Imagine if hundreds of people buy shitty detectors that can be tripped by high NOX counts(A car emission). Suddenly on a hot afternoon during rush hour, 100+ counters register a large nuclear presence. Thats a big worry.
That's as shitty a reason to criminalize something as I've ever heard in my life. What if 100 people ran around shouting "Anthrax" thus causing a panic? Maybe they should issue free speech permits to make sure only competent professionals will be heard.
Only if you make the common mistake of equating "libertarian" with "anarchist", or if instead of mistake, you wish to render the useful meaning of the word into nothingness by taking it to an abstracted and detached from reality extreme.
There is one legitimate function of government that will always separate a libertarian from an anarchist, and that is, as an organization to safeguard the liberty of the individual.
In reality though, most libertarian type people, like most "conservative", "liberal", "socialist", whatever, have their own mix of personal beliefs and use the label to reflect an overall theme to their political/government thinking, while holding actual personal beliefs that have elements of other schools of thought.
I was just thinking how strange it is that everyone supports these companies because they somehow can't resist their entertainment products, even while these companies shit all over our legal system in blatant attempts to slow down societal progress in the name of profits.
I know warner brothers can make good movies, but are seeing them worth fucking up our societies legal system?
I really wanted to see I Am Legend, but the price of admission suddenly seems way too high.
Don't change the subject, he didn't say better. And as far as a defense, it's not, it's an explanation. When microsoft ships with several different database packages, several different browsers, several different desktop environments, several different office suites, a crapload of various network tools, applications, etc... that a typical linux distro ships with, and manages to pull off less bugs, then they can use such comparisons to prove something. Until then, it's like comparing the number of problems found in a storage shed to a skyscraper, and using that comparison to try to argue that the shed is better since it had less reported problems.
"There were Young Republican types on those campuses as well."
True, but, in case you haven't been paying attention... so-called liberals are in on this stuff, people who were not young republicans. That generation has overwhelmingly embraced this type of stuff. The best and clearest example I can think of is, who backed the patriot act? Who voted for it? What are there backgrounds?
A whole generation is not a monobloc that thinks alike and I never implied they were. What is amazing is that a whole generation can live through watching freedom prevail over radicalism, and then grow up and forget what they witnessed first hand. I think that's amazing. I think it's amazing that they lived through a history of terrorism and radicalism being a thorn in the side of oppressive regimes around the world and in terms of acts of terror, hardly being a blip on the US soil by comparison.
But instead of paying attention to the history they lived through, they come into power and begin down the same path that the societies most plagued with terrorism have been on, apparently thinking we'll get different results.
I believe you, we had similar crackdowns in the late 80s when I was a teen on cruising in my area.
It's like the older generations expect the younger ones to be more perfect than they ever were. I've been through it with my family, you should heard my mom and her siblings talk about me when I was a kid getting into trouble, making it sound like I was especially bad. Then as I became an adult, I became close friends with my grandfather and found out about *credit card fraud* and other outrageous things I never came close to engaging in that occurred with them. I got put through the child legal system as a result of what turned out to be my very minor in comparison legal infractions, they never did. They got off because they were just poor innocents who made mistakes, and me, well, you know... I did everything with malicious intent to be evil or something.
Boomers in general(speaking US centric now) seem to live as if they never made such mistakes and they vote accordingly, with no thought or concern that taking away the freedom of people to make mistakes is taking away freedom indeed. That's one thing that really annoys me about boomers in particular. It seems one of the most common threads of uninsightfulness with them, which is surprising coming from the generation that was known for the saying "don't trust anyone over 30".
... after we survived the radical 60s and proved to the world that free speech and tolerance of dissent works, the very generation that watched freedom of dissent work to fizzle out radicalism has come into the positions of power and are now acting as if it didn't work. Fear is truly the mind killer.
The founder of this group, L. Brent Bozell III, also founded Media Research Center and the Conservative Communication Center. He's also been on the board of the American Conservative Union. He's also William F. Buckley's nephew.
