ViperMan

Having little to no SA on the specifics here, I can say based on my experiences in the military and thus far in the civilian world, ATC is far too comfortable giving visual approaches to passenger aircraft. IMO, they should basically only be given upon request. I think it has become the easy button for them to place responsibility on pilots.

If you're basing your entire opinion of anything based on the fact that a "jury of his peers found him guilty," I know two things about you. You've never sat on a court martial or a jury, and two, you have very little practical knowledge of how the justice system works. If you had you would understand that many things - facts, relevant facts - are withheld from the jury. I know this - I learned this - because I once was part of the jury on a court martial in which the member was found guilty, and only after we rendered our verdict and sentence recommendation, were we allowed to be made aware of things which the defense and the prosecution argued about allowing us to know. Why does this matter? Well, we may have still found the member guilty, but I believe the punishment we meted out would have been significantly moderated. I hope you're never falsely accused of a crime. I hope you're never up against a DA or prosecutor that has an ax to grind. I hope that you're never in the wrong place at the wrong time or in the wrong circumstances. If you are, and you think that everything will be ok because the jury will just magically get it right since it's part of our constitutionally guaranteed set of rights, you had better reinterpret your threat environment, because juries absolutely can and do get it wrong. All. The. Time. Yes, a jury may have found him guilty. That is a fact. Whether or not he actually is guilty of the crime he was charged with is a separate question.

January 6th was a block party that got out of control. If you want to see an *actual* insurrection, you can look at the summer of 2020 when numerous democratic governments all but sanctioned mob violence in the name of social justice.

DEI is awful, and at the same time, I don't think it's directly responsible for this. That's just nonsense. Pulling back though, it is part of the larger, more dangerous, apathy that has taken hold in our country which says "competence doesn't matter and neither does accountability." Hopefully whoever is responsible for this is held accountable.

If wanting people to pay for what they use makes me guilty of not being conservative, then lock me up.

The defense rests.

???

Ah ok.

Yes, you are right, but this take appears to be disingenuous. Of course there is no "mind" of the state of California, which you thankfully identify, but then immediately turn around and imbue it with agency and convey that it still disagrees with me :). My point was clear though: there are repeated efforts in California to address problems that prop 13 is creating. People, with minds, are aware of those issues. I brought it up because I think people on this message board would like to see how tax law and policy choices create weapons effects down stream. Hence the discussion. Yes. This is correct. My point is to illustrate one of the hidden effects of prop 13. CA residents can wonder "why don't we have enough infrastructure??? I pay so much in taxes." It's reasons like prop 13 which mask the "why" of not having enough money to buy infrastructure AND all their favorite social programs. I'm just pointing that out. Dickering over what spending should be focused on is a good (political) topic, but a separate one. I'm not commenting on whether or not CA 'needs' to increase their tax revenue - it is implicit that they do because their