Bill Clinton lied under oath to avoid losing a sexual harassment lawsuit. That is the crime that the Republicans impeached him for. Whether he should have been impeached or not is another discussion.
There is a federal law against sexual harassment, which up until that time had been defined as sex with someone over whom you had power. In the late '80's the courts had repeatedly found that when one person in a relationship had significantly more power in the job setting than the other, it was sexual harassment. If the CEO of a company had sex with an intern, it was considered sexual harassment. Bill Clinton was being sued for sexual harassment by a woman who had worked for the Arkansas government while he was Governor. Her lawyer was asking about the Lewinsky affair to show a pattern of behavior.
I've got no problem with Gonzalez losing his job. I've never really liked him as AG anyway. But the firing or not of the AG is not a story. It doesn't make that much difference. The press keeps trying to make this a story about the President, and it isn't.
I am not sure on this, but I believe that US Attorneys do not need to be approved by Congress. The wording in the Constitution is that they "serve at the will of the President." And I have not seen any headlines talking about inappropriate appointment of the replacements, only about inappropriate firings.
Even if they were fired for political reasons, it doesn't matter. It is still legal. Bill Clinton fired those US Attorneys for political reasons, not performance reasons, and it was perfectly legal.
It is still legal...even if it is not normal. What happens if it is discovered that the allegations that these guys were fired with people who were more "in line with" the President's political agenda are true? He's allowed to do that. It may be that we would prefer he didn't. It may be that he fired them because they were investigating someone he didn't want them to. The bottom line is that he is allowed to. If someone thinks that they were fired because they were investigating someone the President didn't want investigated, instead of investigating the firing, they should be investigating the person that was the target of the US Attorney that the Attorney was fired to protect. If you can show that the US Attorney was fired to protect someone who had ACTUALLY committed a crime (not just been accused) that would be a story. The current story isn't.
Except that in both the Watergate and Lewinsky case an actual crime was being covered up. In Watergate, an illegal break in was being covered up. In the Lewinsky case, perjury in a civil suit being brought against Bill Clinton for actions before he was President(BTW, the reason the Lewinsky affair was relevant to that case was to demonstrate a pattern of behavior, by established case law at the time of the lawsuit, the relationship that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky would have been considered sexual harassment. She was an intern, he was the President, a consensual relationship was considered impossible because of the power differential--stupid assumption, but the state of judicial interpretation at that time).
"H1-B's average less than their American counter parts."
There is a flaw in your logic. The average H1-B holder may well earn less than the average American in the same job. However, many H1-B holders are not foreigners with an American education. If those with a foreign education are paid less than US citizens, and those with an American education are paid on average the same as US citizens, than the AVERAGE for all H1-B holders will be less than for US citizens.
It's not weird. Despite the best attempts of the US media, the US Attorney firings is a non-story. The US Attorneys serve at the "will of the President". According to the US Constitution, the President may fire any US Attorney at any time for any reason. It may be that you don't like the reason that President Bush fired these Attorney's. It may be that it was a bad reason. All of the things that everyone has alleged negatively about these firings may be true. It doesn't matter, it was legal. If you think it was inappropriate, don't vote for G.W. Bush when he runs for re-election. OH, that's right, he can't run for re-election. That means that this is a non-story.
To summarize, the firings weren't illegal, the President can't run for re-election.
Um, how are you generating that electric? Going to electric cars doesn't help anything unless we find some good way to generate a lot of electric without fossil fuels. And yes, nuclear power is one solution, but there is no way we would have enough nuclear power plants to run all of our cars on electric by 2020. It takes at least 20 years to build a nuclear plant (and it should, there are a lot of things that need to be looked at carefully when dealing with a nuclear power plant). Now if we develop a fusion power plant, that would be a great solution, but we don't have one yet, so we are still almost certainly looking at at least a 20 year window from when someone figures out how to do it.
Actually, in both cases you would probably be in violation of certain government regulations concerning Acceptable Practice. Neither of the scenarios you mentioned would pass GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) standards (although I am not sure that many auditors would catch it).
