"proponent of taxing wealth": No! I'm a proponent of taxing people who hold lots of land in ways that restrict other people from using that land. If the people who hold lots of land are rich or poor, what matters is that they are holding lots of land in ways that restrict other people from using that land.

If somebody gets rich by his or her own work, and by saving, but not by inheriting large tracts of land or holding lots of land in ways that restrict other people from using that land -- and if that person is not taking or spoiling the natural resources, then I say that person shouldn't be taxed much (if at all).

The land either does belong to everyone, or should. That land or any other natural resource should "belong to" (as in "owned by") private individuals is a "ridiculous" capitalist "idea".

Whoever are using up or spoiling natural resources, such as land, air, water, etc., are taking something from you and from me.

An increase in one tax can be matched with a decrease in another tax. And an increase in the amount of tax revenue received from wealthy land-hoarders can be matched with a decrease in the amount of tax revenue from laborers who are struggling to make ends meet. Laborers currently pay tax on their _earnings_ from their _labor_. That tax should be greatly reduced or abolished. Laborers don't take much from the rest of us; land-hoarders take a lot from the rest of us. Those who take should reimburse (via taxes).

More specifically, regarding the gasoline for those struggling to make ends meet: Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, it would be comparatively preferable to subsidize (or otherwise help with) the _t***sportation_ or _commute_ costs of working families. Also, t***sportation and commuting doesn't always involve gasoline; use of gasoline should be phased out or reduced.

That was a rather personal and involved question, and I answered it for you, but you haven't yet done likewise when I returned the same question to you. Why not? Were you not sincere?

Liberal arts guy -- I think so, for the reason that I like to write, and I think social causes are important, and I appreciate a few of the politically "liberal" social causes. However, my main course of study in both undergraduate and university was not in liberal arts (even though a lot of what went on at the college _was_ liberal arts and I participated in some of that too), and more than 80% of my work life was not in liberal arts (it was more technical -- mostly not liberal arts at all).

I'm impressed, if you read all of what you call a long-winded essay. You didn't have to. Thank you for reading however much you read.

In what way have I "trashed the man who picks up my garbage"? I don't think of myself as trashing him at all. The guy who picks up my garbage drives a specialized truck and I am the only person on my block who follows the rule of spacing my two bins more than five feet apart (which makes it easier for him to pick up the one he comes for).

The guy who picks up my garbage drives a truck but occasionally gets out of the truck when something goes wrong and that's manual labor. Driving and manipulating the picking up mechanism is not quite manual labor; I don't know exactly how to type it. (Maybe it's a little like a factory job I had once; one learns a procedure and then does it many times.) I've done some manual labor, laying sod in my own yard recently; and hauling hay when I was a teenager. I was a specialist at bringing down large trees of neighbors in crowded places, without causing any damage nor injury. I did it entirely as manual labor, even using a handsaw, not a power saw. That's in the last 15 years. I'm proud of my work with the biggest trees; 25 years ago I did a lot of work on a fallen giant oak but that was with a chain saw and hand tools for splitting into firewood. None of the tree work was paid, except I got a few really good meals during the time of the oak. How about the firewood -- there was a lot of it; I claim that as something I created, but darn, it's not liberal arts ... so maybe not what you were asking for. Anyway, I know for a fact that it was put to use heating a home.

My father loved to talk with the truck drivers (recall that the guy who picks up my garbage drives a truck) who delivered to his small business. I think it was sometimes the high point of his day. I am very similar to my father in personality; but he was a little more formally educated than I am. I'm sure it was friendly conversation between him and the truck drivers; he liked them. I guess I probably would too. Come to think of it, one of my funniest conversations was with a truck driver in another job I had; he said, "John, ya f***-up!" And it was very funny, in context. I guess I was the straight man in that conversation.

As for wh**ever I've built from my, as you put it, "amazing education" -- which part, the part about getting to know a variety or people, or the part that didn't have anything to do with liberal arts at all? And why do you call it "amazing"? (To me it might be amazing because of the people, but I still don't know why you said that.) I've debugged some other people's computer programs. That was part of a paid job I had. I've given extensive help interpreting for a person who didn't speak any English; that was similar to "liberal arts" because languages are a little bit related to liberal arts. I think it does qualify as liberal arts work because it's so much about people and communication. I supervised a lot of mentally handicapped people, in a part-time job; that surely ought to count somehow as liberal arts, and I think I was good at it. That was a paid job. I painted a lot of rooms; that was not liberal arts; that was another paying job. And so on.

Enough about me; what about you -- What exactly have you built, or created from your education (amazing or otherwise, wh**ever it is) other than the ability to trash the man who picks up your garbage? What's that like (trashing him)? (I mean, if you do it -- you brought it up out of the blue, so maybe it's something that happens a lot in your life.) How do you do it? Does it bother him? Does he trash you back? How does it fit in with your education?

