Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

But what I paid out of pocket back in '18/'19 alone for medical expenses, I would have no problem heading North. Or come on up as they say

they only want your yankee money.  they don't give a damn for you

It's tough to watch us throw out the baby with the bathwater, but I do agree there's a lot that needs to change. Hopefully we can eventually get the pendulum to swing back a bit and exert some common sense.

I think that's what's likely to happen.  As far as I can ascertain, the administration has hit the pause button on a lot of stuff (and some federal judges have also hit the "resume" button on some of it, at least for now), not the "stop" button.  I believe the plan, and what is likely to happen, is that there will eventually be some stuff brought back.  Hopefully your cousin will be part of that.

It's pretty routine for audits in the private sector to hit giant pause buttons, so I don't yet have concerns that some good stuff can't be brought back.  

Also.....I know this will be massively unpopular here and would cause many to brand me a leftist, which.......if you knew me, lolz.....but even the crazy stuff we hear about, which I have no doubt is true, appears to have had a point beyond the simple "leftists spreading ideology everywhere" and "waste as much money in as many ways as we can think to do it."  Mind you, I'm not claiming that the stuff is moral, ethical, defensible, or that it should continue.  Quite the opposite.  Just that the people responsible, in their utilitarian mindsets, had long-term goals they think all that junk helped, and it might have.  Whether or not those goals were good ones is another topic, as is the point I'd make that spreading evil crap to do some long-term good for your country is not necessarily an ethical way to operate.  All I'm saying is, I think all the stuff that sounds insane and makes us wonder how in the world, and why in the world....is more complicated than "Because they're crazy" or "because they're leftists" or "because they want to see America broke and failed."   

called it....Trump admin is canceling the $400 million armored EV contract the Biden administration awarded to Tesla. Trump gives zero shits about EVs and the environment, he's all drill baby drill all day long.

of course that didn't stop god awful news media like MSNBC or NPR from reporting lies....which is just reason 5,696,006,949 why the public hates them and distrusts them and doesn't believe a word they say...

And for future reference- hate to break it to any shitlibs, TDS'ers, or Elon haters- but if the US government is awarding contracts for things like EVs, satellite internet systems, tunneling/boring, and rocket launches - well Elon Musk's companies are probably going to win almost all those contracts by default and would win them regardless of his role in the Trump administration. His companies are best in class in their fields and/or literally the only game in town in their fields.


https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1890459477230379458

No shortage of data that the US has been the most generous society the world has ever seen as far as donating to charities and causes that help the underprivileged home and abroad.  And the $ donated to the various private and church-led organizations mostly doesn't wind up with the tyrant government. 

I'm curious your support for the last sentence here. Americans are very generous, and by at least some credible estimates, we do send more foreign charitable aid through charities than through our federal government. But most of the NGOs have to at least play ball with the local governments to be allowed to operate at all. So I'm curious what the support is for the idea that private charity is less likely to end up confiscated by warlords than government aid. (That was a nod to that SNL skit--agreed, it's a classic.)

The tie between religion and charity is a fascinating one. A significant portion of US charitable giving goes to operating churches (as opposed to those churches providing direct assistance to the needy). BUT we still give a huge amount to direct aid (including through churches--which is a modestly higher number than through secular direct aid orgnizations). AND people who give money at church are statistically more likely to also give money to other causes (both secular and non-secular). So although a significant portion of US charitable giving is merely paying for the operating expenses of churches, there is a very strong correlation between that and charitable giving that provides direct aid (again, secular and non-secular). 

BUT there are also limits to that charitable giving. If charitable aid was so much better or efficient than government aid at doing things like addressing poverty, than presumably we wouldn't really need government aid. But we do. The power of taxation is simply much more powerful than the power of voluntary giving.

Also, traditionally (and unsurprisingly) the wealthy have been the biggest source of charitable giving, but the tax changes during the first Trump administration substantially reduced the amount that the wealthy could write off as tax deductions, with the predictable effect of reducing the amount of giving from the wealthy. So if we really believe that charitable giving is more efficient than the government at distributing aid, we should eliminate that aspect of the tax code.

I haven't followed that closely enough to know what the actual evidence against Adams looks like, but I do find it suspicious that suits were filed against him shortly after he openly spoke out against the previous administration's agenda as it related to stuff going on in NYC. 

I've heard one person I mostly trust say the evidence against him is credible and another say it's bs.

