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Through this program, the U.S. nuclear power industry has roughly $12 billion in liability insurance protection to compensate the public in the event of a nuclear accident.

As a point of reference the Fukushima cleanup is, at the moment, estimated to require nearly $200 billion, and that is NOT counting the economic loss of an entire uninhabitable region for decades or more

Racism, anti-semitism, and anti-immigrant hysteria just aren't getting the job done like they did in 2016.

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not, because here in Florida the don't monkey this up candidate got more votes (and likely will be the winner if they ever finish counting ballots). Of course, I'm sure the line of thinking with most voters was "I don't mind voting for the guy the racists think is racist, so long as it keeps taxes low."

It's also Florida being Florida, as usual.

The whole "rail line" talk is just so he could troll about karupt gubermint.

For one - it won't cost a billion dollars, OP made that shit up. The cost will be $750 million.

For two - there won't be a light rail line.

The Florida Department of Transportation announced a new plan Monday for the Howard Frankland Bridge.
Starting in 2020, the state will build an 8-lane bridge that will include toll lanes and a bike and pedestrian path.
The toll lanes could accomodate buses, driverless vehicles or even a light rail system.

There will be eight lanes, plus a bike lane and a pedestrian lane.
Four of those lanes will be toll lanes - with AN OPTION of later converting two toll lanes to light rail.
On top of it all, original bridge replacement plan was supposed to just replace a 4-lane bridge with a new 4-lane bridge... and then later add ANOTHER bridge.
So instead of two existing bridges, there'd be three bridges, at a combined price of $1.2 billion.

Basically, everything OP said is bullshit.

I'm sure they already know this, but the algorithm isn't designed to trip up GOP politicians. It says a lot more about how they choose to phrase their message and talk about issues, than any agenda seeking to silence them on Twitter.

When what you post is designed to be inflammatory and lower discourse and a system designed to combat that properly flags it, maybe its working as intended and you should look inwards? No matter where you stand, there are good and bad ways to engage in discourse. On all topics, with all points of view.

Facebook blocked the political ads of Florida state representative Matt Caldwell, whose ad depicts Caldwell shooting a shotgun and talking about his support of the Second Amendment.

Everything about this ad was legal, appropriate, and not offensive in a violent, lurid, or sexual way. There was no innuendo or intent to deceive.

It's not "how they choose to phrase their message", it's the content, plain and simple.

Gun ownership has enough support in this nation to be a political issue that can be discussed, debated, and decided by the people.

If you are against gun ownership that's fine, but the political issue is legal and we should be talking about it.

Facebook is undermining the political process, the same way that the Russians did in *your* election.

Why does Facebook have to choose political sides at all?

Why can't their rules for allowed opinion be non political?

It's in one of the articles linked in the original summary, but the summary link said $800M while the actual article says $800M paid from rate payers and an additional $150M they are writing off and didn't collect from rate payers yet.

As for the reactor, apparently Westinghouse _could_ supply a reactor to meet the NRC's standards, because the NRC ended up approving the construction and operating permit in 2016, 7 years after they were ready to build and 3 years after they finally gave up because market conditions had changed. I doubt they made major revisions to the permit application years after they decided to no longer pursue building it.

Here we see the effect of dismantling the Public Utility Companies Holding Act (PUCHA deregulation) in action. This 'New Deal' act to prevent a re-occurrence of the 1929 depression by Utility companies scamming taxpayers.

Duke received subsidies and tax incentives under provisions to build a nuclear reactor (that's the $2.50 per MWh they charged) and will now be able to activate cost recovery under "SEC. 638. STANDBY SUPPORT FOR CERTAIN NUCLEAR PLANT DELAYS" of the 2005 US energy policy act to the tune of half a billion dollars for these two 'proposed' nuclear reactors. Not a bad return on sunk costs of $65 million. Specifically SEC. 638, (d)(2)(A,B).

To those that cite NIMBYs, NIMBYs didn't make Westinghouse Nuclear go bankrupt and Duke is blaming the NRC for delays issuing the Combined License for the construction and operation of Levy, this is SEC. 638, (c)(1)(A). It would be interesting to know what Duke claims those delays were and US tax and ratepayers should be concerned that this isn't actually covered by SEC. 638, (c)(2)(C), i.e a normal business risk because Westinghouse can't build them a pair of AP1000s anymore and even if they could they can't pass the NRC regulations that make them safe in a hurricane.

Of interest is a 2011 Tampa Bay Times article which aired complaints that Duke have been scamming their customers $2.50 per Mwh since they proposed Levy probably under SEC. 638, (d)(4)(B). This clumsy episode shows exactly how the scam works. It's difficult to believe there was an intention to build a nuclear power plant and that the entire nuclear renaissance was a way for oil and coal companies to use the nuclear industry to plunder the taxpayer.

