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Except that Arizona did sell off non-profitable assets.

Basically it is another way of getting a loan to pay for your shortcomings now, the difference is the person who bought it knows that you'll buy it back later for a higher price guaranteeing it will be profitable.

The accumulated evidence linking lead exposure in children to criminality later in life is overwhelming.

I'm not a reflexive treehugger or chemicals-are-bad kind of guy, but I am open to reading the data and making a case-by-case decision. In this particular case, it's a slam dunk.

Hmm. If we could all agree that they were using excessive force, we could probably all agree to kick them off the force. So I guess official policy is out of the question. I wonder if there is any unofficial listing?

A quick Google and presto:
http://www.motherjones.com/cri...

Also:
http://www.ratemycop.com/

Apparently closed since 2015. Well, thinking about it, this is never gonna be functional. I know way too many criminals that refuse to take responsibility for their actions, and have completely unrealistic expectations about how LEOs treat them.

Still, nice idea, though.

What's a teacher supposed to do? They're product is directly tied to Seattle residents, but they cannot get raises without negotiations, and last time this happened, in 2015, they had to strike.

They got a 9.5% raise over 3 years, which is pennies compared to what rent was/is doing. You've got a relatively rich workforce that has their kids being taught by relatively poor teachers.

OK, enough with the ignorance already. Every US military leader would not take kindly to being labeled a mass murderer,

...but most of them absolutely are, because they were not fighting a war to protect people, but to protect profits . Who gives a fuck how they feel about being called what they are? Ignorance is no excuse, either. It's your responsibility to do your homework before killing people.

Also intent matters, which is exactly why he's being charged with involuntary manslaughter and not murder.

That's wrong, though. His intent was to get someone killed. He should be charged with first-degree murder, since it was "willful and premeditated with malice aforethought." Or with being an accessory or accomplice to same, as I have argued, although I am fast coming around to the idea that the cop is the accomplice (and guilty of voluntary manslaughter) and the SWATter is the murderer in the first degree. He planned the murder (via SWAT team) and then carried it out. The only reason anyone SWATs anyone is because they know that it is dangerous, and that the danger goes up to and includes the death of the victim (and possibly innocent bystanders, maybe even babies.)

the only reason he can sue is because California is a left wing state. The right wing states don't have any protections for political views.

I do wish people would stop dumping on right wingers though. As a left winger I don't find it hard to point out why their beliefs are objectively wrong (I'll spare everyone that in this thread) but looking down on them or worse threatening violence doesn't help. Yes, right wingers are wrong. As the saying goes reality as a well known liberal bias. I think we're much better off letting facts speak for themselves then going off half cocked. We're just feeding into a persecution complex encouraged by right wing propaganda...

All that said, I can understand some of the fear and frustration on the part of the left. We had literal Nazis marching in Charlottesville and a President who called them good people on the sly. We've got guys like Alex Jones engaging in extremely thinly veiled anti semitic rants who pull in millions of subscribers. And let's not forget how many of our closest allies treat women (Saudi Arabia comes to mind). Meanwhile Trump ran on populism but has promised to sign any immigration bill that passes his desk.... Don't forget Bernie called out H1-B abuse but still lost out.

What I'm saying is there's a lot to be scared of if you're on the left and a lot to be scared of if you're just plain a working class American. People react badly to fear. We could use a good, stable leader who genuinely has people's interests at heart to calm it all down. Sadly it looks like the Dems are going to give us more milk-toast right wing blue dogs...

Absolutely. But the economic version of natural selection still applies... if he doesn't do it, his company will tank and another will take over. So the choice is, "Do we push this problem onto the taxpayer or do we go bankrupt while someone else pushes it onto the taxpayer?"

Seems like an easy choice.

Yup. And the owners of many companies made the first choice. How 'bout we tax them for the burden they put on us?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/h...
https://www.thenation.com/arti...
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.commercialappeal.co...

Many more where those came from.

Compare SS to any sort of private institution, or Medicaid. They are very efficient.
Other federal programs do well also, economy of scale and all.
http://www.motherjones.com/kev...

That is one awesome conspiracy theory. I'll definitely add it to my collection, next to this one.

First it was global warming. Then that wasn't proven so it shifted to climate change. Seems suspicious that there are a lot of people making a lot of money and fame off of something they can't even be consistent about.

It was a Republican political strategy to call it "climate change" instead of "global warming":

In a 2002 strategy memo for the Republican Party, political strategist Frank Luntz recommended, "It's time for us [the GOP] to start talking about climate change instead of global warming. ... 'Climate change' is less frightening than 'global warming.' ... While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change sounds a more contollable and less emotional challenge."

Well, it's been explored in North Dakota and Pennsylvania, so I imagine pulling some expert input would be the first step. These people actually traveled to Norway to see their prison systems, so they started with expert input, too. I actually have a project management certification, so I tend to rely on other people's knowledge a lot--never underestimate the power of bringing in someone smarter than yourself.

