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[smjjames]

It's increasingly looking like Sinema will win, however, as things are still being counted, it could go either way.

Also, this is rich (from the previously linked article): "Republicans filed a lawsuit to halt a practice in two counties where officials were checking signatures on early mail ballots that did not match voter files. Arizona GOP chairman Jonathan Lines and Sen. Jon Kyl both accused Democrats of potentially disenfranchising rural voters because officials only in Maricopa County and Pima County — home to Tucson — were checking the signatures."

If they're going to complain about others using the same tactics they use, maybe they should stop doing it on their side? Yes, I know hypocrisy abounds, but hey, do onto others as you would have others do onto you....

[SalmonGod]

Wildfires in California keep getting worse.

[Max™]

Wildfires in California keep getting worse.

People need to stop the hyper-vigilance about small fires which used to clear dead underbrush and whatnot away regularly, it's Smokey's fault basically. By tamping everything and letting dead material accumulate and dry and dry we've been doing a great job of producing ever more massive wildfires... that was the goal right?

[wierd]

Well, I would say it is a perfect storm of the following things.

1) Hey, Nature is GREAT, and I am SILLY VALLEY RICH--- Let's build expensive housing in the middle of a forest!
2) No, picking up stuff out of the forest is bad for the wildlife and the ecology! Burning the wood in fireplaces contributes to SMOG! This is CALIFORNIA we are talking about here-- Smog is TEH EVULZ!
3) So um, Anthropogenic climate change is totally a thing, and like-- this area is getting more and more like Arizona by the decade. It's getting hotter and drier all the time. The aquifers are nearly dry from over exploitation from our agricultural activities, and shit is getting real yo.

With ever greater emphasis on item 3 as time goes on.

[Kagus]

It's because of the Australians and their cataclysmic exploding fire trees. It's all part of their secret terraforming project to make the rest of the world as dangerous as Australia, so that nothing will stand in the way of the Aussie supremacy!

[Doomblade187]

It's because of the Australians and their cataclysmic exploding fire trees. It's all part of their secret terraforming project to make the rest of the world as dangerous as Australia, so that nothing will stand in the way of the Aussie supremacy!

I sometimes suspect that you're secretly an aussie.

[Max™]

Totally forgot the fucking aussie trees, and no, it has little to nothing to do with the climate for a simple reason: warmer climactic periods are LESS arid, sounds crazy but the reason we have large deserts now is because of all the water locked up in various ice caps. Just because the idea seems intuitively fine that hot=arid it doesn't matter if reality disagrees, same with the projections of increased storm intensity/frequency which somehow overlook that storms are driven by the magnitude of the local temperature differences from the equator to the pole, guess what goes down in a warmer planet?

[Kagus]

guess what goes down in a warmer planet?

The cold?

[Il Palazzo]

Totally forgot the fucking aussie trees, and no, it has little to nothing to do with the climate for a simple reason: warmer climactic periods are LESS arid, sounds crazy but the reason we have large deserts now is because of all the water locked up in various ice caps. Just because the idea seems intuitively fine that hot=arid it doesn't matter if reality disagrees, same with the projections of increased storm intensity/frequency which somehow overlook that storms are driven by the magnitude of the local temperature differences from the equator to the pole, guess what goes down in a warmer planet?

[citations needed]

[wierd]

Totally forgot the fucking aussie trees, and no, it has little to nothing to do with the climate for a simple reason: warmer climactic periods are LESS arid, sounds crazy but the reason we have large deserts now is because of all the water locked up in various ice caps. Just because the idea seems intuitively fine that hot=arid it doesn't matter if reality disagrees, same with the projections of increased storm intensity/frequency which somehow overlook that storms are driven by the magnitude of the local temperature differences from the equator to the pole, guess what goes down in a warmer planet?

While true, it ignores the fact that California experiences specific weather patterns related to the jetstream current, as it interracts with the nearby Rocky mountains. 

Climate is totally being impacted.

(soft article)
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140812-california-climate-change-global-warming-science/

(old paper)
https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-042308-145132/unrestricted/IQPTCC07RyanNickKyle.pdf

[scriver]

Totally forgot the fucking aussie trees,

[citations needed]

Lol u don't believe in exploding Aussie trees?

[McTraveller]

If I remember correctly, though, communism isn't common ownership of everything.  It's just common ownership of means of production.  Communism doesn't say that you have to share your house or clothing equally with everyone.  Essentially the core of communism is that the entire population benefits directly from the profit from production, rather than just a small number of "owners".

This is where the idea of UBI tax originates.  Basically you just earmark a portion of corporate profit tax for direct redistribution to everyone in the covered jurisdiction.

According to https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate-profits US corporate profits are something like $2000 billion a quarter.  That's a ridiculous amount of money - about $6000 per capita in the country, per quarter (it's actually way more than I assumed!).

A guy can dream:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That stat has made me rethink my stance on UBI.  I mean, we could get $6000 per person  just by taxing corporate profit at only 25% and using that tax only for UBI and not touching any other tax at all.

Another approach I've been musing over is to tax everyone at 50% of their income, then divide 80% of that total tax revenue equally among the total population.  The other 20% of that tax revenue (10% of original income) is to fund public services. This would be a progressive tax rate in effect, because the very wealthy would get a smaller portion of their 50% returned, where the very poor would get the majority of their income from the distribution.  We'd no longer even need unemployment insurance or anything, because under this scheme each individual is guaranteed at least their per-capita share of 40% of all income in the country.  Per-capita personal income in the US is about $38k, so under this scheme everyone would be guaranteed 0.4x$38k which is about $15k.

The government would have 0.1 x $38k x 330M = $1.25T tax revenue to play with from income tax; this is a little lower than current number from income tax (it was about $1.8T recently) but it should work out fine with the reduction in some of the services that extra $600B was going toward if everyone is guaranteed $15k.

This latter scheme also is completely independent of corporate taxes, so the corporatists can still be "happy".  Or you could combine the two, and end up even better.

[Loud Whispers]

Totally forgot the fucking aussie trees,

[citations needed]

Lol u don't believe in exploding Aussie trees?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Reelya]

If I remember correctly, though, communism isn't common ownership of everything.  It's just common ownership of means of production.  Communism doesn't say that you have to share your house or clothing equally with everyone.  Essentially the core of communism is that the entire population benefits directly from the profit from production, rather than just a small number of "owners".

No, I refuse to believe it. If we get communism then nobody's shoes will fit, because everyone will share the same pair of shoes. And you'll go to work with ill-fitting shoes if you're lucky that it's your turn for the shoes.*

* About average for the idiotic strawman critiques of Communist ideas that get spread around earnestly.

In fact, and this is a radical idea, you can actually apply the idea of "common ownership" to some things without having to apply it to all things, or magically forgetting how to do simple things, such as paying people a wage for hours worked for the commonly-owned enterprise.

[Loud Whispers]

No, I refuse to believe it. If we get communism then nobody's shoes will fit, because everyone will share the same pair of shoes. And you'll go to work with ill-fitting shoes if you're lucky that it's your turn for the shoes.*

* About average for the idiotic strawman critiques of Communist ideas that get spread around earnestly.

In fact, and this is a radical idea, you can actually apply the idea of "common ownership" to some things without having to apply it to all things, or magically becoming moronic and forgetting basic common sense about how to organize things.

Simply call it "public ownership" and people will agree