Lord Ratner

A TCAS alert is not "common" to the point you ignore them, even in DCA. Or any airport in America. Or anywhere. Especially when you can see the converging altitudes. Now, I can understand the regional pilots continuing through a tcas alert because they heard that the other aircraft has them in sight. Especially when it's a slow-moving helicopter. And getting visual on the wrong aircraft in the ocean of bright lights, on nogs, is also completely predictable. So far I don't think this is on the pilots of either aircraft, but we'll see. But if the helicopter didn't have a display that shows the surrounding traffic, this is on the military. And anybody who is surprised by that has had their head in the sand forever. DCA has been pretending like their bullshit airspace arrangement is perfectly ok and no big deal for a long time. Sadly, this was bound to happen. Tragedies happen, and maybe there is a traffic display in the helicopter, but so far the Helo pilots over here opining do not believe there is one. Any -60 pilots know the answer? Drowning in ice water is a horrific way to go. I can't even fathom being one of the families right now.

Anyone remember the KCBM sim instructor who went on the news on the 90s saying that the air force was refusing to add TCAS to aircraft and it was a hazard... Right before a military plane crashed into an airliner over the ocean killing everyone? The military never learns... What a shitty day for aviation.

The obvious counterpoint is that the average self-defense posture doesn't include planning for body armor. And 5.7 doesn't have great ballistics. It doesn't have bad ballistics, but for the higher price you probably want better performance. Against armor it's the only option for compact concealability. But I'm not sure how much I care. Personally, one of the reasons I carry is because I have kids, and the places that kids congregate have become (rare, admittedly) targets for the social-reject-mass-shooters. That's probably the most likely bad guy to have body armor in a self-defense situation... short of a Heat-style bank robbery, and I ain't getting involved in that 🤣😂. If one can consider the ballistics of 5.7 "good enough" for CCW purposes (verdict pending), and we don't care about body armor, then we still have the issue of capacity. 21 rounds is a *lot* of lead to throw at a problem, and like I said, I don't carry spare magazines, and neither do most others. Going from 13 to 21 for a sub compact (and 13 rounds is a recent development thanks to the P365X) is a huge upgrade. And the ammo cost is mostly irrelevant since this isn't a gun to take to the range for a full day of shooting. 1k-2k rounds to get comfortable, then 100 rounds every few months to stay proficient. Some high-dollar personal defence ammo for when you are carrying, but that's (hopefully) a one-time charge. So I'm gonna get it and see. I've got to do more research on the ballistics. I might just buy a pork butt and see for myself. I know the round will zip through bone, but will it just zip through the bad guy entirely? Not ideal. Then it has to feel and carry like the P365x which I absolutely love. With KelTec, who knows? Also it's fucking hideous, but I feel it can get away with that for being truly unique. Besides, M2 proves every day that you can be hideous *and* useful. 🤣🖕😚

During WWII there were scientists in the Manhattan project leaking research to the Soviets. They thought the technology was too powerful and too dangerous to be in the hands of one nation. And the technical, socially awkward, autistic-adjacent minds of the world's top brainiacs had an uncomfortable appreciation for a communist system that "solved" a lot of the messiness associated with a free democratic system. Sound familiar? I can't imagine how the Chinese got their hands on that data when nearly every originating member of the OpenAI team has resigned with very public protests regarding the safeguards in place for the advent of AGI.

Retarded. He starts the article by telling us that he *used to* talk to Elon all the time, then provides an analysis that has zero insider insight or connection to his experiences with Elon. But he hopes the reader will assume that his five reasons are somehow informed by something Elon told him. Point 2 is a perfect example. He should have written "I believe he was upset..." But instead he makes it seem like Elon told him this personally. Point 3 is even more retarded. Lot of people out there who are upset they didn't get to ride the elevator to the top with him.