These people have clout among "conservative" politicians and describe themselves as "conservative". Personal responsibility is one of those ideas that lip service is paid to as it suits the political agenda at hand, and ignored when it doesn't.
Profit making enterprises whether public corporations or private businesses are created for the benfit of their owners not customers.
Say what? If your business is not created to benefit your customers, you don't have a business. It's really that simple. Nobody is going to hand you money to benefit yourself. Try it, go ahead. Start a company called "in it for me Inc." and try to convince people to give you money without benefiting them in return. It doesn't work.
Honestly, I don't think you understood the point of my post. I wasn't decrying or acting as if it's news that businesses are in business to make money... I was decrying that it seems rampant in corporate america today to look only a few quarters out in planning business, due to an extreme focus on the shareholders. It's as if these idiots forgot that there is no business without their customers. There is no benefiting yourself in business if you are not benefiting your customers. That this principle of decay often plays out over years, as a company more and more gets focused on quarterly numbers, means that it won't really be taken into consideration by executives focused on quarterly profits, versus building a solid long term business. This also is a contributing factor to the growing corporate scandals and accounting fraud, but that's another topic.
They seem more than willing, to squeeze out some extra dollars of this quarter in profit at the cost of stepping on the toes of their customers. They do this, without looking at what the long term ramifications of such actions will prove to be, more and more having the attitude "we'll deal with it when it comes, for now the quarters numbers must go up". Cable ISPs have one main competitor now, but if/when wireless heats up and becomes more common place, they will end up with several. Will the customers they squeezed some extra dollars out of now due to the caps remember this when the new competition comes to town? Will the new competition be able to trumpet the benefit of not having similar caps as a benefit to customers?
Seems pretty likely to me. But I'm looking further out than a quarter or two, so that's why I can see it coming. The cable companies don't seem to be and if they are, they seem to be writing off all the customers this will annoy and the friends and people those customers have sway over.
The current situation in corporate America is that management serves shareholders, not customers. Customers are secondary to shareholder needs. This has led to an outbreak of executive leadership that focuses no more than 2 quarters out. This is one of the reasons why US companies aren't as competitive globally as they used to be. Not the workforce, the management. The management goals aren't for strong long term corporate heatlh(which is what serving customers leads to), but rather, making sure they hit the numbers for the current quarter(the customers and customer service be damned).
This isn't true everywhere obviously, and where it is true it's in various degrees. This thinking has become commonplace and leads to decisions that will hurt the company down the line. But since they aren't focusing on anything beyond 2 quarters, they just don't see it.
Your post itself could be the misinformation, meant to throw people away from the truth. Afterall, while what you say is true, it is also true that sometimes government has its dirty laundry aired inadvertantly. The best way to avoid a public panic and concern over this is to get people believing it was intentional, serving some higher goal known only to our government.
It's like most conspiracy theories involving government taking part in bad actions... it's a lot more comforting to believe that our government is almighty and in control doing bad things, rather than believing that shit can and does happen beyond their control. It seems like many prefer the illusion of unjust order, rather than the reality of chaotic events that can not be controlled or stopped by all the might we have invested our faith in.
I will probably vote for another lying, hypocritical scumbag poltician
And that's why our government is broken and will never be fixed.
Not because you won't vote for a specific person, but because you will vote for lying, hypocritical scumbag politicians, knowingly, willingly. I respect your right to do that, but, I find the choice itself to be contemptible.
Companies more and more are being run myopically for quarterly profits. Why would anyone at the higher levels care about things like long term data storage since that has nothing to do with the next quarters profits?
The great 'free market' has some 12% of America living below the poverty line.
You said so many other compelling things, this was entirely unnecessary. This great free market we have, is a helluva lot better than most of the rest of the world economically. People aren't flooding into this country for the waffles and most people know that, so taking a shot like that detracts from your other valid points and weakens your argument with the very people you need to persuade. See that +5 insightful? that was the choir.
