I’d like to see how much my school district spends on football. Unfortunately they don’t release the numbers anywhere for public scrutiny that I’ve found. How can I find the actual numbers? I don’t want to go to the school board accusing them of wasting money on football if it’s actually net profitable.
Because people who talk about "the football team always is fully funded" are from
schools that are turning a profit. We played teams from schools that weren't. They had ancient gear and a field. The public HS across the street from us didn't even have a field, they used ours.
The implication of the original posters mention of his district's "fully funded" team was definitely not that it was turning a profit... but that the school is instead still spending on it while cutting services like the library.
Why would he complain, in this context, about a football program that is generating income for the district?
Yes, that's exactly the implication I'm challenging. The amount of times I've heard the "they're cutting thing-i-think-is-important but keeping the football program" but who don't know that it's because the football program is self-sustaining is so frustrating. They're not choosing football over music or art or whatever. For sports which aren't local cash-cows the parents are having to buy the new equipment and uniforms. Sadly, no one stepped up for the music program like that.
People also ignore how these football stadiums are financed. Some with public bonds, others with private agreements with outside organizations. (Looking at you, Flower Mound.)
You're always beholden to the person who pays the bills. If your football stadium is paid for by public funds, you're beholden to the voter (by way of elected representatives.) If your football stadium was paid for by the local Ford dealership who asks for a cut of concessions, well... you give them a cut of the concessions.
People in North Texas seem to trust corporations more than they trust local governments. I think that's because they're familiar with whom they elect to office. The local corporations might be run by sociopathic dorks, but at least they're SUCCESSFUL sociopathic dorks. And while it might seem that I'm dissing North Texans... I'm really not. We may be on the road to neo-feudalism, but at least they know what side their bread is buttered on.
US sales tax is *significantly* lower than VAT, varies by state (allowing for all kinds of loopholes), and applies to fewer categories of products and services sold. No point arguing this, VAT is a protectionist and anti-competitive tax and the US has a right to challenge it.
Why are you arguing this point? It’s de-facto cheaper and easier for European companies to compete in the American markets, than the other way around.
How is it protectionist if the European companies also pay it?
You are arguing about rules that apply to all companies competing in Europe and then extrapolating that to say that “American companies competing in Europe” are mistreated.
If I read you correctly you're saying that a tax imposed on the consumers in a country benefits the country as a whole and thus aslo the companies operating in that country, which make it unfair to foreign companies? Is that really what you're arguing?
We started this conversation with you seemingly not understanding how VAT messes with free trade, and it sounds to me like you're in a different place now. Feel free to keep arguing over semantics all day long, I'll leave it at that.
My place hasn’t changed at all. Everything I’ve said is internally consistent. You are welcome to view any form of taxation as an impediment to “free trade” but that’s not how competition works. Feel free to continue believing that taxation is inherently protectionist, I’ll leave it at that.
There's "taxation", and then there is "taxation". VAT is an incredibly aggressive and overreaching version of "taxation", and it has severe implications on free trade with Europe. I'm not sure why you won't acknowledge this.
And by the way - plenty of economists view taxation as impediment to free trade.
I’m not sure why you won’t acknowledge that a tax that affects domestic and foreign companies equally is not protectionist. But here we are.
I’m not saying that taxes don’t have an impact on the economy, or the business environment, or growth, or profits…of course they do! Maybe the tax will lower demand which makes investment less appealing, and so less investment from Americans happens as a result. But there's also less investment from the Europeans in that case! And most of all, it has nothing to do with the competitiveness of American products in the European market, because the European products face the same tax. VAT does not distort the relative price between European and foreign products.
If you want to say that tax revenue is used for subsidies that are anticompetitive — well money is fungible, you can’t blame that specifically on VAT revenue, and you should be making an argument against subsidies, not the VAT. But then you will need to address the many ways in which the US subsidizes its own industries.
1) EU businesses have to deal with complicated sales tax arrangements that vary by state and municipality.
2) EU businesses have to operate in their own environment and also face the VAT. There is no protectionism here. The playing field with respect to VAT is balanced, regardless of which side of the pond is (...was) an easier business environment to operate in.
Interesting. It was private for me too. But I clicked to read the full list of the 474 4-star reviews and scrolled and found it. From there I found a direct link to his review which still works (as of a few hours after his name leaked) at:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4065667863
He justifies Ted Kaczynski saying:
"He was a violent individual - rightfully imprisoned - who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary."
The quote about "Violence never solved anything..." it turns out are not his words, they are part of him quoting someone else in his review; but I wasn't able to find the source of the long message he quoted; just news articles from the last few hours mentioning the quote.
Another notable GoodReads comment (from Luigi) regarding another book:
"I love Steve-O. His life is full of wild stories, and his addictive personality is one I relate to. "
Doesn't reject the fact that attempts were made to do so. The threat of cancellation is very real regardless [0], and not everyone is able to make it out unscathed like JK Rowling.
Boycott used to be a necessary and lauded aspect of American democracy and free markets.
