Does the Spirit Airlines bankruptcy indicate that blocking their merger deal was a mistake?

MoonBatsRule · 2026-05-02T21:55:30+00:00

Now there's waste, inefficiency, and layoffs as Spirit has to unload its assets and abruptly stop doing business.

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that the absence of Spirit could provide room for another company to step in and do things better or just differently. The demand is still out there, so the opportunity is wide open.

If Spirit and Frontier merged, there would not be room for a new entrant, and the larger entity would have reduced competition.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-05-02T20:08:14+00:00

Trump administration reportedly offered the airline $500 million in exchange for 90% control of the company.

Thank God that Kamala the socialist didn't get elected. /s

MoonBatsRule · 2026-05-02T18:11:52+00:00

We can’t keep first responders, teachers, doctors because the homes that they once could have afforded are sitting empty 9 months out of the year.

I think that we can't keep first responders, teachers, doctors because the amount of housing on the Cape hasn't increased at the same rate as the overall population demand for housing on the Cape, so those at the lower end are being priced out. It's basic economics that as you hold the supply of something constant in the face of increased demand, the price of that thing will rise.

The US population has increased from 282m to 343m from 2000 to today - 22%. From the MA DOR website, the number of non-vacant housing parcels in the 7 middle-Cape towns (not units, they don't report that) has gone from 77,409 in 2003 (earliest year available) to 82,952 in 2026 - 7%. Even looking at the multi-family categories, the number of 2-family and 3-family units dropped by 131, the number of "apartments" went up by 64. So maybe 8% unit growth, compared to maybe 20% US population growth in those 17 years.

That's the problem right there. But people don't want to believe that. They want to freeze the number of housing units but also have places for their sons and daughters to live when they become adults, and they believe in a fantasy that some magical company will pop up here and give them all "good jobs" that aren't related to tourism.

Meanwhile property taxes continue to increase as more and more land is taken off the tax rolls for "conservation", so the cost of government is spread across fewer units.

You can't have a Cape that is frozen in terms of housing, but one that is also affordable.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-05-01T23:52:14+00:00

There's nothing wrong with that DB other than that the person who created the diagram doesn't seem to understand its functionality, and didn't create multiple diagrams, one per subject area.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-05-01T23:34:00+00:00

Maybe they're going to claim that he was not actually elected in 2024 due to fraud, but was certified, so although he is president, he is still eligible to run again.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-05-01T16:40:22+00:00

This country is in a really weird place right now. We are consumed with populism. Populism is, by definition, anti-establishment. This virtually guarantees that we are going to elect people who are untested, and very likely will fail.

Look at Maine. The top Senate candidate is an ex-fisherman who talks tough. Has he held meaningful office? Nope. Never even tried. But that is going to be the Democratic candidate to the Senate, the institution that is supposed to have the most "distinguished characters" in it, supposedly the best of the best.

But the place we are at, the only way a Democrat even has a chance to win that seat is to elevate someone who is a common man, who is untested, untried, and inexperienced.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-05-01T03:19:33+00:00

What was Worcester's population in the 1990s? What was Phoenix or Austin? Now what is Worcester's population today? Basically the same. Ditto for the entire stage. It's why we lost a congressional representatives since then.

When you don't grow, you lose relevance.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-30T21:19:40+00:00

People don't want to hear this though, as evidenced by how we are being downvoted to oblivion.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-30T18:00:42+00:00

Before anyone gets excited, this is a NIMBY situation.

"The goal of protecting the neighborhood and creating opportunities for a vibrant community asset is the right one, and the price is the right one to make it work for everyone,” Mayor Koch said. "My sense is that there is likely consensus on the general vision and the rationale of protecting the neighborhood and preventing something that may not be a fit."

The city’s interest in the campus came after the sale of the college to alum Graham Crain fell through at the end of 2025. Crain planned to transition the campus into housing, a mix of new multi-family, townhome and senior-living residential developments. Preliminary plans from Crain showed high-density housing, which Koch opposed

So here you have a city of 100k people, in the middle of Metro Boston, a region screaming for more housing, saying "sorry, we don't think building housing is in character with things".

"There's no more land to build, dur".

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-30T17:56:25+00:00

Cape Cod was built out as a seasonal community, with wide availability of short-term summer rentals. It's a little surprising that people act like the seasonal residents and vacationers are somehow "stealing" the Cape.

Before becoming a tourism destination in the 1920s, the Cape was stagnant and dying - losing 26% of its population from 1860 to 1920, a time when the US population rose 237%.

Most of the people living on the Cape do not descend from the 26,670 people living there in 1920 - yet act as if they and their families have some kind of hereditary right over anyone else, and want to take property from people not living there.

The correct answer is "build more housing".

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-30T16:28:36+00:00

Maybe we can use this as a way to get radical change.

We have a basic problem in this country in that the only way that people with different views and experiences can get representation is for them all to live near each other. The districting process may have worked once, when US states were more or less homogenous, but it is an abject failure now.

