That makes a certain amount of sense. Cartels go after the families of snitches, so I imagine this guy wanted them safe in the US before he cooperated.

Community buy-in is more important than efficiency in projects like this.

“The process started with the community-based participatory planning,” WFP program policy officer Bakalilou Diaby shares in the video. “By the end of this process, it was agreed that one of the major action is the land reclamation or land recovery project.”

At first, it took some time to convince the community that the regreening of the degraded landscape was even possible, but after learning about how to improve the land, “the people believe and they are convinced, and they are also committed,” says Diaby.

Sure, these projects could be done more efficiently by one construction company with heavy machinery, but that takes dollars these dirt poor areas don’t have (and I think Trump’s bullshit arbitrary defunding of USAID is an object lesson for developing countries not to rely on foreign charity for anything important, among many, many other reasons why foreign charity is bad for development). So local people need to know how to do it with local resources in order to expand the projects to new areas.

Just as important, local communities need to support and maintain these projects in the long run, and sweat equity is a great way to build commitment.

I do.

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The plan is to argue that only two consecutive terms bar someone from running for a third term, and have the Supreme Court’s Republican majority rubber stamp it, so Trump can run and Obama can’t.

Immigration law is based on the idea that deportation is not a punishment. So people in immigration court don’t get the same protections people in criminal court do - lower standards for evidence, no right to an attorney, guilty until proven innocent instead of the reverse, etc.

Because technically (coughbullshitcough) we’re not convicting or sentencing them, we’re just sending them back to their home country.

Which has always been offensive and cruel, but with the goal of this administration being to hurt as many immigrants as possible as badly as possible, the cruelty is turned up to 11.

It is weird. Except, thinking about it, it’s not.

All sides of American politics have been encouraged to hate and fear other Americans who disagree with them politically.

So when liberals have a choice between blaming their own political leaders for fucking up, or blaming the conservative Americans they hate anyway, a lot of them will make the wrong choice. Just like conservatives do when their leaders fuck up.

The plan was Project 2025. Trump didn’t write it but he certainly followed it.

The economic failures of the Biden administration consisted of what, failing to have a populous who votes for a good legislative branch?

“The people” are not an unchanging monolith. A Republican-led House and Senate were not a foregone conclusion.

If Joe Biden and his staff actually cared about getting stuff through Congress they would have been out stumping for local and state candidates every day in 2022, pushing a very simple message: here’s our big ambitious plan, here’s what we want to do, here’s how it will make your life better, these senators and representatives are stopping us, give us the House and Senate and we will transform America for the better.

And if they failed to get the Congressional support they needed in 2022, Biden and Harris needed to come back in 2024 with that big ambitious plan, and tell Americans what they tried to do, and what they would do in their second term, and what they need from the American people to make that transformation, and go back out and stump in every single state in every single election in the United States to earn the people’s support.

But to do that they needed an ambitious plan - a Green New Deal - that would genuinely help Americans. And they needed to admit the economy was failing and people were hurting.

Biden didn’t have an ambitious plan. Biden didn’t have any plan. Biden sat on his hands and pretended the biggest wealth transfer in history was actually good for American consumers and the economy was going great, and then Harris ran on that record in 2024 and refused to suggest anything she would have done different than Biden.

And of course she lost, because Trump did have an ambitious plan to transform America, and he convinced Americans his plan would leave them better off, and Americans looked at how they were better off under Trump’s first term than they were under Biden and made the obvious choice.

We still live in a democracy. And blaming voters for making the wrong choice is a great way to permanent minority status. It was Biden’s job - it was the job of the Democratic Party as a whole - to recognize the problems facing the American people, offer genuine solutions, and convince the American people to support their plan.

Don’t blame the American people for Biden’s failure to lead.

It’s a horrible thing Trump won.

But it was pretty much inevitable.

The Biden administration was weak, cowardly, and incompetent. It didn’t understand - or refused to admit - how bad the US economy really was and how many people were struggling and suffering.

The student loan debacle exemplified the Biden administration’s “strategy” on the economy, the environment, everything - make a half-ass attempt to slightly improve things, give up at the first challenge, and pat yourself on the back for trying.

The economic failures of the Weimar Republic pushed Germany into the arms of a fascist who promised security and prosperity.

The economic failures of the Biden administration did the same for America.

This administration sent out millions of emails giving immigrants from certain black and brown countries seven days to leave the U.S. voluntarily before being deported.

Seven days. A fucking eviction notice comes with thirty days. Seven days to pack up their entire lives, quit their jobs, buy plane tickets, find somewhere to live and work in a whole different country - fuck, if you had to buy plane tickets for your family at $250 per, could you even afford it? Most American families would have to go into debt for that, never mind immigrants from desperately poor countries who sold everything they had to get here in the first place…

The cruelty is the point, is my point.

Just like immigrants, college educated Americans from lower castes - people smart enough to go to college but too poor to pay for it out of pocket - are enemies of the Trump Administration.

And they want to make their enemies suffer.

They don’t want it to “work”. They want it to hurt people.

I’m reminded of the time Mitch McConnell filibustered his own bill because too many Democrats supported it.

The Trump family made at least $500 million pumping and dumping cryptocurrency. I guess they’re tired of playing in the crypto sandbox and going for the big money now.

Do you have a source for that #1 impact claim? I want to read and share it.

Trouble is, the US already has a ton of plant agriculture subsidies. But they go to major commodity crops (corn, soybeans) that provide feed for livestock or, worse, ethanol.

Transfer those subsidies to plants that people eat and I’m with you.

Sure, it’s a big tent, if all you want is the “solar” part and not the “punk” part you can participate in that half 😆

But the “punk” in solarpunk refers to left anarchist politics and rebellion against the capitalist economic machine, and has ever since the term was invented. I’ma borrow from this Reddit post that answers your question quite well:

The punk comes from DIY attitude. Build-your-own-robot.

The punk comes from mutalist, anarchist, decentralized organization, like in Ursula LeGuin’s dispossessed.

The solar panel itself implies anarachy as people provide power for themselves rather than rely on a central plant or authority. And yet by networking your homesteads together in a horizontal mutalist way you provide insurance agianst variance in both supply and demand.

Without the punk, you just have techno optimism, e.g. the Picards on their vinyard without a care in the world because the Federation can provide all their needs without effort, probably with fusion power or something even more fantastic.

Solarpunk is anti-capitalist and anti-colonialism.

Always has been.

Funny how so many old punks do it, then 😆

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