He doesn't have to wait, he's requesting this during the transition process so that he can use his time in office more effectively. That's why they have a transition process.
As for firing people, that's not relevant. All he requested was information. You may think it's so that he can fire people, but that's pure conjecture. The requesting of the information is not illegal and since he's to be the country's lead executive, the agency should comply with the request.
Government officials are responsible for what happened in Flint, not a company. Bhopal was a failure of India's government to protect their people, that had zero to do with the EPA. The city and the army both used the Love Canal site for dumping yet you're only blaming the business that dumped there. There's blame to go around. The city ultimately approved the reuse of the site knowing it had been a toxic dump, so I'd pin the blame on them. Even a quick glance at Wikipedia for the Hinkley case states that scientists are still debating the issue of cancer and the contaminant in question. So again, did they know it was harmful if scientists still can't agree on it? That plays into the point I was making. As far as California is concerned, everything causes cancer.
The EPA has only existed since 1970. Coal mining goes back a bit before those times. I live in the northeast where asbestos is a huge problem. Communities and developers used the excess as fill because it wasn't known to be harmful at the time. There was no dodging of regulations, they really didn't know. Does that mean they were liable? That doesn't seem right. There were no regulations. What you seem to be ignoring is that those regulations almost always get written after there's a disaster.
As for food safety regulations, when issues happen it is the customers that expose it. They get sick, it gets traced back. We've had a bunch of incidents lately and despite having an inspection process, people got sick anyway. So what are the inspections accomplishing? Do you realize how little of the food supply ever gets inspected before it ends up on your plate? It's laughable. You better have faith in the people working for the companies involved because the regulations aren't going to save you. At most, your next of kin may get a small settlement.
The BP disaster in the gulf, there were a lot of cries for regulation, but the feds already had an organization that was supposed to oversee that kind of drilling operation. Remember the canned paperwork that included information about arctic sea animals? Apparently the government didn't care. Those regulations did nothing to protect the environment, so what do you want? More regulations? The public needs to be shown that these regs achieve something more than just stifling business in this country.
No, it does not. If you can prove that a company intentionally polluted knowing that the pollutants were harmful then by all means, have the EPA bring a lawsuit against them. But I don't believe in punishing everyone because of the possibility of misdeeds by some. I especially don't believe in it if no one realized the pollution was dangerous when the pollution was occurring, unless you could somehow prove that they intentionally didn't look into it or blocked that research. And while coal mining isn't exactly the cleanest job in the world, the bulk of the pollution comes from the consumers of the coal, not from the mines or the miners. Your beef would be with people who warmed their houses with coal, the manufacturer of those furnaces, and the power companies that used coal to produce electricity.
I'm not sure how you can suggest he's not successful when he's made himself tons of money and has his name on buildings all over the globe. Maybe you're playing on the bankruptcies, but that's part of business. The vast majority of his companies were successful. As for issues: border security, vetting of refugees, repatriating US companies, not starting a war with Russia, ditching the TPP, ditching NAFTA, potentially ending our involvement with NATO, rolling back EPA regs, simplifying the tax code, preventing abuses of the H1B program, repealing AHA, and a whole long list of other stuff. As for the odious serial liar bit, Hillary lost.
Like I said, he did campaign on credible issues. This isn't what the EC was meant to guard against. This is sour grapes from a group that doesn't know how to lose.
They did the same thing many years ago when people complained that the latest iPhone got fewer bars of signal. They sent out an update that artificially added bars.
I'm not an elitist, so yes.. anyone off the streets could be President. That's why we have a system of checks and balances. The office of the President really shouldn't have much power. We're not a monarchy. We spend far too much time focusing in on the President and not nearly enough on the other parts of the government.
By the standard you're quoting, Obama shouldn't have been selected either. He was also a populist with not much of a resume for our highest office. Trump is an effective businessman which requires leadership skills. The animosity against him is from people that don't align with his politics, but that's not a disqualification. Love him or hate him, he had relevant issues that he campaigned on. This is not the situation the EC is meant to counter.
Regardless, the people in the effected areas saw their livelihoods taken away by the feds, and there are many examples of this beyond just the coal industry. That's going to create problems. Those problems went unaddressed by the current administration therefore a candidate was able to run using that as part of his platform. It's an example of short-sighted thinking on the part of Democrats. Instead of acknowledging the failures of the party, everyone is screaming about Russia and racism. It's pathetic.
