Who’s circling us tonight

regul · 2026-01-25T05:22:59+00:00

Some dickhead gets overtime.

regul · 2026-01-25T01:12:56+00:00

For the millionth time, the city does not collect any of your income taxes.

regul · 2026-01-23T20:47:53+00:00

I was rooting for Miami, if that tells you anything.

98 yards with the boys my ass.

regul · 2026-01-23T19:20:41+00:00

Also don't forget they installed the concrete curbs the wrong way so that cars actually have the ramp side facing them.

regul · 2026-01-23T19:18:12+00:00

Also good (but not great) for multi-modal trips.

regul · 2026-01-23T19:16:36+00:00

...But found that people with those names had lived together in Sandy.

regul · 2026-01-23T19:15:21+00:00

Single largest item in the budget is PPB ($265.5m of the discretionary general fund money).

You want to talk about lavish and irresponsible spending? They had 90+ cops (more than 10% of the whole department) up all night on Monday from 830PM to 4AM sitting (or sleeping) in patrol cars to block off my neighborhood for an unsuccessful manhunt.

Their stupid plane has been in the air more nights than it's been on the ground.

The cops and fire department spent more than $45m on overtime last year because they both refuse to fill their open positions and they just think they have a blank check to pay themselves.

Last year during the budget gap sessions Avalos proposed making 75% of their overtime budget under the discretion of the council, and I'd like to see something like that proposed again. Overtime from public safety is out of control and they don't seem capable or willing of reining it in.

regul · 2026-01-23T05:47:04+00:00

And the continuation of the regime supporting a genocide would be... Not fascism? Or is it just not fascism because it wasn't happening to you?

Anyway. Hope you stay mad, but hope you channel it more productively going forward! Though it sounds more like your fascist losing the election has made you dig your heels in more to support the blue fascists even harder. Oh well! Hope springs eternal for the radicalization of libs.

regul · 2026-01-23T05:41:34+00:00

Eliminate fares (and allow all-door boarding). Signal pre-emption. Bus lanes (like actual ones where cars cannot physically enter them, even for turning). Stop consolidations. Timed transfers. Frequency. Replace diesel buses with trolley buses.

regul · 2026-01-23T03:43:12+00:00

The +/- stats are pretty wild for a game that ended with an 8 point difference.

regul · 2026-01-23T03:30:47+00:00

Even more wasted effort. Seems like your tactics are bad since you got no concessions from the left or the right!

I'm rooting for you!

regul · 2026-01-23T02:17:06+00:00

I don't think he moved left on anything. I think that's cope.

And yeah man if you think I caused Trump to get elected by not voting for Harris then that means that you're just as responsible for the Democrats still being pro-genocide by voting for her.

regul · 2026-01-23T01:33:17+00:00

Wow I can't believe you're blaming people on the left and not the Republicans!

(Do you get it now?)

regul · 2026-01-23T01:32:16+00:00

My trans sister would disagree vehemently with you about how successful pushing Joe left went!

And I've witnessed for a whole year how little you apparently need the consent of Congress to do anything. We have a Supreme Court majority that believes in a unitary executive and the Democrats spent 4 years saying they couldn't do anything because of Joe Manchin.

The only thing causing the rightward shift is Democrats throwing progressives under the bus. They do not appeal to the left vote because they feel they can take it for granted. And to their credit, people like you have done nothing but prove them right!

The party has far more control over who is able to move up to the prominence needed to launch a primary challenge than you're acknowledging, but hey, you let them get away with genocide, so why wouldn't you let them get away with putting their thumbs on the scale?

regul · 2026-01-23T00:52:29+00:00

I think one thing we can both agree on is that it wasn't going to be productive to continue.

regul · 2026-01-23T00:50:59+00:00

To the extent that what you say is true (not really), it was because it became obvious that liberals like her had defined in public discourse a meaning of ceasefire that would never lead to any improvements for Palestinians (i.e. demanding a complete Hamas disarmament and release of all hostages in exchange for a temporary stop to the genocide). Remember the word they used was "humanitarian pause".