The problem goes beyond regulation inefficiencies. What we have in this country is a bastardized hybrid of socialized medicine and a free market and big business is loving it. These health insurance companies salivate every time one of their corporate boys(dem or rep) get into office and talk about more government health care benefits, because you'll notice every candidate whose put details of health care reform out there talks about including the free market(aka health insurance companies). All of the programs that I've seen offered so far, will amount to nothing more than larger troughs for the big health care pigs to feed at.
We need one of two ways to go with this. We either need to cut out all government funding of health care, taking the troughs away from the pharmaceuticals, the private health insurance system, etc...(as an aside, anyone notice how Bush's prescription drug plan turned into a bonanza for the health care industry? Whodda thunk it?) Or we need to create a department of Public Health and socialize medicine all the way, basically telling the insurance companies that they've done a shit job and they're fired.
I'd support a socialized medicine movement as long as it isn't more bastardized hybrids like the mainstream candidates have talked about. I feel comfortable doing it because the government and not private industry has proven more efficient at fire services, police services, roads infrastructure, space exploration, and a lot of other things the private sector can't do as well because profits are the goal, and there are causes in life that are greater and more noble than profits. You'll notice, that few of these people who argue for a free market and health care ever say a word about a free market fire services or police services. People know deep down that some things should not be trusted to a free market. Like public safety and health.
You bring up two interesting points along these lines... one is in the sentencing. I would tend to share your view that it makes more sense to keep them behind bars.
The other is in the attitude you express here: Whatever leads to their change of heart, they should have thought of that sooner and not done the crime.
This attitude guarantees an unjust system with a high rate of innocent prosecution as well as eliminating any hope at all, of salvaging the salvageable. Not just with regards to child molestation, but all crime across the board.
People who haven't been on the criminal side of the fence often have very healthy home lives. They are completely ignorant and completely oblivious to what it means to be raised in an environment where abuse and molestation or drug use, or whatever the situation that they can't fathom, is an every day normal part of life from the cradle onwards.
I have something of a unique perspective on this, as I was in an abusive environment the first 8 years of my life where molestation and violence were normal parts of life. After 8, my environment changed substantially and I received treatment for the abuse. when I was in that environment, I can tell you with a degree of confidence that the friends I had were also experiencing similar things. The friends I had when I got out of that environment, and ended up going through adolescence with were completely clueless about what it is like to be poor and in an abusive environment. In their well raised, well groomed, well taught, well loved suburban lives, the way things ought to be, the way their lives were, was crystal clear and obvious to them and they could not understand how others couldn't see their notion of right and wrong as clearly as they did.
What's interesting is, these kids weren't perfect either. They too engaged in the bad behavior of their own parents, only their parents bad behavior were legal so that their acting out did not trigger any serious alarms. You know, like drinking, cursing, etc... Mild stuff, but if you're a kid, it's still considered wrong. Anyhow, the interesting thing I saw was them acting out their parents bad behavior, seeing it as normal, even while they would put down the kids of drug users for doing drugs, or the children of violent fathers being violent.
A kid acting out his parents bad behavior of gluttony, is no different in nature than a kid acting out his parents bad behavior of violence or molestation or drug use or whatever. People who are acting these things out due to the upbringing and environment, need to be treated differently and need to be given an opportunity to change things, than those who willingly deviate into these types of things. Otherwise the system is simply those lucky enough to be raised in a nice environment throwing the unlucky ones into jail with some empty claim that they should have magically known better.
Okay, well, given that it's the wealthy they've argued to be taxed, and many of the wealthy(especially old money) seem to be very much against taxes, I just don't get your point at all.
Given Bill Gates philanthropic endeavors, I think there is more to his desire to see the wealthy taxed than just that. Same with Warren Buffet. Not all rich people in the world only think about their jets. Some of them actually get the need to pay for society and gladly endorse the responsibility of the wealthy. The Bill Gates Sr. mentioned in the following article is his dad, but it's still relevant.
