> It's a shame politicians can't be kept accountable tens of years from now. It would be great that if in 25 years it turns out global warming does indeed cause huge problems for humans, we could sue the politicians that took irresponsible risks with the environment. Now they can just focus on short term gains, and ignore all the long term side effects.
This is a super interesting perspective.. but instead of only looking to the future, could we apply this to the past?
aka Were there predictions about global warming in 2015, 2000, or earlier that drove policy that ended up being incorrect?
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.
> On June 25, 1971, one Robert Hardy appeared at the FBI office in Camden, New Jersey and told agents of a plan by several of his friends to raid the draft board in that city, remove the files, and destroy them. Hardy was one of the gang, but changed his mind. He was immediately hired as an informer and told to return to the gang and report on their plans, which he did. On August 22, the FBI was waiting when the group struck, and twenty-eight were arrested. The trial began on February 5, 1973. Hoover died in May 1972, but his ghost must have suffered a shock as Hardy changed his mind again and became a witness for the defense. He told the truth, namely that the FBI had used him as a provocateur, and that the burglary could not have taken place without him and the burglary tools that the FBI had supplied.
What are the odds the FBI has done this more recently than 1971?
Most of the "foiled lone wolf Islamic attacks" in the US were planned by the FBI. They'd find some kid, radicalize him, recruit him, supply him with dummy weapons, plan a terrorist attack for him to carry out, then arrest him for it.
It is a fair assumption that they do this regularly, politics aside one should ask why were there so many FBI agents at the Jan 6 debacle and why didn’t they do more to quell the violence. The origins of Ruby Ridge and Waco are fine examples of insanity. Nevertheless inciting crime and capturing bad guys seems like a game they like playing.
> The after-action responses – 50 pages in all – were located by current FBI Director Kash Patel’s team and recently turned over to the House Judiciary Committee and its special subcommittee investigating security failures and weaponization of law enforcement during the Jan. 6 riot.
> The document has proven a bombshell to lawmakers, revealing for the first time that the FBI had a total of 274 agents deployed to the Capitol in plainclothes and with guns after the violence started but with no clear safety gear of way to be recognized by other law enforcement agencies working in the chaos of the riot.
The claim from the post above was "why were there so many FBI agents at the Jan 6 debacle" and the response asked for a source.
If you consider the response to the violence part of "the Jan 6 debacle", then yes, FBI agents were present.
The documents would NOT specify they were in "plainclothes" because the FBI doesn't wear uniforms, therefore everything would be "plainclothes" by definition. This is both common knowledge but I can personally confirm from my time there. You can dislike the characterization but it is correct.
The more interesting questions:
- Since the FBI primarily an investigative body (in the name) and these were NOT tacteams providing armed support, what was their purpose?
- Further, why did it take almost 5 years for the FBI to identify the man placing the pipebombs? According to reports, no new evidence came to light.
The context of this thread is essentially false flags, or at least some kind of entrapment to make the agency look useful by putting a stop to an attack they had instigated. So when someone asks "what were all the FBI agents doing there", it makes a great deal of difference whether agents were embedded in the crowd as the riot got started or if they arrived later to disperse the crowd.
The intial claim/skepticism is that there were agents there at all. Proven.
Moving on to the implication and my question:
> Since the FBI primarily an investigative body (in the name) and these were NOT tacteams providing armed support, what was their purpose?
We DO deserve an explanation to that one and unfortunately, "they showed up to address the violence" doesn't resolve this because - as noted - they are NOT uniformed. Therefore, a Special Agent drawing their weapon looks like a random civilian which would only increase the chaos and danger for everyone.
They're not even particularly useful for crowd control because a) they're not uniformed and b) as an Executive agency, they don't have authority in the Capital unless US Capital Police authorizes it.. though that may take the Sergeant at Arms or the Speaker specifically, I haven't reviewed that in quite a while.
Finally, since the FBI has a multi-decade history of instigating issues to be able to stop them, we SHOULD be skeptical until we get a complete and documented explanation.
Gosh this article is such a nothingburger. It's an endless litany to hammer that there was "political bias" in the deployment of the FBI.
