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Post by anitya on Oct 22, 2022 21:38:55 GMT
I am hoping by having this separate thread for (or to express) grievances, we can have better sharing of information in the other threads.
You can vent in this thread if that is all you want to do. Go ahead and express grievances even if you feel you do not have a solution. Your grievance can be as simple as why your relative annoys you, if somebody cut you off during your commute, what a useless boss or employee you have or any aspect of non-investing social life.
I will start off -
I am disgusted equally with a lot of the things both the governing parties in our country do. I hope to learn what actions we as individual citizens can take to make these parties do fewer bad things and more good things.
Personally, I vote for a person and so I end up voting for candidates in both parties. I do not get it right all that time but I write to them when I think they are out of line and I tell them not to ask for donations if I do not agree with their conduct. When I witnessed government organizations working against citizens / companies, I have written to Congress about it and I also went up the chain in the government and resolved it favorably. This approach has been time and energy consuming (never fun to confront others' bullshit) but I do not know how else to go about. I figure the ones doing bad things hope for our inaction. I would like to learn what others are doing to hold politicians and government institutions accountable and cause them to work better so I can try to be more efficient in my approach. You can define accountable in any way you like.
Edit: If somebody posts something that is disagreeable to you or annoys you, do not take it personally, it is likely they are just venting. Posters, please do not target other posters - life is too short, especially when so many members are retired or working towards retirement!
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Post by Chahta on Oct 22, 2022 22:53:05 GMT
Good topic for posting.
I believe too many politicians (not citizens) get elected and then get reelected and reelected etc. Doesn't matter which side. They can be in office an entire working lifetime. Professional politicians are what we end up with that are disconnected from real life and work. I doubt there is an easier job to have than develop new ways to spend someone else's money or spend so much time on pandering to get elected yet again.
One need look no further than term limits. If sitting congressmen can't see the benefits to have term limits and set limits on themselves, they truly are not capable of governing. The question then becomes "how do we as citizens handle the issue"? It is far more complex than voting. We must demand term limits and vote out incumbents. There is every incentive for incumbents to stay and not leave office.
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Post by anitya on Oct 22, 2022 23:19:35 GMT
Chahta, I agree. I fully support term limits, which your State has. It would be nice if CA is able to impose term limits for US Congress persons from CA. On a separate topic, I have not figured out a way out of the tyranny of the minority or that of the majority.
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Post by Chahta on Oct 22, 2022 23:40:13 GMT
I did not know TN has state term limits on other than for the governor. I also found this online:
Tennessee State House Passes Resolution to Term Limit Congress
Nashville, TN — Today, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed HJR8, a resolution declaring that the state legislature seeks to join other states in proposing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to establish term limits on Congress. The bipartisan vote was 53 yeas – 34 nays, overwhelmingly in favor of passage. The effort, sponsored by state Rep. Chris Todd, is being spearheaded by the nonpartisan, grassroots nonprofit, U.S. Term Limits.
Rep. Chris Todd said, “Now, more than ever we see the need for limiting the terms of the U.S. Congress. You would be hard-pressed to adequately defend the loss of new ideas and vision we all observe and the potential corruption that comes with being a career politician in Congress.”
According to a recent RMG Research poll, 78% of likely voters in Tennessee support term limits on Congress, including strong support among Republicans(77%), Democrats (90%), and independents (71%) alike.
U.S. Term Limits President Philip Blumel commended the Tennessee House of Representatives saying, “The people of Tennessee are lucky to have public servants who see what is going on in D.C. and are willing to take action to fix it. They know that Congress won’t set term limits on itself. Therefore, it is the obligation of the states to do so.”
Once the senate passes the sister resolution, Tennessee will join other states in the call for a convention for the exclusive purpose of proposing term limits on the U.S. Congress. Thirty-four state legislatures must pass similar resolutions on the topic and approve the term limits amendment before it goes to the states for ratification.
So I would say if we want to get term limits then push your state legislature.
