I'm actually not in favor of gun control. Case in point. But I do think many people don't follow their logic to its conclusion - and if they decide on a limit, what limits are appropriate and why. You may call it jerking off. I call it the central point.
I assume you were posting things on FreeRepublic that would be counter to the perspective of that forum - liberal, democratic or whatever. I do have a question for you: what is the attraction?
I subscribe to The Nation. I read its blog posts and the commentary of posts I think are interesting - just like Slashdot. I find that there is a sizable contingent (maybe as much as a quarter?) that basically trolls the boards offering libertarian, conservative, and other perspectives that differ significantly from the general perspective of The Nation and its readers. What I cannot figure out is - why?
I would never think of spending time reading blog posts from the Free Republic, National Review, Washington Monthly, Townhall.com or other conservative sites. Maybe an article here or there when I'm looking for different perspectives on a particular issue or an issue of these magazines when I am trying to understand what issues seem to be top of mind for conservatives. But I would never read blog posts or commentary - or troll those forums.
Why did you do it? Did you think you would change people's minds? Were you trying to get people's goat? What motivated you?
It seems to me that participating in forums where you don't agree with the thrust of the forum - whether it be an issue (Luddites posting to Slashdot, gun control advocates on NRA sites or whatever) or political philosophy - is a huge waste of time. Yet, it seems like no matter what forum you choose - someone is doing it. Why? Any insight?
Chicago History has a few lessons about another equalizer: dynamite.
Many anarchists were obsessively enthralled with the possibilities of dynamite as an instant equalizer, since it was inexpensive, accessible, portable, and terrifyingly effective. This explosive allowed a single anarchist to carry fearsome destructive power in the pocket of his coat. The threat created by the mere existence of dynamite was in itself a wonderful weapon. "Dynamite is a peace-maker," read an article in the Alarm in April of 1885, "because it makes it unsafe to wrong our fellows."
I find it interesting that these days tough guys dial 1911. If you are going to be violent, why half-step about it? Further, you should realize that no matter where you draw the line, someone else is going to draw it a little further than you would like. If you take this approach, where do you stop - and will you still stop there when someone else doesn't? Pistols, dynamite, nuclear weapons - none of these brings peace. None of it makes you safe.
The bottom line is that making U.S. Attorneys so that they are pursuing a political agenda fundamentally undermines the rule of law. It's one thing to appoint U.S. Attorneys to follow general adminstration policies. It is quite another to hire and fire them based on their handling of particular cases, especially when those cases are being used for political ends - such as smearing political opponents - rather than whether or not there is enough evidence to convinct someone.
This is a simple concept. Your attempts to pretend that the Republican party does not have discipline and work together irrespective of whether they are legislators or on the executive branch is sheer fantasy. The fact is that it was coordinated from the White House; and it is a rather extraordinary example of micro-management. Then you go ahead further and try to Jimmy Carter and any other issue you can think of to distract from the issue at hand. It's sad.
You really should do a better job of looking into the facts. The Bush Adminstration fired everyone. Do a Google News search (LA Times has a good article). See the NYT editorial that talks about the circumstances around why the New Mexico U.S. attorney was fired. Find out why was actually briefed and when about NSA wiretapping (U.S. News has a good article). Use Thomas to find out what bills are in the mix about Patriot Act and abuse of police powers (one bill actually has NSA in the title). It's in the news. The information is available. You simply aren't bothering to looking for it, and it's trivial to find.
The bottom line is that terrorism is about evidence, facts and the rule of law. It's not soldiers, battlefields and nations. The whole war metaphor is fundamentally flawed. Prosecution is essential in law enforcement activity. It means you don't get away with half-baked bullshit. Accountability is what is supposed to seperate courts from forums where you can get away with making any old thing up - like you can on Slashdot.
...and get in a lather over how a handful of US attorneys (ALL of whom work entirely at the whim of every president and are political appointees, and ALL of whom the previous administration fired without so much as a minor hissy fit out of congress) were dismissed.
Can you show me where the Clinton administration pressured US attorneys to selective prosecute cases that served Democratic political ends? Or how when the US attorneys failed to comply they were fired? That would be news - which is why it is news now and wasn't then.
But, the opposing party's majority supported the PATRIOT act...
Perhaps the first time around - a month after 9/11. Perhaps you missed the memo for the Senate and the House the second time around. I'll tease out the key details for you.
For the House, only 44 Democrats supported the legislation and only 18 Republicans did not - which means 207 Republicans did.
The Senate vote was trying to address some of the most problematic aspects of the PATRIOT Act - specifically:
Original action on the bill was blocked in the Senate 2005 by four Republicans and a majority of Democrats who demanded that safeguards be put in place to protect against abuses of the law. Those safeguards included ending the use of "National Security Letters," which did not require a judge's approval, in order to obtain some forms of electronic information. Senators also added a provision that would allow the recipients of a "215 subpoenas," which are issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, to challenge "gag" orders that prevented them from disclosing the fact that they had received a subpoena.
