Prohibition was a scary time for Americans, particularly breweries - most of which went out of business. Prohibition was created by women marching in the streets, complaining that their husbands had become drunks in the saloons. Who could blame them - during the depression, there weren't many jobs to keep them occupied.
The 18th Amendment was ratified in 1919, and the Volstead Act was passed in the same year. The Great Depression, which began in 1929, was not the cause of Prohibition.
The Great Depression helped to bring about the repeal of Prohibition, however - the economic benefits of the "new" brewing and distilling industry was one of the arguments in favor of the 21st Amendment, which was ratified in 1933.
I would have been going to illustrate that, but I was unable to come up with a good example that didn't sound convoluted. Oh, wait a minute, there's a conditional pluperfect past continuous future (or something like that) right now.
I'll take a stab at it - I think that's not proper usage, but I think it's a pluperfect subjunctive of the verb "to go" - being used as a participle with an infinitive to mean proposed action (i.e. a subjunctive contrary to fact past).
This is hardly evidence against the complexity of English...
IANAL, but I own a corporation, and I'm pretty sure no form of civil tort provides for piercing the corporate veil.
IANALE, and this in no way constitutes legal advice, but I'm pretty sure that *most* torts provide for piercing the corporate veil, depending upon the laws of your state and upon specific situations (such as, you're the sole shareholder of your corporation, or a corporate officer intentionally committed fraud).
The american legal system allows to demand ridiculous sums of money, also there's this weird case-law which to my understanding means, that one wrong decision in one court has to be repeated by every other american court, and also that lawyers have to consider not only the given law but any case which might have some remote similarities to the case at hand.
In case (and I know this is a stretch) you're actually interested: America has what is called "common law" (like Britain, Canada, Australia, India, and other places of common governmental origin), which consists of both legislatively-passed laws and the great mass of previously decided legal cases (case law). The "law" consists of both together. (Germany, conversely, has a different system called "civil law", which most European countries use.)
Courts in America are arranged in two parallel hierarchical systems, with trial courts (which hear witnesses, have juries, etc.) at the bottom, and appeals courts (which carefully interpret the law) at the top. The parallel systems are the federal and state courts (50 different state court systems), and each has their own specific areas of authority, or jurisdictions.
Courts simply have to follow the decision of anybody above them in the hierarchy - the more "senior" courts. They don't have to follow the decisions of anybody in a parallel system, or anybody below them, or anybody at an equal level. They may be interested in reading their opinions to help them decide, but they don't have to follow them.
So, to summarize: there is no one "American legal system" - there are at least fifty-one, and which one you're in depends upon what kind of controversy it is. And "one wrong decision" does not have to be followed by every other court - only by those who have to obey it.
Why should a company which is based in the U.S. be allowed to benefit from the infrastructure here while offshoring jobs? Why should the company get a free ride when their employees no longer pay U.S. taxes or pay into Social Security, and the company no longer pays the mandatory matching contribution?
You aren't aware that corporations pay income taxes at a scale of something like 40% of their income?
Hogwarts has more to do with a rational, reasoned approach to problem-solving than most things I've seen lately.
You mean except for the part where they're using magic, right?
Re:What was that series of books?
on
The Big Kerplop
·
· Score: 1
There was a series I read in junior high where the teenage protagonist's father was a scientist who travelled around the world with his team of experts getting into trouble. I can't remember the name of it. Wasn't Johnny Quest, either. Anybody remember that series? It was Tom Swift-like, but it wasn't he.
It was also found that in the real life MMOG women rarely wear sexy armor, don't say "Mi'Lord", don't have a supermodel's figure, and most importantly do not have a penis.
Apparently the reviewers get different spam than I do.
and of course the neverending daily grind of merely surviving as a non-wealthy North American
I think that you haven't seriously considered what would comprise the neverending daily grind of merely surviving as a non-wealthy African, Asian, or South American.
The very poorest North Americans are wealthy by Third World standards. Heck, you've probably got running water and everything.
The fact is that Delaware is a corporation haven because they have few regulations, and no taxation on corporations... merely claiming that it's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand doesn't quite embrace all of the facts.
That's certainly true. But Delaware also has a very well-developed body of caselaw, and experienced judges, to deal with situations like mergers and acquisitions, proxy fights, shareholder lawsuits, directors' liability, and so on. If one of these legal situations arises for a corporation based in Delaware (and they often do), everybody involved has the ability to predict fairly well how it will come out, because the law is clear and straightforward. That certainty is extremely valuable, because it makes for much better decision-making. It's like choosing between the Next Great Thing programming language, with poor documentation and no sample code, and the tried and true previous-generation language, with eight O'Reillys and four dozen webboards devoted to it.