Chiefly, I'll need to push policy to work toward new approaches to prison. To accomplish that, we need something like the Second Chance Act, which provides additional funding to states and local governments who create reintegration programs for released inmates. The SCA doesn't go far enough: we need to provide funding when States successfully implement lower-recidivism prisons, not just a half-way house for people who came out of the same old American prisons we've always had.

I'm hesitant to be prescriptive in the new Act (specify that the prisons must be of a certain form) because that stunts exploration of new approaches; yet, at the same time, I understand that requiring front-to-back rehabilitative prisons which integrate inmates into the community where possible, giving additional freedom of movement within the facility, ability to retain employment, and so forth would push them in that direction faster.

At the same time, a Congressman has much influence. I can use that influence to work with Governors, Mayors, and legislative bodies in Maryland to encourage change within my own state. Talking up the gains in Maryland as a model for the United States would have an impact across the Nation, as people will seek to emulate success--especially when it saves money and gets them good political capital. Everyone wants to re-elect the governor who brought a drastic reduction to crime.

Recidivism in the United States is 676 per 100,000; in North Dakota, it's now as low as around 250; and Norway hits around 70. While 250 is a good number, we can clearly do better than even that; still, cutting recidivism in half is a good first target.

See also how two-income families have bid up the price of houses in "good" school districts: http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
"Middle-class parents are stretched thin these days. Between health care costs, child care hassles, looking for a home in a good district, and paying for college, raising a child is becoming increasingly expensive. Little wonder, then, that married couples with children are more than twice as likely to file for bankruptcy as their childless counterparts, and 75 percent more likely to have their homes foreclosed. And the danger is growing worse by the year: In 2002 1.6 million people filed for bankruptcy, many of those middle-class parents. a record . As Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi note in their book, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers Are Going Broke, having a child is now "the single best predictor" of bankruptcy. ""

Also, the increasing rich-poor divide makes life more difficult for almost everyone in the USA, since daily life gets more expensive as social trust breaks down because more and more income goes into security-related costs -- including sometimes things like private school or homeschooling. For example, a decade ago I talked with someone from CA who said, while California Proposition 13 had saved him some money in real estate taxes probably, he lost much more than he gained in paying for private school for his kids because he felt local schools were underfunded. (Of course, there are other reasons to avoid compulsory schooling kids in general, see John Taylor Gatto...)

And clearly much government spending (and related taxes) is questionable like for counter-productive military adventures abroad like Iraq and on bond interest from a refusal to just issue new money as needed by the economy instead of borrowing it.

All that said, there is lots of web content out there on "frugality" and wealth building; for example: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com...

So MJ says the Cowboys stadium uses 750 MW/hr during peak times. Assuming a 6 hour "peak time" window and 16 games per season, that's 72 million kWh, or 12 times what Pornhub uses in a year.

(I started on this by wondering if 11,000 lightbulbs was a reasonable estimate for a football stadium)

The US government spends more per capita on healthcare than almost any other nation. Yes, the US government, excluding the private sector.

Per capita what? Per population? Per taxpayer? But what about in terms of healthcare received, or in terms of assessing the costs of healthcare?

Think about the difference. Then cite your sources. I'm sure you realize that hand-waved declarations of vague assertions are not especially persuasive when we know how easy it is to lie with statistics.

The problem with the US healthcare system isn't excessive stinginess by the government, it is excessive costs and excessive prices.

Indeed, among other things, it's lack of coverage. And bankruptcies.

Which isn't caused by the government being stingy, it's because the government isn't being thrifty enough by operating its own healthcare facilities. Oh wait, that's because the government is being made to be stingy under the false pretense of not providing its own healthcare facilities!

And the ACA did nothing to address excessive costs and prices (because drug companies, lawyers, and doctors tend to be big donors), instead it simply tried to force Americans to pay those excessive prices in perpetuity, which ensures that this will never get fixed.

Yes, it didn't have a public health insurance provision, let alone a healthcare provision, but we knew this at the time.

Do you not have any actual recall of the situation?

However, you forget the specific subsidies that did reduce the costs for the poor.

That some of us would have preferred hiring more doctors and providing better medical care directly, well, we didn't get a vote on that, now did we?

So if the money allocated to the border wall is unused, it does not go to healthcare

And by "healthcare", you mean the yachts and estates of wealthy doctors, insurance company executives, and pharmaceutical companies.

Now now, we're told "trickledown> " is essential by the GOP. It's their tax-plan now.

Sorry man, you've got less than you think.

But hey, at least you can get your pills.

Look, you know what's happening is due to the GOP, they're the party that's responsible now. And they're going to do their best job...of filling their own pockets. And baking

When I add up income tax, Medicare/social security tax, state taxes, property, sales, hotel, gas, airport and the rest I pay, the total is at least 50% of my paycheck, and I am not by any means rich.