I guess my point here is that if you are going to correct someone - you should actually be acquianted with the facts. I'd also argue that who is in charge of the Executive does matter because the Executive is the one that is abusing the power in the first place.
Which gets back to your ridiculous framing. I'd love for you to talk about all the terrorist activity the PATRIOT Act has enabled the U.S. government to prosecute. Where are all the terrorist convictions? Where is the accountability after the fact - information on what provisions were used, how it was effective, etc. Where's the empirical proof that the PATRIOT actually does "fix the problem" and information about how this Act has actually been used?
I think when you look at the facts you will find that the Patriot Act is being used in ways it was never intended on cases that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism and that is a gross misuse of state power. All we have now is people - like yourself - stating it is very important. I'd like to see some facts that support that assertion. In the meantime, I'll continue to call bullshit.
Having hand guns and rifles is not a trivial thing. These are the tools that can be used to take one's liberty back - when you don't have any other options. It's why there is a 2nd Amendment.
I think you need to learn more about Dershowitz. Perhaps this little blurb from Beyond Chutzpah will suggest itself as useful reading.
The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz's assertions on Israel's human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community. Sifting through thousands of pages of reports from organizations such as Amnesty International, B'Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, Finkelstein demonstrates that Dershowitz has systematically misrepresented the facts.
It sounds to me that with phrases like "Arab bigotry and terrorism and has defended the only free, democratic country in the Middle East" that you have an agenda on this issue. Further, anytime you paint an entire group with the same brush (with the possible exception of groups that are defined solely by bigotry - which is not the case with Arabs), you yourself are being a bigot.
I don't have an agenda. I can see that both Arabs and Jews are doing terrible things that should stop. I also recognize that there is a huge difference in power - with Israel getting U.S. military support and apparently applying the same standards of morality (that it is okay for the U.S. or Israel to commit acts of terrorism because they are really defending themselves from the terrorism of others). I'm sorry but that dog won't hunt.
If I am interested in particular show and I know where it is available, then its one thing to "get it".
However, the real trick of "getting it" is making it available as part of an aggregate service so people can look for topics - sailing, science fiction or whatever without having to think of all the different shows and providers that have something you might be interested in. Sure, you can go to the New York Times site. You can aggregate sites you are typically interested in using an RSS feed. But a big piece of the value chain for people looking for content will be the ability to go to one place and know you are searching everything that is available by topic - you can't get that in a stand alone service. You can do it by providing people with standards - but that means "getting it" on yet another level.
The fact that it is a common U.S. business practice doesn't make it right or even smart. I'll bet that setting your business up for mandatory yearly turnover is a good way to lose a lot of intangible value - incomplete projects, lost knowledge, limited worker involvement/productivity, etc. The intangible value is exactly what people looking at the short-term bottom line miss.
Then again, I'd also bet that Google knows this but is using hourly workers as a way to fill the gaps that are created by their explosive growth. If you are committed to hiring good people but have more work than the staff you have can do, you have to have a mechanism for dealing with the work load.
If you don't take care of the people that make business possible - your employees, you eventually are going to sink your business. Nowhere is this more true than in businesses that rely upon the ideas of their employees - such as the tech sector.
It's not fine. A government that picks and chooses which laws it obeys is a government based on tyranny. You, on the other hand, aren't a tyrannt no matter how many blunts you smoke at home.
Sure, you can image the drive. However, why is it that Microsoft get a free pass? If their product borks my system, they are off the hook simply because they told me their product might be defective and break it? It's one thing to take practical steps to make sure you don't lose your work. It's another to say that its okay for a company to sell defective "upgrades".
It's a share of voice question. If you are going to talk what share of voice corporations have in the media, then you need to identify the share of voice of different interests - such as organized labor. The question I find more interesting is what is the share of voice for unorganized labor? Who are the "experts" speaking for Wal-Mart, Starbucks and other non-unionized employees?
The problem with the credential question is who gets left out. I don't have time for stupid, uninformed people either, but I have less time for people trying to frame and shape my ideas for me - for their benefit.
Let's also not pretend that civil rights was an establishment move, shall we? Loving v. Virginia struck down laws against inter-racial marriage based on the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified almost 100 years earlier. The law is also has to be consistent in such a way that runs counter to "the establishment".
As for the war in Iraq, I would agrue that the topic of diversity of voices in media is exactly why "the establishment" can continue with their failed foriegn policy. I would wager that more American's still believe the stories they were told about WMD, Iraq/Al Qaeda connections, Iraq as a front on the war on terror than know that Hussien and Osama bin Laden were supported and funded by the U.S. government during the last American "war on terror" that was run by the same "establishment". To say such a thing is to be branded a conspiracy theorist - irrespective of the facts.
