Every vendor tells you what your final price is going to be (unless they're trying to put something over on you). If I buy a book from Amazon, I don't care what the "actual cost" is, I care what the price is going to be when they include shipping. If one vendor is selling "Atlas Shrugged" for $1 (plus $4) shipping, and the other vendor is selling it for $2 including shipping, which one is cheaper? Similarly, if I'm buying health insurance -- any health insurance, including private insurance -- I want to know how much I'm finally going to write on my monthly premium check. So the list price, or what you call the "actual cost", doesn't matter to me.
That is an incredibly poor analogy. Your federal subsidy is constant, it is not like "shipping and handling" and at the whim of the seller. Unsubsidized prices for health insurance are comparable. If one plan is $25 more than another it will still be $25 more after your subsidy is applied.
Yeah, the Republicans would like Obamacare to fail by discouraging people to sign up, and one way to do that would be to show them an enormous premium that they couldn't afford, without telling them that after government subsidies, they'll be paying next to nothing.
Your claim fails by assuming shoppers will be getting big subsidies, but lets ignore that. What makes your argument poor is that this change was a last minute change. If this were a concern it should have been addressed ***years*** ago.
It's complicated because the insurance industry is complicated.
It complicated because of the changes dictated by the President's administration at the last minute.
Its simple to just show plans and prices for your state. It became complicated when the administration decided that people will get sticker shock if they see the actual cost of their health plans. So the administration, at the last minute, decided that the system must collect all necessary information to compute a person's subsidy so that only the subsidized cost is reported. That is the sort of political decision that screwed up implementation of the web site.
The "political atmosphere" at the time was created for the purpose of blocking this reform. It didn't "pre-date" the reform effort. The propaganda efforts kicked into high gear to "break" this Presidency--to undo the public's will by neutering a popular President so as to limit his ability to do the people's work. They started screaming he was a communist because a bill modeled largely on their own response to Hilarycare in the 90's had been proposed by a Democratic congress and administration
That is a bit revisionist. The reality was that candidate Obama promised an open, transparent, bipartisan process while he was campaigning. Once in office President Obama turned over health care reform to the Democratic party leadership who promptly went into the back room with their lobbyists and began drafting health care reform legislation in a very partisan fashion. In those first couple of week of the new administration the Democratic attitude was that they control the White House, the House of Representatives and and the Senate - so f' the Republicans we'll do whatever we want. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel literally said this in public in this first week or two. Completely contrary to Obama's promises on the campaign trail. This poisoned the well of bipartisanship. Tossed away the opportunity to get moderate Republicans involved in the drafting. Even in the hyper partisan atmosphere that followed there were a couple of Republicans who were peeled off at times. This indicates some would have probably come on board is there were seats at the table.
If we had the open, transparent, and bipartisan (seats at the table for Republicans) process promised then things would have gone quite different. The Democratic leadership and the White House are equally responsible with the Republican leadership for the current hyper partisan atmosphere. The Democrats locked the Republicans out, the Republicans respond by becoming obstructionists. Bipartisanship was not given a chance by the Democrats. Again, this was all in the first week or two.
It is mind boggling that President Obama, who knew health care would be his signature issue and his legacy, would give up leadership to his partisan party leaders, remain largely silent as they took the process into the back rooms, and merely became a salesman for whatever they came up with. He should have used his bully pulpit to pressure his party to stick to his campaign promises for an open, transparent and bipartisan process. His silence, and Rahm Emanuel's comments, suggested he was OK with the business as usual process his party leadership took. Again, this was all in the first week or two, the Republican obstructionism that you refer to came after this.
BTW, I am an independent disgusted by both parties.
Only because you assume that conservatives are anti-science.
I'm in Canada. The Conservative party here (currently in power) certainly seems to be anti-science. I know of formerly pure-science government labs that are being hired out to industry and anyone that can't get industry funding is getting the boot.
I was referring to those who deny scientific discoveries, not those who think science should be funded by the private sector. Two different problems.
One particular party may support general principals that a person agrees with far better than others, and hence motivate a person to join. However a particular candidate may not represent those principals well or may be flawed in areas outside of those principals. The problem may be with the candidate selected not the general principles that the party represents.
