So, people who had perjured themselves paid a price for committing perjury. Sorry, I don't see a problem here. If they had not lied under oath, they would not have been in the position they were in.
Once more, give me an example of someone who's life was ruined by McCarthyism who was not working to bring about the destruction of the U.S. government.
You made some very strong statements there, but without specifics there is no way to know if what you said accurately reflects the situation.
When I was in school, there were several people who were used as examples of how McCarthyism destroyed people's lives. All of the examples which I was taught in school turned out to be active spies for the Soviet Union. So, I am asking people to give me some examples, by name, of people who's lives were ruined by McCarthyism.
Well, I have no idea if he was truly a communist spy or not. The case can certainly be made that McCarthyism drove him into the arms of the Chinese Communists and assisted them in developing their rocket program. Of course, it could be argued that he would have helped them anyway (which would have been the claim of those who went after him). I will not reject him as a victim, but his later work for the Chinese government leaves doubt in my mind as to whether he was a victim of false accusations (if someone can show me a significant number of victims of false accusations, I will be willing to consider him one of them. Without that, he remains a question mark). Although, this is a start towards what I was asking for.
Most of those who were blacklisted had some interest in communism as a political philosophy at some point (particularly the 1930's, when the commies were more-or-less on our side against the fascists), and many had rejected it after Stalin took over in Russia.
That sentence contradicts itself. Stalin took over in Russia in 1924. So, if they supported communism in the 1930's, it was while Stalin was in charge in the Soviet Union. It would also have been while Stalin was purging the Soviet Union of those not sufficiently supportive of him and starving millions of his people. And, oh yeah, Stalin signed the non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1939.
While Hitler had positioned himself as the opponent of Communism, Stalin recognized that there was nothing in Nazi ideology that was inherently hostile to Communism. The only point of difference was Nazism emphasis on ethnic purity and the superiority of the ethnically German.
The fact of the matter is that the Communist Party USA was a puppet organization of the KGB whose dual purpose was to gather useful intelligence for the Soviet Union and to work for the overthrow of the US government. While a very few members were unaware of this, the majority of those who joined it in the 30's, 40's and 50's supported at least the latter of those two agendas (and of those most approved the former as a path to the latter).
Actually that is not true. The vast majority of Christians are willing to condemn the Westboro Baptist Church without qualification. The number of Muslims willing to give an unqualified condemnation of Muslim extremist terrorists is a much smaller percentage.
There were communist spies in the state department. And there was almost zero intersection between the communist spies and the lives destroyed by McCarthism. So your point is...?
Whose lives were destroyed by McCarthyism? Without such a list there is no way to test your assertion. I had come across one or two people who were subject to the animus of what is called McCarthyism who were actually Soviet spies. Alger Hiss used to be listed as a victim of McCarthyism (although his trial actually predates what is usually termed the period of McCarthyism) until the fall of the Soviet Union when KGB records surfaced that showed he actually was a spy.
The thing is, he provides no information that would allow someone else to even attempt to corroborate his story. This story contains most of the hallmarks which snopes.com lists as classic indicators that a story is an urban legend.
I live in the same state as Pittsburgh, have numerous friends and co-workers from there. My brother attended Carnegie Mellon where I visited him on more than one occasion. And I have never heard of this Oakland of which you speak. None of which is an attempt to say that it does not exist, merely that no one outside of the Pittsburgh area is familiar with it.
In the only article I could find about that study, one of the investigators stated that "do not indicate that dietary sugar is the cause of hyperactivity problems." A follow up study was planned, but either it was never conducted or its results failed to support the conclusion and it was not published because I was unable to find any reference to it. It is also worth noting that in that study, the sugar only had the effect of raising adrenaline levels if it was consumed without accompanying proteins and fats.
The article I found on the study was published in 1995, there has been to date no follow up study showing a connection between sugar consumption and hyperactivity. The other point worth noting is that the adrenaline rush occurs "hours later".
Did you actually double the amount of plastic recycled? Or just the amount of plastic collected for recycling? More importantly, that did not address my point at all. You still pay to have the recyclables picked up, meaning you have no incentive to sort the plastic that is worth recycling from the plastic that is not worth recycling (or is not recyclable at all).
If people get injured more wearing seatbelts than without them, then absolutely we should not have them. The fact of the matter is that campaign finance laws made all of the problems they were supposed to fix worse.
Since we have mandated that everyone recycle and most people do not pay for their trash pickup, we have externalized the cost of disposing of trash. If people had to pay for the disposal of their trash AND there was a financial incentive to reward them for separating out the stuff that it is economically feasible to recycle, this would work much better. I remember as a child, my older brothers would collect various recyclables and take them to the recycling center for spending money. I did it for a little bit, but before I really got a system like my brothers had going the government mandated recycling and the recycling center stopped offering money for recyclables.
