Trump Dictatorship and All Things Politics

[Deleted member 365]

I know attacking brown people over drugs is more popular than holding white drug dealers accountable. But this is pretty ridiculous. Law and order, amiright?

Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht

Libertarian activists, who generally oppose criminal drug policies, argued the government overreached in building its case against Ross Ulbricht and the dark web marketplace Silk Road.

www.cbsnews.com

"Silk Road was the Amazon of drug sites," former FBI Special Agent Milan Patel said in an interview for the CBS News series "FBI Declassified."

"We saw murder-for-hire postings, hacking-for-hire postings, which was, 'hey, pay me two bitcoin and I'll hack into your ex-wife or ex-husband's email account,'" Patel said. "…It was totally anonymous. And you could never trace it back to the person who asked for it."

Ulbricht ran the site until his arrest in 2013, when it was seized by the FBI. During his trial, prosecutors said at least six deaths were traced to overdoses from drugs bought on Silk Road. They alleged that Ulbricht collected $18 million through commissions on tens of thousands of drug sales, and presented evidence alleging he sought to have people killed for threatening his business.

Since Mr. Trump assumed office, he has also pardoned about 1,500 defendants convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

 

[enchilada_style]

Elon is mentally ill. I'm so glad he has a seat at the White House. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Sardines]

Elon is mentally ill. I'm so glad he has a seat at the White House. What could possibly go wrong?

Did you hear about how he lied about being ranked like 12th in the world at a very competitive game, one where to have a rank like that you'd need to be playing the game like it was your full time job. He had the balls to do a live play session and those familiar with the game could easily tell he had spent almost no time playing. He didn't understand how to interact with the map. He wasn't using his equipment space efficiently. He loaded a save or map or something and it was saved as "Elon's Map".

 

[LogGrad98]

Some call it a government sponsored ponzi scheme.

Only really to Americans afraid of the fake Spector of socialism. To every other developed nation they take it as a responsibility to take care of their old and retired folks so they have systems in place to support it. The Scandinavian countries, where birth rates have been below or barely at replacement levels for decades, they have no problems with solvency of their versions of social security, and they have ensconced it into their framework of laws to protect it and make sure it is never a political bargaining chip. Hence they have among the best standard of living for retired people in the world. We could have had that but it has been a pawn in political games in America ever since it's inception and the rich have used their influence to go after it many times. Musk doesn't care if your grandma gets her retirement check, he has no grasp of what that even means, he just knows it stands in the way of the tax breaks he wants, so it has to go. And that's the problem with it in America where the only true deity is the dollar and the billionaires are the acolytes everyone worships and reveres.

 

[LogGrad98]

Did you hear about how he lied about being ranked like 12th in the world at a very competitive game, one where to have a rank like that you'd need to be playing the game like it was your full time job. He had the balls to do a live play session and those familiar with the game could easily tell he had spent almost no time playing. He didn't understand how to interact with the map. He wasn't using his equipment space efficiently. He loaded a save or map or something and it was saved as "Elon's Map".

He's the South African Kim Jong Il without the forced reverence...yet.

 

[LogGrad98]

Good hell, you being let off the hook for committing a crime and the first thing you want to do is buy a bunch of mother ****ing guns.

See ya back in court soon dummy

Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk

The problem is Trump will keep pardoning them. I won't be surprised to see actual racially-motivated domestic terrorist attacks being swept under the rug by Trump as long as the MAGA flag flies. This should get everyone on high alert.

 

[LogGrad98]

A better way to state it is politicians are more concerned with keeping their seats than messing with social security, so they kick the can down the road.

Even worse, they keep expanding SS (most recently with the SS Fairness Act). Basically some older federal workers received huge pensions, under the premise that their SS benefit would be reduced. These workers understood this, and were happy to take the pension. As a former federal employee, these older employees would often tell us under the newer FERS system how much we were getting shafted (and FERS is still a great retirement program), yet I would have been ecstatic to be on the older program with less SS.

Too high of benefits have been paid to former generations compared to the amounts put in to support the program, leaving the current generation holding the bag. The solution will ultimately being the current or near future working class paying even more into the system, as reserves needed for retirees to receice their full benefit are projected to be depleted within 10 years. So basically all of us are going to need to be taxed even higher for a likely lesser future benefit based on the mismanagement of our prior generations.

It's not just the amount being put in, it's what they are doing with it. They have done a ****** job of managing the funds and shenanigans around corporate taxes over the decades have eroded what goes in. No major updates to the inputs in decades is a problem as well as it doesn't keep pace with inflation. It's way more complicated than just not enough heads to pay the next level up. One example is the wealth exemption where they only pay into social security up to a limit of like 180k of earnings so anyone making more don't pay on anything earned beyond that amount. There are a lot of ways this is eroded. The top-heavy boomer retirement is just the biggest and most looming threat but politicians have been playing games with social security for decades. Everyone looks at the single straw that breaks the camel's back and not the billion straws already there.

