Alex1Powell Categories Government

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Observe: the lie that "government" is a monolithic entity, from which we are somehow separate.

Government is how we organize, manage and maintain our society, but to acknowledge that is to acknowledge society, and one's responsibility to organize, manage, and maintain it.


Government didn't close churches. Churches closed because people with something more than a childishly selfish view of the world understood their responsibility to the shared life of a society, and government is how that understanding was operationalized and delivered.

Nor does government militarize police. The police is militarized because people with a fearful, hateful or selfish view of the world understand a militarized police will operationalize & deliver that fear, hate, and greed through the mechanism of government.

Government is *us*.

Those who now align with a party actively working to dissolve and demolish democracy in our country do so not because they don't understand this, but because they do.

Democracy allows people they fear and hate to be government with them.

So they hate democracy, and government.

People who align with a party standing in the way of any solution, any maintenance, any governance, do so not because they don't understand this, but because they do.

Better to die of sickness, disease, and neglect than allow those they hate and fear to be government with them.
There are a number of reasons bills like these are wrongheaded. One is that it tries to implement the same kind of one-size-fits-all solution that opponents of trans inclusion claim to oppose.

But let’s get nuanced for a minute...


Do trans women and girls have an advantage in sports over other women and girls?

I’m here to provide a very unsatisfying answer: It depends.

What sport are we talking about?

How old are people competing in it?

What sort of hormone treatment has the person in question had and for how long?

Those are all factors that play into the fairness question.

Trying to implement broad policies in the name of ensuring fairness can actually have the opposite of the intended effect.

Take the case of Mack Beggs.

A few years back, Beggs was a high school student in Texas. He was a wrestler, and wanted to do it at the college level.

Beggs is a trans man, meaning his birth certificate said female on it. Like many trans guys, he takes testosterone as part of his medical transition.

He wanted to wrestle. Specifically, he wanted a spot on his school’s boys team.

He wasn’t allowed.
Been seeing a lot of discussions about the history of 🇵🇭 police forces (like 👇) but what hasn't been mentioned so far are their connections to the revolutionary Katipunan. Some surrendered Katipunan officers were absorbed in the colonial policing apparatus 1/11


The 2 examples I know are Licerio Geronimo and Juan Cailles. *I wouldn't know these if I hadn't done research for my chapter in this book here: 2/11


Gen. Licerio Geronimo is credited w/ the death of Major Gen. Henry Lawton, the highest ranking American officer to be killed in the Philippine-American War, during the Battle of San Mateo. But after surrendering in 1901 he joined the PC & was instrumental in the defeat ... 3/11

...of his former comrades, most notably Gen. Luciano San Miguel, a veteran of the 1896 revolution who continued to battle the Americans until his death in 1903. He had been routed by Geronimo's troops but San Miguel preferred to die on the battlefield than be taken alive. 4/11

Juan Cailles, like Geronimo, was a Katipunan commander who surrendered to the Americans in 1901. He was then appointed governor of Laguna and enjoyed several years of being a local politician. But in the 1930s, in the midst of landlessness and social unrest... 5/11
The idea that CERB basic income payments *caused* an increase in population overdose deaths isn't an idea that deserves analysis, but humour me? What if we applied some of Bradford Hill's criteria of causation?

THREAD.

(Spoiler: It makes the notion even more ridiculous)


Temporality?

If CERB caused an increase in fatal ODs, the program had to come *before* the increase. The surge clearly started in *March*.

Compared to Feb:
AB: 43%⬆️
BC: 53%⬆️
ON: 19%⬆️

You couldn't even apply for CERB till *April 6*, and payments didn't come till mid-April.


Dose-response?

In causal relationships, there's⬆️incidence where there's⬆️exposure.

In April when people started getting CERB OD deaths went up in:
AB by 26%
BC by 4.3%
ON by 29%

But the proportion of people getting CERB was statistically *the same* (~23.5%) in each province.


Coherence with established evidence?

The literature shows financial *insecurity*, not financial support, contributes to higher risk substance use and poorer health outcomes. The "CERB made ODs go up" narrative isn't just inconsistent with the science. It's *opposite* to it.


More plausible than other explanations?

The mechanism suggested for the "CERB effect" is that when you give extra money to people previously living on less than we need to survive (that's the *actual* problem), they buy a bunch of drugs and die. So fatality rates go up.