Why did you divide by your paycheck, instead of your effective income, which would also include all the services you consume for which you are not billed a market rate?

This would include the vast majority of the transportation infrastructure by which you get from point A to point B, and your consumption goodies get from point B to point A.

It would include the enforcement infrastructure of contract law, without which you would be hiring Luigi (he's not cheap, in the long run) to collect on bad debts (such as your wage arrears, which is now a common problem).

It would include the $$$ security infrastructure of the most powerful nation on earth, used to command a disproportionate share of the world's natural resources, resources that would otherwise be consumed in India and China.

It would include municipal services (water, electricity) delivered to your home.

It would probably include twelve years of highly subsidized education down the street (you did take advantage of this, did you not?) I can't say for certain about American, but in Canada, it certainly does.

It would include such large corn and soy subsidies that Pepsi practically drives a snack truck onto your front lawn to force feed you soft drinks and Doritos until your liver is ripe for harvesting.

As a good first estimate, the implicit services you receive (including their administration) would be about equal to the total tax you contribute.

I don't entirely understand the story of government waste, either. We compare the government to some miracle venture like Facebook or Amazon, and by that standard it looks bad. Yet there's also lot of failure in silicon valley (MySpace, Theranos, Yahoo, Twitter). Do we add the cost of all those failures to the "overhead" of the private sector?

Here's another dynamic. Whenever we do figure out how to do something efficiently in the private sector, the government soon farms it out. What the government keeps tends to be encumbered with non-profitable burdens like fairness and social transparency.

Chapter 1: "Inmates Run This Bitch"

Blaming the government alone for the inefficiency of locking up a million people is kind of weird. The war on drugs originated as a way to fuel the Vietnam war on alcohol (which makes people aggressive) rather than pot (which makes people mild). But certain wealthy elites discovered that this was a good way to manufacture an underclass of perpetually cheap labour, and so America has had this astounding incarceration rate ever since.

Probably this should be called dysfunction, rather than inefficiency. If industry implemented this kind of dysfunction by their normal standards of profit-maximizing efficiency, the entire system would instantly become so brutal as to be declared the war crime it is (and has always been). Chaos would erupt, and Blackwater would swoop in to cream the proceeds. To some degree, the inefficiency of government is the only thing that prevents the terrifyingly efficient gears of industry from grinding up everything in sight.

There's no simple, curable inefficiency in government that one can point and make simply go away. You can point at the EPA and make the entire agency go away. And this would look like a good thing, if you're not soon drinking tap water imported from Flint, Michigan.

How about we maybe try cutting waste and abuse of the system and use that money to cut taxes so people can save more money and need less government assistance when a rainy day comes around.

You mean, all the people who aren't presently addicted to sex, alcohol, gambling, or opiod drug

To support AC's point:
http://www.dollarsandsense.org...
https://www.energyandcapital.c...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

From the first one, discussing the US defense-related costs as just one aspect: "Put all these numbers in perspective: The price of a barrel of oil consumed in the United States would have to increase by $23.40 to offset military resources expended to secure oil. That translates to an additional 56 cents for a gallon of gas, or three times the federal gas tax that funds road construction. If $166 billion were spent on other priorities, the Boston public transportation system, the âoeT,â could have its operating expenses covered, with commuters riding for free. And there would still be money left over for another 100 public transport systems across the United States. Or, we could build and install nearly 50,000 wind turbines. Take your pick."

But there are many other external costs to fossil fuels like health care costs (the legacy of leaded gas is still taking a tremendous toll on our society, but air pollution in general is a killer). For example:
https://thinkprogress.org/here...
"The average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. right now is $2.47. If that cost took into account the environmental and human health costs of burning the gasoline, however, it would more than double, according to a new study. The study, published this week in the journal Climatic Change, created models for the âoesocial cost of atmospheric release,â a method of determining the costs of emissions beyond their market value. According to the study, accounting for the social costs of burning gasoline would add an average of $3.80 per gallon to the pump price, raising the price to $6.27. Diesel has an even higher social cost of $4.80 per gallon. The study also measured the social costs of other fossil fuels not used at the pump. Coal, for example, would jump from 10 cents per kilowatt hour to 42 cents per kilowatt hour, the study found. And natural gas, which has emerged in recent years as a cheap source of fuel, would see its price rise from 7 cents per kWh to 17 cents per kWh."

And on the legacy of leaded gas (and how it has contributed to the USA's huge prison populations): http://www.motherjones.com/env...

A related essay I wrote in 2009 on "Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user":
https://groups.google.com/foru...
"This essay explain why luxury safer electric (or plug-in hybrid) cars should be free-to-the-user at the point of sale in the USA, and why this will reduce US taxes overall. Essentially, unsafe gasoline-powered automobiles in the USA pose a high cost on society (accidents, injuries, pollution, defense), and the costs of making better cars would pay for themselves and then some. This essay is an example of using post-scarcity ideology to understand the scarcity-oriented ideological assumptions in our society and how those outdated scarcity assumptions are costing our society in terms of creating and maintaining artificial scarcity."

