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Comment by stephen_g | Hacker News Reader

This whole thing seems like such a farce... The conservative side of politics in Australia likes to do a much smaller version of this to "save money" whenever they've been in opposition and then get back in to Government - and all it leads to every time is paying far more to have the same work done by the big consulting companies.

You hear stories like people being fired from their public service jobs, then being hired by the consulting firm and being back the next week, now with the consulting firm charging more than double what they were paid before for their time - and they're doing the exact same job they were doing...

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The taxpayers lose out, the rent seekers that own the middle man consulting companies now get a good chunk of the increased charge to taxpayers .. this is why they suppport the conservative side of politics that makes this possible.

And the consulting companies provide lucratively paid, post-politics jobs to those who cut the public service payroll.

This might be true for some high up possition but the actual day to day workers suddenly have middle men squzzing them too. So they end up payed less.

This looks like stories of some public services, like bus services. The government sold 'unprofitable' public services to companies. companies raised the price, but somehow it's still 'unprofitable', so the government has to provide subsidies to companies, or buy it back at a higher price than they sold it for

See UK trains.

The track is unprofitable (legacy maintenance) and had to be brought back into public ownership for safety reasons. The staff are shuffled between various paper-thin "franchise" employers. The one profitable bit is train leasing; the privatization created ROSCOs, which are train landlords, who get the real profits from public subsidy.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/18/profits-of-...

A great example is the city of Chicago selling its parking meters for 1.15 billion dollars. Now considered one of the biggest financial mistakes the city ever made

Chicago was also involved in the interest rate swap "mis-selling"; see https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press...

Having sold a fairly sophisticated and expensive financial product with nasty downside risks to lots of states and cities, Wall Street then went on to rig the underlying number: https://www.reuters.com/legal/ten-big-banks-settle-us-intere... (although market conditions since the financial crisis would have caused the buyers to lose money anyway)

"government" and "unprofitable public services" Should never be in the same sentence. Especially for the 4th largest country by landmass.

The only legitmate ways you justify cutting public transit is

1. a superior form of transit has been established for a while

2. Literally no one is using the transit for whatever reason (which is nearly impossible)

3. mass extinction occurs and there's no one left to transit (though at that point transit is the least of our issues)

It's not supposed to be a direct profit. You Transport people around to businesses to sell to, work to operate the city with, and overall stimulate the economy.

This is exactly what "small government" and "big business" means

> every time is paying far more to have the same work done

Some predictions:

- The 2025 US budget will increase compared to 2024. - The 2025 US budget deficit will increase compared to 2024. - At the end of 2025 the US national debt will have increased compared to 1/1/25.

This is very likely. They'll do a Liz Truss budget of massive tax giveaways. I'll add "bond yields will go up" to that list.

Not exactly groundbreaking predictions given the trillion or so dollars in tax cuts being proposed.

Isn't that the whole point of those sort of actions? Send public money into private hands. Just like when they sold off public assets like a telco (Telstra), or a bank (CommBank) etc.

Of course it is. It's both for show and a distraction from whatever else is going on like seizing unitary power and normalizing deviancy.

Conservatives of the US seem to be positively evil when compared to conservatives most elsewhere in the developed world, who at least seem to have some notion of social contract.

> "Conservatives of the US seem to be positively evil" ...

This is because the U.S. has become so excessively politically polarized in recent years. The typical "conservative" here is more like the "extreme right" elsewhere around the world. They're literal "extremists", taking those political views to the furthest extremes they can think of, and actively hating anyone and anything that's not totally in line with that extremist viewpoint. (The political "left" has become much the same in the other direction here these days as well, thus exacerbating the issue from the "other side".) It's really not a "winning combination" for humanity in general. When (some) folks say "both sides are the same", I suspect that's what they're referring to. They're both becoming increasingly "extremist" in their respective viewpoints, and unwilling to move toward "the middle" even a tiny bit to allow for any productive discussion or compromise that could benefit everyone involved.

> They're both becoming increasingly "extremist" in their respective viewpoints, and unwilling to move toward "the middle" even a tiny bit to allow for any productive discussion or compromise that could benefit everyone involved.

