The evidence for God is the works He is doing in people's lives today... miracles, healing physical ailments, words of knowledge and wisdom and other works of His Spirit along with His work in changing people's lives and delivering from addictions, come to mind. It's not an all inclusive list.
The problem with science and those who would use science and experimental evidence as a means of proving God doesn't exist is that they demand a reproducible sample. If it can't be made to happen twice, under their control, it doesn't prove anything.
If I observe radioactive decay over enough time, science says what byproducts will form from any group of elements and isotopes. It also predicts the rate at which the changes will happen. This can be observed repeatedly. But I can't look at a particular nucleus and force it to decay at a particular time any more than you can force God to do a particular miracle at a particular time. And clearly, once the isotope has decayed, I can't force it to repeat by myself. But measuring over a large enough sample set and not constraining exactly which isotope will decay at what time, the science of radioactive decay is established.
But measuring over the entire base of Christianity, in a year, there are miracles that happen, healing that occurs, people who are delivered from addiction, and a host of messages to individuals or groups or churches from Him. It is evidence which would be accepted in any reasonable study that isn't confined to a handful of Christians. By this means, the religion of Christianity is established and God's existence is established - through the history of His church for a couple of thousand years (and of Judaism before that). The test is there - your sample set is just too small.
The safest course is what? If you choose to ignore the historical record of Christianity and Judaism and the contemporary testimonies of what God has done in the past and is now doing for His people today, then you are left with admitting the error of your ways when you come face to face with Him after death when you have cast your choice and sealed an eternal fate. Hardly a safe choice.
Why do you need to physically see or touch God when His work is seen in the lives of so many Christians? There are a host of physical phenomena that I can't see, but I can measure the effects of and thus believe in. It is so with God. I haven't been fortunate or unfortunate enough to see an angel or be visited by God, but I can see His work in my family's life, just as the Bible described. Seeing the effects helps my belief, but I would believe anyway. Just because you haven't had a miracle happen to you or to someone you know doesn't change the reality that they do happen - today.
Believing in God just to explain bits of science we don't yet fully understand or to meet some other "practical purpose" is the poorest reason I can imagine for belief.
He started out walking with His creation. His creation rejected Him and have been poor teachers of the next generation, until we have confusion and apostasy throughout the world. Most of that apostasy and evil comes from us - Satan gets a lot of blame for the evil we choose to do ourselves. But don't discount that the multiple false gods he has created and confusion of religions that have been promulgated come from anything other than Satan. The more confusion he can spread, the better. God's plan has been consistent from the prophecy He issued after the fall of man all the way through Revelation.
He's given you one more chance to consider His truth. Don't choose hell.
I'll add the "that's nice. good for you" so everybody can avoid replying.
Presidents sign bills Congress passes - or not. They also do some foreign policy stuff and supposedly manage the executive office via the cabinet and a few other things. Nothing that they do really touches unemployment (unless they start a war and institute a draft or increase work to replenish used up weapon stores).
Most of the legislation Trump has signed he provided little constructive help on that any other Republican president couldn't have done better. Mostly his mouth and Twitter feed have been in the way of doing constructive work and have caused a lot of damage.
As a Republican, I hope we do better next time in picking a candidate and managing the primary process to keep rich tycoons from buying an office. If we hold either house of Congress in November it will be amazing considering all the ammunition Trump and the Supreme Court nomination process has given the Democratic party. The market meltdown due to tariffs, interest rates (which he can't do anything about either) and worry over a blue Congress undoing everything the red Congress has done don't help either.
Maybe all those red states should just sell all their corn, wheat, beef, pork and chicken to other states or countries and we could skip maintaining the interstate system leading to California that helps get the food and produce there. That could save the poor California tax payer some of his redistributed income tax dollars.
I'll bet most of the red states would willingly give up almonds, grapes, lettuce, strawberries, and the rest of the major crops of California - at least at a faster rate than you'd give up meat and bread.
Maybe we could influence the power companies to isolate your state from the grid like Texas so you wouldn't have access to wind or hydro generated electricity. We could get rid of a lot of the turbines that are cluttering up our views to supply you with the power you want in order to be carbon neutral. Maybe we should just hold onto more of the water - we're dry after all. You have the sea next to you - build some desalination plants.
All the states have worth. There are some places I would rather not live for a variety of reasons, but all have worth and so do their people. There is literally no way that the costs that the federal government imposes on the states for infrastructure and maintenance of land the federal government owns can be adequately handled by the smaller interior states without some redistribution from larger population states. We'd like to see less federal bureaucracy, but the over populated states are used to big government and with all of our votes of all of our representatives put together, we can't equal the single state of California. So quit your bitching.
There are many ways to look at worth. If you look at the percentage of the population that enlists in the military - a lot of the blue states - like California and New York, - are very much under represented, and a lot of the "takers" are over represented. That means a greater number of the red state sons and daughters lose their lives defending the country than others. How many tax dollars is that worth to you?
There are many good things about open primaries. In our state, one party dominates. If you want any say in who will be in office, you have to vote in that primary (unless there is some race in your party that is close and really matters to you). Whoever is elected is supposed to represent all the people in the state, so for those states who are lopsided, why is an open primary an issue? If you have crazy people who want to run on your ticket, prevent that from happening so that if there are cross over voters they will be choosing from candidates that you might actually want in office. If the ballot entry is controlled better then an open primary isn't an issue. Am I really supposed to know whether or not a person is changing parties for good or just for the primary, and in either case it shouldn't matter.