It's mostly hearsay the only facts are that there were FBI agents deployed and that they were unprepared for riot control. But is riot control their role ? Weren't they supposed to be witnesses to see what was happening and inform other police ?
It was probably messy and you can probably find mismanagement everywhere if you look hard enough (and people to complain about it) but how do you handle a riot organized with the purpose of gaining more time to overturn the result of an election anyways ? (Check out the fake great electors scheme) This is the elephant in the room. To come and whine about political bias after that should be laughed at.
The problem with this thinking is that the US government regularly engages in actual conspiracies, which the public only finds out about much later. COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, the Tuskegee experiments, Operation Paperclip, the list goes on [1].
So, while it's true that the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories are dumb nonsense, it remains unwise to dismiss a theory just because it is a "conspiracy theory".
[1] This is almost certainly true of other governments as well! I'm just less informed there.
You're not crazy. The parent poster stinkbeetle is incoherently angry, he has no self respect or beliefs, there is no signal in his noise, he's being obstreperous and incomprehensible on purpose, he histrionically tries to play the victim of verbal violence when challenged on his racism, and becomes unhinged when asked to explain his own point. He's just another adolescent attention starved edgelord troll. For proof, just set showdead=true and read his comment history. Pity him, for he's having a terrible Festivus.
You've become completely unhinged, you pathetic boomer, because I mildly poked fun at your secular-religion. What are you even doing you poor simpleton? Not even your fellow adherents to the faith are impressed by your mega tantrum. Time to re-evaluate your life choices.
The EV tax applies to people who a) casue a disproportionate amount of wear & tear on the roads vs ICE vehicles and b) are generally higher income in the state.
When you look at taxation from a "charge the people who use it" or the "the rich should pay more" perspective, this appears to address both.
Is the problem simply that you want to pay less taxes?
No, I just want to pay a fair amount of taxes. Honestly the gas taxes should be increased or we should move to a tax structure where it's mileage, weight, and emissions based.
Paying 3x the same taxes while having less externalities isn't fair.
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car in the externalities of road wear & tear.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" is at most 25% higher in a "damage per mile equivalent" but could be as little as 6% using the averages.
If your actual mileage is over 15625/year, then you're paying less than the equivalent.
27 isn't 35 no matter how many times you say it is.
> If your actual mileage is over 15625/year, then you're paying less than the equivalent.
The average is less than that by a decent bit, so more than half of US cars are paying more even with your unproven, contorted math based on some estimates done once in the 70s and never really looked into closely again.
It's also assuming the difference in weight. The closest hybrid I would have bought instead is only like 100kg lighter than my EV. And it gets like 40mpg, better than 35mpg.
It would also mean semi trucks should pay like 20,000x more in registration fees. Does this make sense?
> What's your annual mileage?
Less than 15k on that car (like most people), so even with your assumed math it's overpaying.
Semi trucks pay huge amounts in gas taxes because they guzzle gas like nobody's business. It's only the EVs that aren't paying for their road wear in gas taxes.
Average class 8 truck (>33,000lbs) burns under 11,000GGEa year, ratio is 1GGE=1.13gal of diesel. So somewhere under 12,500gal of diesel on average, but we'll use that to lean even more in the truck's favor.
Are you suggesting the average car burns less than 1 gallon of gas a year?
A 20mpg car driving 12,500mi (the average ICE in the US) would use 625gal of gas. So more like 20x, maybe 40x if the per gallon tax of diesel is double. Pretty dang far off from 20,000x.
And they're doing way more miles while being massively heavier, meaning incredibly more harm on the road than whatever EV you're thinking.
Registration fees are likely the same or close but when you factor in gas taxes (the original comparison here), the Ford is definitely paying more both based on fuel type and mpg.
Not sure where you are but in Indiana, gas tax for unleaded is 36c while diesel is 62c so on a per-gallon basis, that's an additional +72% in taxes. Back of the envelope: Civic at 30mpg pays 1.2c/mile vs SuperDuty at 15mpg pays 4.13c/mile so the multiple is closer to 3.4 vs 2
So yes - assuming registration fees are comparable and mileage is comparable - the SuperDuty should pay more.