I don't see any other outcome when one side is usually supported by evidence and the other side is usually driven by hatred and hysteria generated by rage-bait media. How do you find a middle ground with a nazi?

It's wild how common the viewpoint by "centrists" is that the problem isn't the nazis, it's people being unreasonable about the nazis.

> It's wild how common the viewpoint by "centrists" is that the problem isn't the nazis, it's people being unreasonable about nazis.

What's wilder is that the left clearly still thinks that continually framing their opposition as modern day nazis is a winning electoral strategy.

He is a white guy raised under apartheid who's throwing nazi salutes, overtly referencing nazi ideology and symbology, hiring white supremacist staff to work for him, promoting white supremacist content on a platform that he bought for that explicit purpose, and attending rallies in foreign countries to promote far-right ideology.

There's no room for reasonable discussion with anyone who can look at that and come to the conclusion that they're being "framed" as nazis. To be clear, I don't believe all of their voters are nazis, just those who decide to stick with the party in light of the overwhelming evidence.

I, nor likely any of the commenters here, are political strategists. We are not creating electoral strategies. We are looking at a man who comes from apartheid money, a man who gives literal Nazi salutes (miss me with that "Elon wave" bullshit), who quotes white supremacist rhetoric, who actively supports the Germany far right party, etc. and etc. and etc.

Elon Musk is either a nazi or merely a capitalist who knows dog whistling as a nazi is good business right now. That my observation of this doesn't help with a national political strategy doesn't mean much to me in the moment. He's not been quiet about it, and people don't seem to care (do you?). So, I guess we'll see where it goes.

Elections are over and the winning strategy for 2026 is not appealing to fascists. We need to energize the 10m or so voters who voted in 2020 and skipped 2024 that this is serious and our only hope of ending this early is to shift congress.

It is more that they think it is true ... and it is true from many aspects.

The fact that the right and large part of center do not care about truth and cares only about verbal strategy is the issue. Otherwise said, these are people who honestly express their observations and opinions on what right is.

One reason right became what it is is that years of expectation that reasonable people must euphemism away who they are. That reasonable people must enable them.

He’s been rallying them in Germany…

The DOGE logo literally has a Nazi wheel for an O: https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1irkzry/wel...

> The DOGE logo literally has a Nazi wheel for an O:

If you read the link you provided, even a lot of people on r/EnoughMuskSpam are calling this argument weak - it is obviously an AI-generated image, and some subtle similarity between an AI-generated image and an obscure Nazi logo is much more likely to be just a coincidence than something intentional.

> The DOGE logo literally has a Nazi wheel for an O

TIL that Nazis invented the gear.

In all fairness, it's clearly that the Right has split over the past decade. There's MAGA which is as you describe, then there's your traditional conservative that simply wants to support small business and get tax cuts (among other things that comes down to "I want more money and control over my town/state"). There is definitely a question to ask on if all conservative congress has really shifted that far or what, though.

The left has also more or less split as of late between socialism and neoliberalism too. But that's a whole other conversation.

There is no comparison between left radicalizsrion (rather small) and right radicalization (massive).

Especially at the part level where radical right rules Republicans and have their support while democrats are centrists and

> "There is no comparison between left radicalization (rather small) and right radicalization (massive)."

Oh no, you're totally right on that one there. The numbers of people going to those extremes are definitely far far higher on "the right" for sure. I just find it a bit "scary" that radicalization and extremism on either side is becoming so normal instead of a massive push-back against it. It's absolutely dangerous that society is coming to accept and support the sorts of extremism that they have in recent years / decades. This is not gonna play out well for humanity. :(

My problem is that there is massive pushback - but only against left. Right keeps getting excused, euphemized away, explained and "they do not mean it".

And what double annoys me that any centrist or leftist who correctly described what right wants and plans ended up labeled extreme left and dismissed. Except they were all right it turned out. I mean, I used to dismiss them too, but eventually figured the situation few years ago.

That’s what cults do.

Cultivate in-group bias so that any dissenting opinion are from people not in the know or who can’t be trusted.

Works every time.

Yeah, I been watching it devolve bit by bit pretty near my entire life (at least the "aware" years of it). It's been pretty sad how mentioning it at all has (until recently) been met with derision and ridicule. "You're just being paranoid." Umm... No? I'm paying attention to the reality in front of me? "Paranoid" would be if there were no basis in reality for my concerns.

