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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • I’m talking about this in terms of jurisprudence. Judges are supposed to rule based on law and precedent, not just on their personal preferences and political views. It’s an essential element of the rule of law. There’s very little point in having a constitution or laws if judges just ignore them and do whatever they want. I mean, I think most people here would agree that they do not approve of this Court defying precedent and most reasonable interpretations of the law in order to impose their will on the country.

    Obviously, the Court can, has, and sometimes should overturn precedent, and potentially throw out decades or centuries of previously settled law. But generally speaking, that ruling should make a very compelling case for such an action. They would essentially be saying that everyone writing and interpreting the laws for all that time had gotten it wrong (intentionally or otherwise), including potentially the people who wrote the very sections of the constitution that the ruling is based on.

    The more specific point I was making was that Roberts had ruled that the government could use the tax power alone to tax “not having insurance” and that it wouldn’t run afoul of the constitution as long as it wasn’t just a head tax applied to everyone indiscriminately, as that would be a direct tax which must be apportioned among the states.* That’s the same clause that is being invoked in this case as a reason why wealth taxes shouldn’t be allowed.

    A ruling against taxes on unrealized gains would not only require the Court to assert that we’ve been doing it wrong this whole time and that we only just now figured that out, but Roberts in particular would be doing a complete 180 on the issue. Jumping from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other would be a rather remarkable change, one that would be hard to reconcile without concluding that one decision or the other was dishonest and politically motivated.


    * And because it had a regulatory intent, aimed at compelling people to buy insurance, it had to also not be so crippling a burden that it’s effects would need to go through police or regulatory powers.




  • Trump can do no wrong. Therefore, any action taken against him must be unjustified. So it can only ever be political, and therefore, it’s only fair that we do the same to Biden.

    The best part is, they recognize that this is terrible for democracy, that this being normalized would be a disaster, and then say they are going to do it anyway. They are admitting that rather than accept the outcome of the legal process for settling these kinds of situations, and respecting the rule of law, they would rather damage our society to get their victory by any means necessary.

    Which is pretty much how we got here in the first place, when Trump couldn’t accept an election or dozens of court cases all telling him he lost.


  • The really frustrating part is that cheap generic stuff skyrocketed too. Walmart embraced inflation enthusiastically, and their knockoff mountain dew went from $0.62 to $1.70. Supply chain issues I’m sure…

    I used to get that stuff 10 bottles at a time, and it was one of the few things that made it worth going there. Now I just get whatever is on sale at the local employee owned grocery chain. The price difference is negligible, almost everything else is cheaper, and I get to support some place that isn’t evil.


  • Normally the ones who buy a console at the end of its lifespan are the ones getting the best deal. You have the entire library of games to choose from, and can get all the best games at once. Plus the system will have dropped in price multiple times since it came out, and the older games will cost a fraction of what they did originally. And of course, they’ll have long since addressed any design problems that early models were plagued with.

    At least, that’s how it’s supposed to go.


  • If every halfway respectable news outlet sounded the alarm and made Trump’s threats to democracy and the rule of law the dominant story from now until election day, he’d still have 85% of his supporters. Some would be OK with it. Some would say he’s still better than Biden. Most would never see it because they live in a media bubble that tells them what they want to hear. And more than a few would call those stories hit pieces and climb into the bubble to be safe and comfortable.

    We do need the media and everyone else to sound the alarm. And even a small shift could be enough to make the difference. But as long a large portion of the population is listening to outlets that unabashedly spew extremist propaganda, we’re going to continue have this problem.