I know Chicago had a real problem with the dead voting [for Democrats] at one point...
This is an attack against the voting system that you apparently don't oppose, despite the fact that the people affected by it are part of your nonsense demographic group of "people voting against incumbents."
[citation needed]
Go back and read the topic. You'll find the sources.
I know Chicago had a real problem with the dead voting at one point, but otherwise there just isn't that much of a problem.
Why don't you give me a citation this time? (Note: In order to back up your assertion, you would have to prove a negative, and you'd have to prove it in an area where statistics* aren't kept. Good luck with that.)
*For obvious reasons, they don't keep statistics of people NOT caught committing crimes. In areas without Voter ID laws, it is harder to catch people committing the crime of voting illegally, and if a party is benefiting from illegal votes, they aren't going to support plans to stop the illegal voting, are they?
Looks like you're pretty down on the democrats there, enough that you believe they don't deserve to be protected from manipulation of voting. WOW!
Thanks for reading. I said the Democrat Party doesn't deserve protection. You said that the demographic group of "people voting against incumbents" deserves special protection. They don't. Attacks on the voting system are wrong, and INDIVIDUALS deserve protection against those attacks, no matter which way the individuals are voting. You're calling for allowing attacks on the voting system because they help Democrats.
I wonder if you'll feel the same way when the Democrats are in power and want to manipulate the Voter ID. (yes, I'll oppose that too).
Really? Because the problem Voter ID solves is that Democrats are attacking the voting system by stuffing the ballot boxes in urban areas where they control the counting of the votes. The way they can do this is by keeping ineligible people on the rolls, so that party bosses can send a guy to vote in the name of someone who they know won't show up later and smell a rat. If you oppose this attack, as you claim to, where's your solution?
How often do you make sure you're carrying your driver's license? I'm guessing every day when you drive at least.
Never. I always carry my wallet when I leave the house, and I "know" my drivers' license is in my wallet, but I never actually check. I do, however, always check for my RFID key thing that unlocks the door to my office when I'm going to my office. I check to make sure I have money if I'm going somewhere I need to pay cash. In short, I check for the things that I need to have in order to do the thing I'm leaving my house to do. If my state required ID to vote, I'd make sure to have my ID with me. Is that what you're talking about, the fear that people might forget their ID on their kitchen table? Because they can go back and get the ID before voting.
I don't know about your state, but in this state, unless you tell them you've moved, your VALID license will have the old address on it. They don't mail it to you, they print and laminate it right there and hand it to you still warm.
In my state, you're required to update your driver's license within six months of moving to a new address, or the license automatically becomes invalid. Check on this. I bet your state is like this too.
No, I indicated that it makes no sense to punish the government, then went on to describe that e.g. firing someone isn't punishing them. But, in general, punishing an employee doesn't make them work harder.
If you punish a government employee for breaking the law it makes it less likely that another government employee breaks the law.
Anyway, I wouldn't work for any private firm which paid bonuses or cut pay according to performance in a particular role.
That's fine, I guess. Most people are OK with performance incentives.
I will do the best in any role I am given, and expect all my colleagues to do the same.
I expect IRS employees not to break the law because they disagree with it, and not to stifle free speech because they disagree with the speaker but my standards are apparently too high.
FWIW, your sentence read:
Unless you work for the government, there will be some kind of expectations set out for you.
That's about expectations, not punishment.
Right. The next sentence is about what the punishment should be for breaking those expectations. THAT's the part about punishment
Whichever group tends to vote against the party in power when the law is enacted. It could be race, age, income level, or anything else they can find. It could even be urban vs rural.
So you're saying that the demographic group it hurts is "whichever group votes against the party in power?" So you're saying that you're against voter ID laws because they hurt Democrats? I'm sorry, but the Democrat Party doesn't deserve special protection under the law. Laws should apply to both parties equally.
The fact is, the reason that people are in favor of voter ID laws is that they help prevent attacks against the voting system. The specific attacks they work against work more easily in urban areas, which tend to be controlled by Democrats. Thus, Republicans tend to be in favor of ID laws and Democrats against them. But that doesn't matter; the attacks against the voting system should be prevented because the ATTACKS disenfranchise people.
The voter ID (unlike a driver's license) is something they would likely use once every 2 to 4 years
How often do you need to prove that you're a licensed driver? I certainly vote more often than I need to show my driver's license. (Note that I'm not counting buying alcohol or getting on a plane or anything that a non-driver ID would work for because the non-driver IDs that states are issuing are valid for those purposes too.)
If the people behind the voter IDs were REALLY interested in protecting the right to vote, they'd stipulate that an expired DL is good enough and if they were that worried about the picture being current...
The purpose of requiring a VALID license is that to make sure it shows an accurate ADDRESS. If your address changes, you may live in a different electoral district and thus be an ineligible voter in the place you're trying to cast your ballot. (This is why student IDs aren't usually valid. They don't normally show your legal address. Plenty of students go away to school but keep their legal address at their parents house. You are only eligible to vote in elections from your legal address, which means you can't vote in municipal elections in the city you go to school in.)
By stipulating that the ID can't be expired, you make sure people verify their address at whatever increment the ID expires at.
You misread just a bit, the 'alternative' 'free' IDS are not generally as convenient for non-drivers as a drivers license is for a driver.