It's kind of funny to hear someone say that "too high of a benefit had been paid out" when social security had not been anything more than barely above poverty level income for decades, hence the attempts to make modifications to get people above the poverty line. No one in their right mind would think that SS pays out "too much". The issue has been that we have known for decades it needed reform but no politician has had the support to actually tackle the problem, hence your "kick the can" comment which is spot on. Now it's time to pay the piper really. Interestingly they could cut the military budget to pay for it and we would still spend more on national defense than the next 2 closest nations to us in defense spending. But really major reform is needed and pretty much right now. We have blueprints we could follow, in those other nations that have figured this out already, but lobbyists will ensure corporate taxes stay at all-time lows rather than do what needs to be done and raise taxes on corporations to help pay for it. I'm afraid it will get a lot worse before it gets any better.

 

[Rubashov]

Only really to Americans afraid of the fake Spector of socialism. To every other developed nation they take it as a responsibility to take care of their old and retired folks so they have systems in place to support it. The Scandinavian countries, where birth rates have been below or barely at replacement levels for decades, they have no problems with solvency of their versions of social security, and they have ensconced it into their framework of laws to protect it and make sure it is never a political bargaining chip. Hence they have among the best standard of living for retired people in the world. We could have had that but it has been a pawn in political games in America ever since it's inception and the rich have used their influence to go after it many times. Musk doesn't care if your grandma gets her retirement check, he has no grasp of what that even means, he just knows it stands in the way of the tax breaks he wants, so it has to go. And that's the problem with it in America where the only true deity is the dollar and the billionaires are the acolytes everyone worships and reveres.

Our pension system was overhauled in the 1980s by the Labor government. Pensions for new employees were abolished and people now moved on to a superannuation scheme (in the US I think its called a 401k?) The consequences of this have been interesting, Australians had historically been bad savers, so for the first time since federation we had large amounts of domestic capital to re-invest into the economy, super funds are now some of the biggest financial players in the Australian economy with hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the economy. I would also wager that this local, relatively cheap capital has contributed somewhat to our housing crisis but that's a whole different rabbit hole. The consequence is tho that most workers, if they own their own home, can look forward to a fairly comfortable retirement.

 

[Red]

Federal DEI Employees Get Email Access Suspended And Are Put On Leave

Federal DEI employees will have their email access suspended and be placed on paid leave under the new Trump administration order.

www.forbes.com

 

[Al-O-Meter]

Federal DEI Employees Get Email Access Suspended And Are Put On Leave

Federal DEI employees will have their email access suspended and be placed on paid leave under the new Trump administration order.

www.forbes.com

That is a good start. Removing systemic racism from our government is noble. Those who perpetuate institutionalized racism through counting how much of this ethnicity or that immutable characteristic deserve to be left in history's dumpster.

 

[TheGoldStandard]

Only really to Americans afraid of the fake Spector of socialism. To every other developed nation they take it as a responsibility to take care of their old and retired folks so they have systems in place to support it. The Scandinavian countries, where birth rates have been below or barely at replacement levels for decades, they have no problems with solvency of their versions of social security, and they have ensconced it into their framework of laws to protect it and make sure it is never a political bargaining chip. Hence they have among the best standard of living for retired people in the world. We could have had that but it has been a pawn in political games in America ever since it's inception and the rich have used their influence to go after it many times. Musk doesn't care if your grandma gets her retirement check, he has no grasp of what that even means, he just knows it stands in the way of the tax breaks he wants, so it has to go. And that's the problem with it in America where the only true deity is the dollar and the billionaires are the acolytes everyone worships and reveres.

I am not attacking the validity of having Social Security. I am saying it has been mismanaged. I am also saying older generations getting a windfall because our representatives refuse to make needed changes (benefit level, age, contribution limits) it leaves current and future generations being negatively affected.

WIthin 10 yrs the reserve is gone and people won't get their full benefit. We have known this was coming for decades, but legislators don't do anything to fix the issue.

It is mind numbing to see these political arguments and mentions of socialism when discussing a problem like this.

 

[Al-O-Meter]

The Scandinavian countries, where birth rates have been below or barely at replacement levels for decades, they have no problems with solvency of their versions of social security, and they have ensconced it into their framework of laws to protect it and make sure it is never a political bargaining chip. Hence they have among the best standard of living for retired people in the world.

The Scandinavian countries have a relatively small population with giant offshore oil fields to pay for social services.