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BuddhaSixFour

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Everything posted by BuddhaSixFour

  1. BuddhaSixFour
    I’m honestly not sure what the trend has been. If the “unelected bureaucrats” thing was very recent, there could be a point there. However, the history of the Unitary Executive theory is that it first popped up as an argument by Reagan to try to gain more control, so the status quo seems to at least go back that far. And civil servant protections go back to FDR as I understand it. Some sort of “entrenched bureaucracy“ index would be super interesting to see.
  2. BuddhaSixFour
    Nah, I’m good with reducing fraud. I’m even good with shrinking the federal government. Getting closer to a balanced budget would be great. That’s all fine. I think it can be done without burning everything down in the process (see Clinton example), but maybe not. But where I don’t let MAGAts off the hook is that you don’t mean any of it. It’s just a power play. Y’all are 100% going to flip your shit when the next democrat president puts out 100 executive orders in the first week, and you’re going to stop saying “Unitary Executive” in a heartbeat. Now, Barbie, (hmmm… autocorrect, but let’s leave it) maybe you approve of Trump wielding these powers because you like what he’s doing with them. Fine. That’s your choice. However, the system itself has fundamentally changed in the last month. Those changes are going to have consequences, and you’re not always going to like them, even if you do today. I don’t think you’ve thought that through. You’re not even willing to remotely acknowledge the point and just run back to the tantrum train defense.
  3. BuddhaSixFour
    I think what you meant to say, is “Yes, if Harris had run on a platform of putting Soros in charge of DOGE and won, then that was the will of the people and she’s a unitary executive. I understand she needs to fire much of the executive branch to bring in people aligned with her agenda. I hope George carries on the good work Elon started around eliminating FWA.”
  4. BuddhaSixFour
    Cool. I expect republicans will 100% stand by this the next time a Democrat wins because they fully believe that civics lesson in their heart of hearts.
  5. BuddhaSixFour
    Cool. I expect republicans will 100% stand by this the next time a Democrat wins because they fully believe that civics lesson in their heart of hearts.
  6. BuddhaSixFour
    I’m sure billionaires have a different mechanism at their disposal, but let’s call this the Pledged Asset Line of Credit loophole where you borrow against stock (not taxed) unless you sell the stock to pay off the load (taxed as capital gains). I’ve never seen why that’s a hard one to solve. These loans have to be repaid, presumably by the sale of the underlying assets which triggers capital gains. So, let’s say when you pledge the stock against a PAL, we jot down the current value. If you sell the stock later, which you’ll eventually have to do, you get long term gains up to that amount, and any gains past that are treated as short term gains regardless of duration, and the underlying assets must be sold to pay off the balance when you die. No rolling forward shenanigans. Still leaves PALs as a reasonable financial tool but gets rid of them as a tax loophole. The dumbest way to address it is a wealth tax.
  7. BuddhaSixFour
    Yeah, never met the man but I have three first degree connections. Two think he’s the devil. One he knocked up. 🤷 if DOGE can find billions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse, within the confines of the law, more power to them. But we all really want them to adhere to the law because two of those folks who know him believe Elon is going to need to be checked hard at some point. But I think he’s Trump’s Sin Eater. See how far he can go, let him do all of the things you want to do but can’t. Then when he goes too far and finally finds the boundary, under the bus he goes. That’s wild conjecture though.
  8. BuddhaSixFour
    This is where the conversation jumps the rails. The “rich” pay their fair share and the tax system is highly progressive through the bottom 99%. Then it falls off a cliff and the “stratospherically wealthy” pay far less. I’m super fortunate to have the first world problem of getting taxed hard. Hell, I vote D 90% of the time so I even fully admit I enable it. What chaps my ass is when people who make less than me say I should pay more while the people above me proportionately pay half as much. Scott Galloway has a great discussion on who the “tax mules” are, and it’s the $500k to $2M on W2 wages crowd. A few years of that and investment income takes over at cap gains rates, plus the shenanigans you can play there.
  9. BuddhaSixFour
    Once VA medical records are digitized, it’s going to take the Palantir Hive Mind all of an hour to see when someone never asked for care while on AD, never asked for care after separating, got an FAA cert, and only ever mentioned the problem on their exit physical when there was disability payments on the table.
  10. BuddhaSixFour
    Can’t wait for all of the VA disability scammers with “tinnitus” (congrats, you’re just forty), “sleep apnea” (really? Cash for life for snoring?) and “back pain” (again, just forty) get raked over the coals and spend ten years paying that shit back for lying to a flight doc on exit then heading to the gym and getting your FAA physical done. Always hated that.
  11. BuddhaSixFour
    5 minutes of internet snooping, and that guy’s Linked In is for a 40-year career in sleeping commercial real estate and some buyout stuff of mom and pop medical practices. So, let’s consider the options… A) This guy was some sort of CIA asset California doing deep data analysis and he’s spent a ton of money buying what would be very expensive data if it’s even available. Now, he’s coming out of the shadows to share his critical insights about the election. B) Some schmuck lawyer is bored and realizes he can make shit up on X and get a ton of attention that the commercial real estate world doesn’t give him. He’s making it up, but probably takes some “ends justify the means” rationale. C) Someone creating a bot account (or probably hundreds), happens to scrape his photo and name off of Linked In and has been using it to spew garbage that some people are lapping up. My money is not on Option A.