Go ahead, show us how bad it is there.

Seriously? I did a Google search on "Chicago dead voters" and this was the first hit:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/20...

In all, the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.

That's just the ones they found so far.

So far, then, you found next to nothing then. 119 people. 229 times. Some of which are likely not actual problems. Over 10 years. In a county with 5 million people. Go find us a real problem instead.

I went to check more recent news on voter ID laws and perhaps you've been busy like I have the last couple days and were unaware that Trump and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been going back and forth the last few days over voter fraud problems in Chicago. I didn't know this until today but it's apparently been on the news a bit for a week now.

People don't know how bad it is in Chicago because no one has taken the time to take a good look at it.

People have been complaining about Chicago for decades now. Yet they haven't taken a good look? Seems like there's a problem there. Maybe people just want something to complain about, rather than actually find real problems,

We won't know how bad it is until we look either. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel seems pretty adamant on keeping the federal government from looking too. Why would that be?

He knows how incompetent Donald Trump is?

I know that "if you have nothing to hide then we should be free to look" is not how the government should treat people. That is how people should deal with the government though.

Indeed, the government has been at fault.

At least two documented (looking through the the first letters of States) cases where elections were overturned because of fraud.

Not one single case where you have documented any of the fraud was related to your only offered solution, of voter ID, in fact, you have been remarkably imprecise and inexact about the specific details of those elections.

I wonder why you are so evasive.

How many more do we need?

I would start with documenting one, where your only solution, will work.

What is the downside of stronger screening for voting?

The disenfranchisement of citizens through improper screening, whether accidental or intentional, and unfortunately, as you well know, the intentional has been quite well documented.

You know, this, of course, because you've been told it before.

Really, LynnwoodRooster, you don't accomplish anything with your own willful obtuseness. Like your tendency to lie and prevaricate, it harms you by showing a severe lack of credibility.

And why is that different from 2A rights?

I'd start with the basic fact that the state isn't obligated to provide you with a firearm.

Feel free to advocate for that, of course. You won't win a lawsuit, but you can pursue a law requiring the state to provide citizens with firearms.

Anecdotal evidence says you're wrong...
Number of times snow was recorded in Florida during 20th century: 21 times.
Number of times snow was recorded in Florida during the 21st century: 16 times.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The 1980's were especially bad for Florida, with 3 years in a single decade bringing bad freezes: 1983, 1985, and 1989.
And finally, here's a story about the freezing winter of 2015 in Tampa: http://www.tampabay.com/news/w...

my right to accelerate the payments to the bank.

Be very careful with that. You may have the right, but it's an expensive one.

If Apple were to buy Qualcomm's debts, they might be able to do what they want with it.

I read the German public news (Tagesschau), the BBC, Spanish "El Pais", Al-Jazeera

All of these are sponsored by their respective governments and therefor undeniably tainted.

I believe I am qualified to say that CNN has a good quality to their journalism

Only in a sence, a men accustomed to eating excrement of buffaloes, elephants, and tigers, is "qualified" to judges that of cats and bisons.

I have yet to see blatant fake news on CNN.

Oh, please. The even Wikipedia has a list of what it gently calls CNN controversies . And that's just where they got caught... My "favorites" would be:

Various channels of Putin-TV do this to Ukraine all the time nowadays, I wonder, where they got the idea...

These are just the established and verified "errors" of the past. Then there is scandalous coverage of Trayvon Martin's death, when the US media — CNN included — pushed a false narrative, that the killing was racially motivated. They even presented his killer as "White" and implied, he was a "Conservative", even though Mr. Zimmerman was of Hispanic origin and a registered Democrat.

The 2016 presidential campaign has shown all of the US "established" media as biased liars, but it will take years of tedious sorting out. CNN? The supposedly "objective" information source has leaked debate questions to one of the debate-participants ahead of time. Twice — that we know of! They got rid of the Donna Brazile over it, but she, obviously, was not acting alone — the rest remain at CNN. Great journalist organization...

You fell for another MSM-spread lie.

There is intensive voter fraud going on in all the East Coast cities (my experience being exclusively with those), though I am told the Midwest has the same issue going on in the urban areas. The dead vote regularly. It's all there if you want to look for it.

Then go about proving it. It shouldn't be that hard. You're the one who wants it to exist, it should be something for you to show.

Unfortunately, it turns out that these claims of the dead voting often turn on people with the same name, or mistakes about reporting, or even just facetious attempts based on returned mail.

It may well be that 2000 was only close because of this - though the situation was so muddy we'll never know.

What we do know is that Florida unlawfully removed legitimate voters from the rolls.

You know, thanks to proof.

Pretending it doesn't exist means you aren't being honest or serious.

