If you were familiar with Operation Fast & Furious you would know that there was no way that a career bureaucrat would have approved that program without approval from a political appointee (and probably only with the belief that it had been approved all the way up to at least the Attorney General).
As to point one, yes that is true, but it was NOT after the loan was rewritten to put the investors ahead of repaying the government loan in bankruptcy. One of the reasons that it is true is because they did not wait for the evaluation of the company to be completed before they approved the loan.
Well, there are two reasons for that. The primary reason that the Constitution is "underdetermined" is because it was a document designed to limit the power of government. Many of the issues that people think the Constitution does not speak clearly enough on are issues that the Framers considered to be things that the Federal government should not be involved in. The second was that the Framers intended that those who followed them should amend the Constitution as needed to address new issues.
For the most part though, I believe that the "problems" you see in the Constitution result from the attempts to twist it to allow the federal government to do things the Framers thought they had explicitly denied it the power to do.
It was not "fast-tracked" for funding under Bush. The Solyndra loan was put on hold by the Bush Administration (at least partly because they were not going to be able to complete evaluation before the transition and therefore left it for the new Administration to reach a decision). The Obama Administration may have put more "due diligence" in place, but they then made a decision before that "due diligence" was completed. Somebody from the DOE predicted that Solyndra would go bankrupt in September of 2011 before the DOE renegotiated the loan guarantees so that the investors would get paid first, then, what do you know, Solyndra went bankrupt in September 2011. The Administration is trying to claim that the email predicting the bankruptcy was talking about something else, but this is the same Administration that claims upper levels of the Administration were unaware of Project Fast & Furious when they were making speeches touting the program.
If you do away with interpreting the Constitution according to the original intent of the Framers, the Constitution serves no useful purpose and should just be done away with. Either the Constitution means what the Framers intended it to mean, with changes made according to the system they put in place to change it, or it doesn't really mean anything and is just used to support whatever it is that the powers that be wish to do (and to shelter them from the consequences of not doing the things that they do not wish to do that a significant block of the people wish them to do).
Were Aptera's investors major donors to Issa's campaign? If not, there is no comparison with the Solyndra case. Additionally, while Aptera may not have been a good choice for a government loan (I do not know, but their going out of business now suggests that maybe so), it was in Issa's district. It is part of his job to assist companies in his district in dealing with the federal government. At no point in any of the letters that are quoted in your link did he do any more than say he was requesting that Aptera's application be "given full consideration." If Issa's letter had brought up legislation in front of his committee as well as the loan guarantee, then there would be something to this comparison. In the Solyndra case, the loan appears to have been approved over the objections of the non-political staff at the Energy Department...not only that, when it became obvious that Solyndra was going bankrupt the loans were re-written so that the investors would get their money out before the loans were repaid in bankruptcy.
This does not mean that I approve of Issa's support for Aptera, just that it appears to be a different class of problem from Solyndra.
Game consoles did not arise because they were better. Game consoles arose because it was easier to implement DRM on console games than it was on PC games. They will remain around for much the same reason (although the gap is narrower than it was at the beginning).
The timeline seems to be Facebook enters into an agreement with Merck, then breaks it and forms an agreement with another Merck, then realizes there's an issue. I assert that this is the logical place for the lawyers to get involved, as it's the first time they realized there was a serious legal issue, and it also happens to be too late to do anything about the first two agreements or the first contract breach.
I don't know about the agreements part, but that is what I said in my first post in this exchange.
If you think that Facebook acted without consulting its lawyers once this case entered the courts, you are an even bigger fool than you appear from your posts.
The Kennedys were the closest thing to a hereditary royal family we had in the US.
Yes, but JFK is the guy who started them as a royal family. I do not fault you for leaving Kennedy off of your list, I was just pointing out that when JFK was elected he did not qualify as "old family" by the standards of the day. Of course, his presidency made the Kennedys into a sort of royal family.
In my lifetime, the only Presidents from an "old family" were the Bushes. John F. Kennedy was Irish Catholic, which, by definition, made him not one of the "old families" in 1960.
India is ranked 4th on GDP lists that are adjusted for "purchasing power parity" and 9th or 10th on nominal GDP lists. That does not put them "way down the list".
Well, I suppose it is possible that you have a better understanding of the relevant law than Facebook's lawyers, but I would bet not (considering that neither you nor I have seen the actual contracts that Facebook entered into with either Merck).
