should be made to host pro-Klan propaganda. I sincerely can’t wait to see you make that argument.
No interactive web service is legally required to remain “content neutral”. The people who run Facebook have as much right as the people who run Mastodon instance queer.party to decide whether their respective service will host anti-queer speech. The same applies to Gab, Parler, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, Patreon, Ko-Fi, 4chan, 8kun, DeviantArt, and every other interactive web service out there. Show me the exact law, statute, or “common law” court ruling that directly says otherwise.
And now it’s not. That it hasn’t been revived in the years since its repeal should tell you something.
How could the government regulate speech on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube without (A) regulating speech on all such platforms and (B) standing on the wrong side of the First Amendment, right of association jurisprudence, and property rights laws?
Because “common carrier” rules are about the pipes we use to send electronic communications, not the services through which we send and receive them. Extend “common carrier” status to Facebook and you will force spam, porn, spam porn (those sick fucks…), dis- and misinformation, and the rankest forms of bigotry and hatred upon Facebook—and all other services, for that matter. Hell, services that are ostensibly “family friendly” would have to fall under that status (and suffer that fate) as well, since they are a form of electronic communication.
Every accusation, a confession…
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"My guess would be UK, probably British, based on structure of wording. Or influenced. "
Swedish actually.
"Every aspect of our system is built on conflict from the bottom up. It’s simply our 300+ years of bucking the system. "
Historically speaking I'd say not. Your system today closely mimics a a bastardized hybrid of the system England had under King George with a smattering of the decadence prevalent in ancient rome under the last days of it's republic. With more similarities than I feel comfortable with; Julius Caesar and the rise of rome as an empire rather than a republic came from, to a large degree, arch-conservatives in rome's senate obstructing every attempt to reform the republic and trying, by any means, to pull down the leading cause of those reforms. Very similar to the current GOP.
One thing which precedes the collapse of every nation is the inability to maintain proportional and reasonable legislation. When the laws start becoming childish and illogical, the end is close for that civilization.
"Your a bit uninformed. It’s probably closer to 99%."
That's...hyperbolic. It's more that much as it is with police, you only really need a few truly outstanding grifters to overturn the entire system. It is, however, telling that it is by far more prevalent of the GOP's political candidates to rely entirely on a body of lies. The democrats mainly, from what I can see, apply spin.
I guess it has to do with what their respective base will happily swallow. Liberals at least tend to be more sceptic about their leaders, unlike an increasingly worrying tendency in the US right-wing to look for a strongman.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I've heard plenty of flat tax suggestions tossed around and observed the effects of numerous ones. No arguments about it; flat taxation does raise issues as well.
But there's one massive advantage; If you know all you need to do is tally your income and calculate some 20% of everything beyond a certain minimum and call it "tax" it makes it that much harder to fudge the numbers.
You also need to verify that debts can't be used to cancel out said income unless you're actively paying them off at which point the amortization is what you could deduct and nothing else. No other deductibles. Not for charity, not for owning a piece of paper stating you're a billion dollars in the hole, not by declaring as "income" your seat on some board of trustees paying you a token 10 bucks a week, not by having your money in a bank in a tax haven.
At that point taxes might not be "fair" but at least the system would work and the guy raking in a million a month would pay proportionally as much as the guy raking in 4k.
Instead of as, today, 0, because he paid his hair-dresser 70k and spent a hundred million on "consulting fees" to a close relative...
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Re: Pachinko Arguemnts
"Even if he were saying that—and I don’t grant that he is—he’d still be right: The Florida law is motivated by a bias against, and unfairly targets, “Big Tech”. "
That isn't what "content neutral" means in the law we are talking about here. That is a separate issue of equal protection which the courts have held for decade yes regulations are allowed such discrimination. That's why businesses smaller than 50 employees are exempt for the Affordable Care Act.
"The “theme park” carveout and the fact that it doesn’t target smaller companies/services is proof enough of that."
And labor unions are exempt from the affordable care act. I'm not a fan of such regulatory carve outs but they haven't been found to be unconstitutional.
"The Florida law isn’t written to the same standard of fairness, as I’ve pointed out already."
Again you are arguing an equal protection argument not a free speech argument. You keep confusing the two.
"So long as they don’t discriminate in a way that violates the law of the state they operate in (or federal law), they can pick and choose what speech and which persons to host all the live-long day. "
See this is how you pachinko logic is amazing at time. This is the law. This is the law the state passed regulating how social media operates.
"f you’d like to argue otherwise, by all means, tell me why a privately owned open-to-the-public Black Lives Matter–centric forum should be made to host pro-Klan propaganda. I sincerely can’t wait to see you make that argument."
Why should they? They shouldn't. This law didn't. That doesn't mean that state couldn't. People forget that in the Colorado baker case the courts ruled that the baker did have to sell the gay couple a cake from his inventory. He just didn't have to bake a specific one for their wedding. His services only amounted to his speech when the act was specific to the event. I know that this concept is tough you for you. You can only extrapolate or reduce to absurdity.
Did you know that in the state of California their civil rights law extends to political affiliation? You cant refuse a nazi service in California just because he is a nazi. Not that the Peoples Democratic Republic California enforces this provision fairly.
"No interactive web service is legally required to remain “content neutral”"
That is not what content neutral means here. I've explained it to you plenty you don't get it. The law has to be content neutral. I've read the law. The judge read the law, we both agree it was content neutral.
"And now it’s not. That it hasn’t been revived in the years since its repeal should tell you something."
I think in the case of social media you would be surprised. The justification for the Fairness Doctrine was scarcity. In 1949 we had 4 national networks. NBC, ABC, CBS, and DuMont, we also tended to have at least 1 local regional network, see WGN Chicago.
So in 1949 with 5 choices the FCC concluded and the courts agreed that scarcity nessicated regulation. In 2021 in stead of 4 national companies controlling 80% of the market 3 national companies control almost 100% of the market.
I would love to go to court with a scarcity rationale. There is less choice today than there was then.
"How could the government regulate speech on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube without (A) regulating speech on all such platforms and (B) standing on the wrong side of the First Amendment, right of association jurisprudence, and property rights laws?"
Same way they regulate how large a company has to be before they offer insurance. The larger you are the more regulations you have. I just cant bring yourself to face this reality. Yes regulations are not applied equally. The larger the company the more effect it has on the public interest and the more capable it is on dealing with the regulation. That is the jurisprudence if you must know.
How come so many people with income dont pay income tax? How come the elderly get property tax breaks? Its not fair!
"Because “common carrier” rules are about the pipes"
Thank you Senator Stevens.
'Its a bunch of tubes' lol
No common carrier is about boats. It was then extended to planes, trains, automobiles, wired communication, wireless communication etc. etc.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
“ Swedish actually”
Ah, makes sense.
Knew it wasn’t colonial. Lol
“ Historically speaking I'd say not. Your system today ”
Ohkay. Yes. We’re a parliamentary monarchy that changes it’s monarch every 4-8 years.