The big issue is that the primaries are spread out over a very long time. All primaries should happen on the same day - just like the general election - for all parties. You should not be able to fund your campaign outside of the rules and regulations that would apply for any other donor. One of the issues in our state this election cycle was that someone tried to do what Trump did and fund his own campaign. He lost, and claimed the same open primary process was the reason. The fact there were interminable phone calls on his behalf wasn't seen as an issue, but probably turned off more voters than it helped. If Trump hadn't been able to fund most of his campaign himself due to restrictions on donations to a campaign, we also wouldn't be having this discussion.
While I agree in principle with your comments on the oath, it is a balancing act because the same oath requires you to "faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter". Their duty is to the Constitution if it is actually being violated or about to be violated by some act commanded from above. If not, then faithfully discharging your duties in office should prevail. Not liking what is going on is insufficient unless the Constitution is at risk. Many in the armed forces have thought particular conflicts were wrong over the course of your history. Yet they don't get to just frustrate the orders from above with impunity and without consequence.
Street by street - absolutely not. Zoning codes exist so that some developer who doesn't want to pay for wide sidewalks can't get by with putting in what he thinks is reasonable.
Cars shouldn't pay all the cost of roads. Why should bikes pay nothing? Why should people who walk pay nothing? Why should trucks not pay more since they do more damage? Seems you're just anti-car. Electric cars will need to pay a mileage tax as well since they don't pay fuel subsidies.
In my area there are no real options to cars - call a taxi? Still a car. Call uber? Still a car. Ride a bike? Have really strong legs to battle 30 mph continuous headwinds with 70 mph gusts in the winter with total elevation differences between downtown and where people live that make San Francisco look tame. There are some extremely limited service route buses that run - and for some times of the day you need to reserve a spot on them a couple of weeks in advance. There just aren't enough people going from any particular point A to B to make mass transit economical. Should cities have been laid out differently in some vast utopian fantasy where that were possible? Sure. But that isn't the world we live in. We're talking an hour at 80mph to get to another place where people live - and sometimes not many people at that. Very limited bus services between towns, passenger rail - never covered much and is history anyway.
Sewers??? Taller buildings equals larger sewer taps and bigger pipes under the streets to handle those bigger taps in a dense apartment building scenario equals bigger cost and higher cost to build and repair.
Zoning standards specify what is required for street width, sidewalk style and size. If you think the property owner has anything to do with that you're crazy. The initial builder planning a subdivision might have some sway, but after those things are built everyone else lives with them. Trees are the only thing you can make a valid point on. Personally, I'm not a fan. Their roots destroy sewer lines or other buried utilities, heave and break up sidewalks and streets, they dump tons of leaves, they destroy views, they interfere with line of site wireless or laser networks, and they make it easier for fires to spread. That's why we have parks in towns. Hostile to life? Hardly.
There is really no difference between streets and roads as you imply. When an 18-wheeler delivers parcels or mail between the towns on what you call roads - the driver doesn't dump everything where the road ends. They travel on streets. There are really no streets that are never used as roads to use your terminology. Even residential streets are used by delivery trucks, moving trucks, utility vehicles and the like. They are all public access regardless of where they are located and everyone should pay for them. There are different ways to account for the cost of their upkeep - the cyclists would like to get a free ride and free bike lanes since they don't use gas - the people who commute would like to get a free ride because they pay other drivers and don't use gas - the people who walk don't want to think about what the crosswalks cost or feel like they should contribute anything and really - moving only happens occasionally so why should I pay for roads for that either - but upkeep has to be paid for somehow. The people who live in big cities are used to how they can get around and think that cars are an abomination... but you have to have a fairly significant population density to make any of the alternatives to cars viable.
One sewer connection per building regardless of frontage is by far the standard. Sidewalks - responsibility of owner depending on where you live - sometimes there is a split cost of upkeep - sometimes it is on the property owner. Trees on owner's property - responsibility of owner. Streets are public access and used by public unless a strictly private road. They are paid for as part of the initial purchase of the lot, but after that used by everybody. Not everyone drives on the particular road in front of my house, but there's a vast amount of city street mileage I never drive on either that my property taxes help pay upkeep on because I want the fire trucks or ambulances or police or delivery trucks to be able to do their jobs or the sewer to flow under them or the water to be delivered through them - or hey - I just might want to drive over them to go shopping, go to work, or visit a friend.
Property taxes do virtually nothing in causing a person to choose an apartment or a condo or a free standing house. Do they have some role? Well sure. But it's a small part versus the monthly cost of rent or house payment, desire to live in a community or be more isolated, desire for urban vs suburb, closeness of shopping versus open space.
In our town, you select a list of public schools you'd like each of your kids to go to - three selections. If you were going to school X last year, and you still want to go there, you go there. If you have a brother or sister going to school X and you want the next kid to go there, you get an almost assured in at that school to keep families together. In all other circumstances kids are assigned as well as possible based on their preference. The matching is not 5 nines, but it is way up there. Most parents prefer a local neighborhood school, but for those who are sure school X is a better fit for their kid, they can send them there. Makes every school try harder to be good since they don't have a guaranteed supply of kids.
