The important lesson here is that a project which ran over budget by more than 6x failed to meet a very foreseeable design requirement. Keep this in mind the next time you see someone on here assert that the ACA is going to reduce the deficit.
Yeah, I think they really missed the boat on this one: put up a pro-forma objection to the Republican delay plan, eventually give in to the Republicans (and thus getting what the ACA desperately needs: another year to work through the bugs), and then ride into the 2014 elections proudly trumpeting how they put the country before partisanship and pointing out that all of the ACA's benefits were delayed by the Republicans.
It was stupid of the Republicans to pick this fight at this date but it was even stupider of the Democrats not to cash in on it.
Elected officials are supposed to represent the views of the people who elected them, not some other group of people that believe things that you like better. Regardless if the districts were gerrymandered or not, the people who got elected were elected by the people in those districts. If those people are being fairly represented by the people they elected, then it's working as designed.
If you want to proposed that we do away with the way districts are structured, then I'm in complete agreement with you in principle. But that's a battle for another thread.
1) Congress screwed their own staff over, in the same way that they screwed all the rest of us over, because they couldn't be bothered to read and debate the bill before they passed it. So the Executive is going to fix their little 'oopsie' for them (illegally, I feel); for us? Not so much.
2) Employers are already making negative changes to their health coverage (or their projected health care coverage liabilities) and I think it's reasonable to assume this is going to continue if not accelerate. UPS cut off working spouse coverage with no change in compensation. On top of that, there are too many stories to list of companies that are cutting back working hours to avoid having to pay up under the law and that's certainly a cut in compensation.
The SCOTUS answered the very narrow question of Congress' ability to compel the purchase of a service through a penalty, pardon me, I mean tax. There are other Constitutional challenges to the law that have not been heard yet.
He said "overtly partisan" which is entirely correct. The Democrats passed this law completely without opposition support. That's pretty much a text book definition of "overtly partisan."
The current proposal on the table, by the way, is to delay implementation by a year. Something that the POTUS has already done selectively (and illegally) for special interest groups that support him. Why should big businesses get a break on the ACA but not everyone else?
LOL. And therein lies the truth of the ACA: it's not fair that people who are "somebodies" should have to live with the consequences of their decisions, but it's perfectly OK for all the rest of us "nobodies."
I find your selective outrage amusing. Where was your high minded defense of democratic first principles when this train wreck was forced through Congress? The simple fact is the Democrats didn't have enough votes to cleanly pass the bill they wanted and so through a lot of undemocratic shenanigans they managed to cram an unpopular bill through Congress with no opposition party support.
Now you'd like to be all outraged that the opposition didn't just pack up and go home and, worse, they're playing the same dirty tricks against your side.
I was part of the alpha test group and I raised most of the issues listed here during the alpha. Clearly I was out-voted. I'm still waiting for all those other alpha testers who outnumbered me to show up and defend this god-awful redesign.
"There are at least four glaring problems with how you've redesigned the comments:
1) You're wasting at least 33% of the usable screen space for comments.... 2) You've dropped the visual cues as to how far down in the thread you are.... 3) You moved 'load more/all comments' to the end of the comments! WTF!... 4) You've removed the ability to filter on moderation rating in the story....
Also be careful with moderation changes and You broke my ability to track my own comments and responses to them.
I have children in public elementary, middle, and high schools in Texas. TFA is creating strawman: no public school in TX is teaching anything but straight up science. In fact, my high school child's genetics/dna material is more rigorous than what I saw in college.
All this BS about teaching ID in Texas might be fun to get in a lather over but it just isn't true.
I was responding to the summary quotation that releasing classified information is treason. For a release of classified information to be treason, and not just illegal, you'd have to prove it was giving aid and comfort to our enemies. There's plenty of wiggle room in both directions when it comes to defining: aid, comfort, and enemy.
Her statement, assuming she quoted accurately and in context, is wrong and it furthers an illegitimate end, in my opinion, by reinforcing the belief that the federal government can pretty much do as it pleases and we shouldn't be asking any inconvenient questions about it.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
That's treason. Releasing classified information isn't treason per se unless it meets one of the Constitutional criteria laid out above.
There was at one time a rationale for the law. Legend has it that when auto manufacturers first started selling cars they relied really heavily on dealers to take the risk of introducting this new-fangled device and building a durable market for it. After the market had been established and the risk eliminated the dealers felt, not unreasonably, that it was a bit unfair to allow the manufacturer to barge in and simply drive all the dealers out of business.
Personally, I think if the dealers were dumb enough not to have protected themselves contractually from this completely foreseeable risk they they deserved to be run out of business. Most (all?) State legislators didn't share that viewpoint though (and I'm sure the big campaign donations didn't hurt) and we ended up with the system we've got today.
I think it's reasonable to say that this model of government enforced monopoly has outlived its usefulness, however, inertia in the system means we're likely to have to live with it for a while longer.