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Post by ECE Prof on Oct 23, 2022 1:16:52 GMT
I have been warned before, and so, I am not going there.
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Post by Mustang on Oct 23, 2022 2:44:56 GMT
I have been warned before, and so, I am not going there. I'm not either. I have played in the other forum's pigpen before. It can get very nasty, very quickly. |
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Post by Chahta on Oct 23, 2022 12:23:38 GMT
I do not expect this to get nasty here. This can be discussed without the vitriol over there.
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Post by Capital on Oct 23, 2022 13:03:49 GMT
I have been warned before, and so, I am not going there. I'm not either. I have played in the other forum's pigpen before. It can get very nasty, very quickly. Neither will I. This is my first and last post on this thread. I wish you luck in this endeavor; however, I have great doubts that it is possible in the current political environment. |
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Post by johntaylor on Oct 23, 2022 13:26:55 GMT
"Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains" (Rousseau).
Locke felt humans had natural rights. Francis Hutcheson divided rights into alienable (could be given up voluntarily to government) and unalienable (never given up).
Totalitarianism from the Left (Stalin) and Right (Hitler) did not believe with Hutcheson that essential rights are limitations on government.
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Post by Chahta on Oct 23, 2022 13:39:19 GMT
"Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains" (Rousseau). Locke felt humans had natural rights. Francis Hutcheson divided rights into alienable (could be given up voluntarily to govnment) and unalienable (never given up). Totalitarianism from the Left (Stalin) and Right (Hitler) did not believe with Hutcheson that essential rights are limitations on government. and there you have it. The genesis of those in power. No limitations. Perfect. Seems like their challenge is how far they can go before being stopped. Our challenge is how far we let them go before rebelling. Russia seems to be experiencing this now too. |
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Post by steadyeddy on Oct 23, 2022 14:31:50 GMT
Everything is relative. I watched a video clip of Hu Jintao being escorted away from the CCP conference the other day... eerie. This is just an example.
As I look around the world, I quickly become content with what we have going on in the USA. Perfect is the enemy of good-enough.
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Post by Norbert on Oct 23, 2022 17:06:16 GMT
“To be is to do” — Socrates.
“To do is to be” — Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do” — Frank Sinatra.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2022 17:13:21 GMT
“To be is to do” — Socrates. “To do is to be” — Jean-Paul Sartre. “Do be do be do” — Frank Sinatra. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! |
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Post by richardsok on Oct 23, 2022 18:29:49 GMT
"Realism means admitting that our leadership is unworthy, deluded, and stupid. Really they are unprepared, or unfit for their roles. They have led us from one disaster to the next for over two decades. But we may avoid the worst calamity in spite of their failures. We may be saved the miscalculation of others. Or our salvation may be that the huge treasury of power and advantage bequeathed to our nations by previous generations cannot be wasted entirely, even by foolish heirs like these. Or it may be by pure dumb luck, or the grace of God."
To my mind, the above applies equally to both sides of the aisle -- corrupt, mendacious demagogues throughout.
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Post by anitya on Oct 23, 2022 19:44:54 GMT
I'm not either. I have played in the other forum's pigpen before. It can get very nasty, very quickly. Neither will I. This is my first and last post on this thread. I wish you luck in this endeavor; however, I have great doubts that it is possible in the current political environment. The endeavor is to get irrelevant venting and political commentary out of investing and other life needs threads. If I am not successful in that endeavor, nothing lost but figured worth a try. I see a guy on my hike who always collects items (tissue, masks, water bottles, etc.) discarded on the trail on his way back on his hike. He has been at it for a year now and I see the other hikers are now more conscious of keeping their stuff until they get to a bin and not throwing around. He is my inspiration. I added a sentence or two to the OP to make sure the thread is for grievances in general and not just for political aspect of our life. I see posters already using the thread well. I will try to check on this thread once in a while, fitting this into my limited daily quota of online activity. If I do not acknowledge somebody’s post, you know why - likely I did not get a chance to read, same as with other threads. |
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Post by steelpony10 on Oct 23, 2022 19:48:41 GMT
This is only the beginning of governmental systems, 2k years plus.
