This article from the Financial Times explains the problem.
In a nutshell this isn't about VAT, it's about "Customs Duty" which are apparently two separate things in the EU.
I'm in the United States and we're struggling with this same issue. The flood of cheap goods being imported via TEMU / SHEIN that intentionally stay below the value required to pay import duty is large and growing problem.
It's also bad for the environment in every way imaginable.
Having said all that, it should also be said that we do still currently have a very real Nazi problem.
Nearly every country in the world is experiencing a shift to the right and it's accelerating.
In Europe we have all that
You had all of that but as it has trickled away your populations are also accelerating their move towards the Right Wing. I can't believe how many people in here think that this is only a problem in the United States when it's happening in nearly every country.
Imo, a big part of what I am seeing now stems from a lack of proper history and or civics education.
That doesn't explain what's going on in much of Europe. You bring up the Holocaust but Germany has about the strong laws imaginable against Nazism / Neo-Nazism and yet the far right is about two whiskers away from holding power. It's much the same in France and they already have power in Italy. This accelerating trend towards the right is a Global phenomena.
I think what's really happening is a populist uprising against globalization and the hardships its created for so many people. Those same people are trending right wing because the RW are actually talking about the problem and possible solutions.
Unfortunately and sadly doesn’t surprise me anymore.
It shouldn't surprise you at all. Any notion of "Free Speech" on Internet Platforms was shot in the head during the Trump Presidency and then the corpse was burned at the stake during the Pandemic. There were vast quantities of myopic morons making the arguments "These are private companies, they can do what they want!" along with "You have no right to speech on someone else's platform!" simply because they approved of what was being done.
Now the arguments being used by 2017-2022 MAGAtards are being shouted by 2023-2024 Liberals / Progressives.
It’s pretty obvious that social media as a whole is just a corrupt mess.
It's pretty obvious that people are perfectly happy with restrictions on the other person but never themselves.
People forget that the restrictions they hammer the other person with today are going to be used against them tomorrow. Plan accordingly.
and don’t understand why we’re plowing ahead with two candidates no one really wants as president.
That's easy to understand; it's because the two primary political parties run the show from bottom to top and they both managed to make serious political miscalculations at the same time.
Democrats screwed up by repressing all their younger members for the past 15-20 years in favor of their established power brokers; now their cupboard is bare right when they need it most. The Republicans miscalculated by assembling behind Trump in the first place and then they did it again by re-assembling behind Trump.
If this country's politics weren't being totally controlled by Ds and Rs now is when a 3rd Party Candidate (Libertarian, Green, etc) could gain some serious traction.
There isn’t the political power to do it.
That's the entire problem, full stop. This wouldn't even have gotten to SCOTUS if Congress would have held POTUS accountable via impeachment. The reason Congress didn't is partially due to political pressure from voters but mostly because the HoR is far too small to adequately represent 300,000,000 people.
I like the temperature contrast between cold ketchup and hot food so mine is in the fridge.
They’re not giving him immunity for everything he did as president, they just aren’t interested in being the authority that decides what is or isn’t an “official act”. They are letting lower courts decide that.
That's pretty much what they did but that's not how it's being presented by the media so you've got 30,000,000 people all riled up and ready to riot. I would have preferred if SCOTUS found a way to definitively settle this without the Remands but I understand why they did it.
The lower court will take about an hour to decide that this stuff was "unofficial" and write the legal narrative supporting that. Hell I'd be shocked if it wasn't already done. This isn't even close to over.
C'mon Vox...this article is straight garbage.
First you link to the wrong god damned instance of this case at SCOTUSBLOG (McKesson v Doe 2 instead of McKesson v Doe 3) you then don't link, or you know just post, Justice Sotomayor's remarks about why SCOTUS didn't hear this case for the third time.
Of course you probably chose not to link, or state, her full remarks because if you HAD then you wouldn't have been able to write that inflammatory headline.
SCOTUS already resolved this in 2023 with Counterman v. Colorado. It's right there on pages 14/15 in the linked PDF.
Modern Media is a raging dumpster fire of inflammatory bullshit.
Edit: In case it's not clear this Vox article was carefully crafted to leave the reader ignorant and outraged.
Could be that civilians don't want to be near them because they are scared. Russian soldiers returning from Ukraine are committing all sorts of violent crimes.
I mean would YOU want to be within 20' feet of someone who has a high likelihood of being drunk, suffering from PTSD, and a member of an especially violent and brutal military force?
That's true but we, that includes me, can look around and see what's happening beyond our State and National borders to see if a theory fits.
IMO that's the crux of the problem right there. The Standard of Living has been falling everywhere and it's been falling faster as "Globalization" took hold. The real issue though isn't trade between countries that have roughly similar economic systems and lifestyles, it's the one sided importation of goods between countries that do not have roughly similar economic systems and lifestyles.
The problem with Globalization is that it tears the floor out from underneath the vulnerable. The under-educated and the poor struggle to make a living because their jobs have been shipped away to another country where someone can live for less and thus work for less. It's a race to the bottom.
Those vulnerable people, and even the once privileged who've watched their livelihoods ripped away, are increasingly desperate to find a way out of their situation and so they're increasingly turning to the only people who seem to care. To paraphrase a bit "It's the (real) economy, stupid!"
This isn't my idea either as this outcome was widely predicted by Union Bosses and Business Leaders during the Clinton Administrations runup to NAFTA and MFN Trading Status for China.
If they were correct, and it appears they were, then the only way to stop the madness is to re-onshore the jobs as much as possible with a special focus on geographic areas that have the highest imbalance. The U.S. started doing it under the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration has accelerated the trend. If everyone will just hang tight for another 12-18 months the effects will start to get really noticeable and the Right Wing rise will ebb away.