The difference is the alleged left extremists always turn out to be "some stoner on twitter/bluesky with a hammer and sickle emoji username, doing communist shitposting with no real power at all", while the right extremists have actual money, guns, and power.

Then some centrist turns up to say that maybe annoying shitposters are the real threat, while the US sells out its European allies and dismantles its nuclear safety and pandemic infrastructure.

> The difference is the alleged left extremists always turn out to be "some stoner on twitter/bluesky with a hammer and sickle emoji username, doing communist shitposting with no real power at all", while the right extremists have actual money, guns, and power.

As I think you've noted previously, there's a lot of guns in the USA.

Luigi was one of four recent, last 12 months, people in the news whom I would count as… well, I'm not sure "left" is the right word, but more generically not-the-Right Americans with guns who I would categorise as an "extremist".

(The other three being Matthew Alan Livelsberger (even if he only shot himself, given he also blew up the car he was in), Ryan Routh (golf course), and Thomas Matthew Crooks (ear)).

Like you, I find it remarkable how the US has managed to combine the 2nd amendment and lots of school shootings with relatively little political violence. Like, why are their politicians more sacrosanct than their own kids? Why is the 2nd amendment sacrosanct even to politicians who get the dangerous end pointed at them?

School shootings are usually committed by children… children have little access to politicians and little interest in politics.

> Why is the 2nd amendment sacrosanct even to politicians who get the dangerous end pointed at them?

Sounds like a zinger, but isn’t really.

> Sounds like a zinger, but isn’t really.

Why not?

From the outside, trust me: we have no idea why you're like this.

Every time gun controls come up, the American people's reaction, visible worldwide, is "No! Guns keep us safe from governments gone rogue!" — so why are politicians not scared of them even when actually fired upon?

It really, genuinely, sincerely, makes no sense. Do your politicians think the secret service is magical pixie dust? Or are you all just so numb to the ongoing threat of it that you treat it as an unavoidable part of nature? (As per Onion headline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...)

> School shootings are usually committed by children… children have little access to politicians and little interest in politics.

I think you've misunderstood the point. Why do the people of the USA support the existence of the 2nd amendment over the lives of their kids? Just that, by itself, is already weird.

The USA is a country happy to let kids shoot each other as a price worth paying for… the constitutional right to threaten politicians? Who then act as if they don't feel threatened? I'm not even sure if that's better or worse than them being terrified by the guns, but it's just so alien a culture.

I mean, where I grew up, the regular placement of political figures in crosshairs in political adverts is already at the level of "WTF!", and yet in the USA it seems to not bat eyelids any more. Even the people whose faces are put in the crosshairs (both of targets and actual live fire) don't seem to object.

It makes no sense.

> From the outside, trust me: we have no idea why you're like this.

> Every time gun controls come up, the American people's reaction, visible worldwide, is "No! Guns keep us safe from governments gone rogue!" — so why are politicians not scared of them even when actually fired upon?

Because the gun-loving populace is mostly on the right and they never actually do anything. Despite what you'll see claimed online, almost all of that kind of crazy comes from the gun-hating left.

But when the left discovers a love of guns, that's when you get things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest

Edit: Removed distraction from my main point

>the gun-loving populace is mostly on the right and they never actually do anything.

besides try to assassinate the predsident twice. And yes, if your kid gets into your gun, I'd say you're responsible. So many of those school shooter gun owners were right wing.

That's not even mentioning the entire police force leans right to begin with. That's a lot of people with a lot of reckless control because they know they can't be fired easily.

> Luigi was one of four recent, last 12 months, people in the news whom I would count as… well, I'm not sure "left" is the right word, but more generically not-the-Right Americans with guns who I would categorise as an "extremist".

I'm not really sure what Luigi's personal views are, but it's my impression that Luigi was (is) celebrated among both left-wing and right-wing people (including MAGA).

Hold on.

Livelsberger's uncle said "He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American." He was also very dissatisfied with the government but I don't see strong indications that he was criticizing from the left.

Crooks donated once to ActBlue. He was also a registered Republican and the FBI deputy director described his social media activity as anti-semitic and anti-immigration. Again, case seems open.

