I’m learning the opposite lesson. The US is surprisingly fragile and a single president with no morals or ethics can do far more damage than anyone could have imagined.
It's a lot more than "a single president". It's the two thirds of American voters who either voted for him or couldn't be bothered to vote against him, even after having seen how he behaved in his first term.
That's why he's not the biggest problem. He's more of a symptom than a cause. He won't be around for ever, but even after he's gone, most of those same people will still be around.
no i believe we were taught correctly that the powers of the presidency are limited. the issue is that he is the leader of a group that is embedded into every branch of government at multiple levels. it is not hte case of a random crazy president abusing presidential power and everyone is just at the mercy of a lunatic. It is the case that every wild thing he does is upheld and supported by a large network of people who otherwise would have the power to absorb and dismiss his attempted actions.
Nah, it's more like the United States is vulnerable to 50 years of reactionaries, upset about things like civil rights for African Americans and women in particular, actively working to dismantle democratic processes.
That's why farmers vote for politicians and policy that put them out of business. In my hometown, the county went from 150 dairy farms in 1990 to 3. They voted to keep their guns or whatever bullshit they were told to worry about, and were wiped off the map by the deregulation they "wanted". My little town is a rural ghetto, the richest people in town now are the school principal and state trooper.
POTUS is an acute condition. The sickness lay deeper.
She could have easily saved 50+% of her tuition just living in state for 2 years, and attending community college counts. She didn't even need to pause her education or delay graduation.
The most frustrating part of the student loan question is that you can still GET THESE LOANS! The schools will sell you into indentured servitude today! They'll take the money and don't care at all! They take ZERO responsibility for the student loan crisis.
Crisis? This is the intended outcome. Look around - companies and the media are upset when people exercise their ability to change jobs, drop out of the workforce, or move abroad.
The system is working exactly as intended. Debt and healthcare are just ways we are bound to it.
"Costly burden" is an incredible statement. The utilities get what is effectively free electricity generation. Remember every solar customer still pays the grid connection fee, which goes to maintain the grid.
They love to market a "green energy" plan where they pay you 3c for your exported power and charge somebody miles away 25c for it!
It's a true statement and a real problem. These wildcat megawatt-scale generation facilities built on top of suburban neighborhoods produce an un-curtail-able midday oversupply of electricity driving energy prices into the negative.
The power has to go somewhere, SoCal grid operators have to pay real money to neighboring grids to accept the energy being generated while also paying the homeowner who generated it. No grid connection fee comes close to covering this, it's paid for by increasing rates for everyone else. Net metering was a stupid deal cooked up by politicians who are incapable of systems thinking, or simply decided appealing to suburban voters was more important than grid stability.
It's getting better[1] but still a problem, and the solutions being pursued are: discourage export in favor of onsite storage (done by NEM 3.0) and encourage smaller solar installs (balcony solar).
They barely did anything. They could have done something great. They could have ended the program all together, they could have put a serious cap on it, they could have made the $100k fee a yearly fee, etc
But no, they did virtually nothing. I would even be surprised if more than 100 companies paid the one time $100k fee at this point with all the loopholes that were included.
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