I believe that most of the benefits that are attributed to the EPA are a result of the legislation that predates its creation. Certainly the EPA has long ago fulfilled the mandate for which it was created and has operated as a barrier to entry to new entities protecting established businesses for the last twenty years. Your reference to meat packing plants is perfect. The regulation of meat packing plants has led to the closure of small, local butchers, even though almost all outbreaks of food borne illness occurred as a result of improper hygiene at companies already inspected by the USDA (or another government agency). The government has used every outbreak of food borne illness in the last 30 years as an excuse to force smaller companies to comply with more stringent regulatory requirements even though it was the large companies which were theoretically already subject to those requirements that were the source of the outbreak.
You apparently do not understand that Fox and Fox News are not the same thing. Fox News is not "on the air". It is a cable channel. Fox on the other hand is broadcast "over the air" in most markets.
Sure he does. Google has money that it has not given to the government. That means that it is "tax-supported". All money belongs to the government. You are only allowed to have the money that it decides that you may have. The professor believes that these meals represent money that Google employees should not have. If the government had that money they could pay him more.
What you described is not capitalism, it is a variation on fascism. It is one variant of the economic system that you end up with when you ask the government to regulate ever more aspects of the economy in order to protect people from their own bad decisions. All of the variants look pretty much the same, the only question is whether the people who benefit are people who accumulated wealth before you started down that path and use it to acquire political power as this process goes forward or whether the people who benefit are people who accumulated political power before you started down that path and use it to acquire wealth as this process goes forward. Of course what often happens is some combination of the two. The one thing that never happens as the government regulates ever greater parts of the economy is that the common person benefits.
What makes it disconcerting is that it shows that the publishers of e-books have the ability to know what parts of it I am reading.
Of course, the article actually makes a point of showing as an example of how it is good by highlighting what I would call a misuse of this technology. A professor noticed that a student, who by every traditional measure of doing well was doing excellent, didn't read the textbook. Instead of concluding that the student was able to learn the material from his lectures and other sources concluded that the student wasn't actually learning the material. I was an "A" student through high school and college, scoring well within the top percentile on every type of standardized test I ever took (including the MCAT), yet I rarely read the textbooks (although I usually read my roommates' textbooks).. The reason I never read the textbooks was because they rarely contained anything that added to my knowledge over and above what the professor presented in lecture.
And that real journalists also tend to understand much better the distinction between journalism and editorialising.
And thus are much better at blurring the line so that it is harder to tell when they are editorializing in the middle of what purports to be journalism.
Good grief every time somebody tries to start reigning in government spending, people start talking about "draconian cuts" even though the people are only talking about slowing down the increase in spending. What do you think would happen to a politician that talked about actually cutting spending?
When people start screaming about "spending cuts", have you made any effort to point out that those "cuts" are merely reductions in the increase in spending? Or do you just complain that no one follows through on promises to cut spending? Considering the fact that you think the problems in Europe that were caused by monetary policy are the result of austerity, I'm going to guess that you were one of those screaming about the "spending cuts".
How do you know, the federal government has never actually talked about reducing spending. The closest they have ever come was to talk about reducing how fast they increased spending.
Your examples are all countries which do not control their currency. They all use the Euro. The problems they are having are exactly the problems that were predicted when they joined the euro. Their problems have nothing to do with austerity, rather their problems are because their monetary policy is controlled by someone outside of those countries (this does not mean that they wouldn't have problems if they still controlled their monetary policy, just that the lesson you are learning is not the correct one).
I will repeat, there were quite a few people who predicted the exact problems that Greece, Ireland and Cypress are having before the Euro was created.
Except that there were electric cars which competed with Benz's ICE car and were more popular in the day. Why has it taken twice as long for electric cars to mature as a technology as ICE cars? Why did ICE cars become more popular than electric cars (even though initially the reverse was true) and what has changed that might turn that around?
Several people replied with a question they thought was insightful but which was rather a non-sequitur. They wanted to know what was wrong with NASA inspiring children or expanding international relations. The answer is "Nothing." The problem is that none of those three things should be NASA's primary mission. NASA's primary mission should have something to do with the Aeronautics and/or Space. We have another agency that is tasked with expanding international relations, as a matter of fact that agency was established for the express purpose of managing the U.S. government's foreign relations. It is the State Department. If NASA is going to make foreign relations one of its primary goals, it is going to make itself redundant. Reaching out to Muslim nations also falls under the rubric of the State Department and NASA doing so is redundant. We also already have an agency that has one of its primary focuses as inspiring children to get into science and math (or at least it should). That is the Department of Education. Once again if NASA starts making that its focus it becomes redundant.