The obstructionist part is hilarious given that his first two years his party had a majority in congress. He couldn't use that to his advantage. He was obstructed by people in his own party. He ran a campaign about transparency and working on both sides of the aisle and instead we got secret meetings and pass it to find out what's in it. Not to mention the "if you like your plan, you can keep it, period." Those failures led to the obstructions. People like Scott Brown were voted in to stop what the Democrats were doing because people didn't like what they were doing. That's part of how our system operates. The last thing you want is a pass-anything rubber stamp, regardless of which party is in power. No good comes of it.
Further, why do we even want massive amounts of change? There seems to be this thing where everyone has to run on a platform of "reform". We have a great country, let's make smaller, more manageable changes that a majority can actually get behind.
There's nothing unlawful with the PEOTUS requesting a list of names and research projects. If this work was funded with taxpayer funds, then the people (including the PEOTUS) have the lawful right to know who was involved. That's part of having transparency in government. What Trump chooses to do with that information, that's a different issue.
Part of the reason Trump won is because a lot of the voting public believes that the federal government is far too massive and invasive. His supporters want to burn some of these departments to the ground. The EPA is a prime target because while the intent may be good, it is a barrier to being able to do business in the US for a number of industries. When you take jobs away from the coal miners, as an example, they're going to vote for someone they think is "on their side" and who will abolish the agency most responsible for the loss of their livelihood. Our current POTUS simply didn't care about the people he harmed, this is the result.
Not a good point because that behavior does drive people away. Presumably meta-moderation is supposed to counter that type of behavior, but I do wonder how many people ever take the time to do so.
Freedom is a pretty good reason. If guns scare you, move to someplace like Chicago that makes it nearly impossible to posses one legally. It's a safe haven in a country of chaos, or so you're logic would have us think.
It's a little out there, but it's not wrong. Contagions can spread in places where there are a lot of people stuck close together, which is what public transport is during the rush. People aren't generally crammed together in their homes or workplaces. Things can still spread, but not easily.
Plus it doesn't run in the snow and the buses they send to substitute for the trains are so few and so misdirected that people end up waiting hours in line to get where they're going.
Flu shots are based on a guess each year of which flu strains to guard against. They've gotten the guess wrong some years, and people ended up with the flu whether they got the shot or not. If you have a weakened immune system, this is a big problem.
Amazon makes it clear who the seller is. Right next to the price it will say "ships from and sold by Amazon". That's clear, right? It may also say "sold by $OtherRetailName and Fulfilled by Amazon". Still clear who the seller is. On the side it may also have "Other Sellers on Amazon". Still clear, right? That's part of what makes Amazon popular. You search for a product and have the option of buying it from a variety of sellers. That's why your example doesn't work. I can't think of something equivalent in the offline world.
There's no hand-waving. It clearly states whom each and every item is sold by. I can sell stuff on Amazon if I want to. In that case I'd be the seller and the fulfillment. Amazon would only do the listing and payment processing. Does that mean I was part of Amazon? No, of course not.
As for the customer not communicating with the 3rd party seller, so what? Why would users want to do that? They chose to purchase the item from a particular seller. Amazon's platform did the grunt work. It's a time saver. In some cases, I buy things on Amazon's site from 3rd parties whom I also sometimes make purchases from on their own sites. Why? Amazon's site is sometimes faster, especially if I'm buying multiple things from different sellers. Sometimes I get cheaper shipping options because the 3rd party has opted into "Prime shipping", but it's not available from their own site. Amazon does provide you the option to contact those sellers, it's up to you if you want to do so. I don't really want to talk to sellers directly, I just want to buy stuff.
That's the whole point, isn't it? The US has people under surveillance but they can't act until a crime has been committed that's worth prosecuting them for. You end up in the situation where an attack happens even though the perpetrators were under surveillance. I'm not sure why you would go after the authorities. They'll come back and say that they weren't high enough on the list to warrant surveillance 24/7. There are a finite number of law enforcers to do that kind of work.