So the problem is in the candidate selection process? I tend to think so. Both parties seem to be selecting candidates that represent their extremes, unfortunately the extremes seem to have a higher level of participation. So the problem may actually be with a lack of participation from the more moderate majority of the parties.
I am not addressing the details of how to perform such a study. I am merely arguing against the notion that narrowing the scope to only the non-human influences, q, somehow denies the human influences, p. Knowing the percentage of one gives us the other, p = 1.0 - q.
There seems to be politics on both sides. Yes, a crackpot narrowed the scope of the study. However the statements from the scientists seem to go beyond that. The impression they give is that if it had been narrowed for non-crackpot reasons it would still somehow be wrong. It seems that they feel it harmful to their careers to participate in a climate change study that does not support a particular narrative. They fear that not including human influences somehow puts them into the same camp as those who deny human influences in the eyes of politicians and political activists.
Not including is different than denying. Its sad to see science politicized. Lets scientists do science. Narrow, broad, focused, all-inlusive, whatever.
To be clear, I am not against membership in political parties. I am merely against loyalty to a party. One should strive to see that your party fields the best candidate but if it fails to do so one should vote for the other candidate. Only through voting for candidates irrespective of party can one make political parties work for your vote. It would also seem better for the country, having the better candidate win regardless of party.
Only because you assume that conservatives are anti-science.
... or the suggestions we should all start voting for democrats,...
That is a truly foolish thing to do. Voting for a party, being loyal to a party, makes oneself irrelevant. The party you favor can ignore you because they have your vote, the other party can ignore you because they can not get your vote.
... but at least they are somewhat sane and do not deny reality.
You are absolutely wrong. They are believers or deniers of science and reality depending upon the issue. Both parties have core beliefs that are held as articles of faith that can not be disputed.
Why do we not need a study on cyclical climate change? Recognizing how much of global warming isn't due to humans is also important.
How are the two not inherently related? Doesn't determining one determine the other? If p is the percentage due to human influence then 1.0 - p is the percentage due to non-human influence.
Actually there is no such obligation to honour a warrant you believe to be backed by unjust laws or actions, but there is an obligation to challenge the unjust law and/or action.
In court, not by just ignoring the warrant.
I believe that the 13 Colonies were founded on the presumption that unjust laws were to be challenged by force if and when necessary.
The concept of "unjust" in that era was heavily tied to having representation in government and having a defined non-arbitrary due process. Post revolution, when our founding fathers became Governors and Presidents, and when people had elected representatives and a Constitution and a Bill of Right and a process to amend the Constitution, then our founding fathers thought it completely just to compel citizens to obey laws that they (the citizens) felt personally violated their ethics or business interests. The citizens were free to challenge laws in court but not simply ignore them.
Civil diobedience against an unjust law or action is one of the greatest patriotic actions a citizen can make for the citizens of their own nation.
Yes, when the law/warrant is truly unjust. Not merely contrary to your business model or an extreme opinion of ethics. In this case the extreme opinion being that encryption keys can never be turned over. If one is holding their own keys private then the right against self incrimination should apply. However when one turns over those keys to a **third party** then it is quite reasonable that they be accessible through the **due process** defined in the constitution: sworn statement of probable cause, warrant from a valid court, warrant specifying specifically what is to be taken and from where, etc. Note that in this case the court is being specific about which accounts are affected, this is not some NSA-style turn over all the keys secret order.
>>>>> You don't when that warrant is ethically and Constitutionally wrong...
>>> warrants issued by a valid court
If the warrant is both ethically and Constitutionally wrong it cannot have been issued by a valid court, now can it?
If you think the warrant is unconstitutional then you go to court to have it set aside. You can't just decide upon its constitutionality yourself and ignore it.
What our founding fathers would probably say is that if a law is unjust it should be amended or repealed. I doubt they would say that citizens get to pick and choose what laws they wish to obey...
FYI,...
Its not. I've read quite a bit on the colonial, revolutionary and early republic times.