Routh is certainly reasonable to classify as a leftist.

That's why I called them collectively:

> well, I'm not sure "left" is the right word, but more generically not-the-Right Americans with guns who I would categorise as an "extremist".

Despite who and what they targetted.

For a mere protest-based example of oppositon: an ex of mine is an actual literal communist, so way to the left of the Dems in a lot of regards, and yet was still so anti-Dem as to promote Trump the first time around.

The "anti" part seems more relevant than the "pro", when the question is violence.

But perhaps that's just me.

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. For my part, I'm very wary of accelerationist tendencies and there are hints of that in the two cases I noted. Only hints, though, neither of those guys made a point of leaving full-on manifestos. (Livelsberger came kind of close with his letter talking about how he needed the country to wake up: "This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?")

'left' and 'right' are relative, depends on where you stand

in my perspective, I can see DEI-right and MEGA-right

it looks like:

left ------------------------------------------------------ right

commies------------------------------DEI---------------MEGA

---i'm here-------------------------you're here(I guess)--

DEI looks just fine to you, but to those who're 'right' enough, DEI is extreme left, commies are too far to see

A one-dimensional political coordinate cannot accurately describe this situation, we need a compass

From what I saw, a "massive" amount of the left had no problem with FBI agents repeatedly lying to the FISA court to get warrants to spy on the opposing parties presidential campaign. Everyone on both sides knows the other side is full of criminals so anything against them is OK. There is no good ending to this situation.

> Everyone on both sides knows the other side is full of criminals so anything against them is OK

Yet only one side is literally dismantling the country, department by department, and selling off chunks to the richest man in the world.

The richest man in the world, who keeps appearing next to the president in interviews besides not being elected by anyone for anything.

You're regurgitating a thoroughly bunked talking point. The "both sides" enlightened centrism serves exactly one side and you know which one it is.

> The political "left" has become much the same in the other direction here these days as well

There are some rather unhinged people on the left, sure, but they're basically just nutters on the internet, maybe a few activist groups, and things like that. They're certainly not the ones running the show: by and large the people elected to office on a Democratic ticket are ... just normal sane people.[1] People you can disagree with, dislike, or even hate: that's all fine. I intently dislike Ronald Reagan, but he was also a relatively normal sane person so that's okay, and part of the normal democratic process.

What we've seen in the Republican party is completely different. Not just over the last few months, over the last few decades. Remember Mitch McConnell just outright obstructed anything for years simply as a power game to make the Democrats look bad? Or Republican actors cooking up crazy conspiracies about the Clintons and then banging on and on and on about it for years and years?

And of course the Democratic party isn't perfect. But there are degrees of things, and it's just not comparable. This is "murder, rape, and shoplifting" – all are illegal and should be prosecuted, but they're also not hte same.

People saying that "both sides are the same" are deeply and profoundly misinformed, suffering from pseudo-intellectual delusions of "being above it all", or just outright arguing in bad faith.

[1]: I'm sure there are the occasional exceptions – there are thousands of people if we count federal, state, and local level and any group of thousands has a few nutjobs no matter how you qualify them. It's not above the baseline nutjob factor.

> There are some rather unhinged people on the left, sure, but they're basically just nutters on the internet, maybe a few activist groups, and things like that. They're certainly not the ones running the show

Just the other day, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) was quoted as saying, regarding his own Democratic Party, that “I think the majority of the party realizes that the ideological purity of some of the groups is a recipe for disaster and that candidly the attack on over-the-top wokeism was a valid attack” - https://www.politico.eu/article/us-senator-mark-warner-democ...

So, (if I’m interpreting you correctly) you are saying extreme views isn’t a major problem in the Democratic Party, while Senator Warner is arguing it was a significant contributor to their loss in the 2024 election, and hence Trump being back in the White House. Who is right here?

If you want to know why voters voted the way they did you'd probably try to find a good poll of voters not instead search for the most exciting quote you can find from a politician.

Maybe Warner’s diagnosis of the 2024 election is wrong-but that’s not my point.

My point: it would be rather strange for leading Democrats to come to believe their party is being harmed by its own extreme element if that element was non-existent or completely lacking in any relevance.