Further, if the top 4 advertising holding companies combined with the top few media companies, control the vast majority of the "news" and "information" of the world, just how diverse is news.google.com or even Factiva or Nexis for that matter? To pretend that you can just look elsewhere is to be incredibly niave.
Even they were astounded at how well it seemed to work. Vinh Cao, their squat, barrel-chested lab technician, used to do almost 100 pull-ups every time he worked out. Then one day he cooled himself off between sets with an early prototype. The next round of pull-ups -- his 11th -- was as strong as his first. Within six weeks, Cao was doing 180 pull-ups a session. Six weeks after that, he went from 180 to more than 600...In trying to figure out why the Glove worked so well, its inventors ended up challenging conventional scientific wisdom on fatigue. Muscles don't wear out because they use up stored sugars, the researchers said. Instead, muscles tire because they get too hot, and sweating is just a backup cooling system for the lattices of blood vessels in the hands and feet. The Glove, in other words, overclocks the heat exchange system. "It's like giving a Honda the radiator of a Mack truck," Heller says. After four months of using it himself, Heller did 1,000 push-ups on his 60th birthday in April 2003.
Any suggestions on how to test this using common household items? Would a simple cooler of ice work?
No offense, but if you'd rather hear from policy makers and experts, they already have dozens of media outlets that serve your needs. The United States needs more diversity of voices. We need more diversity of "experts". We need commentary from more people that are impacted from policies - rather than "expert" that have nothing at stake.
As for your claims of arbitary categories, it's not too hard really. Politicians and "experts" are typically "official sources". "Students" and the "general public" are not. You, yourself, make these distinctions in your own post saying that you prefer to hear "experts" rather than "some Joe" - and when they president farts (a politician, last I checked), it's news. It seems strange to me that you suddenly find the distinction arbitrary when someone else uses it.
Which brings us to what constitutes an "expert". We live in a culture where "experts" are people that write books on topics but don't know the first thing about them from the perspective of lived experience. Military experts who have never been in the military. Policy experts who aren't impacted by and don't know anyone who is impacted by their policies. Politicians than then go into the industries they regulated, or vice versa - because of their "expertise".
Being an expert is a rigged game that many people play for profit. If you like listening to experts, you should first read a book describing how the industry works:
Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral "third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."
Let's assume NPR is "slightly left-of-center". How does it get "left-of-center" when it follows the party line more than 60% of the time? Is it because other media outlets are following it 70%, 80%, 90% percent of the time? What does this say about the range of discourse we have in the media?
FAIR also has a good discussion of What is Wrong With the News? that identifies the problems as: corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, telecommunications policy, the PR industry, pressure groups, narrow range of debate, censorship and sensationalism. I think the narrow range of debate is most relevent for our discussion here:
Given that most media outlets are owned by for-profit corporations and are funded by corporate advertising, it is not surprising that they seldom provide a full range of debate. The right edge of discussion is usually represented by a committed supporter of right-wing causes, someone who calls for significantly changing the status quo in a conservative direction. The left edge, by contrast, is often represented by an establishment-oriented centrist who supports maintaining the status quo; very rarely is a critic of corporate power who identifies with progressive causes and movements with the same passion as their conservative counterparts allowed to take part in mass media debates.
This problem should be addressed everywhere. However, it should first be addressed in public formats - given their mandate and reason for existing, which is to represent alternative voices that don't get heard in mainstream media and to broaden the discourse.
What is "left" or "right" very much depends on where you stand. The problem with comments like this one is that what gets called "left" in the United States would count as some form of "right" in most other places in the world.
Want proof? Think about the last time you turned the dial to the socialist, communist, anarchist media outlets? Oh, yeah, that's right - those outlet's don't exist in the United States. You think that happened by accident?
Further, some people have done an analysis of NPR's guest list that stated the following:
Elite sources dominated NPR 's guest-list. These sources--including government officials, professional experts and corporate representatives--accounted for 64 percent of all sources...Workers, students, the general public, and representatives of organized citizen and public interest groups accounted for 31 percent of all sources..organized labor were almost invisible, numbering just six sources, or 0.3 percent of the total. Corporate representatives (6 percent) appeared 23 times more often than labor representatives.
Not only is it biased toward "official sources" and "corporations", it is sexist as well:
Women were dramatically underrepresented on NPR in 1993 (19 percent of all sources), and they remain so today (21 percent). And they were even less likely to appear on NPR in stories as experts--just 15 percent of all professionals were women--or in stories discussing political issues, where only 18 percent of sources were women.
and you know what, I will get mad when NPR covers the White House and favors official sources. Why? Because their mandate was specifically to be an alternative to commercial media that would "promote personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak with many voices, many dialects." In terms of accomplishing that, it is a miserable failure.
