what unrest

3/6/2025 3:25:21 PM

The MAGA’s are now calling Amy Coney Barrett a DEI hire because she dissented against some of Trump’s EO’s:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/maga-world-turns-supreme-court-justice-amy-coney-barrett-rcna194283

Who are the snowflakes again?

3/7/2025 9:14:41 AM

Quote :

"Federal prosecutors who investigated Eric Adams put on leave by Justice Department Also put on leave were the prosecutors who prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and former crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried. https://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-prosecutors-investigated-eric-adams-put-leave-justice/story?id=119565695"

Imagine anyone else going after the people who took down Epstein

I bet trump (or maybe musk?) is more deeply connected to Epstein than we know… and we know he’s deep.

3/9/2025 3:10:30 PM

Quote :

"A sad day for America—Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University activist, has been arrested by ICE, not for any crime, but for his political activism. The Trump administration claims he was involved in “pro-terrorist” activities, yet no formal charges have been filed. This marks a dangerous shift where student activism can now be grounds for detention. Like McCarthyism before it, this moment signals that dissent is no longer safe."

3/10/2025 2:39:47 PM

^^ he and Epstein were best friends. There's no secret to what's going on there.

3/10/2025 2:41:17 PM

^^just to follow-up on that

Quote :

"This is Mahmoud Khalil. He graduated from a leadership program at Columbia University in December, and is still in university housing. He's married, and his wife is eight months pregnant. Mahmoud is passionate about education, and has had a variety of jobs involving education and disadvantaged youth. He's particularly interested in creating programs that help educate out-of-school youth in developing countries. Mahmoud has a green card. He is a lawful, permanent resident of the United States. Remember that, it's going to be important in what's about to happen. Last night (Saturday) as Mahmoud and his wife walked into their university-owned apartment building, two men in plain clothes slipped in the door behind them. The men claimed they were ICE agents. They also claimed that they had a warrant for Mahmoud's arrest on their phone, and that his student visa was being revoked. Reminder: Mahmoud has a green card. He's no longer on a student visa. Mahmoud told them he had a green card, and his wife went up to their apartment to get it. When she returned, the agents, confused, made a phone call where the agents were told "we're revoking that too." The agents refused to give Mahmoud's wife a reason why he was being detained. When Mahmoud's lawyer called, ICE refused to say why Mahmoud was being detained and that his "student visa was revoked." When the lawyer (again) pointed out that he had a green card, ICE representatives said that also would be revoked. You may be wondering, "Hey, isn't it illegal for ICE to come onto private property -- the university -- without showing a warrant to the university for the arrest? Wouldn't the warrant necessarily say something about why he was being arrested?" Great question. Columbia University has publicly said that ICE requires a warrant to enter non-public areas of campus (like housing), but also as of the moment has refused to answer whether ICE contacted them before slipping into the apartment building behind Mahmoud and his wife. Meanwhile: Mahmoud has been sent to a for-profit prison in New Jersey with no official charges. Nevertheless, we know why Mahmoud was arrested. Mahmoud has been involved in peaceful protests at the university, asking that the school stop investing in weapons manufacturing and, in particular, that the school stop investing in companies that are helping to fund the killing of people in Gaza. So, just to make this very clear and simple: A lawful, permanent resident of the United States has been arrested for exercising his freedom of speech. The US government doesn't like some of his OPINIONS and so they have arrested him and are making plans to deport him. Maybe you don't like Mahmoud's opinions. Maybe you don't agree with him. Fine. But the point is: the US government is arresting LEGAL IMMIGRANTS -- PEOPLE WITH GREEN CARDS -- for *exercising their freedom of speech*. This is not the behavior of a nation that is the "land of the free and the home of the brave." It's an act of profound cowardice and an arbitrary and cruel exercise of power. ETA: Mahmoud's wife, an American citizen, attempted to see him at the New Jersey facility today and has been told that he's not there. His lawyer says he may be as far away as Louisiana, but the point is this: he's now not only been "detained" without charges, but neither his wife nor his lawyer know where the US government is holding him."