France is trying to be more aggressive by going after people who are watching the recruiting propaganda. It's a tactic. It wouldn't work in the US for a number of reasons, but France isn't the US. This enables the authorities there to go after people sooner before they're on the verge of committing an attack. The guy in this story wasn't just watching videos. He was flying their flag, dressing the part, etc. Those aren't crimes, but taken together, that sure looks like the sign of a mentally ill or brainwashed person. I could see committing that person on the grounds of mental hygiene rather than going through the criminal system. Either that or if the guy is participating in forums known to be run by IS, perhaps that makes it criminal because now he's a member of a known terrorist organization.
The people of France want to be protected against terror attacks. I think we can all understand that. The question is how you accomplish that and if you're willing to accept that any laws like this might someday be used against you. It's clear that what's going on in Europe today isn't working. You have the Brexit. You have other countries considering holding referendums of their own. You have Front Nationale in France in a position to possibly win the Presidency and they've already committed to holding a referendum on the EU if they do win. Open borders failed and now there's a population in the European nations that want to murder their hosts. How do those nations deal with it?
Amazon provides listing services so that your items show up on their site. Amazon provides payment services so that you don't need to worry about credit card processing. Amazon provides warehousing and distribution if you don't want to handle that yourself.
Those are all services that the Amazon platform provides. These are all services that have been provided to retailers by other companies for many, many years. Amazon is not the seller. They were never the owner of the merchandise at any point in time. They may have had it in their possession in a warehouse, but that's not any different than UPS having it in their possession while it's on its way to be delivered.
Your brick and mortar example doesn't really work. Amazon makes it clear that you're buying the product from a specific seller and Amazon may be one of those sellers. The customer makes the choice.
As for Amazon taking a cut of the profit, so does MasterCard and Visa, so does UPS, so do warehouses. You may or may not see that as a customer purchasing an item, but those costs exist for retailers. That doesn't mean the credit company, the courier, or the warehouse have some liability with regard to the merchandise once it has been delivered to the customer.
If it's Amazon itself selling them, yes. If it's a different company listing them on Amazon, no. Amazon is a platform. The seller is the one making the sale.
Amazon could be proactive and protect their image by policing it, but that's their option as the owner of the platform.
Slashdot Mirror
He doesn't have to wait, he's requesting this during the transition process so that he can use his time in office more effectively. That's why they have a transition process.
As for firing people, that's not relevant. All he requested was information. You may think it's so that he can fire people, but that's pure conjecture. The requesting of the information is not illegal and since he's to be the country's lead executive, the agency should comply with the request.
Government officials are responsible for what happened in Flint, not a company. Bhopal was a failure of India's government to protect their people, that had zero to do with the EPA. The city and the army both used the Love Canal site for dumping yet you're only blaming the business that dumped there. There's blame to go around. The city ultimately approved the reuse of the site knowing it had been a toxic dump, so I'd pin the blame on them. Even a quick glance at Wikipedia for the Hinkley case states that scientists are still debating the issue of cancer and the contaminant in question. So again, did they know it was harmful if scientists still can't agree on it? That plays into the point I was making. As far as California is concerned, everything causes cancer.
The EPA has only existed since 1970. Coal mining goes back a bit before those times. I live in the northeast where asbestos is a huge problem. Communities and developers used the excess as fill because it wasn't known to be harmful at the time. There was no dodging of regulations, they really didn't know. Does that mean they were liable? That doesn't seem right. There were no regulations. What you seem to be ignoring is that those regulations almost always get written after there's a disaster.
As for food safety regulations, when issues happen it is the customers that expose it. They get sick, it gets traced back. We've had a bunch of incidents lately and despite having an inspection process, people got sick anyway. So what are the inspections accomplishing? Do you realize how little of the food supply ever gets inspected before it ends up on your plate? It's laughable. You better have faith in the people working for the companies involved because the regulations aren't going to save you. At most, your next of kin may get a small settlement.
The BP disaster in the gulf, there were a lot of cries for regulation, but the feds already had an organization that was supposed to oversee that kind of drilling operation. Remember the canned paperwork that included information about arctic sea animals? Apparently the government didn't care. Those regulations did nothing to protect the environment, so what do you want? More regulations? The public needs to be shown that these regs achieve something more than just stifling business in this country.
You're saying the same thing with different words.