Tossed on top of a representative republic with an indirectly elected electorate.
Or, not a democracy. ;)
But that’s not what I meant. Our, make law break law challenge law, is deeply rooted in rebellion.
First religious, then irreligious. Then land holdings and finally representation.
And yes, the concern and fear of empire is deep. The most afraid are history at most risk to become that which they fear.
As a libertarian I strongly fear both the right and the left. Imperialism vs globalism.
I just want to be left alone in my own home.
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Yes, it is.
In this case, they’re one and the same. The Florida law provides unequal protection from the law in regards to what speech a social media service must host. The services that run afoul of the law must be made to host certain kinds of speech/speakers “or else”, while the services that fall outside of the law—including those “Florida-friendly” theme park–affiliated services—face no such regulation. Other than “they big”, you can’t offer (and haven’t offered) any reason to make Big Tech host speech it otherwise wouldn’t host but exclude everything outside of Big Tech (including the “Florida-friendly” services) from doing the same.
Equal protection is being denied by way of a First Amendment–violating law demanding that a privately owned service be forced to host speech the government says it must host.
Except no, it isn’t. The law doesn’t give Big Tech services that right—it revokes that right and tells those services “host this kind of speech or else you’re fucked”.
You misunderstand the ruling in that case, but that’s no surprise. Conservatives like you always fuck up at least one detail—and it’s almost always the biggest one.
Masterpiece Cakeshop lost its anti-gay discrimination case on the merits at every level but the Supreme Court (which booted it back to the lower courts on technical grounds). At no point did any of the courts that ruled against the cakeshop force that cakeshop to bake a cake for the gay couple in question. The courts only ruled that the refusal to sell the gay couple a cake in the first place, decorations be damned, amounted to a violation of Colorado anti-discrmination law. The cakeshop could’ve continued discriminating if the owner wanted to keep doing so—but he’d be fined for every instance of it. Masterpiece instead stopped selling wedding cakes altogether so it wouldn’t have to worry about violating the law again.
And before you make that jump: I’m not in favor of compelled speech even when it’s speech I agree with.
Did you know that you’re full of shit?
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube dominating social media doesn’t make them the only games in town. We also have Gab and Parler, Discord servers, Mastodon instances, 4chan and its bastard brethren, and any other number of smaller services and communication protocols that let people stay in touch with each other/share content/be a shitlord meme-troll. Your being upset about the reach of the largest services doesn’t make the smaller services stop existing.
You didn’t answer my question. How could the government regulate speech on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube without (A) regulating speech on all such platforms and (B) standing on the wrong side of the First Amendment, right of association jurisprudence, and property rights laws?
Go back to Kinko’s and keep flippin’ copies.
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Re:
One minor note: Discord, chan sites, and the like aren’t the same thing as “social” platforms like Twitter and Parler. Which are technically instant messaging sites.
YouTube is a video host. Like DailyMotion
Facebook is a blogging site that includes instant messaging.
The chans are forum sites. Reddit is as well.
They’re all different platforms with their own targeted use.
They all handle content in different ways.
To lump YouTube in with “social media” is somewhat less than accurate. Including pure forum services is wrong.
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That Discord and imageboards like 4chan don’t function in the same way as Twitter and “Twitter-likes” doesn’t make either of them any less of an interactive web service.
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Re:
No, it doesn’t. But they’re not the same as twitter or Facebook.
Chans aren’t even image boards (tumbler is), it’s an old fashion forum site.
Not that they should have different legal protections, but that they approach things differently
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Just a reminder that the "define each platform so narrowly that you can pretend they're completely different things" is a silly game not really worth playing.
Do the sites allow user generated content? If so, the platform should not be held directly liable for that content. Whether content is comments, videos, images or whatever is utterly irrelevant to the protections offered, unless you're really desperate to only target specific sites for some reason.
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“ Do the sites allow user generated content? If so, the platform should not be held directly liable for that content. ”.
Agreed.
“ unless you're really desperate to only target specific sites.,,”
That’s just it, they, the Republicans, are.
The “chan” sites and their far older relatives Aren’t in the target.
Nobody is talking about breaking up Reddit!
Nobody is going after blog hosts. Or bloggers in general.
When you say social media in terms of Republicans all they hear is facetwit, Facebook and Twitter.
Ultimately I think this whole thing is a wasted farce.
t he majority of Trump’s supporters, by my guess, be they Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or others, weren’t big users of “social media” in the first place. Not in the big two sense.
It’s a current post 1984 thing it panders to the young.
Generally.
Sure, it ropes in intelligence in the form of adults. But what’s the makeup? Under 40? Under 30?
Because let’s do the numbers: remove corporations, how small is the percentage of active users in my age group and above, late gen X or older.
Remove politicians now. Wow, that number shrinks!
Remove celebrity…
So what’s the popular use of normal people over 40? Is it worth counting even?
Republicans are on a rampage over Trump deplatforming. I agree with the sentiment. Bad facetwit. Very bad. No dinner for you.
But the law is the law.
The rules are the rules. And no matter how pathetic the reasoning is they have that right as a private service.
Don’t fuel the fire by offering non-related services.
Banning trump? Was it wrong? Absolutely in my book. When the leadership of violent enemy nations is still allowed? That’s my view. And you can’t change it.
Did it hurt me? No
Did it hurt Republicans? No
Did it hurt non/Republicans who supported trump, only in the lower age brackets if at all.
In fact pulling trump off the big 2 only hurt advertising revenue for the big 2. And probably not enough for them care.
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Weird... I ask why you're desperately trying to redefine each service according to the type of UGC they display, and you go on a rant about Republicans.
"Banning trump? Was it wrong? Absolutely in my book."
Yet, a great many people disagree with you.
"t he majority of Trump’s supporters, by my guess, be they Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or others, weren’t big users of “social media” in the first place"
Then who was he whining to on there for hours every day? Was he self-aware enough to realise the number of bots and people laughing at him there were, or is this another comfortable lie you tell yourself? Go on, show me the breakdown you're looking at that describes who was following Trump. Surely you have something that's not your imagination if you're making these claims?
"In fact pulling trump off the big 2 only hurt advertising revenue for the big 2."
Did it? I'd like to see that study. You do have a study, right, since you used the word "fact"?
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“ desperately trying to redefine”
I’m not trying to redefine anything.
Forums were always forums.
Blogs were always blogs.
Hosting sites wee always…
Lumping them in with the later social media move is wrong.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265647/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-twitter-by-age-group/
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Forums, imageboards, and video sharing sites are all interactive web services. So are Twitter, Facebook, and other social interaction networks. Insofar as they’re being lumped together, it’s under the banner of “interactive web services”. Stop actively trying to misunderstand people.
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“ . Stop actively trying to misunderstand people.”
I’m not. You’re using a different term now.
They are interactive web services.