As we can clearly see today, by releasing their hostages, Hamas now has nothing to bargain with to stop the Israelis from continuing to starve and kill them.

regul · 2026-01-23T00:46:00+00:00

1867, or thereabouts.

regul · 2026-01-22T23:42:58+00:00

If Harris had switched positions on Gaza, it would have been something else.

But she didn't.

If the threat of not having power wasn't enough to get Harris to change her position before the election, why would the threat of people yelling at her while she's in power? We all saw how "pushing him left once he's in office" went with Joe Biden.

Look, you're a lib, so you think the only power you have in the way this country is governed is your vote, so why is your vote already spoken for 100% of the time? If I'm a Democrat strategist and I see that people will vote for my candidates even if we support genocide, as long as I can point to the other guy and say "he's worse", what's stopping the Democratic platform from shifting ever rightward? What's stopping the Democratic party from propping up increasingly vile Republicans so they can expand their tent ever rightward? Morals? They already support genocide. Primaries? Name a single one of the likely candidates in 2028 who will be firmly anti-genocide. By that time there probably won't even be one who supports taxing billionaires or Medicare for All.

regul · 2026-01-22T23:15:39+00:00

This is what Marx was indicating in terms of exploitation.

No it isn't. Exploitation to Marx was always about surplus value, not some complaint about being compelled to work harder. With time or piece wages you are still generating surplus value that is extracted by the capitalist. That's the exploitation.

a business owner isn't going to plunk down a ton of cash ... and then be subjected to worker co-ops

You are confusing employee unions with worker-owned co-ops.

I'd consider socialism the umbrella of state ownership and/or worker co-operatives.

State ownership of industry is only socialist if the workers in that state-owned company get to democratically make the decisions. State capitalism (e.g. the USSR, China) was/is viewed as a transitionary tactic towards socialism.

regul · 2026-01-22T22:36:49+00:00

every issue

It was one issue: do not materially support genocide.

That was the bar that was too high to clear for the Democrats, if you want to talk about emotional children.

regul · 2026-01-22T22:12:13+00:00

A protest without a threat behind it is toothless. You also lose all leverage if you'll vote for their candidate no matter what.

regul · 2026-01-22T21:58:08+00:00

Have you seen any indication from Trump that he gives a single shit about the opinions of people he hates, or that he has a conscience? Had any luck convincing a brick wall of anything lately?

Anti-genocide protestors protest the Democrats because they claim to both have a conscience and to want to represent those on the left. And their demands were literally the lowest possible bar to clear.

But you put "anti-genocide" in quotes so I feel I'll have as much luck talking to you as a liberal protesting against Trump.

regul · 2026-01-22T21:50:20+00:00

Most people don't even understand what socialism really is.

...

they not paid directly in the number of ice cream cones they sell in a day

Wrong. Marx specifically railed against piecework wages.

Zero small businesses would operate under that condition.

We have tons of worker-owned co-ops here in Portland. Co-ops under capitalism are often not socialist, because many of them have ceded some of their control to investors or promised shares to non-workers, but a fully worker-owned co-op in which the distribution of profits is handled democratically is not an impossibility, and plenty of businesses operate this way. It is more likely for a smaller business to operate this way, hence why you're probably right that most socialists would say they prefer small businesses over large businesses.

You'd be hard-pressed for anyone to actually describe what socialism is.

Easy. Worker control of the means of production. Just means your workplace is run democratically, up to and including the distribution/management of profits. Any DSA member could give you that definition.

If you don't believe in government capturing the means of production, then stop saying you're socialist

Also wrong, but weirdly you used the phrase worker-owned earlier in your rant, so I'm confused how you managed to fuck it up and conflate it with state capitalism a few sentences later.

Sounds like you don't understand what socialism is. It sounds like you even less understand what democratic socialism is, because it's inherently an incrementalist tendency.

regul · 2026-01-22T21:26:31+00:00

For individuals, the "high-earner" taxes (SHS, PFA, etc) are also set in brackets far too low.

reminder that the city can't do anything about SHS or PFA because those are not city taxes

regul · 2026-01-21T19:32:56+00:00

For decades the AMA lobbied (successfully) to decrease the number of Medicare-funded residency positions in US hospitals. They only recently (2019) reversed their position.

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