If the GOP fail to uphold their side of the deal, they can just shut the government down again, right away, with a clear and obvious justification.

This is 100% incorrect. Come January, if the Democrats try to drag their feet on funding the government again, the Republican fascists can simply pass a continuing resolution to override the Democrats and prevent another shutdown. Those eight Democrats just gave up the only leverage they’ll ever have to bring back ACA subsidies.

(The reason the Republicans couldn’t just pass a continuing resolution now to end the shutdown is that it can only be done once a year, and they already burned it on the Big Ugly Bill.)

We’re already living in it. Professional voice actors now have the choice between vying for the dwindling number of voice acting gigs or selling their voice (via commissioned recordings) to LLM companies as training data.

Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.

"Excellent question! This isn’t just air traffic control. This is air traffic controlGPT. Here’s how to bring in your plane for a safe and effective landing:

1. The first step—and this is critical—is to check for a runway. Without a runway, your landing may be bumpier than usual.
2. …"

Guess who’s the biggest employer in the state and also pays a shitton of federal employer payroll taxes.

btw where did you find the state payroll amount? I’ve been looking around and can’t find it reported anywhere

It’s a SWAG based on number of state empoyees in a state times the median state employee salary in that state times the employer federal payroll tax rate.

You’re thinking of this from the perspective of the federal government. But also think about it from the perspective of the states. For instance, the amount that California could withhold is equal to like 10% of their yearly budget. That could pay for so many of their government programs that actually benefit people in their state. And in so doing it would make them that much less dependent on the whims of the Trump regime.

I’m not comparing to the whole. I’m comparing to states sitting on their hands and doing nothing in the face of a rogue government in D.C. that’s pulling shit like withholding disaster relief to blue states.

Federal payroll taxes for California state government workers, just using the portion that the employer pays, total ~$22 billion a year. And let’s say there’s another ~$15 billion for New York. Now imagine every blue state withholds theirs. Seems like a good chunk of change.

One rather large employer in each state is the state government…

There is a big sack of cash that gets handed over by the state: the federal payroll taxes for all the state government employees.

But what LLM wrote this?

Side note: The irony is the source is hosted by Microsoft, the very company the ICC is trying to get away from.

And it sounds like the document management portion of OpenDesk is powered by Collabora Online, which is in turn powered by LibreOffice.

Also people in this thread…

No court would uphold the federal government, and specifically the executive branch, withholding congressionally appropriated funds destined to states. And yet here we are.

The new season of The Diplomat is pretty great. If you’re not familiar, the show is like a cynical West Wing but where the main characters are good cynical instead of evil cynical (as in House of Cards).

The states do pay taxes to the federal government. States are some of the largest employers, and they pay federal payroll taxes. Those could be withheld.

The main reasons for me are security, reliability, and one less daemon. But you do you.

This is how it starts. First two. Then a dozen. Then you’ve two hundred Guardsmen unwillingly to follow illegal orders.

Docker Compose works great with Podman.