As a U.S. citizen, I’m beginning to ask myself how to take more meaningful measures to help bring an end to this behavior. I’m not a political activist and generally try to mind my own business, but that mindset only worked when I felt I could trust the system to self-correct. It seems our judicial system can barely keep up, and Congress is doing next to nothing.
Start holding the opposing party responsible to run good candidates for office and adopt a platform that can appeal to independents.
The knee jerk reaction is to run your party’s candidates and platform to the opposite extreme. Instead you should move towards the center. I really hope the democrats realize this (some do and are speaking out) soon.
I think we have to acknowledge the grievances of people who got us into this position in the first place and don't stop making those grievances and the tangible steps being taken to solve them known on every public platform available.
One thing that could help would be for Democrats who live in congressional districts where there is no way a Democrat will ever get elected because there are too many people there who just vote for the candidate with the 'R' by their name on the ballot without actually looking into either candidate's positions to switch their registration to Republican.
That way they could vote in Republican primaries. Many if not most of those districts actually have Republican candidates in the primaries who are center right but they lose because primary turnout is very low, largely consisting of just the most extreme voters.
For example consider Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG). In the primary the first time she ran against a perfectly normal Republican. I don't remember all the details, but I believe he was a decorated military officer who after the military was a successful businessman and who had server in state offices.
MTG was a full on QAnon and other conspiracy theorist believer. But it is mostly the fringe that votes in primaries so she won. And it is a heavily Republican district with many people who don't really follow politics so she got their vote in the general election because they always vote R.
Register as a Republican if you are in such a district and vote in the primaries and then maybe we can get back to having sane Republicans winning those districts.
For safe Republican districts where they do elect sane Republicans, it is still worth switching registration. Let the current representative from that district know that you are doing this, and promise that if Trump gets upset at their vote on something and bankrolls a primary challenge, you will vote for them in the primary.
Getting involved at the local level is a good place to start. Local governing bodies, city councils and other civic organizations represent meaningful opportunities for change.
Congress is too beholden and scared of Trump on the GOP side to do anything meaningful. The democrats are generally spineless.
The federalist society and GOP have created a severe ideological imbalance on the supreme court that will have serious ramifications for years to come unless there's a serious effort to pack or reform the institution.
How would a standard invasion work? The news about DoD preparing invasion plans for Greenland have an invasion done by Special Operations, not the infantry, armor and air. Special operations probably wouldn't work for the population of Canada.
After a short time, and some casualties, I think the US military would have real problems internally, not counting that popular support would disappear.
I don't particularly care for your explanation, but if you do want to post these kind of comments at least explain yourself a bit so potentially a curious conversation can follow. Not doing so is arguably against this site's guidelines.
I am .... optimistic that something can be arranged. I believe that Greenland is extremely important to arctic security, and America is the best country to defend that zone. At the same time I do not support the aggressive tactics by this administration.
Since this was first proposed I still hold the position that it is up to the people of Greenland - not Denmark - to decide their path. I hope they will hold a referendum.
If the US feels practices are unfair they can go to the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organisation, or they could do whatever this madness is
EU is protecting American business and especially big tech with it’s anti-circumvention laws that US lobbied for. Abolishing those would be more affecting than tarrifs and would allow a de-enchittification movement to start chipping off profits from US companies.
> because their extremely high VAT taxes and non-tariff trade barriers always hurt the US worse, and the EU rebates VAT on its own exports
Your post is yet another example of how USians don't understand how VAT works.
There is no VAT rebate on exports, there is a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any export. There is also a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any B2B sale. That way VAT is a tax only on goods that are sold to consumers in the EU, no matter where they came from and no matter where they were manufactured/processed/...
How this works as an example: You mine iron ore, sell a ton for 1000€. Buyer pays 20% VAT. But since it's B2B, buyer can get those 20% back immediately in his monthly VAT declaration. Buyer makes 500kg steel from that iron ore, sells it for 2000€. Buyer of the steel can get those 20% back, since it's B2B. Let's say the buyer makes paperclips from that steel and sells those. Now the buyer of those paperclips is the interesting thing here, because the buyer pays 20% VAT on those paperclips. He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back. He might be a reseller, in which case he will get the VAT back. End-users don't get their 20% VAT, resellers and processing industry do. It's always only the last step in the chain who really pay VAT, everyone else doesn't.