... the founders had experience with tyranny. Yes, the first recourse is to reform the tyranny, but when that fails, when the tyranny is pervasive, entrenched, and impervious to reform, it must be overthrown.
There is no tyranny here. A lawful court issued a search warrant for **specific** email accounts. The provider was instructed to turn over encryption keys for these **specific** accounts. The founder of the provider decided to exercise civil disobedience and was found to be in contempt of the court.
The Bill of Rights has a more pertinent quote than your Declaration of Independence quote:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The founders defined a **due process** by which the right of a citizen may be violated. "Unreasonable" means without this due process, sworn oaths to probably cause, a warrant issued by a valid court, etc; it does not mean "unreasonable" in the eyes of the person being handed the warrant. In this case it appears that due process is being followed. There is no tyranny. There is at most violation of personal ethics and morals, but these are secondary to the law. Civil disobedience may be the only recourse but civil disobedience has a price, contempt of court is a quite reasonable consequence. Again, no tyranny.
Civil disobedience is not an end run around the law nor a get out of trouble free card. It is a way to preserve one's personal ethics and morals, and it is a way to raise awareness of a possibly unjust law with the goal of having it amended or repealed.
If you are curious (probably not, but here goes) you always hear that the people in the military have to obey the orders of their superiors. That is wrong. They have to obey the LAWFUL orders of their superiors, and REFUSE to obey unlawful ones.
Lawful and matching your personal sense of ethics or morality are two separate things. A legal order may violate a soldier's personal sense of ethics or morality. A soldier's ability to refuse an order is only with respect to the constitution, the universal code of military justice, ratified treaties concerning the international laws of war, etc.
Along those lines, the founders of this country fully believed that it was the right and duty of any citizen to oppose inappropriate laws and actions by the government.
Uh, no, "inappropriate" is grossly vague. If you want to use the word "unjust" you may be partially correct. However our founding fathers used force to enforce some laws that some people considered unjust. What our founding fathers would probably say is that if a law is unjust it should be amended or repealed. I doubt they would say that citizens get to pick and choose what laws they wish to obey, their actions as Governors and Presidents surely suggest otherwise.
You don't when that warrant is ethically and Constitutionally wrong...
You are mistaken, there is nothing in the Constitution that says you can pick and choose which warrants issued by a valid court you will obey.
What you are thinking of is called "civil disobedience", and civil disobedience often has a cost. Precisely the sort of thing we are seeing with respect to the contempt charge in this case. Civil disobedience is not an end run around the law nor a get out of trouble free card. What it is is a way to preserve your personal sense of ethics and a way to draw attention to and raise public awareness of an unjust law with the goal of amending or repealing the unjust law.
A corporate employee not liking how he's being used by law enforcement can, as a general matter, simply get up and walk away from the company if he wants.
In this case - Apparently, no, he cannot.
You are mistaken. The founder is a corporate officer, not a simple employee. Corporate officers have responsibilities with respect to seeing the corporation comply with the law.
They claim they didn't know about the "“Cornhusker Kickback", the "bribe" to the Nebraska Senator to get his vote. They claim it was something slipped in at the last moment.
No, the point that the GP was making, incorrectly, was that Pelosi and the people in congress didn't know what was in the bill. They did know what was in the bill, they had been debating it for months.
And what Pelosi and the House debated was thrown out. What was passed what the Senate's bill, unmodified. There was no merging or editing of the Senate's bill. The Republicans took over Ted Kennedy's old seat in the Senate immediately after passage of the Senate bill, the Republicans now had enough votes to sustain a filibuster. Any modifications and it would have to be voted on again in the Senate and it would fail. The House voted on the Senate proposal exactly as is.
As for knowing what was in it. Last minute edits like the Cornhusker Kickback (or whatever the hell that payoff to one state was called) prove otherwise.
"debate"
Isn't that kind of the point? Bipartisanship I mean.
Except it didn't really happen in a bipartisan manner. For example one night I watched CSPAN and republicans were suggesting quite reasonable amendments and the democratic controlled committee voted each proposal down immediately without debate or further consideration. It seemed that the democratic party leadership had negotiated something in the back rooms between themselves and their lobbyists and no changes were permitted.
