The solution to the cost of an attorney isn't robotic unthinking automation but by either creating programs that make access to low-cost legal advice more readily available or simplifying the law in certain areas so that an attorney isn't needed to navigate complex legal waters.
The thing is that as laws more strictly limited who could practice law, the laws, also, became more complicated, so that it was harder for those not part of the "priesthood" to understand.
The thing is that making the practice of law less regulated would not force high quality legal advice out of the market. It would just force it to compete with cheaper, lower quality legal advice. The result would be that high quality legal advice would be available for less. And we aren't talking about going to court here, we are talking about things like wills. I was just part of a group that talked with an estate planner about wills. He suggested that a lawyer would charge about $500 to write a will. My wife and I have no children, we may as well let the state decide how to dispose of our assets as pay a lawyer $500 to write up a will, the difference between the way the state would distribute our assets and the way we would choose to would, at this point, be less than $500.
A lot of the conversation on this board reminds me of the sorts of conversations that went around when the IBM PC came out. There were lots of arguments about the fact that there were plenty of other PCs that did everything the IBM did, only better vs. "It's from IBM, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." IBM dominated the PC market until they tried to stop the advance of PCs at the 286 processor. By that point the MS-DOS running on everybody else's PCs were fully compatible with that running on IBM PCs, so it was a no brainer to go with the more powerful PCs (of course, IBM would have lost their dominance around then anyway, they were just too big to be nimble enough for that space).
The big difference here is that Android really seems to fill the space most analogous to that filled by DOS in those days and Cisco is not nearly the behemoth that IBM was.
Considering that Senator Robert Byrd only died last year and while he was alive Democrats considered him the "Dean of the Senate", yes. In case you were unaware, Robert Byrd started his political career as a recruiter for the KKK. He left the KKK (or at least stopped openly being a member) when it stopped being a political asset.
What have the Democrats ever done that was beneficial for anyone other than rich, white people?
In most conversations I have heard, "brownskinned people" has been used to refer to anybody who was not of European descent (sometimes further constricted to exclude East Asians). I can conceive of using the term "brownskinned people" to refer to Hispanics, Arabs and South Asians while excluding Africans. However, it makes no sense to use the term to refer exclusively to Arab Muslims (which seems to be what you are saying it refers to). Considering that not all Arabs are Muslim (although the Muslims are working to extinguish the exceptions) and not all Muslims are Arab, being anti-Muslim is not an example of racism.
You are aware that Herman Cain is black, aren't you? It is hard to argue that someone who supports Herman Caine for President is a racist because they oppose Obama. Which is what the poster I replied to seemed to claiming, unless you are contending that blacks are not in the same category as "brownskinned people."
On the other hand, it is easy to argue that a person that supports the party of segregation, Jim Crow laws and the KKK is a racist.
The guilds exist for a reason and certainly a thousand years ago it was a very good reason.
Yes, the reason was to promote the training of new experts in the field. The reason for the guilds being granted monopoly status in that field, however, did not exist for a good reason. That happened in order to protect guild members from competition that was willing to work for less. One of the things that happened when guilds were granted monopolies is that they were able to get much greater profits from tasks that required little or no actual trainning. This meant the Master Craftsman could charge high fees for jobs that they then pawned off on thier apprentices. Even though someone with only the most modicum of training (even self-training) could do that particular job.
Considering that one of the two favorite candidate of the Tea Party participants is Herman Caine, I wonder what group you are talking about that wants people to hate "those brownskinned people". Or maybe you have formed your opinion of the tea parties based on the reporting of people who always vote for the political party that wrote the Jim Crow laws and formed the KKK.
Besides, if this is successful, it'll have a detrimental effect to authors and publishers who publish books with legal templates (Draft your own Will books, for instance), most of which are for really simple stuff like wills or simple contracts. It's going to deny the poorest people access to making these documents because it's going to force them to seek attorneys who are often too expensive.
That is the idea here. The lawyers don't like those books either. The whole point of laws like the one in this case is to protect certain groups from competition (or to force those who go into certain businesses to pay dues to an organization).
It is going to happen immediately (or as soon as the law goes into effect). The summary states that Amazon has announced that their affiliate program will be discontinued in California as soon as the new law goes into effect (which I believe is immediately).