As far as at the Federal level I vote for complete gridlock.Through my wife’s now retired friends at that level the lion’s share of the governing is done by career bureaucrats. The ruling elite which each country has comes and goes.
One gauge for me to tell how your country is doing is by how many are trying to get in, legal and illegal, which countries are found to be more desirable. It seems to be the closest well run and/or socialized countries. No different then switching to jobs with the more benefits. Agree or not that’s what people want. But nations should control the immigration numbers.
I believe individual states overall do a good job. National governments need to go back to just providing services states can’t provide for themselves. There’s a long list of those. So I’d like to see a committee system with each state having 2 representatives and let them vote for a figurehead spokesperson. Other then national defense and interstate commerce, roads, anything that will effect all states must be voted on nationally and revenues nationally shared.
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Post by bizman on Oct 23, 2022 22:00:10 GMT
I'm going in the other direction. We all know the list of problems, though we each may rank them differently from each other. My opinion is anything involving humans is going to be deeply flawed. Yet somehow we have evolved for thousands and millions of years and haven't destroyed ourselves -- at least not yet. And there has even been remarkable progress, especially in the last few hundred years. I like this quote from Morgan Housel: "More people wake up every morning wanting to solve problems than wake up looking to cause harm. But people who cause harm get the most attention. So slow progress amid a drumbeat of bad news is the normal state of affairs." |
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Post by anitya on Oct 25, 2022 4:09:21 GMT
Wow. I did not expect President Xi would become King Xi. When I was little, someone told me "converts are always more zealous (or zealots) than the originals and watch out for them." That statement has rung true every time I checked. When you deal with converts, always expect extreme outcomes.
My losses in BABA and Tencent are not much greater than those in things like Intel but the amount of losses have no value in evaluating future prospects of an investment on an absolute or relative basis (i.e., deploy that capital else where). My original investment was about 1% of PV. So, if I were not to sell, I am taking a lottery in it but hate to lose any amount of money for being lazy / inaction.
Both these companies do not trade in main land China. Does Xi care if these stocks go to zero, as long as the businesses keep making money and pay taxes and the like? Main land Chinese are not affected by these companies' stock prices.
Should I take my lumps and get out of BABA and Tencent?
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Post by mozart522 on Oct 25, 2022 11:34:02 GMT
Neither will I. This is my first and last post on this thread. I wish you luck in this endeavor; however, I have great doubts that it is possible in the current political environment. The endeavor is to get irrelevant venting and political commentary out of investing and other life needs threads. If I am not successful in that endeavor, nothing lost but figured worth a try. I see a guy on my hike who always collects items (tissue, masks, water bottles, etc.) discarded on the trail on his way back on his hike. He has been at it for a year now and I see the other hikers are now more conscious of keeping their stuff until they get to a bin and not throwing around. He is my inspiration. I added a sentence or two to the OP to make sure the thread is for grievances in general and not just for political aspect of our life. I see posters already using the thread well. I will try to check on this thread once in a while, fitting this into my limited daily quota of online activity. If I do not acknowledge somebody’s post, you know why - likely I did not get a chance to read, same as with other threads. Except the rules here by the Admin specifically forbid political commentary and this thread will eventually degrade into biased rants instead of thoughtful venting. These types of thread always start out peaceful and then... |
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Post by chang on Oct 25, 2022 11:52:33 GMT