They are not Web 2.0 social media.
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Forums and imageboards can damn well be “social media” if you look past the way Twitter and Facebook work on the surface and talk about the function they serve—which is to say, they all enable communications between other people using the same service. I mean, other than the more instantaneous nature of Twitter and Facebook, what makes them any different on that front than 4chan or a traditional phpBB forum?
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…fucking what
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Chans are just more forum sites.
Most forum backends can support images, be it CBB, phpBB, BBPy, etc.
First and Formosa they’re text bulletin board forums.
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“ other than the more instantaneous nature”
Bingo.
That’s the same difference between email and text message.
Saying a forum site is the same as a real-time message site like Twitter or a real-time microblog host like face book is the same as saying 16mm is the same as DVD. They both show audio and video right?
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Two things.
That “right?” rhetorical gimmick is bullshit. That said…
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“ Their most fundamental functionality is to enable communication between multiple people.”
And yet the ‘how’ is drastically different.
All i was doing was pointing out you shouldn’t fall into the method of lumping unrelated and totally different methods of communication.
You need not go into your “ I disagree so your automatically a Republican’ protective ball.
Simply read up on the terminology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
Don’t give the anti-230 crowd more amp.
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"Forums were always forums.
Blogs were always blogs."
Define "forum". Define "blog".
If we have this exact conversation but it's on Twitter or in the comments on a post on Facebook, what has fundamentally changed? Nothing according to me, but you are desperate to pretend that this site and those two have to be legally treated differently.
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"Saying a forum site is the same as a real-time message site like Twitter or a real-time microblog host"
What is "real time" about those sites but not here? We post, the post appears, other users are notified of the new post and can respond if they wish. What's the difference?
You are desperate to redefine reality to make a stupid point, something that I've come to learn is your entire persona here.
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"All i was doing was pointing out you shouldn’t fall into the method of lumping unrelated and totally different methods of communication."
Yes, and when you present one instead of arguing the toss over very slightly different variations on the communication you're having here, I'm sure we can enter that conversation.
"Don’t give the anti-230 crowd more amp."
By... accurately describing what the law actually says?
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Wouldn't it be easier to reside in the reality everyone else lives in rather than argue minutiae about how vaguely different your reality is in order to avoid the central point of the correct arguments everyone else is making?
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“ If we have this exact conversation but it's on Twitter or in the comments on a post on Facebook, what has fundamentally changed? ”
The method of interaction between us.
“ but you are desperate to pretend that this site and those two have to be legally treated differently.”
What the bloody hell are you talking about?
I didn’t anywhere anyway ever say treat them differently!
wow, your ignorant jump to ‘I’m offended’ rebuttal…
Seriously?
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The differences are numerous.
“ You are desperate to redefine reality to make a stupid point, something that I've come to learn is your entire persona here”
The only point is STOP THE IGNORANT GROUPING.
Some of you left wing (alt/far left in the US) are so desperate to write off liberal my turning their back on the party for candidate Clinton that was literally a walking piece of shite, and vote for a more wet, mailable shite, …
Grow the fuck up.
Your constant need to group will guarantee a Republican sweep in 22.
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Mind pointing out what I’m avoiding? I missed the billboard.
Because what I did was spell out a very active conservative line of thinking that you are running into at lightspeed.
Neither party represents me.
The Republicans happen to have more values important to me then the Dems at the moment.
I vote on policy I agree with. With zero concern about anything else. Regardless of party.
Honestly, I don’t give to fucks who wins 22. If Republicans win they stop the constant communist progressive push.
If dems win the Republicans will challenge everything in court.
Until the Martian Solidarity party gets into office nothing is real going to happen any time soon.
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…fucking what
No, seriously, I didn’t understand a single fucking thing in that post.
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And yet…
…you seem to care an awful lot about a party you claim doesn’t represent you winning so they can stop the other party and “communist progressive[s]” from doing…something.
Are you sure you’re not a Republican?
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If Republicans win we fail to have any fairness in taxation. They continue to impose their religion on the country. They destroy personal freedoms in the name of the bible.
They ignore all threats to the environment. They strip away internet freedoms.
They’re not much better.
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And yet you’re all but rooting for them to win. Being on their side for even the smallest reason still means you’re on their side. I’m not a registered Democrat, but I know I’m still on the side of Democrats because I vote for and support Democrats. What the fuck is your excuse for your lack of self-awareness.
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The point is right now they are very focused on a very strict definition of social media.
Let’s not give either party a broader target.
Republicans don’t care about censorship in this fight. They want total unblocked access. They’re fighting against all moderation.
Even in my ideal, where I am philosophically against the censorious methodology of deletionism, I accept moderation as necessary, and Beneficial!
On the other side we have dems fighting to tighten restriction and mandate actual censorship in law.
They’re currently targeting a few big companies with the ability to fight back.
Let’s not point either group to more targets.
We don’t need a hundred different bills targeting different platforms. Because they suddenly work up and gathered that these are also “social media”.
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I vote for people and their policy. I’m not a hard line voter.
At the moment Republican platforms are about securing our borders, withdrawing our involvement in world affairs. Creating fair protective trade deals.
And not decimating the automotive, travel, and energy systems immediately, for a less than thought through green new deal.
The Democrat platform is pushing for group thought, disruptive trade, ignoring the border crisis, usurping civil liberties, ignoring the civil violence across the country, destruction of national history, lowest common denominator education (teach the book), destruction of gun rights, and the green new failure.
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They’re also about attacking queer people, dismantling voting rights, denying the existence of systemic racism to the point where they’re trying to ban practically anyone from teaching anything that might say “racism is still a thing”, and attempting to turn the country into a Christian theocracy with the worst excuse for a Christian ever installed as Dear Leader. What is it about that platform that you support? Because right now, that’s what Republicans in power are trying to do across the country. And if you think I’m exaggerating, go look up how Republicans are attacking trans people, passing voting restrictions bills, passing laws against critical race theory (a field of study they barely understand beyond the first two words of its name), and trying to somehow invalidate the results of the 2020 election so Donald Trump can return to power. That is the party you support, whether you like it or not.
The Green New Deal wouldn’t destroy those industries overnight if it passed. That you think it would is proof you’re buying into the fearmongering of everyone even one step right of the center, including “moderate” Democrats.
…ultimately meaningless because they’re never going to do half the shit they promise at a national level, or at least not right now. And even if they had the votes in the Senate to push through the Biden agenda, his agenda is not radical, socialist, or some form of luxury gay space communism. Hell, most of it is barely centrist. But since you’ve all but bought into the Trumpist lies about Democrats and “radical socialism” where anything centrist is “leftist” and anything even one step left of center is “an insult to capitalism that must be squashed in its infancy”, of course you believe the Biden agenda is ultra-super-mega-hyper leftist (Champion Edition & Knuckles [featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series]).