For busing, the school district picks kids up and send them to a hub where they then go to the bus to their actual school. At night kids are picked up from school by buses and taken to the hub where they transfer to the bus home.
Works great. No riots. My property taxes are higher than average. I have no issue at all with helping to support the other schools.
What we need to do is get rid of all of the other garbage taxes - sales, lodging, "sin", income, and all of their overhead and just do property taxes (which would be passed down as rent for those who don't actually own property). Make one adjustment as needed based on cost of government each year at the state, county, and city level. No reason it can't be done in a revenue neutral way, but get rid of all of the state overhead for all the other taxation mechanisms - reduce expenses for the state - simplify retailers lives - simplify internet sellers lives - kick the crutch of lodging tax out - make people want to shop in your state (no sales taxes). For a revenue neutral change, many wins.
The property tax assessments are local so you have someone local to go talk to if you think your taxes are too high. Get an appraisal if you need to. Base all taxes on the actual retail price for the property.
They're running it a bit longer than a day this year. Consider the extra time the beta while they work out the bugs. Course like most betas people might not come back when it's working.
As of the last reports I've seen, the US birth rate is well below the required birthrate for a sustainable population and has been for several years. People decry large families - but the small family or no family choice is a real problem for demographics in our country.
If you want a growing economy and better funding for Social Security and the like, you need new people to buy and produce. That hasn't been happening of late. There are limits to the pyramid scheme that is Social Security that even more workers can't fix, but that is largely due to politicians promising more and more to those who are retired already.
We need to welcome the immigrants. Should everyone be welcomed? Of course not. But unless there is a significant reason - incontrovertible proof of terrorism or something equally heinous, the position should be - come! And we should be especially welcoming of those who have been hurt by war that they had nothing to do with.
Everyone now here is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. Get off your high horses.
A third party might well have a chance in the US at some point. The problem is there is no third party. There are what - 40 or 50 other parties? If the top eight or so could come together and develop a single plan they could agree on, a "third" party might have a chance. As it is, there are simply too many other choices for any one of them to make a difference.
This is similar to the Linux issue. There are simply too many distributions and none of them want to give up what they have for the good of the whole. Whether it is systemd vs gnome-centric vs kde-centric vs super-computer centric vs phone centric, the divisions make it hard to compete and for any software publisher to get behind them. Of course if Microsoft keeps shooting itself in the foot, someone might step up.
That is the same hope the people who support the third parties have. The Republicans and Democrats seem to have automatics pointed at their feet, feeding in clip after clip. At some point, maybe enough voters will notice to think about alternatives. Unlikely, I know, but this generation doesn't have the same fidelity to party that their parents had.
If your dual use is also going to be a heavier weight plastic bag - which virtually all trash can liners are - then reusing the first bag is definitely a win. Just because the heavier weight bag - more plastic - takes longer to break down doesn't change the fact that it also will break down. I fail to see where the time difference matters. As long as it is still a plastic bag - why not pick the one that has less plastic?
And yes, all of us know that the cost of the bags are rolled into the overhead of the store and we end up paying something for them anyway. But the amount that is charged for those bags is much less than the cost of the off the shelf bags - because they are cheap and not well made - but serviceable for many uses.
Let's start a movement to ban the manufacture of trash can liner bags and rely on the plastic bags at the checkout line. It would make more sense.
There's usually enough of an oversupply that for any waste can that could have an issue with leaking, you can double bag, just like the grocery stores, and still avoid purchasing the slightly more durable "real" trash can liners. The kitty litter bags, for example, I always double bag. For the few that tear or have an inconvenient hole, add them to the garbage. We do landfill here, so they aren't much of a threat to the birds or rivers or oceans, and as thin as they are, they should bio-degrade faster than the purchased trash can liners as well.
It isn't just cat litter. I also use the plastic bags for all the trash can liners in the house since the City wants all garbage bagged. They aren't as strong as a real trash can liner, but they work. The extras get donated to the church food bank for people to use to take home the stuff they pick up there. They aren't single use for a great many people, and having to buy higher grade plastic bags to replace their second use is crazy.
Load all the GUIs available. Try each to see which runs acceptably on your older hardware. I suspect that the latest Gnome or KDE versions may be challenged depending on the age of the hardware and graphic card in use. Show them how to select a different one when they login if they want. Report back in a few months to see which one they picked.
I tend to use KDE. Some of the kids use MATE. Some use KDE. Really, what matters are the applications and those will run pretty much on any desktop. Just make sure the GUIs you provide at least work and can do basic things. If they don't, then remove them from the O/S before letting the kids play around.
The problem is that with every major release they completely revamp the API. Nobody who develops for them can keep up with the changes and there's no automated way that works to upgrade source from release to release. If you choose to use a module because there isn't something you need in core, then you're stuck till the module gets converted to the newest release which may never happen. Eventually, your mind just screams.
The path to secure code isn't rewriting everything from the ground up with each release. I know that's an exaggeration, but it sure seems like it. The path to secure code is to get things close to right the first time and then do minor tweaks and fixes from then on.
Using her mail server (regardless of timing of laws and application of what should have been common sense) for non classified e-mails wasn't what got people really ticked off. Handling classified documents in a way that would have gotten other people fired or jailed was the big issue. Maybe it was just me.
Oh... and the handling of evidence once it became an issue... there's that too...