My observations of children of many different parents where the "hyperactivity because of eating sugar" occurs is that the children were showing signs of hyperactivity before the sugar was consumed. If there was a study showing that sugar consumption correlated with hyperactivity, I would be willing to believe it, but since the only study on the issue I have seen agrees with my observations. I would note that most parents are somewhat biased in interpreting their children's behavior.
So, by that logic, Al Capone was the government of Chicago back during Prohibition. I find it amusing that you think that giving power which you consider evil in the hands of corporations is good in the hands of government. You have basically said that if corporations get that power they are the government.
Basically, you seem to be arguing that might makes right. If you have the power to impose your will on everybody else, you are the government and therefore it is your right to do whatever you desire. It is up to those others to band together to stop you, at which point, they become the government.
Or in other words, you appear to believe that if you don't want others to run your life, you need to gather the power and run other people's lives.
I spotted a logical fallacy immediately. Just because one set of people or animals weigh more than another set of people or animals does not mean that the first set is obese. Under the standards used to measure human obesity, I am obese. Yet my doctor tells me I should not lose any more weight since my body fat percentage is on the low side of 10% (which every reference I can find says is below ideal for my age).
I will say that everything I have read supports the idea that BMI (what is used for determining whether humans are overweight or not) is useful for determining whether or not a group of humans weighs more than they should (although it is clearly not as useful when applied to individuals). However, without some sort of study to determine if the increased weight in pets and laboratory animals represents those animals being fatter and/or unhealthier than previously requires significant additional information.
No, it was not "the actual government". It was the power that those less rich than the king applied against the king. They went to war with him and when he lost, he was forced to sign the agreement, which limited the power of the government. You seem to think that you can limit the power of the government by giving the government more power. If "the actual government" had been able to force the king to sign the Magna Carta, there would have been no reason to have the king sign it at all. However, since the king was the government, it was necessary to have him formally acknowledge that his power was limited.
The first major campaign finance law was passed on 1971, and things began to get worse immediately. The SCOTUS decision credited with creating the "Super PAC loophole" was made in 2008. So, no, that decision is not going to work as an explanation as to why campaign finance laws have had the opposite effect of the one which is claimed to be their justification. The reason it is worse now than it was 50 years ago is because of campaign finance laws, not despite them.
No, they banded together to limit the power of the government (in this case the king). They did not form a new government. They limited the power of the one they had.
You should study history sometime. Julius Caesar became Emperor because he convinced the people to give him ever more power in order to protect them from the "evil rich guys". Kings are rich because they are king, not kings because they are rich. The only king that ever stopped being the government "all by himself" had it happen when the rich guys got together and demanded that he respect their rights. Amazingly enough, in the process they also demanded that he respect the rights of the not so rich guys as well. The document they forced him to sign was called the Magna Carta, perhaps you have heard of it?
I am saying that campaign finance laws were supposed to "take the money out of politics" and have not done so. Since the first campaign finance laws were passed, the cost of running a political campaign have risen faster than they did before it was passed. In addition, they were supposed to reduce the influence of lobbyists, yet the evidence suggests that they have done the reverse.
In summary, none of the things which campaign finance laws were supposed to accomplish have happened, yet people like you want to pass more of them. The rule I was taught was that when you try something and it doesn't work, try something different.
Where exactly do you intend to find this uncorrupted, and uncorruptable, overseer of the economy? Perhaps we should have kept King George? Or maybe we should select a new king to run things? I have never understood the logic of people who says that corporations can't be trusted because people are greedy and then want to appoint someone to take over the decision making from them and limit their choices. What makes you think that the person you are giving this power to won't be as greedy as the corporations they are supposed to rein in?
You might want to look at the history of "controls on campaign financing". It has resulted in it being even harder to unseat incumbents. When you combine that with studies which show that the longer a politician holds an office, the more he responds positively to attempts by lobbyists to influence his decision making, it suggests that instituting controls on campaign finance has the opposite effect on government to the one which you postulate.
I, also, love how you conflate Fox with political advertising and propaganda but do not mention the NYT or MSNBC, or even CNN. All of which are at least as much propaganda machines as Fox is.
Of course the biggest difference between corporate power and government power is that I can decline to consume the products produced by corporations and thus avoid giving them my money (and thus not increasing their power), even when they are the only source of a given good.
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So, people who had perjured themselves paid a price for committing perjury. Sorry, I don't see a problem here. If they had not lied under oath, they would not have been in the position they were in.
