Per TFA the levels of trans fatty acids in the USA population has declined by 58% in 9 years (2009 data, probably lower still now) and per this article the use of trans fats by the food industry has declined by 73%. Just about all restaurant chains and most packaged food producers have already removed trans fats from their products.
Sounds like an emergency situation that requires an immediate government ban. Or perhaps, the bureaucrats at the FDA were bored and the dart landed on trans fats as the thing to ban today?
He was engaging in private consensual acts that harmed no one and are nobody elses business. For that he was crucified in British tabloids to the point where he had to battle in courts and in media for months just in order to keep his job. I believe he won the court case and got quite a tidy sum from News of the World and in revenge he helped bankroll the court expenses of claimants in the phone tapping case against the paper which finally killed it. IMHO fair play to him. Going after google is a bit ridiculous though but not as ridiculous as the French law that apparently allowed him to win the case.
Why are people talking about 300m being some kind of a long trip. Take Southern California for example. Literally millions of people drive to Las Vegas or Bay Area every year, many of them multiple times a month. Both of those trips are outside Tesla range. Tesla will be great when there is a supercharger station in just about every gas station. Even then 20 minutes for 50% charge kinda sucks, but I think I could live with that. Until then it is still not a realistic option as the only car for most people in this part of the world. Most families here have multiple cars through so I can see Tesla being one of them though.
The history shows that countries gather intelligence on each other in any way they can. It would be irresponsible not to do so. Based on anything I know about international diplomacy I would be absolutely amazed if any country refrains from gathering data for ANY reason other than actual inability to do so. Of course US has more power in this regard than Brazil but I'm pretty sure countries like China and Russia are doing everything US is doing and more.
I agree in general but still sending a probe to Mars is a political stunt to show India is also coming up, not just China. There are million things India could be investing money into that would bring a better return in areas that you mention than this.
Well, since this is California he made sure his magazines all had 10 rounds or less in them. You know, cause psychos care about complying with the law while shooting police at the airport.
I hate to do this to you but the first sentence from your link:
An assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between semi-automatic, automatic and/or burst fire) rifle...
I don't know what rifle this guy used but it is extremely likely it wasn't an assault rifle by that definition. Most likely it was a semi-automatic only.
The plan as I understand it is for Sebelius to continue being the lighting rod for as long as possible and then resign when the shit starts quieting down a bit thereby sparing higher ups.
There isn't much "far-left" anything in the world except for couple of wacko countries. Far left in the old sense have lost the battle of ideas so thoroughly and so humiliatingly with the end of the cold war that nobody in the right mind would take them seriously. What the GP means is that majority of the US press leans to the left within the context of the US political spectrum, which is certainly true.
I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on public opinion, thank you very much.
I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on facts and new information, not based on public opinion. Public opinion is subject to all kinds of superficial things because majority of people don't have time to understand all the issues and therefore pick up their opinions from a few soundbites. Public opinion does not depend on reality but on the agenda of those who are the best at shaping it, and should never be trusted.
Party representation in the Senate is much closer to the popular vote of the people
Really? Two senators from California (pop. 38 million), two from Wyoming (pop. 500K)? By the way if the fact that a party has more seats than its share of total vote is evidence of gerrymandering (it isn't) then what can be said about Democrats who except for very recent past have always had more seats than votes - http://www.realclearpolitics.com/images/wysiwyg_images/chart10-10.gif , By your logic Democrats are gerrymandering masters and Republicans are the apprentice who just now is starting to pick up the craft.
Seriously? We are talking about grocery stores. Where I live there is a VONS, Smith's and Albertson's literally within 2 miles of my house and there was still room for newcomers like Fresh & Easy and a dollar store to open recently to serve niche markets. Everywhere I lived there were many choices of grocery stores. Perhaps in a small 'one store' town a company can get away with abusing its position for a time but the more they charge the more they open the door for competition.
It's not about turning a profit, it is about efficient operations. In case of private companies there is an obvious incentive to run a tight ship. In public companies the only incentive for the bureaucrat in charge is not to screw up in a particularly public way that might cost him his job, while cashing in his power in a variety of ways through the deals with suppliers, unions, and a million other ways.
