The Constitution has little to say about the powers granted to a municipal government. If this was the federal government, the Constitution would be relevant. The only relevance of the Constitution to municipal government is via the 14th Amendment which courts have ruled expands the Bill of Rights to apply to state and local government (before the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government).
There are also no private investment firms that have such a horrendous rate of return. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure it would be illegal for a private investment firm to offer as low a rate of return as SS. Of course, that overlooks the fact that SS is not an investment vehicle. I pay taxes out of my wages to pay current retirees, when I start collecting SS the money will come from people who are working at the time. Currently, there is a surplus of money paid in SS taxes, so the government spends it. All evidence suggests that when I reach the age to collect SS there will be a shortage and the government will have to raise the amount it collects from workers.
p>On a more practical level, what's the incentive for a county level internet provider to charge $100 for installation if they only need $50 to cover the cost? What's the incentive for a for-profit organization to do the same thing? Is that money likely to be used to improve your installation or give the boardroom another bump in bonuses?
First off, in this situation I think the city did the correct thing and I approve of the court's ruling (initially TDS refused to install a fiber optic network and only did so after the city initiated installing one of their own).
However the problem with your example is this, what is the incentive at the county level to keep the cost of installation down to only $50? Especially when the installer is a county commissioner's son and the supplies are purchased from another county commissioner's brother.
Many times, when the government starts doing something that a private company was doing for what appeared to be an outrageous profit, it ends up costing the government more to do it than what the private company charged.
An example of this sort of thing is college bookstores. I worked at one shortly after they contracted out the bookstore to a private company. College professors can get Instructor's Copies of a textbook from the publisher for free. When the University ran the bookstore, the professors would often forget to do so(or not get around to), then go down to the bookstore and get a copy off of the shelf to use. The University would have to pay for this book. There were other similar things that happened and the end result was that the University actually ended up losing money on the bookstore. The private company signed a contract with the University that limited its markup on textbooks to less than the one that the University had been using when it ran the bookstore and paying the University a percentage of gross sales. Of course, now if a professor got a book from the bookstore, he, or the University, had to pay the bookstore for it. Needless to say, professors were much better at getting the free copy from the publisher.
The important thing to remember about this case is that the city asked TDS to build a fiber optic network in the city and TDS said "no thanks, it isn't economically feasible". The city responded by starting to build their own at which point TDS realized that if there was a fiber optic network in the city and they didn't have one, they would lose boatloads of customers, so they built their own. Then they sued the city for unfair competition.
This was not a case of the city (and its people) deciding they could provide a service cheaper then the private company. This is a case of a city asking a private company to provide a service, the private company declined, so the people of the city decided the city should do itself.
The Lancet survey is bullshit. I saw the methodology they used. Their number is based on "We polled this small group and they all knew somebody who was killed, extrapolating from that to the total population of Iraq we get this humungous number." Overlooking the fact that their sample was unlikely to be representative of Iraq outside of the urban area they chose, they also didn't control for those "somebody who was killed" being the same person in the case of more than one respondent.
This source puts the count at 900,000 Iraqis killed under Saddam Hussein. http://middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/a/me090424b.htm
Some sources say about more than a million dead Iraqis since the beginning of the invasion. That'd be about 27 years in Saddams terms. Young democracy has made it to the same amount in just 6 years.
Some sources say that the Holocaust never happened, I try to limit myself to credible sources, you should try it.
More people voted for Gore in Florida, yet the state was given to Bush, and the supreme court cancelled the official re-count just hours before it was complete. It was a close election, but Bush lost. Facts are facts.
Yes, facts are facts, and every news organization that reviewed the ballots (all of which endorsed Al Gore) in Florida concluded that George W. Bush did indeed receive the majority of the votes in Florida in the 2000 election. So, please tell me the basis for saying that more people voted for Al Gore in Florida than voted for George W. Bush? The "official recount" that the Supreme Court canceled was a partial recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court which was acting outside of its authority to do so (the U.S. Constitution gives complete, and absolute, authority over how Electors are chosen to state legislatures).
Technically a monarch, not a dictator. However, in her case the distinction is minimal. Whether or not she was a "good dictator" depends on what standard you hold her to. Personally, given a choice, I would choose to live in any true democracy over Russia at any point in history.
You may think of Saddam anything you want, but he was a better deal for a majority of people in Iraq and many people in other countries as well. And streets of Baghdad were much safer then that they are now.
You think that the Iraqi people were better off when, on average, somewhere between 75 and 125 civilians were being killed by Saddam's government per day of his reign?
The deadline set up by the Constitution as to when the Electoral College meets.
