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I'm getting real tired of fighting tax breaks for people with 131 Scrooge McDuck piles of money already, at the cost of services a large portion of the country uses or may need.
To be clear, I don't have kids, but want my tax dollars to fund free lunches, but we can't have that. Instead we get garbage like public school busses being used to drive kids to private schools, while the public school students walk. (See Ohio)
(bonus points if you know what movie that quote comes from)
The wealthiest people aren’t descendants of Julius Caesar, the Medicis, the Hapsburgs, Rollo (who is an ancestor to every European monarch), the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, etc.
Some of these are moderately wealthy now (eg the Rothchilds) but they don’t dominate the world’s wealth.
Part of this is that can be hard to maintain a lineage over time. Also, foolish fail sons will squander family wealth.
But some wealthy people just go the French Revolution way.
I don’t believe the Gateses, Musks, Bezoses, etc will survive the upheaval, violence and revolution they are making inevitable.
Also, where are they running to? In an increasingly interconnected world, the whole developed world looks like it'll go down together.
I advocate for things like universal healthcare and providing food and shelter for every person not only because it's moral but also because we can afford it and it preserves the current system. If the ultra-wealthy really took a long-term view, they'd be fighting for those things because they simply won't survive the revolution.
But I believe we're beyond the point where electoral politics can halt a violent upheaval of the current economic order. And many, many people will die in that process.
At the end it's an olygarchy with too much stockpiled military slowly creeping on it's neighbour and stationning troops "on vacation" across the border.
It's all they do now. If it will make some liberal in their heads unhappy, they'll do it. They don't care how much it hurts themselves.
That's honestly why I have absolutely not one iota of sympathy for all the Republicans who's businesses are getting obliterated by the trade "policies" of the dumbass in chief. You voted for this shit. I hope it sucks for you. I hope your wife leaves you. I hope your children never talk to you again. I hope broad society rejects you, permanently, for playing such stupid fucking games with the future of your nation, your children, and your own life.
Truly, it's the Right's chickens finally come home to roost. For decades the Republican side of things has gotten to play incompetent jackass olympics with the government, and between the US's position in global politics, our overall wealth and the general stability maintained by Democrats and moderates over the shrieking howling objections of themselves, everything kept trucking more or less to spec. Like children in a home maintained by parents who know what they're doing.
Now like the adolescents they so frequently scold everyone else for acting like, they have moved out on their own, maxed out their credit cards on stupid shit, and bills are stacking up. And just like those adolescents, they have no goddamn plan and just point the blame at everyone else for letting them fuck everything up for themselves.
Fucking. Children. And I don't just mean in that a distressing amount of them seem to be pedophiles.
That's how they rile up their voting base. But the actual goal is more just to get rich.
Every time we have this discussion, we always conclude that nuclear power generation is the only viable path forward.
Nuclear NIMBYism is even harder to defeat than regular NIMBYism, so you might as well ask for geothermal.
See: utilities trying to shut down coal plants because they are too expensive, being stopped by the current administration.
My aunt is a conservative lobbyist. She is also a drunk. This means that she gets drunk and texts my family her real feelings all the time. She is absolutely 100% motivated by hate. That's it. She has told her sister to kill herself because she's on government benefits. She has told my mom that she should be thrown in prison for going to an anti-Trump protest. She has told her own daughter that she'd be better off dead than bisexual. Her daughter has attempted suicide twice.
She is not motivated by some actual policy outcome. She is not motivated by trying to help people just through some different mechanism than the left would use. She is not motivated by libertarian ideals. She is motivated by hate.
As another comment mentioned, this is immaterial at the rate at which solar PV and batteries are being manufactured, it just makes electricity more costly (an additional tax) until we get to the future.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly (center on US)
Outright banning solar and wind in red states and then watching as power generation companies flee to blue states as these energy sources outcompete fossil fuels in the marketplace doesn't matter. They still got to say "fuck you, libs." That's all that matters. Pointing out how this hurts their own voters won't change anything because the thing they want is not actually human flourishing. The thing they want is "fuck you, libs" and they got that already.
They can use it as a wedge issue.
Look, Republicans in Republican states, they're leaving you without jobs and giving your jobs to immigrants. See, slightly red but mostly purple States? This is what will happen to you. And the energy companies take the blame, not legislators.
Politics today is ruled by cynicism.
That's not cynicism. That's brute honesty.
California is ahead of the curve by having built renewables and batteries before this policy change, while other states will be stuck with suboptimal energy policy for at least the next half decade, increasing their cost of power. California is also the world's fourth largest economy with the energy system they have built.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO/12mo/monthl...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/us-electricity-2025...
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/04/23/california-is-now-the-4th-...
It sounds like your broader point is that conservatives are all stupid and motivated by hatred. I kind of feel like you have plenty of your own hatred though but seem sort of blind to it.
My mother has dealt with her for her entire life.
I assure you that I am not missing some hidden trauma that complicates my aunt. What I described above is just a taste of the harm she's done to people.
Unless someone is completely incapable of rational action (which has happened to me), there’s some level of personal responsibility involved.
I wouldn’t argue that conservatives are stupid and motivated by hatred. However, many people voted for a campaign of blatant hate and an explicitly stated desire for revenge. This definitely colors your view of anyone that doesn’t think this is a bad thing.
You seem to happily ignore who started this garbage, who's responsible for the orange shit stain on the entire country, who yelled "Fuck your feelings" when anyone disagreed, who refused to wear a mask to possibly prevent infections, but is quite happy to see their idiocy forced upon anyone else.
My family would absolutely love to go no-contact with her. But if she ends up with guardianship of my other aunt once my grandparents pass then she'll be sentenced to suffer and die.
But unfortunately being a republican lobbyist means a couple things. She is extremely persuasive and she is friends with some relevant government officials.
I don't envy your situation, or your mom's, at all.
2) Enforce your boundaries
That started out grimly funny but got more and more depressing as I read on. Dealing with that can't be easy.
Turns out the department that deals with farming, is going to focus on farming… and not on pushing electricity production.
Well yeah, the Department of Energy should probably be the ones spearheading our solar, wind, etc.
Did those agencies you dealt with provide you with grants that you depended on to stay in business? Did those grants rely on actual proof that required onsite presence to confirm? Because it's one thing to measure a farm's yield and it's another to see how that yield came to be. There's a reason why the NRCS has field offices at the county level. It's so farmers can go there and so those working in the offices can go to the farms.