If states force online retailers to collect their sales tax - thus burdening the online retailer with knowing about all tax jurisdictions, having common descriptions of items country wide so you know what is even taxable and its particular rate on any given day then....
make all non-online retailers handle the sales tax rates the purchaser would pay at their home and remit them to their home states as well! You make a purchase, show your ID and then the sales tax rate will be whatever it would be for your home address. If you come from a state that is sensible and doesn't collect sales tax - you wouldn't have to pay it anywhere. If you come from a state that is nuts - then you're equally repressed everywhere in the United States you shop.
Seems fair to me. Your opinions will probably vary.
Not really. I suppose to a point it depends on where you live and the number and quality of local shops. Amazon, to use the current target of the establishment charges a sales tax. They also charge shipping and handling (whether directly on a purchase or as rolled into their Prime service). When I'm going to look for some non-food or more rarely food item I want to buy, I look there (or occasionally at some other retailer with a big online presence like Walmart or Target to see how they compare). If there is a big enough discrepancy I may make the effort to get in the car and go t a local Walmart or more rarely Target as they are on the other side of town to purchase something. But the price discrepancy has to be fairly significant to take the time to do that instead of just ordering on Amazon. The sales tax has absolutely no impact on my shopping and that is true of the growing majority of the people. It's about being able to look at a lot of options from your home and get it shipped to your door (or mailbox) and having a good return policy if something doesn't work. The sales tax argument is almost completely immaterial. Taxing online retailers won't do a single thing to increase the number of local shops so the rest of your argument is pointless. They are a dying breed that for most products won't last more than a few decades if that. Even clothing is something I'm now more likely to purchase through Amazon than actually going to a store. Groceries will probably be one of the last holdouts, but Amazon (Whole Foods) and Walmart are doing everything they can to kill that as well.
Sales taxes should simply be completely done away with and other taxes raised to make up for it (income or property or the like). The same is true for lodging taxes and any other tiny vampire type tax out there. Get rid of it and the bureaucracy behind it and reduce the amount of government required to monitor and enforce it. You can be completely revenue neutral and make the whole thing just go away, eliminating a whole class of "criminals" who don't report use taxes - mostly because keeping track of what purchase you've made that didn't come from a retailer that collects sales tax is a pain than any real intent to harm anyone. Property tax increases if you aren't an end user would lead to increased rents, but it would still get rid of a useless layer of crap, bookkeeping and associated expenses for everybody.
The bigger the business, the more products manufactured, the greater the gamesmanship as to how to allocate overhead costs like taxes. But at the end of the fiscal year, every company regardless of size looks at profit and loss and adjusts what factors they have control over to provide the rate of return they want or the stock market demands of them to maintain their share price or profit stream to small owners. Price is certainly one variable they can control. Wages are another. Spending on capital items (and where they do business for example) are others. But to say that price cannot be affected by taxes is incorrect. Look at all the deals made on taxes and the like to get companies to locate plants at particular locations in the country.
If taxes are massively raised on companies they will adjust all variables they can. Since most particular product manufacturers are similar and frequently face similar tax structures, pricing for everybody faces the same pressures - so all similar companies are free to raise prices if taxes go up. They won't be at a competitive disadvantage. They compete for similar skill sets for employees although their location may affect wages and other costs. It's complex, but taxes aren't irrelevant to companies.
The federal income tax is, of course, not the only tax. Didn't say that it was. But the federal government is the one that spends the most and affects everybody regardless of what state you live in.
If a flat tax was instituted and enforced, the services provided at all levels would drop much closer to the minimum needed and the tax bill for everyone would drop. You're welcome to come up with your own method of reducing the spending and stopping the ballooning of the debt, but nothing we've tried yet worked. There would be a lot of tax law and enforcement eliminated.
In addition, cutting all the miscellaneous taxes out of product price chain would reduce prices paid for everything - or at least it could. - thus lowering the outlay for goods and services for everyone including all government agencies.
Making it work would take a lot of thought and work. But all I was addressing was the comment of fair. The only thing that is fair is for each person to pay the same tax. Anything else is just hand waving stealing from one group to give to another.
Is it fair that wages are so badly warped in the U.S.? Of course not. But the way to fix that is to buy stock in companies, vote for salary controls at the top, if there isn't one then submit your own proposal. Everything else is just stealing.
The only thing fair is a head tax. That would be a painful transition, but is really the only thing that is going to reign in spending. We're almost to the point - if we haven't crossed it this year - that the majority of the citizens of tax paying age don't actually pay taxes at the federal level. That's one reason politicians get away with promising things they won't ever be able to deliver and why they keep getting elected. Charge each citizen the same and people might actually care how wasteful government is today. We also might not be as likely to go to war nearly as often or for such questionable reasons.
One head tax bill at the federal level in April. One head tax bill at the state level in October. One city head tax bill in July. One county head tax bill in January. Get rid of the vast majority of the remaining taxes - income tax, sales tax, property tax, lodging taxes - one of the stupidest in my opinion, fuel taxes to name a few. It would probably be hard to get people to dump the sin taxes (tobacco, alcohol, and the like, and to the extent that they actually keep people from damaging themselves I guess they might have a purpose) but really, you could boil most everything down to just those four and adjust the rates each year to cover the budget or pay down debt. Amortize the city, county, and state taxes based on where you lived over the course of the year.
That would be fair and it would likely lead to a tremendous drive to efficiency that has only gotten lip service.