If the Supreme Court had not intervened there are several possible outcomes:
1. Florida Legislature appoints an Electoral College delegation (Constitutionally permissible). Result: Florida's electoral votes go to George W. Bush. George W. Bush is President
2. Florida does not send any delegates to the Electoral College. Result: Neither Candidate has the necessary electoral votes, the outcome is decided by the U.S House of Representatives. George W. Bush is President (the House of Representatives was majority Republican at the time).
There may be one or two other possible outcomes, but they all result in George W. Bush being inaugurated on Jan 20, 2001.
Historically, countries with free trade are economically better off than countries without it, even when the trading partners of the countries with free trade do not have free trade.
You make an interesting point. The problem is that history indicates that the "trick" has rarely, if ever been, accomplished. Feel free to give examples of dictators who were not bad dictators. Based on the track record of dictators, I think it is safe to assume that a dictator is a bad dictator until evidence to the contrary is presented.
Once again we see this come up. The problem with the "popular vote" theory about the 2000 elections is that you don't know enough. The popular vote number in the wikipedia article is based on number of votes counted. Most states stop counting absentee ballots once the difference between the candidates is greater than the number of remaining absentee ballots. Therefore, we do not know what the actual total of actual votes for each candidate on a nationwide election. Second, the U.S. Presidential election is not based on the results of nationwide majority (and never has been nor was it intended to be).
Iran is clearly no more a democracy than the Soviet Union. It requires more than holding an election to be considered a democracy, the outcome of the election has to actually reflect the way people voted. No one in any election anywhere wins every district across an ethnically (and otherwise) diverse population by the same margin, and yet that is what the Iranian government (which is actually the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council) is claiming happened in this last Presidential election.
Obama got widespread support because almost everything he said was such that everyone could interpret it as meaning that he intended to do what they thought he should do, even when they talked with other supporters who thought he would do the diametric opposite.
If you look at history, most revolutions are led by the offspring of the wealthy who have time on their hands (usually the wealthy who have not acquired political power--frequently because the parents haven't been interested in political power). The leaders of the French Revolution were not from the "starving masses", they were the children of the wealthy. The leaders of the Russian Revolution were the same.
I don't know. I used to work for someone who sold stuff at computer shows on the weekend. We would carry cash in a metal box. It is frequently known as a cashbox. It had a lock on the front and dividers in it to separate various denominations. I can easily see someone in the situation described transporting the money in a cahsbox (which could easily be described as a "metal box",
The Great Depression as caused by protectionism. Everything I have seen that actually looks at numbers says that NAFTA actually caused an increase in jobs in the U.S..
One of the mistakes people make is that they think that if fewer people are employed producing a particular thing, then we must be making less of it. There are fewer people working on farms in the U.S. than in the past, yet the U.S. produces more food today than it did in the past. Why? Because much of the process of farming has been mechanized/automated.
The problem with septic systems is that they are only a viable solution if the population is separated by enough area. I believe that the minimum practical is 1/2 acre. Even if the area is significantly less than that, it would not be as small as the plot that most houses in city neighborhoods sit on.
In the early 90's Temple bought up several blocks around the Main Campus and used it to create a buffer zone around the campus. The buffer zone was at least partially a side affect, Temple bought the land because they needed additional facilities and they wanted to pretty up the area to make Temple more appealing to visiting high school students. Currently the Universities that are located in high crime areas in Philadelphia are University of Pennsylvania and Drexel (they are basically side by side). The problem is the neighborhoods around those two is at least partially a result of U of P (and possible Drexel as well) covering up violent crime to reduce their reported crime statistics (Colleges and Universities are required to report the crime statistics in and around their campus).
Actually, there was a study a few years ago on U.S. city populations that discovered that over time the people who were born in said city move out. When one adjusts for immigration (from non-U.S. locations) all cities in the U.S. lose population. U.S. cities that increase in population, or even maintain population, do so because of immigrants. The study concluded that immigrants tend to move to cities with significant populations from their home countries. The second and third generation tend to move out of the cities. Therefore cities which fail to attract immigrants will gradually decrease in size.
Perhaps it has to do with the way we perceive the colors red and blue. However, when I looked at the chart, John Roberts in the 2007 spot at 1.44 looks like a darker red than the blue of David Souter right below him at -1.48. That may be perception, but it is what I see.
If your second reading is correct, then by that same reading, no warrant is needed for a search. I had never really thought about it before, but it is clear to me from the Court rulings on searches without a warrant, that current police practices for arresting people is in violation of the 4th Amendment.
How is it that SEVEN of the nine justices who voted in favor of Brown were conservative? There's no way that case would get a unanimous decision today, and conservatives today are much more moderate on social issues than they were in the 50s..
That's because, despite what the way the media generally portrays things, conservatives are, typically, not racist. while liberals typically are (all the time claiming otherwise but indicating by their actions).