That is a good point, but some people were getting worked up about the idea that this was a "life sentence for illegally copied software". It wasn't. However, in the case of medical software (and some other fields) the technical support for the software is important to make sure that the software is installed and configured properly. Although now that I think about it, there probably already exist regulations that you would not be able to meet using pirated software. I work in a laboratory that does some FDA regulated tests and we would not be able to validate our equipment according to FDA guidelines with pirated software.
Every time the US has a recession, the world has a recession. When Japan went into the doldrums, the US economy was doing fine (that wasn't a collapse, just a slowdown). Name one time that the US has been in recession when the rest of the world economy was growing. The saying in world economics has been "The US sneezes and Europe catches a cold." In the cases you are talking about, the US is still consuming those products. What the US banning the import of beef meant was that less US beef was on the world market. Depending on where a producer is located it is often more profitable to export or import a product. When imports are banned, the price of the domestic product goes up, meaning that it is more profitable to ship it across the country than it was. Sometimes this effect means that it now more profitable to sell products domestically than it is to export them, when before the reverse was true.
From TFA:
"Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who 'recklessly causes or attempts to cause death' can be imprisoned for life."
That means if you use pirated software and it causes someone's death it will be considered similar to premeditated murder. That is why the Justice Department uses the example of a hospital, as that is one of the few places where software can cause someone's death. I can't imagine a case where the software on a home computer would cause death (all of the ideas I can think of would already merit a murder charge).
The collapse of the US tech industry would mean the collapse of the US economy. The collapse of the US economy would mean the collapse of the world economy. The US is not the only country whose economic collapse would spell economic disaster for the world, just the one with the greatest impact. The US economy is the largest in the world, therefore changes in it have greater effect on the world economy. While no single European country's economy would make a large difference in the world economy, the collapse of the entire EU economy would probably have disproportionate effect on the world economy (that is disproportionate to the relative to its size). I'm not sure of the long term impact of the collapse of the Japanese, Chinese, or Indian economies, but short term would be pretty major.
This is off topic, but it is pervasive misunderstanding that I think it is important that people understand.
"And occasionally it had to invent its own challenge, e.g., the Crusades."
The Crusades were not an invented challenge. All of the lands that the Crusaders invaded had been held by Christians only a few hundred years earlier. The Muslims were expanding militarily. They had conquered all of North Africa and much of Spain. They were threatening Constantinople. They had only recently been driven out of France and southern Italy. The Crusades are only some of the campaigns in the centuries long wars between Muslims and Western Europeans. So, in summary, the Crusades were not unprovoked wars of aggression, but responses to a long history of aggression. They were often badly executed and poorly thought out. The Crusaders often committed atrocities, but then so did the Muslims. The Europeans viewed the atrocities committed by either side as just that. All of the evidence that I have seen suggests that most Muslims viewed the atrocities committed ny their side as acceptable tactics of war against the infidel.
The Founding Fathers were not fans of a democratic government. They intentionally set up a Republic with a representative democracy. This was why Senators were not elected directly. The idea was that elected officials would do what they thought was in the best interests of the country and their constituency would only get to vote every couple of years, hopefully giving enough time to see if they were right or not. You should not necessarily expect your representative to do what you want them to do, but what is in the best interest of the country.
Now are there serious problems with the system? Yes. If you want to fix them, focus on local politics where it is possible to know most of the players and issues. Local politicians form the base of the party power structure, if more people paid attention to local politics the parties would be more responsive to people.
Having worked in retail, that is not entirely true. Most stores operate on a principle of making a certain overall return on investment. This obtained by applying a predetermined markup on each type of merchandise. This is adjusted based on the bottom line at the end of the year...are they making a sufficiently large return on investment. If "shrinkage" is too high, they attempt to find ways to reduce it. If they can't they either adjust their margins or go out of business. If they were a "low cost provider", they were selling their products at less than the market would bear in order to attract a larger number of customers. If they go out of business, the price that any remaining "low cost providers" are charging will end up being higher.
