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The new administration's energy plan excludes renewable energy and emphasizes oil and gas.

"The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/ame...

Use Linux

No can do. Didn't you get the memo? We're only using American-made products from now on.

#AmericaFirst

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

https://www.whitehouse.gov/ame...

No, the city only provides the pipe, an ISP provides the actual internet service.

The city IS the ISP. Lmgtfy: here: "SandyNet is the Internet Service Provider owned by the people of Sandy and operated as a public service by the City of Sandy." Now tell me again how the city only owns the pipes. Tell my how ANY municipal ISP service "only provides the pipes". If they only provide the pipes, they aren't an ISP -- BY DEFINITION.

I wasn't talking about Sandy, OR, I was talking about my local municipal fiber network, Utopia, that link is a list of the 9 different ISPs that provide service on the network. Comcast and Century Link have also been invited to provide ISP service on the network, but they prefer to lobby the state government to shut down Utopia, just like in Virginia. As the article notes, this isn't the people telling their government to ban municipal networks, this is the Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association, a cable industry group, pushing the legislation.

An open municipal network provides way more competition that currently exists because it lowers the barriers to entry for ISPs,

You have got to be joking. It increases the barriers to entry. If you know that you're going to have to charge a price for services that competes with a non-profit taxpayer backed service that can operate at a loss, you're not going to try. Your barrier is now the fight you'll have to make to get any subscribers, and a need to make a profit.

I am talking about ISPs that run over the municipal network. Any company that meets the basic requirements are free to offer internet, phone or video services on the network. The barriers of entry are much lower than a service provider that has to string cable across the city (if they are even allowed to).

If you are in favor of healthy competition you should be in favor of municipal networks.

The world of 1984 and Ministry of Truth has arrived.

No, ignorance is not truth and freedom is not slavery. This isn't 1984, and my city government is not Big Brother. How many ISPs can you get gigabit internet from? I have at least 10 that I know of, if that's not competition then what is?

At its core, government is the people banding together to provide those same people with services. It's no different than a farm co-op. Yes, government (particularly at the national level) is growing much larger than I would like to see it but at the local level there is still a great deal of control by the people and a method for firing elected officials that don't use the people's money wisely. You are just so convinced that government == bad (and probably taxation == theft) that you just can't even conceive the notion of the government providing a useful service for the people. Society doesn't exist for businesses to make a profit, it exists to better the lives of the people in the society. I think that basic services that everyone or most everyone in the city use should be provided by the government to keep costs down - because the people banding together to provide the service is more efficient (read: cheaper) than having a company do it with the associated profit margin. These services include roads, police, firefighters, water, sewer, power, and in my view, communications. If it's something that everyone needs to use then why should the people pay a middleman (a for profit company) to build such services when they can provide it themselves, via government.

Incidentally, here is a White House report on how municipal networks spur competition, but I'm sure you'll immediately discount it because Obama is the debbil.

I can see yo

I take this as a sign that you are frustrated by your general lack of success in persuading people who are suspicious about "social justice".

Once again you have created an entire backstory to rant against that is unsupportable. That comment would make more sense if it wasn't my first post for this story. I will admit though, it is the second time this week that I have had to reply to some opinionated posters who obviously hadn't read even the first couple of paragraphs of the article about which they ranted.

Do you want to know why I felt qualified to make such a diagnose for someone that I hadn't even met? I recognise the symptoms because I am exactly the same. I too saw that they only asked women and wondered why. In my teenage years, I would have ranted and raged about it too. I would have used my own insecurities to project motives on people. But as I get older, I now know I should actually follow the links to find out the full story before I jump to conclusions. It's the only way that you can have an informed opinion.

In this case, I found out that they did this for Computer Science Education Week. I found out that in OECD countries less than 1 in 5 computer science graduates are girls. Do either of those things sound implausible to you?

Why would Microsoft care about this? Apart from the public naming and shaming of companies that have wide gender imbalances (which I'm sure you don't care about), TFA had this reason (among others):

By 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there will be 1.4 million computing jobs but just 400,000 computer science students with the skills to apply for those jobs.

So aside from any pure motives of wanting gender equality, this problem will actually affect their ability to employ staff in the future. Hence, they want to encourage girls to take up STEM careers. You could also say that they want to offset the discouragement some girls receive because they are told that this entire field is just a boys club. Does any of that sound implausible?

So why is it so implausible that they would want to do something to encourage girls and that they decided to survey "17 women within Microsoft's global research organization" about what is going to happen in the year '17?

Anyway the given reason is not plausible. It implies that the question was only brought up as an excuse to ask women something. If we want this question answered because it is important, then we should focus on having it answered and not performing some gender equality stunt.