This demonstrated the most fundamental problem with the health reform legislation. The President had promised open, transparent and bipartisan debate and drafting during the campaign and then once in office turned control over to the Democratic party leadership in the House. Who then adopted a very partisan attitude and also went behind closed doors with their lobbyists to do the drafting. If there had been any opportunity for bipartisanship or peeling off moderate Republicans it had been discarded. The House, and the White House to a degree, adopted a "screw the Republicans we won the election and have control of the House and Senate. Rahm Emanual, the President's Chief of Staff publicly said something like that. Pretty much the opposite of what the President promised on the campaign trail, and poisoning the well of bipartisanship and setting the stage for the extreme partisanship of the last 5 years. This was all in the first couple of weeks of the new administration, long before the tea party had any significant presence in the House. Sure there would have been Republicans that would oppose anything, but there would also have been some that would have cooperated. There were a couple at times in spite of the highly partisan atmosphere the Democratic leadership created, if things had truly been done in a bipartisan manner its a pretty safe bet there would have been a number of moderate Republicans who could have been peeled off. Both parties are responsible for the extreme partisanship that exists today.
... the debate and drafting of the ACA, it was quite the bipartisan cluster**k
There was ***NOTHING*** bipartisan about the Affordable Care Act. It was passed without a single Republican vote and lots of dirty parliamentary tricks. The Democrats and the Obama administration own this.
I'm referring to the entire process, not the final vote. The whole process brought out lots of idiocy from both political parties.
What was debated and what was in the final draft are two different things.
Everyone knew what was in it, regardless of what Rush Limbaugh told you.
Lame attempt at character assignation, you've lost the debate. I'm neither a Republican nor a Limbaugh listener. I am however someone who was paying attention during the debate and drafting of the ACA, it was quite the bipartisan cluster**k.
We recently issued a warning about mobile avalanche search applications that are marketed as avalanche rescue systems. Three smartphone applications are presenting themselves as economical alternatives to avalanche transceivers, the electronic device used by backcountry users to find buried companions in case of an avalanche. The applications are not an adequate replacement for an avalanche transceiver for many reasons, and we are concerned about the use of this software in lieu of a specifically-designed avalanche transceiver.
Assuming they work to some degree its probably a matter of whether the buyer was accurately informed about their performance, not what the level of performance actually is. To be honest I expect that the users of such apps are those who would otherwise go into the backcountry with no device at all, are the apps better than nothing at all?
Which explains why, in the 1950's and 60's for example, when spending on lobbyists was a fraction of what it is today, the economy was destroyed by laws that crushed private industries. Or was it one of the biggest growth period in our country's history? I forget. Screw it - ideological assumptions trump facts.
Those companies that you referred to generally made money by manufacturing products and selling them for a profit. That is not what Google does. It sells its hardware products at around cost (ex Nexus). It gives away its software (ex Android). It makes money off of services, in particular targeted advertising based on its monitoring of users (Search, Gmail, etc).
Google's business is **highly** vulnerable to potential legislation. Public sentiment is running a bit high against corporate (and gov't) "snooping" on individuals. Any restrictions on how a company can monitor or collect information on consumers could be quite harmful to Google's revenue. It makes great business sense to be in DC to head off or steer such "privacy" legislation in a manner that preserves Google's ability to monitor users.
I'm eager to see how less frequent polling of satellites and dead reckoning with the M7 in-between will work for backpacking. A couple of years ago I experimented while going on walks near home and I estimate that relevant GPS apps would drain my 4S in about four hours. When I actually go camping and backpacking I download topo maps but don't use the phone for much beyond dropping waypoints on the car and the campsite. My phone is normally powered down and inside a dry bag in my day pack. I go old school for navigation and use a map and compass. The phone is there as a backup, or more likely a camera.