The endeavor is to get irrelevant venting and political commentary out of investing and other life needs threads. If I am not successful in that endeavor, nothing lost but figured worth a try. I see a guy on my hike who always collects items (tissue, masks, water bottles, etc.) discarded on the trail on his way back on his hike. He has been at it for a year now and I see the other hikers are now more conscious of keeping their stuff until they get to a bin and not throwing around. He is my inspiration. I added a sentence or two to the OP to make sure the thread is for grievances in general and not just for political aspect of our life. I see posters already using the thread well. I will try to check on this thread once in a while, fitting this into my limited daily quota of online activity. If I do not acknowledge somebody’s post, you know why - likely I did not get a chance to read, same as with other threads. Except the rules here by the Admin specifically forbid political commentary and this thread will eventually degrade into biased rants instead of thoughtful venting. These types of thread always start out peaceful and then... Please read the "Mission Statement": big-bang-investors.proboards.com/thread/6/mission-statement-readmozart522, on-topic politics in support of investing discussions are fine. anitya: off-topic politics are not fine. Unless you were born yesterday, you know why. I'm not sure what the point of this thread is, but if it's for OT political venting, this is not the place. Armchair used to have a "pigpen page" precisely for this purpose. |
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Post by anitya on Oct 25, 2022 17:33:05 GMT
Except the rules here by the Admin specifically forbid political commentary and this thread will eventually degrade into biased rants instead of thoughtful venting. These types of thread always start out peaceful and then... Please read the "Mission Statement": big-bang-investors.proboards.com/thread/6/mission-statement-readmozart522 , on-topic politics in support of investing discussions are fine. anitya : off-topic politics are not fine. Unless you were born yesterday, you know why. I'm not sure what the point of this thread is, but if it's for OT political venting, this is not the place. Armchair used to have a "pigpen page" precisely for this purpose. This thread has remained non-controversial among the people who chose to use it, unless one wants to make it or wants to view it as controversial. The purpose of the thread is clearly stated and as with any of my posts there is no underhanded meaning for the thread. To restate, This thread is meant to help you and others who come to this forum for investing thought and get help on non-investing aspects of their life. There continues to be off topic and blatant political commentary sprinkled in so many other threads, inspite of many posters’ requests not to do it. I chose to give the benefit of doubt and assume the posters doing the disruption are just venting and do not have any ulterior motive but that does not change the fact that those posts are disruptive. Given the subjective nature of moderation per se, many disruptions have been left in the threads and not deleted or posters have not been asked to modify their posts. I get that you do not have help to moderate or to confer with another moderator in deciding whether you are making unbiased choices in moderating. This thread is to help keep other threads cleaner by allowing people to vent / post without targeting other posters - as stated, the thread is meant to catch all sundry social topics and not just political aspects of social life for which people may not open a thread but find it easy to express in other threads not related to what they are expressing. You do not like this thread? Delete it. My suggestion is get one or more moderators who may sometimes interpret “off topic” and “off topic political” differently than you, but within the written guidelines. Then you guys can collectively get to uniform application of moderation. FYI - I and many seconded the last co-moderator you had if you are looking for clues what type of co-moderator would keep the forum within the spirit of written guideline. P.S.: I rearranged the order of the sentences in the OP to make my intention come through more easily. |
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Post by anitya on Oct 25, 2022 18:55:57 GMT
If you are bothered by unwanted emails from political campaigns hitting your Gmail inbox,
Labeling them as Spam has not had any effect. I used the Promotions folder to teach Gmail’s AI where those emails should go.