Claiming it does exist, without making the effort to provide substantive proof, while willfully misrepresenting the facts and distorting the truth, means you are not honest nor are you serious.

Seriously, don't bother linking that Veritas video either, they've already shown they can't be trusted, and while you will never admit it, the video shows nothing in the way of actual fraud.

Anybody can say anything on video. Doesn't mean it's really what happened, or even, with Veritas, what they said.

Here's a case of 15-yo "boy" / 20-yo "woman" and several years later he is forced to pay child support ("USA Today", sigh):

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Did you think that was isolated?:
"The 15-year-old in California who was seduced by the 34-year-old mom next door. The 13-year-old boy in Kansas who had sex with his 17-year-old babyÂsitter. The 15-year-old boy in Florida who impregnated a 20-year-old."
http://www.tampabay.com/news/c...

Another source - not this rag again! - disregard and go on with your life:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

The fact is, hundreds of thousands of people are navigating one way streets correctly every day.

So? That's not the only relevant statistic. There are several. We want to know how many times people turn the wrong way down a one-way street, and we want to know how many times there is a collision, and how many of those collisions are fatal. We need to know at least these three things to make a sensible evaluation of the vehicle's relative performance.

On average, about 360 lives are lost each year in about 260 fatal wrong-way collisions. The number of fatal wrong-way collisions has been essentially unchanged for the 6 years of data analyzed. [2004-2009]

So you see, human drivers actually do get this wrong, and with fatal consequences. So we really do need to know a bit more than that this vehicle made a wrong turn, assuming that this was indeed a self-driving vehicle in a self-driving mode. Most fatal wrong-way accidents are caused by alcohol. That's not going to be a problem for a self-driving car. If it sees an oncoming vehicle, it's going to stop.

I realize that it is of course tempting to say "but that's highway incidents!" but oh no, that's just where the fatalities are. For example, in Tampa 700 wrong-way incidents ... occurred on local streets in 2014 alone. And keep in mind, this is only incidents which required police involvement. It's probably safe to assume that even more people than that actually turned the wrong way down one-way streets, since studies ... show the vast majority of wrong-way drivers correct their mistakes before causing a crash by simply turning around and heading in the right direction.

TL;DR: Calm down there, me laddo. It's way too soon to call this one.

I can get a US drivers license in 40 minutes from the DMV in Florida no less. I should know, a few years ago I had my wallet stolen and all my ID. The only things I had were a Florida bill for my phone and a bill from Ontario(not with my current address)--NO picture ID, I walked in and had the entire thing done the same day, temporary full permit done and got a full FL permit in a week.

That was actually faster then getting my ID replaced in Ontario, including the affirmation under oath I needed at the police service for various replacement ID. The 3 week wait and dickering to get my OHIP card replaced, the 2mo wait for replacement credit cards.

A few years ago? Not today? Oh my. A lot can change in a year. And you hadan existing ID somewhere (perhaps Florida itself?), which meant you were in the database, rather than having to start from nothing. Your experiences may have been all fine and dandy, doesn't mean everybody else gets along with it. Some have real problems.

Here is a review of the problems others have had

Look, here's the question you have to answer: Is it a bad thing if someone cannot vote due to the burden placed on them due to the government?

Think and consider what it means.

Then ask yourself why the GOP would do what they've done, and whether you'd allow it. Be honest. Do you think it's a good thing that they're allowed to use the strictures of government to shape the electorate? Or should that be avoided?

But ok, let's say you have an honest interest in Voter ID. You genuinely believe in it. Then what you have to do is commit to one thing. The obligation has to be the state's. It has to provide ID. If nothing else, make them put a camera with a printer at the ballot box.

No one who obsesses about Benghazi seems aware that during the George W Bush administration, there were 39 attempted attacks on U.S. embassies, 20 of which resulted in fatalities. The total death toll in those attacks was 87, including three confirmed to be U.S. civilians, and another 21 who worked at U.S. embassies or consulates and were either of American or foreign nationality.

The reason you might not have heard of those tragedies is that unlike Benghazi, no one exploited them for politics.

I don't recall any of those attacks being blamed on a youtube video by a Secretary of State and a President, let alone going after and investigating someone who made said video and using them as a scapegoat. Nor do I recall a Secretary of State lying to the families of those victims while telling people in private emails that it had nothing to do with a video.

Perhaps you could enlighten me?

The blaming a Youtube video part happened pretty fucking definitely.

This is from a New York Times article in 2014:

On the day of the attack, Islamists in Cairo had staged a demonstration outside the United States Embassy there to protest an American-made online video mocking Islam, and the protest culminated in a breach of the embassy's walls- images that flashed through news coverage around the Arab world.

