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The Unique Candidates of the New Hampshire Primary
30 Republicans and 14 Democrats are running for president in the New Hampshire primary this year, the largest number since 1992 when 62 candidates ran. Among other factors, the meager $1,000 fee to get one's name on the ballot makes New Hampshire an attractive place for unusual candidates. This year we have home-builder John Davis who "has budgeted $500,000 to visit all 3,143 counties in the U.S. in a 43-foot live-on bus emblazoned with a photo of himself brandishing a femur-size wrench and the slogan 'Let's Fix America.'" The oddly hatted Vermin Supreme of Rockport, Mass. is a perennial candidate who plans to run on a platform of mandatory tooth brushing and zombie preparedness. Vermin also promises a pony for every American. From the article: "If ever there were a year for has-beens, wannabes and neverwillbes pushing oddball solutions to serious problems and serious palliatives for problems no one has yet postulated, this may be it."
I want to see a New Hampshire candidate run solely on "Live Free Or Die". Extra points if he (or she) can get away with appending it to "Live Free Or Die, Bitches"
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
you get more then 2 parties. Make it cheaper to get on the ballot for governor and senate races.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Vermin Supreme sounds like a pizza in some dystopian future. "Includes all toppings, with rats, cockroaches, and maggots. Dung Beetles are extra".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If Vermin Supreme runs again in six years or so he may really have a chance at winning. As long as these kids keep the internet Pony meme going. Though he may even have a chance in this election. I know several adults who would support his zombie preparedness platform.
And really how much worse can he do than what we've seen over the last 30 years.
I thought you were talkinga bout primary school and gifted students, and therefore was interested. As soon as I realized this was about politics, I became very bored.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
what the hell, here is a good link.
You can't handle the truth.
I find it hard to tell the difference between those candidates and the "actual" Republican candidates.
From the article: "If ever there were a year for has-beens, wannabes and neverwillbes pushing oddball solutions to serious problems and serious palliatives for problems no one has yet postulated, this may be it."
...and he was probably talking about the front-runners, not the gadflies.
Someone had to do it.
Still saner than Michele Bachmann.
...a good place for the Pirate Party to start running candidates.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Is CowboyNeal running, too?
Please, tell me that The Rent Is Too Damn High Party will be represented. I've missed that guy.
Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
This place is overrun by Ron Paul zombies. If a potential candidate can find a way to control them, they'd certainly win my vote.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Got any links I can read?
Drink the kool-aid. Assimilate. Become a Paullower. It is....inevitable.
Ron Paul is the candidate with the most, erm, independently minded supporters you'll find, and I dare you to name any base that knows more about US history back to Woodrow Wilson or Thomas Jefferson, about monetary and fiscal policy, or about foreign policy. He's the one candidate who's actually changed the dialog of the country and sustained it for years, that says something about the issues he speaks on.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
As opposed to the serious candidates who what us to build an electric fence to keep the mexican't out, full body scan everybody at the airports to protect us from the terrorists, start wars in the middle east to bring about peace, and keep pot illegal in the face of irrefutable evidence that it is not harmful and it's prohibition kills thousands every year.
Is that some kind of Decepticon?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Ron Paul is the candidate with the most, erm, independently minded supporters you'll find, and I dare you to name any base that knows more about US history back to Woodrow Wilson or Thomas Jefferson, about monetary and fiscal policy, or about foreign policy. He's the one candidate who's actually changed the dialog of the country and sustained it for years, that says something about the issues he speaks on.
Clearly, you are trying for a (+1, informative) or (+1, insightful) mod there, although based on some of the rabid, uninformed Paullowers here the proper mod would actually be (+1, funny). Too much of anything, even the anointed Ron Paul, can make one into a raving lunatic over time.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Did NO ONE READ the article???
Why is no one excited about an ENGINEER for President who is talking about Thorium??
I officially Endorse Bob Greene for POTUS
http://www.greeneforoffice.org/Home_Page.html
I know what I will be doing in 2016 as I will finally meet the constitutional requirements to be president. This way I could truthfully add that I was a 2016 presidential candidate. I would even make a reasonable platform centered around my areas of expertise. Why not its not like it is that expensive. At worst (most likely) it would make an interesting story and at best (extreme remote) I elected and I could probably do a better job than the current crop of clowns.