Assuming they were legit charges, I have to wonder, is this like police officers letting offenders go so they can be informants?  Like, "We'll drop the charges, but you make sure that NYC isn't fighting us on ICE, DEI, and other stuff."  I'd have to know way more about the severity of the charges, credibility of the charges, and the utility of using him in that way to have an opinion about that.  Also, I assume there's some kind of legal provision for letting criminal offenders go in those situations, whereas I have no idea if anything like that applies to mayors. 

And, I'm not saying that's what's happening.  Just a possibility that makes reasonable sense to me.  

It's a total quid pro quo that Trump's own appointees don't feel comfortable going with.  Eventually some Fordham law clerk is going to find themselves as the lead prosecutor for the SDNY after everyone above them refuses to be complicit in this.

And honestly, they didn't need to do it.  All this does is make their job easier.  It doesn't allow them to do things they otherwise couldn't.  They could still do it, it might just take longer, for zero political gain.  All of the other noise is just that, noise.  he is very good at keeping you focused on the left hand, while the right hand does real work.  He changed the name of a mountain back to what it was.  Whatever.  he changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico.  That keeps the "resistance" occupied with a lot of nothingness.  But this is actually concerning.  

I think that's what's likely to happen.  As far as I can ascertain, the administration has hit the pause button on a lot of stuff (and some federal judges have also hit the "resume" button on some of it, at least for now), not the "stop" button.  I believe the plan, and what is likely to happen, is that there will eventually be some stuff brought back.  Hopefully your cousin will be part of that.

It's pretty routine for audits in the private sector to hit giant pause buttons, so I don't yet have concerns that some good stuff can't be brought back. 

Also.....I know this will be massively unpopular here and would cause many to brand me a leftist, which.......if you knew me, lolz.....but even the crazy stuff we hear about, which I have no doubt is true, appears to have had a point beyond the simple "leftists spreading ideology everywhere" and "waste as much money in as many ways as we can think to do it."  Mind you, I'm not claiming that the stuff is moral, ethical, defensible, or that it should continue.  Quite the opposite.  Just that the people responsible, in their utilitarian mindsets, had long-term goals they think all that junk helped, and it might have.  Whether or not those goals were good ones is another topic, as is the point I'd make that spreading evil crap to do some long-term good for your country is not necessarily an ethical way to operate.  All I'm saying is, I think all the stuff that sounds insane and makes us wonder how in the world, and why in the world....is more complicated than "Because they're crazy" or "because they're leftists" or "because they want to see America broke and failed." 

A massive problem for conservatives in general is that leftists generally don't see this kind of thing as "ideological" but rather as "doing the right thing".  This has downstream consequences in a LOT of ways.  

Example #1:
I do a lot of work in a local service club (we've discussed this here before, I was trying to get @Cincydawg to join the chapter local to him).  As is typical for an organization of that sort, we are VERY careful to be politically neutral at all times.  We absolutely DO NOT want to be seen as either a Republican/Conservative club or as a Democrat/Liberal club.  

It is never really a problem to get Republibans/Conservatives to "check their politics at the door" because they (we myself included) understand that pushing our political ideology through the club would be detrimental to the goals of the club.  On the contrary, the Democrats/Liberals frequently need to be reminded that pushing pro-immigration or pro-Alphabet People items IS ideological.  They simply do not see it as ideological, to them it is right vs wrong.  

Example #2:
A lady here in my town was making some political point and in the process of it she was trying to demonstrate her openness with the statement that she would allow political signs from anyone "except Trumpers".  You have to understand here that the implication was that all were welcome except those (play evil music here) "EVIL TRUMP SUPPORTERS".  This was said as if "Trump Supporters" were some fringe group . . .

That fringe group got a plurality by 1.5% and was only 0.2% shy of an outright majority nationally.  And locally to me it is even bigger.  My County voted roughly 2:1 for Trump and my City roughly 3:2.  So what she implicitly referred to as a 'fringe group' makes up half of the Country, three-fifths of the City, and two-thirds of the County.  

I do not know who coined this phrase but there is a lot of truth to it:
Republicans see Democrats as misguided, Democrats see Republicans as evil.  

That was a long explanation but to comprehend how these things end up being done, you have to understand that the liberal who approved "lesbian art for Afghani Women", "Which pronoun should I choose", or whatever doesn't think of that as an ideological stance on which reasonable people can disagree.  They view it as a matter of good vs evil.