Again, what specifically is wrong with non-driver IDs? If they require the same steps to obtain except for the driving exam, why are they "less convenient?"
reverse race card play
Doesn't exist. The first guy who responded (note: this wasn't you) said that the people who were in favor of voter ID were people who would have been in favor of poll taxes. The people who were in favor of poll taxes and Jim Crow laws were the liberal Democrats of a generation ago. The only thing I have in common with them is the color of my skin. The statement "All white people are racist" (again, made by the first guy and not you) is itself a racist statement. There's no such thing as "reverse racism" just because it happens to Whitey.
race is NOT the issue
You keep using the phrase "demographic group," and I've largely been assuming you mean race. I'll bite. What demographic group are you claiming the voter ID laws suppress?
"Punishing" the IRS would be moving money from one part of government to another, and wouldn't fix anything.
You work, right? Unless you work for the government, there will be some kind of expectations set out for you. If you don't do your job properly, you can lose bonuses, get demoted, have to take paycuts, or eventually be dismissed for cause. That's how most jobs are. The parent poster is arguing for firing whoever made poor security decisions.
Values, not regulations.
The IRS is an organization that decided it didn't like a Supreme Court decision that limited its power and benefited people that its employees didn't like, so they used their powers as the nation's tax collectors to harass their political enemies. They have pretty shitty values, and heads should be rolling until we get people in there with better values. "Should" is the operative word here, as no one has actually been punished for this.
I see you believe it is only democrats that play such games.
No, I said "machine Democrats and incumbents generally." It's easier to steal an election by stuffing the ballot box when there's a large electoral bureaucracy/party machine in place, which tends to be in big cities. Residents of big cities tend to vote for Democrats, which leads to Democrats being in power and staffing the electoral bureaucracy, so ballot box stuffing specifically is a technique usually associated with Democrats. However, electoral fraud generally helps ALL incumbents, not just Democrats. Try reading what I actually typed.
The 'alternative' 'for free' IDs you speak of are not quite as convenient as a drivers license for someone who doesn't drive.
Given that someone doesn't drive, alternative forms of ID are absolutely more convenient than drivers licenses. Why would you need a drivers' license if you can't drive? Except for the part where they test you on your driving skills, the process for obtaining these IDs is usually exactly the same as the process for obtaining a drivers' license. You need some form of government issued ID to buy booze, get on a plane, enter a government building or open a bank account. Only driving requires an actual drivers' license.
I'm unsure how 'Necro-americans' are going to use an old ID anyway since they will no longer look at all like their picture.
Of course they can't. Requiring voter ID is a mitigation for the attack where Guy A, who is alive, casts his ballot. Then Guy A casts Guy B's ballot as well. Guy B isn't allowed to cast a ballot at all if he's dead. It's harder for Guy A to claim to be Guy B if he has to prevent valid ID to do so.
Surely voter registration is checked against death certificates.
The Democrat Party has an unfortunate history of playing games with ID, poll taxes, and various tests to deny citizens their vote. In recent years it has even included false robo-calls telling people the wrong date or location.
My original point was that Voter ID laws seem to work well pretty much everywhere else that we consider a democratic government, and the only reason we don't have them here is that Democrats are too quick to call people racists. On cue, some Democrat neanderthal called me a racist and we were off to the races, so to speak.
You haven't been able to provide an objection to a specific voter ID law. All that you've brought to this conversation is lies about history and lies about theoretical laws, rather than the real laws that are on the books, or real proposals being debated. Your posts make it obvious you're barely reading what I'm writing. You're only in this thread to subtly imply that I'm a racist. Slashdot would be better off with less trolls like you.
The biggest (historical) attack on the electoral system relies on the vote of a specific demographic group. It turns out, if you can dig up the votes, Necro-Americans tend to vote in huge numbers for machine Democrats and incumbents generally.
Of course, in the American electoral system, the dead aren't supposed to be voting. That's why you should have to have current IDs.
Also, I asked for a specific example of a state Voter ID law that you claim "makes it a minor hassle for one demographic group but a major problem for another." You gave a theoretical example, and not a very good one, because no state REQUIRES a drivers' license to vote. (Several ALLOW use of a driver's license, but they all allow for other alternatives, some of which are provided for free upon request.)
There is no principled reason to oppose Voter ID. The only two reasons to oppose Voter ID are that if you are committing election fraud, it makes it more likely that you get caught, and that if your opponent is in favor of it, you get to call them a racist. America would be better off if there were fewer people engaged in either of these activities.
It's far too easy (as history has shown in the U.S.) to slant the process so that it is a minor hassle for one demographic but a major problem for another.
It's far too easy to win an election by stuffing the ballot box with votes that weren't cast by actual voters. It's also far too easy to win an election by claiming that the opponents are racist.
If you want to talk about a specific process that you feel is slanted, I'm willing to do that, but the fact that you can come up with a theoretical implementation that "makes it a minor hassle for one demographic group but a major problem for another" doesn't validate the GPs claim that Voter ID supporters are racist.
You must also think that literacy tests were about ensuring that voters could read the ballot and that poll taxes were about raising revenue.
The purpose of "voter ID", which is the least of the shenanigans that the Plutocrat Party is pulling, is job security for the scumbag politicians who are trying to push it through.
I'm sorry, I was unclear on my statement earlier, and Slashdot doesn't have an edit button. My last sentence should have read "I wonder what Democrat politicians think the difference is between people of Mexican descent in Mexico and people of Mexican descent in the US."
Of course, as you and I both know, Democrats are the people who supported literacy tests and poll taxes to keep African-Americans from voting, and oppose Voter ID laws so they can keep scumbag plutocrats in power.
However, I didn't explicitly point out that I support voter ID laws in my original post, and sarcasm is notoriously hard to transmit over the internet. My apologies for the confusion.
In Mexico you can't make any kind of transaction without your voter registration card.
