Slashdot Mirror

I work longer and harder than I want to

Could it be because you (or someone you love) want more and more things? A new iPhone, a better car, a nicer TV? But a single person does not statistics make...

allowing for extreme stratification of wealth

Allowing, huh? Is there something you'd like to disallow? Spell it out... And then explain, why it would be ethical for you to compel — with threat of arms — the more successful to share their wealth with you to let you work less.

For a long time, the Robin Hood of folklore was considered a hero for violating the private property of the wealthy for the benefit of those less fortunate

Sure. The beneficiaries of any action are always likely to consider the action "ethical". If you arguments are as tainted by an obvious conflict of interest as this one, you may want to reconsider your overall debating strategy.

I suppose, based on your ethical system, that you'd consider him a villain?

Like most other Illiberals, you got your Robin Hood analogy all wrong. He was not robbing "the rich" to give gifts to the poor. He was robbing the tax-collectors to return to the taxed. Sheriff of Nottingham was — Robin's main enemy — was not his target for his wealth, but rather because he was an agent of the oppressive government (of King John). He was no Che Guevara — if a Robin Hood-like figure were to appear today, you'd dismiss him with the derision you and yours have shown to the Tea Party.

http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/morel/04/disaffirmation.html

Without affirmative action, the number of new black lawyers would increase by 8.8 percent because students would attend law schools that fit their preparation, leading to better grades and better jobs.

I wonder if this is also because the proportion of women, disabled people, and other ethnic minorities, targeted by Affirmative Action as a whole vastly surpasses the number of African Americans targeted by Affirmative Action.

I wonder what the results would be if they controlled for people who benefitted from affirmative action policies that let them into schools with lower grades and test scores.

They've already noted this with law degrees: http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/morel/04/disaffirmation.html

It seems plausible to posit that regardless of ethnic or racial background, people who are held to lower standards might not fare so well in real life competition.

Did what we call a "manif" (manifestation/protest march). That is quite different from rioting (going in the street to steal and make damage).

There weren't any deaths, burned cars, or other violence?

Although I do not exclude there is a minority of thugs which always take the occasion to riot, the intention of the crushing majority was only to protest agaisnt that law.

The rioters may of been a minority but there were some protesters who supported them and some rioters supported protesters. Perhaps I could have phrased what I wanted to say better though, so I'll try again. The government in France wanted to boost youth employment, even today France has a high unemployment rate for youth. But the youth protested against making it easier for businesses to fire bad employees who are youth, as if a job was an entitlement not something earned. If you want more employment of youth you want to make it easier to fire those youth who are poor workers. Even today Youth unemployment is high in almost all of Europe.

Falcon

That appears to be born out here: http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/monos/bushdef/nichols.html

Ross Perot, for example, won 30% of the votes of independents, while attracting only 17% of Republican voters and 13% of Democratic voters.

Reagan's mishandling of the economy, that Bush inherited, is what lost Bush the election.

FTFA:

The U.S. Department of Justice, which appealed the lower court ruling on behalf of the NSA, said it was pleased with the decision. The NSA program was "a vital intelligence program that helped detect and prevent terrorist attacks," Brian Roehrkasse, the DOJ's acting director of public affairs, said in a statement.

So, Mr. Roehrkasse, do you know what freedom is?

Do you even know what the fuck your organization is even defending?

I don't know about you, but if our freedoms are being taken away by our Government, than what is there for them to defend? I guess the status quo.

I'll do my best in the coming election to vote for someone that'll take our freedoms seriously and not just use the word as justification for eliminating the Bill of Rights - like Bush does. Sorry, when that idiot in Chief goes on national TV and says he's fighting for our freedom and then allows his henchmen in the DOJ and NSA to pull this kind of shit, it's obvious to me that he and th rest of his administration has absolutely no concept of what freedom is.

Shi'as believe that Muhammad al-Mahdi will reappear when the world has fallen into chaos and civil war emerges between the human race for no reason. (Twelfth Imam) Ahmadinejad is part of an unorthodox group that believes muslims can hasten his coming by deliberately sinking the world into chaos (as opposed to "no reason"). (A nuanced discussion is here.) The publicly announced intention of Iran is to sink the world into chaos so as to usher in a new age.

Mutually Assured Destruction does not deter such a leader, because mutual destruction is in fact his goal. The job of our government *should* be to confine the destruction to Iran as much as possible. It seems tempting to try and replace Ahmadinejad, but we always seem to screw up and make things worse with such attempts. (See Iraq.)

You can't claim victory when you've made very deliberate predictions that temperatures will go up, and then refine those predictions (still going up but in a narrower range), if temperatures actually go down.