You’re not worried about the actual Biden agenda. You’re worried about a boogeyman version of it that doesn’t exist except in your head and the heads of other conservatives who’ve been told not to think critically but to believe conservative leaders, lawmakers, and pundits no matter what. Stop reading Murdoch’s rags and start reading actual books written by people who aren’t regular guests on Fox News or OAN.
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No, they do—they just want the censorship to work in their favor by way of making “leftists” and other “enemies” of conservative ideology (e.g., queer people) so afraid to communicate on a broadly viewable platform—afraid of harassment and bullying and being treated like they’re not welcome—that those…shall we say, “undesirables” leave such platforms and never come back. Moderation would make sure such things can’t happen (to the best of a moderation team’s ability). Removing the ability to moderate by basically opening up moderation decisions to lawsuits would provide the result conservatives are looking for, though.
Yes, yes, you would willingly host bigoted speech of your own volition—we get it already.
Neither party looks good in this fight, but the Dems at least have the more morally righteous argument, in that they want more offensive speech moderated off platforms instead of less.
No, let’s do exactly that—and force our elected representatives to defend doing to those “targets” the same thing that would be done to “Big Tech”. If lawmakers want to go after Twitter, I want them to go after—and defend their going after—Mastodon instances for the exact same reasons. I want them to tell me why they want to make any interactive web service, regardless of size or owner or any other factor, host speech that service doesn’t want to/already doesn’t host.
And if they can’t defend going after Mastodon under the same reasoning they defend going after Twitter, I’d tell them to go after Twitter for something like antitrust issues instead of what speech Twitter does or doesn’t host.
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“ What is it about that platform that you support?”
securing our borders, withdrawing our involvement in world affairs. Creating fair protective trade deals.
“ attacking queer people”
Yes, a few are.
“dismantling voting rights”
Requiring ID and making sure the person voting is the person they claim to be. Like the vast majority of the world.
“ denying the existence of systemic racism”
It’s not systematic. Some facets and pockets still exist. It is not “Embedded within and spread throughout and affecting a whole system, group, body, economy, market, or society”. ~MEAD
“ attempting to turn the country into a Christian theocracy”
That’s a major concern.
Passing the green pact without any safeguards is JUST AS IDIOTIC as ending the affordable care act without a replacement.
“ wouldn’t destroy those industries overnight if it passed”
Now. What it does is set in stone dates that will absolutely not be reachable, and will ultimately cause devastation country wide.
“ anything even one step left of center is “an insult to capitalism that must be squashed in its infancy”, of course you believe the Biden agenda is ultra-super-mega-hyper leftist…”
What the hell? Nothing I said relates to that. I posted clearly my concerns. Those platforms can quickly be gathered from any of these politicians’ web sites.
What part of the multiple posts where I state I support, and support expanding, the social safety net do you not understand?
The only thing I disagree with is stealing someone else’s money to do so.
You want to know how to fund social projects? Go look at the stimulus bill. Cut out every non-National earmark pork foot bit of crap.
You then has a bill that’s 10 pages long and sends cheques to every American.
That’s how you have money to fund social services.
Cheques, mind you, that were immediately taxed as income.
Want to understand how Democrats keep screwing the little guy? Give them $2000. Call it income.
Way to go on that plan, you just pushed millions over the minimum taxable point by calling it income.
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“ Removing the ability to moderate by basically opening up moderation decisions to lawsuits would provide the result conservatives are looking for, though.”
Yes, as I said it’s not about censorship for them. It’s forced speech.
“ Yes, yes, you would willingly host bigoted speech of your own volition—we get it already.”
I’d haul them off to the sand box and let them play with themselves. So what? Let them fight each other for their toys like the little whiney spoiled brats they are.
“ in that they want more offensive speech moderated off platforms instead of less.”
If it was just “offensive” —and that’s purely personal in the first place— … but they want anything they didn’t get and agree with gone.
“ Mastodon”?
As far as I understand that’s a piece of software for creating your own platform. Not an actual platform. Am I wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
My point is at the moment they are focused on platforms that can fight. Don’t direct them to ones that can’t.
Because they’ll shut down before they fight back.
The last thing the internet needs is less choices.
“ to go after Twitter for something like antitrust”
Antitrust monopoly busting (nearly) always harms the consumer.
And I can’t fathom how twitter is in violation of antitrust laws anyway.
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I didn’t ask you about those planks. I asked you about the planks that I mentioned.
They’re also people in power, and they’re trying like hell to pass laws that attack trans people in particular. Trans people are queer people, too. Or are you a “drop the T” kind of person who would metaphorically run all over trans people if it meant you could secure civil rights for all other queer people?
The ID requirements being passed by GOP lawmakers are so strict and onerous that they’re often exclusionary of people of color. One such law—from my home state, in fact!—was found to be so discriminatory that an appeals court said the law’s new provisions “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision”.
And that doesn’t even get into voting restrictions laws that are targeting early voting (especially on Sundays, thanks to “souls to the polls” efforts in Black religious circles) and mail-in voting (which was not found to enable widescale voter fraud but did help increase voter turnout), not to mention the partisan gerrymandering still going on in GOP-controlled states.
So tell me again how Republicans are trying to make voting easier for everyone—including the people more likely to vote against Republicans. (An election isn’t fair unless every legal voter has the opportunity to vote, regardless of who they vote for.)
Racism isn’t only “visible” racism—i.e., people yelling racial slurs, wearing Klan hoods, and doing other openly racist bullshit. Quoting at length from The Root:
Hell, even MLK—whose work partially inspired CRT—was able to encapsulate the same ideas:
So maybe learn what the fuck CRT actually is before you go repeating whatever the fuck Tucker Carlson says CRT is. Hell, try reading the actual original book about CRT.
I don’t see you saying shit about it, though—even though it’s a major part of the Republican/Religious Right alliance that has been a thing since the days of Nixon and the rise of the Southern Strategy. Read a book.
I’ve got news for you: Climate change is causing devastation country-wide right now. Hurricanes on the East Coast forming earlier and earlier each hurricane season, sea levels rising every year, and heatwaves so bad that they’re killing people and making forest fires worse in both number and impact—they’re all happening right now. Hell, Death Valley recorded a high temperature on Friday that was close to the world record for the hottest recorded temperature. You think the Green New Deal would destroy the United States? I’ve got news for you: So will climate change. Read a book.
You’re using the same “the Green New Deal is luxury gay space communism” bullshit arguments as the right-wingers who are going after what’s in the Green New Deal because it makes for a great boogeyman to stir up hatred and fear of change. Everything you say about the GND relates to that bullshit.
Everything changes. Would you rather that change be positive—i.e., give us a healthier overall environment—or would you rather that change be as devastating as unlivable climates around the world (and the growing issue of climate refugees) because we didn’t do shit about humanity’s effect on climate change out of laziness and fear?
The part where you don’t support making the people who can most afford to pay into the public treasury pay more than they already do so they can benefit both themselves (they need public roads, cops, and firefighters, too!) and the general public.