You appear to be talking about PR, while I am talking about the legal issues. If it went to court, their claim would be that when they became aware of the legal issues they withdrew the link from both companies thus, they are no longer involved until the two companies come to an agreement about it.
Actually, yes, they can. As a matter of fact, I would not be surprised to learn that the U.S. trademark issue was why they gave control over to Merck, U.S. (assuming it was someone from Facebook who gave control to Merck, U.S.). As a legal matter, I am pretty sure that they are no longer part of this fight unless their agreement with Merck KGaA was more binding than the impression I have gotten.
Listen, what happens to our planet in 500 years is really really important. What happens to our government in the next 20 is also really important, and if you start violating important principles of one (such as limitations of power and separation of local and federal power) for the other, Im not sure that you can call it a net win. A pristine planet in an orwellian society doesnt really appeal to me, and its why these battles are so important to fight.
The thing that these people who are fighting for expanded government in order to "save the planet" always overlook is that those countries that have had the sorts of governments with the power to enforce the types of rules they want have done more harm to the environment than the capitalist countries they want to turn into that sort of country.
I was wondering if anyone would point out that this scandal isn't just the Rupert Murdoch papers. The others have done it as well, there just isn't as much effort to get to the bottom of those stories.
Most (not all) of the problems with the current system are a result of the regulatory environment. Aspirin would not be approved in today's regulatory environment. That does not mean we should completely do away with all pharmaceutical regulations, but the current system is flawed. I, also, don't have a solution. I think I have an idea, but not one that can be resolved on here.
No, they cannot sue Facebook for violating trademark law because Facebook is no longer using (by allowing someone to use) the trademarked term. Depending on their agreement with Merck KGaA, it may be that Merck KGaA can sue them for breach of contract, but I would bet that there is no basis for that.I am quite confident that Facebook's lawyers have a better grasp on the legal implications of this decision than you or I.
I looked at the decision Facebook reached and tried to conjecture why they would make that decision based on the known facts. The best explanation I could come up with was that they did not want to get caught in a battle over trademark. This particular one is difficult because it is one of a handful around the world where competing companies own the same trademark in different parts of the world in a way that until recently was clearly delineated by law. The Internet has introduced a new marketing space that is very difficult to get to respect national boundaries with regard to something like this.
NO, you should check out the argument that was made in the movie made in writing. The problem with videos to make an argument is that it is easy to hide logic flaws by buzzing right past them too fast for people to notice.
I have a friend who is a bright guy who is constantly sending me videos and saying, "Wow, what do you think of what this guy has to say?" Every now and again I watch one. Every time, I notice that the guy (whoever it is this time) goes over some aspect of his argument in a way that sounds really convincing, but, if you closely pay attention to the actual words he uses, doesn't support the conclusion he asks you to draw from it. I am sure that this documentary is much the same.
I am trying to figure out how you got the idea that one of the following organizations has a monopoly on medical practice in America:
American Dental Association
Ok, I can see how you might say that they have a monopoly on dental care, but medical practice
American Diabetes Association
Nope, I just don't see it.
American Dietetic Association
They focus on nutrition.
Maybe you meant the Americans for Democratic Action? I will agree that they are a rather nefarious organization, but I am pretty sure they limit themselves to voter fraud and misinforming people and don't really take a lot of interest in medical practice.
As for magnetic fields/electricity, it has been very thoroughly studied and my understanding is that it is used to speed healing of bone fractures and some types of muscle injuries.
Why would big pharma want cancer cured, you ask? So that they can profit from selling the cure. You see, if Big Pharma Company A has research that shows a cure for cancer but decides to not pursue it because they want to go on selling the drugs they already have to treat the symptoms of cancer, they run two risks. Risk number one, they fail to develop any new drugs to treat the symptoms and their patents on existing drugs expire. In that case, other people can start manufacturing those drugs and selling them for cheap. That is not very profitable. Risk number two, Big Pharma Company B is doing similar research and decides to pursue it. In this case, not only does Big Pharma Company A not make money off of selling the cure for cancer AND not get the PR push for being the company that developed the cure (while Big Pharma Company B does), they stop making money off of selling the treatments as well.
But if Facebook returns things to the way they were, they will be in the middle of that legal fight and they don't want to be, so they have decided to not allow either of them to use it until the two resolve their legal issues relative to it.
I did not say that patents do not protect ideas, but that is not what they are supposed to do. The fact that patents today protect the underlying idea is why our patent system is broken.