3/10/2025 3:16:48 PM

They are probably about to find something about isis on his computer!

Or something!

3/10/2025 3:27:44 PM

^^ to be clear, he was involved in protests that were decidedly not peaceful. but also, to be clear, what's happening to him is highly disturbing. I'd want to see a lot more evidence from the government that he was involved with the Hamas-adjacent portions of these protests before i'd get on board with this. I'm also betting they didn't bother to actually get a judge to sign off on it, so it's shady as hell. Just like sticking his ass in Louisiana so he's far away from his family and attorneys is shady as hell.

3/10/2025 4:56:06 PM

Quote :

"The moment is hardly one for downplaying the crisis in Washington. "I would argue that the road towards authoritarianism has been paved with people saying, 'You're overreacting, Walz told me. "I don't think you can underestimate how far [Trump] will go. And I think you should assume a worst-case scenario. If I'm wrong, that's O.K., democracy holds. If I'm right, then we need to be prepared that he'll continue to make these moves. As governor, my job is to make sure the firewall is there." "

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/does-tim-walz-have-any-regrets

3/12/2025 10:00:29 AM

Last line… ouch

Quote :

"Days after immigration officers arrested a prominent pro-Palestinian campus activist, administrators at Columbia University gathered students and faculty from the journalism school and issued a warning. Students who were not U.S. citizens should avoid publishing work on Gaza, Ukraine and protests related to their former classmate's arrest, urged Stuart Karle, a First Amendment lawyer and adjunct professor. With about two months to go before graduation, their academic accomplishments - or even their freedom — could be at risk if they attracted the ire of the Trump administration. "If you have a social media page, make sure it is not filled with commentary on the Middle East," he told the gathering in Pulitzer Hall. When a Palestinian student objected, the journalism school's dean, Jelani Cobb, was more direct about the school's inability to defend international students from federal prosecution. "Nobody can protect you," Mr. Cobb said. "These are dangerous times” "

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/nyregion/columbia-university-trump-protests.html

3/12/2025 8:17:57 PM

So... does that count as a "chilling effect?" Asking for a friend

3/13/2025 11:02:50 PM

it was musk who said you can’t call them Nazis until they start killing masses of people

Well trump musk are worse than the Nazis in that case

Quote :

"The New York Times is the first to put out comprehensive estimates on the cost of a year without U.S.A.I.D. and they’re higher than I thought: - 1.65 million deaths from AIDS - 500,000 from lack of vaccines - 550,000 from lack of food aid - 290,000 from malaria - 310,000 from TB "

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/15/opinion/foreign-aid-cuts-impact.html

3/15/2025 5:23:29 PM

something behind a paywall i actually want to read! can you paste how they calculated those values?

3/18/2025 8:07:09 AM

^
https://archive.is/VUIA4

Looks like just took the number of people taking whatever aid and assuming they would all die. Was discussed in the Elon thread a bit.

They offer no comparison of with/without aid (or even if the aid makes it to the recipients who need it) and don't mention alternatives (like stopping the practice of sand in vagina sex) to reduce AIDS.

3/18/2025 9:01:15 AM

Are you a middle schooler from the 90s?

3/18/2025 9:21:00 AM

^ who got sand in your vagina?

3/18/2025 9:42:45 AM

Quote :

"And here we go -- Fox News is now saying we should get rid of "due process" because it's too cumbersome. Brian Kilmeade: "But I also think it's not practical to think that we can do due process on 8 million people." https://www.mediamatters.org/brian-kilmeade/foxs-brian-kilmeade-its-not-practical-think-we-can-do-due-process-8-million-people"

This idiocy is spewing out into the masses

It’s almost amusing how close it is to German Nazis. You have Stephen miller on one side aggressively pro-white, and you have musk on the other side aggressively anti-gay and theyre working together.

