These 2 videos are a lecture on the philosophy of the founding of the United States. Don't let Arnold's Arkansas accent or low production values fool you, he is actually very well educated and very widely read.
Part 1
https://youtu.be/B8fw_bptDW8
Part 2
https://youtu.be/sAmI-o7sO18
With the right wing falling all over itself at the murder of right wing activist and influencer Charlie Kirk, I have to ask where they were at the other political violence in the United States during the Trump era?
Where was the right wing political outrage over the murder of Melissa Hortman and her husband? And their dog?
Or the attempted murder of John Hoffman and his wife?
Or the kidnap and murder plot against Gretchen Whitmer?
Or the firebombing of PA governor Josh Shapiro's house while his family was inside?
Or the attack on district judge Esther Salas, which killed her son?
Or the attack on the CDC?
Or the January 6th attack on the US Capitol?
Or, going back a bit further, the attack on Gabrielle Giffords?
The Trump administration is sending federal agents and national guard troops into Chicago, and elsewhere in the State of Illinois, for a mass deportation event, and doing it in the name of a young mother who was killed by a drunk driver who happened to be an undocumented immigrant.
OK. What is the Trump Administration going to do about the 13,000 other deaths attributed to drunk driving every year? (MADD)
What is the Trump Administration going to do about the 39,000 other traffic fatalities every year? (NHTSA)
What is the Trump Administration going to do about the 7148 pedestrians struck and killed by vehicles? (GHSA)
Take a Florida, for instance. Florida had 85,089 hit and run crashes in 2024, resulting in 205 deaths, 76% of whom were pedestrians or bicyclists. (FDOT) In fact, the Tampa Bay region is the deadliest area in the country for pedestrians and bicyclists.
The vast, overwhelming majority of traffic fatalities in the United States involve citizens. It's such a ubiquitous problem that it doesn't even make the headlines. It's just accepted as a fact of life. It's a roadside memorial that gets turned into a roadside plaque if someone wants to sponsor one.
If the Trump administration is going to spend hundreds of millions on Illinois rounding up people who had nothing to do with this one crash, and this one tragic traffic death in the name of one person killed in traffic then the Trump administration should put their money where their collective mouth is and do something about the other 39,000 traffic deaths we have every year, and the 13,000 drunk driving deaths, and the 7100 pedestrians killed in traffic every year. But they won't, because the whole exercise is nothing but a show to endear Trump to his jingoist base.
The cities with the highest homicide rates in America are Birmingham, AL, St. Louis, MO, and Memphis, TN. When is Trump going to send troops there? Instead he is taking troops from those areas and using them to patrol DC, which is number 10 on the list, and threatening Chicago, which is number 22, and New York City, which is number 127. Trump is literally taking troops from areas with high crime and using them to patrol areas with lower crime. This isn't about crime. This is about control. And making Trump look like a tough guy.
Fuel taxes vs. EV taxes.
This is a comparison between the fuel taxes paid by ICE vehicles and the proposed registration fees for EVs.
I have a Chevy Bolt, so I will use that as my baseline.
The bolt has a 3600 pound curb weight. Looking at ICE vehicles on the market around the same weight, I calculated the average fuel economy is 24.7 city, 32 highway, 26.9 combined.
I have a 44 mile daily commute, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year. That calculates out to 11,000 miles per year for my commute. Add in miscellaneous other driving, and call it 12,000 per year.
The State legislature of Florida is proposing a $200 annual registration fees, and now the federal government is proposing a $500 annual registration fee, for a total of $700 per year in annual registration fees on EVs.
The State of Florida charges 37.325 cents per gallon in fuel tax. The federal government charges 18.4 cents per gallon.
The overwhelming majority of my driving is highway, so I’ll take the highway mileage figure for simplicity.
12,000 miles divided by 32mpg is 375 gallons of gasoline, which comes out to $140 for the State of Florida, and another $69 for the federal government, for a total fuel tax of $209 for the average 3600 pound vehicle driven by a person who commutes like I do.
To sum that up, that’s $700 in registration fees for EVs “to replace what they don’t pay in fuel taxes”, when an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay just $209 in fuel taxes.