Yeah I'm breaking my rule about new calibers, because this is such an intriguing gun. It's a pure CCW gun, no other purpose, so 5.7 makes sense if you want to cram the maximum number of rounds in it. And once you're proficient with it, you only need to keep a single box of carry ammo for it, and you can just buy a box at the range when you pop in to stay current. I dunno, it might suck, but it might also be genius. I'll let y'all know when I get it. If it was $800-1k I'd laugh and move on. But at $400, if I don't like it I'll sell it for $200 and call it a day, or just keep it in the safe to confuse people 🤣.

You're missing the point. There are two reasons this is interesting, the first is California and other states that are putting restrictions on how many rounds are removable magazine can carry. This bypasses it in a way that will drive them insane. But the second, which I find more compelling, is how many people out there think that they're going to be reloading in some sort of Red Dawn style shootout. The idea of this new pistol is to give you 21 rounds in something much smaller and easier to conceal than a full frame handgun. If it conceals as well as a p365, then I would much rather have the extra eight rounds then the ability to swap magazines (which I absolutely do not carry extra magazines). But it's Kel-Tec. They're basically the only innovative gun maker left, but they strike out *a lot.* I will say, I have enjoyed the KSG-410 quite a bit.

Anyone see KelTec's new CCW abomination? I think it might actually be pure genius, but everything with KelTec is a crap shoot. But for $400, I think I'm going to break my rule about buying new calibers... I just hope it's actually comfortable to shoot.

"It hasn't got anything to do at all with what someone else paid for their home. Property taxes must cover the things we agree that property taxes must cover." You are not a conservative. That's fine, and maybe you are in other areas, but your taxation philosophy is juvenile at best. If you can engage on the topic by actually responding to the questions being posed to you, we can continue. Otherwise I can only point out how you're wrong, I can't actually make you read it. Or understand it for that matter. That's my shortcoming, not necessarily yours.

Once again, you're not really saying anything of substance. But we can take this argument one or two steps further to show the absolute absurdity of your contention. Some people, through the gross unfairness of the sales tax system, are paying far less than other people to fund all of our infrastructure because they just refuse to buy more things. Your most consistent "evidence" is how everyone else does it differently. That's rather amusing coming from an American. I believe we're one of only two or three countries on Earth who have codified Free speech into the foundation of our country. And boy does that create some problems with social division. I guess since we're the only ones doing it it must be a contributing factor, eh? Our gun laws are pretty unique as well. Doesn't take much to see what a huge contributing factor that is to violence and death. You have danced around every single attempt to address the actual issue of both property tax, and the concept of a property tax that adjusts based only on the spending of others. It doesn't matter how many other people are doing it. Is it right, or is it wrong? If it is wrong, then it is not a viable solution, and therefore not a contributing factor. The discussion has no point if we broaden it to allow for unethical systemic decisions. Nowhere have I asserted that taxation in and of itself is immoral or wrong. I've been very specific with what type of taxation I am referring to, even going deeper as to isolate changes to that mechanic rather than the mechanic itself. The *entire* point is that some forms of taxation are moral, and some forms are not. Prop 13 was a rebellion against an immoral form of taxation. That's it. Therefore whatever the solution is, it is not to revert to the immoral form of taxation just because everyone else is doing it. The solution, if you refuse to fix spending, is to increase the forms of taxation that are not unethical. Look, California was just ahead of the curve. Texas is having this debate now and is moving in the direction of California anyways. For 100 plus years the housing market tracked inflation almost perfectly, so this conversation was largely irrelevant. Unless you were in California during the '70s when explosive growth caused their housing prices to balloon. The rest of the country didn't experience a similar spike in prices until the global financial crisis broke the housing market. That's the only reason "everyone else does it differently." And all of this started with a statement you started with that is objectively false. "This is perhaps one of the consequences of serially under-funding your state based on a property tax law that all but guarantees your local governments will be unable to fund basic services." It is top to bottom disingenuous to imply that California cannot fund basic services as a function of their property tax law. First of, all prop 13 does is limit tax *growth*. Second, home price appreciation in California has wildly outpaced inflation, so proposition 13 is only preventing the tax revenues from increasing in the same irrational manner that the housing market has increased. But the inflation in home prices is not matched by the inflation in infrastructure costs. Third, even the California government acknowledges that tax revenues are not lower due to prop 13 because other taxes were increased to compensate: Sales, Hotel, and Utility Taxes Largely Replaced Lost Property Tax Revenue. Figure 14 shows that since Proposition 13 passed property tax revenue (adjusted for inflation) for cities and counties increased over 100 percent. In comparison, hotel, sales, and utility taxes increased over 600 percent. The significant increase in these other local taxes reflects cities’ and counties’ efforts to replace lost property tax revenue. Adjusted for inflation, Proposition 13 reduced cities and counties property tax revenue by almost $10 billion in the first year. Compared to their revenues in 1978–79, local sales, hotel, and utility taxes generated roughly $8.5 billion in additional revenue in 2014–15. Cities and Counties Rely Less on Property Tax Revenues Today. Figure 15 shows the share of revenue by source for cities and counties before Proposition 13 through 2014–15. Before Proposition 13, cities and counties relied almost entirely on property tax revenue. Over time, however, cities and counties increasingly relied on taxes they could raise with voter approval to replace lost property tax revenue. As a result, these other sources of revenue likely are paying for services that before Proposition 13 would have been paid with property tax revenue.