Mexico has voter registration cards? That's interesting, because in the US there's a political party that says that Americans of Mexican descent are too stupid or feeble or something to obtain voter registration cards, and thus supporting any "You have to show ID when you vote" law is racist. I wonder what the difference is between people of Mexican descent in Mexico and people of Mexican descent in the US.
That's ridiculous. Just because public financing cannot solve 100% of the problem doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
How does it solve the problem of "$CANDIDATE has views I find reprehensible. I shouldn't have to pay to support that asshole." Free Speech and Free Association (which are natural rights, though I borrowed the phrasing from the US Constitution) implies a right to NOT speak and to NOT associate.
I'm for free-as-in-speech speech, but not free-as-in-beer speech. If you have a message you want to put out, hit your supporters up for money. It is not the job for any freedom-respecting government to spend THE TAXPAYERS' MONEY on promoting political candidates.
(though [Canadian campaign finance authorities] don't issue tax credits after the first $1000 per person, and unlike the USA, corporations don't get a credit for donating!)
I can't speak with any authority on the Canadian campaign finance system, but in the US, neither individuals nor corporations can deduct campaign contributions from their taxes.
So, the difference between X & Y is lost to the government
Right. I addressed this in my comment. The government provides benefits (the essential functions of government) for a cost (taxes). It's incorrect from an economic standpoint to call a service provider forgoing a rate increase a "cost" to the service provider. Xbox Live is a service too, one for which I pay Microsoft $60 a year. I'd probably pay $70, but that extra $10 isn't a "cost" to Microsoft.
In any case, phrasing the lack of a tax increase as a "cost to the government" implies that the lack of that tax increase is a "benefit to the company." Once you start thinking of "somebody else's taxes lower than I'd like" as an undeserved benefit to them, it becomes easy to justify the tax increase. This is an insidious way to argue, and it's wrong from an economic and moral standpoint.
So, the difference between X & Y is lost to the government and thus all of us, because it would have gone to services we all pay for
If the government is squandering the money, like they do with so much of tax revenue, the money is lost to "all of us" whether the government takes it from Microsoft or not.
Re-read what I said. I'd like less government regulation.
OK, here it is again.
I also happen to think that people (including many libertarians and conservatives) are barking up the wrong tree when they advocate for less corporate regulation.
Your earlier comment was that people shouldn't advocate for less government regulation of corporations. You're proving my thesis here.
I'm talking about tax policy, not military policy.
You claimed that the oil industry gets a special benefit from the US policy towards the middle east. It doesn't. Ideally, the oil company gets fewer terrorist attacks. But so does Microsoft. So does Ford. So do the Red States. So do the Blue States. So does everyone.
If you don't think that the US foreign policy in the middle east makes the US less likely to get attacked by terrorists, we can have that conversation. But that's a conversation about military policy, not tax policy.
I hate to break it to you, but you're a liberal.
Yes, but a classic liberal at heart. I recognize that we have gotten much more liberal (in your sense) as a society and do not have delusions that this will change dramatically. The best I can hope for are policies that gently nudge us the other way.
You say that, but the policies you're advocating for are a push towards modern American liberalism.
Claiming that liberal ideas are the only pragmatic ideas
I've done no such thing.
You responded to someone promoting conservatism by arguing against them with liberal ideas, while claiming "I'm a pragmatist."
In any case, I asked you what you meant by "pragmatism" and you responded by, essentially, saying that you're a liberal. It's fine if you're a liberal, but you should probably be aware of that. Thank you for answering my question, though. Good day.
Taxes are a cost to taxpayers. They pay money that they've rightfully earned to the government, and the government performs the essential functions of government. It's something like the relationship between a business and its customers: Microsoft's customers pay money to Microsoft that the customer rightfully earned, and in exchange, Microsoft gives them a copy of Windows 8 or whatever.
Changing the law to end tax deductions on charitable donations would be a tax increase. It's wrong in the economic sense to call "not increasing taxes" a "cost" to the government, just like it's wrong to call Microsoft not raising prices on its operating system a "cost" to Microsoft.
The reason that I objected, however, is that the way you phrased it implies that Microsoft has the government's money. It doesn't. Microsoft has Microsoft's money that customers agreed to pay them in exchange for products that they wanted. Microsoft pays some of its money in taxes to pay for the essential functions of government. The government is doing a lot of things beyond the essential functions of government. If you think the government should be spending more money on whatever your issue is, maybe you should try re-prioritizing the government's already record breaking revenue.
My "label" seems to change. In Tuesday's election, I voted as a registered Republican. However, I'm probably going to change to Democrat because my locality is heavily Democrat and I would like to have some say in local elections.
Were there primaries on Tuesday in your area? Everywhere that I'm aware of, Tuesday was a general election, meaning that you're under no obligation to vote for a member of your party. (Parties hold "Primary Elections" before the general election so the members of their party can pick the candidate from their party that will represent them the best. The effect is that the Democrats pick the best/highest chance of winning Democrat to run against the Republicans pick for the best/highest chance of winning Republican. In areas with sane systems, you need to be a member of the party to vote in that party's primary.)
I'll give you an example of pragmatism:
On a purely ideological basis, I'm against the concept of a limited liability corporation. It represents a massive interference of the government in the free market, and decouples actors from consequences. That said, I recognize the reality that limited liability isn't going anywhere. So rather than waste my breath railing against corporations, I instead advocate for reform. I also happen to think that people (including many libertarians and conservatives) are barking up the wrong tree when they advocate for less corporate regulation... A corporation is nothing but a gigantic pile of government regulation - deregulating it is folly.
OK, so you believe in stronger government regulation of commerce and industry... Let's keep going.
