RA_50

Earth/US/Pacific Northwest. Tech geek, learning geek. I do my best not to judge people on their inherent characteristics, but on their character. Freedom lover.

[Preston Byrne @prestonjbyrne]

Ofcom Concedes Defeat in the 4chan Case

https://t.co/ksa6wgVkjG

[Preston Byrne @prestonjbyrne]

"Foreign censors are very serious people."

"They regard their work as very serious. They take themselves very seriously. They think their function is very grave. And, in their jurisdiction, within their particular province, they enjoy great and vast powers over the people who are subject to their control.

"But we are not subject to their control.

"Accordingly, we need to communicate to them that we're not subject to their control, and disincentivize them from believing the illusion that we are."

https://t.co/o1AiSKn3JP

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

In 2000, miners working 300 metres (980 ft) beneath the Mexican desert broke into a cave. When inside, the scene looked almost impossible. Enormous transparent crystals were everywhere, some reaching 11 metres (36 ft) long.

This is Mexico’s Cave of the Crystals.

1/n

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@ProgSocJazz @RockChartrand 🙄

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@DRanchLife Road pirates

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@TrumpTruthOnX 🙄

[Beth Dutton @1BethDutton]

Got my ballot. Went straight to I-645.

It repeals the 9.9% tax on income over $1 million. And it bans an income tax on the rest of us.

Then read the last line the AG put on it. Repealing it "would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education, and human services."

Not a fact. A warning label. Written by the side that wants the tax.

It works, too. One poll asked it two ways. With that sentence, keep the tax 57%, repeal 35%. Without it, 44% to 40%.

One sentence. 22 points.

They start with millionaires. They never stop at millionaires.

Read the whole thing. Then fill in your bubble like you mean it.

What line on your ballot made you mad, Warriors?

[GRANDPA’s FREE ADVICE @GOP_is_Gutless]

25 years of one-party Democrat control in Oregon is a masterclass in how leftist rule destroys a state’s ability to govern.

This is the same state whose governor leads a system that no longer requires students to prove proficiency in reading, math, or English to graduate high school.

2001–03 budget: $34 billion
• 32% education
• 25% social programs
• 12% infrastructure
• 12% administration
• 6% public safety
• 13% everything else

2025–27 budget: $140 billion (over 4× higher)
• 18% education
• 45% social programs
• 7.5% infrastructure
• 14% administration
• 5% public safety
• 10.5% everything else

Social programs went from $8.5 billion (25%) to $62.7 billion (45%) — 7 times more, nearly half the entire budget on handouts.

“Healthier Oregon” spends $1.3 billion giving free medical care to illegal migrants.

$724 million went to “homeless services” in 2024 — $60,412 per homeless person — while the homeless population rose. Walk Portland’s streets and see where that money actually went.

Oregon schools sank to the bottom of the country in reading and math. Democrats’ solution? Pass a law eliminating proficiency requirements to graduate, extend it again, then brag about higher graduation rates.
They’re not lifting people out of poverty or fixing education.

They’re building a permanent dependency empire with themselves in charge. Their ads say it plainly: “Vote for us or Republicans will take away your benefits!”

Governor Kotek can’t blame Trump. Democrats have controlled Oregon the entire time — even as the federal government flipped party control five times.

This is what one-party Democrat rule delivers.
#Oregon #DemocratFailure #Accountability

[Being Libertarian @beinlibertarian]

Social Security is a ponzi scheme.

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers on Friday, setting olive groves on fire and slinging rocks.

Caught in the attack was Post photographer Heidi Levine. “They just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times,” Levine said. https://t.co/9YLUuU9ktP

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@Stefanoeltorito @gaborgurbacs @elonmusk 🧐

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@PeterMcCormack 🤣

[Among the Wildflowers @deaflibertarian]

Gun rights became very personal to me after a home invasion in which I was nearly murdered while my toddler was in the same room. Yet some people still insist it’s “wrong” for me to own a gun for protection. Their stance shows how little they value my life and my child’s.

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@nic_carter @realDonaldTrump 🤣

[Mike Solana @micsolana]

liz warren: we’re gonna stop the mayonnaise company from buying a hot sauce company

elon musk:

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@OthmerBarbara We can only hope.

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@PramilaJayapal What a dishonest ad! For shame!

[ⱤɆ₳Ⱡ ฿Ɇ₦ @AtRealBen]

The entire covid saga summed up in less than 2.5 mins.

Absolutely on the money, and hilarious AF 😭👌🏻⚡️

[RA_50 @RA50_206]

@April4Congress @RepAndyHarrisMD @RepAndyHarrisMD appears to not understand the constitution.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Bernie Sanders says the top 1% owns more than the bottom 93%, that fewer than a thousand billionaires got $2.2 trillion richer last year, and that it's "obscene."