[Being o]verweight is a serious health concern for children and adolescents. Data from two NHANES surveys (1976-1980 and 2003-2004) show that the prevalence of [being] overweight is increasing: for children aged 2-5 years, prevalence increased from 5.0% to 13.9%; for those aged 6-11 years, prevalence increased from 6.5% to 18.8%; and for those aged 12-19 years, prevalence increased from 5.0% to 17.4%.
I don't know about what your nutritionist friend considers a problem, but an almost 200% increase in obesity rates in a population over the course of three decades to comprise 14-19% of children seems like a major problem to me. But, maybe she is looking at it in comparison to adult obesity rates - which makes it seem like the kids are doing a good job keeping their weight down.
During the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. In 1985 only a few states were participating in the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and providing obesity data. In 1991, four states had obesity prevalence rates of 15-19 percent and no states had rates at or above 20 percent....In 2005, only 4 states had obesity prevalence rates less than 20 percent, while 17 states had prevalence rates equal to or greater than 25 percent, with 3 of those having prevalences equal to or greater than 30 percent (Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia).
Sure, there are ways to manage weight, like the Hacker's Diet, but it is also clear that people aren't doing it in the U.S.
What could be a better criticism of capitalism than the fact that is built on people consuming things they don't need? Or that the only meaningful work is that work which you are paid for? Or that presumably 90% of the work that is done is unnecessary. If true, perhaps we can all focus on only what we need and bring the work week down to 4 hours a week rather than 40. If all economies are based on a large pool of people willing to spend their money on things they don't need, perhaps it is time we tried another that isn't.
Seems like either there is a flaw in your reasoning or you have discovered a solution to many of society's problems that needs to be tried.
I couldn't agree with your sentiments on Ayn Rand more. But, reading this post and your previous one - particularly the despotism of one idea in this post - made me think instantly of her.
I think there may be differences in how we view what domains these models work in. I've seen Quaker decision making a number of times that have given fantastic results toward understanding and resolving thorny problems that, at another point in my life, I would have favored an up or down vote on or a more authoritative decision making model reasoned along the lines of your bus metaphor.
I think the experience with Quaker decision making is what led me to respond to your categorical condemnation of committee decision making - because in my experience it can be quite effective. It's slow, to be sure. But, there are many times where it is better to hash out all the issues, get insight from every source you can and get to general agreement - rather that appointing someone to be King (ala Saul or David) or driver.
I do agree there are circumstances, like driving a bus, when it is better to have someone executing the decision making. But, I think it is also revealing, that the metaphor assumes a tension that in many circumstances can be mitigated. On a bus, people make decisions on whether to get on it because of the bus schedule, without a schedule general agreement can be made on the destination before setting out (and letting those going elsewhere get off), etc. But, it is also true that there are circumstances where it doesn't work and there is no general agreement to be reached - abortion, Iraq war, etc. These are also good examples demonstrating the limitations of decentralization - something I too generally think is a good idea.
Not sure where that leaves us, but your post had me thinking a bit so thought I'd write something.
Thank you Ayn Rand. If you are focused on decision making efficiency, then yes, committees don't tend to be efficient in that way. However, there are many circumstances in this world where a focus on decision making efficiency or heirarchicial models of decision making are worse than the committee model.
I'll give you two examples - one abstract and the other concrete. People that believe in "free markets" are ultimately arguing that the decisions and inputs of many individuals in a committee called a "market" leads to better decision making than "controlled economies" where you put the top 4 or 5 economic minds in charge of the economy.
Peope that like the controlled model argue that it enabled agrarian countries like Russia and China to develop at a much faster rate than they would have in a "free market" system because they were more focused toward a particular end. You could probably also add the early years of Hitler Germany as an example.
Which is better? Obvious problems with the controlled model comes from selection bias of individuals and what they value (both a good and bad thing depending on what decisions they make and how well they line up with what you value), larger likelihood of having incomplete information, information lag that makes it less likely to respond to changing circumstances, etc. However, it is really good about strategically focusing the economy. Which is better depends on what you value - to put it more simply, you might look at they at efficiency vs. development.
Another interesting example is to look at resource allocation as it is practiced in any large organization - say Fortune 500. Resource allocation is a top-down, heirarchial decision making model that has a few people in charge and typically is characterized by how very difficult it is to get funding for any kind of unconventional idea that would improve the business.
Now, one of the reasons that resource allocation uses a controlled model is because it is effective at stablizing and reducing costs. However, it also has disadvantages. For example, it is terrible at finding ways to create operational efficicencies (say, through building new infrastructure) - typically because the people making the decisions about funding are too far way from the operational problems to even be aware of what they are, much less understand them and the possible solutions. The result is the problem typically grows until it cannot be ignored - then more money is spent in a shorter amount of time to address it, in other words it is less efficient. You can perhaps also look to the matured economies or China and Russia after they reached a certain point to see similar problems.