Addenda, to the above last paragraph:

Is it really their fault if they're so confused, by (a) Trump ("The President"), (b) internet-spread conspiracy theories (and other false news), _and_ (c) "Fox News" or similar information outlets? One of my close relatives gets virtually all of his news from Fox. He lives in a place where there isn't much else on the radio. He doesn't use the internet and probably doesn't read much news. And even if he did read news, it would be back-country newspapers that aren't much good -- about the same as listening to Fox or even Rush Limbaugh all day.

There are a lot of people -- tens of millions in the U.S. -- who don't know much news other than what Fox tells them, and if they got the urge to look elsewhere for news, they'd have no idea where to get it. Just as I was as a high school student.

But, since that time, I've had some additional, different kinds of experience:

Starting off, I was raised in the same place where he was raised. I didn't know much about the world (other than my own direct personal experiences of it, which started me off being skeptical -- like "a skeptic without a cause" since I didn't know where to turn for anything else).

Then I got away and spent 4 years at a college (which I regard as a "liberal arts" college), and a little later 2 years at a university (still a little bit "liberal arts" for me because of my associations with a wide variety of people there, including several from other countries). All this gradually broadened my knowledge base. I'm a slow learner, but at least I have a tendency to respect people, so I picked up a few thoughts or perspectives along the way. As in osmosis. I guess what I can articulate of it is that I got used to a wider variety of people being "real people" to me, so that if I see someone who looks different, or speaks a different language and doesn't speak English well, I might still realize they're just as real, human, intelligent, ethical, etc. as I am. (I still have some difficulty relating to women though -- they're more difficult than international, but less difficult than Republican. Republicans are sort of like the evil invaders from outer space -- in my perception of them, I mean.)

And then a little later I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area (a multicultural area) and worked many years there in a research establishment (where I continued to meet and associate with a variety of people, many from other countries).

Also, while commuting an hour round-trip each day, with nothing else to do, while randomly turning the dial on the car radio, I happened to discover "KPFA" the FM radio f**gship station of the Pacifica network. KPFA is based in Berkeley, California. (I've long been in awe of Berkeley, San Francisco, and the 1960s; I grew up thinking maybe somehow they are "where it's at"; but that is very subjective.). KPFA was much more interesting than anything else on the radio (in case you're curious, you can find it at kpfa.org), especially for me, having been raised where there wasn't anything like that. I wish I had had access to KPFA when I was a teenager, but there was no internet then and I was too far from such FM radio stations. I didn't even know what FM radio was until college; we only listened to AM radio.

From KPFA I learned about Palestine and also a little about Haiti, and as a result (from that and a couple of books, etc.) now I think I know about Palestine, but I did not develop much interest in Haiti.

KPFA has much other interesting commentary (they had Howard Zinn occasionally -- and that's just one example). It's _still_ my favorite place to hear the news, but (aside from its news broadcasts) I've gotten tired of the feminism in some of its programming -- not my kind of feminism, I guess. It does still have a variety of good programs -- plenty of them -- that don't have any connection to what I perceive as feminism.

Meanwhile someone introduced me to the work of Warren Farrell (author of Why Men Are The Way They Are and other very interesting books later than that one). (If anyone is still with me, I might lose them at Farrell, but why should I care.) If KPFA and Feminism and, say, Dr. Phil were all bowling pins, then Warren Farrell would be the bowling ball that knocks them all down. He _is_ a feminist, just not the same kind one hears so much these days. Farrell is what I'd call both a feminist and a masculinist at the same time, but since feminism's already got so much air time, he's had to take up the slack on the masculinist side, so he writes more about men's perspectives, and so some women just really h**e him. I don't know how he ever managed to get anything published in today's feminist world, but apparently perseverance pays off.

All the above plus some additional direct personal experience adds up to the way I see the world.

There's a middle-man: Travis Gettys, who wrote the article. He is quoting David Frum. I looked online to see who these people are. It looks like David Frum worked in the George W. Bush administration, and now is highly critical of Mr. Trump; and Travis Gettys probably has "progressive" views, because he works for Raw Story.

I agree with his first paragraph.

But what are we to make of his 1st clause in his 2nd paragraph? It is: "The rate of diabetes, alcohol consumption, obesity and other predictors of public health strongly predicted 2016 support for Trump's campaign". I guess he means "correlated" instead of "predicted". With "correlated", it seems believable, although rather daring or careless to say all that without substantiating it.