Slashdot Mirror
Every vendor tells you what your final price is going to be (unless they're trying to put something over on you). If I buy a book from Amazon, I don't care what the "actual cost" is, I care what the price is going to be when they include shipping. If one vendor is selling "Atlas Shrugged" for $1 (plus $4) shipping, and the other vendor is selling it for $2 including shipping, which one is cheaper? Similarly, if I'm buying health insurance -- any health insurance, including private insurance -- I want to know how much I'm finally going to write on my monthly premium check. So the list price, or what you call the "actual cost", doesn't matter to me.
That is an incredibly poor analogy. Your federal subsidy is constant, it is not like "shipping and handling" and at the whim of the seller. Unsubsidized prices for health insurance are comparable. If one plan is $25 more than another it will still be $25 more after your subsidy is applied.
Yeah, the Republicans would like Obamacare to fail by discouraging people to sign up, and one way to do that would be to show them an enormous premium that they couldn't afford, without telling them that after government subsidies, they'll be paying next to nothing.
Your claim fails by assuming shoppers will be getting big subsidies, but lets ignore that. What makes your argument poor is that this change was a last minute change. If this were a concern it should have been addressed ***years*** ago.
It's complicated because the insurance industry is complicated.
It complicated because of the changes dictated by the President's administration at the last minute.
Its simple to just show plans and prices for your state. It became complicated when the administration decided that people will get sticker shock if they see the actual cost of their health plans. So the administration, at the last minute, decided that the system must collect all necessary information to compute a person's subsidy so that only the subsidized cost is reported. That is the sort of political decision that screwed up implementation of the web site.
The "political atmosphere" at the time was created for the purpose of blocking this reform. It didn't "pre-date" the reform effort. The propaganda efforts kicked into high gear to "break" this Presidency--to undo the public's will by neutering a popular President so as to limit his ability to do the people's work. They started screaming he was a communist because a bill modeled largely on their own response to Hilarycare in the 90's had been proposed by a Democratic congress and administration
That is a bit revisionist. The reality was that candidate Obama promised an open, transparent, bipartisan process while he was campaigning. Once in office President Obama turned over health care reform to the Democratic party leadership who promptly went into the back room with their lobbyists and began drafting health care reform legislation in a very partisan fashion. In those first couple of week of the new administration the Democratic attitude was that they control the White House, the House of Representatives and and the Senate - so f' the Republicans we'll do whatever we want. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel literally said this in public in this first week or two. Completely contrary to Obama's promises on the campaign trail. This poisoned the well of bipartisanship. Tossed away the opportunity to get moderate Republicans involved in the drafting. Even in the hyper partisan atmosphere that followed there were a couple of Republicans who were peeled off at times. This indicates some would have probably come on board is there were seats at the table.
If we had the open, transparent, and bipartisan (seats at the table for Republicans) process promised then things would have gone quite different. The Democratic leadership and the White House are equally responsible with the Republican leadership for the current hyper partisan atmosphere. The Democrats locked the Republicans out, the Republicans respond by becoming obstructionists. Bipartisanship was not given a chance by the Democrats. Again, this was all in the first week or two.
It is mind boggling that President Obama, who knew health care would be his signature issue and his legacy, would give up leadership to his partisan party leaders, remain largely silent as they took the process into the back rooms, and merely became a salesman for whatever they came up with. He should have used his bully pulpit to pressure his party to stick to his campaign promises for an open, transparent and bipartisan process. His silence, and Rahm Emanuel's comments, suggested he was OK with the business as usual process his party leadership took. Again, this was all in the first week or two, the Republican obstructionism that you refer to came after this.
BTW, I am an independent disgusted by both parties.
... it turns the government does have an Apollo program for health care - Medicare. And guess what, it works great.
You should talk to Doctors. They seem to have a quite different opinion of Medicare.
Conservative Americans might be mad at my post ...
Only because you assume that conservatives are anti-science.
I'm in Canada. The Conservative party here (currently in power) certainly seems to be anti-science. I know of formerly pure-science government labs that are being hired out to industry and anyone that can't get industry funding is getting the boot.
I was referring to those who deny scientific discoveries, not those who think science should be funded by the private sector. Two different problems.
One particular party may support general principals that a person agrees with far better than others, and hence motivate a person to join. However a particular candidate may not represent those principals well or may be flawed in areas outside of those principals. The problem may be with the candidate selected not the general principles that the party represents.