Once more, give me an example of someone who's life was ruined by McCarthyism who was not working to bring about the destruction of the U.S. government.
You made some very strong statements there, but without specifics there is no way to know if what you said accurately reflects the situation.
When I was in school, there were several people who were used as examples of how McCarthyism destroyed people's lives. All of the examples which I was taught in school turned out to be active spies for the Soviet Union. So, I am asking people to give me some examples, by name, of people who's lives were ruined by McCarthyism.
Well, I have no idea if he was truly a communist spy or not. The case can certainly be made that McCarthyism drove him into the arms of the Chinese Communists and assisted them in developing their rocket program. Of course, it could be argued that he would have helped them anyway (which would have been the claim of those who went after him). I will not reject him as a victim, but his later work for the Chinese government leaves doubt in my mind as to whether he was a victim of false accusations (if someone can show me a significant number of victims of false accusations, I will be willing to consider him one of them. Without that, he remains a question mark). Although, this is a start towards what I was asking for.
Most of those who were blacklisted had some interest in communism as a political philosophy at some point (particularly the 1930's, when the commies were more-or-less on our side against the fascists), and many had rejected it after Stalin took over in Russia.
That sentence contradicts itself. Stalin took over in Russia in 1924. So, if they supported communism in the 1930's, it was while Stalin was in charge in the Soviet Union. It would also have been while Stalin was purging the Soviet Union of those not sufficiently supportive of him and starving millions of his people. And, oh yeah, Stalin signed the non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1939.
While Hitler had positioned himself as the opponent of Communism, Stalin recognized that there was nothing in Nazi ideology that was inherently hostile to Communism. The only point of difference was Nazism emphasis on ethnic purity and the superiority of the ethnically German.
The fact of the matter is that the Communist Party USA was a puppet organization of the KGB whose dual purpose was to gather useful intelligence for the Soviet Union and to work for the overthrow of the US government. While a very few members were unaware of this, the majority of those who joined it in the 30's, 40's and 50's supported at least the latter of those two agendas (and of those most approved the former as a path to the latter).
Give me a name or two.
Or perhaps he just made the whole thing up? Since there is nothing in the story which would allow anyone else to corroborate his story.
Actually that is not true. The vast majority of Christians are willing to condemn the Westboro Baptist Church without qualification. The number of Muslims willing to give an unqualified condemnation of Muslim extremist terrorists is a much smaller percentage.
There were communist spies in the state department. And there was almost zero intersection between the communist spies and the lives destroyed by McCarthism. So your point is...?
Whose lives were destroyed by McCarthyism? Without such a list there is no way to test your assertion. I had come across one or two people who were subject to the animus of what is called McCarthyism who were actually Soviet spies. Alger Hiss used to be listed as a victim of McCarthyism (although his trial actually predates what is usually termed the period of McCarthyism) until the fall of the Soviet Union when KGB records surfaced that showed he actually was a spy.
The thing is, he provides no information that would allow someone else to even attempt to corroborate his story. This story contains most of the hallmarks which snopes.com lists as classic indicators that a story is an urban legend.
I live in the same state as Pittsburgh, have numerous friends and co-workers from there. My brother attended Carnegie Mellon where I visited him on more than one occasion. And I have never heard of this Oakland of which you speak. None of which is an attempt to say that it does not exist, merely that no one outside of the Pittsburgh area is familiar with it.
In the only article I could find about that study, one of the investigators stated that "do not indicate that dietary sugar is the cause of hyperactivity problems." A follow up study was planned, but either it was never conducted or its results failed to support the conclusion and it was not published because I was unable to find any reference to it. It is also worth noting that in that study, the sugar only had the effect of raising adrenaline levels if it was consumed without accompanying proteins and fats.
The article I found on the study was published in 1995, there has been to date no follow up study showing a connection between sugar consumption and hyperactivity. The other point worth noting is that the adrenaline rush occurs "hours later".
Did you actually double the amount of plastic recycled? Or just the amount of plastic collected for recycling? More importantly, that did not address my point at all. You still pay to have the recyclables picked up, meaning you have no incentive to sort the plastic that is worth recycling from the plastic that is not worth recycling (or is not recyclable at all).
If people get injured more wearing seatbelts than without them, then absolutely we should not have them. The fact of the matter is that campaign finance laws made all of the problems they were supposed to fix worse.
Since we have mandated that everyone recycle and most people do not pay for their trash pickup, we have externalized the cost of disposing of trash. If people had to pay for the disposal of their trash AND there was a financial incentive to reward them for separating out the stuff that it is economically feasible to recycle, this would work much better. I remember as a child, my older brothers would collect various recyclables and take them to the recycling center for spending money. I did it for a little bit, but before I really got a system like my brothers had going the government mandated recycling and the recycling center stopped offering money for recyclables.