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Trade... Japan... WWII... only time will tell.
The evidence for God is the works He is doing in people's lives today... miracles, healing physical ailments, words of knowledge and wisdom and other works of His Spirit along with His work in changing people's lives and delivering from addictions, come to mind. It's not an all inclusive list.
The problem with science and those who would use science and experimental evidence as a means of proving God doesn't exist is that they demand a reproducible sample. If it can't be made to happen twice, under their control, it doesn't prove anything.
If I observe radioactive decay over enough time, science says what byproducts will form from any group of elements and isotopes. It also predicts the rate at which the changes will happen. This can be observed repeatedly. But I can't look at a particular nucleus and force it to decay at a particular time any more than you can force God to do a particular miracle at a particular time. And clearly, once the isotope has decayed, I can't force it to repeat by myself. But measuring over a large enough sample set and not constraining exactly which isotope will decay at what time, the science of radioactive decay is established.
But measuring over the entire base of Christianity, in a year, there are miracles that happen, healing that occurs, people who are delivered from addiction, and a host of messages to individuals or groups or churches from Him. It is evidence which would be accepted in any reasonable study that isn't confined to a handful of Christians. By this means, the religion of Christianity is established and God's existence is established - through the history of His church for a couple of thousand years (and of Judaism before that). The test is there - your sample set is just too small.
The safest course is what? If you choose to ignore the historical record of Christianity and Judaism and the contemporary testimonies of what God has done in the past and is now doing for His people today, then you are left with admitting the error of your ways when you come face to face with Him after death when you have cast your choice and sealed an eternal fate. Hardly a safe choice.
Why do you need to physically see or touch God when His work is seen in the lives of so many Christians? There are a host of physical phenomena that I can't see, but I can measure the effects of and thus believe in. It is so with God. I haven't been fortunate or unfortunate enough to see an angel or be visited by God, but I can see His work in my family's life, just as the Bible described. Seeing the effects helps my belief, but I would believe anyway. Just because you haven't had a miracle happen to you or to someone you know doesn't change the reality that they do happen - today.
Believing in God just to explain bits of science we don't yet fully understand or to meet some other "practical purpose" is the poorest reason I can imagine for belief.
He started out walking with His creation. His creation rejected Him and have been poor teachers of the next generation, until we have confusion and apostasy throughout the world. Most of that apostasy and evil comes from us - Satan gets a lot of blame for the evil we choose to do ourselves. But don't discount that the multiple false gods he has created and confusion of religions that have been promulgated come from anything other than Satan. The more confusion he can spread, the better. God's plan has been consistent from the prophecy He issued after the fall of man all the way through Revelation.
He's given you one more chance to consider His truth. Don't choose hell.
I'll add the "that's nice. good for you" so everybody can avoid replying.
Presidents sign bills Congress passes - or not. They also do some foreign policy stuff and supposedly manage the executive office via the cabinet and a few other things. Nothing that they do really touches unemployment (unless they start a war and institute a draft or increase work to replenish used up weapon stores).
Most of the legislation Trump has signed he provided little constructive help on that any other Republican president couldn't have done better. Mostly his mouth and Twitter feed have been in the way of doing constructive work and have caused a lot of damage.
As a Republican, I hope we do better next time in picking a candidate and managing the primary process to keep rich tycoons from buying an office. If we hold either house of Congress in November it will be amazing considering all the ammunition Trump and the Supreme Court nomination process has given the Democratic party. The market meltdown due to tariffs, interest rates (which he can't do anything about either) and worry over a blue Congress undoing everything the red Congress has done don't help either.
Maybe all those red states should just sell all their corn, wheat, beef, pork and chicken to other states or countries and we could skip maintaining the interstate system leading to California that helps get the food and produce there. That could save the poor California tax payer some of his redistributed income tax dollars.
I'll bet most of the red states would willingly give up almonds, grapes, lettuce, strawberries, and the rest of the major crops of California - at least at a faster rate than you'd give up meat and bread.
Maybe we could influence the power companies to isolate your state from the grid like Texas so you wouldn't have access to wind or hydro generated electricity. We could get rid of a lot of the turbines that are cluttering up our views to supply you with the power you want in order to be carbon neutral. Maybe we should just hold onto more of the water - we're dry after all. You have the sea next to you - build some desalination plants.
All the states have worth. There are some places I would rather not live for a variety of reasons, but all have worth and so do their people. There is literally no way that the costs that the federal government imposes on the states for infrastructure and maintenance of land the federal government owns can be adequately handled by the smaller interior states without some redistribution from larger population states. We'd like to see less federal bureaucracy, but the over populated states are used to big government and with all of our votes of all of our representatives put together, we can't equal the single state of California. So quit your bitching.
There are many ways to look at worth. If you look at the percentage of the population that enlists in the military - a lot of the blue states - like California and New York, - are very much under represented, and a lot of the "takers" are over represented. That means a greater number of the red state sons and daughters lose their lives defending the country than others. How many tax dollars is that worth to you?
There are many good things about open primaries. In our state, one party dominates. If you want any say in who will be in office, you have to vote in that primary (unless there is some race in your party that is close and really matters to you). Whoever is elected is supposed to represent all the people in the state, so for those states who are lopsided, why is an open primary an issue? If you have crazy people who want to run on your ticket, prevent that from happening so that if there are cross over voters they will be choosing from candidates that you might actually want in office. If the ballot entry is controlled better then an open primary isn't an issue. Am I really supposed to know whether or not a person is changing parties for good or just for the primary, and in either case it shouldn't matter.