Let me draw a parallel: Sulfate aerosols. Twenty years ago... BAD! Spend five billion dollars on a five million dollar problem by requiring major changes to industry by amending the clean air act. Now, twenty years later, the same environmental crowd that fought against sulfates so vigorously tell us sulfate aerosols are keeping global temperatures down and should be intentionally put into the atmosphere. Keep in mind, they don't want to lift clean air act restrictions. They want to spend more money (pocket more grants) seeding it with jet airplanes, balloons and artillery cannons... I still haven't heard how this is supposed to avoid the production of acid rain, but there it is, staring you in the face. Twenty years ago, you would have told me to stuff my sulfate conspiracy theories too, I suppose.

So you say a temperature switcheroo in a few decades is impossible? Suppose they just throw up a two or three page "debunking" over at realclimate and continue on their merry way. Would that pass your sniff test? They are simply trying to scare up power and support, just like George W Bush does with the terrorism rhetoric. Remember, the whole sulfate aerosol business started in 1995 when the IPCC's prediction of 1.3C-2.3C temperature increase only turned out to be about a 0.5C increase.

By 1995, in its second full assessment of climate change, the IPCC admitted the validity of the critics' position: `When increases in greenhouse gases only are taken into account, most climate models produce a greater mean warming than has been observed to date, unless a lower climate sensitivity to the greenhouse effect is used. There is growing evidences that increases in sulfate aerosols are partially counteracting the warming due to increases in greenhouse gases.'

Let me translate this statement. It means either it is not going to warm up as much as we said it would or something is hiding the warming. I predict that every attempt will be made to demonstrate the latter before admitting that the former is true.

Source: Testimony of Dr. Patrick J Michaels before the 105th US Congress, 1997

As I see it, the problem is not the EC, but that the elections are a "popularity contest" bereft of any real content, and designed to attract ignorant voters. The EC might possibly prevent a Hitler, Lyndon LaRouche, or "Mickey Mouse" being elected to the White House.

I have a standard procedure I developed during the Bush/Gore election. When someone starts bitching and moaning about a candidate for presidency, I ask them, "I can see you're concerned. It really bothers me that most people voting in the election are not informed enough to make a good decision. It usually comes down to a popularity contest, or a 'MY TEAM vs. "YOUR TEAM' contest. That's pathetic, isn't it?"

Usually they agree with me that it's terrible that ignorant people are casting un-informed votes.

Then I ask them, "What, specifically, qualifies a person to be President? What are the main duties of the President, and why is one candidate more qualified than the other?"

Needless to say, most people don't have a ready answer. (It really IS pathetic that so many ignorant people are casting votes!) So I ask them, "What does it say in the Constitution?" Unless the person is a lawyer, most people don't know the Constitution. There are exceptions, but it's pathetic that most people don't know the Constitution and still insist on "Constitutional Rights".

I then hand them a small booklet with the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States and tell them, "Don't vote until you've memorized the Constitution." These booklets are available for a dollar or less at any Libertarian bookstore, or they can be ordered here: http://www.ashbrook.org/constitution/ I used to carry a number of them in my car and pocket.

If you don't want to order the booklet, you can read the Constitution many places online. Don't vote until you've memorized the Constitution.

Now, Bush is probably the lesser of two evils, which is STILL evil. The CATO Institute will send you a free booklet called, "Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush". I also recommend reading, "We the People" by Mortimer Adler and "The Law" by Frederick Bastiat: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G1753. You have a little over two years before the next Presidential election to educate yourselves.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a member fo the Libertarian Party, but I do consider myself a "libertarian? (small 'l') in the same sense as Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill.

I guess Secretary of Defense Rumsfield put it best in his memo:

After noting that we do not know how to measure success in the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld asks "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" Asking the question in this way shows the same misunderstanding that was at work in Vietnam. ... We cannot capture of kill terrorists faster than they are bred by our enemies, unless paradoxically we make capturing or killing them subordinate to winning the larger political struggle which determines the supply of terrorists.

No, I meant the other one

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

-------------

However, in 1819, the Supreme Court ruled in McCollough vs. Maryland that federal laws supercede state laws. More information can be found here.

The ruling states
The States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burthen, or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into effect the powers vested in the national Government.

Yeah, I can't see why the rest of the world hates the west, can you? We turn war into a fuckin' video game, and relegate them to attacking us with swords while riding their camels.

I know it's the natural evolution of war, but it also seems like the natural evolution of capitalism applied to the battlefield. He with the most money to make the best toys wins, and he who doesn't hopes for an aid package to be sent to his widow.