The tax freedoms are helpful, but it's also helpful (i.e. actually worth tangible tens of millions of dollars) for the board of directors to be able to say "can we legally do X?" and get an answer better than "nobody really knows".
(And "can we legally do X" here is not the "can we legally dump toxic waste into the local swimming pool" that anti-corporatists think - it's more like "can we legally accept Generico's $56 per share premium tender offer, good only until 9:00, if four board members are on vacation?")
ASA
The law isn't secret. It's just complicated.
on
Open Source Law
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
the average citizen has no chance in HELL of even possibly knowing a fraction of a percent of them, much less understanding them
Fortunately, the average citizen has no chance in HELL of ever needing to know most of them. Quick! What's the statutory quorum for a meeting of your local water board? How many days before trial can you file a motion for summary judgment in your state? How many parts per million of formaldehyde can you have in crazy glue? Answer: who cares? If for some reason it matters to you, you can go and seek *that particular fact* out. Or hire a professional to find it out for you. But the average reader sitting in his chair reading Slashdot is not going to go to jail over his ignorance of these matters.
The laws that *matter* on a day to day basis are the ordinary criminal laws - and you already know those. Don't run anybody over. Don't shoplift. Don't steal money that somebody asked you to look after.
The law isn't secret. It's just complicated. It's complicated because the scope of human interactions is complicated. Some people buy houses from each other. Some people sail ships in waters that don't belong to any country. Some people steal things in complicated ways. Some people die and ask for unusual things to be done with their property afterwards.
The legislature's job is to make laws as clearly as possible to help keep all this running smoothly. The lobbyist's job is to suggest legislation, or keep an eye on others peoples' suggestions, in hopes that laws favorable to them will be created. (And legislators listen to them because it's hard to be an expert in both, say, environmental water quality regulation and securities oversight. Lobbyists have sway not merely because they have money, but because they have expertise which they can share with legislators. Wise legislators, of course, listen to both sides.) The judge's job is to interpret the legislature's laws, as well as the traditions passed down from earlier judges. The appellate judge's job is to create law in the cracks where the legislature hasn't, like putty joining everything together. The lawyer's job is to make sense of all this and act as an interface between the system and an individual person.
None of this is mysterious. And none of it is a conspiracy against you. Nobody likes having complicated laws. It's a pain in the ass for judges, and for lawyers, and for ordinary citizens. Want to know why so many corporations are based in Delaware? It's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand. Makes it a good place to set up shop.
t seems very likely that Jones vill be convicted; it seems that Jones will be sentenced to death. The glove that the murderer used will never be found, but the jury knows it is quite possible that Jones could have hid or otherwise disposed of it cleverly enough that it would not be found.
In this case Jones can not rely upon our judicial system to set him free. If the judicial system is reliable, given this evidence it will convict Jones.
In the United States, Jones will probably go free, because he will only be convicted if the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered his wife and children. Given that Jones apparently has no history of violence, had nothing to gain from killing his wife, apparently had nothing against his children, and made no attempt to flee, the jury will probably have some doubt that he did it, and he'll be acquitted. Jones can rely upon the judicial system to set him free.
We do not need to make it easy for Jones, but we need to make it possible. We need there to be an underground of information that Jones can tap into and that Jones can exploit to disappear.
Because, you know, only the innocent would ever use it. Of course.
Hint: we have a public infrastructure for use by the innocent in trouble - it's called the judicial system. It evolved specifically to provide justice for the lowly, complete with significant rights and protections.
The horror of putting an innocent man to death (or maybe anyone to death), or of sending him to prison for the rest of his life, should be enough to convince anyone that Jones has a right to the potential to disappear.
What you are in effect saying is that anyone who is on trial for a serious crime should have the right to choose exile instead. The recently captured Max Factor heir chose cushy exile in Mexico rather than serve his prison sentence for the rape of three women. Do you really think everyone should have that choice?
You are probably right about Estonia becoming an economic powerhouse, but I can also see something else: Eastern Europe becoming the economic and technology center of Europe, surpassing the EU in economic and political strength.
Looking back aren't new rights given in light of their overwhelming need in an ever-changing world?
The point is that rights aren't given by anyone, with the philosophical exception of God. They are merely recognized. Modern governments recognize that people have the right to freely express their opinion, to worship as they choose, to assemble, and so on, because those are intrinsic to being human.