Please note, the federal budget has not actually been balanced in my lifetime. The myth that it was balanced under Clinton is based on accounting gimmicks. However, if you look at the size of the federal debt, it has increased every year, including the year when the budget was supposedly balanced. If tax revenues equal or exceed government expenditures (a balanced budget), the amount of debt would not increase.
California props up the federal government and the defense budget by paying out more than it receives.
Not out of the state budget. I am pretty sure that there is little or no money in the state budget that is being sent to the federal government. When discussing balancing a state budget, the amount of federal spending in a state vs the amount of federal taxes collected in the state is irrelevant.
California has no right to place demands on a company that does not have a presence in California. What they have done is said that if you do certain types of business with companies in California, they are going to count that the same as having a presence in California. Amazon's response to that is to say, "Fine, we will discontinue such business relationships, effective immediately." So, Amazon is still not going to collect those taxes for California AND certain businesses in California will either have to move out of California, or lose a significant source of revenue. The net result of this law will be a reduction in the amount of tax revenue collected by the state of California.
They are doing nothing different from the long, accepted mail order tradition
... exactly, and mail order companies also have been collecting state taxes for years when they have a presence in the state. You'll see that on many mail-order forms, for example "Residents of $STATE please add $N. sales tax."
I think so many people haven't bothered even looking at a mail-order coupon in ages (blame the Innert00bs:^) that they've forgotten this.
And Amazon has been collecting sales tax on sales to states where they have a presence in the state since day one. What has changed is that states are defining what constitutes having a presence in the state as having a business relationship with businesses that have a presence in the state. Amazon's response to this is to dissolve those business relations when such laws are passed. Of course, if they had done this when New York first passed such a law, these other states might not have passed them. Amazon instead chose to fight New York's law in court, and, while they are still appealing it, they lost.
There is certainly prior art. I know that this sort of thing was done in Second Life from its inception. I am sure that similar gift giving was done in other online social networks since the very first online social network was developed.
Push hard enough against GPS tracking and we will have optical systems using either LEO satellites (lots of 'em) or solar-powered drones. The LEO satellites would be tough to coordinate and we might not have all the kinks worked out of that right now. The drones are clearly less than five years away and might be nearly as cost effective as GPS tracking is today.
If the Supreme Court rules that this sort of GPS tracking is unconstitutional, there is no way that any of these options would not, also, be unconstitutional. This is why many of us hope the Supreme Court opposes this sort of tracking.
The problem with this has been pointed out before in similar discussions. If the police can do this sort of warrantless GPS tracking, it becomes easy for a police officer to stalk an ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend. Without GPS, a police officer can choose to tail someone for bad reasons, but sooner or later, their supervisor is likely to question the time they are spending doing so. On the other hand, GPS tracking devices are relatively cheap and it is likely that their supervisor might never realize that they had used one inappropriately. Additionally, it gives the police the power to track those who are in political opposition to current office holders.
What good does it do me if the GPS evidence from when I travel onto private property being inadmissable in court if the reason that the police are tracking me is to find out whether or not I associate with people in disfavor with the powers that be? The purpose of the 4th Ammendment is not to make it harder for the authorities to find out if you are committing a crime. The purpose of the 4th Ammendment is to make it harder for the authorities to find out if you are supporting an opposition political movement.
This is not a bill to be passed, but a Court ruling. It is much harder to circumvent Court rulings that somethign is unconstitutional than it is to circumvent a bill that outlaws some government action. The reason it is harder to circumvent Supreme Court rulings is that the Court gets very salty when you try to go around their clear meaning. If the Court rules that a certain action by the government is unconstitutional, the government has to show that the circumvention they came up with represents a different category of behavior. Further, lower courts often extend Supreme Court rulings in ways which limit such circumvention.