That is because you and he have different concepts of what a "right" is. In the conception of the framers of the U.S. constitution, a "right" is something that everyone has, regardless of what the law says. Under this concept, any law which attempts to restrict that "right" is immoral and unjust. The author of the article seems to share this view of "right" and says that clearly "copyright" is not such a "right"(I can think of a line of argument that would say he is wrong on this last, although I am not sure that I agree with the argument). You seem to be saying that a "right" is something that the government(law) gives you.
Part of the problem is that the word "right" is used in both of these meanings. You have the right to freedom of speech. You have the right to use my car (because I gave you the keys and asked you to drive me home).
Besides the privacy issues there is another reason to be afraid of ONE database that all identification is based on. Right now there are multiple ways that any individual can be idnetified. When one of those databases gets corrupted, it is possible to appeal to an alternate, independent database to provide information to correct the corrupted database. With one database (or several interdependent databases, which is ultimately what this system will become), if an individuals data becomes corrupted there is no place to get evidence that the data in the database is inaccurate.
"I'm sorry, but John Doe is dead."
"I'm John Doe and I'm standing right in front of you."
"The database says John Doe is dead. You must be a criminal trying to steal John Doe's identity."
There are a lot of other scenarios that could also happen, this is just a similar to things that have happened to people already. The system thought they were dead, they had to jump through hoops to prove that they were who they said they were and that they were still alive. What happens when the only system for proving who you are says that you aren't you?
Mussolini was a officially a Socialist (a party with connections to the Bolsheviks in Russia) until WWI when he left over disagreements about Italy's entry into WWI. He joined and became leader of the party that is the source for the word fascist. By Mussolini's own definition fascism is a collectivist movement. From where I stand the difference between one collectivist philosophy (fascism) and another (communism) is really not that important. They both want to sacrifice the individual for the "greater good".
The Nazi's were the National SOCIALIST German WORKERS' Party. The Nazi's also believed in sacrificing the individual for the "greater good". In addition, all three (the Nazi's, the Italian fascists, and the Communists) believed and practiced central planning of the economy. Again, from where I stand one centrally planned economy is not much different from another.
In practice, for the average citizen, how do the fascists and communists differ?
That's because there really is not much to distinguish fascism from communism. Fascism is a nationalistic form of communism, often with an extreme form of racism thrown in (all ethnic groups besides our own is inferior and must be either enslaved or exterminated).
You make a very good summation of fascism. You left out that communism and fascism are very similar, communists were officially internationalist, fascists were officially nationalist. Part of the problem is that Mussolini(who originally coined the phrase) said that fascism was a "right wing collectivistic ideology" (quote from Wikipedia). In the U.S. today that is a nonsense statement. By the nature of political discourse in the U.S. today, collectivism is by definition left wing (not all of those on the left are collectivists, but by definition a collectivist is on the left).
Interestingly, the apparent ancillary to that (that individualists are on the right) is not at this time true. It baffles me how an individualist can perceive a collectivist as a closer ally than another individualist who has a different set of priorities, but such is the case. I am not saying that all on the right are individualists, just as not all on the left are collectivists. There are people whose political ideology is derived from an emphasis on something other than individual good versus collective good.
Gerald Ford did not pardon Nixon "furtively". Ford's pardon of Nixon is a significant part of the reason that he did not win election when he ran against Carter. Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon shortly after taking office and he did so publicly and above board calling a press conference to announce it. For furtive pardons, you want to reference Clinton signing numerous pardons late in the day on his last day in office.
I don't believe that people are naturally good, this includes myself. You say that people who believe that people are not naturally good are not charitable. By saying this you are saying that orthodox Christians are not charitable. It is a basic tenet of orthodox Christianity that people are naturally sinners, which is contrary to be naturally good. Yet, studies have repeatedly shown that Christians in the U.S. give significantly more to charity than non-Christians (note: I have not seen breakouts for charitable giving by other religions and believe that this difference is largely a comparison of Christians to the non-religious).
My original point is, why is it selfish to not want to take someone else's money to help the poor? On the other hand, how is it charitable to want to help the poor by having someone forcibly take money from someone else?