As the attack in Benghazi was unfolding a few hours later, Mr. Abu Khattala told fellow Islamist fighters and others that the assault was retaliation for the same insulting video, according to people who heard him.

In an interview a few days later, he pointedly declined to say whether an offensive online video might indeed warrant the destruction of the diplomatic mission or the killing of the ambassador. "From a religious point of view, it is hard to say whether it is good or bad," he said.

No one who obsesses about Benghazi seems aware that during the George W Bush administration, there were 39 attempted attacks on U.S. embassies, 20 of which resulted in fatalities. The total death toll in those attacks was 87, including three confirmed to be U.S. civilians, and another 21 who worked at U.S. embassies or consulates and were either of American or foreign nationality.

The reason you might not have heard of those tragedies is that unlike Benghazi, no one exploited them for politics.

...or be driving with a bad tail light.

Yep, you just keep on excusing the jackbooted thugs who commit cold blooded murder under color of law, you racist fuck

When you make an allegation of corruption you need to back it up. Link to some source.

I'm not the OP (an AC), but for starters:
The Tampa Bay Times.
Forbes.

For those just tuning in, Rick Scott, Governor of the State of Florida, was previously the CEO of Columbia/HCA when it was found to have committed the largest Medicare fraud ever, up to that time ($1.7 Billion in 1997), leading to his resignation.

The guy was a long-time steroid user.
I'm sure that did not help him to remain chill.

Reality is the precise opposite.

Doubt that. Walmart is a bad corporate citizen. Taxpayers have been subsidizing Walmart's profits for years.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/#3301bbfa7cd8

Taxpayers are also subsidizing security for Walmart with police calls.

http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/public-safety/walmart-police/

Most reasonable people agree that some adult authority figures made serious mistakes. These mistakes suggest a combination of islamophobia, teenagemalephobia, plain old racism and technophobia. For Ahmed, our binary political rhetoric collapsed into two states and since Ahmed's accusers were wrong, then Ahmed must be right.

I can't think of any of my science or engineering friends who would have made it through school in the 70s and 80s under such a zero tolerance system. But I do have a number of questions: Does Ahmed deserve the praise he is getting or is he merely being used as a political campaign? Put another way, if you had done something like this and Obama stood up and declared you brilliant and innocent, would you feel worthy or would you feel a tiny bit of guilt over the fact that you lie somewhere on the spectrum between guilty and genius?

With all that has been written on Ahmed and his clock, I have a number of unanswered technical questoins:

• What noise did it make? Was a ticking sound also part of its functionality?
• Was the 110V cord plugged in during English class? Why?
• Why was the briefcase/suitcase described as a pencil case? Every pencil case I've seen is large enough to hold no more than a few dozen pencils. Ahmed's seems like it could hold 1000.
• When was the pencil case purchased? Was it a reuse of an old case or was it purchased purposely for the clock? If it was purchased for the clock, why not use a case which would allow the clock's display to be seen from the outside.
• Cool clock? Seriously? Is assembling this really exceptional for an American kids of his age? I work with younger kids at a coderdojo, I've met kids at makeshops and science fairs. Most are capable of far more complex, interesting and scary inventions. A volcano or potato clock might even be more interesting.
• Taking apart, reusing and "hacking" existing devices would have been far more impressive, though potentially much more illegal under DMCA and other draconian federal laws.
• Where was Obama, the tech industry and the press when 14-year old Domanik Green's faced felony cybercrime charges instead of internships and invitations to the Whitehouse?

No, they arrested an idiot who is supposed to have a pilot license who does not understand the concept of a 'no-fly-zone'.

You might be the idiot. He fully understood all of the implications of what he was doing, and worked out several scenarios. His expected scenario was that a Blackhawk would be scrambled from Quantico, but would overfly him as he was flying so low and slow, and he hoped that by the time the Blackhawk caught up to him that they would have orders to not shoot him down. His biggest worries were that he would be shot down or that he wouldn't have the nerve to do it in the first place. I can't imagine the adrenaline going through him as he was flying across the national mall in sight of the Capitol without a single LEO or military aircraft in sight.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/p...

He's right, too. Campaign finance laws and all of the corruption that goes with them is the single largest problem with the current government, and apathy from people like you helps to ensure that it doesn't get fixed. Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice. Whichever R or D you want to pick will be just fine.

Before he took off he also called his friend back home to tell him the plan. His friend had the business card of a Secret Service agent who had previously visited and interviewed them after hearing about his plan for a "big thing" to call attention to campaign finance reform. His friend called the Secret Service agent, got no answer, but left a message informing him of the impending flight. He never got a call back, and the authorities claimed they were not aware of the flight. So, yeah, bit of an intelligence failure there.

Here's a much better article that includes a video at the bottom of him actually landing on the lawn, as well as the text of the letters he was trying to deliver. Note the complete lack of any resistance to him landing, the Capitol Police weren't out there and it took a little while to hear the first sirens.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/p...