Some companies have tried to address these problems by making mixed systems. I seem to recall reading in Gary Hamel's, "Leading the Revolution" that Shell had a system set-up where anyone can an submit idea, and a small committee evaluates it within 5 days. The committee has people from every aspect of the business and they decide whether the idea is interesting enough to be developed. If so, then they provide $XX,XXX dollars to the individual/group to test and develop the idea and submit a report within 30 days. The committee then evaluates it again. If it has promise, then rise/repeat with more time and resources each time until it either is implemented to the degree it can be within the company or dies out/gets killed. This model combines centralized decision making, but it also tries to address the problems of centralized decision making - ignorance of on-the-ground problems, poor responsiveness and so forth - that are inherent in an authoritative model.
Bottom line: Top-down heirarchical models can work best when you are executing an idea. However, if your goal is to find unconventional ideas, more people and more groups are better because the number of unconventional ideas that a single group can think of is finite and small (and is typically limited by group values and biases).
Percentages are designed to enable comparison. However, if you think it is a factor, why not look how Sweden stacks up against states with similar populations - say, Georgia, North Carolina or New Jersey? The fact that the national average is so high in comparison on a number of these metrics should suggest to you how those states will look when you make this comparison. I certainly would not be left with the conclusion that "we don't look so bad now, do we?"
It's fine to love your country, but don't let that love serve to blind you to the problems in it. The hype is that America is the best, richest, most free country on earth. The reality is that there are other countries doing a much better job in certain areas, and we should learn from them and improve. For me, I think the most disturbing thing is the Gini index being 45 - the indication of our distribution of wealth being similar to that which you would find in Cambodia, China, Iran, Kenya, Mongola, etc. is a major problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm actually not in favor of gun control. Case in point. But I do think many people don't follow their logic to its conclusion - and if they decide on a limit, what limits are appropriate and why. You may call it jerking off. I call it the central point.
I assume you were posting things on FreeRepublic that would be counter to the perspective of that forum - liberal, democratic or whatever. I do have a question for you: what is the attraction?
I subscribe to The Nation. I read its blog posts and the commentary of posts I think are interesting - just like Slashdot. I find that there is a sizable contingent (maybe as much as a quarter?) that basically trolls the boards offering libertarian, conservative, and other perspectives that differ significantly from the general perspective of The Nation and its readers. What I cannot figure out is - why?
I would never think of spending time reading blog posts from the Free Republic, National Review, Washington Monthly, Townhall.com or other conservative sites. Maybe an article here or there when I'm looking for different perspectives on a particular issue or an issue of these magazines when I am trying to understand what issues seem to be top of mind for conservatives. But I would never read blog posts or commentary - or troll those forums.
Why did you do it? Did you think you would change people's minds? Were you trying to get people's goat? What motivated you?
It seems to me that participating in forums where you don't agree with the thrust of the forum - whether it be an issue (Luddites posting to Slashdot, gun control advocates on NRA sites or whatever) or political philosophy - is a huge waste of time. Yet, it seems like no matter what forum you choose - someone is doing it. Why? Any insight?
Chicago History has a few lessons about another equalizer: dynamite.
I find it interesting that these days tough guys dial 1911. If you are going to be violent, why half-step about it? Further, you should realize that no matter where you draw the line, someone else is going to draw it a little further than you would like. If you take this approach, where do you stop - and will you still stop there when someone else doesn't? Pistols, dynamite, nuclear weapons - none of these brings peace. None of it makes you safe.
The bottom line is that making U.S. Attorneys so that they are pursuing a political agenda fundamentally undermines the rule of law. It's one thing to appoint U.S. Attorneys to follow general adminstration policies. It is quite another to hire and fire them based on their handling of particular cases, especially when those cases are being used for political ends - such as smearing political opponents - rather than whether or not there is enough evidence to convinct someone.
This is a simple concept. Your attempts to pretend that the Republican party does not have discipline and work together irrespective of whether they are legislators or on the executive branch is sheer fantasy. The fact is that it was coordinated from the White House; and it is a rather extraordinary example of micro-management. Then you go ahead further and try to Jimmy Carter and any other issue you can think of to distract from the issue at hand. It's sad.
You really should do a better job of looking into the facts. The Bush Adminstration fired everyone. Do a Google News search (LA Times has a good article). See the NYT editorial that talks about the circumstances around why the New Mexico U.S. attorney was fired. Find out why was actually briefed and when about NSA wiretapping (U.S. News has a good article). Use Thomas to find out what bills are in the mix about Patriot Act and abuse of police powers (one bill actually has NSA in the title). It's in the news. The information is available. You simply aren't bothering to looking for it, and it's trivial to find.
