What's especially clever is if you actually spend time really taking notes on pointless things. Spend five minutes measuring the distance between electrical outlets or whatever.
Even if you have an escort, they will quickly get bored.
Bonus points if you actually forms on the clipboards with blanks on them that want that information.
Incidentally...stacks of live ammo pointed at compressed oxygen canisters? Seriously?
It's naive to think that you can pay every single person a living wage for every single job. In fact, it's considerably worse than naive, you either do not have a firm grip on reality, or you know nothing what so ever about economics.
Uh, it's you who don't have any grasp of economics.
Americans, even last year in a recession, made $12,357,113,000,000 in personal income. That's $42,000 a person, assuming it's spread over 300,000,000 people. (I don't know why we're paying a bunch of children, but let's just go with it.)
Assuming 52 weeks times 40 hours a week, that's almost exactly $20 an hour. With a more reasonable estimate of 200,000,000 working people, we're paying $30 an hour.
We certain can pay every single person a living wage. In fact, on average, we do.
However, instead of varying from $15 to $100 dollars an hour, which would be rather more reasonable, current payscales vary from illegal $5 an hour to $20 an hour for normal workers, and then the rich get paid like $10,000 an hour.
The Times would not be able to have an Opinion/Editorial section if they had to seek the approval of their shareholders.
I think making the shareholders actually vote to have such a section would be entirely reasonable. I'm not trying to say they'd have to vote for every instance of speech.
And I'm not entirely sure that his idea of everyone having to vote for it is reasonable. I think something like a two-third majority should be enough. Hell, a simple majority would probably be enough to stop most corporations from getting involved at all.
Look up the Koch brothers... they are responsible for a tremendous amount of money in politics and they own the companies in question outright (privately owned).
Well, yes, but that's not even a corporate problem at all. That's just a problem of money in the system, period.
The superrich CEO and board of directors abusing public corporations whose stockholders do not agree with what the corporations do is an added level on top of that. If those asshats are going to remove any sort of pension plans, instead encouraging 401Ks, and threaten to privatize social security, well, fuck them. If they're going to remove all other options and force our money into the stock market so we can save for retirement, they're going to have to deal with the fact that we now own part of 'their' corporations, and they don't get to use them to lobby for things that hurt us.
If you want to deal with the money in the system by people who actually own that much money, I can't see a way to fix that. I was just talking about the money in the system directed there by people who don't actually own that money.
I have to suggest you read the decision - they weren't making that argument at all. The whole "corporation=person" meme came from the press, not the judges.
You are correct, Citizens United didn't make that argument. It instead started with the premise that corporations are people. And took it to (one of) the logical conclusion.
I quote: If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.
That, right there, is nonsense. The court started with the premise that 'associations of citizens' have first amendment rights. (And, confusing, the court appears to think they can be 'jailed'. I've never seen a corporation in jail.)
No association has any rights, at all. Human beings in such an association have. Associations are things. (And not even concrete things, they are merely ideas.)
I actually have no problem with Citizens United, strangely enough. That didn't 'decide' things poorly...it started from a completely nonsensical assumption that the courts have had for quite some time of corporations being people, added in 'money is speech', and took the logical next step.
Although, as I said, I'm hoping they take the next step and start trying to figure out what sort of 13th amendment rights corporations have.
Oh, and if climate change deniers don't come up with some sort of conspiracy about Polish weather data, I will be very angry.
Perhaps climate change scientists are running giant heat pumps, moving all the heat in Poland out into the world to boost everywhere else's the temperature, and Poland is now freezing cold, hence the need for *ominous chord* 'data corrections' to keep people from realizing the average world temperature is still the same.
Or perhaps this is an indicator of a much darker secret, like the fact Poland does not actually exist.
It was not CRU's data. The CRU is not running monitoring stations, or even collecting data. The data was from the World Meteorological Organization, via the UK Met Office. Neither the CRU or the Met Office magically have permission to give away that data. In fact, CRU didn't even have that data anymore.
But, nevertheless, after all this happened, the Met Office went and asked for permission to release it. And the raw data they were allowed to release (Which appears to be every station but the 19 in Poland for some reason, insert your own conspiracy theory there.) is here.
It's a real good job you did with the Google there, looking for that data. You looked real hard. Or at least read some pages that said the data hadn't been released, and isn't that really good enough?
Of course, almost all that data was already public anyway via World Monthly Surface Station Climatology and the GHCN before the Met Office released the uncorrected data. So people ran statistical sampling by comparing the CRU data to those data sources to see if the corrections introduced any sort of biases. Theydidn't.
But, hey, I love climate change deniers. In fact, I love all deniers. It's so much fun when they don't get memos and run around demanding that people 'release' information that was released in 2009.
Every single owner must approve political spending. Which, in the case of publicly traded corporations, means every shareholder. Every shareholder must vote for it, which means that anyone can buy part of their stock and stop them.
I mean, it only makes sense. Why the hell should a company I own part of spend some of my profits on political ads I don't agree with?
And I don't see the slightest 'free speech' issue with that. I mean, if slavery of these virtual people is legal (Which it must be.) then surely it's legal to require that all slaveowners agree to their actions. I mean, there's plenty of laws about the treatment of slaves.
In fact, someone should check the laws about slaves already on the books. They're generally considered dead letter, but with the Supreme court apparently unintentionally bringing back slavery, someone should check to make sure there's not already a law prohibiting slaves from speaking about politics without their owners permission.(1)
This is an utterly surreal concept under modern law, but the entire ideal of owned entities being 'people' is a bit surreal to start with. That really makes no sense at all.