He said "over the top" not "extreme". Those two terms are not synonyms. If you don't believe me ask your favorite LLM.

Maybe you think he meant "extreme" and was using a euphemism. But then we have a second problem: politicians aren't necessarily reliable for analysis because they can't necessarily say what they believe.

> He said "over the top" not "extreme". Those two terms are not synonyms.

They are different vaguely defined degrees on the same continuum; while “extreme” no doubt has stronger connotations than “over the top”, neither term has a precise definition and the boundary between the two isn’t clearly defined.

> But then we have a second problem: politicians aren't necessarily reliable for analysis because they can't necessarily say what they believe.

True, but I think you’ll find that in that soul-searching period which inevitably follows defeat, they have the greatest freedom to speak their minds and say what they really think, or at least much closer to what they really think. And the bigger the defeat, the more that’s true: and while November 2024 wasn’t that big a defeat in raw numerical terms, I think it was a much bigger loss in psychological terms

>it would be rather strange for leading Democrats to come to believe their party is being harmed by its own extreme element if that element was non-existent or completely lacking in any relevance.

I'm not surprised. It's a neoliberal congress ignoring a platform demanding increasingly socialistic ideals. We're not aligned at all.

> I'm not surprised. It's a neoliberal congress ignoring a platform demanding increasingly socialistic ideals.

I don’t think “socialistic ideas” are what Warner was talking about. I think he was really talking about social and cultural issues. If you look at antiwoke Marxists such as Adolph L Reed Jr and the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International, you’ll find they’d agree with a lot of Warner’s criticisms of “wokeism”, even as they condemn Warner himself as a member of the capitalist class (with a net worth over $200 million, he’s the second richest US Senator)

> I don’t think “socialistic ideas” are what Warner was talking about.

He isn't, but my main point is that a lot of congress's represenatives are not aligned with what their people want to begin with. As neoliberals they do support hypercapitalistic ideas as well as deregulation. Which is the opposite of what many in their voterbase want in terms of better governmental support and proper worker protections. I'm not really focusing on the "woke" part beyond "If they aren't harming anyone, just let people live how they want, please".

> the attack on over-the-top wokeism was a valid attack

It was making Mt. Everest out of a molehill. No matter the "validity", sending a missle at said molehill is overkill.

>So, (if I’m interpreting you correctly) you are saying extreme views isn’t a major problem in the Democratic Party

It is not in my eyes. Very few disagree with DEI programs and LGBT issues. If those are "woke" I suppose Women's suffrage 120 years ago was also "woke". I just want people to have equal rights in life, no matter their origin.

> Very few disagree with DEI programs and LGBT issues.

Americans as a whole are close to evenly divided on DEI programs. A recent YouGov/Economist poll found 45% support abolishing DEI programs in education and government, 40% opposed; a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 44% supported “closing all federal government DEI offices and firing federal employees working on the issue” with 51% opposed. [0] Unfortunately I don’t have detailed crosstabs (which tend not to be very reliable anyway), but I expect they’d show that there is a decent minority of Democrats and Biden/Harris voters who are opposed to DEI programs

“LGBT issues” are a whole bunch of different issues, and attitudes vary depending on which of them we are talking about. A Gallup poll from May last year [1] found 69% of Americans support same-sex marriage, a slight decline from 2022-2023 but still close to an all-time high. Yet, the same survey also had 51% of respondents labelling gender transition as “morally wrong” [2]. And in 2023 the same survey found 69% of Americans opposed transgender athletes being able to compete as the gender they identify with [3]. So it seems like the average American supports some “LGBT issues” but opposes others

> If those are "woke" I suppose Women's suffrage 120 years ago was also "woke".

It all depends on how you define “woke”. The African-American anti-woke Marxist Adolph L Reed Jr defines “woke” [4] as a form of progressivism that rejects the traditional Marxist analysis that class oppression is the root cause of non-class-based oppression. He wouldn’t call women’s suffrage “woke” because most Marxists historically supported women’s suffrage as a means of empowering working class women, and saw it as fundamentally compatible with their class-first analysis of society’s problems; but he does criticise a lot of contemporary “wokeness” as being in fundamental contradiction to that analysis

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bowmanmarsico/2025/02/03/how-po... - I think the difference in results may be partially due to the question asked - I expect some respondents would have said “Yes” to the first question but “No” to the second, because while they support shutting down government DEI programs, they’d prefer to see the government workers involved reassigned to other tasks rather than simply fired. Asking a question “Do you support A and B?” is problematic because you don’t know if people answering “No” oppose both A and B or only one of them

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/646202/sex-relations-marriage-s...