It shouldn't even be a criminal charge. It may be a crime by the letter of the law, but c'mon, this couldn't be handled in-house?!

Green had previously received a three-day suspension for accessing the system inappropriately.

Green was released on Wednesday from Land O'Lakes Detention Center into the custody of his mother. He'll likely be granted pretrial intervention by a judge, sheriff's detective Anthony Bossone said.

Green also received a 10-day school suspension. It's unclear if he'll return to Paul R. Smith to complete the school year after the suspension.

Middle school student charged with cybercrime in Holiday

Individuals who successfully complete a Pretrial Intervention Program will have their criminal charges dismissed.

Pretrial Intervention is for first offenders charged with third degree misdemeanors or felonies. Violate your PTI and you will be looking at a very pissed off judge and prosecutor.

Understanding Florida's Pre-Trial Intervention Program

Especially because he put GAY GUYS on the computer, the horrors. If he had changed the wallpaper to a cat picture this would not have happened I guarantee it.

Don't be an idiot.

Green said that on the morning in question, he accessed the computer that stored the FCAT files and, realizing that computer didn't have a camera, found another.

''So I logged out of that computer and logged into a different one and I logged into a teacher's computer who I didn't like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him,'' Green said.

The teacher he was targeting was out that day. Instead, the substitute teacher saw the picture and reported it to the school's administration.

Middle school student charged with cybercrime in Holiday

The sad part is that states like Florida are making it harder to install solar. On top of that, Florida is fighting energy efficiency. Other states are adding fees to solar users at the behest of the utility companies.

I live in California and am getting solar installed later this week though not nearly as big of a system as I'd like due to limitations of my roof. PG&E has some of the most expensive electricity in the country because of our state's corrupt public utilities commission. Average rates are around $0.194/kwh (compared to Santa Clara $0.113/kwh). PG&E has been quietly lowering the thresholds to push people into higher tiers of power as they make their homes more energy efficient. On average I'm paying well over $0.19/kwh so solar makes perfect sense.

Possibly linked to the utilities opposition to solar in Florida seeing how the fossil industry seems to be linked very closely to the politicians- here's a comment from them "The utilities have said that solar is not as effective in Florida because the state’s cloud cover makes solar panels inefficient." http://www.tampabay.com/news/b...

I've seen the flag-on-the-truck thing many times - never seen a confederate flag.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/sta...
http://www.tampabay.com/multim...
http://onlyoneheaven.files.wor...
http://media.cmgdigital.com/sh...
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0cuK...
https://historicstruggle.files...
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic...

I rest my case.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/c...

Reality proves you wrong. If obscene speech was NOT illegal, then Paul Little wouldn't have been convicted of obscenity.

OR are you arguing that reality is wrong because it contradicts your opinion?

People have the right to decide for themselves what to buy and consume. USA cannot even have sunscreen that wasn't designed before 1998, and while the rest of the world is enjoying uva and uvb protection that lasts the entire day, Americans have skin cancer epidemic all while FDA is expecting sun screen manufacturers "to prove efficacy". Talk about crazy idiots and their online sympathisers.

I understand the long-running and much-honored Slashdot tradition of not reading TFA, but couldn't you at least have read The Fucking Summary?

When his debit card was inevitably declined by the Apple Store, he would protest and offer to call his bank — except, he wasn't really calling his bank. So he would allegedly offer the Apple Store employees a fake authorization code with a certain number of digits....

There was ample dumbshittery (and liability) to assign here, but it's all on the Apple Store drones. No bank involved.

Nope, its all on a system that accepts random numbers of a certain length with the only safety "feature" being that the store clerk is supposed to call the bank himself so they can tell him a code that he can make up on his own. IOW that override is seriously broken. And has been used to defraud for ages, because the criminals know how it works.

The only reason this is "news" is because one guy hit one chain of stores. No, wait, it's because that chain is Apple.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/c...

"It does not actually matter what code the merchant types into the terminal," the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey stated publicly in February after a similar case there. "Any combination of digits will override the denial." (The Tampa Bay Times is withholding the number of digits so as not to inspire anyone.)

"So there is, as far as I can tell, no constitutional protection against requiring drug screening for welfare eligibility."

Consider this regarding the protection against unreasonable searches.

That article tells me two things:

• Blanket drug screening may be considered unconstitutional (it has not reached the US Supreme Court)
• It's not cost effective in saving money, or reducing the purchase of illegal drugs.

I still think the best solution is to just legalize the drugs in the first place. Then I don't care if they use welfare money to buy them, just like they might with cigarettes or alcohol. Then we don't have to worry about passing these laws to begin with.

