Certainly size is an issue, it is harder for large organizations to be flexible, but what often gets overlooked is that government is fundamentally different than private enterprises, we ask and expect different things from them. And that’s a good thing!
Private companies sole function is to maximize profits, regardless of anything. Companies are encouraged and incentivized to but corners and find shortcuts to increase profits.
We place greater demands on government and restrict its behavior because our expectations are different. The concepts of equal protection under the law and due process are explicitly in opposition to the cut-costs-in-every-possible-way mentality that we expect out of private businesses. Holding jury trials are expensive. Providing basic services to all Americans, even in rural areas and regardless of their ability to pay, is similarly expensive. The government could be a lot more “efficient” if we did away with stuff like that, but we shouldn’t because most people recognize and agree that that would be a terrible thing. Another good example is in the funding of general scientific research that may not have some obvious, profitable application.
It seems fairly benign for people to lament the fact that government doesn’t run as efficiently as private business supposedly does, but it’s fucking insidious and imo is an extremely harmful idea.
But like - there is a vocal contingency on the left that sees wars like this for what they are and is against them. That contingency has at least some influence, as evidenced by the fact that Obama spent 8 years lying to these people and assuring them that he’s doing things the smart way and is NOT interested in perpetual war in the ME.
I feel like this is a juvenile way to look at politics, but a lot of days I just want to sit and complain that if other voters weren’t so god damn stupid and voted for people who weren’t obviously lying to their faces about everything from foreign policy to “universal healthcare” everything would be so much better. It is infuriating.
The thing about that movie The Post, was that the events of the movie took place in 1971, and then the vietnam war didn’t end until 1975. So like great for publishing this afghanistan stuff but it’s not going to change anything.
Man, even setting aside the eugenics and the impossibility of finding a partner for people with autosomal dominant mutations like Huntington’s disease and the like, and the extreme difficulty associated with screening people for certain things like SMA, a non-trivial number of genetic diseases are de novo mutations found only in the child but not in either parent. Maybe it’s just the headline and not the researcher that’s full of hubris, but man, that’s some hubris right there.
Walmart is apologizing for selling sweaters that appear to show Santa with lines of cocaine.
The sweater says “Let It Snow” and includes three white lines on a table in front of Santa.
Part of the description said: “The best snow comes straight from South America” and that “Santa really likes to savor the moment when he gets his hands on some quality, grade-A, Colombian snow.”
Walmart said the sweater was sold online in Canada by a third-party vendor and has since been removed.
I had no water on Friday for like 8 hours, then cloudy water… And to make it worse the main water pump is in 1 of the only Lib Dems District Leader JoSwinson…
Ongoing problem for 2 years and she cant get it fixed, with 1 of the biggest Scottish Water plants in the area still using old Victorian pipes that needed replaced years ago…
And for whatever reason shit like this has led to a global rise of moronic wannabe dictators instead of a global push to upgrade shitty old infrastructure.
The bill, which is expected to easily pass the lower house of Parliament, would give migrants of all of South Asia’s major religions — except Islam — a clear path to Indian citizenship. It is the most significant move yet to profoundly alter India’s secular nature enshrined by its founding leaders when the country gained independence in 1947.
Muslim Indians are deeply unsettled. They see the new measure, called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, as the first step by the governing party to make second-class citizens of India’s 200 million Muslims, one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, and render many of them stateless.
“We are heading toward totalitarianism, a fascist state,” said Asaduddin Owaisi, a Muslim lawmaker, who on Monday dramatically tore up a copy of the bill while giving a speech in Parliament. “We are making India a theocratic country.”
US support and involvement in the war was already drastically winding down by 1971. In '68-'69 there were 27,000 US servicemen killed, by 1971 that was down to 2400. Then in '72-'75 there were about 1000 killed in four years. So I mean I kind of agree that the Pentagon Papers didn’t end the war, but from the opposite angle. The war was already ending and at most the Pentagon Papers sped it up a bit.
Not that it wasn’t a huge and noteworthy story, obviously it was.