Time to offend someone
So Ron Paul's position is that by strengthening property rights, civil lawsuits would provide adequate disincentive to polluters. In reality, he want's to weaken protections for polluters. The opposite of what you've said.
... which is a pipe dream. There is no disincentive for short term profits, that is strong enough. And strong property rights (whose property will be strengthened anyway?) will solve nothing e.g. when it comes to contamination. If you poison your own property, no one can hinder you without regulations forbidding exactly that. If later the borders break that were designed to limit the intoxication, and people get sick or die, how will you solve that problem with property rights? Paying for the lower value of the poisoned property?
The property rights of home and land owners are very strong, but there are still burglars and trespassers. How will you solve that problem with even stronger property laws? How much money do you get out in a civil court from someone who steals? If he has no money left to pay, he can't be made paying more. But he could still break into the next house and start stealing again. How do you hinder him with strong property law? What disincentive gives an even stronger property law?
People who think that property laws will solve anything always forget the most important part of the law: the ability of the intruder to actually pay. If a company can get away with setting up a shell company doing the contamination which will be dissolved or defaults as soon as the work is completed, then what use is a stronger property law?
So Ron Paul's position is that by strengthening property rights, civil lawsuits would provide adequate disincentive to polluters. In reality, he want's to weaken protections for polluters. The opposite of what you've said.
Except that proposal doesn't actually work. It places the responsibility on the private citizen to make a case against a polluter. If, for example, a polluter is burning toxic waste and contaminating the air, the private citizens need to prove where the products that make them sick are coming from. That is an incredibly difficult task and takes a significant amount of time, such that many people could not afford to pursue that problem. It is more likely that the people living in the polluted are would - if they could afford it - sell their houses and move. At that point, of course, someone else would buy the polluted property (at a loss to the seller) and the cycle starts over. The polluter continues to make money, the victims continue to lose lives and money.
He has talked about streamlining and eliminating regulations to reduce their burden on industry
Which generally means a lot more of the latter and very little of the former. Nevermind the fallacy of "their burden on industry". In other words, it is recognized that there is a very good reason to have the kinds of regulations that Ron Paul wants to throw out. This isn't a matter of "civil liberties", because reasonable people do not see slowly killing entire populations as a "civil liberty" that should be granted to companies.
He has proposed eliminating the departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Interior and Education.
Have you considered what the dept of the interior does? Or for that matter what elimination of the dept of education will do in the long term to the uneducated and underemployed people who end up buying the polluted properties because they can't afford to live anywhere else?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Video's nice and all, but I'd usually much rather READ something than watch it. So write down whatever happens in your video and post that somewhere. You might have something interesting in the links in your signature, but I'm not following tinyurl links. They're a necessary evil on twitter (if you find links in twitter necessary), but they have no place outside of that. Find some links that tell me where I'm going. And then title your links better. If your link is about Ron Paul, make your link text "Ron Paul, a Real POTUS". Then maybe I'll read your link.
Why would you say that it's fallacious? I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing contract work for manufacturers by helping them comply with environmental regulations. How can I make all this money with it, if it doesn't cost them anything? And environmental regulations are just he tip of the iceberg. Also, the money they pay me is just the tip of the ice-burg, because they often have to make changes to the way they do business to comply with regulations. And regulatory agencies tend to write regulations as conservatively as possible (for political and ass-covering reasons) in a lazy, one-size-fits-all manner that really doesn't make sense in the real world. And then, to top it all off, they give exemptions to existing businesses! The result is regulations function as a barrier to entry to new businesses.
I don't know if you've ever worked with it or not, but it's a pretty sorry state of affairs. People who work with it don't really wonder why new factories are rarely built in the US.
Have you ever seen Erin Brockovich? Did you know it's a true story? It happens all the time, it's happening today. Obviously, you haven't heard of any of this, or you wouldn't be making such an absurd claim that totally contradicts reality.