I see. Your problem is that we are actually taking their answers seriously. You seem to think that because they are women they are not qualified to talk about their fields. If you think that this question is important enough that we should focus on having it answered, why didn't you follow the link to the blog post to find out what the answers were? Why wasn't your argument that they seemed like low quality answers? I think that it's because you just can't get past the fact that they are women.

I'm afraid you have no point and little awareness of the broader picture.

Perhaps if you bothered to look at the specifics of this case rather than worrying about the broader picture then you would actually be able to make an accurate assessment. But if you can't be bothered looking at the facts of the case, how can we deem your idea of the broader picture to be valid? If you are so set in your opinions that even having the article quoted to you to show where you are wrong just gets ignored, then I feel my diagnosis of you having a coloured view of the world stands. You shou

State's servers were also unsecured and unencrypted, plus they were continually hacked.

Excuse #23,563:

1) Can you name a time the email server for an Original Classification Authority has been hacked? SoS is right up there with the director of the CIA and the director of the FBI in terms of security and classified information.

2) It's a joke after all the whining that Russia is behind the hacks of the DNC and Podesta's emails. The FSK managed to hack both within a matter of weeks, yet they left Hillary's unsecured server alone, for years, because her server was secure, because reasons.

Once Republicans found out about her private email they would have turned that into a scandal regardless.

Back to square one - why hand them a scandal. And why hand them a scandal they could legitimately send you to prison for. Why do yourself what you lambasted Bush for doing, just two years previously...unless you're a trainwreck of political incompetence and corruption.

• "Our Constitution is being shredded. We know about the secret wiretaps, the secret military tribunals, the secret White House email accounts,â Clinton said. "It's a stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok. It is everything our founders were afraid of, everything our Constitution was designed to prevent."

A brazen fool.

That's not how the federal government sees it.

Tell that to the sailor who recently reported to prison, for taking pics on his unsecured, unauthorized cell phone. Hillary didn't get off because she didn't do anything wrong, she got off because she is Hillary Clinton.

and some phone call talking points which were temporarily classified, but were not well marked.

Bogus excuse #30,895. And in this case, the sophistry behind the falsehood is much worse than the lie that she didn't send anything that was marked classified. Because this information was born classified. Think about it for two seconds: if the U.S. ambassador to India sends an email to the SoS about India's nuclear weapons program and the state of hostilities with Pakistan, is that information not classified until it is so marked? Of course not, because it's inherently classified, as Hillary knew full as one of the top security officials in the government, who had special training on how to handle this information. Exposing it on an unsecured server was not part of said training.

There's no evidence of any intentional wrongdoing, or substantive breech.

More sophistry. Intent is irrelevant. An actual breech is irrelevant. What matters is mishandling classified information, which Hillary indisputably did with her unauthorized, unsecured email server. Why anyone bothers to claim otherwise at this point is beyond me, after Mr. Saucier has served his first month in prison. When the very same DOJ that said Hillary 'did nothing wrong' gave him hard time, for far less exposure of classified evidence, where the same DOJ admits he had no intent to distribute.

different kinds of courage and service to the nation, both similarly valuable.

Ellen absolutely deserves what she got, coming out publicly at a time when even TV and "liberal Hollywood" still played LGBT folks for laughs and mockery (and still do at time), risking her career in the process. But her doing so is a big factor in the swift public acceptance of LGBT folks over the past 2 decades, one of the fastest changes in cultural norms we've ever seen, as both she was seen as imminently likable by folks (instead of as "the other"), and for the inspiration she gave many other individuals who maybe wouldn't have had the courage to do so in their own lives, which also helped show people that this wasn't some phantom group of people that "regular folks" didn't know, but that in fact LGBT folks were themselves "regular folks", that most of us know one or two, and indeed there were already part of families and lives.

So yes, Ellen absolutely deserves it.

the full citation:

Ellen DeGeneres is an award-winning comedian who has hosted her popular daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003 with her trademarked humor, humility, and optimism. In 2003 Ellen lent her voice to a forgetful but unforgettable little fish named Dory in Finding Nemo. She reprised her role again in 2016 with the hugely successful Finding Dory. Ellen also hosted the Academy Awards twice, in 2007 and 2014. In 1997, after coming out herself, DeGeneres made TV history when her character on Ellen revealed she was a lesbian. In her work and in her life, she has been a passionate advocate for equality and fairness.

You can read the others here, including Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Bill and Melinda Gates, and others.

Here's the list of the latest Medal of Freedom recipients.

That web page says

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

I'd like to see medals given to people who routinely save lives, like doctors, nurses, and emergency responders. If not the Medal of Freedom, then some other medal.

Also people who bring us our food and water, like farmers and water utility workers. We can live a matter of days without water, and weeks without food. So farmers and water utility workers are super important. But when's the last time you heard of a farmer getting a medal for producing a good crop, or a water utility worker getting a medal for supplying clean water?

