It's the game plan. Destroy, privatize, and profit while taking more money from We the People while delivering less and making the country fundamentally weaker in immeasurable ways.
The extra $40 billion or so taken as tariffs from ordinary people will add to the DoD-MIC, NASA (for SpaceX), and DOGE budgets to transfer wealth via corporate welfare. And the "savings" from destroying essential services like the NIH and CDC will undoubtedly go that way too. It's a cash grab.
It does a lot of good (value) for the cost. A lot of poor people will starve and die and America will lose standing and respect in the world as a consequence of destroying aid to save relative pennies.
its not that people around the hate America because it is giving out the aid.
it is because America's military industrial complex and decades of forever wars caused unimaginable death and suffering to people around the world (+add ~15 Trillion in national debt borrowed on behalf of taxpayers and transferred to Lockheed and friends, with absolutely nothing to show for it).
> He's always liked tariffs, and this is him doing what he believes.
This maybe so, but he still doesn't understand who pays them or why his cronies like them so much. Tariffs transfer wealth from consumers to the government while simultaneously raising inflation. DOGE and friends want to privatize as much government as possible to extract money from it as a grift. Tariffs also hurt SMB sellers who cannot strategically front-load inventory like megacorps can. Furthermore, inflationary policies help out the 0.001% who can financialize weakening currencies while simultaneously making everything more expensive for ordinary people, effectively reducing average and unlivable wages to be even more unequal compared to the soon-to-be trillionaires. It's an ostensible nationalist/protectionist move that's cynically all about $$$$. The average American should anticipate paying $2000 more per year by the time 2026 rolls around for all of their expenditures... for absolutely nothing of value while not receiving a raise to account for it.
I wouldn't be so eager to jump to this conclusion.
After listening to a former pilot on this type of aircraft, who flew this very aircraft into this very airport, the many problems are clear:
- This particular helicopter was flying too high when it should've been around treetop/obstacle-avoidance level where it was
- Helicopters shouldn't be flying through an approach path of a major airport
- TCAS won't do a damn thing <1000' AGL. Perhaps subsequent versions of TCAS should address traffic around airports and down to around 200' AGL
- DCA should scale back on its traffic volume
- The approach change from 01 to 33 is awkward
- The FAA needs to exhaust all avenues to encourage, hire, and train ATC to bolster its ranks rather than send emails about how to quit or allow commercial figures to pressure its leadership to resign
Also, I really want to know if:
- The AA jet got a TCAS TA (advisory) because they definitely didn't receive an RA (warning)
- The ATC controller was in ADS-B filter mode or was seeing all data
We'll never know if:
- The chopper pilot mistook another aircraft for the AA one or was giving the answer expected due to being on NVGs in busy airspace
I'm trying to wade through Varoufakis' Technofeudalism. It's obvious most billionaires lack ideological loyalty except which might make them the most money. The problem is the manufacturing of consent amongst the populous of a belief that a tiny fraction of the population should be celebrated and enriched without regard to all other concerns. This, I think, is what allowed inverted totalitarianism to give way to more overt totalitarianism. The US is presently exhibiting themes of ochlocracy, anocracy, kleptocracy, and plutocracy.
Public administration should be "boring" and a utility that provides predictable quality services without the corrosive corruption of total regulatory capture. The problem right now is it has devolved into a spectacle of personalities and fanatical team sport that occupies disproportionate mindshare that reduces happiness, economic output, world standing, and more.
The most sensible way forward would be in the spirit of Aaron Swartz's realization that the political operating system was sick and now needs urgent care. And so no enduring reform can be realized from within because of vested interested benefit from the ever sliding status quo. This demands a broad base of ordinary people to overthrow the oligarchs using deliberate, peaceful means by the multitudes. The time still isn't ripe yet, but the time is coming for a necessary and essential reset back to sane adult competent leaders who listen to the people irrespective of money, and provide public administration for the benefit of the majority of folks. Small government is no panacea when the billionaires' rival the state in power and influence, smart government not influenced by big money is where the US needs to be to thrive and to continue. Perhaps America should do representative democracy differently with a variant of sortition rather than celebrity popularity contests sold by mass media.
That's the rub. It would've been a non-issue in the late 90's when extremists weren't in power and there was just moderate levels of corruption rather than gold bar senators or Department of Fox News Defense. It's imperative to call-out absurdity where it interferes with the continuation of organized multicellular life rather than be silent, because silence gives consent (Qui tacet consentit).
Half crazy, half too pure to get their hands dirty. 0% sensible discussion of absurdity that can only be explained by actions undertaken extremist ideology that benefit the ultra-rich and harm everyone else.