The poster's point is that by adding "and you have a right to running water, and a right to a 40-hour work week, and a right to Internet access, and a right to a refrigerator, and a right to 99-cent cheeseburgers with your Super Club card", governments cheapen the idea that these are fundamental human attributes and reduce them to the level of merely benefits bestowed by the government.
The American model recognizes certain God-given rights in the first ten amendments to the Constitution not to create them, but to acknowledge them so that they cannot be infringed. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments acknowledge that the list is not all-inclusive of the entire spectrum of human rights - it merely enumerates some that are so important that they are worth mentioning on their own. For good or ill, of course, the judiciary has identified more rights over the years which are not specifically enumerated, like "privacy". But the theory is that "privacy" is still not considered a government-given right, because there can't be any such thing - it is intrinsic, and simply doesn't happen to be mentioned explicitly in the Constitution.
From the disclaimer/header on Project Gutenberg files:
If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives: [Mac users, do NOT point and click. ..type]
Given that a) Macs, being Unix-based, have command-line FTP like everybody else and b) the idea of a point-and-click interface has now passed so far from being a bizarre and contemptible innovation that lots of people are trying hard to develop nice-looking Linux GUIs...... isn't this snarky instruction now more than a little dated?
The second reason is the one that was completely forgotten in the Challenger accident: to have the adaptability of the human mind and body available to react to any contingency.
Heaven knows human adaptability was helpful in the Challenger accident.
Given that taxpayers typically paid for the useless-almost-every-day-of-the-year giant ballpark in which umpires "work", it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that ridiculously high umpire salaries are made possible by the fact that other parts of the baseball enterprise are financed by taxpayer money.
Slashdot Mirror
Prohibition was a scary time for Americans, particularly breweries - most of which went out of business. Prohibition was created by women marching in the streets, complaining that their husbands had become drunks in the saloons. Who could blame them - during the depression, there weren't many jobs to keep them occupied.
The 18th Amendment was ratified in 1919, and the Volstead Act was passed in the same year. The Great Depression, which began in 1929, was not the cause of Prohibition.
The Great Depression helped to bring about the repeal of Prohibition, however - the economic benefits of the "new" brewing and distilling industry was one of the arguments in favor of the 21st Amendment, which was ratified in 1933.
ASA
I can't believe we hadn't seen any Sealab 2021 references yet.
As for me, my robot body will have the strength of five gorillas.
I would have been going to illustrate that, but I was unable to come up with a good example that didn't sound convoluted. Oh, wait a minute, there's a conditional pluperfect past continuous future (or something like that) right now.
I'll take a stab at it - I think that's not proper usage, but I think it's a pluperfect subjunctive of the verb "to go" - being used as a participle with an infinitive to mean proposed action (i.e. a subjunctive contrary to fact past).
This is hardly evidence against the complexity of English...
Soccer is pretty godawful boring already. Now you're supposed to play by mail?
I think it actually speeds up the action.
while germany still has a few nationalists, neither their number nor their jingoism comes even close to what you routinely can see in the US
Well, to be fair, we and the Britons and the Canadians and the Russians killed all theirs in 1939-1945.
ASA
IANAL, but I own a corporation, and I'm pretty sure no form of civil tort provides for piercing the corporate veil.
IANALE, and this in no way constitutes legal advice, but I'm pretty sure that *most* torts provide for piercing the corporate veil, depending upon the laws of your state and upon specific situations (such as, you're the sole shareholder of your corporation, or a corporate officer intentionally committed fraud).
ASA
The american legal system allows to demand ridiculous sums of money, also there's this weird case-law which to my understanding means, that one wrong decision in one court has to be repeated by every other american court, and also that lawyers have to consider not only the given law but any case which might have some remote similarities to the case at hand.
In case (and I know this is a stretch) you're actually interested: America has what is called "common law" (like Britain, Canada, Australia, India, and other places of common governmental origin), which consists of both legislatively-passed laws and the great mass of previously decided legal cases (case law). The "law" consists of both together. (Germany, conversely, has a different system called "civil law", which most European countries use.)
Courts in America are arranged in two parallel hierarchical systems, with trial courts (which hear witnesses, have juries, etc.) at the bottom, and appeals courts (which carefully interpret the law) at the top. The parallel systems are the federal and state courts (50 different state court systems), and each has their own specific areas of authority, or jurisdictions.
Courts simply have to follow the decision of anybody above them in the hierarchy - the more "senior" courts. They don't have to follow the decisions of anybody in a parallel system, or anybody below them, or anybody at an equal level. They may be interested in reading their opinions to help them decide, but they don't have to follow them.