Also caring teachers in the inner cities should get medals.

And people who risk their lives to rescue others in need, like these people.

Who else should get a medal?

Donald trump has threatened many times to curtail the press and sue people who don't agree with him when he becomes President.

So? Donald Trump threatening the press in no way contradicts what I said about the Democrats.

There has been no call from any Democrats that I'm aware of, advocating for government censorship.

Well, then you are living under a rock.

http://www.politico.com/story/...

https://www.hillaryclinton.com...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the...

Knowing a lot of people in the US oil industry, at low and at very high levels, I have a different viewpoint based on what I've heard from them

No doubt you have. Conservatives have deep dislike of the Clintons - despite the Clinton's having passed the trade deals, deregulation, and gutting of welfare that Reagan could have only dreamed of.

Bragging about drilling faster than our capacity to transport - from the White House web site itself:

So we are drilling all over the place -- right now. That's not the challenge. That's not the problem. In fact, the problem in a place like Cushing is that we're actually producing so much oil and gas in places like North Dakota and Colorado that we don't have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it to where it needs to go -- both to refineries, and then, eventually, all across the country and around the world. Thereâ(TM)s a bottleneck right here because we canâ(TM)t get enough of the oil to our refineries fast enough. And if we could, then we would be able to increase our oil supplies at a time when they're needed as much as possible.

Obama administration approves sonic cannons, reopening US Eastern Seaboard to oil exploration

Hillary Clinton Tried to Push Fracking on Other Nations When She Was Secretary of State, New Emails Reveal

Well that depends, do you think that 4.9% is accurate

Yes

when there are 95m people not in the labor force

Who knows for what reasons? Plenty of people choose not to work, so have to assume the research is based on scientific methods.

and food stamp numbers have gone up by 20%.

From what 10 to 12 stamps? This number means nothing on it's own.

Or do you think that the 10% is more accurate? Keeping in mind that 10%(U6) is the rate far more accurate then the U3,

No it isn't, it is a different metric.

but keeping in trend over the last 10 years when you compare everything with U3 and U6 data the rate works out to being roughly 15%(14.7% if you don't want to quibble).

U6 includes U3, ie U3 is a subset of U6, so the 9.5% U6 figure is the highest possible number.
This page seems to show they're all going down.

Not forgetting that the 4.9% can't be independently validated either, even using the official figures since the "self-reporting" number is very hit or miss. Gallup's unemployment rate numbers which are nationally sampled put's their U3 rate at around 5.9%.

That's also valid, as long as you stick with one method when doing comparisons. Both 4.9% and 5.9% are still in the ideal range.

Now, figure that 20% of that 95m are retirees that still at a higher rate in the 1970's when women weren't in the workforce like they are today. Couple that with extremely stagnant wages for the last decade. Toss in that even the white house's own explanation that the U3 number is low because boomers are leaving the workforce, and that pushes the U3 unemployment rate lower.

I'm not sure what you are saying. People choosing not to work (ie retirees, children etc) shouldn't count as unemployed, since the purpose of an unemployment rate to measure how many job seekers there are out there. So if it's low it's because it is actually low.
The Government doesn't try to produce these figures purely to fool the public, they are used to gauge the health of the economy and how effective policy works. They are produced by people who's job it is to report accurate data. If they say it is 4.9%, and some other people say it's 5.9%, then either one sounds ok to me. 5% unemployment is considered economically ideal since you need some unemployed people available for new businesses to hire.

The bigger problem is not so much unemployment, but the support available to unemployed people to get out of that situation. My country has similar unemployment rates (5%), but it isn't an issue because we have access to free health, public housing, welfare etc so unemployment isn't necessarily a life changing experience.

It may very well be 15%, but the quoted 4.9% is published using known methods that we can independently validate. Can you do the same? Or is this the new Trump era where just saying so is good enough?

Well that depends, do you think that 4.9% is accurate when there are 95m people not in the labor force and food stamp numbers have gone up by 20%. Or do you think that the 10% is more accurate? Keeping in mind that 10%(U6) is the rate far more accurate then the U3, but keeping in trend over the last 10 years when you compare everything with U3 and U6 data the rate works out to being roughly 15%(14.7% if you don't want to quibble). Not forgetting that the 4.9% can't be independently validated either, even using the official figures since the "self-reporting" number is very hit or miss. Gallup's unemployment rate numbers which are nationally sampled put's their U3 rate at around 5.9%. Now, figure that 20% of that 95m are retirees that still at a higher rate in the 1970's when women weren't in the workforce like they are today. Couple that with extremely stagnant wages for the last decade. Toss in that even the white house's own explanation that the U3 number is low because boomers are leaving the workforce, and that pushes the U3 unemployment rate lower.

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." - President Barack Obama

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the...