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The Constitution has little to say about the powers granted to a municipal government. If this was the federal government, the Constitution would be relevant. The only relevance of the Constitution to municipal government is via the 14th Amendment which courts have ruled expands the Bill of Rights to apply to state and local government (before the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government).
There are also no private investment firms that have such a horrendous rate of return. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure it would be illegal for a private investment firm to offer as low a rate of return as SS. Of course, that overlooks the fact that SS is not an investment vehicle. I pay taxes out of my wages to pay current retirees, when I start collecting SS the money will come from people who are working at the time. Currently, there is a surplus of money paid in SS taxes, so the government spends it. All evidence suggests that when I reach the age to collect SS there will be a shortage and the government will have to raise the amount it collects from workers.
p>On a more practical level, what's the incentive for a county level internet provider to charge $100 for installation if they only need $50 to cover the cost? What's the incentive for a for-profit organization to do the same thing? Is that money likely to be used to improve your installation or give the boardroom another bump in bonuses?
First off, in this situation I think the city did the correct thing and I approve of the court's ruling (initially TDS refused to install a fiber optic network and only did so after the city initiated installing one of their own).
However the problem with your example is this, what is the incentive at the county level to keep the cost of installation down to only $50? Especially when the installer is a county commissioner's son and the supplies are purchased from another county commissioner's brother.
Many times, when the government starts doing something that a private company was doing for what appeared to be an outrageous profit, it ends up costing the government more to do it than what the private company charged.
An example of this sort of thing is college bookstores. I worked at one shortly after they contracted out the bookstore to a private company. College professors can get Instructor's Copies of a textbook from the publisher for free. When the University ran the bookstore, the professors would often forget to do so(or not get around to), then go down to the bookstore and get a copy off of the shelf to use. The University would have to pay for this book. There were other similar things that happened and the end result was that the University actually ended up losing money on the bookstore. The private company signed a contract with the University that limited its markup on textbooks to less than the one that the University had been using when it ran the bookstore and paying the University a percentage of gross sales. Of course, now if a professor got a book from the bookstore, he, or the University, had to pay the bookstore for it. Needless to say, professors were much better at getting the free copy from the publisher.
The important thing to remember about this case is that the city asked TDS to build a fiber optic network in the city and TDS said "no thanks, it isn't economically feasible". The city responded by starting to build their own at which point TDS realized that if there was a fiber optic network in the city and they didn't have one, they would lose boatloads of customers, so they built their own. Then they sued the city for unfair competition.
This was not a case of the city (and its people) deciding they could provide a service cheaper then the private company. This is a case of a city asking a private company to provide a service, the private company declined, so the people of the city decided the city should do itself.
The Lancet survey is bullshit. I saw the methodology they used. Their number is based on "We polled this small group and they all knew somebody who was killed, extrapolating from that to the total population of Iraq we get this humungous number." Overlooking the fact that their sample was unlikely to be representative of Iraq outside of the urban area they chose, they also didn't control for those "somebody who was killed" being the same person in the case of more than one respondent.
This source puts the count at 900,000 Iraqis killed under Saddam Hussein. http://middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/a/me090424b.htm
I will give you Tito, but that's still pretty terrible odds over modern history: One dictator who (maybe) wasn't bad. Out of how many?
Some sources say about more than a million dead Iraqis since the beginning of the invasion. That'd be about 27 years in Saddams terms. Young democracy has made it to the same amount in just 6 years.
Some sources say that the Holocaust never happened, I try to limit myself to credible sources, you should try it.
More people voted for Gore in Florida, yet the state was given to Bush, and the supreme court cancelled the official re-count just hours before it was complete. It was a close election, but Bush lost. Facts are facts.
Yes, facts are facts, and every news organization that reviewed the ballots (all of which endorsed Al Gore) in Florida concluded that George W. Bush did indeed receive the majority of the votes in Florida in the 2000 election. So, please tell me the basis for saying that more people voted for Al Gore in Florida than voted for George W. Bush? The "official recount" that the Supreme Court canceled was a partial recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court which was acting outside of its authority to do so (the U.S. Constitution gives complete, and absolute, authority over how Electors are chosen to state legislatures).
Technically a monarch, not a dictator. However, in her case the distinction is minimal. Whether or not she was a "good dictator" depends on what standard you hold her to. Personally, given a choice, I would choose to live in any true democracy over Russia at any point in history.
You may think of Saddam anything you want, but he was a better deal for a majority of people in Iraq and many people in other countries as well. And streets of Baghdad were much safer then that they are now.
You think that the Iraqi people were better off when, on average, somewhere between 75 and 125 civilians were being killed by Saddam's government per day of his reign?
The deadline set up by the Constitution as to when the Electoral College meets.
