There was a lawsuit from the AFGE (federal employees union) I think that they had to drop because it relied on the assumption that DOGE was a federal agency. When it was revealed that DOGE was just a renaming of the US Digital Service, that invalidated the premise of the lawsuit. Idk how the USDS had money lying around in its budget for a bunch of new and unqualified GS-15s to just be added to the payroll like government billets aren’t painstakingly difficult to establish, but that is another question, I suppose

Low income taxes. And our sales tax is typically lower than European VAT when the comparison is valid. But those generally go to the feds and the state, that do not fund municipal services, so municipalities have to collect the remainder they need through property taxes, typically on real estate and cars. And none of them fund healthcare, so we have to pay a company premiums for that. Basically the same for higher education. When you look at our total financial burden to receive the kind of services that are funded by taxes in other developed countries, we can be deceptively expensive, especially if you start thinking about the comparative quality of those services. But our income and capital gains tax rates are low, especially if you are very rich! I made myself sad

My city has a senior discount on property taxes, where seniors that have a net worth and income both below certain numbers pay reduced or as low as 0% of their regularly assessed property tax. I’m not sure how they verify net worth, but it seems like a good system to me as long as they have figured out a way to do that efficiently and effectively

Is sh.itjust.works not federated with lemmynsfw.com? Or maybe you use a Front page or Local feed. Here on world (no comment on the instance wars), lemmynsfw communities pretty regularly show up on my All feed. Seems like whatever they do with posts over there really makes the “Active” sorter happy, if you know what I mean

I don’t understand, why are last two panels identical? Printing error?

Degoogled and upamazon’d. Don’t expect a Foss-friendly environment, just a different flavor of enshittification. Also no source

Unethical life pro tip, depending on whether respecting others’ religious traditions is part of your ethics: no mass I’ve ever been to has checked identity before giving out communion. If you’ve got an hour to burn for a free tasteless chip and a sip of wine and backwash, just walk in with mild confidence, mimic others, and mumble along with the prayers, and people will probably just assume you usually go to mass at another time or are traveling. There’s no Eucharist police that’s going to tackle you halfway down the aisle and throw you in an inquisition dungeon because your papers don’t check out

Instructions unclear, hid roadkill bear in Central Park

I’ve seen it done. Not for precision, but for rough estimates, I’ve seen someone toe-heel their way across a job site. Honestly, that and the fact that an inch is usually pretty close to the length of a finger knuckle are really the biggest redeeming qualities of the imperial system in terms of making quick length guesstimates

To be fair, the same can be said of the book it is based on

Fair, I just think jumping to the conclusion that those folks would have come out to vote for Biden is a stretch when you look at how well his campaign was going. Worth remembering that Harris way outperformed Biden in terms of approval rating, which is a very imperfect metric, but the best one we have for guessing if folks would have come out to vote for Biden but stay home for Harris. In 2020, Biden was a challenger to an incumbent who was botching Covid from both a health and economy perspective. In 2024, he was an incumbent struggling to get out of the shadow of the global post-covid recession and some very unpopular decisions in foreign policy regarding the Middle East. Assuming he would have received 2020 levels of votes is not congruent with those facts

How do you figure? He was looking at potentially losing Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia when he dropped out, and showing no signs of being able to campaign his way out of that hole. One of the Harris campaign’s “gaffes” in the late run was when he went and called Trump supporters garbage (or at least, said words that sounded like that) after the Puerto Rico thing at MSG). Maybe 2020 Biden could have pulled it out, but 2024 Biden, both in the sense of his current mental and social capabilities and in the sense of the baggage he had as the incumbent president, didn’t have a lot going for him