There is no "state of California" with a mind and an opinion. And if there was, it certainly doesn't agree with what you just said. If a state is its people, they have repeatedly (as you point out) refused to repeal 13. If a state is its politicians, then the democrats would like to repeal prop 13, and the republicans would not. Just look at Proposition 5 from the recent elections. If you are siding with the democrats (against the republicans) on a tax measure, your position is almost certainly not a conservative one. I don't live in CA anymore, so I don't benefit. I think the more likely source of your struggle to understand is that you have taken a poorly-considered position on an issue you don't understand well, combined with my poor ability to explain the matter. Everything you've written so far has been chapter-and-verse from the liberal position against proposition 13, yet you have tried to shroud the position as somehow an informed conservative stance. I will make it very simple. No tax that can be changed after the transaction is moral. It might be simpler if you just justify your support for Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax. If you do not support such a tax, then perhaps just explain how property tax is not a wealth tax? You point to the very successes of proposition 13 as the problem with it, then suggest that the supporters are confused. They are not. The two houses in your example were purchased for different prices. Period. Why do you believe that someone who buys something at one price should be saddled with your tax burden simply because you paid more for similar goods at a different time? Your post reeks of the type of jealousy that drives socialist policy. Because your point is illogical. This is the tax version of "she shouldn't have worn that dress if she didn't want to be raped." I already showed that the taxation and spending levels in CA wildly exceed similarly states, even with Prop 13. So when you say that prop 13 is a contributing factor, you either reduce the concept of contributing factor to the point of irrelevance (all taxes and spending are part of the equation, therefore everything is a contributing factor) or you are elevating prop 13 above the legion of bad tax and spending decisions in CA that should be fixed. I can simplify it further. Should CA repeal prop 13 or stop spending billions on not-solving homelessness. What about needle exchange programs? Zoning restrictions that prevent new housing from being built? I'm guessing you can come up with dozens or hundreds of things CA should do first before repealing the single tax provision that sets them ahead of the rest of the country in conservative/libertarian tax policy. The point is that when you have the biggest budget in the country, and the most tax revenue per capita, your problem is not with taxation. It is not a contributing factor, unless everything is, at which point, why say anything at all? So in your mind, you don't own a home. The state owns it and you pay an adjustable fee for the privilege of living there, yes? These are absurd analogies. Let's go one by one: Your toilet flushes are paid by the wastewater service fees assessed by your municipality. They do not scale with the price of your home over time. When you go to Disneyland, you are not purchasing a lifetime pass, nor are you purchasing one of the rides. This one is particularly weak. The communists are the ones who believe you have no right to ownership of property. Property tax is definitionally a wealth tax. You bring up socialism as some sort of defense, but the simple reality is you are on the side of California Progressives and against California conservatives. That's not a guarantee you are wrong, but it's as close as you'll get. Which of us is siding with Bernie here? Honestly it doesn't seems like you've thought much about this at all, as your examples and scenarios are incongruent at best. Agreed, this discussion is quite fun. Obviously on a surface (and largely useless) level you are correct literally. California doesn't have enough money. But that sentence is incomplete and misleading. The complete first sentence is : California does not have enough tax revenue to fund the infrastructure required to keep the state from burning to the ground and the many social programs they wish to enact. If you answer that sentence with: California needs to increase tax revenue in order to fund the infrastructure and social programs (which is absolutely not the conservative answer) then the next part gets us to prop 13. And that question is, assuming we are focusing on the property tax component and not the budget voting threshold: Should a person who responsibly purchased a home at a price they could afford, with a tax burden they could afford, have to pay more (even if it exceeds their capacity to afford) simply because another person at a later date paid a higher price for a different but similar house? If you believe the answer to that question is "yes," then I believe you hold an unethical position on the matter.