Health care. Naturally, I'd like to emphasize personal responsibility as much as possible. On the other hand, we've had socialized health care since the Reagan-era law that forbade ERs from turning away patients - I doubt we are going back to some kind of less compassionate system. As such, I don't spend my time railing against health care laws. Instead, I try to advocate that they not come in the form of unfunded mandates (such as the Reagan-era law) and try to rely more on individual responsibility. Obamacare has some elements of this (the exchanges), but it also expanded Medicare/Medicaid. And most irresponsibly, it continues to forbid me from getting together with a million or so of my closest friends to form a health-care co-op. If the insurance is being provided by a huge government-enabled corporation, it only seems fair that the government let me negotiate on an equal footing.
This sounds like you're in favor of "the public option" of a single payer healthcare system... Nothing wrong with that...
As for foreign policy... I'd say it is important for the goverment to protect trade routes. Otherwise we are back to armed merchants, which I feel is suboptimal.
Military protection of trade routes is a decisively interventionist position. Pretty sensible...
I would like the funding of the military to be distributed to the industries it most helps, though. For instance, a duty applied to Middle Eastern oil might work wonders for our policy over there. If we spend $100 billion protecting oil routes...
That's not how military policy works, but moving on...
then we should probably have that reflected in the price of oil from that region.
So you believe that some industries are deserving of government protection, and others aren't and thus should have their taxes increased? That makes sense...
Putting it all together, you're a "pragmatic" who believes in stronger regulation of commerce and industry, public option/single payer health care, military intervention where it is in the national interest, and have criteria for taxing certain industries more heavily than others. I hate to break it to you, but you're a liberal. These ideas are pretty much the opposite of libertarianism. And there's nothing wrong with being a liberal, but call it what it is. Claiming that liberal ideas are the only pragmatic ideas is shortsighted, and worse, objectively wrong.
At best, you'll eventually return to the present form of US democracy, IOW exactly what happened when the US began with "US conservatism".
There's only a few American conservative politicians in the Federal government. The Republican party claims to be the counterweight to the leftist party, the Democrats, but too often, the liberals in the Republican party vote in accordance with the Democrats and their leftist policy. (There used to be a countervailing force of conservative members of the Democratic party, called the "Blue Dog Caucus." The leadership of the Democratic party didn't give them any help in their elections, and they were replaced by Democrats who were further to the left.)
At worst, far less accountable private enterprise...
You're already complaining about how your current Government isn't accountable to the will of the people. You can't have it both ways.
History gives us a clue as to what usually happens in a country with weakened government but strong (rather than nascent, as in C18 America) industry+military.
What clue would that be? Come to think of it, when has a non-nascent government ceded power willingly?
It's taken me a while to get there, but I've finally got round to realising all conservatism (in all its forms) boils down to is thinking about 200 years in the past. In 200 years' time, the conservative will look fondly to today. This viewpoint is just a request to repeat history.
All that your leftism is is a demand to control more and more of people's lives. Even if the people give up their rights to you and your ilk for 200 years, it still won't be enough, and you will still be demanding more control over the daily lives of the people.
That would be I support individual liberty and limiting government.
That is more libertarian than conservative. That is my nominal ideology, though I'm far too pragmatic to call myself such.
I see the difference between libertarians and conservatives as that in foreign policy, conservatives tend to favor a strong military, while libertarians tend to favor isolationism. On domestic policy, libertarians tend to favor a more liberal policy on certain wedge issues like drug legalization. Based on this understanding of libertarian, I don't see where "being too pragmatic" would come into play.
If I'm misstating your libertarian views, please let me know. Otherwise, if you're too pragmatic to call yourself a libertarian, what do you call yourself?
All that "lobbying reform" and "more transparency" means here in America is that lobbyists for the interests in power get to use the reform against people who are not in power. Corporatists use it to keep out competitors, and would-be dictators use it to keep out people who would return power to the individuals.
Interestingly, this is one of the problems that Conservatism solves. A government that does less is less susceptible to lobbying/corruption. The reason you'd lobby or bribe a government official is so they will make a decision in your favor and/or against your opponent. If the government isn't deciding who the winner and the loser is, neither you nor your competitor have a reason to lobby or bribe them.
As far as voting systems go, Proportional Representation doesn't guarantee the rights of the minority in a situation as heterogeneous as the United States. Also, as a union of states, we have it coded into our governing documents that elected officials are supposed to represent interests of the people they live near. PR also, by definition, can't pick a single person to serve a single office, like we Americans do with our Chief Executive.
Now, I believe that Great Britain is more homogeneous than the US, and I think that you guys still believe that each member of Parliament is supposed to represent the whole empire. I KNOW that your elected officials pick the Chief Executive after you elect them. Thus, my opposition to proportional representation only makes sense in a US context. But if you feel like voting for political parties rather than individual candidates will get politicians to listen to the people more, knock yourself out.
Gridiron football is called "football" because the ball was classically 12 inches long. (They shortened it to make the forward pass easier about 100 years ago, so the modern football is 11 1/2 inches.)
Association football is called "football" because it's played on foot, as opposed to polo, which is played on horseback. The name was originally given derisively; it implied "poor people ball."
In the 1850s, the word "soccer" meant "a member of an association." A 19th century soccer star popularized its use to mean "the game played by members of an association football association."
In the UK, we have a very powerful government. It just doesn't exert its power in the interests of the people.
That's exactly the point. The UK government has a lot of power that it uses to further its own interests, rather than the interests of the people. The problem is that people (and government officials) will almost ALWAYS act in THEIR OWN self interest, not the interest of "the people."