In a truly deregulated market, the cost of entry for one cable company would be the same as for another. In a heavily regulated market that we actually have (at the local level) the first company had a very much lower cost of entry due to special deal with the local government.
Except that monopolies are almost always created by regulation.
In the town I live in, precious few grocery stores aren't the HEB brand. There is no real competition for them and they gouge.
Why is there no competition for them? Is there something stopping another chain from opening a store and charging slightly less and taking all their customer?
In the neighborhood I life in, I can't get FiOS and the AT&T DSL options are a joke (they won't bother putting in capacity). So if you want anything but *shudder* dialup, your options are Warner, Warner, or... Warner.
Again, why are there no other choices of Cable providers? Typically, there is local regulation that makes it is a legal nightmare as well as a huge initial cost for a second company to come in. Everybody has access to poles, a company "only" has to run its own wires and presto, you have a second provider. The only problem with this is that running lines carries an enormous up front cost, which made sense to the first one to come in due to the deal with the local government (regulation again, which typically included monopoly access for a number of years as part of the deal) but it doesn't make financial sense for a new company.
The problem is how to incentivize companies to come into markets "owned" by an existing provider: 1) simplify legal process of getting necessary permits 2) Offer incentives like those offered to the initial company - something you should take up with your local government. 3) If the current provider is really "gouging" the customers, it should be no problem for the newcomer to offer a better deal and still be profitable
There is no oversight in clothing market and yet you can buy a shirt at Wallmart or Ross for $5 or shoes for $10. Why don't they charge $100 for a shirt and keep the difference? It is not government oversight that drives prices down but competition. Telcos are not a good case study of either free market or regulation as they are a special case in a lot of ways.
They can run with huge losses too which is usually the case (see USPS, every form of government run public transport, most public utilities) and no shareholders exist to whine and bitch, only voters who have no direct way to hold the management accountable the way shareholders do and plenty of conflicting interests from industry, unions etc competing for management (i.e. government) favors through "donations, lobbying and election time favors (union busing etc). European government run utilities are making literally hundreds of billions in losses, made up by the taxpayer. Even very popular government run services like London Underground make huge losses every year and have to be subsidized.
It's an interesting psychological phenomenon that people will agree that the government is incredibly corrupt institution in certain areas close to their heart (in case of slashdot, privacy rights, lobbying/bribery by music/movie industries etc) and at the same time want to give government more and more power in areas that they don't understand as well (healthcare, industry regulation, public utilities). Guess what, the government is just as corrupt in those areas too.
What evidence do you have that the government will do a better job or be less corrupt than the private companies? Or is government a default solution to every problem regardless of its own (numerous) problems?
I'm not talking about how your neighbors treat you on the street. I'm talking about the government policy to restrict the immigration on racial grounds. Have you tried to settle permanently in Japan and get the citizenship? It is almost impossible unless you have Japanese roots. It's no coincidence that Japan is one of the most racially pure countries on Earth (99% Japanese) as it is a deliberate policy. My point is that we treat it as racism when we are even slightly bit reluctant to grant citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants while we don't apply the same standards to other countries, Japan being one of the biggest offenders.
The point is, people are voting with their money. It may be nice to hang out at a bookstore, but the combination of lower price, vastly greater selection (as in 1000 times greater), and convenience of shopping from home obviously wins out. One justification for keeping the physical stores around Paris might be tourism but when you put it that way - i.e they are charging the taxpayers to decorate the city with bookstores - it does seem kinda silly. It's really just a preference of the ruling elite. They don't care that the books will cost more to the poor people, they are more interested in how the city looks. Just like in certain highly expensive, highly liberal, neighborhoods of San Francisco, New York etc they banned chain restaurants thereby drastically raising the average price of eating out, but it makes it nicer for the rich people to walk around without all those poor people blocking the sidewalk.
Slashdot Mirror
Per TFA the levels of trans fatty acids in the USA population has declined by 58% in 9 years (2009 data, probably lower still now) and per this article the use of trans fats by the food industry has declined by 73%. Just about all restaurant chains and most packaged food producers have already removed trans fats from their products.