"If it were up to me, welfare recipients would be required to do X hours of community service per week..."

Punishing welfare recipients with community services in addition to their workday (some hold two or more jobs), before showing probable cause is in violation of the Constitution, as well, and costs more than the return.

If someone reports an income to the IRS and is on welfare, then I would say they should not be doing community service. If they are on long term or short term disability, they should not be required to do anything either. If they are physically capable of working, and are just hanging out collecting a welfare check then they might as well make their neighborhood look nicer. Instead of welfare we can just call it a JOB. If they have kids to take care of, we can hire some licensed child care providers to help them with the kids while they do their work. In this case it has nothing to do with saving money, but in building peoples self respect and appreciation for their community. I would rather spend extra money and have these people do something with their lives, even if its pick up trash on the side of the road, than to sit at home playing WoW all day. And yes, I knew a family on welfare that had two parents capable of working that just played WoW all day. I'm not saying that they are the typical welfare recipient, but I do know that these people did not respect themselves.

"So there is, as far as I can tell, no constitutional protection against requiring drug screening for welfare eligibility."

Consider this regarding the protection against unreasonable searches.

"If it were up to me, welfare recipients would be required to do X hours of community service per week..."

Punishing welfare recipients with community services in addition to their workday (some hold two or more jobs), before showing probable cause is in violation of the Constitution, as well, and costs more than the return.

The plants are breaking down. They are used. Decommissioning Maine Yankee (900 MWe) took eight years and cost $500 million. It ran for 25 years. For Humboldt Bay(63 MWe) it is $982.3 million http://www.dra.ca.gov/general.... it ran for 13 years. Vermont Yankee (620 MWe) is expected to cost $1 billion to decommission http://cleantechnica.com/2014/... after a run of 42 years. This estimate will likely balloon. There is severe ground contamination at the plant site and perhaps beyond its perimeter as well. Crystal River (860 MWe) ran for 32 years and is estimated to cost $1.18. billion http://www.tampabay.com/news/b... This is low ball because sea level rise will make the site vulnerable to storm surge and letting it sit for 60 years will not be an option. The more contamination, the greater the decommissioning cost. Extending licenses for power plants may double or triple the decommissioning cost owing to larger contamination and for sea level plants, a rush to decommission as the storm surge risk becomes higher.

How about phishing victims?

Let's look at the original site in the screenshot because they have changed it since this story broke.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/...

1) It uses the exact same color scheme as the real site
2) There is really just one word that reveals the true intention: "defeat" in large type that is under the main headline. Skim-reading could easily miss this word.
3) If you miss that word, most all the other text on the site is written to be confusing and ambiguous. It doesn't say "Stop Alex Sink" it says "Alex Sink, Congress". Why do you think they did that?
4)TFS is wrong, that word "defeat" is in a subtitle below the header and off to the right, nowhere near any button.

Sure this guy was dumb, or maybe going to fast and not paying attention to who he was donating to. But the NRCC clearly intended it to be confused with the real site. This is no different than posting an Ebay phishing site. Dont be quick to judge when your mom or grandpa or some other person could have made the same mistake.

Was this guy an idiot? Yes.
Is the NRCC committing fraud? Yes.

"Make a contribution then ask for it back. When they refuse, make a credit card chargeback. Will cost the NRCC $30 for each chargeback, and if they get too many, they get bumped up to a worse level merchant account."

What I think is funny is that a headline at the top of the page which says in bold letters Make a Contribution Today to Help Defeat Alex Sink and Candidates Like Her is somehow "misleading".

The screenshot that I saw with TFA that I read wasn't the Alex Sink site, for whatever that particular site was worth.

The screenshot held up for example was such that when reduced to article size gave no indication at all that it was anything other than a legitimate pro-candidate site where your contribution would go towards the candidate named. And TFA itself said that the domain name it was retrieved from was one that would be legitimate for the candidate if the GOP anti-candidate people hadn't scarfed it up instead.

It wasn't even a tiny bit confusing. It was blatant in-your-face FRAUD.

Caling that "small print at the bottom of the screen" as Forbes did is just plain bullshit. It's big, bold, in your face print, right there at the top.

"Make a contribution then ask for it back. When they refuse, make a credit card chargeback. Will cost the NRCC $30 for each chargeback, and if they get too many, they get bumped up to a worse level merchant account."

What I think is funny is that a headline at the top of the page which says in bold letters Make a Contribution Today to Help Defeat Alex Sink and Candidates Like Her is somehow "misleading".

Caling that "small print at the bottom of the screen" as Forbes did is just plain bullshit. It's big, bold, in your face print, right there at the top.

I hate to reply to an AC, but I hate wrong information more.

Multiple stories corroborate that the actual number potentially losing healthcare is one million, not the five million the AC suggested. These are policies that don't meet the ACA's minimum coverage levels, and thus are no longer allowed to be offered.