No, it does not. If you can prove that a company intentionally polluted knowing that the pollutants were harmful then by all means, have the EPA bring a lawsuit against them. But I don't believe in punishing everyone because of the possibility of misdeeds by some. I especially don't believe in it if no one realized the pollution was dangerous when the pollution was occurring, unless you could somehow prove that they intentionally didn't look into it or blocked that research. And while coal mining isn't exactly the cleanest job in the world, the bulk of the pollution comes from the consumers of the coal, not from the mines or the miners. Your beef would be with people who warmed their houses with coal, the manufacturer of those furnaces, and the power companies that used coal to produce electricity.
I'm not sure how you can suggest he's not successful when he's made himself tons of money and has his name on buildings all over the globe. Maybe you're playing on the bankruptcies, but that's part of business. The vast majority of his companies were successful. As for issues: border security, vetting of refugees, repatriating US companies, not starting a war with Russia, ditching the TPP, ditching NAFTA, potentially ending our involvement with NATO, rolling back EPA regs, simplifying the tax code, preventing abuses of the H1B program, repealing AHA, and a whole long list of other stuff. As for the odious serial liar bit, Hillary lost.
Like I said, he did campaign on credible issues. This isn't what the EC was meant to guard against. This is sour grapes from a group that doesn't know how to lose.
They did the same thing many years ago when people complained that the latest iPhone got fewer bars of signal. They sent out an update that artificially added bars.
Fool me once.
I'm not an elitist, so yes.. anyone off the streets could be President. That's why we have a system of checks and balances. The office of the President really shouldn't have much power. We're not a monarchy. We spend far too much time focusing in on the President and not nearly enough on the other parts of the government.
By the standard you're quoting, Obama shouldn't have been selected either. He was also a populist with not much of a resume for our highest office. Trump is an effective businessman which requires leadership skills. The animosity against him is from people that don't align with his politics, but that's not a disqualification. Love him or hate him, he had relevant issues that he campaigned on. This is not the situation the EC is meant to counter.
Regardless, the people in the effected areas saw their livelihoods taken away by the feds, and there are many examples of this beyond just the coal industry. That's going to create problems. Those problems went unaddressed by the current administration therefore a candidate was able to run using that as part of his platform. It's an example of short-sighted thinking on the part of Democrats. Instead of acknowledging the failures of the party, everyone is screaming about Russia and racism. It's pathetic.
The obstructionist part is hilarious given that his first two years his party had a majority in congress. He couldn't use that to his advantage. He was obstructed by people in his own party. He ran a campaign about transparency and working on both sides of the aisle and instead we got secret meetings and pass it to find out what's in it. Not to mention the "if you like your plan, you can keep it, period." Those failures led to the obstructions. People like Scott Brown were voted in to stop what the Democrats were doing because people didn't like what they were doing. That's part of how our system operates. The last thing you want is a pass-anything rubber stamp, regardless of which party is in power. No good comes of it.
Further, why do we even want massive amounts of change? There seems to be this thing where everyone has to run on a platform of "reform". We have a great country, let's make smaller, more manageable changes that a majority can actually get behind.
Trump is over 35 and a citizen of the US. He's qualified as per the requirements laid out by the Constitution.
Would you be against this if Trump submitted it as a FOIA request?
There's nothing unlawful with the PEOTUS requesting a list of names and research projects. If this work was funded with taxpayer funds, then the people (including the PEOTUS) have the lawful right to know who was involved. That's part of having transparency in government. What Trump chooses to do with that information, that's a different issue.
Part of the reason Trump won is because a lot of the voting public believes that the federal government is far too massive and invasive. His supporters want to burn some of these departments to the ground. The EPA is a prime target because while the intent may be good, it is a barrier to being able to do business in the US for a number of industries. When you take jobs away from the coal miners, as an example, they're going to vote for someone they think is "on their side" and who will abolish the agency most responsible for the loss of their livelihood. Our current POTUS simply didn't care about the people he harmed, this is the result.
Reagan had no problem doing so.
If he doesn't get confirmed, the US is over.
Not a good point because that behavior does drive people away. Presumably meta-moderation is supposed to counter that type of behavior, but I do wonder how many people ever take the time to do so.
More like being against witch hunts, propaganda, and a misuse of federal funds.
Freedom is a pretty good reason. If guns scare you, move to someplace like Chicago that makes it nearly impossible to posses one legally. It's a safe haven in a country of chaos, or so you're logic would have us think.
It's a little out there, but it's not wrong. Contagions can spread in places where there are a lot of people stuck close together, which is what public transport is during the rush. People aren't generally crammed together in their homes or workplaces. Things can still spread, but not easily.