So do corporations... Citizens United wasn't about campaign contributions - it was about issue ads.
Yeah, I know they had an idiotic justification for it. Doesn't change how stupid it is.
1) And while they're at it, check laws in the northern states, like, oh, Delaware, that claimed to to free slaves who reached there.;)
See, that's what I was disagreeing with you about. I believe you mean 'A problem we have now...'...we have so many problems with employment, it's hard to keep track.
we have cultivated the mindset that to be employable AT ALL you need a college degree,
That is because, for more than a decade, it has been a 'buyers market' with regard to employment. As jobs have gotten less and less, as more and more offshoring and whatnot has happened, as less and less people were employed, employers started demanding irrational things to distinguish potential employers apart. Because they could.
If we actually have jobs chasing people, instead of people chasing jobs, these idiotic educational requirements would never have existed. If there was two job openings for every person looking for work, they'd take whatever they could get.
Instead, there are seven people for every job openings, and employers can make whatever crazy demands they want. Not just with education, but with salary, benefits, whatever. Hey, we'll work you 80 hours a week and pay for 40, and if you don't like it, we'll do that with the guy who comes in right behind you.
Eventually we're going to have the most educated ditch diggers in the world.
At the rate we're going, we will have the most educated unemployed ditch diggers in the world.:(
People jumping straight into unemployment instead of taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt and then jumping into unemployment is probably 'better' in some objective sense, but is hardly ideal.
All the IPCC models are extremely accurate, at least over a running average of a few years. And the older models have been predicting the changes for 21 years, not ten.
The IPCC keeps coming out with new models every five years or so...but the new models have basically the same math as the older ones. The 'refinements' are mostly attempts to predict what humans are going to do WRT to CO2 emissions in the future.
The hilarious thing are the newer predictions by skeptics, some of which immediately underestimate the change, like within 5 years. Start a prediction in 2000, have it wrong by 2010.
Whereas the mainstream people, except for this 'Kellogg' dude, are mostly on track.
Although the graph is slightly misleading. Some of the predictions were made more recently, and projected backwards in time. For example, IPCC FAR was made in 1990, and thus doesn't really get 'credit' for any predictions before that, although it's nice to see it works backwards also.
OTOH, that prediction it gets every credit for still being almost entirely correct as of 2011, which proves the IPCC's climate models are pretty damn good, and is why each of them is really only a minor tweak to the previous one.
If that's true, then what, pray tell, would be the purpose of the 9th and 10th amendments? Seriously, if the founders indeed intended for the feds to do pretty much whatever, then why specifically spell out that "all else is the purview of the states and the people"?
First of all, the ninth amendment is only relevant to people who think 'rights' have something to do with the government spending money. I know that nonsense is baked pretty deeply into the brain of America, but it is, in fact, complete and utter nonsense. You have no right to not have your money taken from you as taxes (As that is an explicit power of the government.) and spent however the government wants. Rights and money have almost nothing to do with each other. (Except that the government can't take money from you specifically without a trial. That would be a Bill of Attainder if done via legislation, or unlawful seizure if done by the executive.)
So 'Providing for the general Welfare' has nothing to do with 'rights', enumerated or otherwise. The ninth amendment is utterly irrelevant.
As for the tenth...I don't know why people pretend there's not explicitly a section stating what the Federal government can't do. It's the very next section, section 9. Let's turn your logic around and ask why on earth section 9 felt like barring the government from issuing titles of nobility when such a power is absolutely nowhere in section 8? (Hint: Such a thing could fall under the general Welfare.)
Here's a power that the Federal government can't do, but the states can: The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
The states, of course, can do whatever they want with their own Writ of Habeas Corpus. (Except now they can't, thanks to the 14th.)
Another one, supposedly removed by the 16th amendment: No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. (Strictly speaking, the 16th amendment was not required for an income tax. A 'direct tax', as used there, is a property or head tax. Income taxes are taxes on transactions, hence are 'indirect taxes', and have always actually been constitutional. The 16th was because there was a confusion on the part of the supreme court at the time over taxes on rent money. Google for more info.)
Here's one that's still in effect: No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
The Federal government cannot give preference to stuff being shipped from certain ports. The various states can. They are restricted from levying taxes, but California can, for example, let ships leaving their ports bound for Oregon have higher priority than stuff leaving for Washington. Whereas the Federal government absolutely cannot play any favorites at all.
And of course, I was not attempting to claim that 'provide for the general Welfare' actually covered everything it's been used to cover. Although I think the word 'general' is perhaps the more broken of the two, the government seems to do a lot things that only help specific people.
But, yes, the Federal government can essentially do whatever it wants as long, as long as it doesn't infringe on state or personal rights, enumerated or otherwise. But 'taxing you and spending that money' is not even vaguely such an infringement, despite decades of pretending otherwise by the right.
Yes. The fact is, no corporation can possibly have any rights at all, because all of them are fictional notions by the government in the first place. Things that do not exist have no rights at all.
Owners of corporations have speech rights, and should be able to direct that corporation to make speech on their behalf, and they should not be punished with damage to that corporation, anymore than they should be punished for their own speech.
This fact does not magically mean that corporations have first amendment rights. That's sorta like arguing that a billboard has a first amendment right. No, the owner of it does, and the owner of it can't be punished either directly, or indirectly by damage to the billboard, for 'speech made by the billboard'. (And, hell, the billboard at least actually exists independent of government fiat, so it could, in theory, have rights. Although it doesn't, and the most relevant one would be the 'slavery' thing.(1))
Of course, the entire 'corporations have first amendment rights' was just a trick to undo the 'political speech can be limited' decision, by pretending that it somehow didn't apply to corporations. Because we'd already decided that political speech in the form of money could be limited'...but the supreme court decided to add 'from humans' to that, and then invent another category of 'people' and check them for that.