This has been a point pounded hard by those on the right ("If you like your plan you can keep it" was a lie!), wanting to point to people losing insurance. The left's typical response is that the plans are junk plans, and folks are better off being forced to get a real plan. Since those arguments are all over the web, I'm going to skip past them. Visit Google News to find them if you have missed out.

As is often the case, reality isn't simple enough to be captured in a sound byte. The law had a provision to grandfather old plans:

So what happens to the plans that don't meet the new minimum standards? They will likely disappear. A handful of existing plans will be grandfathered in, but the qualifying criteria for that is hard to meet: Members have to have been enrolled in the plan before the ACA passed in 2010, and the plan has to have maintained fairly steady co-pay, deductible and coverage rates until now.

What insurers have done is made sure no pre-2010 plan stayed in effect (yes, they cancel millions of plans every year), and for the few that have they have made sure the co-pays, deductibles, and coverage have changed significantly. Why would they do that? Well there are a about 4 million people on junk plans. How bad are these plans?

One example: the "Go Blue Health Services Card'' for which cancer survivor Donnamarie Palin of New Port Richey has paid $79 a month. For that, she gets $50 toward each primary care doctor visit, $15 toward each drug — but zero coverage for big-ticket items like hospital stays.

Get in a car wreck, no coverage. Get cancer, no coverage. Need a wart removed, no coverage. Break your arm, no coverage. Yeah. That bad. But they have one thing going for them, they are cheap. $79/month if you don't understand what you're (not) getting seems pretty cheap compared to hundreds of dollars for real insurance. In plain, simple terms these people were going to get a price hike. Now, you're an executive at a health insurance provider faced with the prospect that 4 million people are going to get letters saying "Your $79/month policy is going away, we'd like to offer you a $450/month policy, but it covers a lot more!" Yeah, that's going to lead to lots of bad press on the evening news.

But the way ACA was written had a convenient out. Make sure the law forced the cancellation of the plans, and then flip the narrative to say the government is canceling your plan. It should be no surprise that it took insurance executives about a nanosecond to figure this out and set the wheels in motion. Just make sure no plan qualified or could be grandfathered in.

Now that the Scooby Doo "how did they do it" moment is over, there is one bit left to tidy up. The savvy reader will notice 1 million Californians had their policy cancelled, but o

You might be thinking of an opinion piece last month about terrorists laundering money through Online Gambling. It was a Schneier Movie-Plot Threat article.

Here's an article that seems to say that people with low incomes can get subsidies to apply to commercial insurance, but it doesn't quite come out and say that.

I do agree with everyone who says that the ACA is needlessly complicated and that it's hard to get authoritative information on it. They seem to have said, "Yes, it is complicated, but we'll have a web site where people can figure it out." I don't defend Obama.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/some-canceled-insurance-policies-were-junk-insurance-targeted-by-law/2151587
Some canceled insurance policies were 'junk' targeted by law
Jodie Tillman, Times Staff Writer
Friday, November 8, 2013 6:03pm

Recent days have made it clear that millions of Americans who bought health insurance on the individual market can't do what President Barack Obama said they could: keep their current health plan if they like it.

But some of those now-lamented plans weren't even what most people would consider insurance.

Known as "mini-meds'' or "junk insurance,'' these products often are little more than discount cards that can leave unknowing consumers with huge medical debt. Even a policy expert from the conservative Heritage Foundation, no fan of the Affordable Care Act, says they aren't worth keeping....

Indeed, Michael didn't know they qualify for a tax credit until a Times reporter entered his information into an online subsidy calculator on ehealth, a Web-based broker licensed to sell products through the federal marketplace. It estimated their credit at nearly $10,000 a year — enough to buy affordable insurance for both Palins.

"That'd be great," said Michael Palin.

Said McDonough, the Harvard professor: "Many of these people who think they are losers turn out to be winners."

Back in January, the ENTIRE state of Florida was awaken by an emergency Amber alert sent to their phones:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/early-morning-amber-alert-catches-florida-residents-by-surprise/1270496

Bullshit: charities are an example of failure in action all too often. They enrich others while only claiming to help.

You are presuming (a) that there will always be enough charitable giving to go around (not the case, (b) that it will be directed efficiently and not embezzled (yet it is, (c) that there will not be a significant free-rider problem with those capable of contributing not doing so (and yet there always is).

"The gun of government tyranny", you rail about. I wonder what happens when you lose your job and need help. I for one do not trust the bible-fuckers of the christian charities to treat me fairly.

Yes, rely on those private charities!

You clearly have no idea what "the full force of government to stifle opposition" actually looks like, and for all our sakes, I sincerely hope you never find out.