The big issue is that the primaries are spread out over a very long time. All primaries should happen on the same day - just like the general election - for all parties. You should not be able to fund your campaign outside of the rules and regulations that would apply for any other donor. One of the issues in our state this election cycle was that someone tried to do what Trump did and fund his own campaign. He lost, and claimed the same open primary process was the reason. The fact there were interminable phone calls on his behalf wasn't seen as an issue, but probably turned off more voters than it helped. If Trump hadn't been able to fund most of his campaign himself due to restrictions on donations to a campaign, we also wouldn't be having this discussion.
While I agree in principle with your comments on the oath, it is a balancing act because the same oath requires you to "faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter". Their duty is to the Constitution if it is actually being violated or about to be violated by some act commanded from above. If not, then faithfully discharging your duties in office should prevail. Not liking what is going on is insufficient unless the Constitution is at risk. Many in the armed forces have thought particular conflicts were wrong over the course of your history. Yet they don't get to just frustrate the orders from above with impunity and without consequence.
Street by street - absolutely not. Zoning codes exist so that some developer who doesn't want to pay for wide sidewalks can't get by with putting in what he thinks is reasonable.
Cars shouldn't pay all the cost of roads. Why should bikes pay nothing? Why should people who walk pay nothing? Why should trucks not pay more since they do more damage? Seems you're just anti-car. Electric cars will need to pay a mileage tax as well since they don't pay fuel subsidies.
In my area there are no real options to cars - call a taxi? Still a car. Call uber? Still a car. Ride a bike? Have really strong legs to battle 30 mph continuous headwinds with 70 mph gusts in the winter with total elevation differences between downtown and where people live that make San Francisco look tame. There are some extremely limited service route buses that run - and for some times of the day you need to reserve a spot on them a couple of weeks in advance. There just aren't enough people going from any particular point A to B to make mass transit economical. Should cities have been laid out differently in some vast utopian fantasy where that were possible? Sure. But that isn't the world we live in. We're talking an hour at 80mph to get to another place where people live - and sometimes not many people at that. Very limited bus services between towns, passenger rail - never covered much and is history anyway.
Sewers??? Taller buildings equals larger sewer taps and bigger pipes under the streets to handle those bigger taps in a dense apartment building scenario equals bigger cost and higher cost to build and repair.
Zoning standards specify what is required for street width, sidewalk style and size. If you think the property owner has anything to do with that you're crazy. The initial builder planning a subdivision might have some sway, but after those things are built everyone else lives with them. Trees are the only thing you can make a valid point on. Personally, I'm not a fan. Their roots destroy sewer lines or other buried utilities, heave and break up sidewalks and streets, they dump tons of leaves, they destroy views, they interfere with line of site wireless or laser networks, and they make it easier for fires to spread. That's why we have parks in towns. Hostile to life? Hardly.
There is really no difference between streets and roads as you imply. When an 18-wheeler delivers parcels or mail between the towns on what you call roads - the driver doesn't dump everything where the road ends. They travel on streets. There are really no streets that are never used as roads to use your terminology. Even residential streets are used by delivery trucks, moving trucks, utility vehicles and the like. They are all public access regardless of where they are located and everyone should pay for them. There are different ways to account for the cost of their upkeep - the cyclists would like to get a free ride and free bike lanes since they don't use gas - the people who commute would like to get a free ride because they pay other drivers and don't use gas - the people who walk don't want to think about what the crosswalks cost or feel like they should contribute anything and really - moving only happens occasionally so why should I pay for roads for that either - but upkeep has to be paid for somehow. The people who live in big cities are used to how they can get around and think that cars are an abomination... but you have to have a fairly significant population density to make any of the alternatives to cars viable.
One sewer connection per building regardless of frontage is by far the standard. Sidewalks - responsibility of owner depending on where you live - sometimes there is a split cost of upkeep - sometimes it is on the property owner. Trees on owner's property - responsibility of owner. Streets are public access and used by public unless a strictly private road. They are paid for as part of the initial purchase of the lot, but after that used by everybody. Not everyone drives on the particular road in front of my house, but there's a vast amount of city street mileage I never drive on either that my property taxes help pay upkeep on because I want the fire trucks or ambulances or police or delivery trucks to be able to do their jobs or the sewer to flow under them or the water to be delivered through them - or hey - I just might want to drive over them to go shopping, go to work, or visit a friend.
Property taxes do virtually nothing in causing a person to choose an apartment or a condo or a free standing house. Do they have some role? Well sure. But it's a small part versus the monthly cost of rent or house payment, desire to live in a community or be more isolated, desire for urban vs suburb, closeness of shopping versus open space.
In our town, you select a list of public schools you'd like each of your kids to go to - three selections. If you were going to school X last year, and you still want to go there, you go there. If you have a brother or sister going to school X and you want the next kid to go there, you get an almost assured in at that school to keep families together. In all other circumstances kids are assigned as well as possible based on their preference. The matching is not 5 nines, but it is way up there. Most parents prefer a local neighborhood school, but for those who are sure school X is a better fit for their kid, they can send them there. Makes every school try harder to be good since they don't have a guaranteed supply of kids.
