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The program is a scam and does not pay for recycling of waste, the whole point of it was to setup more government agencies so that state union workers could have more jobs. This is why the money for the program goes the the general fund, to pay state workers. Just one more example of why this state is in the hole thanks to our incompetent legislature. Notice how this program is also considered to be a "high risk" for fraud, I wouldn't expect any less from this state.

http://www.pacificresearch.org/publications/californias-e-waste-waste

"Using data from the last six-years, Dr. Ballon found that under EWRA:

        * Recycling a single electronic item requires 12 distinct transactions across three separate agencies.
        * Expenses have grown nearly three times faster than revenue from 2004-2008.
        * Yearly payments now exceed $150 million.
        * The California Department of Finance has identified the program as a “high risk for fraudulent activities.”

“Under the current system, recycling a piece of electronic waste depends on a complex maze of interactions with little accountability and loads of costs,” Dr. Ballon said. According to the study, EWRA contains no provisions to restrain rising fees and places this burden on consumers and taxpayers."

Here's a huge research paper on how your environmental alarmism is out-of-date.

Air quality and water quality have been improving for decades now. The reason for the improvement is prosperity. People have time to worry about the air quality when they don't have to worry about starving.

I never expected to live in a world where librarians and encyclopedists are the guardians of civil liberties.

I asked when speech hurt someone, and you brought up the President, whose speech fired bullets or something. I asked if your example of hurtful speech was prohibited under Canadian law, thus helping to justify your defense of hate speech laws. Then you accused me of trying to confuse the issues.

I'll repeat my question: Would you rather have ideas and beliefs where a law would prohibit you from speaking those ideas out loud, or hear something digusting and offensive once in a while?

I think it gets right to the heart of the issue, because it's exactly the trade-off that has to be made. In the United States, not a perfect country by any means, I can express any idea that I want to. The price I pay for that is that I have to hear about shitsacks like David Duke and his worthless ilk. In Canada, You rest assured that egregious hate speech will be prosecuted, but expressing ideas that can be construed as inciting hatred toward people from the US can attract the possibility of prosecution by a dispassionate reading of the law, and people who hold these views might be less inclined to express themselves in a public forum.

Taxes are just a part of the way people can have their economic freedoms restricted:

http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2004 /econ_freedom/00_summary.html

They seem to be in the worst 10, so now who'se letting the facts get in the way.

That's a red herring. They charge less in sales because they charge more in other areas. When you rank states by ALL regulations and taxes, Massachusetts ranks in the worst 10 every time.

http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2004 /econ_freedom/freedom.html

http://heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15303

Notice how the liberal states have economic environments that are the most likely to screw poor people out of higer wages and opportunity. So it seems to me the sales tax rankings were selectively chosen to promote an dishonest liberal bias ... well, what else is old?

"....Most comon side effects include stomach ache, vomiting, diareah, abdominal cramps, and loose stool. Doctors advise...." bla bla bla

Also you can read here.

What people don't understand, is that there has to be a double-blind test done on every medicine that will be produced by the medical industry. If it is not the medical industry that's putting it out, then they have to tell you about all of these side effects. Testing in such ways is for the good of the economy, not the humanity.

California's own Silicon Valley state legislators have absolutely horrible anti-technology and anti-business voting records. The Unions and trial lawyers spend far more on them than the technology companies in their own districts, and they vote that way, even worse than the rest of California.

Now they are trying to ban cell phones in cars, starting with children. They have already passed legislation to make your computer more expensive by adding a fee for your monitor or LCD screen. They have banned the use of notebook computers and other technology in the front seat. They are charging and enforcing a huge use tax on all internet purchases. And this is just a start.

Now Figueroa (D-Fremont) and the Senate are targeting Google personally with SB 1822. All of Silicon Valley voted for this bill except for one abstain, Sher (D-Stanford).

Those in Silicon Valley are going to either buy back they Democrats from the Unions (and they have tons of money to fight back) or vote for Republicans.

>Environmental Protection. The phrase "The fox guarding the Henhouse" applies to any private company. And I doubt that people who want less government would want the Sierra Club providing this function.

We'd be better with neither. The EPA lies through it's teeth, despite court orders not to. The Sierra Club does whatever the hell it likes regardless of laws (stupid or not).

I say let the people decide for themselves what level of "environmental protection" is right for them. They could either democratically vote to hire a company to support their views (locally, of course) or, better yet, simply speak with their wallets.

>Fire and Emergency Services. I can see "Sorry, your insurance doesn't cover this type of emergency - what is your credit card number". Yes, I know some ambulances are run by private companies.

And all Doctors take the hippocratic oath. You'll be "saved" despite having no funds. However, if you want quality, speedy healthcare, better than what we (in my province, for example) have now, you _should_ have to pay. It only makes sense, and it gives people just one more reason not to sit on their duffs jobless.