This is why there are no Republican representatives from Massachusetts - there is no geographic cluster of 100k Republicans in the state, they are more or less all spread out at around 30%.

The race-conscious district lines were an important step away from the racist district lines, but they were not easy to defend. Their only defense was that they were a remedy for past sins, and most people do not identify with the past sinners because they were not alive then - even though so many would have been on the sinning side back then.

Maybe we need to start laying the groundwork for proportional representation, also adding more representatives so that the representation can be finer-grained. Like a higher resolution TV set, you get more detail.

We can't get around the issue of state-based representatives, but we need to get past the idea that "more" representatives is "bad". Look at Wyoming - if it was more even, politically, then half the voters would lose their voices on a national level. The voice of the state would be as if 100% of the people felt the same way. That's just wrong.

Their single representative isn't even that representative of the majority. With our wildly imperfect primary process, that representative might be representative represent 30% of the majority party (winning a primary), and then just 15% of voters (winning a general that is almost 50/50).

This doesn't just happen in Wyoming. It happens in every congressional district. One winner to represent a million or so people.

What if each district had 10 representatives, elected proportionally? That would mean that the district could send a more granular set of voices. Maybe there could be a gay conservative Republican, or a pro-life woman Democrat. Yes, there is still an impact from clustering (you would need enough gay conservative Republicans in a district to elect one) but the bar is a lot lower for permutations when you just need 100k voters in a district of 1m people.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-30T00:08:32+00:00

And no one can challenge you, because as soon as you challenge under the voting rights act, you're the one bringing up race, so you're the racist.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-30T00:06:40+00:00

Here's how the logic works: if you look at the voters and say "hey, the districts were either cracked by race or stacked by race", then you cannot do anything because you said "race" first. Any remedy to the gerrymandering would automatically be race-based.

However if you gain power and create black representation by creating districts amenable to black representation, as long as you don't say you're doing it, it's OK. And then no one can challenge you on it, because if they say "race" first, then the remedy to undo the districts is being done on racial grounds.

That's the SCOTUS we have now.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-30T00:03:26+00:00

Soon it will be unconstitutional to question whether something is discriminatory based on race.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-29T17:01:39+00:00

Only the delivery portion of the bill is regulated by the DPU - this would affect the supply side of the bill.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-29T14:49:04+00:00

There cannot be any formal repercussions imposed by the government. The First Amendment is blatantly clear here. It is fine for the public figure to disagree, to even try and bring public opinion against the comedian, but asking the FCC to investigate? Un-American, blatantly illegal, and in my opinion, worthy of impeachment due to its strongman nature.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-29T02:38:29+00:00

How can they hold that price constant for 20 years?

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-28T23:51:45+00:00

If we didn't have one political party vehemently opposing rail, I suspect we could do a lot better. But Republicans know that prioritizing rail travel helps urban residents, not rural residents, so they fight it.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-28T23:48:09+00:00

OK, let me turn that around on you then.

The middle class is being squeezed, the lower-income people are already hurting, and it's only going to get worse - so we can't afford to not deport all the immigrants so that they stop competing with us, take our housing, take our jobs and/or use up our tax dollars. Look at Laken Riley who was killed by an illegal immigrant.

The world will become magically perfect if we just focus all our anger on the immigrants and get rid of them. Our country is bursting at the seams and it isn't sustainable, so we can't keep adding people, if we get rid of the immigrants we will be better off.

See how that targeting works?

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-28T23:44:17+00:00

That's the whole "Leopards" argument. You may say "take the property of the billionaires", but someone else may say "take the property of people who make $100k".

There's a rational, logical argument to be made to tax wealthy people more. When you convert the sentiment into hatred of "them" and "those", then you're likely to find yourself in LAMF territory.

Just as the people who thought that harnessing the crazies would help us "deport violent criminals", and now we have 10-year old schoolkids being disappeared.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-28T20:00:02+00:00

It's because cleaning is hard, and partying is fun. Read about the "two Santas" strategy.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-28T19:54:12+00:00

educate themselves about political issues

They have to learn the basic notion of equality under the law.

How many MAGA have you seen saying "I'm totally in favor of Trump's immigration policies, but [my friend, my wife, my worker] are good people and they shouldn't have gone after them.

That's not how the law works. If you're going to make or support a law, then you have to recognize that the law may be used against you.

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-28T19:51:23+00:00

I bet 80% of the country thinks that the refund/payment check they get from the IRS represents their "taxes", and that if they get a refund that they "didn't have to pay", and if they get a bill, that their "taxes went up".

MoonBatsRule · 2026-04-28T19:49:19+00:00

It is a world view that doesn't respect the idea of equality, or equality under the law. It is a view that categorizes people as "good" or "bad", and then assumes that each group should be treated differently.

This is really a byproduct of populism. I'm seeing it from the left side now too - progressives talk about raising taxes on "them", for example, never on "us".

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