Actually, you hit on a problem that has developed in modern government in the U.S.. There has come to be this attitude that the Supreme Court decides what is Constitutional and it is not the job of Congressmen or the President to worry about whether a law is Constitutional before voting for/signing it. This is why I think here is some merit to the idea that every bill proposed in Congress should contain a statement declaring where in the Constitution Congress gets the authority to enact such a law. It is not that it would stop Congress from enacting bad laws, but it would force members to be more concious of the fact that Congress has (theoretically, at least) limited powers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia tends to get their rulings supported by the Supreme Court. I suspect that this has to do with the judges on both courts being based in Washington, D.C. so that they end up in the same social circles. This means that a) the Supreme Court Judges are a little more reluctant to overturn their decisions and b) the Circuit Court Judges are more familiar with the way that the Supreme Court Judges think and so are more likely to rule in a similar manner to the way the Supreme Court would.
Additionally, both the liberal and conservative judges on this Court have shown lines of reasoning that would lead them to oppose the government on this. These are separate lines of reasoning that just happen to converge on this issue. Unfortunately (since I believe that this type of tracking should require a warrant), there is also a line of thinking on the Supreme Court that sometimes leads them to defer to the other branches of government on issues such as this.
How this comes out will depend on how the lawyers representing Antoine Jones argue the case and whether they choose the arguments that appeal to both the liberal and conservative reasoning on the Court that would oppose this sort of government action.
One of the most fun things is to argue with one of these "tolerant" people who will tell you that all points of view should be respected, that you should be accepting of people who view the world differently and that you shouldn't try and force your viewpoint on others. I always ask them if they truly believe that. Then I ask them why they are trying to force their viewpoint on me? My observation is that people who say that you should never try to force your beliefs on others are usually trying to force thier belief on others.
Perhaps this law is not the exact best way to address this problem, but I hope it will at least start the discussion among the general public, and perhaps it will eventually lead to better laws to address the issue.
Start the discussion among the general public? This discussion has been going on for as long as I can remember. This is a bad law designed to solve a problem that is not amenable to solution by passing laws.
Yeah, but we don't, so why are you acting like we do or should?
Because he believes that all view points should be accepted and tolerated, as long as they agree with his.
They don't want government interference in thier lives, but are perfectly happy to ask the government to interfere in your life. Laws which interfere with things they want to do are bad, laws that interfere with things they think you shouldn't do are good.
Ever heard of the IRA? They are a terrorist organization (although they have been mostly inactive for a few years now). They were composed almost exclusively of Catholics from Ireland, both men and women.
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The solution to the cost of an attorney isn't robotic unthinking automation but by either creating programs that make access to low-cost legal advice more readily available or simplifying the law in certain areas so that an attorney isn't needed to navigate complex legal waters.
The thing is that as laws more strictly limited who could practice law, the laws, also, became more complicated, so that it was harder for those not part of the "priesthood" to understand.
The thing is that making the practice of law less regulated would not force high quality legal advice out of the market. It would just force it to compete with cheaper, lower quality legal advice. The result would be that high quality legal advice would be available for less. And we aren't talking about going to court here, we are talking about things like wills. I was just part of a group that talked with an estate planner about wills. He suggested that a lawyer would charge about $500 to write a will. My wife and I have no children, we may as well let the state decide how to dispose of our assets as pay a lawyer $500 to write up a will, the difference between the way the state would distribute our assets and the way we would choose to would, at this point, be less than $500.
A lot of the conversation on this board reminds me of the sorts of conversations that went around when the IBM PC came out. There were lots of arguments about the fact that there were plenty of other PCs that did everything the IBM did, only better vs. "It's from IBM, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." IBM dominated the PC market until they tried to stop the advance of PCs at the 286 processor. By that point the MS-DOS running on everybody else's PCs were fully compatible with that running on IBM PCs, so it was a no brainer to go with the more powerful PCs (of course, IBM would have lost their dominance around then anyway, they were just too big to be nimble enough for that space).
The big difference here is that Android really seems to fill the space most analogous to that filled by DOS in those days and Cisco is not nearly the behemoth that IBM was.
Considering that Senator Robert Byrd only died last year and while he was alive Democrats considered him the "Dean of the Senate", yes. In case you were unaware, Robert Byrd started his political career as a recruiter for the KKK. He left the KKK (or at least stopped openly being a member) when it stopped being a political asset.
What have the Democrats ever done that was beneficial for anyone other than rich, white people?
