> we have freedom of association, and a business may not want to associate with someone who has opinions counter to their own.
Yes and no. Take the Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled in the baker's favor on the grounds that forcing him to bake the cake would violate his religious freedoms. I wonder, if the baker had refused purely as a personal preference not to do business with gay couples (freedom of association), would the court have ruled differently? As far as I know the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on such a question.
> Since January 2016, EPA has been monitoring compliance with its emergency administrative order (as amended) to ensure that Flint’s drinking water system continues to improve. Flint’s system currently meets regulatory criteria for lead and copper. EPA will continue to oversee the City’s efforts to transition to a long-term drinking water source and also monitor its replacement of lead (and galvanized) service lines throughout Flint
The EPA famously declared the air safe following 9/11. Their credibility is, at least for me personally, negligible. The flint water crisis and the Gold King Mine are other examples.
People are rightfully worried and angered. Your dismissal of them as "losing their mind" or "hysterical" is at best tone deaf, and at worst an intentional tactic to downplay the event. Appeals to governmental authority falls flat when the trust of the people no longer exists for their governmental institutions.
From the article: U.S. EPA continues to assist Norfolk Southern and Columbiana Emergency Management Agency with voluntary residential air screening. ... To increase the rate of screening, Norfolk Southern—with U.S. EPA assistance—is bringing more teams and equipment to East Palestine.
You expect Norfolk Southern to perform honest screening which would result in millions upon millions in damages to be paid out? Why isnt the EPA in charge of this rather than following the lead of Norfolk?
I find it both odd and interesting that this topic, and so many others in our culture, boils down to whether someone/something is racist or not. Racism has become the ultimate morality test. Someone got ChatGPT to say the N-word. Queue up two dozen articles across various neoliberal publications: "we must do more to ensure AI does not harm the most vulnerable in our societies." I agree with many of the points made in the article about our own projection of morality onto the machine.
Chief Diversity Officer - ... responsible for guiding and scaling inclusion strategy and diversity initiatives across Twilio's global workforce
Chief People Officer - .. responsible for driving the talent development and acquisition strategy, and building infrastructure to support a thriving culture of belonging, diversity and inclusion across the company
I think your analysis is a good one given the data we have, and can be used to draw some conclusions or guide general discussion. However the analysis is indeed limited by the data available. The AAA data does not consider variability by gender, race, socioeconomics, location, etc. Further it does not normalize variability in the types of driving being done (teslas have limited range, are not towing trailers, etc), nor other technological advances (modern vs older vehicles).
> For better or worse, both major parties in US noted that you can make anything work well if you compare the other team to nazis.
Agreed, I think this serves a common purpose as other generalized propaganda on the subject. The idea is to poison the well concerning any good-faith discussion of national socialism such that people self-moderate and dismiss the idea prima facie. In this very thread, I pointed to the economic recovery in pre-WW2 Germany which was undeniably facilitated by a shift to nationalist, socialist policies. When I did, you dismissed the idea immediately due to "facism" - announcing you'd withdraw from the conversation if indeed national socialism was the topic.
> No. Because it is a bad idea. It is difficult to put in words how bad an idea it is.
Precisely, I've seen this pattern time and time again. It is prima facie a bad idea, but proof cannot be articulated. In such cases, the fallback is often (not accusing you of this) to attack the person suggesting the idea rather than the idea itself (ad hominem). I agree predictability and stability are ideal characteristics, but only in scenarios where there are other positive characteristics. Predictable and stable misery is a pretty bad state to be in. I think we can agree that the current system has many faults. One of these faults, I think, is that the system has optimized the wealth and opportunity for a very few in number. I believe the nation requires a shift in philosophy away from globalist, hyper individualism, and towards an inward looking (nationalist) stance that optimizes the wellbeing of the people (socialism). Such a shift in national philosophy, as was seen in pre-WW2 Germany, has shown an ability to correct for the excesses and decay of a globalist and individual culture, improving the outlook dramatically for the citizens. By many measures (num of children, unemployment, inflation, wealth, life expectancy) national socialism improved Germany dramatically.