If the Supreme Court had not intervened there are several possible outcomes:
1. Florida Legislature appoints an Electoral College delegation (Constitutionally permissible). Result: Florida's electoral votes go to George W. Bush. George W. Bush is President
2. Florida does not send any delegates to the Electoral College. Result: Neither Candidate has the necessary electoral votes, the outcome is decided by the U.S House of Representatives. George W. Bush is President (the House of Representatives was majority Republican at the time).
There may be one or two other possible outcomes, but they all result in George W. Bush being inaugurated on Jan 20, 2001.
Historically, countries with free trade are economically better off than countries without it, even when the trading partners of the countries with free trade do not have free trade.
The trick is to avoid the bad dictator.
You make an interesting point. The problem is that history indicates that the "trick" has rarely, if ever been, accomplished. Feel free to give examples of dictators who were not bad dictators. Based on the track record of dictators, I think it is safe to assume that a dictator is a bad dictator until evidence to the contrary is presented.
Once again we see this come up. The problem with the "popular vote" theory about the 2000 elections is that you don't know enough. The popular vote number in the wikipedia article is based on number of votes counted. Most states stop counting absentee ballots once the difference between the candidates is greater than the number of remaining absentee ballots. Therefore, we do not know what the actual total of actual votes for each candidate on a nationwide election. Second, the U.S. Presidential election is not based on the results of nationwide majority (and never has been nor was it intended to be).
Iran is clearly no more a democracy than the Soviet Union. It requires more than holding an election to be considered a democracy, the outcome of the election has to actually reflect the way people voted. No one in any election anywhere wins every district across an ethnically (and otherwise) diverse population by the same margin, and yet that is what the Iranian government (which is actually the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council) is claiming happened in this last Presidential election.
Obama got widespread support because almost everything he said was such that everyone could interpret it as meaning that he intended to do what they thought he should do, even when they talked with other supporters who thought he would do the diametric opposite.
If you look at history, most revolutions are led by the offspring of the wealthy who have time on their hands (usually the wealthy who have not acquired political power--frequently because the parents haven't been interested in political power). The leaders of the French Revolution were not from the "starving masses", they were the children of the wealthy. The leaders of the Russian Revolution were the same.
I don't know. I used to work for someone who sold stuff at computer shows on the weekend. We would carry cash in a metal box. It is frequently known as a cashbox. It had a lock on the front and dividers in it to separate various denominations. I can easily see someone in the situation described transporting the money in a cahsbox (which could easily be described as a "metal box",
The Great Depression as caused by protectionism. Everything I have seen that actually looks at numbers says that NAFTA actually caused an increase in jobs in the U.S..
One of the mistakes people make is that they think that if fewer people are employed producing a particular thing, then we must be making less of it. There are fewer people working on farms in the U.S. than in the past, yet the U.S. produces more food today than it did in the past. Why? Because much of the process of farming has been mechanized/automated.
The problem with septic systems is that they are only a viable solution if the population is separated by enough area. I believe that the minimum practical is 1/2 acre. Even if the area is significantly less than that, it would not be as small as the plot that most houses in city neighborhoods sit on.
In the early 90's Temple bought up several blocks around the Main Campus and used it to create a buffer zone around the campus. The buffer zone was at least partially a side affect, Temple bought the land because they needed additional facilities and they wanted to pretty up the area to make Temple more appealing to visiting high school students. Currently the Universities that are located in high crime areas in Philadelphia are University of Pennsylvania and Drexel (they are basically side by side). The problem is the neighborhoods around those two is at least partially a result of U of P (and possible Drexel as well) covering up violent crime to reduce their reported crime statistics (Colleges and Universities are required to report the crime statistics in and around their campus).
Actually, there was a study a few years ago on U.S. city populations that discovered that over time the people who were born in said city move out. When one adjusts for immigration (from non-U.S. locations) all cities in the U.S. lose population. U.S. cities that increase in population, or even maintain population, do so because of immigrants. The study concluded that immigrants tend to move to cities with significant populations from their home countries. The second and third generation tend to move out of the cities. Therefore cities which fail to attract immigrants will gradually decrease in size.
Perhaps it has to do with the way we perceive the colors red and blue. However, when I looked at the chart, John Roberts in the 2007 spot at 1.44 looks like a darker red than the blue of David Souter right below him at -1.48. That may be perception, but it is what I see.
If your second reading is correct, then by that same reading, no warrant is needed for a search. I had never really thought about it before, but it is clear to me from the Court rulings on searches without a warrant, that current police practices for arresting people is in violation of the 4th Amendment.
.
How is it that SEVEN of the nine justices who voted in favor of Brown were conservative? There's no way that case would get a unanimous decision today, and conservatives today are much more moderate on social issues than they were in the 50s. .
That's because, despite what the way the media generally portrays things, conservatives are, typically, not racist. while liberals typically are (all the time claiming otherwise but indicating by their actions).