  12. BuddhaSixFour
    Yes. There will be some recounts and legal haggling like there always is, but at the end of the day, yes.
  13. BuddhaSixFour
    Here's what I think just went down. AF: "We have this massive problem! We can't fix it!" Mattis: "Of course you can, it's called leadership. Get some." AF: "But it's a bigger problem than that! <insert AF talking points b.s.>" Mattis/Trump: "Okay, if it's such a critical problem, here's a tool that can fix it overnight. Recall 1,000 pilots, voluntary or not." AF: "But we can't do that!" Mattis/Trump: "Then I guess it's not such a big f**king problem then. STFU and do your jobs."
  14. BuddhaSixFour
    Zero regrets about doing it for one decade. Zero regrets about not doing it for two.
  15. BuddhaSixFour
    See, that's why you need to serve your country by separating and getting out of the way. There isn't anything personnelists can do because it isn't a beauracratic problem. It's a leadership problem. Commanders can fix it. Not you. Not AFPC. The more you try, the worse it will get.
  16. BuddhaSixFour
    Med school. If planes were really your thing, you wouldn't have been premed.
  17. BuddhaSixFour
    Sorry, man. For what it's worth, it's an illustration of the problem I have with 10-year ADSCs, and anything longer the AF may consider. There is zero way to predict what life is going to deal you that far out. I see it as a bit of a moral imperative to provide some flexibility on the back half of it for that exact reason. A hard and fast six-month limit is lazy ass senior leadership not trusting lazy ass middle leadership to make an informed decision about balancing personal needs and the needs of the Air Force. Could be you're a slacker looking to shirk a commitment. I dunno. Not sure we've ever met. But your SQ/CC does know you, your story, and the state of your community's manning. If he/she supported it, well, consider yourself backed by a random poster on base ops. Good luck.
  18. BuddhaSixFour
    Could you just apply for Misc Sep and cite the family issues and your commitment to the Guard? I've seen that get approved for guys with 18 months left at separation time. May or may not work, but it's way less likely to burn anything down in the way out.
  19. BuddhaSixFour
    Silicon Valley and Redmond are very good at what they do and have already spent uncounted billions on the problem over many years. I don't see a magic check to Lockheed or any other player suddenly showing the pros what's up. The best they would do would be a system that was secure by virtue of the fact it was worthless and didn't do anything so there was nothing on it of value. Imagine trying to use Governet Explorer on you govOS computer to look up a how-to for GoverPoint. I'm sure lots of work goes into focusing on really important things that are limited in scope (key infrastructure, communications, etc). But a general purpose compute stack? I vote no.
  20. BuddhaSixFour
    As an IDE-select who passed on the opportunity, I have found this sentiment to be misleading. Good leadership is highly valued on both sides of the fence. The Air Force has more opportunities per capita, but puts very tight left and right bounds in place. That makes it a better place to learn leadership. The outside world has fewer opportunities, but can have many more degrees of freedom. That makes it a better place to execute leadership. -
  21. BuddhaSixFour
    And the current generation of senior leaders will sail off into retirement patting themselves on the back for having saved the Air Force. Then somewhere between 2028 and 2030, a bunch of people who liked flying in their twenties start to have an inkling that there is more to life than the Air Force. Suddenly they come to the stark realization of just how long their prison sentence really is. They'll come to absolutely despise the Air Force, and they'll have another decade with nothing to do but poison the waters. And they will. Or you can just fix the stupid things that piss people off. The current generation of leadership sails off into retirement rightly knowing that they left the Air Force a better place. Then somewhere between 2028 and 2030, a bunch of people who liked flying in their twenties are still in love with flying, leading and delivering an uninterrupted ass kicking to our nation's enemies. They see the last 10 years as an opportunity that's good for them, good for their families, and good for their nation. They'll come to love the Air Force and spend that second decade nurturing a whole other generation in how to run a fantastic organization. And they will. But you're right, Chang. Your way is better. Let's just do that.
  22. BuddhaSixFour
    Disregard. I'm actually thinking of another user on here. No idea who Chang is.
  23. BuddhaSixFour
    Good god, man. Surely you jest. Flying should, by all accounts, be just the most awesome job ever created. Tactical flying is just about as much fun as anything. The job pays well. You get to serve your country in a meaningful way. And airplanes... f**k yeah. If the Air Force can only get people to do it by A) getting people too young to know better to sign an obscenely long contract, or B) by abusing the terms of the contract to keep people around, then senior leadership really needs to ask how they f***ed it up that bad and shake things up as much as necessary to fix it. Best of all, your people are screaming the solutions at you. Just step back for a second, listen without brushing them of as malcontents, and realize that you do actually have the power to do 75% of what they're asking for, and that you can do it with precisely 0% negative impact to mission effectiveness.
  24. BuddhaSixFour
    Calling anything pertaining to AU "academic" is an insult to professors of 17th century French poetry everywhere.
  25. BuddhaSixFour
    A reasonable two-bedroom apartment with a parking spot in a good but not stellar part of the city. In some of the trendy spots, the box guy would still need a roommate to be that close to a hydrant.
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