Posts by ruggedjackal46

Jonathan Barnes5 said:It doesn't really matter whether they lean left or right, or what specific niche they occupy. I am just as convinced that anyone can secure these funds because getting a hold of this list is relatively straightforward. The reason I find this so jarring is actually quite simple: you could just invent a name like "Guerrilla Girls"—which sounds incredibly juvenile, if you ask me🤣—toss a few vague objectives into a mission statement, and suddenly the money starts flowing.
It works exactly the same way if you call yourselves the "Guardians of Seventh-Century National Monuments" and suddenly there's a check waiting for you. Meanwhile, everyone on this forum is busy debating who gets more funding or whether progress comes from the left or the right🤦 🤣...
It is difficult to feel much affection for a government that functions this way, acting like a chaotic collection of nebulous administrative entries where nobody seems to have the public's best interests at heart.
Think of it like this: in a vast ocean of various special interest groups, there are undoubtedly both liberal and conservative organizations that genuinely want to improve this country and act constructively, spending their grants on meaningful activities for the common good. However, it’s impossible for those sincere groups to stay afloat when you see how many others have crowded into that space and what kind of public image they project.
Once the 2017 audit from our local watchdog group is released, we will see how many legitimate organizations the government actually supports versus how much is being funneled toward groups like the "Guerrilla Girls"🤣... it’s the kind of name a twelve-year-old gamer would come up with, claiming gaming existed back in 1982 after watching a few outdated documentaries.

Is it easy to get on the list? If it really is, maybe someone should just leak the whole thing, because what we're looking at here isn't a collection of publicly funded nonprofits; it's just a curated selection of Facebook groups. I actually searched for those "Guerrilla Girls" on Facebook, and turns out they're just some collective of American female artists. What on earth does that have to do with any of this?

Jonathan Barnes5 said:Good heavens above,🙏🙏
I really have to hand it to these girls, much like those various flame specialists and welders😁..
It's hard to believe anyone would still claim these people lack intellect or vision, because what we're seeing here is nothing short of brilliant.🤣

I’m struggling to make sense of this roster. A huge chunk of these organizations aren't even based here in the States, half of them aren't even official non-profits, most of them don't lean left, they're all doing completely different things, and quite a few of them don't even receive a single cent of federal funding.

Morgan Foster said:The devaluation of the Icelandic króna, tax hikes, slashed social spending, public sector pay cuts—all of that meant the citizens who had skin in those banks only saw a fraction of their money returned. The rest just vanished... gone. Foreign investment won't really return until they lift the capital controls.

How exactly did the American people avoid paying for this? They might have recovered, sure—but don't pretend the average guy didn't feel the squeeze...

Everyone was predicting total collapse, yet somehow they bounced back pretty well. And honestly, I don't see how things could have gone any better for the public if they had used their own money to bail out failing banks. Wouldn't that have been the ultimate belt-tightening?

Morgan Foster said:Yes, Iceland. And what happens now? Once again, the ordinary citizens are the ones footing the bill for that massive reset—it’s always the same. You can't just declare bankruptcy and expect everything to vanish... debts have to be settled eventually. It isn't as simple as just throwing up your hands and claiming you're broke to start over from scratch...

The American people? 😕 Iceland didn't run out to bail out the big banks; instead, the banks collapsed along with their clients—most of whom weren't even locals. But I suppose we're supposed to believe the banks are solely responsible for that mess rather than the government. Right?

Morgan Foster said:I see where you're coming from, but it isn't quite that simple. You've lumped too many different types of companies into one category—companies that exploit the federal budget for very different reasons.
Regarding Boeing or Ford, policy has to account for the fact that the state often holds a stake in these entities. Not to mention the massive socio-political fallout if these giants were to stumble or collapse.

Banks are another hot-button issue. Their insatiable greed triggered the financial crisis, which created the exact kind of fallout our country is dealing with right now. The only flawed part of this argument is suggesting this is a national issue rather than a global one—this sector operates with global investors and sovereign states.
Those governments essentially had no choice but to pull an immediate bailout from the public coffers.

An island?

Justin James10 said:Heaven forbid we actually follow the American model! 🤣 I suppose we should look to Venezuela or Greece as our guiding lights instead, right? ☕

No, the real issue is that since people are prone to corruption, we need to strip away the opportunities for it to happen. Let them deal with their greed in a truly free market.

So, what’s the verdict here? Are we destined to follow the path of the USA, or are we heading straight down the drain like Greece? Is there really no middle ground, no third option sitting there waiting for us to grab it?

Sandra Johnson58 said:Look, Americans aren't exactly my role model for much, but I gotta admit they've got a solid setup when it comes to associations. You've got your for-profit groups and then your non-profits, and honestly, you shouldn't even have to explain the difference. Even in the States, those non-profits get funding, but usually only if they're local and actually working directly with people. Those big national non-profits that basically just exist to philosophize? They mostly just live off donations.

Non-profits operate one way in America, but let’s be honest—the whole donation ecosystem looks fundamentally different when you're talking about a massive nation of 325 million people versus a much smaller country of only 3.5 million. It’s a completely different scale, isn't it?