Tax the everloving fuck out of the rich. Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral.
Unless you want to completely eliminate taxes for everyone not making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and tax the rich on a progressively higher rate depending on how rich they are, that’s life. Shit sucks, doesn’t it. Read a motherfucking book.
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Guess what? You’d still be hosting that speech. Sandboxing it off wouldn’t mean you got rid of it—or that you necessarily disapprove of it. It would only mean you don’t want it where it could be publicly associated with your platform. (And screenshots could still leak what’s behind the door, anyway.) The only way to fully disassociate yourself from that speech would be to delete it from your platform, lest people get the idea you think it’s okay for people to say the N-word on your service because you hide it behind the Internet equivalent of a paper door.
They can want that all the live-long day. Doesn’t mean they’re going to get it—or that I approve of it. I don’t approve of people who think a flat tax doesn’t fuck over the poor, but that’s not reason enough to boot them from a service unless it’s a service I own and operate that has a rule against advocating for policies that would screw over/are screwing over the poor.
That’s why I said “Mastodon instances”. Each instance is its own separate service, its own distinct platform. Rules change from one instance to the next; some alt-right shitpit instance might allow rank bigotry under the guise of Freeze Peach, while most other instances would ban such speech and refuse federation with instances that don’t.
And that’s my point: Make lawmakers explain and defend the policy that would target Twitter and exclude a Mastodon instance. If they can’t explain why one service should be targeted while another shouldn’t beyond “one of them is big”, their policy suggestion is bullshit. The law should generally treat all social media services the same: without favor, affection, malice, or ill-will. Any policy that would compel the biggest social media services to host speech but leave “the little guys” alone—especially “conservative-friendly” services—is bullshit and should be treated as such.
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“Or are you a “drop the T” kind of person“
Not at all. And generally have no concerns TA/TV/TG.
I personal have one single line I don’t believe should be crossed and only one. And only till I understand the nature of the treatments being used in conversion.
That’s if placing a post puberty male on a woman’s team is fair to the women.
It’s not just a Republican talking point either. Women’s groups left right and centre are bitching over it.
I don’t have a dead set thought either way.
But the biological aspect of it makes sense.
I have concern about pedos abusing lax rules. But they do that anyway already.
I see major issues with the linked law! Absolutely!
But it’s not thebID that is flat he problem here;
—and eliminated same-day registration—
If you have ID you should be able to register.
—out-of-precinct voting —
That’s just fucked up.
It’s one thing to bar that ON voting day; which makes perfect sense from a security standpoint. But any day prior To that teaks of an alternative intent.
Early voting is key to voting. Something that should never be undone.
I do however stay a strict differentiation between mail-in-voting, as mail a ballot to anyone on the voting rolls, and absentee voting, request a ballot, fill it out, mail it back.
If you want mail in voting then the states should be absolutely mandated to clear and verify voting rolls ahead of every election, every time, with no excuse.
And a harsh non-negotiable punishment for failure.
As long as the rolls aren’t Maintained mail-in is not secure.
“Critical Race Theory also insists that a neutral, “color-blind” policy is not the way to eliminate America’s racial caste system”
Except I whole heartedly disagree.
You do not destroy racism by being racist.
Rather than “complex and intricate consequences of systemic inequality”, I believe the proper solution is to address the base problem. Not patch over the consequences.
The problem in the education example is that it ignores the cause of the problem and looks for a scapegoat.
A suburban public school with 25,000 students doesn’t produce higher education scores than an inner city school with 10,000 kids because of race, or funding, or any societal issue. The inner city school fails because the teachers ‘teach the book’, don’t give a fuck about the students, and care only about bonuses and quotas on passing rates.
A white person in an urban environment is just as likely to succeed as fail as any other race.
The problem isn’t racism! The problem is political elitist dictatorship in urban settings.
The problem is feeding people through wood-chippers to reach quota mandates without any care how the quotas are met.
“The part where you don’t support making the people who can most afford to pay into the public treasury pay more than they already do”
“Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral”
Stealing from someone because you want what they have is unethical and immoral.
Raise corporate taxes thus Tax the source of the biggest use of public resources.
“Shit sucks, doesn’t it.”
So it’s ohkay when democrats intentionally fuck over the poor? I see.
Nice how everyone got a cheque, ram and voted for the party who paid them, with not a peep from the party till after the election that they were going to be paying taxes on the “stimulus” money.
What is this, some dark version of wizard of oz? Don’t look behind the curtain?
Except that $2000 “stimulus” just pushed you over the bracket and you now owe $350 instead of getting $1200 back?
But I’m heartless?
Great.
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“ You’d still be hosting that speech. Sandboxing it off wouldn’t mean you got rid of it”
Exactly. It would be tucked away out of the general public. And it wouldn’t be censored off the platform.
“ or that you necessarily disapprove of it.”
I don’t judge a Thing by first appearance. I don’t go out of my way
Looking for fucked up nonsense association conspiracies…
“ It would only mean you don’t want it where it could be publicly associated with your platform. ”
… so I’d move it out of the way where it doesn’t disrupt the majority.
That there are types like like you who have blinders on and can only see one possible method of existence? I don’t really care. I’d hid-flag association nonsense too. You don’t deserve the sand box for that though.
Since this is the only place I’ve ever seen the program discussed…
“ favor, affection, malice, or ill-will. Any policy that would compel the biggest social media services to host speech but leave “the little guys” alone—especially “conservative-friendly” services—is bullshit and should be treated as such.”
You totally ignore my point. The won’t justify anything any differently than now.
What they will do is drive sites off the internet one by one by targeting sites that can’t fight back. They simply shut down rather than hire lawyers.
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The base problem, then, is how systems designed by and upheld by white Americans tend to benefit white Americans. That’s one of the key tenets of CRT, as the Root article mentioned: A system can be designed with a sense of “fairness”, but what’s “fair” is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder in American culture is often white people—openly racist or not.
IQ tests are another good example: They measure what the people who make them (typically people who grew up in the West) think constitutes "basic intelligence". They’re not objective because even the basic underpinnings of our understanding of the world aren't necessarily the same between cultures. While someone might not get a high IQ score, that doesn’t make them “stupid”—but get enough people to believe IQ scores are objective forms of measuring intelligence, and point out how underfunded/poor schools (especially when those are majority-Black schools) have kids with low IQ scores, and…well, you get the idea.
Racism isn’t always intentional and openly expressed. CRT is about pointing out how even the most well-meaning systems can still be infected with racism because of how the always-flawed perspective of the dominant society shapes those systems.
No, it doesn’t. It points out how the systems of redlining and school (under)funding, among others, play a role in how well students perform on the SATs. Then it points out how SAT scores can affect whether those students are accepted to a given college. Even if college admissions accounted for those issues, the historical impact of those racist systems can and will continue to generate consequences that will still be felt in the future. It’s not enough to look at SAT scores in a vacuum—we have to look at how various systems can, will, and already do affect SAT scores (among other things).