[Edited on March 24, 2025 at 12:29 PM. Reason : ]

3/24/2025 12:28:32 PM

After praising Ashley Babbitt as basically innocent trying to keep people out of the chambers Trump says he's looking at setting up some sort of government "compensation fund" for the January 6 criminals that he pardoned

This is absurd

3/26/2025 12:18:14 AM

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-sky-news-martha-kelner-signalgate-b2722183.html

Quote :

"Marjorie Taylor Greene hit out at a British Sky News journalist over Signalgate, telling her: “We don’t give a crap about your opinion”. Martha Kelner approached the MAGA Rep. at a press conference on Wednesday (26 March) and as she started to ask a question, Taylor Green interrupted her and demanded to know: “What country are you from?” When the journalist told her she was from the UK, Taylor Greene launched into an angry verbal attack. She said: “We don’t give a crap about your opinion and your reporting. Why don’t you go back to your country where you have a major migrant problem?”"

3/26/2025 4:35:44 PM

That's telling her!

3/26/2025 5:31:25 PM

Best article I’ve read recently, hinting at the interconnectedness of fascism an the economy

Quote :

"In 1976, Mao Zedong succumbed to Parkinson’s disease and passed the torch to Deng Xiaoping. After the Mao-led disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Deng took China in a very different direction. His reforms in the 1980s are credited with helping the country achieve decades of enormously rapid growth. A shift of that magnitude — whatever its direction — is much more common in regimes ruled by a single leader, which political scientists call personalistic political systems. Because China had few constraints on the top leader, the shift from Mao to Deng mattered a lot. The country’s fate hinged on the whims of the guy in charge. Citizens of democracies like to point out that personalistic political systems, like the one Mao built and handed to Deng, don’t deliver for their citizens as well as democracies do. In the long run, on average, there’s a good chance that’s true. But the full story is more subtle. History is filled with examples where personalistic systems seemed to work for a time. China under Deng, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, South Korea under Park Chung-hee, Indonesia under Suharto: There are numerous instances of rapid economic growth under autocratic and personalistic leadership. What the evidence does suggest is that personalistic political systems lead to greater variance in economic performance. In other words, the range of possible outcomes is much wider. Illustration: Valentin Tkach for Bloomberg In a 2005 study, economists Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken analyzed the impact of political leaders on economic performance by examining what happened in the wake of leaders’ unexpected deaths. There were no systematic post-death economic shifts following the demise of democratically elected leaders — like, say, when Lyndon B. Johnson took over for John F. Kennedy. But the death of autocrats led to marked shifts in economic outcomes: sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. When leaders operate without constraints, you have to rely on luck: Maybe you will get a “good” leader who manages things well. But maybe you will get a bad one. Without constraints, the range of possibilities widens and the risk of disaster increases. History suggests that good luck in leaders seldom lasts. The Unconstrained Presidency The first two months of Donald Trump’s presidency have proceeded at a blistering pace, including more than 90 executive orders. President Trump has fired independent officials, effectively shut down agencies like USAID, picked fights with judges and empowered Elon Musk to act as the government’s newly appointed Cost-Cutter in Chief. Designated as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency — a loosely defined entity of unclear legal status — the centibillionaire has been operating across a remarkably wide collection of agencies and departments, accessing their financial records and pushing for massive layoffs. These disparate maneuvers have one thing in common: They are all part of a remarkable shift toward unilateral action by the president and the people he picks to work on his behalf. While many US presidents have attempted to claim new powers for the executive branch, the Trump administration is unique in the extent to which they are pursuing maximalist claims of executive authority, as well as in their willingness to challenge the courts. It’s also notable how little pushback Trump has received from the legislative branch. A Republican-controlled Congress has largely abdicated from any sort of institutional dissent with respect to the president’s initiatives. (The judicial branch has been active, in comparison, but with limited enforcement ability.) The Trump administration’s agenda, paired with the lack of pushback, amounts to a bid to concentrate enormous power in the hands of the president and his hand-picked agents (like Musk). If successful, this would replace a system of rules-based policymaking across branches with decision-making by a few individuals. Are Americans Feeling Lucky? To understand the risks of personalistic systems, it’s worth considering the absolute best-case pro-Trump and pro-Musk scenario. Since Musk in particular has been empowered by Trump to act seemingly without constraint, let’s focus on him. Suppose