Autocracy Texas Style

[Captante]

You mean the world's 5th largest economy, the one that's about to the 4th? That California?

Great anecdotal wad btw, the "I watched a video several years ago" bit. Yep, compelling stuff as usual Felix. Look your bets don't concern us; more interested in your devotion to ignorance and this struggle to respect certain Constitutional rights. The problem in Texas is those in office like Abbott. You need to admit it instead of vomiting reheated talk radio.

Reminder: you are not dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer in Felix.

What is it you get as a "reward" for arguing with stupid folks again?

so how the fuck do you justify your unskilled, labor-vacant living?

Felix most likely gets an invoice rather than a paycheck.

 

[iRONic]

For the life of me, I cannot understand why liberals continue to live in red states whose govts are openly hostile to them.

I can answer that. We left CT and moved to KY for money and family. Specifically to keep more of my money and move nearer to our family.

I have paid $1200 a month in heating bills in Connecticut at certain times during especially shitty winters. After living here for four winter seasons we have never paid more than 300 bucks a month NG and electric combined.

My mortgage & property taxes run me at least 30% less here. My wife's mother lives seven minutes away, her sister lives nine minutes away.

My oldest child and their partner just moved here from NM. They will be living 15 minutes away. Our middle child and both of my grandchildren live 15 minutes away also.

As far as the lunatic GQP cultists who live around here they're easy to spot & easy enough to avoid.

 

[Captante]

I have paid $1200 a month in heating bills in Connecticut at certain times during especially shitty winters. After living here for four winter seasons we have never paid more than 300 bucks a month NG and electric combined

Let me guess.... you had electric heat and kept the windows open all winter ???

Seriously .... that's MORE than my last boss paid to heat an INDOOR GARAGE with a 20 foot ceiling and adjoining large metal building full of offices! (this was a limo-company garage with floor-to-ceiling "roll-up" steel doors that opened frequently!)

Connecticut IS an expensive place to live though no doubt! (and family doesn't come with a price-tag!)

 

[zinfamous]

I can answer that. We left CT and moved to KY for money and family. Specifically to keep more of my money and move nearer to our family.

I have paid $1200 a month in heating bills in Connecticut at certain times during especially shitty winters. After living here for four winter seasons we have never paid more than 300 bucks a month NG and electric combined.

My mortgage & property taxes run me at least 30% less here. My wife's mother lives seven minutes away, her sister lives nine minutes away.

My oldest child and their partner just moved here from NM. They will be living 15 minutes away. Our middle child and both of my grandchildren live 15 minutes away also.

As far as the lunatic GQP cultists who live around here they're easy to spot & easy enough to avoid.

Is it any comfort that your $1200 gas bills and property taxes in CT were subsidizing those affordable costs in KY? At least you were sort of pre-paying into your current lifestyle.

 

[Captante]

Messed up as Connecticut is in SOME ways, at least here WOMEN are FULL CITIZENS (!!!) not "breeding stock".

No humor (or sarcasm) intended whatsoever.

At this point I'd be embarrassed and ashamed to live in any "red" state but doubly so if it's down south.

 

[dainthomas]

I gave you guys an example of how excessive regulation is harmful to businesses which are usually in business to help people.

lol wat

 

[iRONic]

Let me guess.... you had electric heat and kept the windows open all winter ???

Seriously .... that's MORE than my last boss paid to heat an INDOOR GARAGE with a 20 foot ceiling and adjoining large metal building full of offices! (this was a limo-company garage with floor-to-ceiling "roll-up" steel doors that opened frequently!)

Connecticut IS an expensive place to live though no doubt! (and family doesn't come with a price-tag!)

Close. Electric heat and propane!!

Colder the winter got the higher the propane cost. Gouging motherfuckers!

 

[iRONic]

Is it any comfort that your $1200 gas bills and property taxes in CT were subsidizing those affordable costs in KY? At least you were sort of pre-paying into your current lifestyle.

Heh heh… actually my mortgage for a 1500 square-foot house is almost the same as it was in CT. The difference here in KY is my socialist county gives me a 40% discount on my property tax cause I'm disabled!

Shitlol

 

[sandorski]

Only a union member would advocate for pay based on body temperature, not merit.

