241–250 of 587 posts
Interesting approach to competing with China on wireless technology. I would have thought the US having a competitive edge over China in terms of research and development would be important to Republicans.
The federal govt can’t be the majority of technological innovation. If we’re lucky this vacuum will be filled by an even larger private sector innovation hub like Xerox park and bell labs.
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Trump specifically ran saying he didn't agree with many of these plans. His actions are consistent with cheaper federal government but not smaller federal government. Just a centralized executive government that does what he says. The method is simple: say what you need to to get approval, do what you always wanted to do after you get it. See also Kennedy walking back his anti-vaccine positions to get crucial votes o…
Trump ran on saying whatever to whomever. his intentions though were obvious. He ran on cutting spending by 2 trillion. Where did people think this was going to come from? He ran on ending red tape. He ran on reducing regulation. These days folk getting approved by the senate just have to show up. No one believes RFK when he says he's changed his mind on vax. I mean, these guys are lackeys, not stupid. Democracy is a…
> Do we need a better system? I'd argue yes. But all the others are worse
I think there's a lot of room for improvement here. Eliminate the senate. Dramatically expand the house. Eliminate the electoral college. Sane district boundaries. Etc.
Most young people have no hope of owning a home or having kids and our federal government is "borrowing" money to pay for all of these things. Last year it added 1830 billion dollars to the national debt while paying 1126 billion in interest. Take a look at the dollar price of gold chart if you haven't recently. This is obviously not sustainable, maybe even in the short term.
To continue steal from our children's futures to pay for decades of accumulated corruption, appropriated by Congress, is a crime. Can anyone see a reasonable path forward where we don't make drastic changes?
If you happen to be one of those people who thought that voting for the Republicans was in your best interest, yet you are shocked and horrified by what the Republicans are currently doing, I strongly suggest you reevaluate your political epistemology, and interrogate both your sources of information as well as your political stances.
Unlike you, others fully expected this as the outcome Of a Republican Administration and Congress.
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Why don't you care about nuclear safety, dmix? Is that the waste you're talking about?
Posting multiple replies under my comments, then replying again in other threads is some weird attention seeking behaviour... But yes I do think it is very wasteful, as the article says it can cause serious inflation issues to dump $1T into the economy like that. Not at all economically conservative nor a useful behaviour of an agency claiming to want to save money, similar to the federal firings I critiqued as non-p…
This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour. The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at…
And the worst thing is that they may have misunderstood what "probationary employees" were. In federal speak, they are new employees, but the new regime may have thought they were "bad" employees, based on the idea of "probation" in the criminal justice sense.
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And the worst thing is that they may have misunderstood what "probationary employees" were. In federal speak, they are new employees, but the new regime may have thought they were "bad" employees, based on the idea of "probation" in the criminal justice sense.
We live in such a moronic time that I believe the reason that we are dropping the post-WWII Rules Based Order, is that it is also called the "Liberal" International Order. [0] Watching a historic empire destroy itself is beyond words. I will miss Pax Americana. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
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I wouldn't do this if there were lives at stake. e.g. turning off circuits in a hospital to see which ones are really necessary. It's a very strong claim to say no lives depend on any federal funding.
All of the important programs have temporary restraining orders. That's actually the standard the judge applies, "is there a possibility of irreparable harm?" (e.g. lives lost). It's not perfect but no system is.
These people also can't afford AIDS medications.
This is just one of many examples.
Your standard given here already isn't being held to in the most basic, obvious ways.
I know these cuts make almost no difference to the massive federal spending, but they are putting a spotlight on our nation's dire financial situation. Most young people have no hope of owning a home or having kids and our federal government is "borrowing" money to pay for all of these things. Last year it added 1830 billion dollars to the national debt while paying 1126 billion in interest. Take a look at the dollar…
Is just something assumed by Republicans with no basis in reality. The amount of "facts" that conservative friends post on Facebook that can be trivially debunked that have still been circulating for years is insane.
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> We may be looking at a lost decade. We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation o…
You forgot "wilfully letting go of democracy". US democracy is far away from dying, but who knows how much longer it can keep holding up.
Also people like it: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HHP... (pp. 29-32)