CRT isn’t about placing blame on one white person or even white people in general. Only asshole conservatives who’ve never even read about CRT outside of what other asshole conservatives write about CRT think that.
And in a vacuum where race doesn’t matter, I’m sure that’s true. But historically, white people have had far more privileges in American society because they have always been the historically dominant racial group of the United States. (I mean, Black people didn’t even have equal access to their civil rights until nearly two centuries after the founding of a country whose declaration of independence said “all men are created equal” but whose Constitution also deemed Black people to be three-fifths of a person.) The whole point of CRT is to basically examine how those privileges came about and how they’re continually upheld.
And what do you call it when a single person can make millions of dollars in a single day without doing nearly anything while hundreds of thousands of people barely make 60 dollars a day for doing backbreaking physical labor that often helps the millionaire become even richer? What do you call it when the poor and the middle class have their taxes raised while the rich have theirs lowered (and in some cases, actually pay nothing)? Because I call that exploitation. I call it socialism for the rich.
Boss made a dollar, I made a dime; that was a poem from a simpler time
Now boss makes a thousand and gives us a cent while he's got employees who can’t make rent
So when boss makes a million and workers make jack, then that’s when we riot and take our lives back
I don’t respond to otherwording.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the passage of the bills regarding the first two stimulus checks a bipartisan move, and wasn’t the president at the time of those bills being passed a Republican? Because I’m thinking that if you’re looking to blame the Dems alone, you’re rewriting history to make Republicans look even more callous than they were—which is a weird as hell thing to do, since you vote for Republicans.
I don’t like it, either. But until you can change the rules, them’s the rules we play by.
Life sucks. Get used to it.
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If a racist were to log onto your service and say “I hate n⸻rs”, you wouldn’t judge that “by first appearance”?
The whole point I keep making in re: association is that even if you sandbox the speech, you’re still saying “it’s okay to post that shit here, just do it where people can’t see”. You’re all but saying that people can be as bigoted as they want on your service, even if such behavior is only limited to that one slice of the service. You are willingly and knowingly associating with that content and giving it tacit approval to be posted.
And if you think that speech won’t eventually be associated with your service in some way, you’ve lost your mind.
Any proposed law that tries to make Facebook or Twitter host speech will eventually be aimed at the smaller services. Making lawmakers justify such targeting now will help show how their targeting of the larger services is bullshit.
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See, all the CRT thing comes down to is it intentionally try’s to focus on the remaining ‘now’ issues and the ‘then’ rather look at the great progress made, and the places for improvement.
It in forces racism. It pushes one race above all others.
Recognising racial disparities is a good thing.
In reality, it doesn’t push for equality, it pushes for inversion.
The goal of CRT, as you point out, is not colour blindness.
The goal should be true equality.
Here’s my own response to that pome. One I actually posted a long time ago.
You make $10 and I just make eight.
You work less for more
I went home and ate.
You strike for $15 when I asked for $7.
Now nobody’s working
You call that heaven?
I like my dart, you want a rolls Royce.
Your goals not my goals
Thanks for no choice.
Not stop all the bitching and go back to work
Can’t deduct my dues?
You all ham fist jerks
Fuck you UFWU ~LostOne
I was a teen. The Union was a mandate. We had no “right to work” law at the time. The base rate was 8.50. $1.50 more than I asked for when I applied. And nearly double minimum wage.
My first and only Union job. The source of my permanent hatred of unions.
The went on strike and I went to work.
I lost friends, was bullied, harassed, and eventually quit. The employees wound up getting $9.
The issue with redistribution is it doesn’t tackle the problem. It targets management including people who have nothing to do with any exploitation if it exists.
Tax the company. Not the individual.
You also ignore the realities of income raise vrs the country at large.
Because outside of the big cities and the eastern “beltway”, where $50k is barely making it… in most of country 50k is not upper only middle class and happy, it’s the price of a nice house.
Step outside of the beltway bubble, the urban drama.
Your $25k is poverty in NY or DC, or Seattle or Chicago:
It’s stable living in Bucket ND, Spring Hill MO, Falls MT, etc.
While Dems keep worrying about the ‘rich getting richer’ the question should be why does a gallon of milk cost $5 in NYC and 75č in Bucket?
Same state?
Why does a can of soda cost $2 in Chicago and 50č in Douglas?
Why is a pack of smokes $8 in Charlotte and $3.50 in south Durham?
Why does a 3 bedroom condo cost $500,000 in LA and a 5 bedroom house on 2 acres cost $100k in the Sierra?
The wealth gap you hear and read about in the news is very different than the value gap of urban-rural.
“ I don’t respond to otherwording.”
I didn’t sensor. Everyone has a right to their own opinions.
If it’s contrary to the general public you put it out of the way. People interested in understanding others can go look for themselves. And make their own opinions.
“ Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the passage of the bills regarding the first two stimulus checks a bipartisan move”
The first one was. The second one started that way but became a mess and was far from bipartisan.
It passed by necessity, not quality.
“ Life sucks. Get used to it.”
That’s generally my response to there being billionaires.
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“ You are willingly and knowingly associating with that content and giving it tacit approval to be posted.”
What it posits is I believe everyone has the right to speak, and a right to be heard.
Allowing alternative speech is not tact approval of it.
If that’s the way you think, there’s nothing I can do to change your mind.
An enlightened individual seeks out every alternative view. Read, understand.
When was the last time you picked up the NYP or watched a news, not commentary, show on Fox, or read a few articles on BB?
Because I occasionally watch CNNHN during the day. I get the NYT feed most days: a Sunday hard copy.
I read the China News Daily, multiple short papers from Japan. I read books from journalists of both parties.
“ Any proposed law that tries to make Facebook or Twitter host speech will eventually be aimed at the smaller services. ”
That they are immediately going after the big fish outs the tarts on someone who can fight back and crush the law. If we put the fight on the little sites they will shut down. I’m not interested is seeing anyone forced off the internet for bullshite laws. Agree with the platform or not.
Because most won’t come back.
That’s a major trampling of free speech.
The politicians will say oops and move on in the end when they ultimately loose.
The platforms will be gone forever.
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It really is, though. If you allow speech like racial slurs on your service, regardless of whether you sandbox it, you are sending a tacit message of approval for that speech—that you are, in essence, okay with that speech being posted on your service.
Everyone has a right to speak. You’re under no obligation to let them say heinous shit on your service. If you’re honestly okay with someone using the N-word on your service—regardless of any possible sandboxing—you’re telling them that you’re okay with their bigotry. The only way to prevent their bigotry from infecting your service from the inside is to keep it from getting inside in the first place. You do that by banning the speech from the get-go (no sandboxing), deleting it when you’re aware of it being posted, and banning anyone who uses it.