The lightest SuperDuty has a gas engine. Diesel SuperDuty fuel economy is a bit better, but the vehicle also weighs more and is likely to be carrying/pulling more. But regardless of whether the multiple is 2 or 3.4 or somewhere in between, it is a small fraction of the added road wear.
By the fourth power law, an unloaded diesel Superduty creates ~22x the road wear of a honda civic. Loaded can be 100x more.
I do agree the relationship probably isn't linear, but the fourth power rule doesn't necessarily have numerous studies confirming it. It was a small collection of studies on road wear the US highway administration did in the 1950s and pretty much everyone has just gone with that. Other studies have pointed to it being less than previously thought.
Thanks for the insight but my claim was never "12,000mi is really 35,000mi"
Regardless, it would be interesting to see the actual number worked through to see what the equivalent EV registration fee should be if road damage/maintenance is the sole factor.
> If the car was a 35mpg hybrid that would be 35,000mi of equivalent driving.
> that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off
You absolutely did suggest me paying taxes for 12k miles is practically the same as ~35k miles, you said it several times. That it's not far off. How else am I supposed to read that? You were so sure of it you mentioned it many times.
> Regardless, it would be interesting to see the actual number worked through to see what the equivalent EV registration fee should be if road damage/maintenance is the sole factor.
Sure, but it's likely far less than what I'm paying. As mentioned elsewhere, a similar weight unloaded F-150 pays half the taxes. So I'm at least paying double for similar weight vehicles, and yet you tell me it's really only 6%. But sure, tell me again how I'm really just paying my fair share and 12 = 35.
> If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car in the externalities of road wear & tear.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" is at most 25% higher in a "damage per mile equivalent" but could be as little as 6% using the averages.
^ As you quoted, I used the formula to estimate 12k would be equivalent to 27k and said paying taxes equivalent to be 35k miles is "at most 25% higher", neither of which is "12 = 35". Using their approach, I calculated 35k to be equivalent to 15625 specifically, again, not 12k.
If the underlying approach is wrong, we should replace it with something better.
Alternatively, the OTHER reasoning of "the rich should pay more" still applies, so I assume that's a factor here. Hoping States charge rich people (or high income earners, if you prefer) less isn't likely to work right now.
> Alternatively, the OTHER reasoning of "the rich should pay more" still applies, so I assume that's a factor here.
Once again, your assumption is incorrect. That base model F-150 that pays half the taxes costs more than my EV. The registration fee doesn't factor in income or valuation at all. A $100k Hummer EV pays the same as a $15k used Bolt. Meanwhile that Hummer EV is going to do a hell of a lot more damage to the roads than the Bolt.
It probably has more to do with the government being in the pocket of oil interests and acts accordingly.
> The budget is voted on by Congress literally every single year.
A formal budget hasn't been voted on and passed by Congress in decades.
You're likely thinking of "continuing resolutions" and omnibus bills, neither of which are "budgets" by Congress's own defintions but function similarly:
The first - a continuing resolution - just continues spending as is, no chance to change or cut.
The second - an omnibus bill - is a big conglomoration of requests and projects with minimal chances to change things.
You are 100% correct on the lack of political will to be able to change things. Frankly, I believe that a) too many people have their hands in the pot or b) they fundraise off the real/perceived problems, so the motivation to fix anything is minimal.
They're not after money. They're motivated by prestige which CAN be money (ew, tacky) but is actually measured by access to key figures, your name being in the right places with the right people, and the cocktail party circuit.
My wife was a reporter in DC and she was at the White House Correspondents Dinner and everything. Living in those circles is surreal. The namedropping is a whole other level. When I realized I was doing it too (with some legit impressive names at the time), I gtfo. I'd rather be evaluated by what I've done or can do vs who I know or knows me.
My wife was a reporter with a top tier news agency in DC and I was shocked how they divvied up topics.
At best, it was "you're good with computers, go report on this hearing on cybersecurity" but more commonly, it was "who has this morning open? You do? Great. Go cover this 9am on the Israel-Palestine negotiations and what the implications are. We'll do a segment in the 11am hour."
This is a super interesting perspective.. but instead of only looking to the future, could we apply this to the past?
aka Were there predictions about global warming in 2015, 2000, or earlier that drove policy that ended up being incorrect?