- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Summary
California officials warned that Trump’s order to release massive amounts of water nearly caused severe flooding for farmers.
Trump boasted about the move, claiming it would help fight wildfires, but experts said the water couldn’t reach affected areas, which are over 200 miles away.
The Army Corps of Engineers initially planned to release water at maximum capacity but scaled back after urgent pushback.
Experts warned the water could have been better used months later for irrigation.
I think he has no idea what he is doing, and he has dismantled all the guardrails. According to project 2025 the entire country needs to be razed and dismantled. So they can rebuild it as Musk/Trump’s techno fascist state.That’s why Musk wants access to social security numbers, health data and addresses. Musk now knows where you live, what colour your skin is, your gender, your income and debt, and all your weak points. The Nazis did this, it helps with identifying perceived enemies of the state, deportation of immigrants and jailing or execution of political rivals. I am so sorry for those of you in the states who didn’t vote for this monster.
Side-note but this is exactly the reason why my country never asked for my ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation (and AFAIK is not legally allowed to do so). We learned from WWII that this is too great of a liability to entrust to future, potentially hostile governments. The Nazis poured over every written registry of Jewish population census to make a handy murder list, maybe we shouldn’t facilitate their job next time?
(Side-side note: because of what I just said it is very surprising that Germany keeps a registry of everyone’s religion for tax purposes, like maybe just find any other way to allocate subsidies?)
(Side³ note: I’m going to guess unfortunately my government does have “legally trans” people in a database due to the logistics of changing legal gender)
In a system where men and women are treated equally (double surnames, same parental leave etc), it might no longer be needed for central governments to register people’s sex, only the healthcare system would need to know. I’m just thinking out loud here, this might be a bad idea for other reasons.
Yeah that’s the gender-radical answer. I’m all for it but we’re certainly not there yet despite being on the very progressive side of gender rights.
There are also the positive discrimination laws to take into account (in Belgium it’s illegal for companies to have a pay gap between men and wonen in equivalent positions) but IMO those should not rely on a central government database to be enforced.
Then there’s the fact that people usually change their names if they change their legal gender… When Robert becomes Julia there’s no need for a gender marker to guess what happened.
Well, now maybe you understand why republicans are so against DEI initiatives.
Because of potential data abuse? That’s a good one
He knows exactly what he’s doing, or at least, someone else proposed this and explained it to him. What he is doing is: ruin Californias agriculture. This water would’ve been needed in summer, when the place runs dry.
So come August, chances are, California agriculture is withering on the vine with no way to water it. At which point Orange Führer will blame the state government, just like he did with the wildfires. CA will suffer politically and economically, which is the real goal here.
Which in turn we devastate all the red states because California is largest tax payers in the country. Those taxes help the red states. So by destroying California economy he fucks over all of America. Well they voted for it so let them suffer. Just wish rest of us didn’t have to suffer too.
They’ll just up the debt and blame dems again or say we have to implement austerity for the good of the country.
Sure, but as long as he and his oligarch bros get away with blaming Dems, DEI, China or whatever, it’s just another piece of red meat for the gullible
I’m not sure he knows or cares about the knock on effects. He knows it hurts California, so he does it.
The American government is not funded by taxes. It spends new money, then it collects taxes to stave off inflation. Trump doesn’t need a single cent from California to shower red states with dollars if and when he wants to. If you think California failing would hurt red states in some way, it has to be a real, non-financial effect. E.g. of red states important Californian food which can’t be grown because of X or Y.
What do you mean by “new money”?
The treasury prints money, backed primarily by treasury bonds and the faith in the US government. Fiat currency is a government backed scam, just like bitcoin is a techbro backed scam.
So you’re saying the government prints enough new money each year to cover its expenses and then collects taxes to stave off inflation? Do you have a source for this?
That’s a perfect example of the ignorance which allowed Trump and Maga to take over the states.
According to the US Government Accountability Office, “the federal government borrows money straight from the public. The government issues securities like bills, notes, and bonds through the U.S. Treasury… Individual and institutional investors can back the government by investing in these types of securities and many choose to do so.”