I would happily take the other side of that bet. The vast majority of landlords are going on Zillow, looking at what similar homes get, and hoping they can set their price $50 higher per month. Financial literacy is an endangered species, and I can't count how many landlords I've talked to who have no idea what their actual input costs are. In any case, it matters in the context of this conversation, when we are talking about financial incentives and burden distribution. I'll take the opposite side of that bet too. You may buy less, but it would not be dramatically less. And it sure as shit wouldn't be zero. Take a look at what the UK pays in value-added tax. They most certainly have hospitality and food, activity for children, furniture, clothes, and all the other stuff. And they have property and income taxes on top of that. Now, there's a great argument that over taxation reduces spending, but we are talking about substituting one form of taxation with another. Honestly I'm not even sure why you think your spending would be reduced with a higher sales tax, considering this hypothetical is meant to replace one form of taxation that you believe everybody including renters is already paying, with another form that everybody would be paying. It's just moving from one bucket to another. It may be a psychological shock at first, but the mask shouldn't be particularly surprising. Edit: Good chat by the way. You are asking all the most interesting questions.

No worries at all. Just want to make sure my position is clear, I am not anti-taxes. Personally, I would just boost consumption taxes into the stratosphere. If that makes the public lose their mind, great. People should know what governing costs. However, if we accept the "necessity" of a wealth tax, then it must be set at the time of taxation. So, whatever you paid for your house is what you will be assessed at. This is Prop 13 in a nutshell. More broadly, however, we need to cut the budget in half, at a minimum. We simply pay for too many things that we don't need to pay for. But that's not a taxation problem, that's a political/voting problem, and outside the context of the discussion. It's not a coincidence Elon is in charge of DOGE. Twitter was a shot across the bow for every organization on Earth. Cutting 80% of your staff without changing the function of the organization reminded a whole lot of lazy capitalists that just because you are spending resources on something doesn't mean it's contributing to anything. That's not really a punishment though. They need the government funded roads more, they pay more. That is offset by many reduced costs in rural areas. Renters don't pay property taxes. Using that logic reduces all transactions to community purchases. Landlords charge what the market allows. If that covers property tax, great, but there is no mechanical reason why it has to. A parent renting to a child might be losing money on the transaction. A landlord who signed a 10 year lease doesn't get to raise the rate mid-term because the taxes went up. So no, renters don't pay property tax. But I'm not 100% sure what point you're getting towards, as I have never argued for a pure use-based system of taxation. Further, we do not in fact need EMS/LE equally, but again, I'm not sure that rabbit hole gets anywhere useful. Why would it crush the economy? The people paying the highest property taxes are the ones paying the highest sales taxes (nominally). You would have to make allowances for the poor, which I endorse, and you actually have a more controllable way of helping the poor without creating loopholes for the rich. Here are some basic examples of sales-tax-only rules to cover social considerations: No sales tax on grocery store food purchases (limit on max exempt transaction amount) No sales tax on school supplies in August/Sept (many states do this already) No sales tax on the first $x,xxx of rent No sales tax on the first $x,xxx of a vehicle purchase No sales tax on daycare You put caps on these exemptions to prevent some billionaire from sending their kid to a $300,000/year "daycare," but you still end up exempting the poor from taxation on "human needs" while actually directing the charity of the tax system towards the things we want to help the poor with. No more using government money on drugs and vape and other non-essentials. And as a benefit, every American gets these benefits, not just the ones who are deemed poor by our overlords. No monitoring or verification required. All tax benefits are calculated at the register and applied on the spot. And no more filing taxes, a stupid industry unto itself. But that's just one way to do it. There are lots of proposals in this arena from much smarter people than me.

