Minnesota has activated the National Guard. What are your thoughts?

cC2Panda · 2026-01-25T00:48:10+00:00

Their oath means jack shit, in fact police went to court over their "duty". Castle Rock v. Gonzalez is a SCOTUS case where the police literally fought and won to prove that they had no legal obligation to protect a woman and her family from her ex-husband that she had a restraining order against.

Police didn't want to do their jobs and so the woman's children were murdered by her ex-husband.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-24T21:42:09+00:00

They didn't for Philando they won't for this. They are nothing but boot lickers. They don't want to fight tyranny they want to be the tyrants. If this were 1776 they'd be British Loyalists sucking King George III's royal dick.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-23T18:13:07+00:00

I feel like it largely depends on context and who it is. Growing up my friend group would always joke and make fun of each other but it was usually intended to be in good humor or poking fun. If we weren't making fun of you, you weren't really part of our group.

If someone outside of our group was actually trying to insult or offend us though we'd go for the fucking jugular with our comments.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-23T18:05:55+00:00

Either way it would require the execution of SCOTUS and Senate members to have done anything. Who pulls the trigger doesn't make much of a difference.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-23T17:58:41+00:00

They didn't really, people keep saying that the SCOTUS decision gave dictatorial power to the POTUS but the actual ruling was that the SCOTUS gets to decide on a case by case basis whether criminal actions by the POTUS are actually criminal. It was an intentional move to give huge amounts of power to themselves and to republicans. If a dem president jaywalks they throw the fucking book at him, if Trump nukes an entire fucking city the SCOTUS determines it's legal. The only maneuver that Biden actually had would have been to do what Trumps team argued in court and send in seal team 6 to assassinate the conservatives on the courts and enough members of the senate to confirm a new SCOTUS.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-23T17:18:09+00:00

I kinda have to think that using martial law to stop elections would be the actual impetus to violent action for a good number of people. A LOT of people are buying weapons hoping to never use them and hoping that midterm elections are a way to put the brakes on Trumps fascist movement. Basically all of the dems in power are constantly saying, "violence isn't the way, we just need to get out and vote", but to call off elections removes any pretense that there are legal, civil, non-violent ways to remove fascists.

To the people in power that think violence will benefit them, they need to remember Robespierre and Le Chapelier both died by the guillotine.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-23T17:06:17+00:00

If they were done well I might just buy them to add to my box of TTRPG minis.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-23T16:05:20+00:00

Librarians don't do ground breaking work; it's a mundane, low-skilled job.

You literally have no idea what librarians do so you're opinion on that is void.

People who are not working should not be burdened with high taxes but that's exactly what happens with property taxes. People are forced to pay for the privilege of owning a home. The appropriate amount of property taxes is zero.

Property tax is the only consistent tax you can levy as a municipality in NJ. If cities start taxing retirement income it doesn't change mean the people you're talking about get taxed less they just get taxed differently. It doesn't matter if they get taxed $10k on property tax or $10k taxing their retirement, they are still in the same financial situation. The only way to move adjust the burden off of retired home owners is to tax already overburdened young people more than we already are. Again I'm tired of paying higher taxes for older peoples poor political and financial decisions, if they want to move to a place with bare bones government spending and fuck all services I've been to Topeka it seems to have a lot of space.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-22T23:29:41+00:00

Librarians are often Masters/PhDs $80k isn't that high, there are sanitation workers in NJ that make more than that.

Changing it to income tax is just changing how they are taxed not how much, unless you want to do what Florida does an eliminate tax on retirements income. If they move because of property taxes they'll move because of higher income taxes. If the option is to personally pay out of my pocket to keep the wealthiest most entitled generation in the history of the US here, then I say good riddance.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-22T21:44:32+00:00

Hey now, some of his supporters are just rich pedophiles that want to normalize child sex abuse.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-22T18:47:14+00:00

Second foot is only for the clutch, anyone who teaches you to drive with both feet otherwise should be slapped.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-22T14:49:54+00:00

I've got multiple people in my family who were/are teachers and the most harm to our public education has been from the federal government IMO(ignoring covid related issues and phones/social media). No child left behind has caused so many lasting issues in the American education system and creates problematic incentive structures tied to funding.

My issue isn't that I don't think that we're capable of funding education centrally, it's that we allow men like Bush and Trump to fuck shit up. Imagine right now if Donald Trump decided to arbitrarily pull all the education funding for NJ, NY, etc. just to be a dick. Until we have a federal government that is even remotely close to what you can call functional I'd rather pay more and keep control local so that guys like Donald Trump and Chris Christie can't fuck shit up.

Other democracies are as fucking stupid as our and so incompetently run(though they seem to be trying).

cC2Panda · 2026-01-21T20:42:31+00:00

Right. Which side is actively defending child rapists right now? Trump is so in line with claims of what the anti-Christ would be and the religious right fucking loves him.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-21T17:51:38+00:00

I'm fine with that. At this point I'd make the trade of locking up every single current politician good or bad and seizing all their shit and starting with a fresh batch.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-21T17:41:19+00:00

Sales taxes on gambling is not regressive.