I will repeat, the head of NASA should see his primary missions as being involved with Aeronautics and Space, not foreign relations or education (although both of those may be secondary or tertiary objectives).
You are now making a different argument. Your initial argument compared the Tesla to the cars made by Benz. That argument is generally that you have to give a "new" technology time to mature. The problem with that argument is that there were electric cars equivalent to the Benz ICE car before the model T was developed and for a time they were more popular than ICE cars. Now you are making the argument that battery technology has taken time to develop to the point where electric cars are practical. Actually as I think about you comparison to CFLs I find the argument somewhat frightening because the only reason that CFLs began to displace traditional incandescent bulbs is because the government made the traditional incandescent bulb illegal (yes, I know that if a manufacturer makes a modified incandescent bulb that meets the energy standards of the new law they can sell them, but the law was written so that the traditional incandescent bulb does not meet the standard). My fear is that at some point it will be decided that people are not moving to electric cars fast enough and someone will decide to outlaw ICE cars (and of course just like with light bulbs the main reason will be that the traditional one is too inexpensive).
Well, that's fine, by that standard the first electric automobile was built in 1835, so my argument still stands. The electric motor was not even a little bit new at the time that automobiles came onto the scene either. By your time table electric cars are less than 30 years "newer" than ICE cars. How come it only took from 1807 to 1886 for ICE automobiles to get to Benz, yet it took from 1835 to 2003 for electric cars to get to Tesla?
I am suggesting that a technology that has been around for over 100 years cannot be called a "new" technology. Considering that when cars first appeared electric cars were more popular than internal combustion engines, it is a bit much to suggest that all it will take is just a few more years before they replace internal combustion engine vehicles.
Yes, of course the first electric car was around before the Model T and there still isn't an "affordable" electric car. In 1900, there were 1575 electric cars registered in the entire U.S., compared with 936 internal combustion cars. So, in 1900, electric cars were more popular than internal combustion cars, yet today when there a millions of internal combustion cars registered in the U.S. the number of electric cars is somewhere in the vicinity of.01% of that number. Exactly how long is this technology going to take to mature?
Whatever the motives of those involved with Planned Parenthood today (and you are correct that end results are more important than motives), it is clear from their writings that those who started Planned Parenthood had racist motives. That is, one of their goals in establishing Planned Parenthood was to reduce the number of minorities as a percentage of the population.
Oh, I forgot to mention relative to your "staring down the abyss of Depression" comment. Since WWII there have been multiple recessions, this is the first one where the number of jobs was not higher 4 years after the start of the recession than at the high point of jobs before the recession began. There are fewer Americans employed today than at the high point before the recession began, even though we have been in "recovery" for over 4 years.
The problem with your logic is that the size of the population of the U.S. that is within the bounds of what is considered "working age" is larger today than it was when Obama took office. So, the number of people leaving the workforce cannot be explained by baby boomers retiring, since that does not represent enough people.
Actually, the accusation that Democrats support infanticide is based on more than the idea that abortion is infanticide. As the OP pointed out the starting point for the accusation is that Democrats almost uniformly support government funding of Planned Parenthood. In a legislative hearing on a bill to require abortion clinics to provide medical care to a baby born alive after an attempted abortion, Planned Parenthood's representative repeatedly stated that whether or not to provide any care to the infant (once it has actually been born, everyone agrees that it is an infant) should be a decision made by the mother and the doctor. When one reads what she was saying it is clear that she was supporting the right of the mother to allow her newborn child to die of exposure if the mother had been trying to abort the pregnancy. So, Planned Parenthood's representative was advocating, indirectly, for the right of the mother, in certain circumstances and in conjunction with a doctor, to perform infanticide. This was not a circumstance where the Planned Parenthood representative was ambushed and was not sure how to respond. She had gone before the legislature expressly to testify against this law. She should have known that this was the sort of question she was going to get. Therefore one can assume that the answers she gave were the ones that she prepared to give.
Of course, one of the things that is overlooked is that this law was introduced at the same time that an abortion doctor in another state is on trial for killing a woman who came to him for an abortion and for killing several babies that were born alive in his clinic after failed abortions. The deaths he is being charged for represent only a small sample of the deaths which occurred in his clinic. If you are interested in knowing more, search for Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the man ran a house of horrors (among other things, he kept preserved feet from the babies he aborted).