infrastructure has failed. That's true, prima facie. I may not like it, but it is plainly the case. You are right in stating that CA doesn't have enough money. That's what I'm pointing out. You're placing 100% of the blame on social program spending. That's part of the spend side and is a part of the problem. I'm pointing out that there is also a systematic collection problem on the other side of the equation, and also an interesting one that most people aren't aware of. You're categorically denying there is a collection problem. That's ok. Neither you or I like taxes. We don't have to be happy with every fact in the world. I'm as conservative as you are, but any objective analysis must start with looking at facts. Not with "democrats are stupid and wrong in all cases and all circumstances a priori and anyone who doesn't agree with me is henceforth a democrat." That style of thinking led dems to align themselves with all manner of absurdity when Trump would state something obviously true, just because they had to be the opposite. The question you present is framed in such a way as to side-step the issue and generate your pre-approved response. 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. If the cost of living in a neighborhood goes up because we need to run underground water pipes up the hillside in order to deliver water, that's going to be a cost borne by property taxes. I would argue that such a project should be shouldered equally, by all the people who are going to benefit from it. That is a conservative position. Prop 13 arrests that, which is why I think it's a problem. We don't "own" our homes in the same sense we own our cars or our furniture. I don't like that, and I'm not advocating for that, but for the purposes of this discussion, and the world we all inhabit, it is the case. So embarking on a diatribe for you and constructing an answer about why property taxes need to change over time is playing into a misframed argument. The price of a toilet flush changes over time. You know this. Everyone else in the world knows this. As that price changes, funds have to be raised to cover those increased costs. In contrast, wealth taxes are designed specifically to take from all assets as they are construed by Pocahontas, and their intent is confiscatory - that is a new thing as far as our country is concerned and is something that I am equally frightened to see we are flirting with. Property taxes serve a different purpose, and as long as any of us has existed, they have been part of the equation. Painting with such a broad brush intentionally muddies the water and conflates two separate issues. Funding things like infrastructure with property taxes is the choice we have collectively made as a society. Again, that's just a fact in the world, not an endorsement. We witnessed infrastructure collapse or at least not serve its function - ergo facto there is a problem there, maybe we should look at something. Hey prop 13 causes property taxes to function in a radically different way than in every other state, maybe that's part of our budget gap. Oooo, yeah, look, see here Bob, some people are paying only 1-2% of what other people are paying for all our infrastructure...maybe, just maybe, that's contributing to funding shortfalls, and could perhaps be the reason politicians have had to make trade-offs over the years and allow infrastructure projects to go unaddressed. That's all I'm saying. Constantly nudging the conversation back to all taxes are immoral, or at least property taxes in this case, is an interesting theoretical point, but not on topic. For the purposes of this discussion, they are a given. Not good or bad. Just a given.