The bottom line is that terrorism is about evidence, facts and the rule of law. It's not soldiers, battlefields and nations. The whole war metaphor is fundamentally flawed. Prosecution is essential in law enforcement activity. It means you don't get away with half-baked bullshit. Accountability is what is supposed to seperate courts from forums where you can get away with making any old thing up - like you can on Slashdot.
Has Iraq, Vietnam and all the other guerilla movements around the world over the last 100 years taught you nothing?
Can you show me where the Clinton administration pressured US attorneys to selective prosecute cases that served Democratic political ends? Or how when the US attorneys failed to comply they were fired? That would be news - which is why it is news now and wasn't then.
Perhaps the first time around - a month after 9/11. Perhaps you missed the memo for the Senate and the House the second time around. I'll tease out the key details for you.
For the House, only 44 Democrats supported the legislation and only 18 Republicans did not - which means 207 Republicans did.
The Senate vote was trying to address some of the most problematic aspects of the PATRIOT Act - specifically:
I guess my point here is that if you are going to correct someone - you should actually be acquianted with the facts. I'd also argue that who is in charge of the Executive does matter because the Executive is the one that is abusing the power in the first place.
Which gets back to your ridiculous framing. I'd love for you to talk about all the terrorist activity the PATRIOT Act has enabled the U.S. government to prosecute. Where are all the terrorist convictions? Where is the accountability after the fact - information on what provisions were used, how it was effective, etc. Where's the empirical proof that the PATRIOT actually does "fix the problem" and information about how this Act has actually been used?
I think when you look at the facts you will find that the Patriot Act is being used in ways it was never intended on cases that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism and that is a gross misuse of state power. All we have now is people - like yourself - stating it is very important. I'd like to see some facts that support that assertion. In the meantime, I'll continue to call bullshit.
Having hand guns and rifles is not a trivial thing. These are the tools that can be used to take one's liberty back - when you don't have any other options. It's why there is a 2nd Amendment.
I think you need to learn more about Dershowitz. Perhaps this little blurb from Beyond Chutzpah will suggest itself as useful reading.
It sounds to me that with phrases like "Arab bigotry and terrorism and has defended the only free, democratic country in the Middle East" that you have an agenda on this issue. Further, anytime you paint an entire group with the same brush (with the possible exception of groups that are defined solely by bigotry - which is not the case with Arabs), you yourself are being a bigot.
I don't have an agenda. I can see that both Arabs and Jews are doing terrible things that should stop. I also recognize that there is a huge difference in power - with Israel getting U.S. military support and apparently applying the same standards of morality (that it is okay for the U.S. or Israel to commit acts of terrorism because they are really defending themselves from the terrorism of others). I'm sorry but that dog won't hunt.
If I am interested in particular show and I know where it is available, then its one thing to "get it".
However, the real trick of "getting it" is making it available as part of an aggregate service so people can look for topics - sailing, science fiction or whatever without having to think of all the different shows and providers that have something you might be interested in. Sure, you can go to the New York Times site. You can aggregate sites you are typically interested in using an RSS feed. But a big piece of the value chain for people looking for content will be the ability to go to one place and know you are searching everything that is available by topic - you can't get that in a stand alone service. You can do it by providing people with standards - but that means "getting it" on yet another level.
There is a long way to go yet.
The fact that it is a common U.S. business practice doesn't make it right or even smart. I'll bet that setting your business up for mandatory yearly turnover is a good way to lose a lot of intangible value - incomplete projects, lost knowledge, limited worker involvement/productivity, etc. The intangible value is exactly what people looking at the short-term bottom line miss.
Then again, I'd also bet that Google knows this but is using hourly workers as a way to fill the gaps that are created by their explosive growth. If you are committed to hiring good people but have more work than the staff you have can do, you have to have a mechanism for dealing with the work load.
If you don't take care of the people that make business possible - your employees, you eventually are going to sink your business. Nowhere is this more true than in businesses that rely upon the ideas of their employees - such as the tech sector.
What's next? Unipedalism?!?
It's not fine. A government that picks and chooses which laws it obeys is a government based on tyranny. You, on the other hand, aren't a tyrannt no matter how many blunts you smoke at home.
Sure, you can image the drive. However, why is it that Microsoft get a free pass? If their product borks my system, they are off the hook simply because they told me their product might be defective and break it? It's one thing to take practical steps to make sure you don't lose your work. It's another to say that its okay for a company to sell defective "upgrades".
It's a share of voice question. If you are going to talk what share of voice corporations have in the media, then you need to identify the share of voice of different interests - such as organized labor. The question I find more interesting is what is the share of voice for unorganized labor? Who are the "experts" speaking for Wal-Mart, Starbucks and other non-unionized employees?