USD is backed by your faith in the US government to exist and not prints giant amounts of money. Taxes are another way of raising money, it helps to stave off inflation rising since the gov considers it better to have small amounts of inflation then deflation.
While also deporting the people who would harvest it.
It’s so fucked that someone willingly followed the order to release the water. I’m sure it won’t be the last time
2025 is right in that it’s existence and the ability of the current president to implement it tell us that we have erred in the amount of power we place in the president(s). Constitutionally he has the full power to do what he is doing, or at least he mostly does, the problem is that the constitution was written centuries before FDR expanded the power of the executive in a major and possibly anti constitutional way (as many of his contemporaries suggested).
The Founding Fathers left us a great system, impervious to tyranny and the sort of populism that Trump represents, and we ruined it.
Constitutionally he absolutely does not have the power to do what he’s doing. Our system of checks and balances is failing because the Supreme Court and the Legislature have both all but fully ceded their authority to the Executive. Constitutionally, the job of the Executive is to implement the laws created by the Legislature and abide by rulings from the judiciary, not to do whatever they want with no basis in law or procedure.
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It’s not looking impervious in the slightest right now. We’re living in the consequences of their actions, and one of the consequences being tyranny.
And it’s always been tyrannical, regardless of the year you pick. This country has always been enslaving, discriminating, disenfranchisng, warring, killing innocents, or otherwise robbing workers/indiginous peoples. And always done the majority of this all at the same time.
They left us a system that was easily abused and hard to change. What’s not great about that?! /s
FDR kind of fucked it up, and from then on every subsequent president added to the enshitification of the office by expanding its powers. But yes it is inherently an oligarchy, but I do not think that is inherently a bad thing. The intentions were good.
Were they? Initially only white land owners were allowed to vote. Seems like they created a system that was great for people just like them.
Yeah because they feared the masses were too stupid to participate in democracy. More than once they describe how a popular mob would end up electing a man exactly like Trump. I would say these elections have vindicated them, although there’s no reason why it wouldn’t have worked with more participation, that’s what the electoral college is for. But the problem is that the electoral college is not working the way it’s supposed to: they are not supposed to vote for whom the people want, they are supposed to deliberate between them and elect the best candidate.
And all those mechanisms were designed into the Constitution. You can’t keep defending it as perfect if its very structure allowed this to happen.
“The Ford Pinto is the greatest car ever made. Yes, it blows up and breaks down and is uncomfortable but it’s the best”
That’s what you sound like.
“Impervious” yet FFR was able to break it. Do you not hear yourself. Maybe people 300 fuckin years ago didn’t quite understand everything yet.
He phrased it wrong but he’s sort of right. If Americans knew how to leverage their own political system , as designed by the founding fathers, to their advantage in a focused and rational way, we wouldn’t be here. Could it have been better? Sure, but ultimately there is no democratic system that can protect voters from themselves. Democracies grsnt the people immense power, including the power to destroy their own democracy. That’s what Americans have chosen.
A system that depends on the people running it not to make mistakes is usually a bad system.
Doesn’t every system of government require people running it to avoid mistakes in order for it to work long term?
It’s ok to depend on people being generally competent most of the time. It’s not ok to depend on people never making mistakes, not is it ok to depend on people acting in ways that real human beings don’t act. I’m politics, one if there critical failures was depending on politicians to act in good faith, and another was depending on the voters to stay informed and use critical thinking enough to avoid voting for an obvious conman.
Maybe there’s just no truly good system for politics, and the best we can hope for is the least bad option. But we won’t even achieve that much if we pretend the US system is was created by enlightened demigods. It’s a deeply flawed system created by men who had no experience with democracy and who clearly saw themselves as the leaders of a new kind of aristocracy.
I will give them unqualified credit for one thing, though. The Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution are some of the most effective works of propaganda ever created. Saying that all people are fundamentally equal while simultaneously excluding most people from the levers of power was perhaps the greatest con of all time.