That’s how taxation works, but it doesn’t solve government finance by itself.

The US government has always paid interest on the debt. It’s never missed a payment. That makes it a very stable investment, and until recently it was considered the most stable, predictable investment that could be made.

That also means the US could have stupidly-low interest on its debts. And because the investment is so safe, it also creates a bottom for interest rates. No other investment is safer, so any time the fed rate goes up, all other loan rates go up as well - otherwise investors would just put their money in the US instead of on a home or business loan.

That and other factors result in inflation generally being higher than the interest on loans made to the US, which results in a situation where paying cash up front is actually more expensive than getting a loan and paying with future tax revenue, because future tax revenue grows with inflation that outpaces the interest on the loan.

Federal government deficit spending works because interest is often higher than return on federal bonds, so it’s literally cheaper for the government to go into debt and pay over a long period than to pay cash.

Local government can’t do that, but they do have other tools. The one I deal with the most often is Public Improvement Districts where we’ll cut a deal to waive municipal property tax or the city’s sales tax for like 20 years on a big development in return for the developers building the public infrastructure required to support that development, then transferring it to the City. For really big projects, we may even redirect the tax to the developer, which we actually kinda prefer when that 20-year clock times out and you don’t have business owners and residents suddenly getting new taxes they aren’t used to and freaking ALL the way out.

It’s a deal for the developer because they need that infrastructure anyway, and the only “extra” cost to them is oversizing stuff like wastewater lines beyond what they need, and it’s a deal for the city because those road, water, sidewalk, and wastewater extensions they install with the project end up serving more than just that development.

I used to be a gun salesman.

One day I’m in the back mounting scopes and a customer’s rifle gets delivered to me with the rings and scope. First thing I do it go back out front and have the customer shoulder the rifle so I can see where his eye sits.

I then spend time carefully mounting and leveling the scope, use the bore-sighter to get it zero-ish at 100 yards (enough to hit paper - then the customer finishes at the range), and it’s looking real good.

Last thing I do it work the action to make sure everything still has clearance, and a chrome-plated 300 Win Mag cartidge comes out of the gun.

That gun made it through the firearms check-in, at least 1 other sales guy, to me, back to the customer, and back to me again. We’re supposed to check the rifle every time, and that round made it into the gun. Closest I can figure is people weren’t working the action all the way, and at some point one of us did after seeing the silver color thinking it was the mag follower, and in the process loaded the chamber.

My asshole was puckered for a solid day, but it also spoke to how effective the rules are. Even though multiple people fucked up, following the rest of the rules kept it from actually being dangerous.

I feel like I had one installed over my garage door.

Yes, but if each district has an executive that can also fire judges it still removes any independence from the judicial branch - completely negating its purpose.

The judicial branhlch’s primary function at a national scale is to protect against the tyranny of the majority, and they can only achieve that if they are not subject to the wrath of elected officials who are upset with rulings they make after appointment.

That changes judges into representatives and completely defeats the entire purpose of the judicial branch and removes judicial independence.

It also changes the country into a confederation. We tried that in 1776 and it didn’t work AT ALL, and then part of the country tried it again in the 1860s, and it lead to a war that resulted in more US deaths than all other US wars combined.

“I’m homeless right now, so future affordable housing is worth nothing to me.”

If became effective immediately, by the end of his term Trump would have installed 8 of the 9 justices on the Court, as Sotamayor and Kagan were both first-term Obama appointees.

The last time this was discussed, the idea was to cycle them out every 2 years, starting with the longest-serving (Thomas) through the newest (Jackson).

That would result in no change to the current partisan makeup during Trump’s term. If it were to take effect on January 1, he would get to change out Thomas and Roberts, with the next President getting Alito and Sotamayor in their first term, and Kagan and Gorsuch in their second.

It would actually be ideal to wait until the next President (hopefully a Dem) if the goal was to restore balance, since the first 3 replacements seats were all Republican-appointed.

Though what would actually happen is the Thomas, Alito, and Roberts would all resign and be replaced by new Republicans right before the law took effect so that the longest-remaining terms were all Republican-appointed when the law takes effect.

deleted by creator

18 years is the correct length. It’ the shortest term that prevents a single 2-term President from being able to replace the majority of the Court.

But if Harris had won, Israel would have continued committing genocide!

They traded their independence from the feds in exchange for free used equipment.

When I was younger we had one of the older-style “2 big springs” doors and needed to replace the springs. The new ones were a bit shorter, so we had to close the doors a little harder. No problem.

About 20 minutes later there was a sound like an explosion in the garage. One of the new springs broke where the hook went into the door from the strain of being stretched so tight, and it shot across the room and was sticking out of the man-door on the other side of the garage.

Don’t fuck with garage springs.

Fist time I got an AARP flyer in the mail I wanted to punch the mailman.

The kids I understand. But final judgement depends on an important question:

McMuffin, McGriddle, or Biscuit?

Lots of scams involve getting people to download unverified apks that are used by scammed. That’s the nominal reason for Google’s new bullshit.

Pretending restrictions are good for you is how these companies operate. Telecoms have been doing it for over a century. Why should we suddenly trust them to NOT be evil?

But if you leave that process in the hands of CLEC (telecom providers) they have a financial incentive to make the process impossible and expensive to drive customers away from cheaper alternatives like VOIP.

And the spoofing has become an endemic part of the system. Years ago, there was a separate system for phones, which is why phones kept working even when power an internet went out. That also meant the phone companies knew exactly where a call was coming from because the wire could be traced to its physical location and verified for CallerID. It was also accurate because all landlines were published unless you paid to be excluded.

But none of that is true anymore. Even when you make a call from most “landlines” these days, there’s no actual landline phone system it’s coming through. It’s VOIP. And the same system that’s used to identify your number can be used by anyone, and the phone company giving priority to certain carriers and customer as “trusted” while denying it to others raises net neutrality concerns.

It’s the ongoing security vs freedom debate. You can’t say the phone companies should block calls from unverified numbers while at the same time saying Google shouldn’t block download of unverified apps.

There’s legitimate uses of spoofing. If I need to make a work call from my cell phone, I don’t want to share my number, so I use an app to send the call from my office number. If you work in a call center, you need the CID to point to a main line, not your desk phone. If you’re working from home, you want to send the company’s number - not yours. You don’t necessarily want phone companies able to determine who can and cannot use CID spoofing, because they won’t use it for good.

In fact - they’ve used it for evil in the past and are now actually prohibited from blocking spoofed CIDs. The Madison River Telephone company blocked Vonage back in the early aughts in what turned into one of the first big Net Neutrality cases when the FCC stepped in.

Essentially, they had been using the spoofed CID that’s essenially a necessity of VOIP systems as an excuse to ban VOIP users from calling their customers. So the FCC ended up prohibiting telephone providers from from that practice.

They actually work in tandem now. And honestly, some of the generative stuff in Adobe products I find genuinely useful. Specifically I really like the AI noise reduction in Lightroom. It allows people with less-expensive cameras to have better end results.

And with public figures there’s also the actual malice requirement, which requires the defendant to have evidence they were telling a lie and, or have shown so little interest in checking the facts that the only reasonable explanation is they were actively avoiding the truth.