That's the general idea behind American Conservatism. The government will always act in its own interest and against the interests of "the people," so we should limit the amount of damage they can do by having the government in charge of as few things as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I know Chicago had a real problem with the dead voting [for Democrats] at one point...
This is an attack against the voting system that you apparently don't oppose, despite the fact that the people affected by it are part of your nonsense demographic group of "people voting against incumbents."
[citation needed]
Go back and read the topic. You'll find the sources.
I know Chicago had a real problem with the dead voting at one point, but otherwise there just isn't that much of a problem.
Why don't you give me a citation this time? (Note: In order to back up your assertion, you would have to prove a negative, and you'd have to prove it in an area where statistics* aren't kept. Good luck with that.)
*For obvious reasons, they don't keep statistics of people NOT caught committing crimes. In areas without Voter ID laws, it is harder to catch people committing the crime of voting illegally, and if a party is benefiting from illegal votes, they aren't going to support plans to stop the illegal voting, are they?
Looks like you're pretty down on the democrats there, enough that you believe they don't deserve to be protected from manipulation of voting. WOW!
Thanks for reading. I said the Democrat Party doesn't deserve protection. You said that the demographic group of "people voting against incumbents" deserves special protection. They don't. Attacks on the voting system are wrong, and INDIVIDUALS deserve protection against those attacks, no matter which way the individuals are voting. You're calling for allowing attacks on the voting system because they help Democrats.
I wonder if you'll feel the same way when the Democrats are in power and want to manipulate the Voter ID. (yes, I'll oppose that too).
Really? Because the problem Voter ID solves is that Democrats are attacking the voting system by stuffing the ballot boxes in urban areas where they control the counting of the votes. The way they can do this is by keeping ineligible people on the rolls, so that party bosses can send a guy to vote in the name of someone who they know won't show up later and smell a rat. If you oppose this attack, as you claim to, where's your solution?
How often do you make sure you're carrying your driver's license? I'm guessing every day when you drive at least.
Never. I always carry my wallet when I leave the house, and I "know" my drivers' license is in my wallet, but I never actually check. I do, however, always check for my RFID key thing that unlocks the door to my office when I'm going to my office. I check to make sure I have money if I'm going somewhere I need to pay cash. In short, I check for the things that I need to have in order to do the thing I'm leaving my house to do. If my state required ID to vote, I'd make sure to have my ID with me. Is that what you're talking about, the fear that people might forget their ID on their kitchen table? Because they can go back and get the ID before voting.
I don't know about your state, but in this state, unless you tell them you've moved, your VALID license will have the old address on it. They don't mail it to you, they print and laminate it right there and hand it to you still warm.
In my state, you're required to update your driver's license within six months of moving to a new address, or the license automatically becomes invalid. Check on this. I bet your state is like this too.
No, I indicated that it makes no sense to punish the government, then went on to describe that e.g. firing someone isn't punishing them. But, in general, punishing an employee doesn't make them work harder.
If you punish a government employee for breaking the law it makes it less likely that another government employee breaks the law.
Anyway, I wouldn't work for any private firm which paid bonuses or cut pay according to performance in a particular role.
That's fine, I guess. Most people are OK with performance incentives.
I will do the best in any role I am given, and expect all my colleagues to do the same.
I expect IRS employees not to break the law because they disagree with it, and not to stifle free speech because they disagree with the speaker but my standards are apparently too high.
FWIW, your sentence read:
Unless you work for the government, there will be some kind of expectations set out for you.
That's about expectations, not punishment.
Right. The next sentence is about what the punishment should be for breaking those expectations. THAT's the part about punishment
Whichever group tends to vote against the party in power when the law is enacted. It could be race, age, income level, or anything else they can find. It could even be urban vs rural.
So you're saying that the demographic group it hurts is "whichever group votes against the party in power?" So you're saying that you're against voter ID laws because they hurt Democrats? I'm sorry, but the Democrat Party doesn't deserve special protection under the law. Laws should apply to both parties equally.
The fact is, the reason that people are in favor of voter ID laws is that they help prevent attacks against the voting system. The specific attacks they work against work more easily in urban areas, which tend to be controlled by Democrats. Thus, Republicans tend to be in favor of ID laws and Democrats against them. But that doesn't matter; the attacks against the voting system should be prevented because the ATTACKS disenfranchise people.
The voter ID (unlike a driver's license) is something they would likely use once every 2 to 4 years
How often do you need to prove that you're a licensed driver? I certainly vote more often than I need to show my driver's license. (Note that I'm not counting buying alcohol or getting on a plane or anything that a non-driver ID would work for because the non-driver IDs that states are issuing are valid for those purposes too.)
If the people behind the voter IDs were REALLY interested in protecting the right to vote, they'd stipulate that an expired DL is good enough and if they were that worried about the picture being current...
The purpose of requiring a VALID license is that to make sure it shows an accurate ADDRESS. If your address changes, you may live in a different electoral district and thus be an ineligible voter in the place you're trying to cast your ballot. (This is why student IDs aren't usually valid. They don't normally show your legal address. Plenty of students go away to school but keep their legal address at their parents house. You are only eligible to vote in elections from your legal address, which means you can't vote in municipal elections in the city you go to school in.)
By stipulating that the ID can't be expired, you make sure people verify their address at whatever increment the ID expires at.
You misread just a bit, the 'alternative' 'free' IDS are not generally as convenient for non-drivers as a drivers license is for a driver.