And, surprise, for some reason they weren't allowed to be limited, despite this making literally no sense even if you grant them first amendment rights on par with people. Even if you count them as actual people, actual people already have limits on campaign giving!
That right there is the actual problem. The whole dodge of making corporations into 'people' is due entirely to the fact that the court, at one point, decided to put a sanity cap on 'political speech in the form of giving buckets of money.'. And a later court said 'Hrm, how can we make bribery back legal?'
1) Incidentally, I think someone should arrest the owners of some of the large corporations for slavery. Why on earth would corporations have first amendment rights and not thirteenth? And how on earth is it 'free speech' if slaves are being forced to say it by their owners?
Ah, yes, the 'provide for the general Welfare' deniers.
Now they are apparently at the point of suggesting the US government is not supposed to protect people from hurricanes. Seriously. This is where those people are. The government is not allow to attempt to migrate natural disasters.
They have passed the point of claiming that certain things are not 'providing for the general welfare'. (Which is at least sometime a reasonable argument. Although hurricane warnings pretty clearly fall under it no matter what..) No, now they're at the point of claiming that the government is not allowed to 'provide for the general Welfare' at all, despite it being listed, right there, in the constitution.
The person I am replying to is about to respond with the claim that 'provide for the general Welfare' is a summary of the stuff explicitly listed under that, and grants no power in itself.
Really? Is 'to pay the Debts' also a summary? Because nothing allowing that appears to be listed below, either. Or 'To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises'. That doesn't appear below either.
I'm aware that it is entirely possible in your fucked up world-view that the government shouldn't be doing those things either, but the fact is that the government that the founding fathers set up did those things, so clearly they intended for the government to have such power. Those are not summaries of powers listed below (as they are not listed below), yet are clearly powers everyone agrees the government has...because they're listed right there. Along with 'provide for the general Welfare'.
Section 8 is clearly a list of things 'The Congress shall have Power' to do, and the fact that the first item is on the same line does not magically make it something else. The stuff on the first line is the stuff all governments are supposed to do, it's the other lines that are stuff intended to explain specific things they want the US government to do. The government is supposed to provide for the general Welfare, and it's hard to see how 'Warning people they're about to get hit by a hurricane' is not 'providing for the general Welfare'.
You are correct that easy student loans have inflated the price of college education.
However, I have to point out that's not the reason we have millions of unemployable college grads. The reason college grads are unemployed is that everyone is unemployed, and college grads are the people trying to start employment, so high unemployment hits them first.
What easy student loans have done is make all those unemployed people get hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt first before they can even enter the job market. Which is, obviously, completely idiotic to encourage, and at this point it's almost a requirement for all sorts of jobs that don't even slightly actually need a college degree.
But the loans are not, strictly speaking, what is causing them to be unemployed. The fact there are no jobs is what's causing them to be unemployed.
And I'm not convinced we can solve the college problem before fixing the economy. Right now, idiotic college loan policies are keeping even more young people from being unemployed. We can hardly make things better by dumping high school graduates straight on the job market.
Remember, everyone, it's the jobless's fault that there are seven people for each open position. There fact that by definition 85% of them can't get a job no matter that they do is irrelevant.
You know, someone should just start a big list of all the fucking stupid slashdot members, and why they are stupid. We could have a database, with a record of 1171201:Blames the the current unemployment problem on lazy people, is not aware there literally are not enough jobs no matter what people do.
This discussion is ripe for the picking of stupid people. As was is that climate change discussion.
And then, when it's done: Targeted advertising to those user ids.
OTOH, running out on the bill at a restaurant is theft.(1)
With the things you mentioned, you have an actual contract, and they know who you are, and you're being sent bills and refusing to pay them. (And it's not a 'contract violation' to fail to pay. It's just a debt.)
This is utterly different than walking out after anonymously consuming goods or services somewhere and not paying. The first is simply a debt, the second is a deliberate attempt to not have to pay. The first results in you being sued, the second results in you being arrested.
Of course, I've been assuming some sort of hotel prostitute, where the anonymous client is supposed to pay before they leave. Running out without doing that would be like dining and dashing.
It would be entirely different if someone, say, hires a call girl, telling them who they are, and having them come to their house for sex, with a bill sent later. (Not that illegal prostitution works that way, it's not even slightly safe for the prostitutes, but this is hypothetical.) That would be closer to not paying the phone bill.
In the places I know of, where it's illegal and hence both sides are distrusting each other (because neither can go to the police if the other rips them off.), it's always the former situation. Prostitutes do not send bills. So running out on without paying is, probably, technically, theft. (And yes, it's still theft even if prostitution is illegal. Just like stealing someone else's cocaine is technically theft. It's just pretty silly to go to the police over it.)
In places prostitution is legal, I suspect it operates rather closer to the later. They're going to want to know the names of all their clients, and, heck, probably want to get paid in advance, which makes this rather a moot point.
1) Note I do mean 'running out'. Being unable to pay is not theft. Hell, being able to pay and refusing is not theft. You will, however, have to let them know who you are, so they can bill you. (Or sue you if you're actually not intending to pay at all.)
There is no such thing as consent being granted contingent on something. Consent is not a business agreement. (Sex can be, but that transaction is totally different from consent.)
Such a concept makes a mockery of actual rape. It is not rape if someone promises to do something later and does not.