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/645704/slim-majority-adults-say...

[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/507023/say-birth-gender-dictate... - I can’t find 2024 figures but I assume they haven’t substantially changed

[4] https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin...

The context here is "democrats", so you'll see a much more skewed result if you filter for those people.

>It all depends on how you define “woke”.

I'd defer to modern discussion to try and define that. It's pretty clear that if they think women hires are DEI, than women's issues has some degree of "woke".

> The context here is "democrats", so you'll see a much more skewed result if you filter for those people.

Again, it depends on the issue. The 2023 Gallup poll I cited [0] found that 48% of Democrats opposed allowing transgender athletes competing under the gender they identify with, with 47% supporting - a notable shift from two years earlier when a clear majority of Democrats (55%) were supportive. By contrast, in 2023, independents were 67% opposed, 28% supportive; Republicans were 93% opposed. A 2024 Pew survey found 75% of Democrats support corporate DEI initiatives, 21% oppose; [1] while 75% is a supermajority, 21% is a substantial minority rather than a minuscule or irrlevant one

> It's pretty clear that if they think women hires are DEI, than women's issues has some degree of "woke".

I don’t think anyone considers the mere fact of hiring a woman to be “woke”. Is Trump “woke” for nominating Pam Bondi to be United States Attorney-General, or Elise Stefanik to be US ambassador to the UN, or putting Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court? Were the Tories “woke” when they elected Margaret Thatcher as their leader in 1975? Is Alternative für Deutschland “woke” because one of their two co-equal leaders is Alice Weidel?

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/507023/say-birth-gender-dictate...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/19/views-of-...

>it depends on the issue.

Those sound like expected numbers to me. People in general will be split if they have little opinion, because only the extreme cases will chime in.

>while 75% is a supermajority, 21% is a substantial minority rather than a minuscule or irrlevant one

not for polling. As a reference, Nixon's ratings leaving office was 25%. I wouldn't take that to mean "a quarter of the nation supported Watergate".

60+ is pretty high, 70+ is basically overwhelming support. 90% is almost unheard of and only really happens in maritime efforts or very early pollings.

So 75% supporting DEI initiatives is very high. ~50% being split on sports shows the interest is fairly low and pretty much "whatever". I wouldn't be surprised if the drop was simply because 2022 had some huge incident and then 2023 had none.

I more or less feel the same way about trans athletes; meh. it's a private organization adjusting rules for money at the end of the day and rarely about "sportsmanship". They'll do whatever makes them more money in the end. In the grand scheme of the world this will disappear into nothing as transitioning technology improves to make people biologically identical to their chosen gender.

>I don’t think anyone considers the mere fact of hiring a woman to be “woke”.

They should probably tell that to that pilot that died while Trump blamed it on "DEI".

That was part of my point. "Woke" is just a bad dogwhistle stretched beyond meaning. Pam Bondi can be not woke but Danielle Sassoon may be if that's how they frame it.

> They should probably tell that to that pilot that died while Trump blamed it on "DEI".

I thought Trump’s comments were about the FAA not the female helicopter pilot. Her name and gender weren’t released until several days after the accident, by which point I think Trump had largely stopped talking about it. And part of the background to Trump’s remarks about the FAA is a longstanding legal and political dispute about FAA DEI policies going back to the Obama administration, into which Trump had intervened by signing a presidential memorandum a week before the crash. [0] An outstanding class action lawsuit [1] alleges the FAA replaced a program under which it accredited college courses in air traffic control with a “biographical questionnaire” engineered to discriminate against qualified white applicants. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that underlying situation, I think it was wrong for Trump to “jump to conclusions” by blaming an air crash on it when the investigation into its causes was only just beginning; but my recollection is Trump’s DEI-blaming was about the FAA’s hiring policies not the female helicopter pilot; part of Trump’s claim is that the FAA created for itself an artificial staff shortage by refusing to hire qualified applicants simply because they were white.