The problem with the credential question is who gets left out. I don't have time for stupid, uninformed people either, but I have less time for people trying to frame and shape my ideas for me - for their benefit.
Let's also not pretend that civil rights was an establishment move, shall we? Loving v. Virginia struck down laws against inter-racial marriage based on the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified almost 100 years earlier. The law is also has to be consistent in such a way that runs counter to "the establishment".
As for the war in Iraq, I would agrue that the topic of diversity of voices in media is exactly why "the establishment" can continue with their failed foriegn policy. I would wager that more American's still believe the stories they were told about WMD, Iraq/Al Qaeda connections, Iraq as a front on the war on terror than know that Hussien and Osama bin Laden were supported and funded by the U.S. government during the last American "war on terror" that was run by the same "establishment". To say such a thing is to be branded a conspiracy theorist - irrespective of the facts.
Further, if the top 4 advertising holding companies combined with the top few media companies, control the vast majority of the "news" and "information" of the world, just how diverse is news.google.com or even Factiva or Nexis for that matter? To pretend that you can just look elsewhere is to be incredibly niave.
Any suggestions on how to test this using common household items? Would a simple cooler of ice work?
You left out Katrina...oh, wait...probably better not to bring that one up...
No offense, but if you'd rather hear from policy makers and experts, they already have dozens of media outlets that serve your needs. The United States needs more diversity of voices. We need more diversity of "experts". We need commentary from more people that are impacted from policies - rather than "expert" that have nothing at stake.
As for your claims of arbitary categories, it's not too hard really. Politicians and "experts" are typically "official sources". "Students" and the "general public" are not. You, yourself, make these distinctions in your own post saying that you prefer to hear "experts" rather than "some Joe" - and when they president farts (a politician, last I checked), it's news. It seems strange to me that you suddenly find the distinction arbitrary when someone else uses it.
Which brings us to what constitutes an "expert". We live in a culture where "experts" are people that write books on topics but don't know the first thing about them from the perspective of lived experience. Military experts who have never been in the military. Policy experts who aren't impacted by and don't know anyone who is impacted by their policies. Politicians than then go into the industries they regulated, or vice versa - because of their "expertise".
Being an expert is a rigged game that many people play for profit. If you like listening to experts, you should first read a book describing how the industry works:
Let's assume NPR is "slightly left-of-center". How does it get "left-of-center" when it follows the party line more than 60% of the time? Is it because other media outlets are following it 70%, 80%, 90% percent of the time? What does this say about the range of discourse we have in the media?
FAIR also has a good discussion of What is Wrong With the News? that identifies the problems as: corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, telecommunications policy, the PR industry, pressure groups, narrow range of debate, censorship and sensationalism. I think the narrow range of debate is most relevent for our discussion here:
This problem should be addressed everywhere. However, it should first be addressed in public formats - given their mandate and reason for existing, which is to represent alternative voices that don't get heard in mainstream media and to broaden the discourse.
What is "left" or "right" very much depends on where you stand. The problem with comments like this one is that what gets called "left" in the United States would count as some form of "right" in most other places in the world.
Want proof? Think about the last time you turned the dial to the socialist, communist, anarchist media outlets? Oh, yeah, that's right - those outlet's don't exist in the United States. You think that happened by accident?
Further, some people have done an analysis of NPR's guest list that stated the following:
Not only is it biased toward "official sources" and "corporations", it is sexist as well:
and you know what, I will get mad when NPR covers the White House and favors official sources. Why? Because their mandate was specifically to be an alternative to commercial media that would "promote personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak with many voices, many dialects." In terms of accomplishing that, it is a miserable failure.I don't know about what your nutritionist friend considers a problem, but an almost 200% increase in obesity rates in a population over the course of three decades to comprise 14-19% of children seems like a major problem to me. But, maybe she is looking at it in comparison to adult obesity rates - which makes it seem like the kids are doing a good job keeping their weight down.
Sure, there are ways to manage weight, like the Hacker's Diet, but it is also clear that people aren't doing it in the U.S.
What could be a better criticism of capitalism than the fact that is built on people consuming things they don't need? Or that the only meaningful work is that work which you are paid for? Or that presumably 90% of the work that is done is unnecessary. If true, perhaps we can all focus on only what we need and bring the work week down to 4 hours a week rather than 40. If all economies are based on a large pool of people willing to spend their money on things they don't need, perhaps it is time we tried another that isn't.
Seems like either there is a flaw in your reasoning or you have discovered a solution to many of society's problems that needs to be tried.
I couldn't agree with your sentiments on Ayn Rand more. But, reading this post and your previous one - particularly the despotism of one idea in this post - made me think instantly of her.