And it leads down a rather horrible slippery slope where after you pay a prostitute, they now have 'consented' to sex.
You think I'm kidding, but such rational was, for the longest time, basically the reason martial rape was legal. Because they had 'given their consent'.
Consent is decision, made by each of two (Or more, obviously) parties, that happens at the actual time of sex, as to what they wish to allow at that time. Trying to make it anything else, either to remove it(1) or to add it, is not something we want to play with.
1) We already run into enough trouble with trying to decide who cannot consent at all, like children, and under what circumstances others cannot, like being drunk.(2) We really don't need to be adding 'And the people have to not break promises later'.
2) I should mention that most 'too drunk to consent' nonsense is really 'too drunk to struggle' or even 'passed out', and is not actually any sort of debatable consent issue, despite what a few men claim. Women do not normally wander around voluntarily sleeping with men while drunk and then claiming rape later.
I want to know how the hell a piece of software is going to tell adults from children.
Last I checked, software was barely at the level where it could identify the shapes of people at all. Basically, faces.
I suspect you could use somewhat the same approach to figure out if a picture had a nude person in it, (Except the face thing took years of work.) but figuring out even the approximate age would be a neat trick.
Erm, I find the last one pretty strange. Sex can't retroactively change into rape because of later actions.
Failure to pay prostitutes is theft. Intending to fail to pay them in advance is also fraud. It is not rape.
Of course, as we've learned with Sweden, apparently some places do not seem to translated the crime 'rape' in any particularly reasonable way. Perhaps this is just an Italian word with two meanings.
I don't understand why buying part of a company is easier than buying a car.
I sometimes thing the sanest way to fix the problem would be to have companies owned for a quarter. Each quarter, their quarterly report comes out, and people can put in bids for selling or buying stock. (Sorta like a silent auction.) After one week, all transactions go through at exactly the same time, and everyone owns part of that company for another entire quarter.
Right now what's going on is not 'Buy a company because it is making a profit, and I expect a cut of the profits in the form of dividends.' (Which is the fricking point of owning stock.) It is 'I'll hold this stock for a bit and then sell it for a profit.'.
And that's the thought of the owners. Who, of course, select the board of directors, who select the CEO. Who then, knowing why he was hired, directs companies away from making a profit, and into manipulating the market just long enough that they can sell their stock.
It seems really surreal to me that, despite being fairly liberal, I'm having to sit and argue that companies should attempt to make profits. At least then they'd have employees, instead of having layoffs that bumps the stock price for a few weeks and guts the company.
You're being a bit unfair to Smith. Smith actually understood a loot of problems with capitalism and talked about them at length in his book.
In fact, he talked specifically about workers vs. masters and about how master colluding with each other to keep wages low was perfectly accepted, whereas society had managed to pass laws stopping workers from doing the same. (He seemed to think the solution was to also prohibit the masters from doing this. Aka, to interfere internally with how businesses operate to an astonishing level, to actually force employers to pay specific 'fair' wages.)
Adam Smith pointed out a lot of facts, like Marx, and then came up with philosophies about those facts, also like Marx.
Unlike Marx, though, the people who claim that Smith knew what he was talking about run around quoting some of his observations without actually bothering to learn what he thought about how things should be. They often represent things he stated as fact but disliked as being 'What Adam Smith thought'. (It doesn't help that his book is written at an extremely high reading level, with mile-long multi-clause sentences.)
For the best example, he was utterly opposed to any sort of collusion between businesses, at any level, to any extent at all, period. Even stuff that's legal today. He knew once that happened, the 'invisible hand of the market' stopped working.
Warren Buffet, for example, pays millions of pounds in tax on capital gains. Well, poor people don't pay capital gains.
Poor people do, indeed, pay tax on all capital gains they earn. They even pay the same percentage as Buffet.
They don't have any of that income, though, so they are taxed $0.
His income tax bill is neither here nor there, because most of his income doesn't come in that form.
Erm, I think you've misunderstood what he has repeatedly stated.
If you take all his income, if you add up every single added dollar that he ends up with at the end of the year, and you add up every single dollar his secretary ends up with at the end of the year, he pays a lower percentage in taxes. He ends up with something like 70% of his money left over, his secretary ends up with something like 60%. (I forget the exact numbers.)
Everyone knows his income isn't taxed as income. It is instead taxed at a lower rate, and it's such a lower rate as to counteract the fact he's paying a higher percentage on stuff counted as 'income'.
That's the fucking point people are making.
the wealthy put more into the pot than the poor
Hey, moron, the wealthy take much more out of the pot, too.
Add to this the fact that middle and high income earners pay most of the VAT bill as well, and the argument that those who are better off don't pay their "fair share" is unmitigated bollocks.
Uh, you're so astonishingly wrong I don't know how to respond to that. The poor do indeed pay a higher percentage of their income to cover VAT. All sales taxes are universally recognized as regressive. The VAT is slightly better at this than straight sales tax, but still results in the taking like 5% of the poor's income and 3% of the rich's
Of course, in your universe, this is all absolute. Everyone should pay the same amount of tax, regardless of how much they consumer or make.
Might I suggest you stop yammering about taxes that are supposed to be proportional, like income and sales, and instead attempt to get a head tax passed? That's the only sort of tax that people are supposed to pay the same amount of money into regardless of their financial situation.
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What's especially clever is if you actually spend time really taking notes on pointless things. Spend five minutes measuring the distance between electrical outlets or whatever.
Even if you have an escort, they will quickly get bored.
Bonus points if you actually forms on the clipboards with blanks on them that want that information.