Perhaps they should be? Is a criminal record supposed to be secret? If so, then who are we trying to protect with such secrecy?
Once upon a time, it used to be you could serve your time for a conviction, and then once it was served, that was it, your debt was paid in full. These databases make sure that your debt is never paid in full and that you will pay forever.
I'm kind of torn, having been a victim of molestation myself, because on the one hand, I hate child molesters with a passion and sincerely believe that most of them are not salvageable. OTOH, what about those innocent ones who get wrongly convicted and what about those who are salvageable, who do have the potential to change? These laws, in the name of protecting society from the truly dangerous, also create lifelong oppression for the innocent people who fall through the cracks and for those who might otherwise be reformed.
What to do? For myself, I would rather that innocent people not be oppressed for life in the name of avoiding a traumatic series of events for myself. If having a just state means that I have a greater risk of being victimized, then that's the price I'm willing to pay for a just state. My security, or rather, illusion of security, is not worth the cost of oppressing innocent people and those who could be salvaged from their mistakes. That's just my view on it.
I actually read something about Bill Gates appearing with Warren Buffet at a Nebraska university, arguing that taxes needed to be increased on the wealthy. Both of those men, whatever else we may not like about them(I've got nothing against Buffet myself), have very patriotic/pro country views on taxes despite being obscenely wealthy. Neither one seem to have any problem with paying taxes, probably because they love their country and believe supporting is a noble cause. Versus the slash and spend idiots who want to project the image of being patriotic, while not wanting to pay for all the spending they are big fans of.
Some substances go through the body so fast that a person can train on them for months before an event then stop a week before testing and not get detected. You don't have to be on the substance during the competition or testing to get an edge from using it.
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Imagine if hundreds of people buy shitty detectors that can be tripped by high NOX counts(A car emission). Suddenly on a hot afternoon during rush hour, 100+ counters register a large nuclear presence. Thats a big worry.
That's as shitty a reason to criminalize something as I've ever heard in my life. What if 100 people ran around shouting "Anthrax" thus causing a panic? Maybe they should issue free speech permits to make sure only competent professionals will be heard.
Only if you make the common mistake of equating "libertarian" with "anarchist", or if instead of mistake, you wish to render the useful meaning of the word into nothingness by taking it to an abstracted and detached from reality extreme.
There is one legitimate function of government that will always separate a libertarian from an anarchist, and that is, as an organization to safeguard the liberty of the individual.
In reality though, most libertarian type people, like most "conservative", "liberal", "socialist", whatever, have their own mix of personal beliefs and use the label to reflect an overall theme to their political/government thinking, while holding actual personal beliefs that have elements of other schools of thought.
A libertarian government isn't going to be snooping on people.
I was just thinking how strange it is that everyone supports these companies because they somehow can't resist their entertainment products, even while these companies shit all over our legal system in blatant attempts to slow down societal progress in the name of profits.
I know warner brothers can make good movies, but are seeing them worth fucking up our societies legal system?
I really wanted to see I Am Legend, but the price of admission suddenly seems way too high.
And someone needs to start a group on the net to push for such legislation.
Don't change the subject, he didn't say better. And as far as a defense, it's not, it's an explanation. When microsoft ships with several different database packages, several different browsers, several different desktop environments, several different office suites, a crapload of various network tools, applications, etc... that a typical linux distro ships with, and manages to pull off less bugs, then they can use such comparisons to prove something. Until then, it's like comparing the number of problems found in a storage shed to a skyscraper, and using that comparison to try to argue that the shed is better since it had less reported problems.
"There were Young Republican types on those campuses as well."
True, but, in case you haven't been paying attention... so-called liberals are in on this stuff, people who were not young republicans. That generation has overwhelmingly embraced this type of stuff. The best and clearest example I can think of is, who backed the patriot act? Who voted for it? What are there backgrounds?