You took his analogy in a direction that led people to point out the flaw in his reasoning. While others have mentioned that flaw, I do not think they have spelled it out clearly enough.
When vacuums came out, they required electricity to function, unlike their various predecessors (primarily the broom) and unlike their competitors (there exist several devices that can be used manually to extract dirt from a carpet). However, vacuum cleaners offered additional functionality in exchange for this new requirement, they performed the task for which they were designed more efficiently and thoroughly than the devices with which they competed. What additional functionality is Microsoft offering in return for this always on the Internet requirement of the new gaming console? The answer is that if this new requirement gave added functionality for the consumer, they would be selling the new game consoles with and without it and charging extra for the ones that require an internet connection to function (because people would pay that extra). By not offering a next generation game console without the always on internet connection they demonstrate that the additional function it provides are for the manufacturer, not the consumer.
I am amazed at how closely you watch your neighbors without actually knowing anything about them. You know that your neighbors stay up at night, with the lights out and that they are NOT having sex. I am going to conclude that while you were watching them (how else did you know that they are not having sex?) that you observed them smoking weed.
You weren't on the jury, but the guy basically said that he knew they were drug dealers in the article. I know it is hard to believe that someone did something that they knew could likely end up with them in jail, but that's what he did.
He did deal with drug dealers, he knew he dealt with drug dealers. He worked very hard to avoid knowing anything about his customers that would move his awareness from the category of suspicion relative to a particular person to the category of knowledge. In this case he continued doing business with the person even after his awareness moved from the category of suspicion to the category of knowledge. IT says so right in the article. He knew where the line was, but hoped to get away with going over the line on this one occasion. He was wrong and went to jail. That's what happens when you play that game and make a mistake.
I also reserve that word for things of which I am certain. I do not expect you to accept those things which I know but cannot prove because you have no way to know whether or not my judgment is accurate. I on the other hand have many years of experience with my judgment and have learned how to tell when I know something, even when I am not sure how I know it.
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I believe that most of the benefits that are attributed to the EPA are a result of the legislation that predates its creation. Certainly the EPA has long ago fulfilled the mandate for which it was created and has operated as a barrier to entry to new entities protecting established businesses for the last twenty years. Your reference to meat packing plants is perfect. The regulation of meat packing plants has led to the closure of small, local butchers, even though almost all outbreaks of food borne illness occurred as a result of improper hygiene at companies already inspected by the USDA (or another government agency). The government has used every outbreak of food borne illness in the last 30 years as an excuse to force smaller companies to comply with more stringent regulatory requirements even though it was the large companies which were theoretically already subject to those requirements that were the source of the outbreak.
You apparently do not understand that Fox and Fox News are not the same thing. Fox News is not "on the air". It is a cable channel. Fox on the other hand is broadcast "over the air" in most markets.
Sure he does. Google has money that it has not given to the government. That means that it is "tax-supported". All money belongs to the government. You are only allowed to have the money that it decides that you may have. The professor believes that these meals represent money that Google employees should not have. If the government had that money they could pay him more.
What you described is not capitalism, it is a variation on fascism. It is one variant of the economic system that you end up with when you ask the government to regulate ever more aspects of the economy in order to protect people from their own bad decisions. All of the variants look pretty much the same, the only question is whether the people who benefit are people who accumulated wealth before you started down that path and use it to acquire political power as this process goes forward or whether the people who benefit are people who accumulated political power before you started down that path and use it to acquire wealth as this process goes forward. Of course what often happens is some combination of the two. The one thing that never happens as the government regulates ever greater parts of the economy is that the common person benefits.
What makes it disconcerting is that it shows that the publishers of e-books have the ability to know what parts of it I am reading.
Of course, the article actually makes a point of showing as an example of how it is good by highlighting what I would call a misuse of this technology. A professor noticed that a student, who by every traditional measure of doing well was doing excellent, didn't read the textbook. Instead of concluding that the student was able to learn the material from his lectures and other sources concluded that the student wasn't actually learning the material. I was an "A" student through high school and college, scoring well within the top percentile on every type of standardized test I ever took (including the MCAT), yet I rarely read the textbooks (although I usually read my roommates' textbooks).. The reason I never read the textbooks was because they rarely contained anything that added to my knowledge over and above what the professor presented in lecture.