Incidentally...stacks of live ammo pointed at compressed oxygen canisters? Seriously?
It's naive to think that you can pay every single person a living wage for every single job. In fact, it's considerably worse than naive, you either do not have a firm grip on reality, or you know nothing what so ever about economics.
Uh, it's you who don't have any grasp of economics.
Americans, even last year in a recession, made $12,357,113,000,000 in personal income. That's $42,000 a person, assuming it's spread over 300,000,000 people. (I don't know why we're paying a bunch of children, but let's just go with it.)
Assuming 52 weeks times 40 hours a week, that's almost exactly $20 an hour. With a more reasonable estimate of 200,000,000 working people, we're paying $30 an hour.
We certain can pay every single person a living wage. In fact, on average, we do.
However, instead of varying from $15 to $100 dollars an hour, which would be rather more reasonable, current payscales vary from illegal $5 an hour to $20 an hour for normal workers, and then the rich get paid like $10,000 an hour.
The Times would not be able to have an Opinion/Editorial section if they had to seek the approval of their shareholders.
I think making the shareholders actually vote to have such a section would be entirely reasonable. I'm not trying to say they'd have to vote for every instance of speech.
And I'm not entirely sure that his idea of everyone having to vote for it is reasonable. I think something like a two-third majority should be enough. Hell, a simple majority would probably be enough to stop most corporations from getting involved at all.
Look up the Koch brothers... they are responsible for a tremendous amount of money in politics and they own the companies in question outright (privately owned).
Well, yes, but that's not even a corporate problem at all. That's just a problem of money in the system, period.
The superrich CEO and board of directors abusing public corporations whose stockholders do not agree with what the corporations do is an added level on top of that. If those asshats are going to remove any sort of pension plans, instead encouraging 401Ks, and threaten to privatize social security, well, fuck them. If they're going to remove all other options and force our money into the stock market so we can save for retirement, they're going to have to deal with the fact that we now own part of 'their' corporations, and they don't get to use them to lobby for things that hurt us.
If you want to deal with the money in the system by people who actually own that much money, I can't see a way to fix that. I was just talking about the money in the system directed there by people who don't actually own that money.
I have to suggest you read the decision - they weren't making that argument at all. The whole "corporation=person" meme came from the press, not the judges.
You are correct, Citizens United didn't make that argument. It instead started with the premise that corporations are people. And took it to (one of) the logical conclusion.
I quote: If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.
That, right there, is nonsense. The court started with the premise that 'associations of citizens' have first amendment rights. (And, confusing, the court appears to think they can be 'jailed'. I've never seen a corporation in jail.)
No association has any rights, at all. Human beings in such an association have. Associations are things. (And not even concrete things, they are merely ideas.)
I actually have no problem with Citizens United, strangely enough. That didn't 'decide' things poorly...it started from a completely nonsensical assumption that the courts have had for quite some time of corporations being people, added in 'money is speech', and took the logical next step.
Although, as I said, I'm hoping they take the next step and start trying to figure out what sort of 13th amendment rights corporations have.
Oh, and if climate change deniers don't come up with some sort of conspiracy about Polish weather data, I will be very angry.
Perhaps climate change scientists are running giant heat pumps, moving all the heat in Poland out into the world to boost everywhere else's the temperature, and Poland is now freezing cold, hence the need for *ominous chord* 'data corrections' to keep people from realizing the average world temperature is still the same.
Or perhaps this is an indicator of a much darker secret, like the fact Poland does not actually exist.
It was not CRU's data. The CRU is not running monitoring stations, or even collecting data. The data was from the World Meteorological Organization, via the UK Met Office. Neither the CRU or the Met Office magically have permission to give away that data. In fact, CRU didn't even have that data anymore.
But, nevertheless, after all this happened, the Met Office went and asked for permission to release it. And the raw data they were allowed to release (Which appears to be every station but the 19 in Poland for some reason, insert your own conspiracy theory there.) is here.
It's a real good job you did with the Google there, looking for that data. You looked real hard. Or at least read some pages that said the data hadn't been released, and isn't that really good enough?
Of course, almost all that data was already public anyway via World Monthly Surface Station Climatology and the GHCN before the Met Office released the uncorrected data. So people ran statistical sampling by comparing the CRU data to those data sources to see if the corrections introduced any sort of biases. They didn't.
But, hey, I love climate change deniers. In fact, I love all deniers. It's so much fun when they don't get memos and run around demanding that people 'release' information that was released in 2009.
I like Al Frankin's solution to Citizen's United:
Every single owner must approve political spending. Which, in the case of publicly traded corporations, means every shareholder. Every shareholder must vote for it, which means that anyone can buy part of their stock and stop them.
I mean, it only makes sense. Why the hell should a company I own part of spend some of my profits on political ads I don't agree with?
And I don't see the slightest 'free speech' issue with that. I mean, if slavery of these virtual people is legal (Which it must be.) then surely it's legal to require that all slaveowners agree to their actions. I mean, there's plenty of laws about the treatment of slaves.
In fact, someone should check the laws about slaves already on the books. They're generally considered dead letter, but with the Supreme court apparently unintentionally bringing back slavery, someone should check to make sure there's not already a law prohibiting slaves from speaking about politics without their owners permission.(1)
This is an utterly surreal concept under modern law, but the entire ideal of owned entities being 'people' is a bit surreal to start with. That really makes no sense at all.
So do corporations... Citizens United wasn't about campaign contributions - it was about issue ads.
Yeah, I know they had an idiotic justification for it. Doesn't change how stupid it is.