I think there may be differences in how we view what domains these models work in. I've seen Quaker decision making a number of times that have given fantastic results toward understanding and resolving thorny problems that, at another point in my life, I would have favored an up or down vote on or a more authoritative decision making model reasoned along the lines of your bus metaphor.
I think the experience with Quaker decision making is what led me to respond to your categorical condemnation of committee decision making - because in my experience it can be quite effective. It's slow, to be sure. But, there are many times where it is better to hash out all the issues, get insight from every source you can and get to general agreement - rather that appointing someone to be King (ala Saul or David) or driver.
I do agree there are circumstances, like driving a bus, when it is better to have someone executing the decision making. But, I think it is also revealing, that the metaphor assumes a tension that in many circumstances can be mitigated. On a bus, people make decisions on whether to get on it because of the bus schedule, without a schedule general agreement can be made on the destination before setting out (and letting those going elsewhere get off), etc. But, it is also true that there are circumstances where it doesn't work and there is no general agreement to be reached - abortion, Iraq war, etc. These are also good examples demonstrating the limitations of decentralization - something I too generally think is a good idea.
Not sure where that leaves us, but your post had me thinking a bit so thought I'd write something.
Can we call this one a dead horse and move on?
Thank you Ayn Rand. If you are focused on decision making efficiency, then yes, committees don't tend to be efficient in that way. However, there are many circumstances in this world where a focus on decision making efficiency or heirarchicial models of decision making are worse than the committee model.
I'll give you two examples - one abstract and the other concrete. People that believe in "free markets" are ultimately arguing that the decisions and inputs of many individuals in a committee called a "market" leads to better decision making than "controlled economies" where you put the top 4 or 5 economic minds in charge of the economy.
Peope that like the controlled model argue that it enabled agrarian countries like Russia and China to develop at a much faster rate than they would have in a "free market" system because they were more focused toward a particular end. You could probably also add the early years of Hitler Germany as an example.
Which is better? Obvious problems with the controlled model comes from selection bias of individuals and what they value (both a good and bad thing depending on what decisions they make and how well they line up with what you value), larger likelihood of having incomplete information, information lag that makes it less likely to respond to changing circumstances, etc. However, it is really good about strategically focusing the economy. Which is better depends on what you value - to put it more simply, you might look at they at efficiency vs. development.
Another interesting example is to look at resource allocation as it is practiced in any large organization - say Fortune 500. Resource allocation is a top-down, heirarchial decision making model that has a few people in charge and typically is characterized by how very difficult it is to get funding for any kind of unconventional idea that would improve the business.
Now, one of the reasons that resource allocation uses a controlled model is because it is effective at stablizing and reducing costs. However, it also has disadvantages. For example, it is terrible at finding ways to create operational efficicencies (say, through building new infrastructure) - typically because the people making the decisions about funding are too far way from the operational problems to even be aware of what they are, much less understand them and the possible solutions. The result is the problem typically grows until it cannot be ignored - then more money is spent in a shorter amount of time to address it, in other words it is less efficient. You can perhaps also look to the matured economies or China and Russia after they reached a certain point to see similar problems.
Some companies have tried to address these problems by making mixed systems. I seem to recall reading in Gary Hamel's, "Leading the Revolution" that Shell had a system set-up where anyone can an submit idea, and a small committee evaluates it within 5 days. The committee has people from every aspect of the business and they decide whether the idea is interesting enough to be developed. If so, then they provide $XX,XXX dollars to the individual/group to test and develop the idea and submit a report within 30 days. The committee then evaluates it again. If it has promise, then rise/repeat with more time and resources each time until it either is implemented to the degree it can be within the company or dies out/gets killed. This model combines centralized decision making, but it also tries to address the problems of centralized decision making - ignorance of on-the-ground problems, poor responsiveness and so forth - that are inherent in an authoritative model.
Bottom line: Top-down heirarchical models can work best when you are executing an idea. However, if your goal is to find unconventional ideas, more people and more groups are better because the number of unconventional ideas that a single group can think of is finite and small (and is typically limited by group values and biases).
Percentages are designed to enable comparison. However, if you think it is a factor, why not look how Sweden stacks up against states with similar populations - say, Georgia, North Carolina or New Jersey? The fact that the national average is so high in comparison on a number of these metrics should suggest to you how those states will look when you make this comparison. I certainly would not be left with the conclusion that "we don't look so bad now, do we?"
It's fine to love your country, but don't let that love serve to blind you to the problems in it. The hype is that America is the best, richest, most free country on earth. The reality is that there are other countries doing a much better job in certain areas, and we should learn from them and improve. For me, I think the most disturbing thing is the Gini index being 45 - the indication of our distribution of wealth being similar to that which you would find in Cambodia, China, Iran, Kenya, Mongola, etc. is a major problem.