Slashdot Mirror
If you were familiar with Operation Fast & Furious you would know that there was no way that a career bureaucrat would have approved that program without approval from a political appointee (and probably only with the belief that it had been approved all the way up to at least the Attorney General).
As to point one, yes that is true, but it was NOT after the loan was rewritten to put the investors ahead of repaying the government loan in bankruptcy. One of the reasons that it is true is because they did not wait for the evaluation of the company to be completed before they approved the loan.
Well, there are two reasons for that. The primary reason that the Constitution is "underdetermined" is because it was a document designed to limit the power of government. Many of the issues that people think the Constitution does not speak clearly enough on are issues that the Framers considered to be things that the Federal government should not be involved in. The second was that the Framers intended that those who followed them should amend the Constitution as needed to address new issues.
For the most part though, I believe that the "problems" you see in the Constitution result from the attempts to twist it to allow the federal government to do things the Framers thought they had explicitly denied it the power to do.
It was not "fast-tracked" for funding under Bush. The Solyndra loan was put on hold by the Bush Administration (at least partly because they were not going to be able to complete evaluation before the transition and therefore left it for the new Administration to reach a decision). The Obama Administration may have put more "due diligence" in place, but they then made a decision before that "due diligence" was completed. Somebody from the DOE predicted that Solyndra would go bankrupt in September of 2011 before the DOE renegotiated the loan guarantees so that the investors would get paid first, then, what do you know, Solyndra went bankrupt in September 2011. The Administration is trying to claim that the email predicting the bankruptcy was talking about something else, but this is the same Administration that claims upper levels of the Administration were unaware of Project Fast & Furious when they were making speeches touting the program.
If you do away with interpreting the Constitution according to the original intent of the Framers, the Constitution serves no useful purpose and should just be done away with. Either the Constitution means what the Framers intended it to mean, with changes made according to the system they put in place to change it, or it doesn't really mean anything and is just used to support whatever it is that the powers that be wish to do (and to shelter them from the consequences of not doing the things that they do not wish to do that a significant block of the people wish them to do).
Were Aptera's investors major donors to Issa's campaign? If not, there is no comparison with the Solyndra case. Additionally, while Aptera may not have been a good choice for a government loan (I do not know, but their going out of business now suggests that maybe so), it was in Issa's district. It is part of his job to assist companies in his district in dealing with the federal government. At no point in any of the letters that are quoted in your link did he do any more than say he was requesting that Aptera's application be "given full consideration." If Issa's letter had brought up legislation in front of his committee as well as the loan guarantee, then there would be something to this comparison. In the Solyndra case, the loan appears to have been approved over the objections of the non-political staff at the Energy Department...not only that, when it became obvious that Solyndra was going bankrupt the loans were re-written so that the investors would get their money out before the loans were repaid in bankruptcy.
This does not mean that I approve of Issa's support for Aptera, just that it appears to be a different class of problem from Solyndra.
Game consoles did not arise because they were better. Game consoles arose because it was easier to implement DRM on console games than it was on PC games. They will remain around for much the same reason (although the gap is narrower than it was at the beginning).
The timeline seems to be Facebook enters into an agreement with Merck, then breaks it and forms an agreement with another Merck, then realizes there's an issue. I assert that this is the logical place for the lawyers to get involved, as it's the first time they realized there was a serious legal issue, and it also happens to be too late to do anything about the first two agreements or the first contract breach.
I don't know about the agreements part, but that is what I said in my first post in this exchange.
If you think that Facebook acted without consulting its lawyers once this case entered the courts, you are an even bigger fool than you appear from your posts.
The Kennedys were the closest thing to a hereditary royal family we had in the US.
Yes, but JFK is the guy who started them as a royal family. I do not fault you for leaving Kennedy off of your list, I was just pointing out that when JFK was elected he did not qualify as "old family" by the standards of the day. Of course, his presidency made the Kennedys into a sort of royal family.
In my lifetime, the only Presidents from an "old family" were the Bushes. John F. Kennedy was Irish Catholic, which, by definition, made him not one of the "old families" in 1960.
India is ranked 4th on GDP lists that are adjusted for "purchasing power parity" and 9th or 10th on nominal GDP lists. That does not put them "way down the list".
Well, I suppose it is possible that you have a better understanding of the relevant law than Facebook's lawyers, but I would bet not (considering that neither you nor I have seen the actual contracts that Facebook entered into with either Merck).