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Bill Clinton lied under oath to avoid losing a sexual harassment lawsuit. That is the crime that the Republicans impeached him for. Whether he should have been impeached or not is another discussion.
There is a federal law against sexual harassment, which up until that time had been defined as sex with someone over whom you had power. In the late '80's the courts had repeatedly found that when one person in a relationship had significantly more power in the job setting than the other, it was sexual harassment. If the CEO of a company had sex with an intern, it was considered sexual harassment. Bill Clinton was being sued for sexual harassment by a woman who had worked for the Arkansas government while he was Governor. Her lawyer was asking about the Lewinsky affair to show a pattern of behavior.
I've got no problem with Gonzalez losing his job. I've never really liked him as AG anyway. But the firing or not of the AG is not a story. It doesn't make that much difference. The press keeps trying to make this a story about the President, and it isn't.
I am not sure on this, but I believe that US Attorneys do not need to be approved by Congress. The wording in the Constitution is that they "serve at the will of the President." And I have not seen any headlines talking about inappropriate appointment of the replacements, only about inappropriate firings.
Even if they were fired for political reasons, it doesn't matter. It is still legal. Bill Clinton fired those US Attorneys for political reasons, not performance reasons, and it was perfectly legal.
It is still legal...even if it is not normal. What happens if it is discovered that the allegations that these guys were fired with people who were more "in line with" the President's political agenda are true? He's allowed to do that. It may be that we would prefer he didn't. It may be that he fired them because they were investigating someone he didn't want them to. The bottom line is that he is allowed to. If someone thinks that they were fired because they were investigating someone the President didn't want investigated, instead of investigating the firing, they should be investigating the person that was the target of the US Attorney that the Attorney was fired to protect. If you can show that the US Attorney was fired to protect someone who had ACTUALLY committed a crime (not just been accused) that would be a story. The current story isn't.
Except that in both the Watergate and Lewinsky case an actual crime was being covered up. In Watergate, an illegal break in was being covered up. In the Lewinsky case, perjury in a civil suit being brought against Bill Clinton for actions before he was President(BTW, the reason the Lewinsky affair was relevant to that case was to demonstrate a pattern of behavior, by established case law at the time of the lawsuit, the relationship that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky would have been considered sexual harassment. She was an intern, he was the President, a consensual relationship was considered impossible because of the power differential--stupid assumption, but the state of judicial interpretation at that time).
"H1-B's average less than their American counter parts." There is a flaw in your logic. The average H1-B holder may well earn less than the average American in the same job. However, many H1-B holders are not foreigners with an American education. If those with a foreign education are paid less than US citizens, and those with an American education are paid on average the same as US citizens, than the AVERAGE for all H1-B holders will be less than for US citizens.
It's not weird. Despite the best attempts of the US media, the US Attorney firings is a non-story. The US Attorneys serve at the "will of the President". According to the US Constitution, the President may fire any US Attorney at any time for any reason. It may be that you don't like the reason that President Bush fired these Attorney's. It may be that it was a bad reason. All of the things that everyone has alleged negatively about these firings may be true. It doesn't matter, it was legal. If you think it was inappropriate, don't vote for G.W. Bush when he runs for re-election. OH, that's right, he can't run for re-election. That means that this is a non-story. To summarize, the firings weren't illegal, the President can't run for re-election.
Um, how are you generating that electric? Going to electric cars doesn't help anything unless we find some good way to generate a lot of electric without fossil fuels. And yes, nuclear power is one solution, but there is no way we would have enough nuclear power plants to run all of our cars on electric by 2020. It takes at least 20 years to build a nuclear plant (and it should, there are a lot of things that need to be looked at carefully when dealing with a nuclear power plant). Now if we develop a fusion power plant, that would be a great solution, but we don't have one yet, so we are still almost certainly looking at at least a 20 year window from when someone figures out how to do it.
Actually, in both cases you would probably be in violation of certain government regulations concerning Acceptable Practice. Neither of the scenarios you mentioned would pass GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) standards (although I am not sure that many auditors would catch it).