So, to summarize: there is no one "American legal system" - there are at least fifty-one, and which one you're in depends upon what kind of controversy it is. And "one wrong decision" does not have to be followed by every other court - only by those who have to obey it.
I have a special tool for that too... it's called a sledge hammer!
Gallagher's got a Slashdot account now. There goes the neighborhood.
ASA
Why should a company which is based in the U.S. be allowed to benefit from the infrastructure here while offshoring jobs? Why should the company get a free ride when their employees no longer pay U.S. taxes or pay into Social Security, and the company no longer pays the mandatory matching contribution?
You aren't aware that corporations pay income taxes at a scale of something like 40% of their income?
ASA
Hogwarts has more to do with a rational, reasoned approach to problem-solving than most things I've seen lately.
You mean except for the part where they're using magic, right?
There was a series I read in junior high where the teenage protagonist's father was a scientist who travelled around the world with his team of experts getting into trouble. I can't remember the name of it. Wasn't Johnny Quest, either. Anybody remember that series? It was Tom Swift-like, but it wasn't he.
Are you thinking of the "Danny Dunn" novels?
Slavery is alive and well, most recently with intellectual property.
Wow. Way to trivialize a disgusting and horrific practice which has crushed the souls of millions for thousands of years.
It was also found that in the real life MMOG women rarely wear sexy armor, don't say "Mi'Lord", don't have a supermodel's figure, and most importantly do not have a penis.
Apparently the reviewers get different spam than I do.
and of course the neverending daily grind of merely surviving as a non-wealthy North American
I think that you haven't seriously considered what would comprise the neverending daily grind of merely surviving as a non-wealthy African, Asian, or South American.
The very poorest North Americans are wealthy by Third World standards. Heck, you've probably got running water and everything.
Ummmm...I'm curious what prompted the parent statement.
I haven't been too disappointed by the SC recently. (but this is in the view of a greenie)
I'd guess their recent Constitution-gutting decisions in Lawrence v. Texas and Grutter v. Bollinger.
The fact is that Delaware is a corporation haven because they have few regulations, and no taxation on corporations... merely claiming that it's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand doesn't quite embrace all of the facts.
That's certainly true. But Delaware also has a very well-developed body of caselaw, and experienced judges, to deal with situations like mergers and acquisitions, proxy fights, shareholder lawsuits, directors' liability, and so on. If one of these legal situations arises for a corporation based in Delaware (and they often do), everybody involved has the ability to predict fairly well how it will come out, because the law is clear and straightforward. That certainty is extremely valuable, because it makes for much better decision-making. It's like choosing between the Next Great Thing programming language, with poor documentation and no sample code, and the tried and true previous-generation language, with eight O'Reillys and four dozen webboards devoted to it.
The tax freedoms are helpful, but it's also helpful (i.e. actually worth tangible tens of millions of dollars) for the board of directors to be able to say "can we legally do X?" and get an answer better than "nobody really knows".
(And "can we legally do X" here is not the "can we legally dump toxic waste into the local swimming pool" that anti-corporatists think - it's more like "can we legally accept Generico's $56 per share premium tender offer, good only until 9:00, if four board members are on vacation?")
ASA
the average citizen has no chance in HELL of even possibly knowing a fraction of a percent of them, much less understanding them
Fortunately, the average citizen has no chance in HELL of ever needing to know most of them. Quick! What's the statutory quorum for a meeting of your local water board? How many days before trial can you file a motion for summary judgment in your state? How many parts per million of formaldehyde can you have in crazy glue? Answer: who cares? If for some reason it matters to you, you can go and seek *that particular fact* out. Or hire a professional to find it out for you. But the average reader sitting in his chair reading Slashdot is not going to go to jail over his ignorance of these matters.
The laws that *matter* on a day to day basis are the ordinary criminal laws - and you already know those. Don't run anybody over. Don't shoplift. Don't steal money that somebody asked you to look after.
The law isn't secret. It's just complicated. It's complicated because the scope of human interactions is complicated. Some people buy houses from each other. Some people sail ships in waters that don't belong to any country. Some people steal things in complicated ways. Some people die and ask for unusual things to be done with their property afterwards.
The legislature's job is to make laws as clearly as possible to help keep all this running smoothly. The lobbyist's job is to suggest legislation, or keep an eye on others peoples' suggestions, in hopes that laws favorable to them will be created. (And legislators listen to them because it's hard to be an expert in both, say, environmental water quality regulation and securities oversight. Lobbyists have sway not merely because they have money, but because they have expertise which they can share with legislators. Wise legislators, of course, listen to both sides.) The judge's job is to interpret the legislature's laws, as well as the traditions passed down from earlier judges. The appellate judge's job is to create law in the cracks where the legislature hasn't, like putty joining everything together. The lawyer's job is to make sense of all this and act as an interface between the system and an individual person.