But the real answer (if maybe not politically acceptable) is not to subsidize electric cars. It is to tax *all* the externalizes of fossil fuel use at the point of purchase, bringing the cost of gas to, perhaps, US$10 a gallon or more. The tax could be redistributed as a basic income to everyone.

Perhaps the deepest irony about all this (mentioned in the above essay) is mentioned here by B

http://www.wri.org/blog/2016/0...

http://www.motherjones.com/kev...

I've never been asked for ID on the train itself.

I have. Conductors do not have to ask for it, but may choose to — at their sole discretion. And you must comply or they can call police and kick you off the train at the next stop.

Commuter trains never ask for ID, nor would it really be possible for them to do so due to time constraints.

Just you wait.

Looking at those links, and not clicking them, they don't really appear as "citations" to me. They appear to be positions.

Instead of clicking your "citations," I looked at the meta-data to see what you're shilling as "citations."

nextbigfuture.com is the blog of a guy named Brian L. Wang. From their about page:

Brian L. Wang, M.B.A. is a long time futurist. A lecturer at the Singularity University and Nextbigfuture.com author. He worked on the most recent ten year plan for the Institute for the Future and at a two day Institute for the Future workshop with Universities and City planners in Hong Kong (advising the city of Hong Kong on their future plans). He had a TEDx lecture on Energy. Brian is available as a speaker for corporations and organizations that value accurate and detailed insight into the development of technology global trends. ...
He has written over 20000 articles for Nextbigfuture including in depth coverage on energy (especially nuclear and nuclear fusion), space, quantum computers, science, superconductors, nanotechnology, advanced computers and communication, military, technology, AI, urban development, cities and megacities.

Again, he's an MBA. It is probably a great blog, too, since they let him give a TEDx talk! But, just a blog. Linking to a blog doesn't mean you gave a "citation," it just means you aren't able to explain the ideas you want to convey yourself.

I also looked up institureforenergyresearch.org, which turns out to be a right wing think tank supported by ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Mother Jones ranked them #12 in the "Dirty Dozen" worst groups questioning anthropogenic climate change http://www.motherjones.com/env...

world-nuclear.org is just shooting fish in a barrel:

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) is the international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports the companies that comprise the global nuclear industry. Its members come from all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, uranium conversion, uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, plant manufacture, transport, and the disposition of used nuclear fuel as well as electricity generation itself.[1]

Together, WNA members are responsible for 70% of the world's nuclear power as well as the vast majority of world uranium, conversion and enrichment production.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"Citation" is not a synonym for "www link."

They closed the entire DMV for several years in order to prevent people from acquiring an ID?

No, they focused heavily on the offices that minorities could conveniently use, which was kinda revealing.

The freaking blog you pointed to is a lie,

Identify one falsehood in it. Go ahead.

there are a lot of other things going on into making those decisions, you can get an ID at the post office, from the DMV through the mail or online.

Yes, racists are practiced at finding excuses for their behavior, literacy tests and poll taxes were usually defended under those same terms. Including you know, misinforming the public about the situation.

But hey, if you want the state to mail out ID to everybody, go ahead and propose it.

You need an ID to buy booze, medicine and cigarettes, you're saying no black person buys booze, medicine or cigarettes?

Actually, I've found that sales clerks will rarely bother me about booze or cigarettes even if they are supposed to get ID, but I understand some people do have complaints about that process, medicine is somewhat different, but then, there are problems with pharmacists denying people's prescriptions. And don't even get my mother started on the way they hassled her about her diabetic testing strips refill, then tried to bill her after they FAILED to give her the number of strips she needed the first time when she asked for more. She gets quite irate at them.

If you close 31 DMV offices you do not "save only $100,000" ... argh, there is just so much wrong with this that it's not even worth pointing out. If it isn't obvious that this is partisan bullshit grasping at straws to make a point then you're dumber than you realize..

Sure man, you come right after an accusation that relied on false counter cries of racism and bigotry to ignore actual racism and bigotry, and you think it's other people who are full of partisan bullshit.

Sorry man, there's a reason it keeps being revealed.

And it gets worse as apparently it was Bentley's paramour behind it.

Crickets, eh? Interesting sound they make.

Yeah! I mean, it's not like we give billions of dollars to other industries like oil. Or have paid trillions of dollars in protecting those same interest abroad.

But it's not just oil. How about the $5.3 billion in improper subsidies for Boeing for the Dreamliner? Or that Boeing and Lockheed get billion dollar subsidies for launching absolutely nothing into space. Pork-barrel spending is never truer than in aerospace. How about the $20 billion we give to farmers to NOT GROW CROPS.