Again, what specifically is wrong with non-driver IDs? If they require the same steps to obtain except for the driving exam, why are they "less convenient?"
reverse race card play
Doesn't exist. The first guy who responded (note: this wasn't you) said that the people who were in favor of voter ID were people who would have been in favor of poll taxes. The people who were in favor of poll taxes and Jim Crow laws were the liberal Democrats of a generation ago. The only thing I have in common with them is the color of my skin. The statement "All white people are racist" (again, made by the first guy and not you) is itself a racist statement. There's no such thing as "reverse racism" just because it happens to Whitey.
race is NOT the issue
You keep using the phrase "demographic group," and I've largely been assuming you mean race. I'll bite. What demographic group are you claiming the voter ID laws suppress?
You're the one who said that it's impossible to punish government employees who screw up.
"Punishing" the IRS would be moving money from one part of government to another, and wouldn't fix anything.
You work, right? Unless you work for the government, there will be some kind of expectations set out for you. If you don't do your job properly, you can lose bonuses, get demoted, have to take paycuts, or eventually be dismissed for cause. That's how most jobs are. The parent poster is arguing for firing whoever made poor security decisions.
Values, not regulations.
The IRS is an organization that decided it didn't like a Supreme Court decision that limited its power and benefited people that its employees didn't like, so they used their powers as the nation's tax collectors to harass their political enemies. They have pretty shitty values, and heads should be rolling until we get people in there with better values. "Should" is the operative word here, as no one has actually been punished for this.
I see you believe it is only democrats that play such games.
No, I said "machine Democrats and incumbents generally." It's easier to steal an election by stuffing the ballot box when there's a large electoral bureaucracy/party machine in place, which tends to be in big cities. Residents of big cities tend to vote for Democrats, which leads to Democrats being in power and staffing the electoral bureaucracy, so ballot box stuffing specifically is a technique usually associated with Democrats. However, electoral fraud generally helps ALL incumbents, not just Democrats. Try reading what I actually typed.
The 'alternative' 'for free' IDs you speak of are not quite as convenient as a drivers license for someone who doesn't drive.
Given that someone doesn't drive, alternative forms of ID are absolutely more convenient than drivers licenses. Why would you need a drivers' license if you can't drive? Except for the part where they test you on your driving skills, the process for obtaining these IDs is usually exactly the same as the process for obtaining a drivers' license. You need some form of government issued ID to buy booze, get on a plane, enter a government building or open a bank account. Only driving requires an actual drivers' license.
I'm unsure how 'Necro-americans' are going to use an old ID anyway since they will no longer look at all like their picture.
Of course they can't. Requiring voter ID is a mitigation for the attack where Guy A, who is alive, casts his ballot. Then Guy A casts Guy B's ballot as well. Guy B isn't allowed to cast a ballot at all if he's dead. It's harder for Guy A to claim to be Guy B if he has to prevent valid ID to do so.
Surely voter registration is checked against death certificates.
Don't call me Shirley.
The Democrat Party has an unfortunate history of playing games with ID, poll taxes, and various tests to deny citizens their vote. In recent years it has even included false robo-calls telling people the wrong date or location.
My original point was that Voter ID laws seem to work well pretty much everywhere else that we consider a democratic government, and the only reason we don't have them here is that Democrats are too quick to call people racists. On cue, some Democrat neanderthal called me a racist and we were off to the races, so to speak.
You haven't been able to provide an objection to a specific voter ID law. All that you've brought to this conversation is lies about history and lies about theoretical laws, rather than the real laws that are on the books, or real proposals being debated. Your posts make it obvious you're barely reading what I'm writing. You're only in this thread to subtly imply that I'm a racist. Slashdot would be better off with less trolls like you.
Of course, in the American electoral system, the dead aren't supposed to be voting. That's why you should have to have current IDs.
Also, I asked for a specific example of a state Voter ID law that you claim "makes it a minor hassle for one demographic group but a major problem for another." You gave a theoretical example, and not a very good one, because no state REQUIRES a drivers' license to vote. (Several ALLOW use of a driver's license, but they all allow for other alternatives, some of which are provided for free upon request.)
There is no principled reason to oppose Voter ID. The only two reasons to oppose Voter ID are that if you are committing election fraud, it makes it more likely that you get caught, and that if your opponent is in favor of it, you get to call them a racist. America would be better off if there were fewer people engaged in either of these activities.
It's far too easy (as history has shown in the U.S.) to slant the process so that it is a minor hassle for one demographic but a major problem for another.
It's far too easy to win an election by stuffing the ballot box with votes that weren't cast by actual voters. It's also far too easy to win an election by claiming that the opponents are racist.
If you want to talk about a specific process that you feel is slanted, I'm willing to do that, but the fact that you can come up with a theoretical implementation that "makes it a minor hassle for one demographic group but a major problem for another" doesn't validate the GPs claim that Voter ID supporters are racist.
You must also think that literacy tests were about ensuring that voters could read the ballot and that poll taxes were about raising revenue.
The purpose of "voter ID", which is the least of the shenanigans that the Plutocrat Party is pulling, is job security for the scumbag politicians who are trying to push it through.
I'm sorry, I was unclear on my statement earlier, and Slashdot doesn't have an edit button. My last sentence should have read "I wonder what Democrat politicians think the difference is between people of Mexican descent in Mexico and people of Mexican descent in the US."
Of course, as you and I both know, Democrats are the people who supported literacy tests and poll taxes to keep African-Americans from voting, and oppose Voter ID laws so they can keep scumbag plutocrats in power.
However, I didn't explicitly point out that I support voter ID laws in my original post, and sarcasm is notoriously hard to transmit over the internet. My apologies for the confusion.
In Mexico you can't make any kind of transaction without your voter registration card.