Justin James10 said:Sid, our budget is basically a fantasy—it looks more like a Ponzi scheme waiting to collapse at any second. We're living entirely on borrowed time and credit.

Corruption is impossible to fully root out because it's just baked into human nature. Isn't it obvious? That's why we need to get the government's hands out of everything.

The same logic applies to every nation operating under the system you're defending—especially the US. So, what's the grand plan here? Just double down on this path and hope for the best?

Corruption is impossible to eradicate because it's baked into human nature. That’s why we need to keep the government's hands out of everything as much as possible.

Wait, let me get this straight: people are inherently corrupt, so the solution is to give them less regulation? I'm struggling to follow that logic.

Justin James10 said:What budget money are we even talking about? The government survives on massive debt precisely because the budget is so bloated.

The government's role should be focused on its core functions, like the judiciary (ensuring legal certainty), maintaining order, and national defense—which, in a broader sense, includes responding to emergencies like fires and floods.

It isn't the government's job to manufacture instant soup packets or fund various non-profit organizations!🙂

Are you sure about that?

The government should focus its spending on core functions, like the judiciary (ensuring legal stability), maintaining order, national defense (which, in a broader sense, includes responding to things like fires and floods), and so on.

And what exactly qualifies as those "core functions"? More importantly, if we strip everything back, how would you actually tackle corruption within the courts, the police, or the military?

Justin James10 said:Oh, you know, it's just the idea that a tiny little non-profit organization with maybe 300 members somehow holds some historical right to receive massive amounts of funding—just so they can play on equal footing with organizations that have millions of members. Why? Because that's just... hmm... "fair," right?

What’s actually fair is for all of them to collectively drain the budget so we don't end up looking like a tiny, bankrupt Greece.

So, what's the plan? Cut off all the funding for non-profits, privatize every single government-owned company... What exactly is the state supposed to spend tax dollars on then? Or should we just dismantle the government entirely?

Justin James10 said:I actually finished reading that way back in 5th grade! 😉

Ah, sorry, I think you just missed the point entirely.

Justin James10 said:ruggedjackal46, you’re actually suggesting we bring back slavery? 🤔

You really ought to pick up a book. 😉

Justin James10 said:Let’s move past the cheap moralizing for a moment. Please, help me understand: why on earth should taxpayer money be used to fund some private citizens' association? Why is there such a widespread assumption that it’s perfectly fine to take from everyone just to hand it out to a select few?

Look, I'll give you the short version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato)

loneseal said:In Adezej's poll, 2/3 are backing IK, but if you look at the comments on any news site, everyone's absolutely against it. #faithbasedpoll

Look, I have zero interest in defending the Republican Party's polling numbers, but we have to face reality: the people who feel the burning need to comment on every single article online are usually a pretty small, and often extremely radical, minority.

Anthony Jackson2 said:Seriously, where’s the hysteria? I’m just poking fun at the brainless clerics over at Hrast and the idiots in the Republican Party—hardly a meltdown.

Then you’ve got the crowd from the daily news outlets rambling about "uprisings and unrest in Australia"🤣, and the group terrified that men are going to sneak into women's restrooms just to cause trouble in a stall—pure nonsense. Who exactly is being hysterical here?

If anyone’s actually done something wrong, let them be the first one to take a shot at it.

Anthony Jackson2 said:Markić's dog from Hrast says Andrej Plenković pushed through a decision against the will of the bishops—basically the American people 🙏

God 🙏 🙏

Where do we even live? 🤦

Ninety percent of Americans are Catholic, yet ninety percent of them decided that Ivo Josipović was the one they wanted representing them politically. Isn't that just something? 🙏

Sandra Johnson58 said:🤣
Look, man, don't go acting all high and mighty about it—it's only been 70 years, you know?☕

Now they’re pushing this Istanbul Convention on us, as if people have somehow forgotten the atrocities committed by the Turks back in the 15th century.

loneseal said:There's just way too much raw trauma and personal tragedy involved to ever make that kind of rationalization work.

Exactly. Half the country is still reeling from the fallout of the 1940s.

Are we still nursing wounds from the mid-1900s? I can’t wait until 2050, when we might finally have a serious conversation about what liberal capitalism actually looked like in America during the 2000s and 2010s.

Paul Sanders5 said:The real deal—you know, the actual American or British kind, not that Russian mess that turned out to be exactly what they were fighting against in the first place.

I mean, let’s not even get into how perfectly they worked together for years before everything just went south and the friendship imploded, kind of like what happened between the Father and Peyton Manning ☕

Look, the UK and the US didn't have fascists running the show, so you can't even begin to compare that to the situation we dealt with back home. There’s a massive difference between being an anti-fascist holding office and being an anti-fascist hiding out in the woods of an occupied country. In our neck of the woods, we didn't just have a huge, organized resistance against the fascists during World War II; we had to fight the Soviets afterward, too. We used to actually have some backbone. 😁

Justin James10 said:If you had just submitted...

The real tragedy is that we never had access to true, Western-style anti-fascism. But then again, nothing from the West ever seems to actually take root in these parts, does it? 🕺

What kind of Western anti-fascism are we even talking about?