So the problem is in the candidate selection process? I tend to think so. Both parties seem to be selecting candidates that represent their extremes, unfortunately the extremes seem to have a higher level of participation. So the problem may actually be with a lack of participation from the more moderate majority of the parties.
I am not addressing the details of how to perform such a study. I am merely arguing against the notion that narrowing the scope to only the non-human influences, q, somehow denies the human influences, p. Knowing the percentage of one gives us the other, p = 1.0 - q.
There seems to be politics on both sides. Yes, a crackpot narrowed the scope of the study. However the statements from the scientists seem to go beyond that. The impression they give is that if it had been narrowed for non-crackpot reasons it would still somehow be wrong. It seems that they feel it harmful to their careers to participate in a climate change study that does not support a particular narrative. They fear that not including human influences somehow puts them into the same camp as those who deny human influences in the eyes of politicians and political activists.
Not including is different than denying. Its sad to see science politicized. Lets scientists do science. Narrow, broad, focused, all-inlusive, whatever.
To be clear, I am not against membership in political parties. I am merely against loyalty to a party. One should strive to see that your party fields the best candidate but if it fails to do so one should vote for the other candidate. Only through voting for candidates irrespective of party can one make political parties work for your vote. It would also seem better for the country, having the better candidate win regardless of party.
Conservative Americans might be mad at my post ...
Only because you assume that conservatives are anti-science.
That is a truly foolish thing to do. Voting for a party, being loyal to a party, makes oneself irrelevant. The party you favor can ignore you because they have your vote, the other party can ignore you because they can not get your vote.
... but at least they are somewhat sane and do not deny reality.
You are absolutely wrong. They are believers or deniers of science and reality depending upon the issue. Both parties have core beliefs that are held as articles of faith that can not be disputed.
Why do we not need a study on cyclical climate change? Recognizing how much of global warming isn't due to humans is also important.
How are the two not inherently related? Doesn't determining one determine the other? If p is the percentage due to human influence then 1.0 - p is the percentage due to non-human influence.
Actually there is no such obligation to honour a warrant you believe to be backed by unjust laws or actions, but there is an obligation to challenge the unjust law and/or action.
In court, not by just ignoring the warrant.
I believe that the 13 Colonies were founded on the presumption that unjust laws were to be challenged by force if and when necessary.
The concept of "unjust" in that era was heavily tied to having representation in government and having a defined non-arbitrary due process. Post revolution, when our founding fathers became Governors and Presidents, and when people had elected representatives and a Constitution and a Bill of Right and a process to amend the Constitution, then our founding fathers thought it completely just to compel citizens to obey laws that they (the citizens) felt personally violated their ethics or business interests. The citizens were free to challenge laws in court but not simply ignore them.
Civil diobedience against an unjust law or action is one of the greatest patriotic actions a citizen can make for the citizens of their own nation.
Yes, when the law/warrant is truly unjust. Not merely contrary to your business model or an extreme opinion of ethics. In this case the extreme opinion being that encryption keys can never be turned over. If one is holding their own keys private then the right against self incrimination should apply. However when one turns over those keys to a **third party** then it is quite reasonable that they be accessible through the **due process** defined in the constitution: sworn statement of probable cause, warrant from a valid court, warrant specifying specifically what is to be taken and from where, etc. Note that in this case the court is being specific about which accounts are affected, this is not some NSA-style turn over all the keys secret order.
>>>>> You don't when that warrant is ethically and Constitutionally wrong ...
>>> warrants issued by a valid court
If the warrant is both ethically and Constitutionally wrong it cannot have been issued by a valid court, now can it?
If you think the warrant is unconstitutional then you go to court to have it set aside. You can't just decide upon its constitutionality yourself and ignore it.
What our founding fathers would probably say is that if a law is unjust it should be amended or repealed. I doubt they would say that citizens get to pick and choose what laws they wish to obey ...
FYI, ...
Its not. I've read quite a bit on the colonial, revolutionary and early republic times.