Don’t think sandboxing will help keep that bigotry “in its place”, either. 4chan’s head honcho(s) thought /pol/ would work as a “containment” board. That idea didn’t work in any way that matters. It sure as shit wouldn’t work for you.
I don’t need to “seek out” the views of bigots, cranks, hateful assholes, and conservatives. (Whoops, tautology!)
Victory is never guaranteed. Even the best efforts of “Big Tech” lobbyists can be for naught if lawmakers think going after “Big Tech” would help secure another term in office.
As you alluded to, “Big Tech” would be both the primary target and the entities best equipped to fight the laws. But asking what effect those laws would have on smaller sites/services isn’t “putting the fight” on those smaller entities—it’s putting the question of (for example) “what’s going to stop you from going after a fifty-person Mastodon instance” directly to the people writing the laws that would do exactly that, regardless of whether lawmakers intend for that to happen.
Lawmakers who can’t justify going after Twitter but leaving Mastodon instances alone for any reason other than the size of Twitter are full of shit. The only way to prove it is to raise the question. That you’re too much of a coward to do so means people with some actual testicular fortitude will have to do it.
And hey, look at that—didn’t I raise the question? 🤔
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Understanding how we made that progress is as important as making further progress. That means understanding how racist systems were dismantled in the past so we can dismantle racist systems in the present and have fewer such systems in the future. What good is worrying about the here and now if we can’t (or aren’t supposed to) understand how our past got us here?
No, it really doesn’t. It looks at the historical impact of systems crafted by and upheld by the dominant societal group of American history—white people—that have given them and continue to give them privileges not enjoyed by other racial groups. (Again: In what year did Black people get full equal access to their civil rights, and how long was that after the founding of the country?) CRT is not about pushing any non-white racial group above all others (including white people), but about understanding how the dominant group has created systems that uphold racism—even when the people upholding those systems don’t intend to be (or are even actively anti-)racist. Read the fucking book.
You’re actively shitting on people who want to have a chance at something other than soul-crushing labor for the wealthy every day. You’re actively shitting on people who want to be less poor.
Jesus, Lostcause, I knew you were something of a bootlicker for the rich, but you made a fucking three-course meal out of their boots with that poem. You’re seriously more concerned about helping the rich stay rich than about helping the poor stay alive.
And you’re a fucking scab, to boot. From the bottom of my heart, Lodos: Fuck you. Never break a picket line.
You don’t even know what the problem is because you’re more concerned about keeping rich people rich.
Unless they’re management, someone is always being exploited by management. No exceptions. And targeting management is the right thing to do, since they’re the ones most likely to enrich themselves off the backs of the exploited. Tell me: How much money did Jeff Bezos make in his final year as Amazon CEO, how much money did the lowest-paid employee in his company make in that same timeframe, and how large is the difference between the two in terms of a percentage? Because I guarantee the lowest-paid employee did more work than Bezos did in that year—or at least more of the work that actually keeps the company in business.
Do those cities have the same kinds of opportunities for high-paying jobs as the major metropolitan areas? Because “stable living” means nothing to people who are looking to make more than the money they need to pay for rent, utilities, and groceries every month. Not everyone is comfortable with living in “stable” poverty, Lodos.
I didn’t say you did. I said you otherworded me. Allow me to break out another copypasta:
otherwording (or in-other-wordsing) — noun
Summarizing a point of argument in a way that distorts the point into saying something it does not and attributes the false interpretation to the person who raised the original point.
Example: You will often find the phrases “in other words” or “so you’re saying” at the beginning of an instance of otherwording.
See also: strawman; your comment
Because of course you see nothing wrong with letting people like Jeff Bezos get continually wealthy while his lowest-paid employees live in “stable” poverty after they do eight hours of the kind of body-destroying labor that Bezos has likely never done in his entire enchanted life. Of course you see nothing wrong with the rich exploiting the poor and the desperate, since you believe that’s the natural order of things and “punishing success” is tantamount to treason against the ruling class.
FYI: Kissing ruling class ass isn’t going to get you anywhere. They’ll just as soon kill you and not think twice about missing your lips on their shitholes if they think doing so will make them even more money. If you’re not exploiting people, chances are someone is exploiting you. Which side are you on: the greedy vulture class or the exploited worker class?
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“ I don’t need to “seek out” the views of bigots, cranks, hateful assholes, and conservatives. (Whoops, tautology!)”
Seriously, no bigots in the dem party right?
See: that’s your issue though. You don’t have a clue what the ‘other side’ even says. You just gave up your logical ability and o talk about any bubble since you clearly admit your in one yourself. Completely, entirely, and without stray.
So as I’ve said before, must be nice in a bubble where you can never be wrong.
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“ No, it really doesn’t. ”
You yourself said it doesn’t seek a colour blind system.
“ Never break a picket line.”
Fuck that. Don’t get in the way of my employment. I didn’t ask to join the Union cult. I didn’t ask for anything they claimed was in my interest. I wanted to go to work, do my job, collect a paycheque, and go home.
“ You don’t even know what the problem is because you’re more concerned about keeping rich people rich.”
The problem is wealthy corporations exploiting the poor. Not paying taxes because they write off $100 toilet seats and million dollar cars.
Creating self-enclosed indentureship.
“ Not everyone is comfortable with living in “stable” poverty, Lodos.”
Look up cost of living outside of the metropolitan areas. (Exclude New York and California).
A $75000 house that costs $1500 a year in property tax.
A $20k car and gas at $2.50.
Electric at $40 per month. Internet and tv at $50 per month. Groceries at $10k per year. Free municipal trash and recycling.
NG at $10 a mont or less.
It’s not poverty. It’s upper middle class living at income below a city’s reality poverty level.
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“ I didn’t say you did. I said you otherworded me.”
And my point was I don’t care what an individual thinks of it. I didn’t censor.
I don’t agree with you. I believe everyone has the right to be heard. I just put the problem types over there. Out of the way of the majority.
As for wealth, it’s a lost cause argument between us. You want to punish individuals for corporate policy. I want to punish corporations for corporate policy.
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"The method of interaction between us."
I look at my Facebook feed, see a message posted by someone in my friends list, I like and comment on it with a short piece of text.
I look at my Twitter feed, see a message posted by someone I'm following, I like it and comment on it with a short piece of text.
According to you, these are such fundamentally different interactions that the companies cannot be considered to be operating in the same business. I don't see it.
"I didn’t anywhere anyway ever say treat them differently"
Then why are you so desperate to pretend they are completely different services?
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"The only point is STOP THE IGNORANT GROUPING.
Some of you left wing (alt/far left in the US)"
I'm only seeing one person. indulge in ignorant grouping here. Hint: it0's the one who unironically uses meaningless terms invented to distract from the original white supremacist/neo-Nazi meaning of the term alt-right that was coined by a literal Nazi.
"Your constant need to group will guarantee a Republican sweep in 22."
I hope your country doesn't destroy itself so soon, but we'll see.
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Because they are.
That doesn’t change the applicability of 230.
