b_m_b_m_b_m

Nothing we could have done to prevent this!

If the plan was $600 until the state could do the 70% thing that would be ok, not great, but instead they're gonna fuck over everyone by a new mandate with no time to implement it

This is the biggest problem with widespread covid among younger people: unknowingly or unwittingly passing it along to an older friend or relative who are much more likely to end up seriously sick or dead

Deliberately using a different thread

In case you're curious how things will actually be going for the next year.

!!!!!! If you are lower risk, it's worth voting in person if you're in a state with a close election for the presidency, house, or senate

Very normal thing to do, def. not sexual harassment or intimidation.

Got a precrime unit here in Richmond, but only seems to go after reporters.

Ban all trucks, but especially from cities

In country per this site which no doubt put me on a list The navy has a lot which would be extremely problematic in a disintegrating federal order

I think with either case it's absolutely imperative that we eliminate our nuclear stockpile as soon as possible. There won't be a clear successor state a la the USSR and Russia, so we may end up with a few subnational nuclear states, or a totalitarian domestic nuclear state

Right now reminds me of that moment at the top of the first hill of a rollercoaster, right before gravity takes hold and things speed up significantly

Collective sun poisoning

Wonder if the GOP is gonna give states money for this... Doubtful

Russian Orthodox types moved from "saviors of Christendom" to "saviors of the white race" seamlessly

@Emperor Diocletian II

An equity stake would separate those who need it, and are willing to give up something in exchange, and those just looking for a good deal Money talks, bullshit walks

It's not about making money, it's about mitigating risk. Right now all the risk is held by the public and it isn't mitigated in any way other than the interest to the loan, which over the whole of the program doesn't adequately cover losses. We can just give out grants or wholly forgiveable loans (like the PPP!) if we're not concerned with losses or mitigating risk to taxpayers. And if we don't care about these losses, why not just create a literal government electric car company?! It would accomplish the same goals as you've outlined but without some dude becoming a billionaire in the process! A Tennessee Valley Authority but for electric cars. Ultimately I think there is benefit to having the taxpayers get actual return for its investment, when it comes to specific companies and technologies that it invests in

0, just about what we got out of Solyndra, where we're out $500million+ The point is you win big, or even moderately, on a couple of good companies (like if we got equity from Tesla) and that makes up for the massive losses (even if we got equity in Solyndra for example) But you'd need a whole lot of paid back wins at 3-4% to make up for even one failure The difference is similar downsides (taxpayer holding the bag) but far better upsides (taxpayer makes substantial return) when you get equity We shouldn't be socializing the losses and completely privatizing the success

The goal should be to not leave the taxpayer on the hook for losses of the inevitable business that fails, like Solyndra. There is a good in the government being able to provide loans! But there is a smart way to do it, and is to the benefit of taxpayers. The way we do it now is privatizing success and making public the loss.

https://slate.com/business/2013/05/tesla-is-worse-than-solyndra-how-the-u-s-government-bungled-its-investment-in-the-car-company-and-cost-taxpayers-at-least-1-billion.html

This is what we already do for companies that fail after the government gives loans, and it sucks. We get equity in failure, and merely a repaid subsidized loan from successful companies. If an investment firm did this they'd be out of business because the reward of a successful company is supposed to balance out losses from businesses that don't make it. There's no startup company that can get a loan from a private source that doesn't require equity. This wasn't today's Tesla looking for a short term loan. I mean, shit, it's the justification that capital uses to syphon the surplus value, in that the investors take a cut of profit because they are the "only" ones taking a risk (as workers are paid a mere wage for the risk they take on) If the government was even given just 5% of the shares offered at the IPO and at that price of 17/share and held it to today, they would have doubled their money. Instead, this value is kept in private hands, despite being invested in by the government at the time. And hell, mere months later in May 2010 Toyota got ***2.5%*** of Tesla for $50 million. At this valuation, the government should have had a ***23.25%*** stake in Tesla, if not more as the loan itself made the company more viable and valuable than before. Get the fuck outta here with this paid back the loan bullshit, this is the picking winners and losers bullshit that you libertarians love to wax poetic about, and the taxpayers subsidizing a fucking billionaires private business venture, where the taxpayers took on the nearly half a billion dollar risk and got very little reward in return. We shouldn't be giving no strings attached loans, we should be getting equity in return for taxpayer risk.