Unless you can cite a statute to base this idea on you're just blowing hot air and as long as all your doing is complaining on Slashdot you may as well not even do that.

I'm no lawyer, so it would take an absurd amount of time to find any sort of legal citation. My guesstimate (yes, guess, see previous statement about not being a lawyer) would be that something along the lines of Comcast hasn't yet occurred and there would not be a lot of legal precedent. First, we are dealing with a single corporation that does not compete with itself and faces minimal competition in multiple markets, some of which have "government-approved monopolies" (even if it's municipal-level last-mile contracts and not anything federal). Second, there is no inherit problem with incorporating all components of a business per se. Samsung owns everything they need to make a phone, washer/dryer, or TV with minimal purchasing from other companies. Nobody really complains about that, but then again we have competition in all markets that Samsung sells items in.

Write you senator and migrate from big party politics or just settle for more of the same.

This is probably one of the more insightful statements I've seen on /. in a while. Unfortunately the public is too busy using change.org to urge the president to declare the Westboro Baptist Church a Hate Group, or build a death star.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the...
Sure...you go with that thought process.

Yeah, if only they bothered to do routine medical checks and give people vaccines.

Oh wait.

You want to do something? Bitch about the sex trade or something useful, not your usual shit.

Link for the pardon request: https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the his Nobel Prize

Bill Clinton promised he had ended "the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula" with his deal. He had social worker and Democrat activist Wendy Sherman lead the negotiations. President Obama used the same woman to negotiate a similar "deal" with Iran. Note: here resume LOOKS good now at first glance because she was involved in this stuff, but she had no credentials for any of this before Bill used her for it.

Compare the Clinton statement re North Korea with Barack Obama's statement re his Iran deal and you will see that we should have ZERO confidence the same team of idiots got better results from Iran. Iran will be detonating bombs within a decade, and MAY have been involved in this Korean detonation (Iran and N.K. have been caught cooperating in the past).

Prepare for a nuclear war, possibly within the next 10 to 20 years, thanks to the social workers and community organizers of the DNC.

Oh, and Democrats have a "talking point" for the stupid to use on this: "Bush screwed it up!". They cannot however back this up with any actual action by Bush that breached the Clinton "deal", nor can they point to ANY action Obama has take in the past 7.5 years to repair it.

Hope you all like yer gay this, and gay that, and unlimited immigration, and global warming fixes, 'cause the price tag is going to be VERY steep. It's a bad idea to vote for foolish globalist morons (in EITHER party) in order to get the "right" to publicly celebrate activities you could have always done privately, or to "save the planet" from a degreee of temperature in a century, or prove that you are not a racist - - - particularly when it means you might not be alive to participate in those activities, might be accellerating a much more severe global threat, and the immigrants you invited in are no more bomb-proof than you are.

how are any of these data plans even legal?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/net...

If you search for the top senders a 'noreply' is on there.

If you start digging through the e-mail sources there's some pretty interesting (but politically boring) data in there.

Someone is running "CommuniGate Pro SMTP 6.0.4" in 2016. It was released on 28-Mar-2013 and has had Bug fixes since then

https://messages.whitehouse.go...

Is not resolvable from the outside it seems.

You mean the radical policies like small business incentives back when the economy was going down? Oh wait, the Republicans blocked that.

I'm still looking for these radical bills he's allowed to become laws. Perhaps you could point me to them

The truth is that politics is not about radical acts these days (thank goodness!) but hey, with Trump, you probably will mange to get that radicalism you fear has taken over DC

I haven't read anywhere that there was a lack of evidence that she willfully broke the law.

https://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9347847&cid=52462645

18 USC 793. This statute explicitly states that whoever, “entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any documentthrough gross negligence permits the same to removed from its proper place of custodyor having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody.shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.” Comey called her “extremely careless.” That was highly charitable. But even by that standard, Hillary was grossly negligent with classified material. Comey says Hillary had no intent to transmit information to foreign powers. But that’s not what the statute requires.

18 USC 1924. This statute states that any employee of the United States who “knowingly removes [classified] documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.” Hillary set up a private server explicitly to do this.

18 USC 798. This statute states that anyone who “uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United Statesany classified informationshall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.” Hillary transmitted classified information in a manner that harmed the United States; Comey says she may have been hacked.

18 USC 2071. This statute says that anyone who has custody of classified material and “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years.” Clearly, Hillary meant to remove classified materials from government control.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/charge-hillary-rodham-clinton-pursuant-18-usc-641-793-794-798-952-and-1924

If you think Clinton should be charged, then at least sign the petition
It will likely only result in a mealy-mouthed platitude, but at least it is one way to communicate our disapproval.

More likely it will just land you on the 2016 Enemies List.