Wait... democrats are making unsubstantiated claims about the moral character and legal actions of their opponents, even in the face of on-the-record denials from all involved parties? Say it ain't so.

Not even remotely. Read the ruling, not the headlines.

Too many confounding variables. First, income taxes, sales/use taxes, and wealth taxes (property tax) are all different concepts. The effects of adding or removing them changes based on which ones you change. You suggest two workable options. No different than they are now. With revenues. You can use already collected revenues (either of the three sources), or issue debt and use future revenues to pay off the debt. The problem with debt isn't the debt itself. Alexander Hamilton understood how good debt could be, and we are a powerhouse because of it. It is *what* you spend it on. The things you ask about are not why we are broke. We came up with a solution to this. Fuel taxes. they have had to be adjusted, and electric cars have presented another opportunity to adjust, but it is a very simple way to tax those who use the roads in a fairly consistent manner. Yeah, that would be strange. But I'm not sure why income or sales taxes couldn't pay for these services. That's a separate conversation from property taxes. Taxation is not theft. If you are pointing that question at me, I never made that claim. What I said is that "property tax is unethical." And I believe that any tax that is unpredictable is immoral. If there is a tax that will exist in a perpetual recurring state (which is already questionable), you should be able to predict the maximum amount of that tax for every single year that you may be paying it from the time of the imposition of the tax. So in the case of California, when you buy a home, you know that the tax will be x% of the price you paid, and it will never go up more than 2% per year.

Sure I did: Your entire post is premised off this statement, and the statement is entirely false. A deficit is never a result of too little income. It is a result of too much spending. That's the short version of why your entire post is wrong. You frame it in the most progressive way imaginable, which is surprising coming from you. Prop 13 was a revolt against high taxes. It accomplished it's goal. Correct. Those who properly budgeted for purchasing a house to account for being able to afford property taxes that can not be increased beyond their capacity to pay due entirely to the purchasing habits of others. No one in CA is being discriminated against. If you think your neighbor should have higher taxes because *you* paid more to buy a home, you are the problem. Please, tell me what things you own, completely and without debt, that you should be priced out of because other people decide they want it more at a later date. Your car? Your clothes? Again, it's *never* under taxation. There is only taxation. The "over" and "under" can only be applied to spending. You are framing this like a liberal. Debt never happens without spending, regardless of the revenue. Ever. No shit. "Writing checks," even your analogy supports my point. writing checks is *spending* Besides, you can run the experiment in other liberal states with no Prop 13 analog. Both New York and New Jersey have deficits. No Prop 13 to lean on. Just look at the spending per captia of CA, which has nothing to do with revenue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets CA: $7,634 NY: $6,746 TX: $3,573 FL: $3,476 Lol, a cartel? You need to elaborate on this one, and explain how the exploding real estate markets in Texas, Arizona, and Florida, all areas with devastating price increases and massive institutional buying, are somehow different. Be sure to account for California's decades-long attack on development and growth. Again, unbelievable framing. Long-term property owners are "pocketing" property taxes? Who's? Yours? Did your taxes go up because of them? Nope. This is some Bernie Sanders level philosophy. It was their money to start with. They bought a house they could afford with a tax burden they could afford. Now because other people are *voluntarily* buying homes at higher prices, the long-term owners are "pocketing" taxes? Incredible. Honestly it's stunning to see an alleged conservative misdiagnose the problem in California so thoroughly as to become progressive in the course of doing so. Even more alarming is what your entire premise leads to. There is only one logical solution to the deficit if the true problem, as you suggest, is under taxation. If you are making the argument that a limit on taxation leads to deficit spending, and deficit spending is ignored by the tax payers, leading to huge debts that explode in the future, and that increasing taxes would somehow limit deficits through public outrage... just look around. Higher revenues don't result in lower deficits unless the higher revenues are acute and unexpected, such as the 2021/2022 tax years. And the government is a goldfish, it will grow to fill whatever size tank you put it in. Look at the federal budget... Even with record revenues and exploding GDP growth during the pandemic, our spending/GDP is at record levels. Prop 13 is one of the purest expressions of limited taxation enacted by a population, and it is especially relevant because it limits an already-immoral form of taxation: wealth taxes. You are suggesting that not only is the wealth tax ethical, it should be unconstrained. Also, using the word "discriminatory" in this context is wildly dishonest. Who is being discriminated against? What is the characteristic targeted in this discrimination? An old couple on fixed income that has lived in the same home for 60 years, bought it when it was affordable and budgeted for the associated taxes, and have decided they would rather stay in their home then make the huge amount of money they would get from selling it, are discriminating against you and I because... what? We were born later? They should have to move to a cheaper state because *you* want more money for the state to spend?

