Caleb Spare

I make software at @liftoffmobile.

NP → NE → NM → TX → CA → WA

[Searchlight Institute @SearchlightInst]

It's been decades since America's electricity grid was last upgraded.

Fixing the grid is the first step to lowering electricity costs, accelerating clean energy, and building a better future.

It's time we leveraged this moment to make bold choices and solve big problems.

[Ostap Yarysh @OstapYarysh]

This is fundamentally flawed logic that unfortunately many on the left continue to embrace: "Economic sanctions punish ordinary people who did not ask for this war." Interestingly enough, in their minds, the same logic somehow doesn't apply to Israel.

However, it presumes that most Russian citizens are victims of the regime, not its enablers. Obviously, there are a brave few who actually try to do something and have paid a price for doing so, but they are rather the exception. The vast majority either actively supports the war or simply does not care enough to oppose it because it hasn't significantly disrupted their daily lives. Yet.

Many in the U.S. are not aware that Russia's war machine is not primarily fueled by conscripts dragged unwillingly to the front. It relies heavily on volunteers who knowingly sign contracts and travel to Ukraine to kill people for money. They don't have a moral problem with it and see it as just another risky job.

Those who are not in the military manufacture drones, sew uniforms, maintain military logistics, and keep defense factories running around the clock. They produce propaganda on TV, print books that justify aggression, adopt stolen Ukrainian kids, create "patriotic" art, spread pro-war messages on social media, and pay taxes that finance the war - or simply do nothing and accept the invasion of Ukraine because "what can we do?"

Sanctions are not designed to be pleasant. Their purpose is precisely to increase the economic and political cost of aggression both for the regime and its enablers. If Russian society can continue living largely normal lives while missiles rain down on Ukrainian cities every single night, there is little incentive for anyone inside Russia to question the war.

[Stephen Richer @stephen_richer]

Every state counts every vote.

Stop passing the buck on this. It's pathetic.

Yes, Donald Trump and his allies are lying about fraud. Per usual.

But you knew this problem was coming. And you did nothing about it.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Can someone give us a manifest of this fake meeting that keeps getting shared?

Who said what ? What was their regulatory oversight power? Were they authorized by POTUS/Chief of Staff to make this claim? Did @pmarca call Biden or Chief of Staff after to express concern?

[dylan matthews 🔸 @dylanmatt]

This is a good moment for very boring, traditional capital gains hikes
- return the estate tax to 2000 levels
- end step-up basis and treat death as a realization event
- treat carried interest as earned income
- raise the top rate from 23.8% to 30%

[Josh Barro @jbarro]

The attacks on state capacity are coming home to roost

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

Reporting from the Financial Times on Xinjiang remains incredibly grim:

* In some areas, 90% of children are taken from parents to be educated in boarding schools where they aren't allowed to speak Uyghur
* Officials monitor who eats during Ramadan and report those who skip meals
* Basic items like prayer mats and religious text are considered illegal contraband
* Adult Uyghur women are pressured to marry Han Chinese men, and there are official goals to sterilize a certain % of them.
* Xinjiang has the largest prison capacity in the world relative to population
* Huge numbers of Uyghur prisoners are now being shipped across the country in forced labor schemes, as a way to dodge Xinjiang sanctions/boycotts
* The CCP shut down all 10 existing Uyghur-language publishers, none remain. They fed one university's book collection into a shredder.

There's a lot going on the world, but it's worth remembering that China is still actively engaged in cultural genocide. They're barely even hiding it, they openly talk about the need to 'correct' Uyghur culture and create 'ethnic unity'. They are openly destroying an entire culture as efficiently as they can, cutting children off from parents, restricting language, restricting religious practice, forcing sterilizations and intermarriage, imprisoning anyone who resists the tiniest amount and shipping them out to forced labor factories. That is what the CCP is.

https://t.co/gHK9ZS38Vx

[Josh Barro @jbarro]

Why did leftists decide that manifestly low conscientiousness is a mark of "authenticity"? They did it with Fetterman, it blew up in their face, and now they've done it again with Platner: falling in love with an obviously unreliable underemployed weirdo. https://t.co/cid5VoEtsW

[Caleb Spare @calebspare]

@davidcrawshaw "Sandbox" does not really have any of those connotations to me.

Other words: scratch, transient

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

This seems like a totally reasonable idea to me.

[Paul Novosad @paulnovosad]

One of our society's worst brainworms is this compulsive tearing down of anyone who tries to do anything good.

Bill Gates is the most ethical and pro-social billionaire that we have. If all the billionaires were like him, our world would be better in many many ways.

[Caleb Spare @calebspare]

@perseusnovum @Timodc I'm genuinely dumber for having been exposed to this take

[Jane Flegal @JaneAFlegal]

I have an idea for you

[James Talarico @jamestalarico]

I want to thank Senator John Cornyn for his years representing our state. 

We don’t agree on everything, but we both still believe in public service.

To Senator Cornyn’s supporters: you have a place in our campaign.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Seniors are already the wealthiest age group in America. Washington spends 6x as much on seniors as people under 25. So state and local govts moving in the same direction is totally absurd. Empty pandering to win a primary.

[Jordan Weissmann @JHWeissmann]

It is darkly funny how the left has become fanatically devoted to defending petite bourgeois landlords against professionally run property managers

[Caleb Spare @calebspare]

I keep seeing these headlines about Trump's $1.7B slush fund for insurrectionists and toadies, but 1.776 rounds to 1.8, not 1.7. Let's be precise when discussing world historical corruption, folks.

[Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc]

you have a responsibility to the kids you teach, as individuals, to offer them challenging and interesting material. intentionally trying to stunt their education so that the high-performer/low-performer gaps are small is wrong.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

Ken Paxton is so corrupt that the Republicans in the AG office became whistleblowers.

Then Republicans in the Texas House voted to impeach him.

Then MAGA got involved. In the Senate, he argued that it was all a left wing conspiracy to get him. He was acquitted.

Now Trump endorses him for Senate.

This isn't left or right.

This is about Republicans' tolerance for corruption. They even have a preference for it!

It's not something they accept just out of necessity to beat the other side.

These are bad people.

Kakistocracy. Trumpism is a populist movement, which leads to the worst people rising to the top.

[A Greg @agreger1]

@StatisticUrban Potus should be ~2 mil, congress pushing 800k with a host of bureaucratic/advisory jobs in the 500k range +/- 150k or so