1) And while they're at it, check laws in the northern states, like, oh, Delaware, that claimed to to free slaves who reached there. ;)
The problem is that now...
See, that's what I was disagreeing with you about. I believe you mean 'A problem we have now...'...we have so many problems with employment, it's hard to keep track.
we have cultivated the mindset that to be employable AT ALL you need a college degree,
That is because, for more than a decade, it has been a 'buyers market' with regard to employment. As jobs have gotten less and less, as more and more offshoring and whatnot has happened, as less and less people were employed, employers started demanding irrational things to distinguish potential employers apart. Because they could.
If we actually have jobs chasing people, instead of people chasing jobs, these idiotic educational requirements would never have existed. If there was two job openings for every person looking for work, they'd take whatever they could get.
Instead, there are seven people for every job openings, and employers can make whatever crazy demands they want. Not just with education, but with salary, benefits, whatever. Hey, we'll work you 80 hours a week and pay for 40, and if you don't like it, we'll do that with the guy who comes in right behind you.
Eventually we're going to have the most educated ditch diggers in the world.
At the rate we're going, we will have the most educated unemployed ditch diggers in the world. :(
People jumping straight into unemployment instead of taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt and then jumping into unemployment is probably 'better' in some objective sense, but is hardly ideal.
All the IPCC models are extremely accurate, at least over a running average of a few years. And the older models have been predicting the changes for 21 years, not ten.
The IPCC keeps coming out with new models every five years or so...but the new models have basically the same math as the older ones. The 'refinements' are mostly attempts to predict what humans are going to do WRT to CO2 emissions in the future.
Erm, have you checked google, or are you just repeating talking points?
Because the IPCC has pretty much all of their data available. Here is the data used in AR4. Whereas the math appears to be over at the paper itself.
The hilarious thing are the newer predictions by skeptics, some of which immediately underestimate the change, like within 5 years. Start a prediction in 2000, have it wrong by 2010.
Whereas the mainstream people, except for this 'Kellogg' dude, are mostly on track.
Although the graph is slightly misleading. Some of the predictions were made more recently, and projected backwards in time. For example, IPCC FAR was made in 1990, and thus doesn't really get 'credit' for any predictions before that, although it's nice to see it works backwards also.
OTOH, that prediction it gets every credit for still being almost entirely correct as of 2011, which proves the IPCC's climate models are pretty damn good, and is why each of them is really only a minor tweak to the previous one.
If that's true, then what, pray tell, would be the purpose of the 9th and 10th amendments? Seriously, if the founders indeed intended for the feds to do pretty much whatever, then why specifically spell out that "all else is the purview of the states and the people"?
First of all, the ninth amendment is only relevant to people who think 'rights' have something to do with the government spending money. I know that nonsense is baked pretty deeply into the brain of America, but it is, in fact, complete and utter nonsense. You have no right to not have your money taken from you as taxes (As that is an explicit power of the government.) and spent however the government wants. Rights and money have almost nothing to do with each other. (Except that the government can't take money from you specifically without a trial. That would be a Bill of Attainder if done via legislation, or unlawful seizure if done by the executive.)
So 'Providing for the general Welfare' has nothing to do with 'rights', enumerated or otherwise. The ninth amendment is utterly irrelevant.
As for the tenth...I don't know why people pretend there's not explicitly a section stating what the Federal government can't do. It's the very next section, section 9. Let's turn your logic around and ask why on earth section 9 felt like barring the government from issuing titles of nobility when such a power is absolutely nowhere in section 8? (Hint: Such a thing could fall under the general Welfare.)
Here's a power that the Federal government can't do, but the states can: The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
The states, of course, can do whatever they want with their own Writ of Habeas Corpus. (Except now they can't, thanks to the 14th.)
Another one, supposedly removed by the 16th amendment: No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. (Strictly speaking, the 16th amendment was not required for an income tax. A 'direct tax', as used there, is a property or head tax. Income taxes are taxes on transactions, hence are 'indirect taxes', and have always actually been constitutional. The 16th was because there was a confusion on the part of the supreme court at the time over taxes on rent money. Google for more info.)
Here's one that's still in effect: No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
The Federal government cannot give preference to stuff being shipped from certain ports. The various states can. They are restricted from levying taxes, but California can, for example, let ships leaving their ports bound for Oregon have higher priority than stuff leaving for Washington. Whereas the Federal government absolutely cannot play any favorites at all.
And of course, I was not attempting to claim that 'provide for the general Welfare' actually covered everything it's been used to cover. Although I think the word 'general' is perhaps the more broken of the two, the government seems to do a lot things that only help specific people.
But, yes, the Federal government can essentially do whatever it wants as long, as long as it doesn't infringe on state or personal rights, enumerated or otherwise. But 'taxing you and spending that money' is not even vaguely such an infringement, despite decades of pretending otherwise by the right.
But you can apparently close your eyes to the fact that there are literally more job seekers than open positions.
Yes. The fact is, no corporation can possibly have any rights at all, because all of them are fictional notions by the government in the first place. Things that do not exist have no rights at all.
Owners of corporations have speech rights, and should be able to direct that corporation to make speech on their behalf, and they should not be punished with damage to that corporation, anymore than they should be punished for their own speech.
This fact does not magically mean that corporations have first amendment rights. That's sorta like arguing that a billboard has a first amendment right. No, the owner of it does, and the owner of it can't be punished either directly, or indirectly by damage to the billboard, for 'speech made by the billboard'. (And, hell, the billboard at least actually exists independent of government fiat, so it could, in theory, have rights. Although it doesn't, and the most relevant one would be the 'slavery' thing.(1))
Of course, the entire 'corporations have first amendment rights' was just a trick to undo the 'political speech can be limited' decision, by pretending that it somehow didn't apply to corporations. Because we'd already decided that political speech in the form of money could be limited'...but the supreme court decided to add 'from humans' to that, and then invent another category of 'people' and check them for that.