Plus it doesn't run in the snow and the buses they send to substitute for the trains are so few and so misdirected that people end up waiting hours in line to get where they're going.
Flu shots are based on a guess each year of which flu strains to guard against. They've gotten the guess wrong some years, and people ended up with the flu whether they got the shot or not. If you have a weakened immune system, this is a big problem.
How is Amazon the seller? It's not their merchandise.
Your example isn't really adding any clarity.
Amazon makes it clear who the seller is. Right next to the price it will say "ships from and sold by Amazon". That's clear, right? It may also say "sold by $OtherRetailName and Fulfilled by Amazon". Still clear who the seller is. On the side it may also have "Other Sellers on Amazon". Still clear, right? That's part of what makes Amazon popular. You search for a product and have the option of buying it from a variety of sellers. That's why your example doesn't work. I can't think of something equivalent in the offline world.
There's no hand-waving. It clearly states whom each and every item is sold by. I can sell stuff on Amazon if I want to. In that case I'd be the seller and the fulfillment. Amazon would only do the listing and payment processing. Does that mean I was part of Amazon? No, of course not.
As for the customer not communicating with the 3rd party seller, so what? Why would users want to do that? They chose to purchase the item from a particular seller. Amazon's platform did the grunt work. It's a time saver. In some cases, I buy things on Amazon's site from 3rd parties whom I also sometimes make purchases from on their own sites. Why? Amazon's site is sometimes faster, especially if I'm buying multiple things from different sellers. Sometimes I get cheaper shipping options because the 3rd party has opted into "Prime shipping", but it's not available from their own site. Amazon does provide you the option to contact those sellers, it's up to you if you want to do so. I don't really want to talk to sellers directly, I just want to buy stuff.
That's the whole point, isn't it? The US has people under surveillance but they can't act until a crime has been committed that's worth prosecuting them for. You end up in the situation where an attack happens even though the perpetrators were under surveillance. I'm not sure why you would go after the authorities. They'll come back and say that they weren't high enough on the list to warrant surveillance 24/7. There are a finite number of law enforcers to do that kind of work.
France is trying to be more aggressive by going after people who are watching the recruiting propaganda. It's a tactic. It wouldn't work in the US for a number of reasons, but France isn't the US. This enables the authorities there to go after people sooner before they're on the verge of committing an attack. The guy in this story wasn't just watching videos. He was flying their flag, dressing the part, etc. Those aren't crimes, but taken together, that sure looks like the sign of a mentally ill or brainwashed person. I could see committing that person on the grounds of mental hygiene rather than going through the criminal system. Either that or if the guy is participating in forums known to be run by IS, perhaps that makes it criminal because now he's a member of a known terrorist organization.
The people of France want to be protected against terror attacks. I think we can all understand that. The question is how you accomplish that and if you're willing to accept that any laws like this might someday be used against you. It's clear that what's going on in Europe today isn't working. You have the Brexit. You have other countries considering holding referendums of their own. You have Front Nationale in France in a position to possibly win the Presidency and they've already committed to holding a referendum on the EU if they do win. Open borders failed and now there's a population in the European nations that want to murder their hosts. How do those nations deal with it?
Amazon provides listing services so that your items show up on their site.
Amazon provides payment services so that you don't need to worry about credit card processing.
Amazon provides warehousing and distribution if you don't want to handle that yourself.
Those are all services that the Amazon platform provides. These are all services that have been provided to retailers by other companies for many, many years. Amazon is not the seller. They were never the owner of the merchandise at any point in time. They may have had it in their possession in a warehouse, but that's not any different than UPS having it in their possession while it's on its way to be delivered.
Your brick and mortar example doesn't really work. Amazon makes it clear that you're buying the product from a specific seller and Amazon may be one of those sellers. The customer makes the choice.
As for Amazon taking a cut of the profit, so does MasterCard and Visa, so does UPS, so do warehouses. You may or may not see that as a customer purchasing an item, but those costs exist for retailers. That doesn't mean the credit company, the courier, or the warehouse have some liability with regard to the merchandise once it has been delivered to the customer.
If it's Amazon itself selling them, yes. If it's a different company listing them on Amazon, no. Amazon is a platform. The seller is the one making the sale.
Amazon could be proactive and protect their image by policing it, but that's their option as the owner of the platform.