>Tax Collection. Sorry, can't trust non-government entities.

I'd have said the opposite. :) Take the GST, for example. A Canadian tax with collection procedures so complicated, some question wether it actually gathers enough to pay for it's own administration (it does, but it doesn't leave a whole lot left). However, minus the cost to business (passed on to consumers) this tax costs much more than it brings in.

And then there's the dreaded audits... Help!

The fact is that if we were to completely privatize everything reasonbly possible, taxes would be so low I doubt there'd be enough to collect to make it interesting to defraud.

>It's always easier to cut a few corners to do a crappy job.

And, at the same time, you can spend more and get the other half of the customers.

That's why both wal-mart and Saks 5th Avenue sell clothes. They're both the same end product, just one of the companies doesn't cut corners. Both of them operate just fine, and give consumers a choice.

Perhaps I _want_ to cut certain corners? Maybe a gravel road to my house would suit me just fine rather than a paved one? Maybe I live so far away from a city that having the same level of police protection is wasteful? Perhaps I want more telecommunications service than a 14.4 kbps maximum phone line? I wish I could make that decision rather than a government office miles removed.

>And most non-profit organizations aren't any better - would you want the Jehovah's Witnesses in charge of building permits?

Actually, I'd advocate no building permits. If you own land, you should be allowed to do anything you like with it, as long as you don't endanger lives or harm the property of others (and perhaps a handful of other things).

Zoning regulations (and building permits) are horrible, and, in fact, increased the cost of leasing for my company by 60% because the location we wanted was zoned for Convenience stores only (not computer stores) and we had to find accomodation elsewhere, at an inflated price (which we certainly will pass on to customers, I'm not a charity. ;-)

Hey, just my 2 cents!

I must admit that part of what I posted was from something heard on the radio...I apparently didn't get it quite right. :-/ I think what I was referring to is new legislation, which hasn't passed and hopefully won't. The current law does require the employer to pay health insurance for the employee during the time off.

Here's the article that mentions Buck: Summit looks at why firms leaving state

What I didn't touch on in my previous post was the bevy of new taxes that're being proposed right now. Unfortunately, I can't find a good summary article but bills are in process that would additionally tax diapers, bullets, cigarettes, gasoline and a host of other items. Our local sales tax rate is already almost 8%!

This is a slightly older article that talks about taxes in California

As to whether or not Democrats are the "boogiemen", clearly they have had control of this state for many, many years. They are responsible for the current business climate which is definitely grim. Throw some more new taxes into the mix, and it will be ghastly. It won't necessarily take much more to drive significant numbers of businesses out of the state. If that happens, California may find itself in a full-blown recession. In the current fiscal climate, IMO other states will fare much better.

The paper doesn't actually call for a laissez-faire regime. In fact, the opening quote is from Leon Fuerth's speech (he was Al Gore's national security adviser) at the Foresight Institute last year, pointing out that people who wanted a laissez-faire regime for nanotech were living in a fantasy world. The paper actually suggests the experience with recombinant DNA as a model. This would be apparent had the poster spent some time reading the paper. Or even this excerpt.

As for overthrowing the government, well, that's actually the most common view of what the Second Amendment is about among professors of constitutional law who have written on the subject -- including people like Larry Tribe of Harvard, no libertarian. Though I don't really see what that has to do with nanotechnology.

Q. President Bush didn't really do anything until his approval rating in California had fallen to 26 percent. Isn't that true?

A. He appointed Brownell and Pat Wood. They helped save our behinds. He may have taken a while to do it, and I think the world of President Clinton but the Clinton administration didn't give us any help. They were just trying to get us to raise rates 300-400 percent and I wasn't going to do that.

Q. Some experts say you shouldn't have signed those contracts, that you should have known that the prices were coming down.

A. They don't know squat.

This thing was a scam, a total scam to rip off Californians and there has been a massive shift of wealth from San Diego and the rest of this state to Texas and North Carolina.

No question, we passed a law that didn't make sense. We didn't know what we were doing back in 1996. The energy companies were smart, they took advantage of it. They may have acted legally, they may have acted illegally, but by the time I got into it the two giants that are supposed to run this system, Edison and PG&E, were on their knees.

You hired me to get a job done. I got the job done and I'm plenty tired of people sitting on the fence saying 'Oh, we should done this and should have done that.' We got 11 plants online. And they said the energy problem was going to bring me down. Where is Enron today?

My guess is real, but with a hidden agenda. A quick search turns up the Pacific research Institute, a Libertarian think tank. So, they'd be against any form of government 'interference' and very pro-Microsoft in this instance.

Personally, I like Berke Breathed's take on libertarians, "I'd be a libertarian if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging winers."