Re: the idea that the v*****es "work so well that herd immunity may not even be necessary": I think this is a wrong idea. As long as there's a sizable population that doesn't get v******ted, it's likely that the C****-** v***s will keep mutating and some of the mutations will eventually overcome the v*****es. One mutation seems to have already done so. ( https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/4/19/is-the-south-african-c***d-variant-immune-to-v*****es ) More v*****es could be developed to combat the mutations (I suppose), but possibly the mutations would outpace the v*****e developments so that we wouldn't be able to keep up, and so the p******c (or a derivative p******c) might just keep getting worse.

Frum, as quoted by Gettys, says "They bear responsibility too for the harm they do themselves and their families." But that's not enough. In my opinion, getting v******ted against C****-** is a civic responsibility and those who refuse bear responsibility to all of society -- because the refusers are harboring the v***s and allowing it to continue mutating in their bodies collectively, thus endangering us all, and later harming some of us via the mutations they allowed to develop. Could be I'm wrong (I'm not a v*****e scholar) (nor a v***s scholar) but that's how the p******c-and-v*****e situation seems to be playing out.

V*****e refusers are somewhat like draft dodgers and conscientious objectors in a war; but draft dodgers and conscientious objectors, in some wars, have a good reason to refuse to be in those wars (or even to furtively avoid being in them, I think), whereas in this war against the v***s it seems (to me) more obvious that everybody has a duty to get v******ted.

But a lot depends on what kind of knowledge or ignorance they have. Is it really their fault if they're so confused, by Trump (who after all _was_ called the President of the U.S.A. -- and most children think they can believe an authority figure like that, and it takes a lot to overcome that training), and by the internet-spread conspiracy theories, that they really don't understand the true situation?

If you're smarter, why don't you already know?

It seems quite apt to call the USA a r****t country, if any country might be called a r****t country. The USA was late in abolishing institutionalized racial s***ery. The USA has a lot of r****t history about its indigenous population. The USA population exhibited additional r****t behavior noticeably after Mr. Trump as president encouraged it, when he called Mexican immigrants or i*****l i*******ts "rapists" and when he used the term "Kung Flu"; and I think it's become noticeable lately because many people imitate Mr. Trump or think it's alright to follow Mr. Trump's example. ("Mexican" isn't necessarily a "race" but it seems to be perceived similarly as "race" is perceived, by many people.) Usage of these terms "rapists" and "Kung Flu" in the contexts where he used them was r****t behavior by Mr. Trump, even while he was president of the U.S. That says something about the USA right there. If these had been mere mistakes or one-time utterances, they could be forgiven or overlooked, but with him it was his typical behavior and he had no regrets about it. And a large segment of the USA population approved of Trump and supported him even while he was talking and acting like that. That says something about the USA right there, too. R****t? Yeah, more or less. Of course, the USA has other qualities too; r****m is only a part of it.

Not everyone "knows this". I don't, for example. Maybe it isn't true.

If you'd said 13% does 70% of the jail time, or even 13% suffers 70% of the convictions, I'd be inclined to believe it. That's not the same as 70% of the crime.

Oh well, I didn't write it for you anyway. And you could have just kept quiet, but no, you have to make empty insults just to make the venue a little less pleasant. Worse than a waste of time.

That's prejudice. You've as good as admitted you haven't spent any effort at reading it, and probably haven't even read it at all. Yet you've got your judgement already on display about it. Doesn't matter much in this case, but it's a bad habit.

I seldom watch the Supreme Court justices' v**es. Slightly more often, I encounter a dissenting opinion that I find interesting, usually written by one of the justices that had been appointed by a democrat president.

In recent years I've become aware of the confirmation hearing process, such as with Brett Kavanaugh and 2 or 3 other recent ones.

To your question: I don't recall any such time. The 2000 p**********l e******n might have been such a time, but I wasn't watching the court justices that closely. But I _have_ wondered how the "conservative" justices were going to v**e, as recently as the last few months when the court was asked to consider the 2020 p**********l e******n [or some part of its processes]. I think they did the right thing when they dismissed or refused to take the case. I was thinking they might do a wrong thing, but I was relieved that they seemed to be doing the right thing, and I concluded that at least they weren't as whacko as Mr. Trump wanted them to be. So my faith in the U.S. Supreme Court increased a little bit, at that.

That is great! Concise, meaningful, relevant, and (in my opinion) true.

As for me, in addition to a forum for explaining, I also need a place where I can scream.

Thank you very much for explaining that.

(As for 'People often use "court packing" to describe changes to the size of the Supreme Court', I hadn't even thought "court packing" ever meant that. I would call 'changing the size' "changing the size" or "expanding" or "reducing the size". To me, "court packing" means that existing seats are filled by an unfair process favoring one group over another, or one judicial ideology over another. The unfairness is really the key concept that I was after, whether people call it "packing" or something else.)