Ok, cool. So like Hertz rent-a-T6.

Liason program? Pre-positioning? Sorry, I'm not up to speed on all the COAs. What are these? I can assume I know what light foot prints at remote sites means. That could be interesting just because it opens up lots of options for people. Also, same with tenant units. Think beyond the USAF. Lots of good Coast Guard sites and Navy bases dudes would want to live near. Throw a couple of these out to K-bay, North Island, Tampa, C-Springs...now you're cooking with oil. Honestly, though, it probably makes the most sense to just stand up little tenant units near the super hubs, or within about 2 hours of them...at least the first ones if something like this actually goes down.

@Lord Ratner I didn't open that line about prop 13 in order to convince you, personally, that the law is having the effects I outlined. The state of California knows it's a problem - as evidenced by their continual and repeated attempts to have it changed which recur, year after year after year. It is squarely in their sights. You or anyone else on this board doesn't need to take my word for it. State lawmakers know it was a poison pill they took in 1978 and are grappling with the deleterious effects on their governments. I provided a couple little links to show people how absolutely distorted the property tax burden truly is in CA, but if you care to, you can find manifold research on prop 13 which goes into the numerous other distortions it creates. People can do their own research and make up their own minds, and if they don't live in CA, they can click around their state assessor's website and see that their neighbors likely share a similar property tax burden. CA is uniquely different. That's the point. It's a one-off. The hyper-libertarian diversion you go down about there's no such thing as "under" collection as part of a deficit, I literally just can't make heads or tails of. Same with the "progressive" spaghetti you shotgun out. Your last post was a kaleidoscope; it was tough to keep up with what point you were making. What I got was the impression that you benefit from prop 13, but whatever. Again, I'm not advocating or disparaging taxes at a fundamental level. That's a separate discussion. Spending (output) - Taxes (collection) = Deficit (if negative) | Surplus (if positive) Spending is half the equation, as you stated. Taxes (collection) are the other half. Or what am I missing? I literally don't get it which is why I think you were more making an ideological point about the fundamental legality or morality of taxes and talking past my point, rather than to it. It was tangential to begin with, and which is part of the reason I think @brabus engaged you on a more fundamental "well how do you think we should fund the government at all?" line of questioning because that's how your reasoning comes across in that post. We can (and should) have a discussion about the morality or ethics of taxation. But I'll save that for the PHIL 101 thread. Right here and now, in the present day, taxes pay for things like roads, police, firemen, and other public services. I can bang my head against the wall on that topic, but it's not going to accomplish much good. Most people who are conservative (me) want the things we all use equally to be paid for equally. My home's toilets flush (on average) just as many times a day as a progressive's. Same with someone who is my neighbor. So no, I don't need to justify why someone shouldn't pay for services they are using. What it cost to flush a toilet in 1978 isn't what it costs now. Just because you got to go to Disneyland in 1982 for $17.50, doesn't mean you get to show up in 2025 and pay the same rate. Things change. It's the project of communists and socialists to hand out carve-outs and exceptions and "credits" to select groups of people. I only advocate for people paying for what they use. If it's something we all use equally, we all pay for it equally. That sounds pretty damn conservative / fair to me. If you can get Bernie Sanders on board with that, I'll buy you a drink of your choice, but I think you've got your work cut out for you. Prop 13 ensures that the opposite of that happens, and it ensures it into perpetuity. The reason I brought it up, was because I like to get at the root cause of why something is happening. This message board is one of the better out there I've found because the mix of problem-solving, bar-napkin analysis, and trolling is tolerable. It's fun and partisan to score points dunking on Gavin Newsome and Karen Bass (and other "progressives"), but these are like "contributing factors" at this stage of failure. They are inept, corrupt, and I have no doubt share some responsibility for what happened. But, we're basically witnessing an infrastructure collapse which is a much bigger problem than can be solved by just pinning it all on one or two politicians, or even a whole political party. On the flip side of that coin, we can go full libertarian "you can't tax me bro! this muh house 'til the heat death of the universe" but we don't live in that world. This is a system level failure. That's why I pointed at prop 13. It goes back a long time - almost 50 years - and it informs the discussion at the "mission planning" level of analysis. Effects like this are baked-in. And we're not likely done dealing with the massive distortions laws like this create. Prop 13 is only one of many bad laws on the books. It's probably not the only policy CA has had in place over the long term that creates and contributes to issues like this, but it is certainly one of them.

I would do it. Or I would do something like it. In fact, I am currently looking for a "retirement" gig that will let me keep doing military aviation in a part time capacity. I'm figuring out how to min run the airlines, and am winding up with a lot of free time on my hands. May as well do what I like, get paid retirement, get paid min guarantee, and then make extra money chasing clouds. That said, I'm aware of things like Drachen, etc. I also don't want to fly perma red air. For some reason I'd rather do something IFF-like or straight UPT. Maybe I'm crazy. Not gonna be able to do the part time (non-retired) gig after I'm retirement eligible - I just can't make working for free make financial sense.