And, surprise, for some reason they weren't allowed to be limited, despite this making literally no sense even if you grant them first amendment rights on par with people. Even if you count them as actual people, actual people already have limits on campaign giving!
That right there is the actual problem. The whole dodge of making corporations into 'people' is due entirely to the fact that the court, at one point, decided to put a sanity cap on 'political speech in the form of giving buckets of money.'. And a later court said 'Hrm, how can we make bribery back legal?'
1) Incidentally, I think someone should arrest the owners of some of the large corporations for slavery. Why on earth would corporations have first amendment rights and not thirteenth? And how on earth is it 'free speech' if slaves are being forced to say it by their owners?
Ah, yes, the 'provide for the general Welfare' deniers.
Now they are apparently at the point of suggesting the US government is not supposed to protect people from hurricanes. Seriously. This is where those people are. The government is not allow to attempt to migrate natural disasters.
They have passed the point of claiming that certain things are not 'providing for the general welfare'. (Which is at least sometime a reasonable argument. Although hurricane warnings pretty clearly fall under it no matter what..) No, now they're at the point of claiming that the government is not allowed to 'provide for the general Welfare' at all, despite it being listed, right there, in the constitution.
The person I am replying to is about to respond with the claim that 'provide for the general Welfare' is a summary of the stuff explicitly listed under that, and grants no power in itself.
Really? Is 'to pay the Debts' also a summary? Because nothing allowing that appears to be listed below, either. Or 'To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises'. That doesn't appear below either.
I'm aware that it is entirely possible in your fucked up world-view that the government shouldn't be doing those things either, but the fact is that the government that the founding fathers set up did those things, so clearly they intended for the government to have such power. Those are not summaries of powers listed below (as they are not listed below), yet are clearly powers everyone agrees the government has...because they're listed right there. Along with 'provide for the general Welfare'.
Section 8 is clearly a list of things 'The Congress shall have Power' to do, and the fact that the first item is on the same line does not magically make it something else. The stuff on the first line is the stuff all governments are supposed to do, it's the other lines that are stuff intended to explain specific things they want the US government to do. The government is supposed to provide for the general Welfare, and it's hard to see how 'Warning people they're about to get hit by a hurricane' is not 'providing for the general Welfare'.
Because society paid for your education, you fucktard.
You are correct that easy student loans have inflated the price of college education.
However, I have to point out that's not the reason we have millions of unemployable college grads. The reason college grads are unemployed is that everyone is unemployed, and college grads are the people trying to start employment, so high unemployment hits them first.
What easy student loans have done is make all those unemployed people get hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt first before they can even enter the job market. Which is, obviously, completely idiotic to encourage, and at this point it's almost a requirement for all sorts of jobs that don't even slightly actually need a college degree.
But the loans are not, strictly speaking, what is causing them to be unemployed. The fact there are no jobs is what's causing them to be unemployed.
And I'm not convinced we can solve the college problem before fixing the economy. Right now, idiotic college loan policies are keeping even more young people from being unemployed. We can hardly make things better by dumping high school graduates straight on the job market.
Wow, our country is really fucked up, isn't it?
Remember, everyone, it's the jobless's fault that there are seven people for each open position. There fact that by definition 85% of them can't get a job no matter that they do is irrelevant.
You know, someone should just start a big list of all the fucking stupid slashdot members, and why they are stupid. We could have a database, with a record of 1171201:Blames the the current unemployment problem on lazy people, is not aware there literally are not enough jobs no matter what people do.
This discussion is ripe for the picking of stupid people. As was is that climate change discussion.
And then, when it's done: Targeted advertising to those user ids.
OTOH, running out on the bill at a restaurant is theft.(1)
With the things you mentioned, you have an actual contract, and they know who you are, and you're being sent bills and refusing to pay them. (And it's not a 'contract violation' to fail to pay. It's just a debt.)
This is utterly different than walking out after anonymously consuming goods or services somewhere and not paying. The first is simply a debt, the second is a deliberate attempt to not have to pay. The first results in you being sued, the second results in you being arrested.
Of course, I've been assuming some sort of hotel prostitute, where the anonymous client is supposed to pay before they leave. Running out without doing that would be like dining and dashing.
It would be entirely different if someone, say, hires a call girl, telling them who they are, and having them come to their house for sex, with a bill sent later. (Not that illegal prostitution works that way, it's not even slightly safe for the prostitutes, but this is hypothetical.) That would be closer to not paying the phone bill.
In the places I know of, where it's illegal and hence both sides are distrusting each other (because neither can go to the police if the other rips them off.), it's always the former situation. Prostitutes do not send bills. So running out on without paying is, probably, technically, theft. (And yes, it's still theft even if prostitution is illegal. Just like stealing someone else's cocaine is technically theft. It's just pretty silly to go to the police over it.)
In places prostitution is legal, I suspect it operates rather closer to the later. They're going to want to know the names of all their clients, and, heck, probably want to get paid in advance, which makes this rather a moot point.
1) Note I do mean 'running out'. Being unable to pay is not theft. Hell, being able to pay and refusing is not theft. You will, however, have to let them know who you are, so they can bill you. (Or sue you if you're actually not intending to pay at all.)
