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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I’m not a lawyer, but it strikes me that this could be exactly what is happening. The ambulance company’s insurance wouldn’t pay the hospital directly, they aren’t health insurance. So instead, the cyclist’s health insurance footed the initial bill. Then they went after the cyclist for his deductible/copay/whatnot. Now he has to get the money from the ambulance company. If this was vehicle on vehicle violence, he would have gone to his auto insurance, who would have in turn went after the ambulance company’s insurance, but he might not have auto insurance or auto insurance might not be willing to get involved because he wasn’t driving. So he has to go direct to the company. Wouldn’t be shocking if the company pushed off any non-legal petitions from him because he doesn’t have the name weight of an insurance company with lawyers on retainer, so now he is seeking a legal remedy. Insurance doesn’t just work always, there is often a degree of negotiating and litigation involved in these exchanges, especially if one party disagrees with another on matters of liability







  • The presidential primary is probably the wrong place to start, unfortunately. Because of its scope, it’s hugely expensive in terms of both money and power to get a successful candidacy there. In order for there to be a Bernie on the debate stage 2016 and 2020, you need a couple dozen progressives in the House, a few progressive Senators, a handful of progressive governors, and a metric boatload of progressive state and municipal legislators. For international affairs, the dominant force there is going to be the House Reps and Senators because the other offices won’t have much leverage on that issue. It’s hard to campaign on an issue that splits the big tent and triggers foreign spending against your campaign. The fact that there has been no inkling of an indication that Congress would have the prospective candidate’s back makes it basically nonviable at the national level, as much as that stings. Airing a campaign message of “we will cease a betting thenIsraeli government in their war crimes” beside lower level candidates going out with messaging of “we need to strengthen our relations with our allies in the Middle East” is a disaster waiting to happen, and that is a message that won many a House Rep Democratic primary. It’s an unbearably slow process to drum up a response to a system that is murdering children by the day, and the only solace is that every success makes the next win easier. But it is the system we have, and the only way to change/reform that system short of violence is through a series of small, hard-fought victories. It’s how liberals/progressives were able to get the extent of LGBT rights that we do have, it’s how direct military intervention and corporate bailouts are becoming, if not fully frowned upon, a policy that carries some shame and embarrassment for its advocate. It’s also how abortion rights have been eroded by the regressives, and it’s how transphobic policies are becoming a nationwide phenomenon



  • This passive language bullshit is so obvious sometimes. “Oh, I wonder what the cyclist did to get run over? And that poor SUV driver getting charged for murder because of this event, Paris is really going off the deep end finding ways to attack innocent drivers.” And yet, per the article, the SUV driver ran down the cyclist in a fit of road rage. That sounds an awful lot like an active choice by the driver, not some passive circumstance that the headline implies. If this person got angry and attacked someone with a knife, and the victim died, the headline wouldn’t be “Knife owner charged with murder after person stabbed”. But use the “right” weapon and all of a sudden we put the kiddie gloves on



  • I’m assuming they are referring to the fact that this is an unironic usage of a format that typically contains an ironic message. But I think this format is used to express counter narratives of all kinds, both serious and unserious, so I wouldn’t call this an incorrect usage. I mean, the format already has some bone hurting juice energy to start with, so I think gatekeeping its usage is maybe outside of the spirit of the template



  • It’s maybe worth pointing out that the analysis covers 10 years and appears to account for $0 in GDP growth (and corresponding tax base growth) dependent on those policies. If I’m reading this correctly (big if to be fair): Assuming the government continues to capture 17.5% of US GDP, Harris’ policies would need to generate roughly 4% GDP growth per year (no small feat, granted) to be net zero relative to absolute debt levels and less than that to be net zero relative to debt as a percentage of GDP. Government expenditure is not like consumer spending because almost every dollar it spends looks less like consumption and more like an investment, and leveraging investments is actually a valid strategy, especially when you have the economic momentum/inertia of a nation state to balance the risks involved with debt, and that is before you even get into fiscal monetary policy