Do you know what Big Oil, Big Aerospace, and Big Agriculture all have in common? They are predominantly located in red states. Not that all subsidies are republican-related of course. $1T goes to medicare, medicaid, and ACA. $366B goes to safety net programs. Hell, $1.5B goes to the entertainment industry every year.

Personally, I'm very interested in the coming electrification of the auto industry and have invested my own money into it. It was a smart move. Anyone with half a head could see it coming a decade ago.

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
http://nation.time.com/2011/04...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03...
https://www.economist.com/news...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

Compiled stats on mass gun shootings in US for a few decades. I haven't verified they are 100% accurate, but they do have references.

You can try to look for patterns. One of the things I noticed is the vast majority of the guns were obtained illegally, whatever that means in each case. One thing that was very common was there were a lot of military people involved. There were also a lot of unhappy workers involved shooting up their old places of work. Plenty of mental health issues all around.

Point to take home, steer clear of being a dick to people at work or ex-military people who used to kill people for a living.

All shortages these days are only caused by a disagreement over the price.

That is kinda important. Even more important is the will to allow the import, and in the end, availability.

The western States have sucked the Colorado River dry. There's no wiggle room.

So now, Cali is looking toward Oregon to tap into the Columbia River. There has even been dreams of diverting Great Lakes water to the west. For some reason, the people in those areas are not terribly excited about the idea. And now they are talking about getting water from Alaska.

So these people have looked at what we did to the Colorado River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and say they want no part of shipping their water off to the Southwest to water lawns and golf courses, build fountains, and grow almonds. http://www.motherjones.com/env...

Yet we grow Most of those crops mentioned in the Mother Jones article here in the Northeast (almond and Pistachio excluded) with no irrigation at all.

heck I don't know. probably just making it up.

https://www.politico.com/story...
https://thinkprogress.org/stev...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/con...

---

https://www.childtrends.org/in...

In 2015, more than 1 in 6 U.S. children (18 percent) lived in households that were food-insecure at some point during the year, and 0.7 percent experienced the most severe level of need, where food intake is reduced and regular eating patterns are disrupted.[1]

https://www.nokidhungry.org/si...

Child Hunger is a Health Problem
While every American is morally offended by the existence of childhood hunger, pediatricians and public health
professionals see the tragic effects of this unnecessary condition graphically imprinted on the bodies and minds
of children;
â Hungry children are sick more often, and more likely to have to be hospitalized (the costs
of which are passed along to the business community as insurance and tax burdens);
â Hungry children suffer growth impairment that precludes their reaching their full
physical potential,
â Hungry children incur developmental impairments that limit their physical, intellectual
and emotional development.

---

Cause I'm just crazy that way.

Much of this could be addressed for *PENNIES* on the dollar yet republicans have been targeting poor children for over a decade now (it really started under bush JR).

We burn carbon in order to do useful things. We measure the usefulness of things with money. "Waste" means burning carbon without doing something useful.

What a pile of entitled assholery. Most of the "useful" things you wank on about are either 1) burning over a trillion a year on the imperial budget or 2) banks passing other people's money back and forth, claiming fees along the way.

Neither of those things are in any way useful to the human race.

So supporting the hard-left is equivalent to supporting republicans?

Half the NRA's donors are foreign. Does that mean we must appoint a special counsel to investigate Italy's and Canada's meddling in the election now?

According to, ahem, Wikipedia, private prisons house about 8% of the prison population.

And according to the 80-20 power law, 20% of your prisoners experience 80% of the total injustice and punitive "piling on" and we have already identified nearly half of that group.

(You think when you are already underneath two 300-lb linemen, well "what's one more?" and "ooooof" you had no idea a ruptured spleen could hurt that much—especially two days later, while the whistle-toting coach continues to prevent you from consulting with a qualified team doctor.)

Sheesh, even the most myopic libertarian knows that coercion is properly the power of the state, to be exercised by the state, with responsibility to the state (and not the bottom line).

Chapter 1: "Inmates Run This Bitch" — June 2016

In the middle of the morning, Miss Price tells us to shake down the common areas. I follow one of the two COs into a tier and we do perfunctory searches of the TV room and tables, feeling under the ledges, flipping through a few books. I bend over and feel around under a water fountain. My hand lands on something loose. I get on my knees to look. It's a smartphone. I don't know what to do—do I take it or leave it? My job, of course, is to take it, but by now I know that being a guard is only partially about enforcing the rules. Mostly, it's about learning how to get through the day safely, which requires decisions like these to be weighed carefully.

A prisoner is watching me. If I leave the phone, everyone on the tier will know. I will win inmates' respect. But if I take it, I will show my superiors I am doing my job. I will alleviate some of the suspicion they have of every new hire. "Those ones who gets along with 'em—those ones are the ones I really have to watch," SORT commander Tucker told us in class. "There is five of y'all. Two and a half are gonna be dirty."

I take the phone.

Miss Price is thrilled. The captain calls the unit to congratulate me. The other COs couldn't care less. When I do count later, each inmate on that tier stares at me with his meanest look. Some step toward me threateningly as I pass.