There is no such thing as consent being granted contingent on something. Consent is not a business agreement. (Sex can be, but that transaction is totally different from consent.)
Such a concept makes a mockery of actual rape. It is not rape if someone promises to do something later and does not.
And it leads down a rather horrible slippery slope where after you pay a prostitute, they now have 'consented' to sex.
You think I'm kidding, but such rational was, for the longest time, basically the reason martial rape was legal. Because they had 'given their consent'.
Consent is decision, made by each of two (Or more, obviously) parties, that happens at the actual time of sex, as to what they wish to allow at that time. Trying to make it anything else, either to remove it(1) or to add it, is not something we want to play with.
1) We already run into enough trouble with trying to decide who cannot consent at all, like children, and under what circumstances others cannot, like being drunk.(2) We really don't need to be adding 'And the people have to not break promises later'.
2) I should mention that most 'too drunk to consent' nonsense is really 'too drunk to struggle' or even 'passed out', and is not actually any sort of debatable consent issue, despite what a few men claim. Women do not normally wander around voluntarily sleeping with men while drunk and then claiming rape later.
I want to know how the hell a piece of software is going to tell adults from children.
Last I checked, software was barely at the level where it could identify the shapes of people at all. Basically, faces.
I suspect you could use somewhat the same approach to figure out if a picture had a nude person in it, (Except the face thing took years of work.) but figuring out even the approximate age would be a neat trick.
Erm, I find the last one pretty strange. Sex can't retroactively change into rape because of later actions.
Failure to pay prostitutes is theft. Intending to fail to pay them in advance is also fraud. It is not rape.
Of course, as we've learned with Sweden, apparently some places do not seem to translated the crime 'rape' in any particularly reasonable way. Perhaps this is just an Italian word with two meanings.
I like to say 'A rising tides lifts all boats, but only the rich appear to have any boats'.
I don't understand why buying part of a company is easier than buying a car.
I sometimes thing the sanest way to fix the problem would be to have companies owned for a quarter. Each quarter, their quarterly report comes out, and people can put in bids for selling or buying stock. (Sorta like a silent auction.) After one week, all transactions go through at exactly the same time, and everyone owns part of that company for another entire quarter.
Right now what's going on is not 'Buy a company because it is making a profit, and I expect a cut of the profits in the form of dividends.' (Which is the fricking point of owning stock.) It is 'I'll hold this stock for a bit and then sell it for a profit.'.
And that's the thought of the owners. Who, of course, select the board of directors, who select the CEO. Who then, knowing why he was hired, directs companies away from making a profit, and into manipulating the market just long enough that they can sell their stock.
It seems really surreal to me that, despite being fairly liberal, I'm having to sit and argue that companies should attempt to make profits. At least then they'd have employees, instead of having layoffs that bumps the stock price for a few weeks and guts the company.
You're being a bit unfair to Smith. Smith actually understood a loot of problems with capitalism and talked about them at length in his book.
In fact, he talked specifically about workers vs. masters and about how master colluding with each other to keep wages low was perfectly accepted, whereas society had managed to pass laws stopping workers from doing the same. (He seemed to think the solution was to also prohibit the masters from doing this. Aka, to interfere internally with how businesses operate to an astonishing level, to actually force employers to pay specific 'fair' wages.)
Adam Smith pointed out a lot of facts, like Marx, and then came up with philosophies about those facts, also like Marx.
Unlike Marx, though, the people who claim that Smith knew what he was talking about run around quoting some of his observations without actually bothering to learn what he thought about how things should be. They often represent things he stated as fact but disliked as being 'What Adam Smith thought'. (It doesn't help that his book is written at an extremely high reading level, with mile-long multi-clause sentences.)
For the best example, he was utterly opposed to any sort of collusion between businesses, at any level, to any extent at all, period. Even stuff that's legal today. He knew once that happened, the 'invisible hand of the market' stopped working.
Warren Buffet, for example, pays millions of pounds in tax on capital gains. Well, poor people don't pay capital gains.
Poor people do, indeed, pay tax on all capital gains they earn. They even pay the same percentage as Buffet.
They don't have any of that income, though, so they are taxed $0.
His income tax bill is neither here nor there, because most of his income doesn't come in that form.
Erm, I think you've misunderstood what he has repeatedly stated.
If you take all his income, if you add up every single added dollar that he ends up with at the end of the year, and you add up every single dollar his secretary ends up with at the end of the year, he pays a lower percentage in taxes. He ends up with something like 70% of his money left over, his secretary ends up with something like 60%. (I forget the exact numbers.)
Everyone knows his income isn't taxed as income. It is instead taxed at a lower rate, and it's such a lower rate as to counteract the fact he's paying a higher percentage on stuff counted as 'income'.
That's the fucking point people are making.
the wealthy put more into the pot than the poor
Hey, moron, the wealthy take much more out of the pot, too.
Add to this the fact that middle and high income earners pay most of the VAT bill as well, and the argument that those who are better off don't pay their "fair share" is unmitigated bollocks.
Uh, you're so astonishingly wrong I don't know how to respond to that. The poor do indeed pay a higher percentage of their income to cover VAT. All sales taxes are universally recognized as regressive. The VAT is slightly better at this than straight sales tax, but still results in the taking like 5% of the poor's income and 3% of the rich's
Of course, in your universe, this is all absolute. Everyone should pay the same amount of tax, regardless of how much they consumer or make.
Might I suggest you stop yammering about taxes that are supposed to be proportional, like income and sales, and instead attempt to get a head tax passed? That's the only sort of tax that people are supposed to pay the same amount of money into regardless of their financial situation.