None of this is mysterious. And none of it is a conspiracy against you. Nobody likes having complicated laws. It's a pain in the ass for judges, and for lawyers, and for ordinary citizens. Want to know why so many corporations are based in Delaware? It's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand. Makes it a good place to set up shop.
ASA
t seems very likely that Jones vill be convicted; it seems that Jones will be sentenced to death. The glove that the murderer used will never be found, but the jury knows it is quite possible that Jones could have hid or otherwise disposed of it cleverly enough that it would not be found.
In this case Jones can not rely upon our judicial system to set him free. If the judicial system is reliable, given this evidence it will convict Jones.
In the United States, Jones will probably go free, because he will only be convicted if the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered his wife and children. Given that Jones apparently has no history of violence, had nothing to gain from killing his wife, apparently had nothing against his children, and made no attempt to flee, the jury will probably have some doubt that he did it, and he'll be acquitted. Jones can rely upon the judicial system to set him free.
We do not need to make it easy for Jones, but we need to make it possible. We need there to be an underground of information that Jones can tap into and that Jones can exploit to disappear.
Because, you know, only the innocent would ever use it. Of course.
Hint: we have a public infrastructure for use by the innocent in trouble - it's called the judicial system. It evolved specifically to provide justice for the lowly, complete with significant rights and protections.
The horror of putting an innocent man to death (or maybe anyone to death), or of sending him to prison for the rest of his life, should be enough to convince anyone that Jones has a right to the potential to disappear.
What you are in effect saying is that anyone who is on trial for a serious crime should have the right to choose exile instead. The recently captured Max Factor heir chose cushy exile in Mexico rather than serve his prison sentence for the rape of three women. Do you really think everyone should have that choice?
ASA
You are probably right about Estonia becoming an economic powerhouse, but I can also see something else: Eastern Europe becoming the economic and technology center of Europe, surpassing the EU in economic and political strength.
Rumsfeld was right.
ASA
Looking back aren't new rights given in light of their overwhelming need in an ever-changing world?
The point is that rights aren't given by anyone, with the philosophical exception of God. They are merely recognized. Modern governments recognize that people have the right to freely express their opinion, to worship as they choose, to assemble, and so on, because those are intrinsic to being human.
The poster's point is that by adding "and you have a right to running water, and a right to a 40-hour work week, and a right to Internet access, and a right to a refrigerator, and a right to 99-cent cheeseburgers with your Super Club card", governments cheapen the idea that these are fundamental human attributes and reduce them to the level of merely benefits bestowed by the government.
The American model recognizes certain God-given rights in the first ten amendments to the Constitution not to create them, but to acknowledge them so that they cannot be infringed. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments acknowledge that the list is not all-inclusive of the entire spectrum of human rights - it merely enumerates some that are so important that they are worth mentioning on their own. For good or ill, of course, the judiciary has identified more rights over the years which are not specifically enumerated, like "privacy". But the theory is that "privacy" is still not considered a government-given right, because there can't be any such thing - it is intrinsic, and simply doesn't happen to be mentioned explicitly in the Constitution.
ASA
From the disclaimer/header on Project Gutenberg files:
.type]
... isn't this snarky instruction now more than a little dated?
If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
[Mac users, do NOT point and click. .
Given that a) Macs, being Unix-based, have command-line FTP like everybody else and b) the idea of a point-and-click interface has now passed so far from being a bizarre and contemptible innovation that lots of people are trying hard to develop nice-looking Linux GUIs...
ASA
The second reason is the one that was completely forgotten in the Challenger accident: to have the adaptability of the human mind and body available to react to any contingency.
Heaven knows human adaptability was helpful in the Challenger accident.
ASA
Really? I think there is a valid bit of constitutional law here.
Who owns the electro-magnetic fields in my house? Does DirectTV own them, or may I sample them freely?
What part of this do you think has to do with the Constitution, as opposed to simply common-law property rights?
ASA
Dude, it's not like it's taxpayer money.
Given that taxpayers typically paid for the useless-almost-every-day-of-the-year giant ballpark in which umpires "work", it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that ridiculously high umpire salaries are made possible by the fact that other parts of the baseball enterprise are financed by taxpayer money.
ASA
I'm just happy that the space program was not ended.
Yes, it was. Wait and see.