In most conversations I have heard, "brownskinned people" has been used to refer to anybody who was not of European descent (sometimes further constricted to exclude East Asians). I can conceive of using the term "brownskinned people" to refer to Hispanics, Arabs and South Asians while excluding Africans. However, it makes no sense to use the term to refer exclusively to Arab Muslims (which seems to be what you are saying it refers to). Considering that not all Arabs are Muslim (although the Muslims are working to extinguish the exceptions) and not all Muslims are Arab, being anti-Muslim is not an example of racism.
You are aware that Herman Cain is black, aren't you? It is hard to argue that someone who supports Herman Caine for President is a racist because they oppose Obama. Which is what the poster I replied to seemed to claiming, unless you are contending that blacks are not in the same category as "brownskinned people."
On the other hand, it is easy to argue that a person that supports the party of segregation, Jim Crow laws and the KKK is a racist.
The guilds exist for a reason and certainly a thousand years ago it was a very good reason.
Yes, the reason was to promote the training of new experts in the field. The reason for the guilds being granted monopoly status in that field, however, did not exist for a good reason. That happened in order to protect guild members from competition that was willing to work for less. One of the things that happened when guilds were granted monopolies is that they were able to get much greater profits from tasks that required little or no actual trainning. This meant the Master Craftsman could charge high fees for jobs that they then pawned off on thier apprentices. Even though someone with only the most modicum of training (even self-training) could do that particular job.
Considering that one of the two favorite candidate of the Tea Party participants is Herman Caine, I wonder what group you are talking about that wants people to hate "those brownskinned people". Or maybe you have formed your opinion of the tea parties based on the reporting of people who always vote for the political party that wrote the Jim Crow laws and formed the KKK.
Besides, if this is successful, it'll have a detrimental effect to authors and publishers who publish books with legal templates (Draft your own Will books, for instance), most of which are for really simple stuff like wills or simple contracts. It's going to deny the poorest people access to making these documents because it's going to force them to seek attorneys who are often too expensive.
That is the idea here. The lawyers don't like those books either. The whole point of laws like the one in this case is to protect certain groups from competition (or to force those who go into certain businesses to pay dues to an organization).
It is going to happen immediately (or as soon as the law goes into effect). The summary states that Amazon has announced that their affiliate program will be discontinued in California as soon as the new law goes into effect (which I believe is immediately).
Please note, the federal budget has not actually been balanced in my lifetime. The myth that it was balanced under Clinton is based on accounting gimmicks. However, if you look at the size of the federal debt, it has increased every year, including the year when the budget was supposedly balanced. If tax revenues equal or exceed government expenditures (a balanced budget), the amount of debt would not increase.
California props up the federal government and the defense budget by paying out more than it receives.
Not out of the state budget. I am pretty sure that there is little or no money in the state budget that is being sent to the federal government. When discussing balancing a state budget, the amount of federal spending in a state vs the amount of federal taxes collected in the state is irrelevant.
California has no right to place demands on a company that does not have a presence in California. What they have done is said that if you do certain types of business with companies in California, they are going to count that the same as having a presence in California. Amazon's response to that is to say, "Fine, we will discontinue such business relationships, effective immediately." So, Amazon is still not going to collect those taxes for California AND certain businesses in California will either have to move out of California, or lose a significant source of revenue. The net result of this law will be a reduction in the amount of tax revenue collected by the state of California.
I think so many people haven't bothered even looking at a mail-order coupon in ages (blame the Innert00bs :^) that they've forgotten this.
And Amazon has been collecting sales tax on sales to states where they have a presence in the state since day one. What has changed is that states are defining what constitutes having a presence in the state as having a business relationship with businesses that have a presence in the state. Amazon's response to this is to dissolve those business relations when such laws are passed. Of course, if they had done this when New York first passed such a law, these other states might not have passed them. Amazon instead chose to fight New York's law in court, and, while they are still appealing it, they lost.
There is certainly prior art. I know that this sort of thing was done in Second Life from its inception. I am sure that similar gift giving was done in other online social networks since the very first online social network was developed.
Push hard enough against GPS tracking and we will have optical systems using either LEO satellites (lots of 'em) or solar-powered drones. The LEO satellites would be tough to coordinate and we might not have all the kinks worked out of that right now. The drones are clearly less than five years away and might be nearly as cost effective as GPS tracking is today.