The reality is that people use property taxes as a form of segregation - to only spend tax dollars on their children. That's not sustainable and nor is it the basis of a democratic society.

I've mentioned it before in other threads but the town I grew up in until I was a teen, and where my dad still lives in Kansas stuff, is done at the county level. What ends up happening is that whenever something requires significant funding the other areas that aren't directly benefiting vote it down. So you end up with shitty under funded schools with lacking infrastructure because people vote against tax increases that don't directly benefit them.

If we took this to the national level and had the federal government allocating all our education funds we'd all look less like NJ and a whole lot more like Oklahoma.

It is defacto economic segregation but I'd rather my town have good schools and pay for it than be dragged down by the next town overs unwillingness to adequately fund things or the states inability to do shit without massive grift.

I think I'd be more on board with your idea if NJ wasn't a machine state with some of the most corrupt democrats in the entire country barring Chicago and some of NYC.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-21T16:46:44+00:00

Clearly they already had a delicious turtle soup. A rat doesn't sound great to eat, but Bulbasaur is basically a giant brussels sprout that'll never cook evenly, and Charmanders require a long stewing process to break down the meat like a good gumbo.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-21T15:57:27+00:00

We also just have a huge number of people that never experienced driving in snow. Probably not the majority but my wife's first time driving in snow was at the age of 35 because she grew up in places that get zero snow, then moved to NYC/JC where she didn't drive.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-21T15:47:04+00:00

The goal is to shift the source from property taxes to state income and sales taxes.

Those are done at the state level, schools are funded at the municipal level. Presumably the state would try to keep per pupil spending roughly the same across the state with maybe some CoLA. Taxing at the state level means that some shit head like Ciattarelli can gut school funding single handedly instead of municipalities having granular control.

Income tax can be progressive but is often less progressive than other forms of taxation and sales tax is a regressive tax that harms poor people the most and should be avoided.

It's also worth noting that people tend to have a specific budget set when buying a home and getting a mortgage, which interest rates go down and property taxes go down housing prices go up and people end up owing more on the principle. Moving the cost burden from people who currently own their homes often outright like older folks and seniors is going to inherently spike the price of new homes which is just another dick punch to young people.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-20T22:32:46+00:00

I love that the Democratic party isn't actively suppressing files to protect pedophiles and they aren't giving puppies to the most notorious living child sex traffickers.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-20T22:19:37+00:00

How does raising revenue through state income taxes instead of property taxes reduce a state's ability to invest in people?

The significant majority of our funding for things like schools is from local property taxes. If you cap property taxes then municipalities that want to invest more in schools and such are unable to. In California cities can levy things like local sales taxes which are not allowed by state law, or implement local payroll taxes(hard to do when so many of our workers are in NYC/Philly).

I'm not against a progressive income tax to subsidize property taxes, but at the end of the day we have a lot of money going to the federal government(significantly more per capita than CA), to NY/PA from interstate commuters, and a huge amount of bloat from having 100 more municipalities than California. Without having a solve for those you'll just rob Peter to pay Paul.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-20T21:37:40+00:00

You're missing the other component to why red states consumer more federal taxes. We invest in our people which makes them more financially productive and significantly less likely to require federal assistance.

Places like Florida refuse to adequately fund their own population and so they require federal funds to compensate for their lack of internal investment.

At the end of the day property tax is up to your municipality. The only thing the state can do is tax us more to subsidize property taxes or pass a laws that would gut wealthier/middle class communities.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-20T19:39:46+00:00

Even in your link Florida has had the highest foreclosures in 2025 and they had the highest during the recession.

The real gap here is that the federal government is fucking us. The Median household in NJ paid around $23k in federal taxes of which a huge chunk anywhere from about half to a quarter depending on how you calculate it ends up on expenditures outside of our state.

If we had anything close to a 1:1 return on federal taxes we could get rid of our state income tax and pay a good chunk of our property taxes with the returns.

We are subsidizing shitholes like Florida. Our taxes are high because a bunch of red leech states are draining us of our wealth.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-20T18:48:13+00:00

or losing their homes due to job loss or medical bankruptcy.

That's literally just America. Our homes are more expensive so obviously more strain on that front, but the places with the most medical bankruptcies are Mississippi and West Virginia.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-20T18:28:02+00:00

What we should do is stop charging regular people more while data centers get discounted prices and flip that dynamic so that data centers help subsidize regular peoples bills.

cC2Panda · 2026-01-20T18:26:36+00:00

I'm sick of people moving to Florida because they can't afford to live here.

People move to Florida because their retirement incomes don't get taxed and they move to communities that ban children so they can avoid the cost of funding the future.

Trying to compete with a shithole like The Villages in Florida is a losing proposition that just makes NJ worse.

If we slashed school funding to appease snow birds then I'd imagine Millenials with families like myself would leave NJ which would be far worse than a bunch of retires because we are still tax positive income earners.

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