If you think Clinton should be charged, then at least sign the petittion:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/charge-hillary-rodham-clinton-pursuant-18-usc-641-793-794-798-952-and-1924
It will likely only result in a mealy-mouthed platitude, but at least it is one way to communicate our disapproval.

Yes, because transportation spending is overwhelmingly going to public transport (NOT a Federal issue) and AMTRAK/rail. It is not going back to the source of the income. Get rid of those expenses and you'd find more than enough money to maintain roads.

Amtrak has received under 2 billion dollars from the Federal government each year for the past few years, and that is less than the transfers from the General Fund to the Highway Trust Fund which is also on that page. So even if those funds for Amtrak are going through the Highway Trust fund, they can't be overwhelming. And if they're not funded through that fund, then bringing them up is even more irrelevant.

Spending on "public transport" is too nebulous a term to find information that is definitive on it, let alone discuss whether or not it is a "federal issue", though that is a separate discussion that would distract from the matter at hand anyway, so let's not bother. Nonetheless, given that your assertion about Amtrak is not sustained, and your prior track record of supplying an out-of-date by over a decade source, I cannot take your word as credible.

The CBO, however indicates that public spending (from all sources, federal, state and local), on highways is 165 billion, with mass transit receiving less than half of that. This is not focusing on the revenue streams (though you should note that Federal spending is not the majority anyway, and you haven't shown how much states collect from their own taxes, which complicates the analysis even more since their rates vary considerably, as does the share of local spending from cities and counties), but it does show that your contention that "transportation spending is overwhelmingly going to public transport" is not supported, since the largest share is, in fact, to highways, then the second is to water-related infrastructure. Sorry, but a distant third is not overwhelming.

And you should especially consider that this is not discussing the current state of expenses for maintaining the roads, merely addressing the current spending. It is possible that that current spending in the US on transportation infrastructure is far less than it properly needs to be anyway. So it could be that the best result for transportation investments would easily be far in excess of the current revenues from fuel taxes anyway, regardless of any diversions you might make from current spending. (And let's not forget, transportation investments are supposed to enrich us all, that is their purpose, isn't it?)

I'm sorry, but your assertions just don't seem to be supportable.

I think you are getting too caught up in your need to craft a story, that you are not paying careful enough attention to what you are saying being accurate. Or even meaningful. As I already said to you, really, if you wanted to have a discussion on the preferred taxation method you wanted, you could do so, but offering false contentions is a silly waste of time.

Why not just skip that? Say how you want to do things on their own merits, make an argument without going into unsupported facts.

You're ridiculously wrong.

Obama has been telling the FBI, DHS, et. al. to leave Muslims alone. Hence, the Orlando shooter was on the list but taken off.

COINTELPRO once targeted leftists activities to disrupt, degrade and destroy their political power. Now the left has slowly gained power in the establishment and so it's "right wing extremists" that are being targeted by such lists. Anyone advocating nationalism and owning guns is probably on the list for opposing the One World Goverenment's "Open Borders" plans. (hint: Obama just implemented the first steps of the North American Union - Canada, USA, Mexico all under one supergovernment just like the EU). You get on the list for dissenting against the plans of the elites. Terrorists aren't dissenting, they're seen as useful pawns to scare people into accepting more gun regulations.

The NIT should not be used in civilian criminal court if the government wishes to protect it under a national security designation.

But what if the NIT can be used in criminal and national security matters?
Here's the classification categories that the NIT would have to fall under if the FBI succeeds in getting it classified:

Executive Order 13526- Classified National Security Information

Sec. 1.4. Classification Categories. Information shall not be considered for classification unless its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security in accordance with section 1.2 of this order, and it pertains to one or more of the following:

(a) military plans, weapons systems, or operations;
(b) foreign government information;
(c) intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology;
(d) foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources;
(e) scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to the national security;
(f) United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities;
(g) vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures, projects, plans, or protection services relating to the national security; or
(h) the development, production, or use of weapons of mass destruction.

My guess is that the FBI can get the NIT classified under the clauses (c), (e) and (g)

https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

Sign the petition, lets turn the FBI and the Intelligence apparatus into a tool to really make our country safe. There is no reason to waste billions of dollars on "intelligence" when we can't even spot a crazy with a gun in our own back yard. If you want to own a gun, fine. Just assume that everything that you say and do will be scrutinized if you decide to exercise that 2nd amendment right to keep and bare arms.

Would it surprise you to find out you are wrong?

US Average poverty: 12.4%
US Hmong poverty: 37.8%
US Cambodian poverty: 29.3%
US Laotian poverty: 18.5%
US Black poverty: 27%

You do realize that layoffs remove people who aren't necessary to produce the product being sold, right? The cost of wages is the base cost of all prices; it is not business, but the consumer who pays wages.

Labor reduction is a good thing. The labor force moves to other things. How do you think food keeps getting cheaper? From where do you think all the manufacture and services jobs came from? What money are Americans redirecting to the growing Healthcare sector to enjoy more and better healthcare?

