Has been pushing hard for decades to get those religious lunatics into a fervor right? The Republican party actively encourages religious extremism so that they can Farm those people for votes.

It's always about the same thing. Taking all the money and leaving voters with nothing. If you're going to rob somebody blind and do it year in year out like the Republican party does you have to keep offering them something in exchange for all the economic security you are stealing.

It needs to be something intangible since the Republicans are taking all the tangible stuff like money and property and food and medicine and healthcare and education.

And that's why you will see religious freedom bills that give people the right to leave their children unvaccinated risking the lives of everybody else.

They get all the money and you get to skip your vaccines or teach your kids the Earth is 6,000 years old or whatever lunatic nonsense that isn't real you insist is real.

Before 2000 the government paid for 70% of college tuition. By 2003 after several rounds of cuts it was 20%.

Meanwhile here's Donald Trump telling us we need more immigration and h-1bs because Americans are just too dumb. Seriously Google it. That's what he said.

I wish my country would stop proving him right...

The risk of creating a viable competitor is too big so they will do pretty much anything a government wants in order to avoid being kicked out of the country.

It's not about the profit they can make in the country it's about making sure that there is never a viable competitor that could enter into any of your other markets.

Ultimately there really isn't a lot these companies do that's special. The most we survived because they're the ones who when the market was developing survived via survivorship bias. When you're talking infrastructure including internet infrastructure you are generally going to end up with some form of Monopoly forming. At least if you're not extremely careful to enforce competition. And I don't think there's a country on planet Earth that does that

In the blue States it's generally individual cops getting caught doing it. Albeit a lot but still individual cops.

In the red States it's coming down from the top that's the difference. It's because corruption at the top is more common in a red state than a blue state.

This is to be expected if you understand how left and right wing politics work.

In a red State you have a right Wing state. So you have people that are prone to hierarchical structures and obedience.

That's going to encourage corruption because the people at the top will view themselves as being absolutely in charge and the people beneath them will encourage that view. It's why Trump can get away with committing so many crimes and the public still loves him.

A hierarchical command structure versus a democratic command structure is going to lend itself to top down corruption more often and the corruption is going to be worse. There is just no getting away from that or the consequences of right-wing politics.

You do know that it is the CHILDREN of anti-vaxxers who are suffering and dying, not the stupid, manipulated parents, right?

And your point being? This is what their god wants. Let them deal with the repercussions. After all, they're better off dead.

Are actively hiding their economic data. We are going to have a 1930s style economic collapse.

All the pieces are here. We are in the middle of a industrial revolution with massive amounts of automation and technological unemployment without any significant new employment opportunities on the horizon. Seriously sit down and write out what the jobs are going to be after automation and ai and machine learning rip through the economy. You can't just go and make cars after the buggy whip factory shuts down when the car factory is also automated.

Next we have a huge economic bubble where we are spending trillions of dollars specifically AI infrastructure spending and the massive bank loans that go with it.

And we have widespread drought resulting in crop failures and increasing food prices. Even if you don't believe climate change and the water cycle breaking is the problem the drought is still real.

This is everything that led up to world war I at world war II.

We have the technology to stop this but we don't have the education and critical thinking and social structures to stop it...

Seriously. I understand the bomb squad needs robots that's a good thing. But every year a crime goes down and every year we put more cops with better weapons and more weapons on the street.

I understand what's going on with all that immigration enforcement bullshit. There's a bunch of bitter old assholes who get off on seeing people slammed into the ground.

But is there really that many people for whom the pleasure of watching a couple of Mexicans get dragged into a black van by masked goons is enough to make them A-Okay with this bullshit?

I just had to get the new fancy license and they made me take my glasses off because they're using facial recognition now.

One of the funny things I keep seeing over and over again is confused white people in the middle class pulled over by cops and harassed the same way they're used to seeing "those people" harassed.

The place where it's really showing up is DUIs. In several red states with heavy duty police enforcement there is a ton of stories about people getting pulled over and arrested and losing their license when they were Stone Cold sober. There are a couple of big scandals where the local police were just told you need to get your arrest numbers up or else.

DUI is really popular for that because the cops can arrest you without cause or proof and it takes months before it comes out that you were innocent. Meanwhile your license is suspended.

The fact that they're doing this to the in group is a massive red flag. It's a huge shift in how things work.

They are objectively bad for the economy and they know it. People are starting to know it too no matter how much propaganda there is.

Google it. It is a fact that the Republican party is worse for the economy than the Democratic party. Trickle down economics doesn't work and never has.

We have been trained to get angry when we see anyone discussing the two political parties. So it's tough to have this discussion but it's a discussion we need to have.

Because without positive economic gains for 90% of us the Republican party has to give voters some reason to vote for them.

Yes homophobia and racism and transphobia will always be good old standbys but religion is fading in America. It's just not bringing the numbers in that it used to.

So they are pivoting to crackpottery with anti-vax being the big one.

We don't do commas any more. Slapping together words is the new norm. Forget commas when you're talking about a serial list: Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

So they fold corporation on paper, walk away from the loan and open up a new corporation that gets to use the facility.

Dude it's 2025, by now you should know how this game is played.

I forget which town but one of them immediately removed all the cameras when somebody did a foi request.

You're not going to find out where the billionaires are going because like Steve Jobs used to do they hide their license plates.

But your shitty little Republican mayor who frequents the local gay bar doesn't have the resources to do that. A

What are you talking about? Of course image enhancement is possible using AI.

So we have had multiple decades of Court packing so you're headed by the heritage foundation, a right-wing think tank that made that their primary goal.

If you look into Amazon for example and wonder how they got so big you will find that they were just going around buying up all there competitors using investment capital. Most tech companies that's how they got big they just bought up competitors.

Facebook is in a unique situation. Nobody under the age of 18 wants to be on the same social media platform has their parents so every few years a new social media platform develops as a separate platform for the kids.

Every time that happens Facebook just buys that platform.

Tick tock was a problem because they couldn't just buy the platform since it was owned by the Chinese government. So they just pressured the government here to shut it all down and give them control.

Refusing to enforce antitrust law makes your life noticeably worse even if you don't use the services involved.

The problem is it's government regulation and its bureaucrats that enforce the law there.

We have been taught our whole lives that there is nothing worse than the bureaucrat. It doesn't help that as an American most of your interactions with the government are negative. Means testing for assistance programs is brutal and difficult so if you fall on hard times and need help fuck you. Most of us did never do need help still have to go to the DMV sometimes and wait in line frustratingly or we get pulled over by cops and that's our interaction with the government.

It is very easy to translate those frustrated emotions with a sabotaged government into a desired cut regulations that control corporate abuses that hurt you.

And that is way too complicated a concept for probably 80% of the population to understand...

They went from buying low to selling high and are now shorting the stocks.

They're winning either way.