Yes, you are getting it. "Merit" is not an excuse to underpay your Workers.

 

[FelixDeCat]

In my opinion you caught in a vicious psychological dilemma. Here is how I see it:

Conservatives are conservative for reasons. One is that conservatives manifest behaviors that are ancient in origin and provide survival value for those who express those traits thus preserving them genetically. They saved our bacon before we developed forethought and future predictive analysis, rational analytic thinking. The former is an instantaneous reaction created by fear. One leaps instantaneously from the frying pan and if lucky it's not into the fire. Liberals are more able to suppress the fear reaction allowing them to spend precious time in the hot pan, but they are thus better able to survive a jump.

What does all of this have to do with anything? It's all about the relation of fear and how it affects our cognitive style. When children are exposed to threat, the fear of it triggers conservative thinking. Behaviors become constricted and life is full of taboos. It is a product of authoritarianism, Stockholm Syndrome and contempt for deviation heresy, etc. A conservative is someone who is strongly emotionally constricted, law and order motivated and the kind of people liberals hate because their emotional intolerance for difference is something liberals find ugly and contemptible.

The problem, then, is that conservatives are caught in a nasty catch 22. The more frightened they become of liberality, the closer to conscious awareness the price of their inner emotional constriction becomes, which threatens to evoke the same kind of rage liberals feel at attempts to repress and confine their inner freedoms. In an attempt to keep such feelings repressed they act out their repressive nature earning them the description by liberals of being contemptible deplorable and all of the rest of the shit liberals here will try to tar you with.

And the greater the abuse you face the greater your need to deflect that hatred will become. Thus in a way they create you and you create them, and all because we all needed love and support as children and didn't get it, some less than others.

So this is a cycle that recreates itself, I call the Wheel of Karma. There is no stopping that wheel. Only you can step off. Only you can see the hopelessness of striving to fix the world. Only you can relax and step off the wheel. There is nothing to fear because off the wheel life is perfect, they beauty of the universe unfolding.

In short you were bent by being called contemptible and now other insane people think they can fix you by the same means. You are bent by being put down and more putdowns will never fix you. Only love can fix you and it has to come from the Source, God of Love within you.

That reminds me of that Journey song ...

🎵 The wheel in the sky keeps on turning!

 

[Brainonska511]

It kind of invalidates every Republican complaint about federalism.

Somewhat, but one thing to remember is that the states and federal government are both sovereign entities while cities and counties are simply creatures created by individual states.

 

[FelixDeCat]

lol wat

I mean, you have to think about it... If a business is not in business to help people, they will pick your competitors. Customers are always right! ✅️

Employees can go jump in the lake. 😉

J/k ...You need good employees to deliver the level of service your customers desire.

 

[IronWing]

I mean, you have to think about it... If a business is not in business to help people, they will pick your competitors. Customers are always right! ✅️

Employees can go jump in the lake. 😉

J/k ...You need good employees to deliver the level of service your customers desire.

You need good employees to sponge off of.

 

[UNCjigga]

I for one look forward to the secession and statehood of the Free States of Houston and Austintonio. More blue states might get us back the Senate. I hear Texans love ‘em some secessions.

 

[akugami]

I for one look forward to the secession and statehood of the Free States of Houston and Austintonio. More blue states might get us back the Senate. I hear Texans love ‘em some secessions.

Great news on secession, but be careful, that'd put them squarely into a civil war with Redneckistan.

 

[Moonbeam]

That reminds me of that Journey song ...

🎵 The wheel in the sky keeps on turning!

And our beliefs about love remind me of this:

How does it go? Fool me once, can't fool me again. So true unless your willing to accept the pain.

 

[Vic]

The money you suck off the labor of others is your only god. What a sad way to waste one's life.

The consequence of homo sapiens as the ultra apex predator is that a great many of us are cannibals. Whether it is war, slavery, or exploitation, the motivation is the same: to feast alive upon our fellow humans.

 

[BoomerD]

And our beliefs about love remind me of this:

How does it go? Fool me once, can't fool me again. So true unless your willing to accept the pain.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.'"

 

[zinfamous]

Heh heh… actually my mortgage for a 1500 square-foot house is almost the same as it was in CT. The difference here in KY is my socialist county gives me a 40% discount on my property tax cause I'm disabled!