The average family put 43% of their income to food in 1900, with 38% of the labor force working on farms. In 1950, it was 30% of our income with 12% of our labor force on the farms (and an additional chunk in the laboratories and factories making tractors, pesticides, fertilizers, and diesel fuel to support the farm worker). Today, we spend 11% of our income on food, with under 2% of our workers on the farm. How many poor families should be starving right now so that we could have avoided the elimination of 36% of our farm labor force, and should we give up healthcare or the Internet to support these excess and unnecessary farm workers?

You might want to look at the LBJ quote regarding certain minority voting DNC for the next 200 years.

You might want to look it up yourself.

It's widely discredited, and there's a matching quote in the reverse sentiment. Namely that the Democratic Party would lose the South for a Generation.

So which is it? Well, I will quote Abe Lincoln, and say, you should not believe everything you read on the Internet just because it has a picture next to a quote.

Or in this case, because somebody printed it in a book. I get it, you want to take a side. It's exactly what you want to believe. It makes you feel better at night.

Take a look at who ran on the GOP vs DNC for the ticket this year, four old white people vs a diverse group of 17, black, white and hispanic. But the GOP is racist!

Good idea, use the list of Presidential candidates to completely understand the political parties, man, your analysis is so deep and probing it can't possibly be questioned.

Why don' t you just pass around the chain letter where Charles Guiteau and John Wilikes Booth are both called liberals? Trow in a slice of whining about Robert Byrd, while never mentioning Strom Thurmond to make it really apparent.

I honestly don't get it, do Fauxbitarians like you fail to realize you're actually sucking the partisan teat, or are you just false-flagging to make your professed side look bad?

I would not describe a hack of an AOL email address as a stepping stone to hacking another system.

But the original has a much better description. He's claiming he saw clintonemail.com's IP while reading Blumenthal's emails, and then used a port scanner to identify vulnerabilities in her server.

If it's true, and can be verified from server logs, it could be important. Hillary Clinton cannot be charged in Court with violating an Executive order, so the law everyone says she broke is almost completely irrelevant to her fate in Court. The ones that are relevant to the Judicial branch are statutes, and they tend to only ban a) willful fuck-ups with information (ie: you not only had to do it wrong, you had to know you were doing it wrong), or b) only come into play if somebody actually sees the info.

a) is virtually impossible to prove beyond a Reasonable Doubt when your only predecessor who used email used a private server, but if there's proof of b)...

She absolutely could not authorize any private internet facing server to process the information under discussion.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the...

Note especially Section 3, part c.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

Oh so emission standards is obamas fault? i don't recall him passing any.

The Obama Administration has officially taken credit for making the CAFE standard tougher.

The Obama Administration today finalized groundbreaking standards that will increase fuel economy to the equivalent of 54.5 mpg for cars and light-duty trucks by Model Year 2025. When combined with previous standards set by this Administration, this move will nearly double the fuel efficiency of those vehicles compared to new vehicles currently on our roads.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/28/obama-administration-finalizes-historic-545-mpg-fuel-efficiency-standard

And I didn't edit this Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy#2009_Obama_Administration_directive

You don't have to agree with me, but I'm not just making stuff up.

If you have a new document that is believed to be able to be classified lower, it has to go to a classification authority specialist who reviews it against the documents that define what is and isn't classified, and if that person agrees it can be classified lower, then it is. Hillary Clinton skipped all those steps simply because it was inconvenient for her.

No. Hillary Clinton can declassify information herself. Part 3 clearly says so.

Yes they do. Since at least 2003 SecState has had the ability to classify materials related to foreign negotiations, and since 2009 SecState is an Original Classification Authority. Historically OCAs have been limited to POTUS, VPOTUS, SecDef, and various DoD department heads, or whomever the President chooses to delegate this authority to, but at present it seems to be a fairly long list of persons. Next time you want to rebut an argument, please provide evidence.

"In this case all Classified information is Classified by the Executive Branch, which means the guy who runs the Executive Branch (Obama), and his closest advisers (like Clinton) by definition are the guys who decide whether something is Classified, and therefore they can declassify shit simply by talking about it. Legally speaking much of the case against Clinton will collapse in Court simply because most shit that was on her server, and was classified, was classified by the state department, using her authority as Secretary of State."

That's some fundamentally flawed understanding of classification authority. Let's go backwards first. A lot of the classified information was classified by other agencies, so the case collapsing because some or most of it is from the State department is spurious.

I don't believe you've disagreed with me.

There is not much real world difference between "much of the cases" collapsing and "a lot of it" not collapsing. It's a matter of emphasis.

