• 5 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: March 14th, 2023

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  • NATO members in general are too comfortable relying too much much on the U.S. defense umbrella. It is something the U.S. has been warning NATO members about for a long time. It’s meant to be a collective defense. What’s happening in Ukraine should be a loud wakeup call.

    I’m fine with NATO members relying on the US defense budget as long as they spend their money on socialist programs at home. The US could provide the best socialist safety net on the planet, and still outspend the rest of the world 40:1 on defense if it would just tax the rich. Tax capitol gains like income as well, and 80% tax on everything over 20 million a year, 95% tax on everything over 200 million a year, and 99% tax on everything over 1 billion a year.

    Boom now we can do the best socialized medicine on the plan and have enough left over to build a couple hundred new NATO bases where ever member states want them.


  • Stance? They are easy to detect. Much easier than shaded turf grass or artificial turf. What I can tell you is that the term “non-functional turf” has entered the language over the previous 3 years in via the regulatory agencies. This term describes areas of turf grass like median strips or decorative turf around shopping centers (the strip mall soul patch bit of green near the entrance or sign).

    These areas will likely be excepted in the current legal and regulatory framework, and its important to understand why. Groups like farmers or golf courses have strong advocacy groups going to bat for them in the water rights world. Other groups, like home owners, do not receive the same advocacy when it comes to laws, and often more importantly, agency policy (the interpretation and implementation of law).

    So if we ban water use to golf courses, should we ban it to city (or heck, private) private sports fields?

    In my personal politics, I’m as anti-grass as they come, unless its deep rooted annual grasses. But in practice there is a bit of nuance to appreciate, with a big part of that being that relative to agriculture, irrigated turfgrass is a nothing burger. Agriculture is far far more heavily subsidized with regards to water use, and far more wasteful. Look just south of pheonix and you see fields and fields of cotton. Southern Arizona is where your lettuce is coming from.