And any border-crossing is treated as a sale, so the you get the VAT rate (different EU contries have different rates) from the country that the goods are leaving paid out, and you have to pay the VAT rate of the country you are entering on those goods. If you are exporting to non-EU, and there is no VAT in the destination country, you don't pay any, you just get the VAT back from the country you are exporting from. So it is totally symmetrical, totally fair, and totally neutral, independent from whether it is US, EU, Chinese or whatever the origin might be.
And if you think it's complicated, you might be right. But then again, look at the complete and utter mess that US sales taxes are. Every other town might have a different tax rate, system, catalogue of goods every other week. USians shouldn't complain about trade barriers as long as that mess is still in place.
> The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
That's a fault of Ireland and the Netherlands, the EU is just powerless to stop those practices. Same as the US is powerless to get rid of their own tax haven states like Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. Just to cite Wikipedia, "Andrew Penney from Rothschild & Co described the US as "effectively the biggest tax haven in the world" and Trident Trust Co., one of the world's biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland and Grand Cayman, and into Sioux Falls" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_as_a_tax_haven
The best thing these countries could do would be to increase military spending to protect against Trump (and actual enemies like Putin whom they’ve enabled by their idiotic energy deals and “not my problem” approach to defense spending). I doubt they will, so US will get Greenland ceteris paribus.
I’ll put myself in the minority here by saying that I think Trump is probably right. Greenland can’t be credibly defended by Denmark, the EU or even NATO. Article 5 is an untested foundation myth. Greenland is far away. Political will matters. We might be heading towards an independent Greenland if we continue following the status quo, which would be influenced strongly by adversaries and would be a US security nightmare.
I’d say that I prefer him to go about it a different way, except that I can’t see what that different way looks like when you want territory from another country that doesn’t want to give it to you.
And I say this as a European. Europe is not credible from a defense perspective and lacks the will to do very much of anything quickly or effectively. The best you can expect is a series of talking shops and some policy documents to be drawn up while the ice continues to melt.
If trump is actually deranged enough to use military force against Greenland we'll see how capable the EU is of defending it - and I suspect they'll put on a good show.
What the EU wouldn't be able to handle, I suspect, is would be a full ground invasion by China, not that China would/needs to do that.
If the US was genuinely concerned about the security of Greenland they should have discussed this with the EU and encouraged them to reinforce the island, and/or offered a joint base.
bicx|1 month ago
jleyank|1 month ago
aebtebeten|1 month ago
afterburner|1 month ago
kcplate|1 month ago
The knee jerk reaction is to run your party’s candidates and platform to the opposite extreme. Instead you should move towards the center. I really hope the democrats realize this (some do and are speaking out) soon.
lostmsu|1 month ago
kurtis_reed|1 month ago
Avicebron|1 month ago
tzs|1 month ago
That way they could vote in Republican primaries. Many if not most of those districts actually have Republican candidates in the primaries who are center right but they lose because primary turnout is very low, largely consisting of just the most extreme voters.
For example consider Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG). In the primary the first time she ran against a perfectly normal Republican. I don't remember all the details, but I believe he was a decorated military officer who after the military was a successful businessman and who had server in state offices.
MTG was a full on QAnon and other conspiracy theorist believer. But it is mostly the fringe that votes in primaries so she won. And it is a heavily Republican district with many people who don't really follow politics so she got their vote in the general election because they always vote R.
Register as a Republican if you are in such a district and vote in the primaries and then maybe we can get back to having sane Republicans winning those districts.
For safe Republican districts where they do elect sane Republicans, it is still worth switching registration. Let the current representative from that district know that you are doing this, and promise that if Trump gets upset at their vote on something and bankrolls a primary challenge, you will vote for them in the primary.
cdrnsf|1 month ago
Congress is too beholden and scared of Trump on the GOP side to do anything meaningful. The democrats are generally spineless.
