Elon Musk

[mikbone]

So impressive. 

This is what our government should be doing.

[NeuroTypical]

Dude is a class act.  I remember he jumped to free up Starlink resources for Ukraine incredibly quickly after the invasion. 

And then he turned it off (or threatened to) once Ukrainians started using Starlink to run their military drone ops.  Because he wasn't about to let his platform be used as a tool to wage war.

[Phoenix_person]

1 hour ago, mikbone said:

This is what our government should be doing.

I agree, but whenever government tries to do it, voters (mostly Republican) ask how it's being paid for. The answer: increasing the tax burden of people like Elon Musk. And here's the good news: he can still write off stuff like this. When we say we want billionaires to be taxed into being millionaires, they always have the option to cut out the taxman and have full autonomy over how their excess wealth is charitably used if they don't trust the government to do it. Maybe the Waltons would be more inclined to invest in getting their employees off of food stamps if the alternative was giving their excess profits to Uncle Sam. And hey, $999M is still an absolutely obscene amount of money.

[Carborendum]

3 hours ago, mikbone said:

So impressive. 

I agree.

3 hours ago, mikbone said:

This is what our government should be doing.

I disagree.  Not government.

This is exactly the type of thing that billionaires ought to be doing.  But they should be spearheading a crowd-sourcing campaign.  He should, certainly be the biggest donor.  But we can't be dependent on one person alone.  -- One person leading a million middle classers, that's an inspiring.

[mikbone]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

I agree.

I disagree.  Not government.

This is exactly the type of thing that billionaires ought to be doing.  But they should be spearheading a crowd-sourcing campaign.  He should, certainly be the biggest donor.  But we can't be dependent on one person alone.  -- One person leading a million middle classers, that's an inspiring.

Well, Elon made starlink to make money.  And probably to allow his cars to communicate with each other, so that atonomous driving can become reality.  He created the cybertruck on a whim.

He is just using his resources wisely and aiding where he can.

Our government should have been a much better steward with our tax dollars.  If so, NASA could have had similar resources.  Nuclear fusion reactors etc.  Our government has been so mis-managed that It can barely support any catastrophe.

[NeuroTypical]

14 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

16 hours ago, mikbone said:

This is what our government should be doing.

I agree, but whenever government tries to do it, voters (mostly Republican) ask how it's being paid for.

Oh, I don't think many on my side think the government shouldn't have a hand in disaster response/cleanup.  I think the right gets mostly ticked off at federal government overreach.  Each state should work it's own programs, and the FedGov should stay out of things. 

14 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

The answer: increasing the tax burden of people like Elon Musk.

Nonsense.  Do you think local, county, state, and federal disaster response resources aren't already available and already paid for?  A quick googling: 

 

If the GOP is full of people twitching in revulsion when they see a FEMA truck, then the Dems are full of ignorant people being led by emotion.  They see fires on the TV and immediately jump to "we need to radically redesign how we do things and tax the rich to fix it!"

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

Oh, I don't think many on my side think the government shouldn't have a hand in disaster response/cleanup.  I think the right gets mostly ticked off at federal government overreach.  Each state should work it's own programs, and the FedGov should stay out of things. 

The big issue for this blaze is that it was preventable. 

• State and local government was in charge of taking care of the wild lands to prevent fires like this. (controlled burns, creating fire breaks, etc.
• They were responsible for keeping up the water supply to be able to fight such an eventuality. 
• They were supposed to have personnel who knew how best to fight fires.

Government failed miserably.  And we want government to fix it?  Which level of government? 

For local... There are some circumstances where we claim "you broke it, you bought it."  Other times we say, "Stop touching my stuff before you break anything else!  Just leave us alone!"  I may not be sure where this particular event lies on that scale.  But I do know that the people who caused it (all the various levels of government involved in this debacle) aren't the ones who can fix it.

Then we ask, "should the Feds take care of it?"  No.  This was not just a freak of nature.  It was a completely preventable event.  They chose to give money to illegal aliens and homeless rather than safety of their own citizens.  This is one of the results.  California should have to clean up the mess they made for themselves.  No more tax dollars.

But if individuals (from anywhere) want to give a completely free will donation (time, talents, and means) to help people, that is certainly their right, and it should be encouraged.  But to use forcibly gotten tax dollars to help people get out of the mess they made for themselves?  That makes no sense.

Edited January 13 by Carborendum

[NeuroTypical]

When I was a kid, we went to Disneyland.  I remember the traffic, the endless lanes full of cars going nowhere, my dad swearing.  It was wrong and needed to be fixed.  Fast forward 3 decades, and my work flies me into CA.  I saw the same traffic, even more endless lanes full of cars going nowhere.  I didn't swear, I allocated enough time.  Still wrong, still needs to be fixed.

Metro Cali places are full of people unable or unwilling to fix their own problems.  They desired to emphasize diversity and equitable representation in their fire departments, over other priorities like "ability to handle several big fires with high winds".  And that's what they got.  Straight out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

The death toll stands at what, 16 now?  I suppose many things had to work well in order to keep it that low.  Colorado's most expensive fire cost 2 lives, but a fraction of the acreage and impacted homes.  But yeah, allocating billions across a decade for reservoirs that are still in the red-tape step of the process?  Representative government at it's finest.  You get what you want.

Edited January 13 by NeuroTypical

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

You get what you want.

Not always.  But sometimes, you can get what you need. 

The count is now at 24 (last I saw). 

And it turns out that they now believe that an illegal alien started one of the fires with a blowtorch.   They have him in custody.  But they didn't want to formally arrest him or call him a suspect or else Trump's ICE will come and get him.

I sure hope they return to sanity and put him behind bars...SMH

[Vort]

12 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Not always.  But sometimes, you can get what you need. 

FTR, I hate the Stones, but you can't deny their pervasive influence.