You didn't respond to the point I'm making though. I'm not disputing these things: Property tax may be an unethical manner for states to tax inhabitants - I have not challenged this in my previous post. California (and most other governments) absolutely misallocate their funds on social projects, climate "justice," saving the fish/squirrels, et al. They do this to the massive detriment of other, more important spending - like infrastructure. So on those topics we can agree - or at least not disagree directly. No, my point is that prop 13 has been a boon for certain property owners to the detriment of others, which is why it has become so entrenched. And the unintentional side effect of this has been to create a massive deficit in CA's budget, one which is mostly hidden, because people who don't live there don't understand how CA's unique property tax exclusions work. And others don't understand how much more expensive it would be to live there if tax burdens were equalized. For instance, take two properties and compare them side-by-side. They're neighbors in San Francisco. 45 Liberty 23 Liberty Google street view If you compare them on google maps, you'll see they're effectively the same property. One of them pays a yearly tithe to the state of $50,400. The other pays a yearly tithe of $1,800. That differential, of $48,600, accumulates over time, but it never shows up on any balance sheet. This is the actual, real, deficit I'm talking about. In the next 10 years it'll amount to a half a million dollars (more with interest) - and that's just between two neighboring properties. The aggregate effect of this massive, marginal under-taxation, is to generate insurmountable, unimaginable debts. I bet if you integrated a function like that, the total, hidden, debt would be in the hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars over the last number of decades. These are the type of debts that insurance companies can't pay. The type of debts that lead to increased insurance premiums for people who don't even live in California. The type of debts that lead to the cost of eggs tripling and people wondering 'why'. The type of debts that lead cities and towns to make system level choices when it comes to allowing their infrastructure to collapse. The type of debts that bankrupt states. In essence, CA has been writing checks its politicians couldn't cash. Yes, CA budgets their money incorrectly. It is also true that prop 13 has turned the state into a real estate cartel. One in which long-term owners are the ones pocketing property taxes that would otherwise go to fund the state's infrastructure, or would otherwise operate to prevent people who live in CA currently from living there because they can't afford its actually cost thereby preventing the debt from accumulating in the first place. // Break // I am not arguing that taxes need to increase in CA. I am not arguing that property taxes are fundamentally 'fair' or 'unfair'. Those are separate discussions. I'm pointing out that the property tax system in CA is fundamentally and uniquely different than in every other state I'm aware of wherein people who own similar properties pay massively different (10X or sometimes 100X) tax bills. See the above for proof. So no, prop 13 is not ethical - it's one of the most insidious, discriminatory, and unethical laws in operation in our society, and we're witnessing it bear fruit right now. But because it has complex, hidden effects, grants certain people massive (and legal) $ arbitrage, it's simultaneously a very easy law whose effects are easy to obfuscate and also one that gets a lot of people to stand in defense of because they benefit from it directly. It's also a reason I scoff when people say that CA contributes more to the federal tax base than any other state. Yeah, right, so long as you ignore the enormous hole they dig themselves deeper and deeper into year after year by passing and keeping laws like prop 13.

I don't disagree, but focusing on what's listed on paper is missing the point. I'm sure if I looked through their books the majority of their expenditures would be misallocated. That doesn't address the collection problem, however, or the actual deficit that is reflected in the way this disaster has unfolded. Much of CA's property tax base winds up in the pockets of private owners due to prop 13. No other state I'm aware of has a property tax policy which directly and systematically under funds their government quite like this one does. That has consequences over the long run - ones we are seeing right now. The point I was making was more along the lines that if you design a tax policy around not collecting taxes from the people that live in your state, you're going to eventually run into the consequences of said tax policy. In this case I'm just pointing at prop 13 as having the largest / outsize impact on creating a massive accumulated deficit CA has avoided contending with. They may have had a "surplus" on paper for numerous years. Maybe now they have a "deficit." Politicians may have touted said surplus and maybe even some of them felt pretty good about themselves and got some kudos from their voter base. I bet it felt good to them. Maybe they had a $100 Bajillion dollars surplus in their Excel sheets or PowerPoint slides. Cool. It's an illusion. It's a number on a piece of paper. It means absolutely nothing. Reality keeps the actual balance sheet. The truth is that there is a real, actual, physical, literal deficit buried in the ground, reflected by their crumbling infrastructure, empty reservoirs, ineffectual government, understaffed agencies, man-made drought due to policy choices favoring industries over citizenry, etc, etc. It took many 10s of years to create a problem this big. Running California properly costs a lot more than they spend. Too many people live there who "tax" the system without paying into it. That's what I'm talking about. That's the deficit that builds and builds over decades due to tax policy like prop 13 and which allows the party to continue right up until the balcony collapses. This is that kind of deficit. Or, if you like, you can look at it like this: all the insurance money and construction costs that are going to be incurred over the next number of years "rebuilding" CA was the actual deficit they weren't carrying on the books. At a minimum. Now start doing that math on all the other mismanaged forest or grassland in CA that's all still waiting to go up in smoke. You'll start to get an idea about how far behind they truly are. *Note: nothing in this post should be construed as desire to increase taxes on "us" - we all pay too much as it is.