... the founders had experience with tyranny. Yes, the first recourse is to reform the tyranny, but when that fails, when the tyranny is pervasive, entrenched, and impervious to reform, it must be overthrown.
There is no tyranny here. A lawful court issued a search warrant for **specific** email accounts. The provider was instructed to turn over encryption keys for these **specific** accounts. The founder of the provider decided to exercise civil disobedience and was found to be in contempt of the court.
The Bill of Rights has a more pertinent quote than your Declaration of Independence quote:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The founders defined a **due process** by which the right of a citizen may be violated. "Unreasonable" means without this due process, sworn oaths to probably cause, a warrant issued by a valid court, etc; it does not mean "unreasonable" in the eyes of the person being handed the warrant. In this case it appears that due process is being followed. There is no tyranny. There is at most violation of personal ethics and morals, but these are secondary to the law. Civil disobedience may be the only recourse but civil disobedience has a price, contempt of court is a quite reasonable consequence. Again, no tyranny.
Civil disobedience is not an end run around the law nor a get out of trouble free card. It is a way to preserve one's personal ethics and morals, and it is a way to raise awareness of a possibly unjust law with the goal of having it amended or repealed.
If you are curious (probably not, but here goes) you always hear that the people in the military have to obey the orders of their superiors. That is wrong. They have to obey the LAWFUL orders of their superiors, and REFUSE to obey unlawful ones.
Lawful and matching your personal sense of ethics or morality are two separate things. A legal order may violate a soldier's personal sense of ethics or morality. A soldier's ability to refuse an order is only with respect to the constitution, the universal code of military justice, ratified treaties concerning the international laws of war, etc.
Along those lines, the founders of this country fully believed that it was the right and duty of any citizen to oppose inappropriate laws and actions by the government.
Uh, no, "inappropriate" is grossly vague. If you want to use the word "unjust" you may be partially correct. However our founding fathers used force to enforce some laws that some people considered unjust. What our founding fathers would probably say is that if a law is unjust it should be amended or repealed. I doubt they would say that citizens get to pick and choose what laws they wish to obey, their actions as Governors and Presidents surely suggest otherwise.
You don't when that warrant is ethically and Constitutionally wrong ...
You are mistaken, there is nothing in the Constitution that says you can pick and choose which warrants issued by a valid court you will obey.
What you are thinking of is called "civil disobedience", and civil disobedience often has a cost. Precisely the sort of thing we are seeing with respect to the contempt charge in this case. Civil disobedience is not an end run around the law nor a get out of trouble free card. What it is is a way to preserve your personal sense of ethics and a way to draw attention to and raise public awareness of an unjust law with the goal of amending or repealing the unjust law.
A corporate employee not liking how he's being used by law enforcement can, as a general matter, simply get up and walk away from the company if he wants.
In this case - Apparently, no, he cannot.
You are mistaken. The founder is a corporate officer, not a simple employee. Corporate officers have responsibilities with respect to seeing the corporation comply with the law.
> > "Everyone knew what was in it" > Prove it.
Prove they didn't.
They claim they didn't know about the "“Cornhusker Kickback", the "bribe" to the Nebraska Senator to get his vote. They claim it was something slipped in at the last moment.
No, the point that the GP was making, incorrectly, was that Pelosi and the people in congress didn't know what was in the bill. They did know what was in the bill, they had been debating it for months.
And what Pelosi and the House debated was thrown out. What was passed what the Senate's bill, unmodified. There was no merging or editing of the Senate's bill. The Republicans took over Ted Kennedy's old seat in the Senate immediately after passage of the Senate bill, the Republicans now had enough votes to sustain a filibuster. Any modifications and it would have to be voted on again in the Senate and it would fail. The House voted on the Senate proposal exactly as is.
As for knowing what was in it. Last minute edits like the Cornhusker Kickback (or whatever the hell that payoff to one state was called) prove otherwise.
"debate" Isn't that kind of the point? Bipartisanship I mean.
Except it didn't really happen in a bipartisan manner. For example one night I watched CSPAN and republicans were suggesting quite reasonable amendments and the democratic controlled committee voted each proposal down immediately without debate or further consideration. It seemed that the democratic party leadership had negotiated something in the back rooms between themselves and their lobbyists and no changes were permitted.