You appear to be talking about PR, while I am talking about the legal issues. If it went to court, their claim would be that when they became aware of the legal issues they withdrew the link from both companies thus, they are no longer involved until the two companies come to an agreement about it.
Actually, yes, they can. As a matter of fact, I would not be surprised to learn that the U.S. trademark issue was why they gave control over to Merck, U.S. (assuming it was someone from Facebook who gave control to Merck, U.S.). As a legal matter, I am pretty sure that they are no longer part of this fight unless their agreement with Merck KGaA was more binding than the impression I have gotten.
Listen, what happens to our planet in 500 years is really really important. What happens to our government in the next 20 is also really important, and if you start violating important principles of one (such as limitations of power and separation of local and federal power) for the other, Im not sure that you can call it a net win. A pristine planet in an orwellian society doesnt really appeal to me, and its why these battles are so important to fight.
The thing that these people who are fighting for expanded government in order to "save the planet" always overlook is that those countries that have had the sorts of governments with the power to enforce the types of rules they want have done more harm to the environment than the capitalist countries they want to turn into that sort of country.
Just require them, by law, to publicly report the results of *all* trials that involve the drug.
They are currently required, by law, to report the results of all trials of a drug to the FDA when they seek approval of that drug.
I was wondering if anyone would point out that this scandal isn't just the Rupert Murdoch papers. The others have done it as well, there just isn't as much effort to get to the bottom of those stories.
Most (not all) of the problems with the current system are a result of the regulatory environment. Aspirin would not be approved in today's regulatory environment. That does not mean we should completely do away with all pharmaceutical regulations, but the current system is flawed. I, also, don't have a solution. I think I have an idea, but not one that can be resolved on here.
No, they cannot sue Facebook for violating trademark law because Facebook is no longer using (by allowing someone to use) the trademarked term. Depending on their agreement with Merck KGaA, it may be that Merck KGaA can sue them for breach of contract, but I would bet that there is no basis for that.I am quite confident that Facebook's lawyers have a better grasp on the legal implications of this decision than you or I.
I looked at the decision Facebook reached and tried to conjecture why they would make that decision based on the known facts. The best explanation I could come up with was that they did not want to get caught in a battle over trademark. This particular one is difficult because it is one of a handful around the world where competing companies own the same trademark in different parts of the world in a way that until recently was clearly delineated by law. The Internet has introduced a new marketing space that is very difficult to get to respect national boundaries with regard to something like this.
NO, you should check out the argument that was made in the movie made in writing. The problem with videos to make an argument is that it is easy to hide logic flaws by buzzing right past them too fast for people to notice.
I have a friend who is a bright guy who is constantly sending me videos and saying, "Wow, what do you think of what this guy has to say?" Every now and again I watch one. Every time, I notice that the guy (whoever it is this time) goes over some aspect of his argument in a way that sounds really convincing, but, if you closely pay attention to the actual words he uses, doesn't support the conclusion he asks you to draw from it. I am sure that this documentary is much the same.
Ok, I can see how you might say that they have a monopoly on dental care, but medical practice
Nope, I just don't see it.
They focus on nutrition.
Maybe you meant the Americans for Democratic Action? I will agree that they are a rather nefarious organization, but I am pretty sure they limit themselves to voter fraud and misinforming people and don't really take a lot of interest in medical practice.
As for magnetic fields/electricity, it has been very thoroughly studied and my understanding is that it is used to speed healing of bone fractures and some types of muscle injuries.
Why would big pharma want cancer cured, you ask? So that they can profit from selling the cure. You see, if Big Pharma Company A has research that shows a cure for cancer but decides to not pursue it because they want to go on selling the drugs they already have to treat the symptoms of cancer, they run two risks. Risk number one, they fail to develop any new drugs to treat the symptoms and their patents on existing drugs expire. In that case, other people can start manufacturing those drugs and selling them for cheap. That is not very profitable. Risk number two, Big Pharma Company B is doing similar research and decides to pursue it. In this case, not only does Big Pharma Company A not make money off of selling the cure for cancer AND not get the PR push for being the company that developed the cure (while Big Pharma Company B does), they stop making money off of selling the treatments as well.
But if Facebook returns things to the way they were, they will be in the middle of that legal fight and they don't want to be, so they have decided to not allow either of them to use it until the two resolve their legal issues relative to it.
I did not say that patents do not protect ideas, but that is not what they are supposed to do. The fact that patents today protect the underlying idea is why our patent system is broken.