Yes, strictly speaking, you're correct. You don't _need_ to form a corporation. However, it's often convenient and more effective.
Should labor unions be prevented from participating in elections?
What about newspapers, television, or radio stations?
How about your local Rotary club?
Remember, had it gone the other way, the levers of power won't always be in the hands of people you like or trust. My personal opinion is that we'd be better served by a well documented and transparent free-for-all than the hodge-podge of hacks we deal with today.
Simply because I generate the data, largely incidental to my use of a private service, doesn't mean the government is entitled to it. "It exists, therefore the government may have it," isn't a position supported by the US Constitution.
Hate to respond to a trolling AC, but just can't resist.
Knowing that I have a mobile phone, or that I'm using it, isn't the same thing as knowing where I am 24/7, who I've called, how long I talked, etc. That information isn't normally discernible by anyone but me, the recipients of my communication, and the telecom providers I've contracted with to enable that communication. In other words, it's not public information.
The phone company and I have a private contract to which the government isn't a party. The government wants to argue that since I disclosed that data to _anyone_ it is no longer private information but their argument is absurd. By their logic any information I shared with any person or entity instantly becomes public for the purposes of government snooping. The only possible way to avoid it would be to live in a self-sustaining box somewhere interacting with no-one, intentionally or unintentionally. In other words dead.
While I respect the financial acumen that allows you to make material ad buys during campaign season, most of the rest of us can't afford to buy time to influence a national election. I'm sure you're a perfectly cromulent individual, but I don't really want our political discourse to be dictated only by those individuals who can independently afford it.
Scott, Wickard, and Kelo were indeed all offenses against core Constitutional principles (although you could argue, and I wouldn't, that Scott was consistent with the immoral racial discrimination built directly into the Constituation at the time of it's drafting), however, Citizens United was a solid win for both Constitutional adherence and for freedom in general. You should be celebrating it, instead of criticizing it.
Citizens United held (correctly) that people don't lose their 1st amendment rights simply because they've exercised their right to peacefully assemble. CU re-affirmed the right of people you like, as well as those you don't, to assemble and petition their government. I'm sure you can think of some examples where you'd be very unhappy if they'd reached the opposite conclusion.
Slashdot Mirror
The important lesson here is that a project which ran over budget by more than 6x failed to meet a very foreseeable design requirement. Keep this in mind the next time you see someone on here assert that the ACA is going to reduce the deficit.
Yeah, I think they really missed the boat on this one: put up a pro-forma objection to the Republican delay plan, eventually give in to the Republicans (and thus getting what the ACA desperately needs: another year to work through the bugs), and then ride into the 2014 elections proudly trumpeting how they put the country before partisanship and pointing out that all of the ACA's benefits were delayed by the Republicans.
It was stupid of the Republicans to pick this fight at this date but it was even stupider of the Democrats not to cash in on it.
Elected officials are supposed to represent the views of the people who elected them, not some other group of people that believe things that you like better. Regardless if the districts were gerrymandered or not, the people who got elected were elected by the people in those districts. If those people are being fairly represented by the people they elected, then it's working as designed.
If you want to proposed that we do away with the way districts are structured, then I'm in complete agreement with you in principle. But that's a battle for another thread.
I'm suggesting two things:
1) Congress screwed their own staff over, in the same way that they screwed all the rest of us over, because they couldn't be bothered to read and debate the bill before they passed it. So the Executive is going to fix their little 'oopsie' for them (illegally, I feel); for us? Not so much.
2) Employers are already making negative changes to their health coverage (or their projected health care coverage liabilities) and I think it's reasonable to assume this is going to continue if not accelerate. UPS cut off working spouse coverage with no change in compensation. On top of that, there are too many stories to list of companies that are cutting back working hours to avoid having to pay up under the law and that's certainly a cut in compensation.
"You know other countries have specific laws against the practice of tacking unrelated laws into government finance bills"
Oh, the irony. Had such a thing been in place the PPACA wouldn't have become law in the first place.
HA! Four MONTHS!?! Yeah, you really showed them!
The SCOTUS answered the very narrow question of Congress' ability to compel the purchase of a service through a penalty, pardon me, I mean tax. There are other Constitutional challenges to the law that have not been heard yet.
He said "overtly partisan" which is entirely correct. The Democrats passed this law completely without opposition support. That's pretty much a text book definition of "overtly partisan."
The current proposal on the table, by the way, is to delay implementation by a year. Something that the POTUS has already done selectively (and illegally) for special interest groups that support him. Why should big businesses get a break on the ACA but not everyone else?
LOL. And therein lies the truth of the ACA: it's not fair that people who are "somebodies" should have to live with the consequences of their decisions, but it's perfectly OK for all the rest of us "nobodies."
I find your selective outrage amusing. Where was your high minded defense of democratic first principles when this train wreck was forced through Congress? The simple fact is the Democrats didn't have enough votes to cleanly pass the bill they wanted and so through a lot of undemocratic shenanigans they managed to cram an unpopular bill through Congress with no opposition party support.
