Figure out your residency (digital nomad, non lucrative visa from passive income, etc). Find where you want to live. Find a property within that area. Use word of mouth, find someone locals trust, have them help you with maintenance and pay them for that help. I use both Wise and Santander. Idealista is, by far, the biggest real estate website in Spain. Use this to start your search. Some properties are going to be held by local agencies, and you're going to have to talk to folks on the ground to see those listings (wildly different market than Zillow and Redfin in the states). There is an annual wealth tax on globally held assets >€2M, if this potentially applies to you, seek assistance from a Spanish tax advisor. I strongly advise not buying over the Internet and buying in person to avoid scams and fraud. Use a legal advisor to facilitate your purchase as you would with an attorney in the states.
This will probably get flagged, but if you read this, spent a few minutes trying to understand the gravity of this specific EO. Every federal employee even in independent agents must and will jump when Trump says so. Even if he asks them to do something illegal (close the congress! Jail a democrat!), they must follow his orders. Because HIS interpretation of the law cannot be superseded.
If he wanted to fire anyone who disagreed with him, this EO wouldn’t have been necessary. With very few exceptions, executive branch employees serve at the pleasure of the President.
This is how it is, how it has been, and is entirely consistent with the Constitution.
So, if not that, then why issue this EO?
First of all, it’s a statement: “Resistance to this agenda from within the executive branch will not be effective”
Secondly, it helps ensure that when the President issues a statement, it’s not immediately met with bureaucrats making statements to the contrary.
> If he wanted to fire anyone who disagreed with him, this EO wouldn’t have been necessary.
Nonsense! This is the exact opposite! This is EO shows Trump trying even harder to fire all the people who refuse to go along with his crimes.
He is asserting that when the Judicial branch concludes his firings are illegal, he's going to ignore it, and then fire anyone else who refuses to help him illegally fire people.
It's the democracy-destroying version of a Monty Python sketch: The people who followed the law have been sacked. The people who didn't sack the people who followed the law have also been sacked.
> He is asserting that when the Judicial concludes his firings are illegal, he's going to ignore it, and fire anyone else who refuses to help him illegally fire people.
"No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law"
Immediately succeeded by “, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.”
… and preceded by “The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch”
Nothing in that says anything about countermanding a judicial ruling. If anything, it says that the President should set the strategy during litigation rather than one federal case making one argument while another makes a contradictory argument in reference to the same law.
You’re wrong, many jobs are protected by congressional law. The executive branch can’t do just anything he wants. Sure some agencies he can but now all. This shit was decided a long time ago and there are several laws covering it. Congress is not doing their job and impeaching and firing this president. GOP don’t care if he’s a criminal as long as he is their criminal
I dunno, it makes sense that the federal branch that manages interest rates is independent of the president. Didn't we have a whole thing where Trump couldn't force rate increases or decreases back in 2020? Do we really want Trump to declare interest rate changes via tweeting or whatever?
What about things like drug approvals? I don't want Trump to ban certain drugs just because they didn't donate to his campaign. I don't want Trump to approve Elon Musk's brain chips just because Musk told him to.
It makes sense that we don’t elect a fed chairmen, but if the fed chairmen doesn’t report to any elected official then where do they get their authority?
Supreme Court Judges are appointed by elected officials, but then don’t report to anyone. Maybe a fed chairmen is like that? But there is no constitutional office like that. Surely congress can’t make up offices which are then untouchable?
I don’t want trump playing transactional games with the FDA either, but I don’t see how that can be balanced with the powers. He is the chief executive.
I mentioned in another comment that one angle that would make more sense than arguing that agencies are “independent” is to argue that trump is not enforcing the law already written by congress, so taking away the power of the legislature. That seems like a more fruitful take.
> It makes sense that we don’t elect a fed chairmen, but if the fed chairmen doesn’t report to any elected official then where do they get their authority?
Congress put in a process for a fed chairman to be appointed in a way that jointly incorporates president, house and senate. Similarly firing them also needs joint cooperation, then the people have some say by electing/unelecting a congress or president that fucks it up. Same for FDA, USPS, etc etc. I definitely want a formalized process to hire and fire these guys and not just up to whims of individual executives.
The Fed is a bit of an odd duck because it's structured quite a bit differently than most federal agencies.
But sure, Trump could absolutely instruct the FDA to rescind certain drug approvals. There are of course processes that legally need to be followed in order to do that, but he could do it.
> it makes sense that the federal branch that manages interest rates is independent of the president.
You left out who the federal reserve is controlled by. It's not completely independent right? In its current form, it is owned and controlled by regional federal reserves which are controlled by the banks.
You are advocating for the corporate bank control of the money supply (and interest rates). One definition of fascism is the merger of corporate and government power. One sign of oligarchy is when corporations control the regulation of their industry.
"Independent government agencies" is just a code word for industry controlled government agencies (which are a form of fascism or oligarchy).
This is what ChatGPT "thought" about your comment:
```
- Misses the point of the original comment.
- Overly pedantic instead of engaging with the sentiment.
- Unclear analogy (PRC as a continuation of the Shang Dynasty).
- Appears detached from social norms—not recognizing the rhetorical nature of the discussion.
- Ultimately, basementcat's response likely seemed out of place and frustratingly abstract, making it easy to dismiss as nonsensical.
```
But like, for real, thinking that "ROME" still exists now makes zero sense.
Rome (the city) does still exist, as do the Roman Catholic church and Eastern Orthodox church which were integral institutions of the late Roman empire. Rome, the original capital, passed in to possession by the modern Italian state, which declared itself a "new Roman Empire" under Mussolini less than 100 years ago. The new Roman capital at Constantinople passed into the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s, whose leader took the moniker "Caesar of Rome". Other states like the Germanic "Holy Roman Empire" and even the Russian Empire with its "Tsars" (Caesars) have claimed to be successors to the Roman Empire.
Being in academia (or very adjacent to it), there are two types of BlueSky users:
1) The ones that moved because of ideological reasons
2) The ones that moved b/c Twitter became a desolate hellscape.
I'm closer to (2) than to (1), and the difference between 2024 and 2020-2022 twitter is stark. Before, if you had an interesting tweet about a new article you would get lots of engagement (retweets, discussions, people disagreeing and pushing back).
Now? Nothing, just a few random retweets or comments from non-academic people that almost feel LLM-generated. Compound this with network effects, and even my right-wing pro-Trump colleagues (and there are some) decided to at the very least dual-post.
> non-academic people that almost feel LLM-generated
I don't understand why this isn't talked about as much as the MAGA garbage. I occasionally read tweets by a couple prominent Rubyists who've been using Twitter since 2006 (because Twitter was written in Ruby, which attracted Rubyists) and none of the replies to their tweets are written by familiar Rubyists like back in the day. Most of the replies are from accounts created in the past few years with AI-generated profile images.
Also, did you go for a big bank (Santander BBVA etc) or smaller one?
Gracias!