My observations of children of many different parents where the "hyperactivity because of eating sugar" occurs is that the children were showing signs of hyperactivity before the sugar was consumed. If there was a study showing that sugar consumption correlated with hyperactivity, I would be willing to believe it, but since the only study on the issue I have seen agrees with my observations. I would note that most parents are somewhat biased in interpreting their children's behavior.
So, by that logic, Al Capone was the government of Chicago back during Prohibition. I find it amusing that you think that giving power which you consider evil in the hands of corporations is good in the hands of government. You have basically said that if corporations get that power they are the government.
Basically, you seem to be arguing that might makes right. If you have the power to impose your will on everybody else, you are the government and therefore it is your right to do whatever you desire. It is up to those others to band together to stop you, at which point, they become the government.
Or in other words, you appear to believe that if you don't want others to run your life, you need to gather the power and run other people's lives.
I spotted a logical fallacy immediately. Just because one set of people or animals weigh more than another set of people or animals does not mean that the first set is obese. Under the standards used to measure human obesity, I am obese. Yet my doctor tells me I should not lose any more weight since my body fat percentage is on the low side of 10% (which every reference I can find says is below ideal for my age).
I will say that everything I have read supports the idea that BMI (what is used for determining whether humans are overweight or not) is useful for determining whether or not a group of humans weighs more than they should (although it is clearly not as useful when applied to individuals). However, without some sort of study to determine if the increased weight in pets and laboratory animals represents those animals being fatter and/or unhealthier than previously requires significant additional information.
No, it was not "the actual government". It was the power that those less rich than the king applied against the king. They went to war with him and when he lost, he was forced to sign the agreement, which limited the power of the government. You seem to think that you can limit the power of the government by giving the government more power. If "the actual government" had been able to force the king to sign the Magna Carta, there would have been no reason to have the king sign it at all. However, since the king was the government, it was necessary to have him formally acknowledge that his power was limited.
The first major campaign finance law was passed on 1971, and things began to get worse immediately. The SCOTUS decision credited with creating the "Super PAC loophole" was made in 2008. So, no, that decision is not going to work as an explanation as to why campaign finance laws have had the opposite effect of the one which is claimed to be their justification. The reason it is worse now than it was 50 years ago is because of campaign finance laws, not despite them.
No, they banded together to limit the power of the government (in this case the king). They did not form a new government. They limited the power of the one they had.
You should study history sometime. Julius Caesar became Emperor because he convinced the people to give him ever more power in order to protect them from the "evil rich guys". Kings are rich because they are king, not kings because they are rich. The only king that ever stopped being the government "all by himself" had it happen when the rich guys got together and demanded that he respect their rights. Amazingly enough, in the process they also demanded that he respect the rights of the not so rich guys as well. The document they forced him to sign was called the Magna Carta, perhaps you have heard of it?
I am saying that campaign finance laws were supposed to "take the money out of politics" and have not done so. Since the first campaign finance laws were passed, the cost of running a political campaign have risen faster than they did before it was passed. In addition, they were supposed to reduce the influence of lobbyists, yet the evidence suggests that they have done the reverse.
In summary, none of the things which campaign finance laws were supposed to accomplish have happened, yet people like you want to pass more of them. The rule I was taught was that when you try something and it doesn't work, try something different.
Where exactly do you intend to find this uncorrupted, and uncorruptable, overseer of the economy? Perhaps we should have kept King George? Or maybe we should select a new king to run things? I have never understood the logic of people who says that corporations can't be trusted because people are greedy and then want to appoint someone to take over the decision making from them and limit their choices. What makes you think that the person you are giving this power to won't be as greedy as the corporations they are supposed to rein in?
The thing is, there is only so much that rich people can do...unless of course the "collective" hands it to them by giving it to the government.
You might want to look at the history of "controls on campaign financing". It has resulted in it being even harder to unseat incumbents. When you combine that with studies which show that the longer a politician holds an office, the more he responds positively to attempts by lobbyists to influence his decision making, it suggests that instituting controls on campaign finance has the opposite effect on government to the one which you postulate.
I, also, love how you conflate Fox with political advertising and propaganda but do not mention the NYT or MSNBC, or even CNN. All of which are at least as much propaganda machines as Fox is.
Of course the biggest difference between corporate power and government power is that I can decline to consume the products produced by corporations and thus avoid giving them my money (and thus not increasing their power), even when they are the only source of a given good.
Where are you planning to flee to?