The worker "safety" margin in the shareholder-first privatized system is about an order of magnitude more "intimidating" to the work force than a properly run prison, and the average hire is about half as well equipped to manage these decisions.

That's not the only phone story. This "article" is about a half-day read, and still I recommend the whole thing.

Real journalism. A great fit alongside your collection of tubes and vinyl for any retro hipsters out there with a sixties conscience. (If you've been freshly fished from the Juicer section of the cryogenic deep freeze, here's a carrot tip: a modern cellphone is like Kirk's communicator, but with less flip action, and it also comes with a tiny screen on which you can play Breakout or Dig Dug for as long as your thumb will bend.)

Where do I get it?
CNN,

US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe. Exclusive: US government wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman

Mother Jones

A pair of news reports dropped Monday evening that indicate that the investigation into Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort might be reaching a boiling point, with CNN reporting that Manafort was subject to government wiretapping before and after the presidential campaign, and the New York Times reporting that Manafort has been directly told by government investigators that he should expect to be indicted.The New York Times and CNN Just Published Bombshells About the Trump-Russia Investigation

BBC

Back in March Donald Trump was widely derided for tweeting that President Barack Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory". Now some Republicans are crowing that the latest revelations vindicate Mr Trump's accusations.

That's not exactly the case. Paul Manafort was the target of the surveillance, not Mr Trump - although the former Trump campaign chairman has an apartment in Trump Tower. And if Mr Trump spoke with Mr Manafort, then it's entirely possible those conversations could have been recorded. FBI wiretapped Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort - reports

(emphasis mine). You know since Trump owns the building, and it was his campaign Manager targeted, the definition of "my" is certainly broader in that context than in normal usage.

Plastics don't have to get dissolved to have effects; they can absorb or discharge other substances. The discharge may well be affected by acidity. So it is a serious concern. See http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
"As Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi note in their book, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers Are Going Broke, having a child is now "the single best predictor" of bankruptcy. "

Yes, our material standards and expectations in the USA are so high that raising a kid is so expensive in the USA especially. And yet we also don't have the community (something individual money can't buy) and easy availability of child-care that hunter/gatherer tribes had (replacing real community with the faux community of compulsory authoritarian schooling). I sometimes reflect on my own suburban neighborhood growing up with many stay-at-home moms all around and so many kids all around on the street (yet loosely supervised by those stay-at-home moms) and think what an impoverished life so many kids these days have in a brave new world shaped by two-income families even with so many toys, bigger houses, "good schools", and the internet. Trying to make things work on just one income in such a situation is then so much harder.

Good luck doing the best you can for your family in a system where family values is too often a meaningless slogan (or actively undermined by economic policy).

Long term, a basic income could help make it possible for more people to have more time and flexibility be better parents and better neighbors without going bankrupt in the process (a more general idea than Warren's specific suggestions in that article).

Dems would love to axe military spending, provide alternative jobs training, allow Gov't to negotiate drug and medical service costs

Whatever you're smoking, did you bring enough for everyone? Democrats blocked medical negotiations and went right on spending over a trillion each of Obama's years in office.

And Dems would also be fine with economic incentives and/or gov't programs to encourage/force sterilization to overpopulation.

Eugenics, seriously? I see you moved from a nice fatty to some combination of meth and shrooms.

Besides the bad quality goods they sell, I refuse to patronize a company that intentionally designs their employee health insurance to be so inadequate and unaffordable that the employees see public health care as a more attractive insurance. Part of their new employee orientation includes training on how to apply for Medicaid. Medicaid was never intended as a safety net for full-time gainfully employed citizens. WalMart is covertly gaming the Medicaid system by keeping wages under the threshold and shifting the burden onto taxpayers. If that is how WalMart stays competitive by exploiting taxpayer revenue, then I refuse to patronize them.

First thing I found; I imagine there are others: http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

Aside from that, I seriously question people so fucking lazy that they would avail of these services. Is it really hard to go to a supermarket and just buy the stuff to make a meal? What the hell is the difference? Aside from the freedom to eat what you like, when you like for less money.

Umm did you forget all the Clinton dead bodies (all rationalized though the sum total is nigh unto impossible to have been as the were explained away).

Ah, you mean the ever-growing list of assorted people whose "mysterious" deaths have no particular connection to the Clintons that the right-wing keeps pretending has some legitimacy?

Or did you miss how discredited and uninformed that list was? Just tell the truth, did you ever look into its veracity or not? It's what you chose to start off with, but that alone, destroys your credibility.

http://www.snopes.com/kkk-endo...

On the other hand.....

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

That's just a few. Trump got the vote of the KKK and neo-nazis, and if you voted for him, you're ideals align with theirs.

Don't be a gullible fucking idiot.

http://www.snopes.com/kkk-endo...

On the other hand.....