Also how the Judge is likely to call the balls and strikes on the rest of the case. A prosecutor who tries to charge a major political candidate months before the election with a docket that includes any charges that are by definition not crimes is gonna not gonna get a lot of the close calls to go his way.

Next, not even the original classifying agency can declassify something without discussing it with other agencies.

True in terms of inter-agency DC politics.

But if you think a anybody would go to jail for releasing info the DoD had classified three years ago, changed it's mind about six months ago, neglected to get the paperwork from higher-ups you've clearly never met a Jury.

And since this is a criminal investigation, the only legal standard that matters is the "would a Jury think it was so damaging she should go to jail" standard.

Finally, under the law, the President delegates classification authority to the agencies. The President can not declassify something on a whim, they must ask the agency to declassify it. The agency head can decline to do so; but theoretically the President could just fire the head of the agency and keep doing so until someone agrees to.

You're gonna actually have to cite the law here. If it's a statute name the statute.

I suspect you're talking about an Executive Order, probably this one, and in this context an Executive Order is meaningless because of the way the government is designed. Why? Because an Executive Order is a statement saying what the President thinks should be done. If the President goes out and does something using a different procedure then he laid out in the Executive order he has not actually violated the law, because he has unilateral authority to change his Executive Orders anytime he likes.

And does that apply to Hillary Clinton to? Of course, if Obama says he trusts her.

Not only is that incorrect, in that it quite possibly could be misdemeanor, that is wholly inconsistent with historical precedent on these types of cases.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-prosecution-past-cases-221744

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-classified-information/2015/09/18/a164c1a4-5d72-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html

Obama is acknowledging what is common knowledge and the subject of numerous news articles -- the government grossly overclassifies documents and frequently does it with the sole purpose of saving some politician from embarrassment, which has nothing to do with National Security. Overclassification was named as an issue in the 9/11 Report.

The lesson of the Pentagon Papers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-classified-information/2015/09/18/a164c1a4-5d72-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html

NY Times Op-Ed in 2001: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/national-security-and-americas-unnecessary-secrets.html

President signs law in 2010 to reduce overclassification: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/07/president-signs-hr-553-reducing-over-classification-act

Well, actually, we don't need to leave it to a bunch of internet commenters to decide this issue -- there is an actual process described as "equities review" which the Executive Branch is responsible for, when a cyber vulnerability is known, but not yet disclosed to the public:

  https://www.whitehouse.gov/blo...>href=https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/04/28/heartbleed-understanding-when-we-disclose-cyber-vulnerabilities

The considerations described here (in whether to reveal or keep secret a vulnerability) cover:

-- How much is the vulnerable system used in the core internet infrastructure, in other critical infrastructure systems, in the U.S. economy, and/or in national security systems?
--
Does the vulnerability, if left unpatched, impose significant risk?
--
How much harm could an adversary nation or criminal group do with knowledge of this vulnerability?
--
How likely is it that we would know if someone else was exploiting it?
--
How badly do we need the intelligence we think we can get from exploiting the vulnerability?
--
Are there other ways we can get it?
--
Could we utilize the vulnerability for a short period of time before we disclose it?
--
How likely is it that someone else will discover the vulnerability?
--
Can the vulnerability be patched or otherwise mitigated?

In this case, I might argue that this is becoming so well known (though the technical specifics have not been revealed), that the FBI/US had better tell Apple to make sure that other users of the affected phones can be secured -- while the intelligence value of the exploit is rapidly decreasing due to its publicity.

In bureaucratic speak all that means that as long as you can write a well worded memo of justification then you can do whatever you want.

Well, actually, we don't need to leave it to a bunch of internet commenters to decide this issue -- there is an actual process described as "equities review" which the Executive Branch is responsible for, when a cyber vulnerability is known, but not yet disclosed to the public:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/blo...>href=https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/04/28/heartbleed-understanding-when-we-disclose-cyber-vulnerabilities

The considerations described here (in whether to reveal or keep secret a vulnerability) cover:

-- How much is the vulnerable system used in the core internet infrastructure, in other critical infrastructure systems, in the U.S. economy, and/or in national security systems?
-- Does the vulnerability, if left unpatched, impose significant risk?
-- How much harm could an adversary nation or criminal group do with knowledge of this vulnerability?
-- How likely is it that we would know if someone else was exploiting it?
-- How badly do we need the intelligence we think we can get from exploiting the vulnerability?
-- Are there other ways we can get it?
-- Could we utilize the vulnerability for a short period of time before we disclose it?
-- How likely is it that someone else will discover the vulnerability?
-- Can the vulnerability be patched or otherwise mitigated?

In this case, I might argue that this is becoming so well known (though the technical specifics have not been revealed), that the FBI/US had better tell Apple to make sure that other users of the affected phones can be secured -- while the intelligence value of the exploit is rapidly decreasing due to its publicity.