That is a good point, but some people were getting worked up about the idea that this was a "life sentence for illegally copied software". It wasn't. However, in the case of medical software (and some other fields) the technical support for the software is important to make sure that the software is installed and configured properly. Although now that I think about it, there probably already exist regulations that you would not be able to meet using pirated software. I work in a laboratory that does some FDA regulated tests and we would not be able to validate our equipment according to FDA guidelines with pirated software.
Every time the US has a recession, the world has a recession. When Japan went into the doldrums, the US economy was doing fine (that wasn't a collapse, just a slowdown). Name one time that the US has been in recession when the rest of the world economy was growing. The saying in world economics has been "The US sneezes and Europe catches a cold." In the cases you are talking about, the US is still consuming those products. What the US banning the import of beef meant was that less US beef was on the world market. Depending on where a producer is located it is often more profitable to export or import a product. When imports are banned, the price of the domestic product goes up, meaning that it is more profitable to ship it across the country than it was. Sometimes this effect means that it now more profitable to sell products domestically than it is to export them, when before the reverse was true.
From TFA: "Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who 'recklessly causes or attempts to cause death' can be imprisoned for life." That means if you use pirated software and it causes someone's death it will be considered similar to premeditated murder. That is why the Justice Department uses the example of a hospital, as that is one of the few places where software can cause someone's death. I can't imagine a case where the software on a home computer would cause death (all of the ideas I can think of would already merit a murder charge).
The collapse of the US tech industry would mean the collapse of the US economy. The collapse of the US economy would mean the collapse of the world economy. The US is not the only country whose economic collapse would spell economic disaster for the world, just the one with the greatest impact. The US economy is the largest in the world, therefore changes in it have greater effect on the world economy. While no single European country's economy would make a large difference in the world economy, the collapse of the entire EU economy would probably have disproportionate effect on the world economy (that is disproportionate to the relative to its size). I'm not sure of the long term impact of the collapse of the Japanese, Chinese, or Indian economies, but short term would be pretty major.
This is off topic, but it is pervasive misunderstanding that I think it is important that people understand. "And occasionally it had to invent its own challenge, e.g., the Crusades." The Crusades were not an invented challenge. All of the lands that the Crusaders invaded had been held by Christians only a few hundred years earlier. The Muslims were expanding militarily. They had conquered all of North Africa and much of Spain. They were threatening Constantinople. They had only recently been driven out of France and southern Italy. The Crusades are only some of the campaigns in the centuries long wars between Muslims and Western Europeans. So, in summary, the Crusades were not unprovoked wars of aggression, but responses to a long history of aggression. They were often badly executed and poorly thought out. The Crusaders often committed atrocities, but then so did the Muslims. The Europeans viewed the atrocities committed by either side as just that. All of the evidence that I have seen suggests that most Muslims viewed the atrocities committed ny their side as acceptable tactics of war against the infidel.
The Founding Fathers were not fans of a democratic government. They intentionally set up a Republic with a representative democracy. This was why Senators were not elected directly. The idea was that elected officials would do what they thought was in the best interests of the country and their constituency would only get to vote every couple of years, hopefully giving enough time to see if they were right or not. You should not necessarily expect your representative to do what you want them to do, but what is in the best interest of the country. Now are there serious problems with the system? Yes. If you want to fix them, focus on local politics where it is possible to know most of the players and issues. Local politicians form the base of the party power structure, if more people paid attention to local politics the parties would be more responsive to people.
Having worked in retail, that is not entirely true. Most stores operate on a principle of making a certain overall return on investment. This obtained by applying a predetermined markup on each type of merchandise. This is adjusted based on the bottom line at the end of the year...are they making a sufficiently large return on investment. If "shrinkage" is too high, they attempt to find ways to reduce it. If they can't they either adjust their margins or go out of business. If they were a "low cost provider", they were selling their products at less than the market would bear in order to attract a larger number of customers. If they go out of business, the price that any remaining "low cost providers" are charging will end up being higher.
