Good luck then! Actually curious to see how it will work out.

Almost all taxes are collected from the paycheck before you even get your hands on it. The filing is mostly for the tax return on the overpayment. They’ve already thought of it. How you gonna stop paying?

The helicopter route at the time of the collision allowed the Black Hawk to fly as close as 75 feet below planes descending to land on runway 33 at Reagan National Airport, according to the NTSB. With allowable errors in the helicopter’s altimeters and other equipment as well as Army rules expecting aviators to hold their altitude within 100 feet, it could end up being much closer.

“How much tolerance should we have for aviation safety whenever civilian lives are at risk?” asked Todd Inman, NTSB board member. “How much is that tolerance,” he continued. “I think it should be zero.”

Sounds like the tolerances weren’t big enough! Odd interaction putting those two paragraphs next to each other. NTSB demanding zero margin for safety…

If NYC uses ranked choice voting in the general

It does not, for some weird reason. City primaries only.

This is literally that scene from Schindler’s List where the Commandant sits on the balcony and snipes any prisoner below who isn’t laboring fast enough. And for years they were saying this was unrealistic and such crass cruelty could not have happened!

https://piped.video/watch?v=N0DqnUk90lo

New York City has also banned plastic bags since 2020. I was skeptical about the ban at first, because by measure of material weight, bags are but a small fraction of plastic waste. Thin film is just too efficient in terms of use-per-weight ratio. I also thought anyone who didn’t want to use plastic bags already had the option to bring their own reusable bags with them.

My newfound appreciation for the ban is that not only does it divert the use of plastic material, but it forces a change in the public perception around plastic use itself. Sure, you could bring your own bags, but it felt awkward because no one else did. You felt like you were inconveniencing the cashiers and other shoppers by breaking the routine, as if you were asking for special treatment. But now it’s perfectly normal! You want to carry that bag of potatoes in your arms without an external bag? Go right ahead. You want to run home carrying a jug of milk dripping condensation on the pavement? Doesn’t make you look like a crazy person! All thanks to the ban. Single action by the government on behalf of the collective has achieved what collective action by many single individuals could not have.

For trash I’m still using plastic bags I hoarded in anticipation of our ban in NYC 5 years ago.

Don’t understand why it wasn’t done this way in the first place. RCV was approved as a New York City Charter amendment by a voter initiative in 2019, but only applies to primary city elections, not general. You’d think procedurally it would be easier to justify altering the general election process that the Constitution actually applies to, rather than what is technically internal business of independent private organizations (the Democratic and the Republican parties).

fight FOR the left in primaries, vote AGAINST fascists in the general

That’s how it should have worked, except that in the 2024 Democratic Presidential primary, when Biden was the only name on the ballot, we were STILL told to vote for him and only him or we’d be supporting Trump. In the primary! Voters in Michigan tried to campaign for “uncommitted” option in protest of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and how the administration was ignoring it, and they were crucified by establishment Democrats. Even Bernie Sanders distanced himself from the protest vote, saying to vote Biden no matter what. In the primaries!

Democrats hate progressives. The two would be separate parties in a sensible democracy, but in the legacy first-past-the-post American system, splitting the party while Republicans exist is political suicide. There are more progressives than center Democrats, but they are not as united as the core establishment Democrats are, which made any one of them irrelevant in primaries up to now. RCV has given them a real chance for the first time. For example by giving Lander votes to Mamdani in the instant runoff. The moment RCV got implemented, long-serving Democrats started suddenly getting kicked out in the primaries. This terrifies them, so Democrats will continue to fight against RCV in the future. Just look how both Cuomo and Adams will try to commit political murder-suicide now by running as independent in the general just so that the “official Democratic party nominee” would not win.

Wtf happened to Adams? Sure, he was under criminal corruption indictments, then cozied up to Trump and got “pardoned” (charges dismissed). But then he was supposed to be on the Democratic primary ballot, his picture was even in the official voter guide from a month ago, but on election day his name wasn’t even in the list? Now he’s apparently running as independent incumbent instead? What a booger!

EDIT: Both Cuomo and Adams are intending to run as independent in the general? WhyTF do we even have primaries then! If they are not going to play by their own rules of their special little club, let’s just extend Ranked Choice Voting to cover the general and scrap the primaries altogether!

12:30 AM GMT 🤡

I know you are just nitpicking on whether the current dictatorship has an official policy to deport American citizens, but I want to clarify, for the benefit of anyone else who might not be aware of this, that the American government has in fact already deported multiple American citizens by mistake. This GAO investation found that while ICE doesn’t keep track of such stats, based on the data that is available it must report that indeed “ICE and CBP took enforcement actions against some U.S. citizens.” The numbers are in the hundreds-arrests-per-year range, and dozens-per-year deportations. There are many interviews in the press with American citizens who say they were illegally detained or deported. Some Americans had to sneak back across the border after being illegally deported. Many Americans sued and won settlements for their illegal deportations, so now it is official court record that such events happened.

This is not just a matter of ambiguity, cases of “who can really know whether that person was a citizen or not”. These are cases where CBP has been clearly negligent, where the victims had been able to procure for display real birth certificates, real passports, and the agents wouldn’t look at them. The court-appointed lawyers would “lose” the documents and claim none were received in front of the judge, or there would not even be court hearings at all, just deportations. When sued later, no one would take responsibility, no one reprimanded, just settlements paid out. Sometimes the CBP would get sued, receive a court judgement affirming that the victim was a citizen who was unlawfully deported, then ignore the judgement and deport them again. This has all already happened… under past administrations. The implication is that the willful negligence under the current one will not get better.