Mexico has voter registration cards? That's interesting, because in the US there's a political party that says that Americans of Mexican descent are too stupid or feeble or something to obtain voter registration cards, and thus supporting any "You have to show ID when you vote" law is racist. I wonder what the difference is between people of Mexican descent in Mexico and people of Mexican descent in the US.
That's ridiculous. Just because public financing cannot solve 100% of the problem doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
How does it solve the problem of "$CANDIDATE has views I find reprehensible. I shouldn't have to pay to support that asshole." Free Speech and Free Association (which are natural rights, though I borrowed the phrasing from the US Constitution) implies a right to NOT speak and to NOT associate.
I'm for free-as-in-speech speech, but not free-as-in-beer speech. If you have a message you want to put out, hit your supporters up for money. It is not the job for any freedom-respecting government to spend THE TAXPAYERS' MONEY on promoting political candidates.
(though [Canadian campaign finance authorities] don't issue tax credits after the first $1000 per person, and unlike the USA, corporations don't get a credit for donating!)
I can't speak with any authority on the Canadian campaign finance system, but in the US, neither individuals nor corporations can deduct campaign contributions from their taxes.
The AC above (not me, as you implied)
You're right. My apologies.
So, the difference between X & Y is lost to the government
Right. I addressed this in my comment. The government provides benefits (the essential functions of government) for a cost (taxes). It's incorrect from an economic standpoint to call a service provider forgoing a rate increase a "cost" to the service provider. Xbox Live is a service too, one for which I pay Microsoft $60 a year. I'd probably pay $70, but that extra $10 isn't a "cost" to Microsoft.
In any case, phrasing the lack of a tax increase as a "cost to the government" implies that the lack of that tax increase is a "benefit to the company." Once you start thinking of "somebody else's taxes lower than I'd like" as an undeserved benefit to them, it becomes easy to justify the tax increase. This is an insidious way to argue, and it's wrong from an economic and moral standpoint.
So, the difference between X & Y is lost to the government and thus all of us, because it would have gone to services we all pay for
If the government is squandering the money, like they do with so much of tax revenue, the money is lost to "all of us" whether the government takes it from Microsoft or not.
Re-read what I said. I'd like less government regulation.
OK, here it is again.
I also happen to think that people (including many libertarians and conservatives) are barking up the wrong tree when they advocate for less corporate regulation.
Your earlier comment was that people shouldn't advocate for less government regulation of corporations. You're proving my thesis here.
I'm talking about tax policy, not military policy.
You claimed that the oil industry gets a special benefit from the US policy towards the middle east. It doesn't. Ideally, the oil company gets fewer terrorist attacks. But so does Microsoft. So does Ford. So do the Red States. So do the Blue States. So does everyone.
If you don't think that the US foreign policy in the middle east makes the US less likely to get attacked by terrorists, we can have that conversation. But that's a conversation about military policy, not tax policy.
I hate to break it to you, but you're a liberal.
Yes, but a classic liberal at heart. I recognize that we have gotten much more liberal (in your sense) as a society and do not have delusions that this will change dramatically. The best I can hope for are policies that gently nudge us the other way.
You say that, but the policies you're advocating for are a push towards modern American liberalism.
Claiming that liberal ideas are the only pragmatic ideas
I've done no such thing.
You responded to someone promoting conservatism by arguing against them with liberal ideas, while claiming "I'm a pragmatist."
In any case, I asked you what you meant by "pragmatism" and you responded by, essentially, saying that you're a liberal. It's fine if you're a liberal, but you should probably be aware of that. Thank you for answering my question, though. Good day.
Taxes are a cost to taxpayers. They pay money that they've rightfully earned to the government, and the government performs the essential functions of government. It's something like the relationship between a business and its customers: Microsoft's customers pay money to Microsoft that the customer rightfully earned, and in exchange, Microsoft gives them a copy of Windows 8 or whatever.
Changing the law to end tax deductions on charitable donations would be a tax increase. It's wrong in the economic sense to call "not increasing taxes" a "cost" to the government, just like it's wrong to call Microsoft not raising prices on its operating system a "cost" to Microsoft.
The reason that I objected, however, is that the way you phrased it implies that Microsoft has the government's money. It doesn't. Microsoft has Microsoft's money that customers agreed to pay them in exchange for products that they wanted. Microsoft pays some of its money in taxes to pay for the essential functions of government. The government is doing a lot of things beyond the essential functions of government. If you think the government should be spending more money on whatever your issue is, maybe you should try re-prioritizing the government's already record breaking revenue.
My "label" seems to change. In Tuesday's election, I voted as a registered Republican. However, I'm probably going to change to Democrat because my locality is heavily Democrat and I would like to have some say in local elections.
Were there primaries on Tuesday in your area? Everywhere that I'm aware of, Tuesday was a general election, meaning that you're under no obligation to vote for a member of your party. (Parties hold "Primary Elections" before the general election so the members of their party can pick the candidate from their party that will represent them the best. The effect is that the Democrats pick the best/highest chance of winning Democrat to run against the Republicans pick for the best/highest chance of winning Republican. In areas with sane systems, you need to be a member of the party to vote in that party's primary.)
I'll give you an example of pragmatism: On a purely ideological basis, I'm against the concept of a limited liability corporation. It represents a massive interference of the government in the free market, and decouples actors from consequences. That said, I recognize the reality that limited liability isn't going anywhere. So rather than waste my breath railing against corporations, I instead advocate for reform. I also happen to think that people (including many libertarians and conservatives) are barking up the wrong tree when they advocate for less corporate regulation... A corporation is nothing but a gigantic pile of government regulation - deregulating it is folly.