For busing, the school district picks kids up and send them to a hub where they then go to the bus to their actual school. At night kids are picked up from school by buses and taken to the hub where they transfer to the bus home.
Works great. No riots. My property taxes are higher than average. I have no issue at all with helping to support the other schools.
What we need to do is get rid of all of the other garbage taxes - sales, lodging, "sin", income, and all of their overhead and just do property taxes (which would be passed down as rent for those who don't actually own property). Make one adjustment as needed based on cost of government each year at the state, county, and city level. No reason it can't be done in a revenue neutral way, but get rid of all of the state overhead for all the other taxation mechanisms - reduce expenses for the state - simplify retailers lives - simplify internet sellers lives - kick the crutch of lodging tax out - make people want to shop in your state (no sales taxes). For a revenue neutral change, many wins.
The property tax assessments are local so you have someone local to go talk to if you think your taxes are too high. Get an appraisal if you need to. Base all taxes on the actual retail price for the property.
They're running it a bit longer than a day this year. Consider the extra time the beta while they work out the bugs. Course like most betas people might not come back when it's working.
As of the last reports I've seen, the US birth rate is well below the required birthrate for a sustainable population and has been for several years. People decry large families - but the small family or no family choice is a real problem for demographics in our country.
If you want a growing economy and better funding for Social Security and the like, you need new people to buy and produce. That hasn't been happening of late. There are limits to the pyramid scheme that is Social Security that even more workers can't fix, but that is largely due to politicians promising more and more to those who are retired already.
We need to welcome the immigrants. Should everyone be welcomed? Of course not. But unless there is a significant reason - incontrovertible proof of terrorism or something equally heinous, the position should be - come! And we should be especially welcoming of those who have been hurt by war that they had nothing to do with.
Everyone now here is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. Get off your high horses.
A third party might well have a chance in the US at some point. The problem is there is no third party. There are what - 40 or 50 other parties? If the top eight or so could come together and develop a single plan they could agree on, a "third" party might have a chance. As it is, there are simply too many other choices for any one of them to make a difference.
This is similar to the Linux issue. There are simply too many distributions and none of them want to give up what they have for the good of the whole. Whether it is systemd vs gnome-centric vs kde-centric vs super-computer centric vs phone centric, the divisions make it hard to compete and for any software publisher to get behind them. Of course if Microsoft keeps shooting itself in the foot, someone might step up.
That is the same hope the people who support the third parties have. The Republicans and Democrats seem to have automatics pointed at their feet, feeding in clip after clip. At some point, maybe enough voters will notice to think about alternatives. Unlikely, I know, but this generation doesn't have the same fidelity to party that their parents had.
If your dual use is also going to be a heavier weight plastic bag - which virtually all trash can liners are - then reusing the first bag is definitely a win. Just because the heavier weight bag - more plastic - takes longer to break down doesn't change the fact that it also will break down. I fail to see where the time difference matters. As long as it is still a plastic bag - why not pick the one that has less plastic?
And yes, all of us know that the cost of the bags are rolled into the overhead of the store and we end up paying something for them anyway. But the amount that is charged for those bags is much less than the cost of the off the shelf bags - because they are cheap and not well made - but serviceable for many uses.
Let's start a movement to ban the manufacture of trash can liner bags and rely on the plastic bags at the checkout line. It would make more sense.
There's usually enough of an oversupply that for any waste can that could have an issue with leaking, you can double bag, just like the grocery stores, and still avoid purchasing the slightly more durable "real" trash can liners. The kitty litter bags, for example, I always double bag. For the few that tear or have an inconvenient hole, add them to the garbage. We do landfill here, so they aren't much of a threat to the birds or rivers or oceans, and as thin as they are, they should bio-degrade faster than the purchased trash can liners as well.
It isn't just cat litter. I also use the plastic bags for all the trash can liners in the house since the City wants all garbage bagged. They aren't as strong as a real trash can liner, but they work. The extras get donated to the church food bank for people to use to take home the stuff they pick up there. They aren't single use for a great many people, and having to buy higher grade plastic bags to replace their second use is crazy.
Load all the GUIs available. Try each to see which runs acceptably on your older hardware. I suspect that the latest Gnome or KDE versions may be challenged depending on the age of the hardware and graphic card in use. Show them how to select a different one when they login if they want. Report back in a few months to see which one they picked.
I tend to use KDE. Some of the kids use MATE. Some use KDE. Really, what matters are the applications and those will run pretty much on any desktop. Just make sure the GUIs you provide at least work and can do basic things. If they don't, then remove them from the O/S before letting the kids play around.
The problem is that with every major release they completely revamp the API. Nobody who develops for them can keep up with the changes and there's no automated way that works to upgrade source from release to release. If you choose to use a module because there isn't something you need in core, then you're stuck till the module gets converted to the newest release which may never happen. Eventually, your mind just screams.
The path to secure code isn't rewriting everything from the ground up with each release. I know that's an exaggeration, but it sure seems like it. The path to secure code is to get things close to right the first time and then do minor tweaks and fixes from then on.
Using her mail server (regardless of timing of laws and application of what should have been common sense) for non classified e-mails wasn't what got people really ticked off. Handling classified documents in a way that would have gotten other people fired or jailed was the big issue. Maybe it was just me.
Oh... and the handling of evidence once it became an issue... there's that too...