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Post by Norbert on Oct 25, 2022 19:16:39 GMT
Please read the "Mission Statement": big-bang-investors.proboards.com/thread/6/mission-statement-readmozart522 , on-topic politics in support of investing discussions are fine. anitya : off-topic politics are not fine. Unless you were born yesterday, you know why. I'm not sure what the point of this thread is, but if it's for OT political venting, this is not the place. Armchair used to have a "pigpen page" precisely for this purpose. This thread has remained non-controversial among the people who chose to use it, unless one wants to make it or wants to view it as controversial. The purpose of the thread is clearly stated and as with any of my posts there is no underhanded meaning for the thread. To restate, This thread is meant to help you and others who come to this forum for investing thought and get help on non-investing aspects of their life. There continues to be off topic and blatant political commentary sprinkled in so many other threads, inspite of many posters’ requests not to do it. I chose to give the benefit of doubt and assume the posters doing the disruption are just venting and do not have any ulterior motive but that does not change the fact that those posts are disruptive. Given the subjective nature of moderation per se, many disruptions have been left in the threads and not deleted or posters have not been asked to modify their posts. I get that you do not have help to moderate or to confer with another moderator in deciding whether you are making unbiased choices in moderating. This thread is to help keep other threads cleaner by allowing people to vent / post without targeting other posters - as stated, the thread is meant to catch all sundry social topics and not just political aspects of social life for which people may not open a thread but find it easy to express in other threads not related to what they are expressing. You do not like this thread? Delete it. My suggestion is get one or more moderators who may sometimes interpret “off topic” and “off topic political” differently than you, but within the written guidelines. Then you guys can collectively get to uniform application of moderation. FYI - I and many seconded the last co-moderator you had if you are looking for clues what type of co-moderator would keep the forum within the spirit of written guideline. P.S.: I rearranged the order of the sentences in the OP to make my intention come through more easily. The moderation on this forum is terrific compared to what I've seen elsewhere. Everything has some degree of subjectivity. The last thing we need is "collective" thinking. Sure, there's some stuff I'd like to see disappear. But, that's my problem. No one is forcing me to read it. Obviously politics can affect our investments. You've mentioned what's happening in China, which certainly makes China less attractive. Another example would be a Democrat sweep in November. |
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Post by chang on Oct 25, 2022 19:59:58 GMT
My aim here is minimum to zero moderation. I bite my tongue daily to avoid moderation. Only valueless OT political provocations that will inexorably lead to hostile, rancorous food fights are prevented — there are other places that welcome this.
Don’t hesitate to use the ignore (block) function. I’ve got three incredibly annoying posters blocked. If others find their verbal diarrhea to be valuable, wonderful. It’s possible I’m getting just a tad crusty in my old age.
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Post by anitya on Oct 25, 2022 20:56:32 GMT
chang , Thanks. I agree that given the age group of forum members one would hope the forum should not need moderation, an unpleasant task in of itself. Unfortunately, valueless OT provocations exist here. They do not lead to food fights because others exercise restraint and look the other way. And many of us do not want to burden you and acknowledge the free service you provide. As imperfect as it is, many of us use the block function. Let us hope for a better future. Thanks.
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Post by johnsmith on Oct 25, 2022 22:56:14 GMT
I hate the site Nextdoor. It's such a sty of boorish, complaining ninnies who spy on their neighbours, bitch and moan about them. Can't find a more thankless, hopeless and spineless crowd anywhere else!
Thanks for letting me vent!
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Post by Chahta on Oct 25, 2022 23:57:24 GMT
My aim here is minimum to zero moderation. I bite my tongue daily to avoid moderation. Only valueless OT political provocations that will inexorably lead to hostile, rancorous food fights are prevented — there are other places that welcome this. Don’t hesitate to use the ignore (block) function. I’ve got three incredibly annoying posters blocked. If others find their verbal diarrhea to be valuable, wonderful. It’s possible I’m getting just a tad crusty in my old age. 50 years old is old enuf to be crusty? Hmmmm 🤔 |
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Post by archer on Oct 26, 2022 6:03:00 GMT
I hate the site Nextdoor. It's such a sty of boorish, complaining ninnies who spy on their neighbours, bitch and moan about them. Can't find a more thankless, hopeless and spineless crowd anywhere else!
Thanks for letting me vent!
I've subscribed to 3 Nextdoor neighborhoods. 2 are quite nice and useful. The 3rd one thankfully wasn't a representation of what it was actually like to live there. I guess you can't judge a neighborhood by its Nextdoor site :-) |
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Post by Chahta on Oct 26, 2022 10:16:10 GMT
Nextdoor usually has people complaining about Nextdoor and venting.
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Post by BearMkt on Oct 27, 2022 0:30:02 GMT
"You can vent in this thread if that is all you want to do." "Personally, I vote for a person and so I end up voting for candidates in both parties." I would do the same but when neither candidate is good, I typically vote for an ideology I think is best for the country. I'm happy to discuss issues more so than candidates.
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