I've got some legit questions for the "Elon's a Nazi" crowd: What are you concerned he's going to do? Is he expressing a desire to ethnically cleanse the country? Is the concern here more that he is "signaling" to a certain sub-element of our society? All of the above? I genuinely want to know. Best I can tell is he is a guy who is building electric cars, rocket ships, brain-body computer interfaces who is also pretty eclectic. I saw plenty of kids like that in public school growing up. They weren't Nazis. I can "get" that it wasn't a good look, but do any of you hold a serious concern out there that he's going to attempt to reboot the 3rd Reich? What direction are you concerned he's moving in?

From your keyboard to God's ears.

I watched it and I agree. I'll keep my eye on him going forward. Seems like one of those guys that has a true grasp of what the hell he's talking about. Which is surprisingly rare (and refreshing) these days. Talking to a family member, it's apparently the case that many of these home catch on fire from the inside. An ember will float into an air vent or the like and then ignite flammable material on the inside of the home and so on. I certainly agree that building codes and insurance have a big role to play going forward. As an aside, I can't help but also point at prop 13 as a contributing factor. 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. The way I see it, this fire was a decades-long policy decision in the making.

The problem is that if it is the case that there are unstoppable fires, then we need not build in those areas. Ask me how much sympathy I have for New Orleans - you don't rebuild a city next to the ocean that is below sea level - or if you do, you accept the inevitable consequence of being underwater. Else, if the fire is stoppable, through preparation, forest management, etc, we should have been preparing for them. Said another way, the conditions that enabled this fire to happen should never have been allowed to manifest. It hearkens back to the Smoky the Bear commercials from when I was a kid: "only you, can prevent forest fires." It's almost like prevention has been on the menu for some time...hmmmm.

They'll probably do something along these lines, but it won't be available if you're over any reasonable income limit. See the following: https://www.ebikeincentives.org/eligibility/ They did the same thing with electric bikes, but they made sure that anyone who actually contributes to the tax kiddy isn't eligible. LOL. Someone who barely makes $45K per year ain't spending $2,000 on a bicycle, and hence probably doesn't benefit from the credit. It'll be the standard democratic "this feels and looks good" vs "it is good." True climate emergencies would necessitate removing all barriers to addressing "existential issues" - yet another reason (#69) why I don't take their "climate change" rhetoric seriously.

All the "could work" discussion begs an obvious question: why weren't we doing it before? Not to say that we can't do things better; we can and should. This is clearly driven by the times, however, and is yet another loop in the reactionary merry-go-round. I'm suspect for this, and this reason alone.

You can always "soft cancel" like I'm currently doing. Have some Fidelity accounts now and am slowly transferring a lot of my stuff their way. I'll probably just keep USAA to pay all my bills, and maybe some insurance products I've had for a long time.

VPN or not, isn't all your traffic encrypted while you're on https???

Pffffft. How could I forget lol. I remember it was only a couple of years ago the Dems were charging hard to codify Jan 6th as the second coming of Sept 11th. Nary a peep today. Maybe sanity still has a chance.

I've never been able to see the connection between term limits and resolving corruption. Am I to believe that a congress person can't engage in unethical behavior during their first term??? If anything, it just puts them under a time crucible to get all the goodies they're looking for run through as quickly as possible; it fast tracks whatever corrupt impulse is there in the first place. There's no inherent constraint placed on corruption by time. It may limit the time that someone has to become corrupt, but a good question to ponder is why don't we put 4-6 year term limits on officers? Why aren't we all corrupt by the time we're Lt Cols? I just don't see a connection there. The problem is lack of accountability and lack of transparency. When Nancy Pelosi was engaging in legislation that was going to benefit Nvidia and other tech companies while simultaneously purchasing stock options she knew would react positively to the actions she was taking, that all should have taken place within the public view. It wasn't classified. It wasn't secret. Basically I guess I'm effectively suggesting that congress people should be required to conduct all legislative business in full view of the public. I have no idea what that looks like, but body cameras would be a start. Drafting legislation? Put the computer screens on a YouTube stream. Meeting with a lobbyist? Have a camera crew there to stream it on X. Obviously this is ridiculous, but the core of the problem is our government is allowed to keep a lot of unsecret things secret.