Charging $300 for aspirin is unconscionable because
- the aspirin cost $.25
- the hospital is actively preventing you from using alternatives
Neither of those apply here.
The fuel costs were astronomically higher due to the demand... They're just passing that cost on to you, exactly as the contract stipulates.
The power company can't stop you from using wood, propane, or a gas powered generator to heat your home.
There is some fuckery in that there are very few places in the country where you can choose from more than one electric provider, but no one could generate cheap power with gas prices as they are.
Sucks, but reality sometimes does.
Not true, brother.
You can choose to heat your own home with electricity, natural gas, propane (guess what, if you filled your propane tank last month, you didn't pay "surge" pricing), wood, etc, etc.
Or just turn down the thermostat, put on more clothes, chop some wood, do some jumping jacks, etc.
You can't buy property and live off the land or off the grid.
WTF? Really?
A large number of preppers would like a word with you...
It's a socialist game to act like you didn't have any choices and someone else should be responsible to take care of you.
I do agree that we should remove more regulation, allowing people more choice, but I don't currently believe it would have changed much here.
A $17k electric bill sucks, but that's what happens when you hit record energy pricing and make absolutely no accommodation in your consumption. Personal responsibility is a thing.
Any attempt to soften this blow, without holding the consumers responsible, will WEAKEN our ability to weather a crisis like this in the future.
Quit with the emotional arguments!
The power companies didn't do anything nefarious.
The coldest weather on record created the highest power demand on record, which created the greatest natural gas demand on record.
A free market, operating normally, would expect to see record natural gas prices at the same time. This isn't some scheme to defraud Texans. This is how a free market works.
If you want to protect yourself against price surges like that, the free market allows you to do so. Hedges on critical commodities are a thing for a reason. You just have to prepare before the emergency.
Texans took care of one another, largely without government interference.
That's MAGA af.
Don't cry like a simp because the free market operated properly.
If government regs made it worse, then you should be pissed.
We don't need any of this "boo hoo hoo, everyone in the country needed to stay warm all at once, and I had to compete with others for the limited supply of natural gas".
That's how it works, and reality doesn't care about your feelings. GTFO with that socialist BS.
Decentralization means he can't shut it down.
It is way more vulnerable to a government induced crash now, however, because more government regulated institutions have bought in.
I'll own Bitcoin through that simply because he can't shut it down.
Don't allow others to stand astride your ability to trade.
Also, Joe can't print $4 trillion in Bitcoin next year, so that's good.
Your test sounds like it would do the job.
I have a proposal for a quicker test:
Do a brain scan whole you explain how UPS eliminated all of the left turns and backing up from their routes.
If their brain lights up, thinking about how that could be accomplished, and why you would want to do it, you have a voter.
If it gives the equivalent of the eyes glazed over vacant stare, next, please!
If they have the curiosity to wonder about first and second order consequences of strange sounding policies implemented in complex systems...
You can probably assume 3-6 on your list.
I keep admonishing people not to engage in demoralizing sarcasm, though the sentiment is exactly correct.
So, if we can't trust the feds to look into it, what would pedes do?
The chans love a good mystery. What data can we get
- during the attack
- potentially from a cooperative gab leadership
Do we have people here capable of looking in to this? I bet we do!
I bet the chans would be interested, given their well known feelings about censorship, and their penchant for conspiracy-theory hunts.
Maybe he should have stood on principle, like Trump, and not engaged in deep state level shenanigans.
Trump is the cleanest mfer to grace DC with his presence since... Well, maybe ever.
That is what allowed him to get as far as he did.
And if you think Trump "lost", if you think his movement hasn't fundamentally changed the attitude of the peasants toward their oligarchs...
well, if you think that, you're not paying attention.
This is the right attitude.
I live in Oklahoma. It's basically the same here, though I haven't lost power. It helps that I can see the cloud from the cooling tower on a massive natural gas turbine plant from my house...
That said, tomorrow is forecast to start the main melt. It's the first day in over a week we'll clear freezing. And the highs will be well above freezing for the remainder of the ten day forecast.
What I'm saying is, we've basically made it through now.
But taking matters into your own hands is MAGA af. Keep it up, pede.
I never joined the military. But I came really close. And I didn't bail on it for what I would now consider to be the "right" reasons...
It's pretty effed to recruit our young men with promises of honor and moral rectitude, then to send them into the places we do with the orders we issue.
There is certainly honor in being willing to put your life on the line to protect the rights and lives of your fellow citizens.
If that's what our military spent its time doing, I bet so many of our brothers and sons wouldn't come home hungry for the barrel of a pistol.
You can't change the lies you were told or the mission you were sent on. Remember why you thought you went.
Thank you for being willing to serve, even if it didn't turn out to be what you expected. May your demons let you rest at night.
Define yourself by who you choose to be today.
Don't be afraid to warn young men about it.
I haven't put on a mask to walk into a business in my state in months.
A few still wear them, but I haven't even been offered a mask by the door Nazis in quite some time. When they did offer, I didn't slow down, or even look at them. I simply, cheerfully replied "I'm good, thanks!", and kept walking.
Deep down, even the zealots know that forcing attire onto another person against their will is... Fucked up.
There are benefits to living in "flyover country". I assume it's similar in Canadia.
You're right.
And you don't need to allow the despair to overwhelm you.
This isn't new. I've been called a conspiracy theorist for twenty years now, for pointing out exactly this kind of manipulation and malfeasance. This manipulation has been going on at least that long.
Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Julian Assange helped open some people's eyes. But most were still blinded by partisanship. Those journalists were bad, because they were making the GOP look bad...