Now it’s been relabeled “cancel culture” and the public are fascists for denying a person here and there oodles of figurative prestige.
A minority of elites sure have the masses convinced “canceling” a rich person is the true threat to democracy.
The end of a society is nigh when the elites are fighting to preserve their power to exploit the masses carte blanche. We grow their potatoes; not the other way around, and don’t you forget it!
JK Rowling was not cancelled in any way. Gawker Media however, was, by a deranged billionaire who abused the legal system to exact revenge on a gossip-oriented news site and its entire media conglomerate. "Cancel culture" to the degree that it exists as any kind of actual threat to free speech is squarely a right-wing endeavor.
> Gawker Media however, was, by a deranged billionaire who abused the legal system to exact revenge on a gossip-oriented news site and its entire media conglomerate.
Gawker Media wasn't cancelled; they intentionally violated a direct court order.
Maybe you should be arguing that the court should not have ruled against Gawker in the first place, or arguing that the court should not have directed Gawker to cease the publication of nonconsensual nudes, or that the court should not have brought the hammer down when Gawker continued its publication of nonconsensual nudes.
> I'm curious why you think it is okay to publish nudes of someone against their will.
I in no way stated or implied that that is OK in any way. such practices are vile and disgusting as was the outing of Thiel.
However, a "first amendment violation" , neither incident was.
"free speech" means, as we are reminded constantly by right wingers when they are denouncing "cancel culture", "speech that we despise is also free". Gawker in no way violated the first amendment. Right wing billionaires who claim to be things like "free speech absolutists" are full of it and will use any tools at their disposal to silence and "cancel" speech they don't like, including using their billions to abuse the justice system, launching torrents of frivolous lawsuits against media companies that published a story they didn't like (but had no legal basis to challenge).
Again, "a free speech violation occurred" is not my point.
my point is, billionaires saying "At last! free speech!" like PG did when he retweeted this MIT annoucement are completely full of it. They would like right-wing speech, ideas like "Black people are less intellectually capable" to be "free", which means "welcomed into the discourse without constraint", whereas any media company they don't personally like should be sued into oblivion. Gawker's fate only began when Peter Theil decided to target tens of millions of dollars at suing them into oblivion, waiting for something to stick. It quite plainly set a precedent that such actions can be taken by any billionaire whenever they want. Billionaires like Theil, PG and quite plainly Musk do not give a flying f** about "free speech". it is their speech they care about. And they should be widely challenged on this.
Gawker was not fined $140 million for violating a court order. They were sued for damages by Hulk Hogan and Hogan could have sued for the same things even if they had complied with that order, and I am not familiar with what basis there is to claim this lawsuit would not have been brought or successful if they had complied; even if unsuccessful, Theil's goal was to continue flooding Gawker with lawsuits until they went out of business, and this is most certainly an abuse of the legal system.
I did not say she was cancelled (in a successful sense), I said there were attempts to get her cancelled. Again, while her attempted cancellation wasn't successful, the fact that such an attempt even happened in the first place is mortifying. We live in the 21st century, witch hunts should not be a thing anymore.
Furthermore, I get the sense that your dismissal of JK Rowling's attempted cancellation is a thinly veiled attempt to dismiss or minimise the notion that "cancellation" is an actual phenomenon. People have their lives physically harmed and their livelihoods threatened because of this. People have committed suicide because of this (if you did actually bother to read the comment you were responding to). If that were your intent, you should take a good look as to whether you're consumed by the culture wars or not.
The notion that cancellation is exclusively a right-wing phenomenon is bollocks as well. Countless leftist academics have been successfully cancelled for their views. Oftentimes, their views were (mis)interpreted and misrepresented by their attackers in a fashion that requires the complete obliteration of reasoning. In fact, if you actually check the statistics from FIRE, 60% of the cancellation in academia came from the left, although 40% from the right is non-trivial as well. As such, the threat to free speech is indeed real, regardless of your political affiliation.
Lastly, I'm not based in the US or any part of the anglosphere. From my outsider's point of view however, the imminent threat to free speech in the "1984" sense is coming from the left. I spent two years of my time watching how Donald Trump and the republicans made a complete joke out of the US. I watched in utter shock at the atrocities and lunacy that they were capable of. In the next two years however, I observed an equivalent form of lunacy that was emerging from the left. This is no thanks to the influence of big tech, academia, and the left-wing media, whose global reach is far more prevalent than that of Fox News. From then on, I watched as more institutions in the west were ideologically captured, sacrificing their function for "social justice". While they are not the government, they are the cumulation of every power aside from the government. We've seen how big tech can rival the power held by congress. That, plus the media, academia, public and private institutions combined, is capable, and is exercising that power in a manner that is starting to look 1984-esque. What seems to be successfully driving this trend is the left's inability to discern social justice from "critical social justice". In other words, my calculus assignment easily runs circles around Robin DiAngelo's entire academic career and intellect. However, her books are selling like hotcakes. Make what you want out of what I've written.
> why do people constantly ignore this.