Bulliet isn’t too bad in an old fashioned, if that’s your thing, but I don’t like it neat either. If you like the idea of a bourbon and it’s sweeter caramel notes, it might be worth trying Weller, Four Roses, or Michters if you can find any of them.

If you like those single malts, there are so many directions you could go. The honey notes in Speyside/Highlands scotches (like Macallan and Glenmorangie) are enjoyable and I know some enjoy the smoky peat forward ones from Islay, like a Lagavulin.

Your post and tasting notes inspired me to break out the Aberlour A’Bunadh I was gifted that’s been collecting dust in my liquor cabinet. Cheers!

It’s mostly because of stock awards as part of compensation packages.

If you get $50,000 in equity each year and the shares are worth $20 when you were awarded them, then they balloon to $160, you just earned $400,000 for each year you held on to them. These numbers are all made up and just for reference, but this is what some of these hardware company employees experienced.

I hope you know I’m agreeing with you. I want to see change too and it’s why I advocate for people to reach out to their representatives right now. We are already hearing reporting of hundreds if not thousands of calls per day asking reps to not back current Dem leaders.

Change can’t happen if we refuse to acknowledge the the systems in play and how different parts of the government function, which is where I started with all this.

More than anything I want engaged people to continue to be engaged but meaningfully and with purpose. Simply being upset over lack of progress or the speed of it happening aren’t enough, despite our desire for that to be true.

There are millions of dollars and hundreds of legal experts involved in plans to dismantle the parts of government they don’t agree with and they talk about it loudly. They celebrate their wins, regardless of how small or even true they are, loudly, and the uninformed notice. By refusing to acknowledge the small wins or even the path to this being realistic, you build no message of support to chase bigger wins. It actually does the opposite - you crush interest in change and in action, both because it builds a perception that there is no political win large enough to satisfy and because others will also hear this lack of celebration as a lack of outcome.

This is why I’ve spent all this time replying. We agree on it not being enough and that something must be done. We agree that this group of leaders hasn’t earned trust. Where we disagree is in how it is being framed. Change of this magnitude needs to snowball. Win people over with quick wins within their political control and continue to press forward for more, with renewed support from the electorate.

Change of this magnitude will require sustained support over time to be successful and it doesn’t happen if we won’t even acknowledge when things did go right, however small it may be to start.

Not having trust is warranted, I’ve said elsewhere that they’ve not done anything to earn it.

However you seem to be ignoring that investigations did happen during both of those Presidencies and there were criminal charges brought as a result. There is proof of people involved being held accountable that you could go and read about if you cared to. Corruption scandals involving Halliburton and Blackwater during the Bush era also did result in prosecution, as did various investigations during Biden’s term. Both Epstein and Maxwell were arrested, with the latter being tried and convicted.

I’ll concede that I can’t be certain that an investigation will actually take place and shouldn’t have said that, however history has shown that these investigations do routinely happen by this committee.

I’ll also concede that minor politicians, staffers, and private sector participants were primarily the ones that had charges brought against them, not Presidents. But you’re exaggerating when you say there is never accountability and that AGs during Democratic Presidencies don’t prosecute criminal charges around corruption.

I know you were. Doesn’t change what I said.

You seemed to agree with me that prosecution in this environment isn’t realistic and that you wanted investigations for when it can be. I shared a website highlighting that there is a commitment by the incoming head of the oversight committee to perform those investigations. It’s going to happen.

I don’t see why you’re concerned with a politician politicking and trying to give soundbytes saying that he wants to focus on something with broader appeal across both parties to the media. This guy wants to be speaker and needs both parties to support him right now. Has no bearing on what the oversight committee will do.

The incoming head of the oversight committee told them to start finding lawyers and made a statement about how there will be investigations. That doesn’t seem like steering away from accountability at all.

You seem to be mixing two topics. One appears to be a complaint about purchasing power between tourists and locals, and the other about US domestic purchasing power on minimum wage.

You’ve got lots of great answers by others on the latter and how it is unsustainable as a living wage. Why Americans (and likely other Western tourists in general) consider certain countries “cheaper” is because of exchange rates. That would be a whole post on it’s own.

A single US Dollar (USD) can be used to buy about 93 Indian Rupees (INR), as an example. The average monthly wage is something like 25,000 INR, so even minimum US federal wage would be 5x more monthly buying power (but as explained by others, minimum wage earners are not the ones traveling). “Cheap” is used to compare against a similar purchase in their home country and what it would have cost there. It is not an insult but a way to describe the difference in cost relative to income.

This is a really great question! You’ve already got the underlying reason down too - all the various executive departments were created to distribute the enormous administrative burden of figuring out how to enforce laws that have been passed.

Interestingly, Congress is actually in charge of creating the various departments. The President is not authorized to abolish or create new ones, or to expand their jurisdiction or invent new powers, however they are responsible for proposing leaders to each and soliciting their guidance for topics within their domain. How this currently gets enforced is part of the issue however.

Independent agencies also exist that do not explicitly fall under the authority of the President. While the President can remove heads of departments for any reason, there is a much higher bar for removal of independent agency board members.

As the office of the attorney general is one of the government’s oldest, established during the first Congress, this may be a matter of combatting tradition more than anything else! This predates independent agencies by something like 100 years.

I should also edit in a clarification that the DOJ not being an independent agency is what allows it to be more partisan than something like the FTC. Also that an independent agency does not in and of itself entirely mitigate partisan politics from its decision making.

Whether it is referred to the DOJ or not is not my point. What I describe is how this process works. Congress having a simple majority of one party with an adversarial president is unlikely to result in prosecution or impeachment/removal by the Senate because of the systems in play.