you believe that Musk’s success in the private sector translates perfectly to public administration — and that Musk is correct in his diagnosis of the current state of the public sector. Perhaps you therefore expect a big boost to US gross domestic product as a result of Musk’s untrammeled power. Even if the bet on Musk were to pay off as handsomely as his most fervent acolytes hope, what happens after that? Should we expect that we will always be so lucky as to have the right person invested with those unchecked powers? In fact, if you really think Musk is uniquely qualified to manage government, you can only expect the next person to be much worse. When leaders operate without constraints, you have to rely on luck. A News Quiz for Risk-Takers Play Pointed, the weekly quiz that tests what you know — and how confident you are that you know it. One response might be that if Musk’s successor proves to be ineffective or worse, electoral discipline can be relied upon to limit their overreach. That is, if a future president is a bad leader or empowers one, they can be then kicked out by voters. But this ignores another layer of uncertainty: Once you move to a personalistic system, democracy can no longer be taken for granted. You cannot simply remove checks and balances and hope that politics will still take place under the same rules as before. From Rules to Deals The US government is now veering toward the kind of governing-by-deal-making that Trump, who fancies himself as a master of the “Art of the Deal,” no doubt favors. This contrasts with the rule of law, whereby legislation is passed and regulations are put in place through a well-ordered policymaking process. The first risk of a personalistic system, as we’ve described, is that too much hinges on who’s in charge. The second is that no single leader, no matter how smart, can make every decision. When rule of law is replaced by the whims of the executive, that process filters down into everyday decision-making. This was documented by researchers Mary Hallward-Driemeier and Lant Pritchett in a study titled, “How Business is Done in the Developing World: Deals versus Rules.” While there’s politicking and uncertainty in every government, they describe why low-income countries are more likely to be dominated by deals. Take a business trying to get a construction permit, one example from their paper. A rules-based approach would specify what’s required upfront. The process might be quick or slow, but it would be predictable. There is no negotiation and therefore less room for outright corruption. But in many low-income countries, the authors observe, the rules are merely the starting point for a negotiation — deal-making, if you will — between business and government. Governance by deal-making creates the sort of uncertainty and restricted economic opportunities that are harmful to investment and growth; only the well-connected need apply. This is an inevitable consequence of an unconstrained leader at the top. The lack of clear rules filters down, empowering thousands of dictatorial bureaucrats along the way. Where the rule of law languishes, corruption flourishes. The Cost of the Deal In an unpredictable, deal-making world, the way to succeed is to curry favor with whomever is in power. That may not sound so bad if deal-making replaces, say, stifling taxation — it could even be the grease that makes the wheel of business spin faster. But the evidence suggests this is not the case: A 2000 study by economist Shang-Jin Wei argued that corruption discourages investment far more than taxes, precisely because it is fickle and uncertain. The political implications are even more concerning than the economics. By placing extraordinary powers in just a few individuals at the top of the deal-making hierarchy, they can become very difficult to dislodge. When success in business requires being in the good graces of those in power, leaders can wield that authority to build their own political resources — from campaign money to favorable media coverage. Furthermore, unchecked authority raises the stakes of holding on to power. If whoever gets to be in charge can push whatever policies they like, and if it is hard to remove them once they get there, each side of the political aisle will see electoral losses as existential challenges. This, in turn, can add yet more political instability. And as the late, great economist Alberto Alesina documented with colleagues in the mid-1990s, political instability is associated with lower economic growth. In short, the lesson from social science is that good economic policy depends as much on process as on substance. If the US takes steps down the road toward an unchecked, personalistic system of policymaking, it will carry very steep long-term costs. America has the most prosperous economy in world history, and it is no coincidence that it was built on a relatively impersonal, rules-based system. If it’s destroyed, it may prove near impossible to rebuild. "

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-28/what-happens-to-an-economy-when-deals-replace-rules?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_content=business&leadSource=uverify%20wall&embedded-checkout=false

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2646667
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.121

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/do_leaders_matter



[Edited on March 30, 2025 at 9:05 AM. Reason : ]

3/30/2025 9:04:15 AM