The federalist society and GOP have created a severe ideological imbalance on the supreme court that will have serious ramifications for years to come unless there's a serious effort to pack or reform the institution.
United857|1 month ago
wrxd|1 month ago
Aqua0|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
Simulacra|1 month ago
lifetimerubyist|1 month ago
A subtle signal that war with United States is a possibility.
Trump will use this as a pretext to not only take Greenland but to invade Canada as well.
He has gone utterly mad. Congress needs to act. Yesterday.
cdrnsf|1 month ago
bediger4000|1 month ago
After a short time, and some casualties, I think the US military would have real problems internally, not counting that popular support would disappear.
rpiguy|1 month ago
[deleted]
throwaway89201|1 month ago
Simulacra|1 month ago
Since this was first proposed I still hold the position that it is up to the people of Greenland - not Denmark - to decide their path. I hope they will hold a referendum.
OrvalWintermute|1 month ago
[deleted]
Flundstrom2|1 month ago
It's not EU's fault US manufacturers can't keep manufacturing costs down.
Neither is it EU's fault Trump believes slapping tariffs hurting US consumers will improve US standing in the world.
kermitdekikker|1 month ago
Crowberry|1 month ago
surgical_fire|1 month ago
holowoodman|1 month ago
Your post is yet another example of how USians don't understand how VAT works.
There is no VAT rebate on exports, there is a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any export. There is also a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any B2B sale. That way VAT is a tax only on goods that are sold to consumers in the EU, no matter where they came from and no matter where they were manufactured/processed/...
How this works as an example: You mine iron ore, sell a ton for 1000€. Buyer pays 20% VAT. But since it's B2B, buyer can get those 20% back immediately in his monthly VAT declaration. Buyer makes 500kg steel from that iron ore, sells it for 2000€. Buyer of the steel can get those 20% back, since it's B2B. Let's say the buyer makes paperclips from that steel and sells those. Now the buyer of those paperclips is the interesting thing here, because the buyer pays 20% VAT on those paperclips. He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back. He might be a reseller, in which case he will get the VAT back. End-users don't get their 20% VAT, resellers and processing industry do. It's always only the last step in the chain who really pay VAT, everyone else doesn't.
And any border-crossing is treated as a sale, so the you get the VAT rate (different EU contries have different rates) from the country that the goods are leaving paid out, and you have to pay the VAT rate of the country you are entering on those goods. If you are exporting to non-EU, and there is no VAT in the destination country, you don't pay any, you just get the VAT back from the country you are exporting from. So it is totally symmetrical, totally fair, and totally neutral, independent from whether it is US, EU, Chinese or whatever the origin might be.
And if you think it's complicated, you might be right. But then again, look at the complete and utter mess that US sales taxes are. Every other town might have a different tax rate, system, catalogue of goods every other week. USians shouldn't complain about trade barriers as long as that mess is still in place.
> The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
That's a fault of Ireland and the Netherlands, the EU is just powerless to stop those practices. Same as the US is powerless to get rid of their own tax haven states like Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. Just to cite Wikipedia, "Andrew Penney from Rothschild & Co described the US as "effectively the biggest tax haven in the world" and Trident Trust Co., one of the world's biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland and Grand Cayman, and into Sioux Falls" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_as_a_tax_haven
windowpains|1 month ago
Chance-Device|1 month ago
I’d say that I prefer him to go about it a different way, except that I can’t see what that different way looks like when you want territory from another country that doesn’t want to give it to you.
And I say this as a European. Europe is not credible from a defense perspective and lacks the will to do very much of anything quickly or effectively. The best you can expect is a series of talking shops and some policy documents to be drawn up while the ice continues to melt.
mna_|1 month ago
See:
>NATO invoked Article 5 in response to Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001
https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/coll...
Now take a look at the European countries who helped the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
Then scroll down to "Dead". Those Europeans died for the United States.
Incipient|1 month ago
What the EU wouldn't be able to handle, I suspect, is would be a full ground invasion by China, not that China would/needs to do that.
If the US was genuinely concerned about the security of Greenland they should have discussed this with the EU and encouraged them to reinforce the island, and/or offered a joint base.