OK, so you believe in stronger government regulation of commerce and industry... Let's keep going.
Health care. Naturally, I'd like to emphasize personal responsibility as much as possible. On the other hand, we've had socialized health care since the Reagan-era law that forbade ERs from turning away patients - I doubt we are going back to some kind of less compassionate system. As such, I don't spend my time railing against health care laws. Instead, I try to advocate that they not come in the form of unfunded mandates (such as the Reagan-era law) and try to rely more on individual responsibility. Obamacare has some elements of this (the exchanges), but it also expanded Medicare/Medicaid. And most irresponsibly, it continues to forbid me from getting together with a million or so of my closest friends to form a health-care co-op. If the insurance is being provided by a huge government-enabled corporation, it only seems fair that the government let me negotiate on an equal footing.
This sounds like you're in favor of "the public option" of a single payer healthcare system... Nothing wrong with that...
As for foreign policy... I'd say it is important for the goverment to protect trade routes. Otherwise we are back to armed merchants, which I feel is suboptimal.
Military protection of trade routes is a decisively interventionist position. Pretty sensible...
I would like the funding of the military to be distributed to the industries it most helps, though. For instance, a duty applied to Middle Eastern oil might work wonders for our policy over there. If we spend $100 billion protecting oil routes...
That's not how military policy works, but moving on...
then we should probably have that reflected in the price of oil from that region.
So you believe that some industries are deserving of government protection, and others aren't and thus should have their taxes increased? That makes sense...
Putting it all together, you're a "pragmatic" who believes in stronger regulation of commerce and industry, public option/single payer health care, military intervention where it is in the national interest, and have criteria for taxing certain industries more heavily than others. I hate to break it to you, but you're a liberal. These ideas are pretty much the opposite of libertarianism. And there's nothing wrong with being a liberal, but call it what it is. Claiming that liberal ideas are the only pragmatic ideas is shortsighted, and worse, objectively wrong.
In other words, they'll be making money from taxpayers themselves.
Someone doesn't understand how taxes work.
At best, you'll eventually return to the present form of US democracy, IOW exactly what happened when the US began with "US conservatism".
There's only a few American conservative politicians in the Federal government. The Republican party claims to be the counterweight to the leftist party, the Democrats, but too often, the liberals in the Republican party vote in accordance with the Democrats and their leftist policy. (There used to be a countervailing force of conservative members of the Democratic party, called the "Blue Dog Caucus." The leadership of the Democratic party didn't give them any help in their elections, and they were replaced by Democrats who were further to the left.)
At worst, far less accountable private enterprise...
You're already complaining about how your current Government isn't accountable to the will of the people. You can't have it both ways.
History gives us a clue as to what usually happens in a country with weakened government but strong (rather than nascent, as in C18 America) industry+military.
What clue would that be? Come to think of it, when has a non-nascent government ceded power willingly?
It's taken me a while to get there, but I've finally got round to realising all conservatism (in all its forms) boils down to is thinking about 200 years in the past. In 200 years' time, the conservative will look fondly to today. This viewpoint is just a request to repeat history.
All that your leftism is is a demand to control more and more of people's lives. Even if the people give up their rights to you and your ilk for 200 years, it still won't be enough, and you will still be demanding more control over the daily lives of the people.
That would be I support individual liberty and limiting government.
That is more libertarian than conservative. That is my nominal ideology, though I'm far too pragmatic to call myself such.
I see the difference between libertarians and conservatives as that in foreign policy, conservatives tend to favor a strong military, while libertarians tend to favor isolationism. On domestic policy, libertarians tend to favor a more liberal policy on certain wedge issues like drug legalization. Based on this understanding of libertarian, I don't see where "being too pragmatic" would come into play.
If I'm misstating your libertarian views, please let me know. Otherwise, if you're too pragmatic to call yourself a libertarian, what do you call yourself?
Interestingly, this is one of the problems that Conservatism solves. A government that does less is less susceptible to lobbying/corruption. The reason you'd lobby or bribe a government official is so they will make a decision in your favor and/or against your opponent. If the government isn't deciding who the winner and the loser is, neither you nor your competitor have a reason to lobby or bribe them.
As far as voting systems go, Proportional Representation doesn't guarantee the rights of the minority in a situation as heterogeneous as the United States. Also, as a union of states, we have it coded into our governing documents that elected officials are supposed to represent interests of the people they live near. PR also, by definition, can't pick a single person to serve a single office, like we Americans do with our Chief Executive.
Now, I believe that Great Britain is more homogeneous than the US, and I think that you guys still believe that each member of Parliament is supposed to represent the whole empire. I KNOW that your elected officials pick the Chief Executive after you elect them. Thus, my opposition to proportional representation only makes sense in a US context. But if you feel like voting for political parties rather than individual candidates will get politicians to listen to the people more, knock yourself out.
Association football is called "football" because it's played on foot, as opposed to polo, which is played on horseback. The name was originally given derisively; it implied "poor people ball."
In the 1850s, the word "soccer" meant "a member of an association." A 19th century soccer star popularized its use to mean "the game played by members of an association football association."
In the UK, we have a very powerful government. It just doesn't exert its power in the interests of the people.
That's exactly the point. The UK government has a lot of power that it uses to further its own interests, rather than the interests of the people. The problem is that people (and government officials) will almost ALWAYS act in THEIR OWN self interest, not the interest of "the people."
That's the general idea behind American Conservatism. The government will always act in its own interest and against the interests of "the people," so we should limit the amount of damage they can do by having the government in charge of as few things as possible.
Was anyone ever arrested at a Tea Party rally?