Sounds like an emergency situation that requires an immediate government ban. Or perhaps, the bureaucrats at the FDA were bored and the dart landed on trans fats as the thing to ban today?
He was engaging in private consensual acts that harmed no one and are nobody elses business. For that he was crucified in British tabloids to the point where he had to battle in courts and in media for months just in order to keep his job. I believe he won the court case and got quite a tidy sum from News of the World and in revenge he helped bankroll the court expenses of claimants in the phone tapping case against the paper which finally killed it. IMHO fair play to him. Going after google is a bit ridiculous though but not as ridiculous as the French law that apparently allowed him to win the case.
Why are people talking about 300m being some kind of a long trip. Take Southern California for example. Literally millions of people drive to Las Vegas or Bay Area every year, many of them multiple times a month. Both of those trips are outside Tesla range. Tesla will be great when there is a supercharger station in just about every gas station. Even then 20 minutes for 50% charge kinda sucks, but I think I could live with that. Until then it is still not a realistic option as the only car for most people in this part of the world. Most families here have multiple cars through so I can see Tesla being one of them though.
The history shows that countries gather intelligence on each other in any way they can. It would be irresponsible not to do so. Based on anything I know about international diplomacy I would be absolutely amazed if any country refrains from gathering data for ANY reason other than actual inability to do so. Of course US has more power in this regard than Brazil but I'm pretty sure countries like China and Russia are doing everything US is doing and more.
I agree in general but still sending a probe to Mars is a political stunt to show India is also coming up, not just China. There are million things India could be investing money into that would bring a better return in areas that you mention than this.
Well, since this is California he made sure his magazines all had 10 rounds or less in them. You know, cause psychos care about complying with the law while shooting police at the airport.
Just a wild guess here, but perhaps gun owners were obeying laws that disallow carrying guns at the airport.
I hate to do this to you but the first sentence from your link:
An assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between semi-automatic, automatic and/or burst fire) rifle...
I don't know what rifle this guy used but it is extremely likely it wasn't an assault rifle by that definition. Most likely it was a semi-automatic only.
Guess what S in NSDAP stood for.
The plan as I understand it is for Sebelius to continue being the lighting rod for as long as possible and then resign when the shit starts quieting down a bit thereby sparing higher ups.
As per article it is AT LEAST $174 million plus a lot of other stuff that's hard to account for. Still seems ridiculously high.
Russia Today is a propaganda outlet of the Russian government.
There isn't much "far-left" anything in the world except for couple of wacko countries. Far left in the old sense have lost the battle of ideas so thoroughly and so humiliatingly with the end of the cold war that nobody in the right mind would take them seriously. What the GP means is that majority of the US press leans to the left within the context of the US political spectrum, which is certainly true.
I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on public opinion, thank you very much.
I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on facts and new information, not based on public opinion. Public opinion is subject to all kinds of superficial things because majority of people don't have time to understand all the issues and therefore pick up their opinions from a few soundbites. Public opinion does not depend on reality but on the agenda of those who are the best at shaping it, and should never be trusted.
Party representation in the Senate is much closer to the popular vote of the people
Really? Two senators from California (pop. 38 million), two from Wyoming (pop. 500K)? By the way if the fact that a party has more seats than its share of total vote is evidence of gerrymandering (it isn't) then what can be said about Democrats who except for very recent past have always had more seats than votes - http://www.realclearpolitics.com/images/wysiwyg_images/chart10-10.gif , By your logic Democrats are gerrymandering masters and Republicans are the apprentice who just now is starting to pick up the craft.
Seriously? We are talking about grocery stores. Where I live there is a VONS, Smith's and Albertson's literally within 2 miles of my house and there was still room for newcomers like Fresh & Easy and a dollar store to open recently to serve niche markets. Everywhere I lived there were many choices of grocery stores. Perhaps in a small 'one store' town a company can get away with abusing its position for a time but the more they charge the more they open the door for competition.