> "Woke" is just a bad dogwhistle stretched beyond meaning.

There is no one single definition of “woke”. Some definitions are very vague, others much more precise. I keep on coming back to Adolph L Reed Jr’s definition, which is reasonably precise and concrete, yet also undeniably pejorative. Of course, one can reject his orthodox Marxist premises, but I don’t think the word as he uses it (and as many of his antiwoke Marxist fellow travellers use it) is a mere meaningless dogwhistle

> Pam Bondi can be not woke but Danielle Sassoon may be if that's how they frame it.

I haven’t heard anyone call Danielle Sassoon “woke”. Given she’s a Republican, a Federalist Society member, and she clerked for Scalia, I doubt it is going to happen. Some conservatives admire her courage, others may view her as foolish or disloyal, but I doubt any of them will call her “woke”-unless she goes in a very different direction in the future.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-pr...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigida_v._FAA

Yeah we're talking past each other here so no point containing this conversation. Have a good one.

Yes, because political slogans like Defund the Police resonate with people. /s

In 2024, Republicans and Democrats in Congress made a lot of compromises to come up with a bipartisan bill to fix the situation at the southern border. Trump told the Republicans to vote against the bill that they had helped craft, because he didn’t want Biden to get the credit. They listened. The parties are not the same.

There is no comparison between left radicalizsrion (rather small) and right radicalization (massive).

Especially at the part level where radical right rules Republicans and have their support while democrats are centrists

"both sides" when it blatantly only one side is the reason you're in this mess.

This exact comment is part of the issue, you see? You're saying what Trump said, too, when asked about the divide in the country: "Oh, you know, we are only divided because of THEM". Very ironic.

"The root problem is both sides blaming the other side for extremism" seems to me a problematic argument because it becomes rhetorically unfalsifiable. Any counter-example that's offered can immediately be pounced on as evidence for the argument being made.

"Anyone who offers evidence that disagrees with me is just more proof that I'm right!"

this might show that it's not about us vs them, and instead we should find things we have in common and find compromises and work on political and social problems like adults

If you saw the EO today, it's pretty clear Trump does not want compromise.

okay, where's his proof? I can provide dozens of links, many quoted from his words, about why he messed it up. That's the difference. We can support our arguments, and the few counterarguments have so many holes or outright lies. The 350b number flying around is so easy to disprove with a few minutes of research. The issue is so few spend that time to fact check.

He can't blame egg prices and inflation anymore. He's managed to mess both of those up even more in a month.

Imagine this, if you provide state of the art free education with all the trimmings. Will the voter become more stupid?

Back in the days in NL we had university grads stocking shelves in the supermarket. It was hard to see the point of it.

How useful that was became obvious when it was abolished and political parties pretty much had to explain their program as if the voter was 5 years old. The thing is, hardly anything is that simple. Picture a field with spherical cows all over.

Everything comes with an explanation simplified to the point it becomes a lie.

Every politician needs to carefully keep up with the basket of lies. More and more lies are added on top. One might as well start lying for real and profit from it. If the lion share of voters buys into everything anyway???

This was funny

https://youtu.be/T4kNUS7w8Tk

If god wanted us to give power-point presentations he would have provided screens?

Maybe the real budget isn't in the books?

https://youtu.be/q_IoizTAL6w

https://home.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new...

http://files.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_56.pdf

Of course ... were you expecting the people who got fired to just forgive and forget? No, go to a large consultancy, get hired for twice your normal pay, renting you out to your previous employer for ... nobody cares, but WAY more than they paid you before.

It's called starve the beast.

The strategy is to identify government agencies or programs that conservatives don't like. Then they cut funding or put up obstacles for that agency. Over time the agency can't complete it's stated goals because of a lack of funding or restrictions. Then conservatives claim the program doesn't work and it's a waste of money.

I've seen this repeatedly my entire life in American politics. It's so dumb.

>then being hired by the consulting firm and being back the next week

Who owns the consulting firms? They are tied to the conservatives doing this. They are now getting a free cut from the backs of the people.

"The U.S. is only divided because of them, not because of us"

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