A whole generation is not a monobloc that thinks alike and I never implied they were. What is amazing is that a whole generation can live through watching freedom prevail over radicalism, and then grow up and forget what they witnessed first hand. I think that's amazing. I think it's amazing that they lived through a history of terrorism and radicalism being a thorn in the side of oppressive regimes around the world and in terms of acts of terror, hardly being a blip on the US soil by comparison.
But instead of paying attention to the history they lived through, they come into power and begin down the same path that the societies most plagued with terrorism have been on, apparently thinking we'll get different results.
I believe you, we had similar crackdowns in the late 80s when I was a teen on cruising in my area.
It's like the older generations expect the younger ones to be more perfect than they ever were. I've been through it with my family, you should heard my mom and her siblings talk about me when I was a kid getting into trouble, making it sound like I was especially bad. Then as I became an adult, I became close friends with my grandfather and found out about *credit card fraud* and other outrageous things I never came close to engaging in that occurred with them. I got put through the child legal system as a result of what turned out to be my very minor in comparison legal infractions, they never did. They got off because they were just poor innocents who made mistakes, and me, well, you know... I did everything with malicious intent to be evil or something.
Boomers in general(speaking US centric now) seem to live as if they never made such mistakes and they vote accordingly, with no thought or concern that taking away the freedom of people to make mistakes is taking away freedom indeed. That's one thing that really annoys me about boomers in particular. It seems one of the most common threads of uninsightfulness with them, which is surprising coming from the generation that was known for the saying "don't trust anyone over 30".
... after we survived the radical 60s and proved to the world that free speech and tolerance of dissent works, the very generation that watched freedom of dissent work to fizzle out radicalism has come into the positions of power and are now acting as if it didn't work. Fear is truly the mind killer.
The founder of this group, L. Brent Bozell III, also founded Media Research Center and the Conservative Communication Center. He's also been on the board of the American Conservative Union. He's also William F. Buckley's nephew.
These people have clout among "conservative" politicians and describe themselves as "conservative". Personal responsibility is one of those ideas that lip service is paid to as it suits the political agenda at hand, and ignored when it doesn't.
You'll need them for dealing with upper management.
Profit making enterprises whether public corporations or private businesses are created for the benfit of their owners not customers.
Say what? If your business is not created to benefit your customers, you don't have a business. It's really that simple. Nobody is going to hand you money to benefit yourself. Try it, go ahead. Start a company called "in it for me Inc." and try to convince people to give you money without benefiting them in return. It doesn't work.
Honestly, I don't think you understood the point of my post. I wasn't decrying or acting as if it's news that businesses are in business to make money... I was decrying that it seems rampant in corporate america today to look only a few quarters out in planning business, due to an extreme focus on the shareholders. It's as if these idiots forgot that there is no business without their customers. There is no benefiting yourself in business if you are not benefiting your customers. That this principle of decay often plays out over years, as a company more and more gets focused on quarterly numbers, means that it won't really be taken into consideration by executives focused on quarterly profits, versus building a solid long term business. This also is a contributing factor to the growing corporate scandals and accounting fraud, but that's another topic.
They seem more than willing, to squeeze out some extra dollars of this quarter in profit at the cost of stepping on the toes of their customers. They do this, without looking at what the long term ramifications of such actions will prove to be, more and more having the attitude "we'll deal with it when it comes, for now the quarters numbers must go up". Cable ISPs have one main competitor now, but if/when wireless heats up and becomes more common place, they will end up with several. Will the customers they squeezed some extra dollars out of now due to the caps remember this when the new competition comes to town? Will the new competition be able to trumpet the benefit of not having similar caps as a benefit to customers?
Seems pretty likely to me. But I'm looking further out than a quarter or two, so that's why I can see it coming. The cable companies don't seem to be and if they are, they seem to be writing off all the customers this will annoy and the friends and people those customers have sway over.