Now you'd like to be all outraged that the opposition didn't just pack up and go home and, worse, they're playing the same dirty tricks against your side.
Turn about is fair play.
Glad I wasn't the only alpha tester who felt that way.
I was part of the alpha test group and I raised most of the issues listed here during the alpha. Clearly I was out-voted. I'm still waiting for all those other alpha testers who outnumbered me to show up and defend this god-awful redesign.
Original comments are here.
tl;dr:
"There are at least four glaring problems with how you've redesigned the comments:
1) You're wasting at least 33% of the usable screen space for comments. ... ... ... ...
2) You've dropped the visual cues as to how far down in the thread you are.
3) You moved 'load more/all comments' to the end of the comments! WTF!
4) You've removed the ability to filter on moderation rating in the story.
Also be careful with moderation changes and
You broke my ability to track my own comments and responses to them.
Overall this is much much worse."
"Resistance is futile"
I thought that was the Vogons.
Well that explains why Ep. V went downhill after the Battle of Hoth. Come to think of it, it completely explains the land side of the Battle of Endor.
I have children in public elementary, middle, and high schools in Texas. TFA is creating strawman: no public school in TX is teaching anything but straight up science. In fact, my high school child's genetics/dna material is more rigorous than what I saw in college.
All this BS about teaching ID in Texas might be fun to get in a lather over but it just isn't true.
I was responding to the summary quotation that releasing classified information is treason. For a release of classified information to be treason, and not just illegal, you'd have to prove it was giving aid and comfort to our enemies. There's plenty of wiggle room in both directions when it comes to defining: aid, comfort, and enemy.
Her statement, assuming she quoted accurately and in context, is wrong and it furthers an illegitimate end, in my opinion, by reinforcing the belief that the federal government can pretty much do as it pleases and we shouldn't be asking any inconvenient questions about it.
No, Marissa, it is not treason:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
That's treason. Releasing classified information isn't treason per se unless it meets one of the Constitutional criteria laid out above.
There was at one time a rationale for the law. Legend has it that when auto manufacturers first started selling cars they relied really heavily on dealers to take the risk of introducting this new-fangled device and building a durable market for it. After the market had been established and the risk eliminated the dealers felt, not unreasonably, that it was a bit unfair to allow the manufacturer to barge in and simply drive all the dealers out of business.
Personally, I think if the dealers were dumb enough not to have protected themselves contractually from this completely foreseeable risk they they deserved to be run out of business. Most (all?) State legislators didn't share that viewpoint though (and I'm sure the big campaign donations didn't hurt) and we ended up with the system we've got today.
I think it's reasonable to say that this model of government enforced monopoly has outlived its usefulness, however, inertia in the system means we're likely to have to live with it for a while longer.
Yes, strictly speaking, you're correct. You don't _need_ to form a corporation. However, it's often convenient and more effective.
Should labor unions be prevented from participating in elections?
What about newspapers, television, or radio stations?
How about your local Rotary club?
Remember, had it gone the other way, the levers of power won't always be in the hands of people you like or trust. My personal opinion is that we'd be better served by a well documented and transparent free-for-all than the hodge-podge of hacks we deal with today.
Simply because I generate the data, largely incidental to my use of a private service, doesn't mean the government is entitled to it. "It exists, therefore the government may have it," isn't a position supported by the US Constitution.
Hate to respond to a trolling AC, but just can't resist.
Knowing that I have a mobile phone, or that I'm using it, isn't the same thing as knowing where I am 24/7, who I've called, how long I talked, etc. That information isn't normally discernible by anyone but me, the recipients of my communication, and the telecom providers I've contracted with to enable that communication. In other words, it's not public information.
The phone company and I have a private contract to which the government isn't a party. The government wants to argue that since I disclosed that data to _anyone_ it is no longer private information but their argument is absurd. By their logic any information I shared with any person or entity instantly becomes public for the purposes of government snooping. The only possible way to avoid it would be to live in a self-sustaining box somewhere interacting with no-one, intentionally or unintentionally. In other words dead.
While I respect the financial acumen that allows you to make material ad buys during campaign season, most of the rest of us can't afford to buy time to influence a national election. I'm sure you're a perfectly cromulent individual, but I don't really want our political discourse to be dictated only by those individuals who can independently afford it.
Scott, Wickard, and Kelo were indeed all offenses against core Constitutional principles (although you could argue, and I wouldn't, that Scott was consistent with the immoral racial discrimination built directly into the Constituation at the time of it's drafting), however, Citizens United was a solid win for both Constitutional adherence and for freedom in general. You should be celebrating it, instead of criticizing it.
Citizens United held (correctly) that people don't lose their 1st amendment rights simply because they've exercised their right to peacefully assemble. CU re-affirmed the right of people you like, as well as those you don't, to assemble and petition their government. I'm sure you can think of some examples where you'd be very unhappy if they'd reached the opposite conclusion.