It's the most seductive and most wrong economic argument of our time. Let me explain why.

First, wealth distribution follows a power law. Always. Everywhere. Books, music, startups, followers on X, goals in soccer. A small minority captures most of the value. That's not a bug of capitalism. It's the mathematical signature of every system where value gets created.

So the only question that matters isn't "how big is the rich's slice?" It's "is the cake growing, and is the slice of the poorest growing with it?"

And the answer is yes. In 1990, more than one human in three lived in extreme poverty. Today it's about one in ten. During exactly the period when billionaires multiplied.

Bernie shows you the slice. He never shows you the cake.

Second thing he won't tell you: past a certain level, wealth stops being consumption. It becomes capital allocation.

Elon Musk isn't sleeping on a pile of cash. He owns stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, xAI. Jeff Bezos owns Amazon stock. That "$2.2 trillion" isn't sitting in a checking account. It's factories, rockets, data centers, millions of jobs. Nobody can eat $100 billion. You can only decide where to invest it.

Once you understand that, the whole debate changes. The real question becomes: who allocates capital better?

The people who built Amazon, SpaceX and Nvidia? Or politicians?

A 5% wealth tax isn't "taking money from the rich." It's taking investment decisions away from people who proved they can create value and handing them to people who proved the opposite.

Because the fundamental difference between an entrepreneur and a politician is consequences.

The entrepreneur invests his own money. If he allocates badly, he loses everything. The market corrects him brutally, no appeal. That's why most startups die: the system kills bad decisions.

The politician invests other people's money. If he allocates badly, nothing happens. Worse, he gets a bigger budget to "fix the problem."

Milton Friedman put it better than anyone. There are four ways to spend money. Your money on yourself: you care about price and quality. Your money on others: you care about price. Others' money on yourself: you care about quality. Others' money on others: you care about nothing.

Government is the fourth box. By design.

Perfect example: California high-speed rail. Approved in 2008 for about $33 billion. Current estimated cost: over $100 billion. Passengers carried: zero. No entrepreneur would have survived that. The politicians who pushed it built careers on it.

And when allocation has no consequences, it eventually finds a buyer. A politician who controls billions without accountability becomes the most profitable target in the world for anyone who wants to steer that money.

The irony is that the left that rails against billionaires is itself funded by billionaires. George Soros is one of the biggest Democratic donors in history. The Gates Foundation shapes public health policy across the planet.

Politicians don't fight billionaires. They pick their own. The ones who fund the state over the ones who compete with it.

So if we actually want fewer poor people, we have to stop judging ideas by their intentions and start judging them by their results. And the results are brutally clear.

China, 1978: Deng Xiaoping opens the economy to markets. More than 800 million people escape extreme poverty. The largest retreat of misery in human history. Not through redistribution. Through the freedom to build.

India, 1991: liberalization. Same movie.

South Korea and North Korea: same people, same language, same starting point in 1953. One became one of the most advanced economies on earth. The other has famines.

Poland and Ukraine: comparable living standards in 1990. Today the average Pole is more than three times richer than the average Ukrainian.

Argentina: a year and a half of liberalization, and the poverty rate falls from over 50% to around 30%.

No country in history escaped poverty by punishing the people who build. Every single one did it by letting them build.

And if you want to see what Bernie's program looks like in real life, you don't have to imagine it. It exists. It's called France. We've been running it for 45 years.

Mass nationalizations in 1981. Two years later, Socialist president Mitterrand has to reverse course into austerity.

Retirement at 60. The 35-hour workweek.

A wealth tax for 35 years. Hundreds of wealthy households left every year for Belgium, Switzerland, London, taking their capital, their companies and their future taxes with them. Macron finally scrapped it in 2018.

Hollande's 75% tax: raised a few hundred million, drove talent out, abandoned after two years.

One of the highest tax burdens in the OECD. Public spending around 57% of GDP, a record in the developed world.

Last balanced budget: 1974. Public debt: over €3.4 trillion. Mass unemployment for four decades.

If taxing the rich and growing the state made people prosperous, France would be the richest country on the planet.

It isn't. GDP per capita in France is barely more than half of America's. It's lower than Mississippi, the poorest state in the US. Not a single global tech giant. Our best engineers build Silicon Valley instead. I've been going back and forth between Paris and San Francisco for years. I see it every week.

And California is about to replay the movie. Prop 40, on the ballot November 3rd, would take 5% of billionaires' net worth. Even Gavin Newsom, a Democratic governor, opposes it. The state's own nonpartisan budget analyst warns that income tax revenue could drop every year if the wealthy leave. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel have reportedly already started moving their assets out.

You don't fight poverty by shrinking the top. You fight it by growing the cake.

Bernie wants a society where nobody has too much. I want a society where nobody has too little.

The first has been tried everywhere and produces equality in stagnation. The second lifted a billion people out of misery.

Choose.