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Alt, alternative, covered more than neo-nazis. Starting with even that is wrong.
Let’s cover something here since I did a thesis on it.
Not all white suprematists are Christian. The idea comes from two large groups: The Church of the Christian Brotherhood, and The Arian Brotherhood and Church of Christ.
But The Way is agnostic.
The Solidarity (of Man) is theistic satanism
Dragon’ Den is Setian
Draco Nocto is vampiric.
Quite with the christian nazi crap.
Not all Christians are nazis. Biden and nanny Nancy are christian.
Third. And this is key, not everyone who voted for Trump is a nazi, alt right, or otherwise
Some of us simply chose the person offered who would do what we want.
And ignored the negatives.
There has never been a President in this country I completely agreed with.
For all his faults Trump was the first in a long time that attempted to do everything he ran on.
Today, the Republican Party has 4 sub groups.
“Republican on name only” who vote Democrat 9:10
“Deep state” career politicians who vote for their own money, position, and power.
“Liberal conservatives” who say fuck the world and look to make America an island.
And the small subset know as “alt right” racist, homophobic, bigoted, crap bags.
The Democrat party is splinter into many dozens of groups.
The alternative, being made of those who would otherwise fall into small useless parties.
Such as the Greens, the Democratic Socialists, the Representative Libertarians, …
Like it or not every political opinion chart (for America politics) clearly places me on the Democrat side.
I was a registered dem for over 2 decades.
I’m currently listed with a party I have long been involved with: Socialised Freedom Libertarians.
I really really, hope the Rs run Trump in 24. Because it will split the party in 3.
I desperately hope the Dems run Biden for a second term.
Because it will decimate the Democrat party. By 32 the 2-party system would be dead.
Because right now we have do-or-be-destroyed bloc voting.
The masses are suffering from it.
Keep in mind the Democrats submitted the amendments in bot stimulus packages that would qualify the “free support” as income.
It’s the Dems who support private election funding and PACs.
It’s the Republicans stonewalling weapons verification in response to Dems looking for gun grabs.
It’s the Republicans standing in the way of the National movement to repeat and accept obscenity.
It’s the republicans refusing to tak business at logical rates.
While the dems push to send our jobs overseas and/or give them to illegals, the pubs look to support offshore headquarters registration.
The management, the controllers, the power for both parties are absolutely shite!
So yes. Alt! I don’t give two fucks about your opinion of alt left: I AM alt left. And I’m quite proud of it.
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"Because they are."
I notice that you don't present a reason why services that are often used in the exact same way are completely different.
"That doesn’t change the applicability of 230."
Nobody said it did. The only person arguing about how things should apply is you. I'm simply calling you out on your pointless attempt to pretend that these services are somehow fundamentally different.
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"Alt, alternative, covered more than neo-nazis."
The term "alt-right" was coined by Richard Spencer specifically to try and rebrand his toxic views after "white supremacist" and "neo-Nazi" weren't helping him recruit to his cause.
The term "alt-left" was a "no you!" argument presented by unimaginative right-wingers when they got tired of their propaganda sites being accurately described as "alt-right". It's meaningless except to people trying a "both sides are bad" argument.
"There has never been a President in this country I completely agreed with."
Good, that means you have an intellect greater than the average toddler. Presidents deal with complicated adult issues, and even if you agree with their personal opinions on every subject, they have to make deals and compromises on a regular basis due to the nature of politics. Agreeing with that person 100% on every issue should cause any educated adult to question their views somewhat.
"And this is key, not everyone who voted for Trump is a nazi, alt right, or otherwise"
Yet, they have no problem associating with such people. Well... CPAC did kick out openly white supremacists like Nick Fuentes recently, so maybe even they're getting the message.
"Like it or not every political opinion chart (for America politics) clearly places me on the Democrat side"
So you've given up on pretending to be a "libertarian" and now claim to be a "Democrat" even though half your posts here argue directly against what they stand for and you crow about how proud you were to vote for Trump?
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I pointed out the differences of some, microblogs, texting, forums.
I wasn’t after anything about 230.
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“ The term "alt-right" was coined by Richard Spencer”
No, alt right existed before AltRight. He took the term and co-opted it.
Alternative groups have existed and called themselves such in public since the 60s. If not earlier.
“ Yet, they have no problem associating with such people. ”
The idea of forced association is not something any libertarian believes in. Nor is it much used in the centre of the two party system.
They exist. We ignore them.
“ even though half your posts here argue directly against what they stand for”
On a few points of importance to me. Like my belief that bottom up is no better than top down in economics.
That the country is better off armed than not. That we have a rights to our arms and a right not to be taxed on our constitutional freedoms.
That the system should strive for racial equality and not reversed unbalancing.
That we should protect our society rather than join lopsided trade deals.
Yes, plenty of places I disagree. Important places. Key ideas.
That doesn’t mean I don’t side with them more than not historically.
It’s that some people are too extreme on particular issues for me to support them.
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“ The term "alt-right" was coined by Richard Spencer”
No, alt right existed before AltRight. He took the term and co-opted it.
Alternative groups have existed and called themselves such in public since the 60s. If not earlier.
“ Yet, they have no problem associating with such people. ”
The idea of forced association is not something any libertarian believes in. Nor is it much used in the centre of the two party system.
They exist. We ignore them.
“ even though half your posts here argue directly against what they stand for”
On a few points of importance to me. Like my belief that bottom up is no better than top down in economics.
That the country is better off armed than not. That we have a rights to our arms and a right not to be taxed on our constitutional freedoms.
That the system should strive for racial equality and not reversed unbalancing.
That we should protect our society rather than join lopsided trade deals.
Yes, plenty of places I disagree. Important places. Key ideas.
That doesn’t mean I don’t side with them more than not historically.
It’s that some people are too extreme on particular issues for me to support them.
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Yet, you're the one who mentioned it, and the only one trying to redefine each individual service beyond the scope of it in a discussion about that very law.
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"No, alt right existed before AltRight. He took the term and co-opted it."
Language is fluid, and the modern connotation of the term is the one associated with Spencer.
"The idea of forced association is not something any libertarian believes in"
I thought you were a "Democrat" lol. But, nobody's forcing you to associate with anyone, they're just noting that there's one way that the Nazis, white supremacists, etc. tend to congregate towards, and you actively voted to be counted on the same "side". As the Simpsons meme goes - Fox are not racists but are #1 with racists.... and you chose to go to their arena.
"It’s that some people are too extreme on particular issues for me to support them."
Yet, you voted for the corrupt bankrupt gameshow host con artist who pandered to them...
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Ironically, if the conservatives were right about the social media platforms being politically biased, it would give the platforms MORE first amendment protection, not less!
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It’s not really any different from Leftists declaring hate speech to not be free speech - while simultaneously declaring any dissent to be hate speech.
It all boils down to a belief that only those who agree with your group should speak, and all others must be silenced.
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