It's not about turning a profit, it is about efficient operations. In case of private companies there is an obvious incentive to run a tight ship. In public companies the only incentive for the bureaucrat in charge is not to screw up in a particularly public way that might cost him his job, while cashing in his power in a variety of ways through the deals with suppliers, unions, and a million other ways.
In a truly deregulated market, the cost of entry for one cable company would be the same as for another. In a heavily regulated market that we actually have (at the local level) the first company had a very much lower cost of entry due to special deal with the local government.
Except that monopolies are almost always created by regulation.
In the town I live in, precious few grocery stores aren't the HEB brand. There is no real competition for them and they gouge.
Why is there no competition for them? Is there something stopping another chain from opening a store and charging slightly less and taking all their customer?
In the neighborhood I life in, I can't get FiOS and the AT&T DSL options are a joke (they won't bother putting in capacity). So if you want anything but *shudder* dialup, your options are Warner, Warner, or... Warner.
Again, why are there no other choices of Cable providers? Typically, there is local regulation that makes it is a legal nightmare as well as a huge initial cost for a second company to come in. Everybody has access to poles, a company "only" has to run its own wires and presto, you have a second provider. The only problem with this is that running lines carries an enormous up front cost, which made sense to the first one to come in due to the deal with the local government (regulation again, which typically included monopoly access for a number of years as part of the deal) but it doesn't make financial sense for a new company.
The problem is how to incentivize companies to come into markets "owned" by an existing provider: 1) simplify legal process of getting necessary permits 2) Offer incentives like those offered to the initial company - something you should take up with your local government. 3) If the current provider is really "gouging" the customers, it should be no problem for the newcomer to offer a better deal and still be profitable
There is no oversight in clothing market and yet you can buy a shirt at Wallmart or Ross for $5 or shoes for $10. Why don't they charge $100 for a shirt and keep the difference? It is not government oversight that drives prices down but competition. Telcos are not a good case study of either free market or regulation as they are a special case in a lot of ways.
Points deducted for not mentioning Koch brothers though.
They can run with a zero margin
They can run with huge losses too which is usually the case (see USPS, every form of government run public transport, most public utilities) and no shareholders exist to whine and bitch, only voters who have no direct way to hold the management accountable the way shareholders do and plenty of conflicting interests from industry, unions etc competing for management (i.e. government) favors through "donations, lobbying and election time favors (union busing etc). European government run utilities are making literally hundreds of billions in losses, made up by the taxpayer. Even very popular government run services like London Underground make huge losses every year and have to be subsidized.
It's an interesting psychological phenomenon that people will agree that the government is incredibly corrupt institution in certain areas close to their heart (in case of slashdot, privacy rights, lobbying/bribery by music/movie industries etc) and at the same time want to give government more and more power in areas that they don't understand as well (healthcare, industry regulation, public utilities). Guess what, the government is just as corrupt in those areas too.
What evidence do you have that the government will do a better job or be less corrupt than the private companies? Or is government a default solution to every problem regardless of its own (numerous) problems?
I'm not talking about how your neighbors treat you on the street. I'm talking about the government policy to restrict the immigration on racial grounds. Have you tried to settle permanently in Japan and get the citizenship? It is almost impossible unless you have Japanese roots. It's no coincidence that Japan is one of the most racially pure countries on Earth (99% Japanese) as it is a deliberate policy. My point is that we treat it as racism when we are even slightly bit reluctant to grant citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants while we don't apply the same standards to other countries, Japan being one of the biggest offenders.
The point is, people are voting with their money. It may be nice to hang out at a bookstore, but the combination of lower price, vastly greater selection (as in 1000 times greater), and convenience of shopping from home obviously wins out. One justification for keeping the physical stores around Paris might be tourism but when you put it that way - i.e they are charging the taxpayers to decorate the city with bookstores - it does seem kinda silly. It's really just a preference of the ruling elite. They don't care that the books will cost more to the poor people, they are more interested in how the city looks. Just like in certain highly expensive, highly liberal, neighborhoods of San Francisco, New York etc they banned chain restaurants thereby drastically raising the average price of eating out, but it makes it nicer for the rich people to walk around without all those poor people blocking the sidewalk.