That is because you and he have different concepts of what a "right" is. In the conception of the framers of the U.S. constitution, a "right" is something that everyone has, regardless of what the law says. Under this concept, any law which attempts to restrict that "right" is immoral and unjust. The author of the article seems to share this view of "right" and says that clearly "copyright" is not such a "right"(I can think of a line of argument that would say he is wrong on this last, although I am not sure that I agree with the argument). You seem to be saying that a "right" is something that the government(law) gives you. Part of the problem is that the word "right" is used in both of these meanings. You have the right to freedom of speech. You have the right to use my car (because I gave you the keys and asked you to drive me home).
Besides the privacy issues there is another reason to be afraid of ONE database that all identification is based on. Right now there are multiple ways that any individual can be idnetified. When one of those databases gets corrupted, it is possible to appeal to an alternate, independent database to provide information to correct the corrupted database. With one database (or several interdependent databases, which is ultimately what this system will become), if an individuals data becomes corrupted there is no place to get evidence that the data in the database is inaccurate. "I'm sorry, but John Doe is dead." "I'm John Doe and I'm standing right in front of you." "The database says John Doe is dead. You must be a criminal trying to steal John Doe's identity." There are a lot of other scenarios that could also happen, this is just a similar to things that have happened to people already. The system thought they were dead, they had to jump through hoops to prove that they were who they said they were and that they were still alive. What happens when the only system for proving who you are says that you aren't you?
Mussolini was a officially a Socialist (a party with connections to the Bolsheviks in Russia) until WWI when he left over disagreements about Italy's entry into WWI. He joined and became leader of the party that is the source for the word fascist. By Mussolini's own definition fascism is a collectivist movement. From where I stand the difference between one collectivist philosophy (fascism) and another (communism) is really not that important. They both want to sacrifice the individual for the "greater good". The Nazi's were the National SOCIALIST German WORKERS' Party. The Nazi's also believed in sacrificing the individual for the "greater good". In addition, all three (the Nazi's, the Italian fascists, and the Communists) believed and practiced central planning of the economy. Again, from where I stand one centrally planned economy is not much different from another. In practice, for the average citizen, how do the fascists and communists differ?
That's because there really is not much to distinguish fascism from communism. Fascism is a nationalistic form of communism, often with an extreme form of racism thrown in (all ethnic groups besides our own is inferior and must be either enslaved or exterminated).
You make a very good summation of fascism. You left out that communism and fascism are very similar, communists were officially internationalist, fascists were officially nationalist. Part of the problem is that Mussolini(who originally coined the phrase) said that fascism was a "right wing collectivistic ideology" (quote from Wikipedia). In the U.S. today that is a nonsense statement. By the nature of political discourse in the U.S. today, collectivism is by definition left wing (not all of those on the left are collectivists, but by definition a collectivist is on the left). Interestingly, the apparent ancillary to that (that individualists are on the right) is not at this time true. It baffles me how an individualist can perceive a collectivist as a closer ally than another individualist who has a different set of priorities, but such is the case. I am not saying that all on the right are individualists, just as not all on the left are collectivists. There are people whose political ideology is derived from an emphasis on something other than individual good versus collective good.
Gerald Ford did not pardon Nixon "furtively". Ford's pardon of Nixon is a significant part of the reason that he did not win election when he ran against Carter. Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon shortly after taking office and he did so publicly and above board calling a press conference to announce it. For furtive pardons, you want to reference Clinton signing numerous pardons late in the day on his last day in office.
I don't believe that people are naturally good, this includes myself. You say that people who believe that people are not naturally good are not charitable. By saying this you are saying that orthodox Christians are not charitable. It is a basic tenet of orthodox Christianity that people are naturally sinners, which is contrary to be naturally good. Yet, studies have repeatedly shown that Christians in the U.S. give significantly more to charity than non-Christians (note: I have not seen breakouts for charitable giving by other religions and believe that this difference is largely a comparison of Christians to the non-religious). My original point is, why is it selfish to not want to take someone else's money to help the poor? On the other hand, how is it charitable to want to help the poor by having someone forcibly take money from someone else?