US Politics: Stamping out Chauvinism

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Reapportionment time!!

Saw that population growth was the slowest since the thirties.  Feel like this should be emphasized every time we talk about a "border crisis."

[S John]

6 hours ago, argonak said:

Republicans really hate California for some reason.   I suspect Fox News has some sort of California Hate hour where the show a picture of the state so all the viewers (even the californians) can scream their hate out at it.  All the while lies about how its a failed state on the level of Somalia, while also being filled to the brim with those damn rich hippies and hollywood, play in the background.

My neighbors were complaining to me that "Californians were moving into our neighborhood" the other day, and I laughed and said well now they're Washingtonians and they just kind of stared at me with a weird lack of comprehension.  And they're otherwise very nice people.

My experience with this from living in Texas is that it’s more about the pocketbooks of Californians than the politics that causes resentment. People used to LA or Silicon Valley prices have themselves a field day in Austin, Dallas, etc when it comes to real estate. The real estate markets in TX cities have been going nuts for years, pricing out many locals. But this new ‘high’ price for Texas is still cheap to a Californian.

Have heard many tales of houses on the market in the Austin area getting 40 or 50 offers, many of them cash and a typical regular family simply cannot compete. The housing cost in Austin as risen something like 26% just this year on top of a decade or more of rapidly increasing prices. One of the things that used to be the backbone of the community - UT Austin - has definitely not caught up when it comes to competitive salaries in the new environment. Unless you’d already been in Austin and bought a long time ago you’d be pretty hard pressed to work for the University of Texas and live anywhere near it which is kind of sad if you ask me. Californians moving to Austin to work in its rapidly growing tech sector are the ones the locals tend to blame about this state of affairs. Not that it’s entirely on them, much of it is just the standard growing pains that any city would experience during a boom, but there is enough truth to it that Californians tend to bear the brunt of the ire from locals. 

[Fez]

29 minutes ago, DMC said:

Saw that population growth was the slowest since the thirties.  Feel like this should be emphasized every time we talk about a "border crisis."

Yep. Definitely. Also, for the first time ever there are more people ages 80+ than ages 2 and under.

[Ormond]

1 hour ago, Trishkin said:

If this is a dig at my warnings about the inevitable Lizard People Downrising, you’re way out of line! The Downrising will soon be the only appropriate topic for this thread.

Oh no, I would never upset the plans of the Lizard People by saying anything that would specifically refer to them.  

[IheartIheartTesla]

Speaking of California (should this go in the international affairs thread?) Gavin Newsom will now face a recall election, with the efforts against him having reached the requisite 1.5M signatures. The last recall, if I recall correctly, gave us Arnie (who acted in Total Recall) in place of Gray Davis

[A True Kaniggit]

4 hours ago, Ormond said:

 It's certainly much more related to the thread than many of the tangents people have gotten onto here.

Hey. And I thought we were behaving ourselves. 
 

You may have noticed I responded to @Tywin et al. ‘s mention of the “night ice sphere” with only a laughing face, in order to let the conversation end.

When of course my initial reaction was to inform him how silly such a name is. 

I regularly see it during the daytime. And if that sphere were made of ice, it would have melted by now. I mean, it was in the mid 80s F today. 

[Myshkin]

Great, now California has to spend several hundred million dollars just to re-affirm that we do indeed want Gavin Newsom as our governor.  

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Hey. And I thought we were behaving ourselves. 
 

You may have noticed I responded to @Tywin et al. ‘s mention of the “night ice sphere” with only a laughing face, in order to let the conversation end.

When of course my initial reaction was to inform him how silly such a name is. 

I regularly see it during the daytime. And if that sphere were made of ice, it would have melted by now. I mean, it was in the mid 80s F today. 

You know, y'all, I have been reading this thread on this board for so long that I was not thinking of any particular instance and probably was thinking of tangents that happened before most of you whippersnappers had even discovered this board.