Why are congressional Republicans, and Florida state Republicans, proposing to charge me combined nearly three and a half times what an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay? Why are Florida Republicans proposing to charge me an additional 30% over what an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay? Why are congressional Republicans proposing to charge me over 7 times what an equivalent ICE vehicle would pay? My speculation is that their owners in the petroleum industry are terrified by electric vehicles, and are trying desperately to tie back the hands of time so they can continue to make profits from their products.
So what to do about this? The transition to electric vehicles is unstoppable. In one thing Republican legislators are correct: EV owners do not pay their fair share of the taxes necessary to support the infrastructure they use. (In fairness, ICE owners don’t either, but that is a different subject.) I don’t object to paying my fair share, but I do object to paying my share and 7 other people’s as well. The only fair solution I can see is to eliminate fuel taxes altogether, and charge all vehicle owners road use fees based on the weight of the vehicle and the miles driven. That would even the playing field between ICE vehicles and EVs.
This is the Op-Ed that got Rumeysa Ozturk arrested for "support for terrorism".
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj
On March 4, the Tufts Community Union Senate passed 3 out of 4 resolutions demanding that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel. These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.
Unfortunately, the University’s response to the Senate resolutions has been wholly inadequate and dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the student body. Graduate Students for Palestine joins Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the Tufts Faculty and Staff Coalition for Ceasefire and Fletcher Students for Palestine to reject the University’s response. Although graduate students were not allowed by the University into the Senate meeting, which lasted for almost eight hours, our presence on campus and financial entanglement with the University via tuition payments and the graduate work that we do on grants and research makes us direct stakeholders in the University’s stance.
While an argument may be made that the University should not take political stances and should focus on research and intellectual exchange, the automatic rejection, dismissive nature and condescending tone in the University’s statement have caused us to question whether the University is indeed taking a stand against its own declared commitments to free speech, assembly and democratic expression. According to the Student Code of Conduct, “[a]ctive citizenship, including exercising free speech and engaging in protests, gatherings, and demonstrations, is a vital part of the Tufts community.” In addition, the Dean of Students Office has written, “[w]hile at times the exchange of controversial ideas and opinions may cause discomfort or even distress, our mission as a university is to promote critical thinking, the rigorous examination and discussion of facts and theories, and diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.” Why then is the University discrediting and disregarding its students who practice the very ideals of critical thinking, intellectual exchange and civic engagement that Tufts claims to represent?
The role of the TCU Senate resolutions is abundantly clear. The Senate’s resolutions serve as a “strong lobbying tool that expresses to the Tufts administration the wants and needs of the student body. They speak as a collective voice and are instrumental in enacting systemic changes.” In this case, the “systemic changes” that the collective voice of the student body is calling for are for the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law. These strong lobbying tools are all the more urgent now given the order by the International Court of Justice confirming that the Palestinian people of Gaza’s rights under the Genocide Convention are under a “plausible” risk of being breached.
This collective student voice is not without precedent. Today, the University may remember with pride its decision in February 1989 to divest from South Africa under apartheid and end its complicity with the then-racist regime. However, we must remember that the University divested up to 11 years after some of its peers. For instance, the Michigan State University Board of Regents passed resolutions to end its complicity with Apartheid South Africa as early as 1978. Had Tufts heeded the call of the student movement in the late 1970s, the University could have been on the right side of history sooner.
We reject any attempt by the University or the Office of the President to summarily dismiss the role of the Senate and mischaracterize its resolution as divisive. The open and free debate demonstrated by the Senate process (exemplified by the length, open notice and substantive exchange in the proceedings and the non-passing of one of the proposed resolutions), together with the serious organizing efforts of students, warrant credible self-reflection by the Office of the President and the University. We, as graduate students, affirm the equal dignity and humanity of all people and reject the University’s mischaracterization of the Senate’s efforts.
The great author and civil rights champion James Baldwin once wrote: “The paradox of education is precisely this: that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which [they are] being educated.” As an educator, President Kumar should embrace efforts by students to evaluate “diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.” Furthermore, the president should trust in the Senate’s rigorous and democratic process and the resolutions that it has achieved.
We urge President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate.
This op-ed was written by Nick Ambeliotis (CEE, ‘25), Fatima Rahman (STEM Education, ‘27), Genesis Perez (English, ‘27) and Rumeysa Ozturk (CSHD, ‘25) and is endorsed by 32 other Tufts School of Engineering and Arts and Sciences Graduate Students.
'An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads a man to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself'.
- Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government (1795).