If the Supreme Court rules that this sort of GPS tracking is unconstitutional, there is no way that any of these options would not, also, be unconstitutional. This is why many of us hope the Supreme Court opposes this sort of tracking.
The problem with this has been pointed out before in similar discussions. If the police can do this sort of warrantless GPS tracking, it becomes easy for a police officer to stalk an ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend. Without GPS, a police officer can choose to tail someone for bad reasons, but sooner or later, their supervisor is likely to question the time they are spending doing so. On the other hand, GPS tracking devices are relatively cheap and it is likely that their supervisor might never realize that they had used one inappropriately. Additionally, it gives the police the power to track those who are in political opposition to current office holders.
What good does it do me if the GPS evidence from when I travel onto private property being inadmissable in court if the reason that the police are tracking me is to find out whether or not I associate with people in disfavor with the powers that be? The purpose of the 4th Ammendment is not to make it harder for the authorities to find out if you are committing a crime. The purpose of the 4th Ammendment is to make it harder for the authorities to find out if you are supporting an opposition political movement.
This is not a bill to be passed, but a Court ruling. It is much harder to circumvent Court rulings that somethign is unconstitutional than it is to circumvent a bill that outlaws some government action. The reason it is harder to circumvent Supreme Court rulings is that the Court gets very salty when you try to go around their clear meaning. If the Court rules that a certain action by the government is unconstitutional, the government has to show that the circumvention they came up with represents a different category of behavior. Further, lower courts often extend Supreme Court rulings in ways which limit such circumvention.
Actually, you hit on a problem that has developed in modern government in the U.S.. There has come to be this attitude that the Supreme Court decides what is Constitutional and it is not the job of Congressmen or the President to worry about whether a law is Constitutional before voting for/signing it. This is why I think here is some merit to the idea that every bill proposed in Congress should contain a statement declaring where in the Constitution Congress gets the authority to enact such a law. It is not that it would stop Congress from enacting bad laws, but it would force members to be more concious of the fact that Congress has (theoretically, at least) limited powers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia tends to get their rulings supported by the Supreme Court. I suspect that this has to do with the judges on both courts being based in Washington, D.C. so that they end up in the same social circles. This means that a) the Supreme Court Judges are a little more reluctant to overturn their decisions and b) the Circuit Court Judges are more familiar with the way that the Supreme Court Judges think and so are more likely to rule in a similar manner to the way the Supreme Court would.
Additionally, both the liberal and conservative judges on this Court have shown lines of reasoning that would lead them to oppose the government on this. These are separate lines of reasoning that just happen to converge on this issue. Unfortunately (since I believe that this type of tracking should require a warrant), there is also a line of thinking on the Supreme Court that sometimes leads them to defer to the other branches of government on issues such as this.
How this comes out will depend on how the lawyers representing Antoine Jones argue the case and whether they choose the arguments that appeal to both the liberal and conservative reasoning on the Court that would oppose this sort of government action.
One of the most fun things is to argue with one of these "tolerant" people who will tell you that all points of view should be respected, that you should be accepting of people who view the world differently and that you shouldn't try and force your viewpoint on others. I always ask them if they truly believe that. Then I ask them why they are trying to force their viewpoint on me? My observation is that people who say that you should never try to force your beliefs on others are usually trying to force thier belief on others.
Nah, you already can't buy lawyers and politicians, you can only rent them.
Perhaps this law is not the exact best way to address this problem, but I hope it will at least start the discussion among the general public, and perhaps it will eventually lead to better laws to address the issue.
Start the discussion among the general public? This discussion has been going on for as long as I can remember. This is a bad law designed to solve a problem that is not amenable to solution by passing laws.
Yeah, but we don't, so why are you acting like we do or should? Because he believes that all view points should be accepted and tolerated, as long as they agree with his.
They don't want government interference in thier lives, but are perfectly happy to ask the government to interfere in your life. Laws which interfere with things they want to do are bad, laws that interfere with things they think you shouldn't do are good.
Ever heard of the IRA? They are a terrorist organization (although they have been mostly inactive for a few years now). They were composed almost exclusively of Catholics from Ireland, both men and women.