If states force online retailers to collect their sales tax - thus burdening the online retailer with knowing about all tax jurisdictions, having common descriptions of items country wide so you know what is even taxable and its particular rate on any given day then....
make all non-online retailers handle the sales tax rates the purchaser would pay at their home and remit them to their home states as well! You make a purchase, show your ID and then the sales tax rate will be whatever it would be for your home address. If you come from a state that is sensible and doesn't collect sales tax - you wouldn't have to pay it anywhere. If you come from a state that is nuts - then you're equally repressed everywhere in the United States you shop.
Seems fair to me. Your opinions will probably vary.
Not really. I suppose to a point it depends on where you live and the number and quality of local shops. Amazon, to use the current target of the establishment charges a sales tax. They also charge shipping and handling (whether directly on a purchase or as rolled into their Prime service). When I'm going to look for some non-food or more rarely food item I want to buy, I look there (or occasionally at some other retailer with a big online presence like Walmart or Target to see how they compare). If there is a big enough discrepancy I may make the effort to get in the car and go t a local Walmart or more rarely Target as they are on the other side of town to purchase something. But the price discrepancy has to be fairly significant to take the time to do that instead of just ordering on Amazon. The sales tax has absolutely no impact on my shopping and that is true of the growing majority of the people. It's about being able to look at a lot of options from your home and get it shipped to your door (or mailbox) and having a good return policy if something doesn't work. The sales tax argument is almost completely immaterial. Taxing online retailers won't do a single thing to increase the number of local shops so the rest of your argument is pointless. They are a dying breed that for most products won't last more than a few decades if that. Even clothing is something I'm now more likely to purchase through Amazon than actually going to a store. Groceries will probably be one of the last holdouts, but Amazon (Whole Foods) and Walmart are doing everything they can to kill that as well.
Sales taxes should simply be completely done away with and other taxes raised to make up for it (income or property or the like). The same is true for lodging taxes and any other tiny vampire type tax out there. Get rid of it and the bureaucracy behind it and reduce the amount of government required to monitor and enforce it. You can be completely revenue neutral and make the whole thing just go away, eliminating a whole class of "criminals" who don't report use taxes - mostly because keeping track of what purchase you've made that didn't come from a retailer that collects sales tax is a pain than any real intent to harm anyone. Property tax increases if you aren't an end user would lead to increased rents, but it would still get rid of a useless layer of crap, bookkeeping and associated expenses for everybody.
The bigger the business, the more products manufactured, the greater the gamesmanship as to how to allocate overhead costs like taxes. But at the end of the fiscal year, every company regardless of size looks at profit and loss and adjusts what factors they have control over to provide the rate of return they want or the stock market demands of them to maintain their share price or profit stream to small owners. Price is certainly one variable they can control. Wages are another. Spending on capital items (and where they do business for example) are others. But to say that price cannot be affected by taxes is incorrect. Look at all the deals made on taxes and the like to get companies to locate plants at particular locations in the country.
If taxes are massively raised on companies they will adjust all variables they can. Since most particular product manufacturers are similar and frequently face similar tax structures, pricing for everybody faces the same pressures - so all similar companies are free to raise prices if taxes go up. They won't be at a competitive disadvantage. They compete for similar skill sets for employees although their location may affect wages and other costs. It's complex, but taxes aren't irrelevant to companies.
The federal income tax is, of course, not the only tax. Didn't say that it was. But the federal government is the one that spends the most and affects everybody regardless of what state you live in.
If a flat tax was instituted and enforced, the services provided at all levels would drop much closer to the minimum needed and the tax bill for everyone would drop. You're welcome to come up with your own method of reducing the spending and stopping the ballooning of the debt, but nothing we've tried yet worked. There would be a lot of tax law and enforcement eliminated.
In addition, cutting all the miscellaneous taxes out of product price chain would reduce prices paid for everything - or at least it could. - thus lowering the outlay for goods and services for everyone including all government agencies.
Making it work would take a lot of thought and work. But all I was addressing was the comment of fair. The only thing that is fair is for each person to pay the same tax. Anything else is just hand waving stealing from one group to give to another.
Is it fair that wages are so badly warped in the U.S.? Of course not. But the way to fix that is to buy stock in companies, vote for salary controls at the top, if there isn't one then submit your own proposal. Everything else is just stealing.
The only thing fair is a head tax. That would be a painful transition, but is really the only thing that is going to reign in spending. We're almost to the point - if we haven't crossed it this year - that the majority of the citizens of tax paying age don't actually pay taxes at the federal level. That's one reason politicians get away with promising things they won't ever be able to deliver and why they keep getting elected. Charge each citizen the same and people might actually care how wasteful government is today. We also might not be as likely to go to war nearly as often or for such questionable reasons.
One head tax bill at the federal level in April. One head tax bill at the state level in October. One city head tax bill in July. One county head tax bill in January. Get rid of the vast majority of the remaining taxes - income tax, sales tax, property tax, lodging taxes - one of the stupidest in my opinion, fuel taxes to name a few. It would probably be hard to get people to dump the sin taxes (tobacco, alcohol, and the like, and to the extent that they actually keep people from damaging themselves I guess they might have a purpose) but really, you could boil most everything down to just those four and adjust the rates each year to cover the budget or pay down debt. Amortize the city, county, and state taxes based on where you lived over the course of the year.
That would be fair and it would likely lead to a tremendous drive to efficiency that has only gotten lip service.