I think you could say the "consommé" version of that sort of "feast" enjoyed in truly oppressive regimes, such as under Stalin, is being served now to conservatives of various flavours in the United States. That is still not acceptable. The IRS has admitted it was out of line, but they may not be the only ones involved.

What's going on between the IRS and True the Vote?

But Engelbrecht's attorney, Cleta Mitchell, says it's not just the Democratic Party that went after the conservative causes, but also the federal government. Within months of the groups filing for tax-exempt status, Engelbrecht claims she started getting hit by an onslaught of harassment: six FBI domestic terrorism inquiries, an IRS visit, two IRS business audits, two IRS personal audits, and inspections of her equipment manufacturing company by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Texas environmental quality officials.

Taken alone, any of the visits and actions might seem perfectly reasonable. But Engelbrecht and her lawyer says it's the pattern and the timing of the attention paid to Engelbrecht's interests that led them to conclude something was amiss...

The IRS’s Tea-Party Targeting

IRS may have looked beyond 'tea party' and 'patriots'

So far it looks like it may have been as many as 500-600 conservative groups. This is not good, at all. Some of what has been going on is way beyond acceptable for government behavior in the United States, or the West in general today.

We don't have to get to Stalin / Mao / Pol Pot bad to say things have gone too far. Even the totalitarian regimes they headed didn't want to repeat the experience again.

.

The blunder shows that a highly experienced nuclear operator with a sterling reputation in the industry is not immune from unforeseen miscues that raise questions about judgment and competence.

The sequence of mistakes has put Progress in a state of crisis management for more than two years. Company officials are dealing with persistent questions from Wall Street analysts while they negotiate data requests from the insurer, Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited, known as NEIL.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/crystal-river-nuclear-plant-had-flaw-in-its-safety-procedures-for-more/1276841 also shows that Crystal River had other serious problems, just like so many other plants that consistently skirt safety regulations and prescribed critical safety procedures:

and those are just from a quick cursory review from a web search engine. People who look harder can find more. The common link in all of these are shortcuts taken to save money and to bypass conventional procedures which are required to be followed by the NRC.

Wearing masks in public illegal in at least 18 states, mostly in the south-east, due to the prevalence of the KKK wearing masks and hoods while terrorizing, burning, lynching, and killing blacks and others:

Good points on priorities. See also on privacy: http://fyngyrz.com/?p=25

I saw that link on slashdot recently in someone's comment, and it is an insightful essay on privacy. There is a sense that a certain degree of privacy is both a human right and a human requirement in our society, and government should have a duty to protect it (even for reasons beyond ensuring the government remains accountable to the people policitcally).

But failing that, we should at least have David Brin's "Transparent Society" where everyone can watch the watchers:
http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html

See also my suggestion:
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319

There are also chilling effects. My house has electric heat, so if I grew hydroponic vegetables instead of running the heaters in winter, I would still get the heat via the lights (thermodynamics) and I'd also get fresh veggies all winter. But I know if I buy a lot of hydroponic equipment, I'll most-likely end up on some government list somewhere to have my door kicked in (see another comment here by someone else about an example of that and our misguided drug laws). Or see:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/pinellas-hydroponic-garden-shop-has-attention-of-deputies-searching-for/1204506

So, buy hydropoincs and have your dogs shot as a result of data mining?
"Why do SWAT teams kill all dogs when serving a warrant at a household?"
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110721154445AAWtx8u

Or, see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse

Although another reasons I don't do it is concerns about humidity and mold, and also finding the space, so that is not the only concern, beyond the cost of the equipment.

Thankfully, in the USA we are nowhere near the total squashing of dissent like was accomplished using the 1930s German gestapo secret police, although they apparently mostly used neighbors turning in neighbors since it was before the internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo
"According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo wasâ"for the most partâ"made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information.[36] Gellately argued that it was because of the widespread willingness of Germans to inform on each other to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a prime example of panopticism.[37] Indeed, the Gestapo -- at times -- was overwhelmed with denunciations and most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations.[38] Many of the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations.[39] Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive organization" "...which was constructed within German society and whose functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of German citizens".[40]
After 1939, when many Gestapo personnel were called up for war-related work such as service with the Einsatzgruppen, the level of overwork and understaffing at the local offices increased.[39] For information about what was happening in German society, the Gestapo continued to be mostly dependent upon denunciations.[41] 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information prov

Landing at the wrong airport isn't good, but it's not that unusual. Our own boys in clue did it less then a year ago:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/macdill/c-17s-landing-at-wrong-airport-elicits-theories-but-few-facts/1241869
The landing was actually quite impressive in a way. The landing strip the ended up using is not supposed to be long enough to land a C-17. but somehow a) they did not notice this fact until it was too late, and b) they managed to land safely.