The current situation in corporate America is that management serves shareholders, not customers. Customers are secondary to shareholder needs. This has led to an outbreak of executive leadership that focuses no more than 2 quarters out. This is one of the reasons why US companies aren't as competitive globally as they used to be. Not the workforce, the management. The management goals aren't for strong long term corporate heatlh(which is what serving customers leads to), but rather, making sure they hit the numbers for the current quarter(the customers and customer service be damned).
This isn't true everywhere obviously, and where it is true it's in various degrees. This thinking has become commonplace and leads to decisions that will hurt the company down the line. But since they aren't focusing on anything beyond 2 quarters, they just don't see it.
Your post itself could be the misinformation, meant to throw people away from the truth. Afterall, while what you say is true, it is also true that sometimes government has its dirty laundry aired inadvertantly. The best way to avoid a public panic and concern over this is to get people believing it was intentional, serving some higher goal known only to our government.
It's like most conspiracy theories involving government taking part in bad actions... it's a lot more comforting to believe that our government is almighty and in control doing bad things, rather than believing that shit can and does happen beyond their control. It seems like many prefer the illusion of unjust order, rather than the reality of chaotic events that can not be controlled or stopped by all the might we have invested our faith in.
I wouldn't go that far personally... I see them as your typical alarmist partisan cult... kind of a modern John Birch Society lite.
I will probably vote for another lying, hypocritical scumbag poltician
And that's why our government is broken and will never be fixed.
Not because you won't vote for a specific person, but because you will vote for lying, hypocritical scumbag politicians, knowingly, willingly. I respect your right to do that, but, I find the choice itself to be contemptible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs
I wouldn't doubt it at all.
Companies more and more are being run myopically for quarterly profits. Why would anyone at the higher levels care about things like long term data storage since that has nothing to do with the next quarters profits?
The great 'free market' has some 12% of America living below the poverty line.
You said so many other compelling things, this was entirely unnecessary. This great free market we have, is a helluva lot better than most of the rest of the world economically. People aren't flooding into this country for the waffles and most people know that, so taking a shot like that detracts from your other valid points and weakens your argument with the very people you need to persuade. See that +5 insightful? that was the choir.
The problem goes beyond regulation inefficiencies. What we have in this country is a bastardized hybrid of socialized medicine and a free market and big business is loving it. These health insurance companies salivate every time one of their corporate boys(dem or rep) get into office and talk about more government health care benefits, because you'll notice every candidate whose put details of health care reform out there talks about including the free market(aka health insurance companies). All of the programs that I've seen offered so far, will amount to nothing more than larger troughs for the big health care pigs to feed at.
We need one of two ways to go with this. We either need to cut out all government funding of health care, taking the troughs away from the pharmaceuticals, the private health insurance system, etc...(as an aside, anyone notice how Bush's prescription drug plan turned into a bonanza for the health care industry? Whodda thunk it?) Or we need to create a department of Public Health and socialize medicine all the way, basically telling the insurance companies that they've done a shit job and they're fired.
I'd support a socialized medicine movement as long as it isn't more bastardized hybrids like the mainstream candidates have talked about. I feel comfortable doing it because the government and not private industry has proven more efficient at fire services, police services, roads infrastructure, space exploration, and a lot of other things the private sector can't do as well because profits are the goal, and there are causes in life that are greater and more noble than profits. You'll notice, that few of these people who argue for a free market and health care ever say a word about a free market fire services or police services. People know deep down that some things should not be trusted to a free market. Like public safety and health.
You bring up two interesting points along these lines... one is in the sentencing. I would tend to share your view that it makes more sense to keep them behind bars.
The other is in the attitude you express here:
Whatever leads to their change of heart, they should have thought of that sooner and not done the crime.
This attitude guarantees an unjust system with a high rate of innocent prosecution as well as eliminating any hope at all, of salvaging the salvageable. Not just with regards to child molestation, but all crime across the board.