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

That's just a few. Trump got the vote of the KKK and neo-nazis, and if you voted for him, you're ideals align with theirs.

Don't be a gullible fucking idiot.

Meanwhile, all the false flag, false report, and literal violent bullshit has been coming out of the left.

Nope!

Nope!

Nope!

I will grant this did though.

But but muh conservatives! But but his tax returns!

And shadowy business dealings. He can't even keep his promises, note how he claimed he wasn't going to take money from foreigners staying at his hotels? oops

Even Mother Jones gets it right sometimes.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. The US has seen a massive decline in violent crime in general, along with a decline in teen pregnancies. There is no correlation between increased gun-ownership, increased conceal-and-carry, and increased violent crime.

While it's only a theory and correlation does not strictly imply causation, I cautiously subscribe to the lead-crime hypothesis:

"Second, this correlation holds true with no exceptions. Every country studied has shown this same strong correlation between leaded gasoline and violent crime rates. Within the United States, you can see the data at the state level. Where lead concentrations declined quickly, crime declined quickly. Where it declined slowly, crime declined slowly. The data even holds true at the neighborhood level - high lead concentrations correlate so well that you can overlay maps of crime rates over maps of lead concentrations and get an almost perfect fit.

Third, and probably most important, the data goes beyond just these models. As Drum himself points out, "if econometric studies were all there were to the story of lead, you'd be justified in remaining skeptical no matter how good the statistics look." But the chemistry and neuroscience of lead gives us good reason to believe the connection. Decades of research has shown that lead poisoning causes significant and probably irreversible damage to the brain. Not only does lead degrade cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person's ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for "emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/a...
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Really? The judiciary "leans conservative" so soon after 8 years of Obama appointments? Of the last 24 years Democrats have had 16 years of making appointments and 8 years of obstructing Republican appointments as best they could.

That's just so wrong, that it is a lie.

Republican obstruction of Obama judicial appointees was unprecedented.

The judicial confirmation rate under the Republican-controlled Senate is less than half of what it was when Democrats held power under George W. Bush. There are so few judges that it’s hurting the country.
It’s Not Just Merrick Garland: Republicans Are Blocking So Many Nominees It’s Caused a Judicial Emergency

The Times editorial board accurately describes the severely deteriorated state of federal judicial selection and suggests that Republican obstruction during President Obama’s two terms in office is substantially responsible for the 100-plus current vacancies.
Anti-Obama Republicans have created a judicial emergency

Since taking control of the Senate in early 2015, Republicans have confirmed only 17 federal judges, a historically low number. The Senate confirmed just 11 judges in 2015, the fewest since 1960. There have been only two appellate court judges approved since Republicans took control, with seven appeals court nominations left pending. If the Senate doesn’t confirm any appellate judges this year, it will have confirmed the fewest since the 1897-98 session, when there were just 25 circuit court judges nationwide, compared with 179 now.
Senate Republicans Are Breaking Records for Judicial Obstruction

I swear, I don't know why people keep modding you up. Every god-damn thing you post is just a manipulative life.

You mean evidence exactly like this?

The Intercept Discloses Top-Secret NSA Document on Russia Hacking Aimed at US Voting System

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the US election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

For the last two decades no American based bank would loan Trump money due to his shady business practices and so the money he has been using comes from either Russia. Or China (a whole new issue.)

Mother Jones:

Since Donald Trump became a presidential candidate, journalists and investigators looking at his business holdings have wondered if there are any Russian connections to the complicated and opaque finances of his real estate empire. So far, no solid evidence of a Moscow link has emerged.

A large chunk of his foreign money seems to come from Germany. But Trump doesn't seem to be particularly friendly with Merkel or the Germans. In fact, they hate his guts.

Of course, that's not surprising either: the influx of foreign money and influence is the consequence of our trade imbalance, which Trump fortunately seems to want to address.

I am not sure what the point of your post is

It's to mock bigots, liars, and conspiracy nuts like you. Of course, it's perhaps just easier to call you what you are: a bigot, a liar, and a conspiracy nut, and to tell you to go to hell.

There's lots of meticulously researched and sourced articles out there. Just because you can't use google doesn't mean there isn't any evidence.

The proposal to ban laptops from the cabins of planes appears to be attempting to take advantage of the following logical fallacies and cognitive biases:

• * Zero-risk bias: Prefer to reduce a small risk to zero, over a greater reduction of a larger risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
• * Nirvana/Perfection fallacy: Prefer to abandon functional good for unachievable perfection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
• * Identifiable victim effect: We respond more strongly to a single identified victim, than a faceless group of victims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Remember that time they said they needed porno scanners? It turned out that the porno scanners didn't work. https://radsec.org/secure1000-... And, DHS upper management (Chertoff http://www.motherjones.com/moj... ) got rich off the sale of the porno scanners. This shows that we should not blindly accept TSA/DHS proposals.