Then reddit told me they were all evil because they attacked Hillary...
POLITICAL PARTY IS A LIE!!
But more people are awake to that fact now than ever before.
I wrote off the GOP before the Dems. There is still no reason for loyalty to either party (or the libertarians).
But this movement, whether or not helmed by Donald Trump, has changed my perspective, has restored my faith in my people.
Now I know that, come what may, we will not allow the twin sparks of liberty and justice to be extinguished from the earth. We are awake.
Take courage. Your brothers are with you, and we are not the minority, as the demagogues would have you believe.
Continue to live your life guided by the principles that made this country the greatest the world has ever seen.
Continue to think carefully about why those principles exist, and how those in power attempt to circumvent them.
Continue to loudly and confidently call out the grift and fraud; do not allow them to intimidate you or shame you into silence.
Continue to rearrange your life to deny income and information to the enemies of the people (wall street, establishment politicians of any party, the mainstream press, big tech, almost anyone with a net worth over $100M). This one is tricky, but you can do it!
DO NOT back down from hard conversations with family and friends. You owe them better than that, even if they can't appreciate it at first.
You are the solution. I am the solution. We are winning.
Don't let them demoralize you into giving up by lying to you about that fact.
They will not prevail against the wrath of We The People.
Sic semper tyrannis.
Because this movement of ours must have absolute and complete power over whatever party we form and complete and absolute power over whatever elected office we get, in order to enforce good moral and ethical principles ...
The gop will not
Truth. We must be exceptionally vigilant, because the cancer knows how to disguise its nature.
You are also right that scumbags who are forced to act virtuous have always been an important part of our country. Power corrupts, and it attracts those who were already corrupt. People who honestly believe that solutions come from the people, that government is more likely to screw it up worse than to fix an issue... those people don't tend to have a burning desire to go into politics.
Which is why we must be unwavering in our expectations that our leaders are bound to the principles that allow our society to prosper. We can't expect them to do it on their own. It's not in their nature.
It is a fool who expects to be ruled by angels. We must at least be ready to call out the demons, regardless of which color they paint their political signs.
Mitch Mcconnell is one such, trying to use a halo to hide his horns. Pretending to be on the side of truth and light is not the same as giving battle to protect it.
The GOP is the inevitable result of the pursuit of naked power without respect to principles. They've written down some wonderful sounding rhetoric in their official platform, but they are a party infested with worms and maggots, who have long ago forgotten the principles that would make Americans stand with them.
I wholeheartedly agree that a new party is needed. I just don't see how it will be any different from the current cancer unless it bears a commitment to principles that has long been absent from the GOP.
This is a much more measured and reasoned discussion than I expected on this topic. You are not allowing yourself to resort to the bully tactics that I expected from one holding your position. Respect for that.
I agree that "who watches the watchmen" is a fundamental question in a Republic. I also agree that the answer has boiled down to "no one" for far too long.
I mean, not literally no one; I've been deeply concerned about media lies and political deception basically since I was old enough to think for myself (W). However, I seemed to be nearly alone. It was soooo difficult to get anyone to care, I was near the point of despair.
However, that's not where we are today.
Millions of people have stood and called out the media deceptions and political shenanigans in a way I was worried Americans had forgotten.
We allowed ourselves to become too comfortable in the success of our system. It's so good that it creates a society that seems invincible. We have all these checks and balances, so the average citizen feels they can relax and live their own life. It's awesome that we've become that successful.
However, millions of Americans have now called out "enough".
The watchers were drowsy, but now I know they're not gone. This movement has restored my faith in my people. We will not allow the twin sparks of liberty and justice to sputter out on our watch.
I'm not 100% in favor of every thought that enters Trump's head.
However, he was the first with real power to stand up to the media and political establishment, and I'll always love him for that. I'll support him as long as his movement appears to be for the greater good (there's plenty left to do).
So, in a way, I have allowed pragmatism to guide my political actions. However, I am here to restore that which made this country the greatest the world has ever known. MAGA. If this movement drifts away from those principles, it will have drifted away from me.
I don't move. And that is what this Republic requires.
The two aren't independent...
The reason we have a military with the capabilities we do...
The reason we have an industrial society CAPABLE of outfitting that military...
The reason we defeated the USSR economically...
ALL of that is reality because we have crafted a set of principles that, when followed, allow our society to coexist and cooperate on a level not achieved by any other culture.
The principles of our society are not to lay down and be a pussy. They allow, no, require, that we take up arms to defend her when necessary.
But those principles also require we observer certain customs as we shoulder those arms.
You wish to paint me with the brush of naivete...
But your model of might-makes-right fails utterly to grasp what makes us mighty.
Be ready to do what must be done to uphold the greatest nation on earth. Part of being ready means to understand what that means. We cannot protect her while destroying that which made her great.
That side of human nature is exactly why ethics exists.
And the ethics developed over millennia of dealing with men who believe like you, the superiority of that moral code, when followed, is why western civilization has dominated all others.
Only when men can trust one another to abide by a shared code can we develop into a true society.
The ends don't justify the means.
Every single "right" in the right hand column is bullshit.
Positive (aka bullshit) rights vs negative rights.
Positive rights are merely a trick of rhetoric; they cannot exist, logically, without undermining negative rights to the point they no longer mean anything.
Also, they left off perhaps the most important negative right of all, the right to self defense.
This is a declaration of rights that is intended to sound good, but to actually undermine the most basic rights that preserve our liberty.
CA puts ridiculous limits on their market...
If you want reliable power, CA is NOT your role model.