Shitlol

yep. and one wonders how the county gets compensated for that 40% discount....

I imagine many qualify for that or similar, for many different reasons, heh.

In MD, there is an income-based discount up to $60k total household income(AGI, actually) , which can be up to 60% discount, lol, or the homestead discount which you can claim for your primary residence, which locks annual property tax increase to, I think, 1.5% per year.

I used to qualify for the former, but I a few years ago I got a new job that paid a lot more and just couldn't adjust down low enough to meet it. Now I have to do homestead....but of course they are taking like half a year to authorize it; meanwhile the assholes re-assessed and tried to bump my property taxes up by like 80-90%. It's insane.

...generally, I shouldn't complain as much because I was paying a pittance for several years, but there is certainly something egregious about just deciding that you now owe $9k instead of $5k (yes, I know--still fairly "cheap" for other liberal hell holes in the country....)

 

[hal2kilo]

Let me guess.... you had electric heat and kept the windows open all winter ???

Seriously .... that's MORE than my last boss paid to heat an INDOOR GARAGE with a 20 foot ceiling and adjoining large metal building full of offices! (this was a limo-company garage with floor-to-ceiling "roll-up" steel doors that opened frequently!)

Connecticut IS an expensive place to live though no doubt! (and family doesn't come with a price-tag!)

Damn nuke industry came in when they were building Millstone Nuclear plant (I lived about 4 miles from it in Waterford) said electricity will be cheap as water, so a lot of people got rid of their oil funaces and converted to electric. Boy, did they get sold a bill of goods.
When I worked at the EB shipyard installing our data recording system on Tridents, one of the guys used to work for RADCON there. They could always tell when Millstone vented.

 

[BoomerD]

yep. and one wonders how the county gets compensated for that 40% discount....

I imagine many qualify for that or similar, for many different reasons, heh.

In MD, there is an income-based discount up to $60k total household income(AGI, actually) , which can be up to 60% discount, lol, or the homestead discount which you can claim for your primary residence, which locks annual property tax increase to, I think, 1.5% per year.

I used to qualify for the former, but I a few years ago I got a new job that paid a lot more and just couldn't adjust down low enough to meet it. Now I have to do homestead....but of course they are taking like half a year to authorize it; meanwhile the assholes re-assessed and tried to bump my property taxes up by like 80-90%. It's insane.

...generally, I shouldn't complain as much because I was paying a pittance for several years, but there is certainly something egregious about just deciding that you now owe $9k instead of $5k (yes, I know--still fairly "cheap" for other liberal hell holes in the country....)

Jeezus...and I'm pissed off that our property taxes have jumped from about $2400/year to $3200/year since we moved here less than 5 years ago.
Prop 13 is one thing the voters in California got right. I wish we had that here.

 

[akugami]

MSN

It's not even the hottest months yet, but already 13 deaths in Texas that are heat related.

Good luck to any outside workers in Texas. You're next.

 

[MrSquished]

In case I forgot to mention it the governor of Texas is really fucking evil, and so are quite a few of the GQP politicians down there. But he's a good start.

 

[HomerJS]

Just days after Greg Abbott, the governor, ratified the law, officials said a 35-year-old utility lineman working to restore power in Marshall, Texas, died after experiencing symptoms of heat illness. The heat index – which takes into account both the temperature and humidity – was 100F (37C) while he was working.

Texas governor signs bill rescinding water breaks as deadly heat grips state

Measure will nullify local ordinances that provide workers protection from devastating, triple-digit temperatures

www.theguardian.com

 

[Zorba]

Just days after Greg Abbott, the governor, ratified the law, officials said a 35-year-old utility lineman working to restore power in Marshall, Texas, died after experiencing symptoms of heat illness. The heat index – which takes into account both the temperature and humidity – was 100F (37C) while he was working.

Texas governor signs bill rescinding water breaks as deadly heat grips state

Measure will nullify local ordinances that provide workers protection from devastating, triple-digit temperatures

www.theguardian.com

Linemen have an insanely good union, I doubt he was denied a water break due to the change in this law.

At a minimum heat related illness should be treated the same as any other workplace injury, though.