The TSA success rate at finding known weapons and explosives is 5%. IE, they only find 1 out of 20: https://www.theguardian.com/co... This means that the laptop change will not actually make a difference to the real risk.

If they are worried that a well funded group will make explosives that look like a laptop, why would they only do laptops? Why wouldn't an attacker make explosives that look like a suitcase? A CPAP? A baby stroller? Why can't an attacker disguise explosives as a big enough item that it doesn't make any difference where it is on a plane? If they can't find an explosive shaped like a laptop, they are not going to find an explosive shaped like other things. Are they going to ban all carry-ons and checked items?

On the face, It seems looke like they have decided to increase their security theater.

While we wait for the TSA's analysis, lets review a few facts. Here are some reference pages on various types of death in the US:

• * https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fasta...
• * http://www.nsc.org/NSC%20Image...
• * https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs...
• * https://www.theguardian.com/us...

So, your chance of dying of various things in the US is:

• * US Citizen killed by terrorists from 2005 through 2014: (about 1 in 240K deaths.)
• * Killed by lightning in the US: (about 1 in 160K.) For every terrorism death, there are about 1 and 1/2 deaths by lightning.
• * Dying in a plane crash: (about 1 in 10,000) For every terrorism death, there are about 25 deaths by plane crashes
• * Being killed by police in the US: (about 1 in 2300) For every terrorism death, there are about 105 deaths by police
• * Drowning in the US: (about 1 in 1200) For every terrorism death, there are about 200 deaths by drowning.
• * Dying in a motor vehicle accident: (about 1 in 100.) For every terrorism death, there are about 2,200 deaths by motor vehicle accidents
• * Heart disease & cancer in the US: (about 1 in 7 deaths.) For every terrorism death, there are 35,000 deaths by heart disease and cancer.

There hasn't been a big increase in deaths by terrorism. Or laptop. Why aren't we banning laptops in order to protect people from lightning? It would make just as much sense.

It looks like you could show a decrease in deaths by

>"Congress never ratified the Paris Agreement. In fact, Obama never sent it to Congress for ratification. there is nothing to "withdraw" from...we were never in it."

Don't try to use logic or reason here with any topic in which the word "Trump" is injected. It apparently doesn't work...

Agreed.

But Trump did do exactly what he promised the voters in his election campaign promises.

Disagree. Almost everything he promised on day one hasn't even been done yet - 100+ days out.

Had he not, then the same people would be complaining that he was a liar or didn't do what he said he would do.

If you actually look at the previous link or probably find any other metric, compare by numbers with Hillary or *any* other president (potential or not), you find the difference astounding. The man is, by all unbiased metrics, the biggest liar we've ever seen at this level, by (very) far.

I don't like Trump, nor some of what he does, but the alternative was not any better (just in different ways). I think South Park put it the best- we had a choice between a turd sandwich or a giant douche.

Hillary was attacked by the right for decades, Russia added a ton more propaganda to make the country believe in crazy conspiracy theories. Pizzagate is not a thing. The FBI said her crimes were piddly and would be laughed out of court. You can't compare running her own email server to the possibility of perjury, espionage, and treason that the current Administration is under investigation for. The current topic of Paris agreement is an economic no-brainer. Those are oil & gas companies saying we should go forward with it because there is money to be made in leading the world in technology. If you believe the scientists, this is a huge moral issue with millions of lives at stake. Secretary of Defense James Mattis sees climate change as a national security threat. This choice is a ridonculous one, and you can't compare this Administration to the boringness of what Clinton's would have been.

The following anonymous coward putinbot posts are mine. I don't normally bother signing in to slashdot because it isn't worth the trouble:

WaPo, CIA conflict of interest rag
Guccifer 2.0 is a fraud
TL;DR

I'm a Democrat, not a Republican or a Trump fan or a putin bot. I resist propaganda because propaganda is more dangerous than Trump. I resist propaganda because it is a symptom of a system that is so stacked against ordinary citizens that it may be too late to ever wrest control of our government back from the oligarchs, deep state and military industrial complex.

But since you mention bots, I'll mention paid trolls (not claiming you are one): Correct the Record, ShareBlue. Paid trolls working for Hillary, according to sources I think you'll agree aren't Putin-friendly:

How a super PAC plans to coordinate directly with Hillary Clinton’s campaign
David Brock's Army of "Nerd Virgins" Has Hillary's Back
Clinton SuperPac Admits to Paying Internet Trolls
The making of a Hillary Clinton echo chamber

Neonicotinoids are the problem:
https://actions.sumofus.org/a/...
https://phys.org/news/2016-04-...
http://www.motherjones.com/tom...

the cause is new pesticides from Monsanto/Bayer

http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/...

https://www.motherjones.com/fi...

Brennen Center, Washington Post, Atlantic, Mother Jones, UCSD, UW, Cornell, Cambridge. There is a mix a academic original research and easily accessible, but thoughtful articles in that list.