This demonstrated the most fundamental problem with the health reform legislation. The President had promised open, transparent and bipartisan debate and drafting during the campaign and then once in office turned control over to the Democratic party leadership in the House. Who then adopted a very partisan attitude and also went behind closed doors with their lobbyists to do the drafting. If there had been any opportunity for bipartisanship or peeling off moderate Republicans it had been discarded. The House, and the White House to a degree, adopted a "screw the Republicans we won the election and have control of the House and Senate. Rahm Emanual, the President's Chief of Staff publicly said something like that. Pretty much the opposite of what the President promised on the campaign trail, and poisoning the well of bipartisanship and setting the stage for the extreme partisanship of the last 5 years. This was all in the first couple of weeks of the new administration, long before the tea party had any significant presence in the House. Sure there would have been Republicans that would oppose anything, but there would also have been some that would have cooperated. There were a couple at times in spite of the highly partisan atmosphere the Democratic leadership created, if things had truly been done in a bipartisan manner its a pretty safe bet there would have been a number of moderate Republicans who could have been peeled off. Both parties are responsible for the extreme partisanship that exists today.
... the debate and drafting of the ACA, it was quite the bipartisan cluster**k
There was ***NOTHING*** bipartisan about the Affordable Care Act. It was passed without a single Republican vote and lots of dirty parliamentary tricks. The Democrats and the Obama administration own this.
I'm referring to the entire process, not the final vote. The whole process brought out lots of idiocy from both political parties.
It was debated for 8 months.
What was debated and what was in the final draft are two different things.
Everyone knew what was in it, regardless of what Rush Limbaugh told you.
Lame attempt at character assignation, you've lost the debate. I'm neither a Republican nor a Limbaugh listener. I am however someone who was paying attention during the debate and drafting of the ACA, it was quite the bipartisan cluster**k.
Half of the people in the federal government are actively trying to sabotage the ACA.
Is that the half that wants to repeal it or the half that voted for it without knowing what was in the bill?
We recently issued a warning about mobile avalanche search applications that are marketed as avalanche rescue systems. Three smartphone applications are presenting themselves as economical alternatives to avalanche transceivers, the electronic device used by backcountry users to find buried companions in case of an avalanche. The applications are not an adequate replacement for an avalanche transceiver for many reasons, and we are concerned about the use of this software in lieu of a specifically-designed avalanche transceiver.
Assuming they work to some degree its probably a matter of whether the buyer was accurately informed about their performance, not what the level of performance actually is. To be honest I expect that the users of such apps are those who would otherwise go into the backcountry with no device at all, are the apps better than nothing at all?
Which explains why, in the 1950's and 60's for example, when spending on lobbyists was a fraction of what it is today, the economy was destroyed by laws that crushed private industries. Or was it one of the biggest growth period in our country's history? I forget. Screw it - ideological assumptions trump facts.
Those companies that you referred to generally made money by manufacturing products and selling them for a profit. That is not what Google does. It sells its hardware products at around cost (ex Nexus). It gives away its software (ex Android). It makes money off of services, in particular targeted advertising based on its monitoring of users (Search, Gmail, etc).
Google's business is **highly** vulnerable to potential legislation. Public sentiment is running a bit high against corporate (and gov't) "snooping" on individuals. Any restrictions on how a company can monitor or collect information on consumers could be quite harmful to Google's revenue. It makes great business sense to be in DC to head off or steer such "privacy" legislation in a manner that preserves Google's ability to monitor users.
I'm eager to see how less frequent polling of satellites and dead reckoning with the M7 in-between will work for backpacking. A couple of years ago I experimented while going on walks near home and I estimate that relevant GPS apps would drain my 4S in about four hours. When I actually go camping and backpacking I download topo maps but don't use the phone for much beyond dropping waypoints on the car and the campsite. My phone is normally powered down and inside a dry bag in my day pack. I go old school for navigation and use a map and compass. The phone is there as a backup, or more likely a camera.