The original tax was designed to double the cost of a Thompson. There's all sorts of fun dumb history about that law, like how it originally banned rifles longer than 18 in, But that would be bad for the firearms industry that was already producing shorter .22 rifles. So they made an exception for .22. Fast forward and the government started selling their surplus M1s, without realizing those rifles violated the law. So the law conveniently changed. Government has always been stupid. That has always been the necessary compromise.

While mathematically you're making a fairly obvious argument (if you increase your spending without increasing revenue, you will have a debt), the point is rather oblique. Prop 13 is not and has never been the problem. Prop 13 is maybe the only ethical element left in the California tax code. The repeated taxation of owned property is unethical. Full stop. Yeah I know property tax is a deeply enmeshed element of American government, but that doesn't change the core unethical nature of it as a wealth tax, which is why every state has had to grapple with that unethical argument in unique and inadequate ways. In California, the answer is prop 13. In Texas, they freeze your property tax when you turn 65. But both of those are bandages for the inherent unsustainability of taxing people on something they responsibly purchased merely because other irresponsible people irresponsibly purchased other property at irresponsible prices. California has one of the largest tax revenues in the world. It is purely and entirely a function of their desire to spend that revenue on social projects and other non-returning ventures. I know that you also criticize the excesses of liberal government, but to even suggest that prop 13 is responsible is to adopt the very justifications that they have used to put themselves in this situation in the first place. The "collection problem" does not exist if there is no allocation problem. The surplus was a one-off artifact of an insane stock market rally. The deficit is partially, as noted, a function of migration. However migration includes people leaving, which should lower the burden on services costs in a well-managed economy. Obviously we all know California is not well managed. It's both, as always. One of the cute things about government is anytime they get an increase in tax revenues, they reformulate expenditures to use every penny of it. Then when the one-time increase goes away, they act as though that was the baseline.

That's what I'm doing. Nothing to do with fires, it's just a superior home to live in.

That's a pretty hot take. The problem in California was that they didn't have enough tax money? I think at this point it's pretty obvious that there's nowhere in the country that doesn't have enough tax money. It is purely and entirely a function of choosing to spend it on the immediate gratification of social programs and neglecting the boring and unrewarding work of preventing catastrophes. "No one cares about the bomb that didn't go off." -Tenet

Doesn't matter. If the insurance company won't cover the house, then the bank won't lend the money. The problem will solve itself.

The never trumpers are absolutely desperate for this to be some sort of Nazi thing, considering they've been fantasizing about Nazis in the Republican party for the last couple election cycles. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the world's richest internet troll did this on purpose. Also super genius billionaires do have a tendency to lose their mind, so who knows.. But it doesn't take a lot of mental horsepower to realize that the most likely answer is not that Elon musk is a secret Nazi.

Those were really good cops. And for a drink mess, she was pretty controlled. I prefer the first one 😂

Hook 'em All!! ☠️🏴‍☠️