President Obama said that everybody should attend higher education, and that if you don't think traditional college is for you, go to a trade school.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/iss...

Actually, I agree with you. The guns by themselves may not help much if we ignore all our other rights, and yes, we have issues there.

I think we put people in prison for too long, take away their rights to vote too easily, and so fourth.

I think the government is kidding itself about encryption, the bad guys will just use other options besides the ones the government wants, but frankly a lot of people high up in the government don't understand technology, so that it what it is.

My point is that without guns, you're just subjects because you don't even have the option to revolt. I consider the Declaration of Independence just as important as the US Constitution, even if it isn't a legal document.

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

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

^ That is hard to do without guns, sad to say. Humans are a rather violent species. :(

http://law.stackexchange.com/q...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

In short, the US Government has said "If the people of Texas want to leave, they'll have to go to war to force the issue."

That's how much was spent in 2014 by the feds.

That's a lot of vest interest in showing that AGW is real and needs more research dollars.

Great, now show me the 'other' set of books... I kid... kinda..

Heh, checking out more recent figures (lord knows why you wouldn't link to them :-), looks like Homes brought the deficit spending down by almost 70% since he took office (p. 359? feel free to correct). It's very phony of course because of the Wall Street bailouts. When you exclude them, the deficit almost tripled since 2007, which may not be true either, since the bailouts are still ongoing, so the 'real' deficit might be hard to pinpoint. The whole thing is a fantasy anyway.

Anyway, your new number for defense is 3.6, more bang for the buck, where's the beef? Still, I wouldn't mind if they found that eight and a half tril, it's not exactly chump change.

Getting back to the story, let's all be happy that people are making censorship in Iran (and everywhere else) a little easier to circumvent. Freedom of speech is always a good thing, right?

This it isn't an obscure fact. The US Defense budget has been bouncing around 4-5% of GDP for more than 10 years. There are pleny of place to find the numbers. Here is one. I refer you to page 6.

Defence Expenditures of NATO Countries (2008-2015)

I will refer you to page 320 of this document:
BUDGET OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT - Historical Tables

Supporting the Force: The Industrial Base and Defense Conversion

The Defense Drawdown After World War II

During World War II, the nation truly had a defense economy. In the war's last year, 1945, over 39 percent of the nation's GDP was devoted to defense. By 1948, less than 4 percent of GDP was spent on defense. (Ibid., p. 140.) Defense spending in 1945 was $714 billion in 1987 dollars; by 1948, it was under $65 billion. Thus, in only three years, defense spending had fallen by 90 percent. (Ibid., p. 128.)

That solution is nuclear power.

Any politician that claims that the government needs to fund this and support that and ignores nuclear power is not serious about the problem. This tends to lead me to think that global warming is not the problem that they claim.

Barack Obama (October 2007, before becoming president): ”It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table.“
(2009, after becoming president): "We must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change.” (citation)

James Hansen (probably the most famous of the climate activists), 2013:
"We call on your organization to support the development and deployment of safer nuclear power systems as a practical means of addressing the climate change problem... in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power." (citation)

Filter your Presidential candidates with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

Expel Brahmin From Your Country;
Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It'll be extremely costly;
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

You may have missed the point.

You're expecting mdsolar's posts to be anti-nuclear and, intentionally or not, he has done quite a good job of exposing the bias of the nuclear shills on /. by posting a report that is designed to support nuclear power. The authors are from IAEA, NRC, and big utility companies like Duke who operate 6-8 nuclear reactors.

The Nuclear shills are criticizing the report of an organisation whose founders state exists to strengthen global security by reducing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and also to reduce the risk that they will actually be used.. Who wouldn't want that, especially if you support nuclear power?

They're arguing against an initiative designed to improve the acceptance of Nuclear power supported by the US and Russians presidents.

They're criticizing a regulatory framework that the NRC has committed to implementing in conjunction with the DOE, FBI, DOHS that lays the regulatory framework for extending Nuclear power around the world.

This is what it looks like when Industry, in this case the nuclear industry, push government when *they* recognise a risk that they want legal frameworks to deal with. What Industry is saying to government is that they are lagging because of the lack of progress on international regulatory frameworks being in place to force *all* radiological materials handlers to comply.

It shows that our nuclear shill friends aren't examining or understanding what is presented and instead are relying on their internal bias and pre-conceived judgement. mdsolar has posted something pro-nuclear, that critiques government's lack of progress on international law required to secure Nuclear power. The appropriate response for a sincere supporter of Nuclear Power would be to say 'boo, government, bad, holding nuclear industry back get those laws in place' but they are too busy pointing fingers at anti-nuke NIMBYs in combi vans that have very little influence over the process. Their great anti-nuke conspiracy theory.

Intentionally or not, mdsolar has gotten the nuclear shills to criticize a report that supports the development of Nuclear power.