And that real journalists also tend to understand much better the distinction between journalism and editorialising.
And thus are much better at blurring the line so that it is harder to tell when they are editorializing in the middle of what purports to be journalism.
Good grief every time somebody tries to start reigning in government spending, people start talking about "draconian cuts" even though the people are only talking about slowing down the increase in spending. What do you think would happen to a politician that talked about actually cutting spending?
When people start screaming about "spending cuts", have you made any effort to point out that those "cuts" are merely reductions in the increase in spending? Or do you just complain that no one follows through on promises to cut spending? Considering the fact that you think the problems in Europe that were caused by monetary policy are the result of austerity, I'm going to guess that you were one of those screaming about the "spending cuts".
How do you know, the federal government has never actually talked about reducing spending. The closest they have ever come was to talk about reducing how fast they increased spending.
Your examples are all countries which do not control their currency. They all use the Euro. The problems they are having are exactly the problems that were predicted when they joined the euro. Their problems have nothing to do with austerity, rather their problems are because their monetary policy is controlled by someone outside of those countries (this does not mean that they wouldn't have problems if they still controlled their monetary policy, just that the lesson you are learning is not the correct one).
I will repeat, there were quite a few people who predicted the exact problems that Greece, Ireland and Cypress are having before the Euro was created.
Except that there were electric cars which competed with Benz's ICE car and were more popular in the day. Why has it taken twice as long for electric cars to mature as a technology as ICE cars? Why did ICE cars become more popular than electric cars (even though initially the reverse was true) and what has changed that might turn that around?
Several people replied with a question they thought was insightful but which was rather a non-sequitur. They wanted to know what was wrong with NASA inspiring children or expanding international relations. The answer is "Nothing." The problem is that none of those three things should be NASA's primary mission. NASA's primary mission should have something to do with the Aeronautics and/or Space. We have another agency that is tasked with expanding international relations, as a matter of fact that agency was established for the express purpose of managing the U.S. government's foreign relations. It is the State Department. If NASA is going to make foreign relations one of its primary goals, it is going to make itself redundant. Reaching out to Muslim nations also falls under the rubric of the State Department and NASA doing so is redundant. We also already have an agency that has one of its primary focuses as inspiring children to get into science and math (or at least it should). That is the Department of Education. Once again if NASA starts making that its focus it becomes redundant.
I will repeat, the head of NASA should see his primary missions as being involved with Aeronautics and Space, not foreign relations or education (although both of those may be secondary or tertiary objectives).
You are now making a different argument. Your initial argument compared the Tesla to the cars made by Benz. That argument is generally that you have to give a "new" technology time to mature. The problem with that argument is that there were electric cars equivalent to the Benz ICE car before the model T was developed and for a time they were more popular than ICE cars. Now you are making the argument that battery technology has taken time to develop to the point where electric cars are practical. Actually as I think about you comparison to CFLs I find the argument somewhat frightening because the only reason that CFLs began to displace traditional incandescent bulbs is because the government made the traditional incandescent bulb illegal (yes, I know that if a manufacturer makes a modified incandescent bulb that meets the energy standards of the new law they can sell them, but the law was written so that the traditional incandescent bulb does not meet the standard). My fear is that at some point it will be decided that people are not moving to electric cars fast enough and someone will decide to outlaw ICE cars (and of course just like with light bulbs the main reason will be that the traditional one is too inexpensive).
Well, that's fine, by that standard the first electric automobile was built in 1835, so my argument still stands. The electric motor was not even a little bit new at the time that automobiles came onto the scene either. By your time table electric cars are less than 30 years "newer" than ICE cars. How come it only took from 1807 to 1886 for ICE automobiles to get to Benz, yet it took from 1835 to 2003 for electric cars to get to Tesla?
I am suggesting that a technology that has been around for over 100 years cannot be called a "new" technology. Considering that when cars first appeared electric cars were more popular than internal combustion engines, it is a bit much to suggest that all it will take is just a few more years before they replace internal combustion engine vehicles.
Yes, of course the first electric car was around before the Model T and there still isn't an "affordable" electric car. In 1900, there were 1575 electric cars registered in the entire U.S., compared with 936 internal combustion cars. So, in 1900, electric cars were more popular than internal combustion cars, yet today when there a millions of internal combustion cars registered in the U.S. the number of electric cars is somewhere in the vicinity of .01% of that number. Exactly how long is this technology going to take to mature?