People who haven't been on the criminal side of the fence often have very healthy home lives. They are completely ignorant and completely oblivious to what it means to be raised in an environment where abuse and molestation or drug use, or whatever the situation that they can't fathom, is an every day normal part of life from the cradle onwards.
I have something of a unique perspective on this, as I was in an abusive environment the first 8 years of my life where molestation and violence were normal parts of life. After 8, my environment changed substantially and I received treatment for the abuse. when I was in that environment, I can tell you with a degree of confidence that the friends I had were also experiencing similar things. The friends I had when I got out of that environment, and ended up going through adolescence with were completely clueless about what it is like to be poor and in an abusive environment. In their well raised, well groomed, well taught, well loved suburban lives, the way things ought to be, the way their lives were, was crystal clear and obvious to them and they could not understand how others couldn't see their notion of right and wrong as clearly as they did.
What's interesting is, these kids weren't perfect either. They too engaged in the bad behavior of their own parents, only their parents bad behavior were legal so that their acting out did not trigger any serious alarms. You know, like drinking, cursing, etc... Mild stuff, but if you're a kid, it's still considered wrong. Anyhow, the interesting thing I saw was them acting out their parents bad behavior, seeing it as normal, even while they would put down the kids of drug users for doing drugs, or the children of violent fathers being violent.
A kid acting out his parents bad behavior of gluttony, is no different in nature than a kid acting out his parents bad behavior of violence or molestation or drug use or whatever. People who are acting these things out due to the upbringing and environment, need to be treated differently and need to be given an opportunity to change things, than those who willingly deviate into these types of things. Otherwise the system is simply those lucky enough to be raised in a nice environment throwing the unlucky ones into jail with some empty claim that they should have magically known better.
Okay, well, given that it's the wealthy they've argued to be taxed, and many of the wealthy(especially old money) seem to be very much against taxes, I just don't get your point at all.
Given Bill Gates philanthropic endeavors, I think there is more to his desire to see the wealthy taxed than just that. Same with Warren Buffet. Not all rich people in the world only think about their jets. Some of them actually get the need to pay for society and gladly endorse the responsibility of the wealthy. The Bill Gates Sr. mentioned in the following article is his dad, but it's still relevant.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0408-06.htm
Perhaps they should be? Is a criminal record supposed to be secret? If so, then who are we trying to protect with such secrecy?
Once upon a time, it used to be you could serve your time for a conviction, and then once it was served, that was it, your debt was paid in full. These databases make sure that your debt is never paid in full and that you will pay forever.
I'm kind of torn, having been a victim of molestation myself, because on the one hand, I hate child molesters with a passion and sincerely believe that most of them are not salvageable. OTOH, what about those innocent ones who get wrongly convicted and what about those who are salvageable, who do have the potential to change? These laws, in the name of protecting society from the truly dangerous, also create lifelong oppression for the innocent people who fall through the cracks and for those who might otherwise be reformed.
What to do? For myself, I would rather that innocent people not be oppressed for life in the name of avoiding a traumatic series of events for myself. If having a just state means that I have a greater risk of being victimized, then that's the price I'm willing to pay for a just state. My security, or rather, illusion of security, is not worth the cost of oppressing innocent people and those who could be salvaged from their mistakes. That's just my view on it.
I actually read something about Bill Gates appearing with Warren Buffet at a Nebraska university, arguing that taxes needed to be increased on the wealthy. Both of those men, whatever else we may not like about them(I've got nothing against Buffet myself), have very patriotic/pro country views on taxes despite being obscenely wealthy. Neither one seem to have any problem with paying taxes, probably because they love their country and believe supporting is a noble cause. Versus the slash and spend idiots who want to project the image of being patriotic, while not wanting to pay for all the spending they are big fans of.
Some substances go through the body so fast that a person can train on them for months before an event then stop a week before testing and not get detected. You don't have to be on the substance during the competition or testing to get an edge from using it.