For the president, what you say is true. But there are others who are not the president and have participated in illegal activities. This is also being blocked currently by the DOJ or by pardons.

Democrats alone do not have the ability for removal via impeachment. They’d need Republicans to cross the aisle on it and recent history has shown that this is unlikely.

Voters want accountability but there are more obstacles to overcome within our existing legal framework before that is realistically possible. This is why there may be a focus on other more easily altered areas in the short term.

As much as I agree that criminals and corrupt politicians have no business being in government, prosecution is unlikely to be successful in the next 2 years. Congress only has the authority to investigate then makes a referral to the DOJ, but the president controls the DOJ.

The recourse after a referral like that falls flat would be to impeach and remove (until someone is in place that will honor an independent DOJ) but they’d need the opposing party to cooperate and reach the 2/3 threshold needed for removal. Prosecution may need to wait for the next president to unblock the DOJ and empower them to do their job.

Some of the ideas being floated might be more attainable in the short term, especially in the cases of regaining control over responsibilities enumerated in the Constitution as belonging to Congress, such as passing budgets and declarations of war.

It must be 1926. We have a prosperous decade leading up to a market inflated by stock market speculation, stock prices that are unlikely to match anticipated future earnings, the fed increasing interest rates to curb spending which is impacting construction investment, the overproduction of certain commodities, reduction in foreign trade and lending, and retaliatory tariffs and protectionist policies going into effect.

Oh wait, it’s 100 years later and it just rhymes with the lead up to the Great Depression? Cool.

Me too. Banking/finance is the one I’m most worried about. Value stocks and international stocks are both valid for an overall portfolio strategy, but they don’t fill the same large cap criteria that the SPX covers.

Even total market funds are heavily invested into AI, so it requires breaking investments out into the composition you’re after, sans AI.

For anyone in the market and worried about things like this, what do you think of SPXT? The expense ratio is terrible but it tracks S&P without the IT sector included, which should insulate it from the circular financing arrangements that helped balloon valuations like this.

For reference, SPX composition is normally 30-40% IT sector (because of rules driving which stock and how much of it gets included), and many of those companies are involved in these AI investments.

Of course. Wikipedia would probably do a better job, but the idea behind it was that the smallest state by population serves as the baseline for representation within the House, which was originally intended to be based on population. At the time it was conceived, this was Wyoming.

This means that representation would be more accurately scaled to the population, so instead of rebalancing which states get larger shares of reps (CA, TX, FL, NY, etc) to accommodate the hard limit of 435, the House continues to grow to meet the demands of the populace. Under the rule, the House would grow well beyond 435 but it would mean one vote in Wyoming wouldn’t be worth roughly 68 votes in California, for example. Instead, CA would gain something like 17 reps and Wyoming would have 1.

Since the only outlined requirements for the House in the Constitution is that each state has one rep and there are not more than one rep per 30,000 citizens, this would require a repeal of the law capping the House at 435 (due to the physical constraints of the building!) and the passing of a new law to expand it. The Wyoming Rule was a proposal to do just that.

Durable and resilient change means connecting the court expansion to something meaningful. In this case, it would involve looking back on history and returning to the concept that the SC has seats equivalent to the number of federal circuits.

It could be argued there is almost a precedent for this from the Judiciary Act of 1869, the last time the court size changed, and that’s held up after all this time.

The SC expansion would need to be tied to the number of federal circuits, assuming that’s why you suggested 4, so that the addition isn’t just met by more retaliatory additions later on.

While we are dreaming of a better future, why not also reform the House to build true representation based on population and remove the cap of 435. Revive the Wyoming rule.

Interesting theory by Warren. Pass bills targeting key issues and see if the president vetos something popular…

It is critical to draft and pass this legislation, however the problem is that if he does veto, afterwards nothing changes. They get to say “we tried” and that isn’t likely to be enough for voters.

They’ll need help. Get involved. Contact your reps - write to them and make appointments to see their staff at their offices, regardless of their affiliation. Work on building support for popular legislation that benefits the people, directly with those making the decision.

I did no such thing. Please actually read, recognize context, and try to understand what I wrote rather than accusing me of ignoring things.

I’m agreeing that vetos are difficult to override. The top level comment had it right that even with the win, the numbers are not there without cooperation from the opposing party to overcome a veto. This affects what legislation can be passed.

Whether the opposition will or won’t cooperate because “they’re a cult” is not relevant to how the system actually functions, though it does affect the possible outcomes and how many “ifs” are being relied on for change.

I’m also agreeing with the comment I replied to that it remains to be seen what the Democrats will actually do and that current Dem leadership has given us no reason to believe they are masterminds.

We are going to see that, yup. People are upset and want change but may not understand (or care about) how things work. It’s one of the reasons the last presidential election went the way it did too, regardless of the evidence that the change on offer may not be in the direction uninformed voters wanted.

Many have seen the damage rapidly caused over the past few years and wonder why the opposition now can’t undo it, despite the levers available being different. There are still things that can be done but either because of emotions or an incomplete understanding of the systems in play, there are mismatched expectations floating around.

It’s why I advocate to engage politicians, which is one of the next levers available to us.

You’re right on all points. It is a lot of ifs, but that’s the position the US gov is in. The veto override and impeachment/removal numbers will impact what can legally be done. Democrats having a simple majority in Congress with an adversarial president means overcoming one or both of those things to pass real legislation or meaningfully hold the President accountable.

They can still subpoena, run investigations, control budgets, and otherwise be incredibly vocal to make certain decisions politically painful but it remains to be seen what they’ll actually do or if there is a plan at all.

In the meantime, we can actively try to pressure politicians to do something with the powers they will have in Jan by writing them and showing up at their offices (with appointments - it’s doable).