[A True Kaniggit]

8 minutes ago, Ormond said:

You know, y'all, I have been reading this thread on this board for so long that I was not thinking of any particular instance and probably was thinking of tangents that happened before most of you whippersnappers had even discovered this board.

Aren’t younger people known for being more self centered?

Just a sine of the times I suppose. 

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Martell Spy]

Wow, Biden has gone totally insane. First, he plans to limit us to 1 hamburger per month. (It isn't clear if you will be allowed to eat anything else in this month) He is also going to force us to drink plant-based beers!

Biden’s fake burger ban and the rising culture war over meat
Biden’s not taking away your meat, as Republicans claimed this weekend. But partisan conflict over eating animals is just getting started.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/26/22403599/biden-red-meat-ban-burger-kudlow

Quote

 

Despite these flaws, the Mail’s article took off in the right-wing media world, with many interpreting it as an actual summary of Biden’s policy aims. According to the Post’s fact-check, the most influential vector was Fox News, which made an easily shareable infographic about “Biden’s climate requirements” that launders the Mail’s misinformation as an authoritative claim about Biden’s plan stemming from the University of Michigan itself.

On Monday, Fox News’ John Roberts admitted the error on-air: “a graphic and the script incorrectly implied it [the Michigan study] was part of Biden’s plan for dealing with climate change. That is not the case.” But it was too late: the graphic had already motivated of the more prominent false claims on social media, with prominent conservatives retweeting it as though it were accurate:

 

 

[DMC]

47 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

He is also going to force us to drink plant-based beers!

Those Budweiser Clydesdales are god damn delicious!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Does that mean you are no longer allowed to drink Miller's or Heineken. You don't know what a chemical beer tastes like if you have never tried it.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

2 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Does that mean you are no longer allowed to drink Miller's or Heineken. You don't know what a chemical beer tastes like if you have never tried it.

What about plant based vodka?  Just curious what my options will be.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

What about plant based vodka?  Just curious what my options will be.

If you're looking to get shitfaced you might want to try some of Tom Brady's avocado tequila.  

[Fez]

10 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

What about plant based vodka?  Just curious what my options will be.

I recommend garlic vodka. It packs a hell of a punch, and not just from the alcohol.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

If you're looking to get shitfaced you might want to try some of Tom Brady's avocado tequila.  

In a word, no.

But let’s talk about tax policy for a moment, shall we?  Yellen (whom autocorrect insists on correcting to ‘yelled’, amusing, non?) has proposed a “global minimum tax regime”.  Basically, the idea is to remove the incentive to relocate people, IP, etc., solely for the purpose of accessing a lower tax rate to drive down a global effective rate.  While this may gain some traction in high tax jurisdictions (e.g., UK, France, Germany, etc.), I am confident that other countries that rely on this tax tourism will resist.  I was thinking specifically of Ireland (12.5%!), but Hungary (which is notorious for a lax treaty, and is often suggested but almost never used in practice) has already come out against.  If you think about it, if a company earns a dollar [I could say euro, pound, yen, rmb- just go with dollar for a sec] of normalized global profit, the various entities in the world all want to tax that global dollar based on the dollar’s relationship to that country.  These are the biggest audit fights (transfer pricing) and drive the biggest headlines.  Hungary is basically saying “I want the ability to take less than the global minimum amount of that dollar of profit, but increase my volume of dollars connected to Hungary”.  

[Mlle. Zabzie]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

I recommend garlic vodka. It packs a hell of a punch, and not just from the alcohol.

I’m a tax lawyer.  I feel that, like sunlight, that amount of garlic would be hazardous to my continued existence.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Yellen (whom autocorrect insists on correcting to ‘yelled’, amusing, non?) has proposed a “global minimum tax regime”.

Yeah she seems bullish on this but I can't help but think getting all the OECD countries to sign off is pie in the sky.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

That's one hell of a pivot, Zabz.