Whatever the motives of those involved with Planned Parenthood today (and you are correct that end results are more important than motives), it is clear from their writings that those who started Planned Parenthood had racist motives. That is, one of their goals in establishing Planned Parenthood was to reduce the number of minorities as a percentage of the population.
Oh, I forgot to mention relative to your "staring down the abyss of Depression" comment. Since WWII there have been multiple recessions, this is the first one where the number of jobs was not higher 4 years after the start of the recession than at the high point of jobs before the recession began. There are fewer Americans employed today than at the high point before the recession began, even though we have been in "recovery" for over 4 years.
The problem with your logic is that the size of the population of the U.S. that is within the bounds of what is considered "working age" is larger today than it was when Obama took office. So, the number of people leaving the workforce cannot be explained by baby boomers retiring, since that does not represent enough people.
You forgot to mention the guy who attempted to go on a murder spree at various organizations designated by the SPLC as "hate groups".
Actually, the accusation that Democrats support infanticide is based on more than the idea that abortion is infanticide. As the OP pointed out the starting point for the accusation is that Democrats almost uniformly support government funding of Planned Parenthood. In a legislative hearing on a bill to require abortion clinics to provide medical care to a baby born alive after an attempted abortion, Planned Parenthood's representative repeatedly stated that whether or not to provide any care to the infant (once it has actually been born, everyone agrees that it is an infant) should be a decision made by the mother and the doctor. When one reads what she was saying it is clear that she was supporting the right of the mother to allow her newborn child to die of exposure if the mother had been trying to abort the pregnancy. So, Planned Parenthood's representative was advocating, indirectly, for the right of the mother, in certain circumstances and in conjunction with a doctor, to perform infanticide. This was not a circumstance where the Planned Parenthood representative was ambushed and was not sure how to respond. She had gone before the legislature expressly to testify against this law. She should have known that this was the sort of question she was going to get. Therefore one can assume that the answers she gave were the ones that she prepared to give.
Of course, one of the things that is overlooked is that this law was introduced at the same time that an abortion doctor in another state is on trial for killing a woman who came to him for an abortion and for killing several babies that were born alive in his clinic after failed abortions. The deaths he is being charged for represent only a small sample of the deaths which occurred in his clinic. If you are interested in knowing more, search for Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the man ran a house of horrors (among other things, he kept preserved feet from the babies he aborted).
More open government is probably a good thing, more efficient government is certainly not a good thing.
You took his analogy in a direction that led people to point out the flaw in his reasoning. While others have mentioned that flaw, I do not think they have spelled it out clearly enough.
When vacuums came out, they required electricity to function, unlike their various predecessors (primarily the broom) and unlike their competitors (there exist several devices that can be used manually to extract dirt from a carpet). However, vacuum cleaners offered additional functionality in exchange for this new requirement, they performed the task for which they were designed more efficiently and thoroughly than the devices with which they competed. What additional functionality is Microsoft offering in return for this always on the Internet requirement of the new gaming console? The answer is that if this new requirement gave added functionality for the consumer, they would be selling the new game consoles with and without it and charging extra for the ones that require an internet connection to function (because people would pay that extra). By not offering a next generation game console without the always on internet connection they demonstrate that the additional function it provides are for the manufacturer, not the consumer.
I am amazed at how closely you watch your neighbors without actually knowing anything about them. You know that your neighbors stay up at night, with the lights out and that they are NOT having sex. I am going to conclude that while you were watching them (how else did you know that they are not having sex?) that you observed them smoking weed.
You weren't on the jury, but the guy basically said that he knew they were drug dealers in the article. I know it is hard to believe that someone did something that they knew could likely end up with them in jail, but that's what he did.
He did deal with drug dealers, he knew he dealt with drug dealers. He worked very hard to avoid knowing anything about his customers that would move his awareness from the category of suspicion relative to a particular person to the category of knowledge. In this case he continued doing business with the person even after his awareness moved from the category of suspicion to the category of knowledge. IT says so right in the article. He knew where the line was, but hoped to get away with going over the line on this one occasion. He was wrong and went to jail. That's what happens when you play that game and make a mistake.
I also reserve that word for things of which I am certain. I do not expect you to accept those things which I know but cannot prove because you have no way to know whether or not my judgment is accurate. I on the other hand have many years of experience with my judgment and have learned how to tell when I know something, even when I am not sure how I know it.