What is true, however, is that a company can shield itself from this kind of liability by complying with environmental regulations even if they are hurting people. Yikes!
Nonetheless, Erin Brockovich is not a realistic portrayal of how the country would be if all the environmental regulations were eliminated as most of the candidates want to see happen. While yes it is based on a true story, the fact is that the case was brought up by someone who had legal connections. Without her involvement in the matter it is hard to tell how long the company would have been able to continue polluting the water and what the outcome would have been.
And had she not been connected to an experienced legal team, she may well have been steamrolled by the lawyers that were hired by the company, and ended up with nothing.
In other words, no matter how much of an inconvenience the polluters might view regulations to be, they need to be in place.
It happens all the time, it's happening today.
Companies polluting? Yes, that does happen all the time. People winning legal cases against those companies to stop them from doing it? That is really quite rare. And on top of that, you are ignoring the fact that the Brockovich case was reactive, not proactive. The pollution already occurred, the damage has already been done. It cannot be undone by money. How many people can corporations be allowed to kill?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It is not rare for people to win these kind of lawsuits. In fact it is so common that companies always try to settle out of court rather than bringing them to trial. Because if pollution they've caused is shown to have injured someone, there isn't a jury in the country that will let them off the hook.
Preventing lawsuits is the main reason companies try to reduce pollution. They're not worried about a couple million dollars in fines. Today, preventing lawsuits simply means meeting environmental standards. Sure, the picture would be very different without regulations, but it's pretty silly to think that potential polluters would just not worry about it. The potential liability associated with pollution is enormous.
It is not rare for people to win these kind of lawsuit
Really? How many do you know of that haven't been featured in hollywood movies? For some reason do you think hollywood likes to put very common stories into film? If so, then why wasn't my last oil change made into a movie?
In fact it is so common that companies always try to settle out of court rather than bringing them to trial.
Wrong. They settle out of court because they don't want the bad publicity. But even that doesn't happen very often. There are far, far, far, more cases of polluters getting away with it than there are of them not.
Because if pollution they've caused is shown to have injured someone, there isn't a jury in the country that will let them off the hook.
Bull. Shit.
The companies know exactly what attorneys to hire to get out of this. The attorneys know exactly how to pick a jury that will lead to acquittal. And the lawyers representing the people in the case are comparatively underpaid to boot.
They're not worried about a couple million dollars in fines.
They should be worried about not hurting people. Instead they are worried about PR and their bottom line.
but it's pretty silly to think that potential polluters would just not worry about it
You're an idiot to think that they would worry about it if there were no regulations. They make much more money by cutting corners than they do by being careful.
The potential liability associated with pollution is enormous.
Only if they're caught, and proven liable. Which is already a big hurdle to clear even with existing regulations. They very case you used in your (barely even qualifying as flimsy) argument mentions that the actual pollution measurements weren't taken until many years after the plant had claimed to have stopped polluting. Which means that had nobody cared, they would have certainly maintained the high pollution levels they were previously at.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If nothing else, Brooke Baldwin video is helpful, particularly if you need to rub out a quick one at work.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Case in point for the Paultards: how the cigarette industry went decades without losing a liability lawsuit because there's no way to know if Grandma got lung cancer because she smoked two packs a day or because she was genetically predisposed to it. Do they think other polluting industries wouldn't do the exact same thing?
"Your Honor, the plaintiff simply hasn't proven that the poisonous mercury that gave her children birth defects came from our mine. She could be a carrier, or the alleged poison could have come from from Massey Energy upstream....."
Then there's the fact that regulations and inspections are proactive, rather than reactive. Ask the parents of Valerie Lakey what they would prefer: to have their daughters guts back in her body before she was hydraulically disemboweled from a faulty pool drain, or the $25 million judgement against the manufacturer. But back to pollution - just how the hell is the average family going to afford the tens of thousands of dollars to hire independent experts and subpoena documents and testimony from the polluting company in question?
The Libertarian Way would literally result in poverty, misery and even death for many in return for even more power and money for those who are already powerful and rich.