Well in my mind there's no question that tobacco is far worse than marjiuana, claiming there's no bad side effects at all is always a risky claim to make. There have been studies that indicate that's not the case as it leads to increased risk of schizophrenia, especially when used by adolescents.
I'm not even claiming that's a strong enough reason to keep it banned, just that there are bad side effects.
Skimming the article, it doesn't even seem they considered a very real possibility. That political bias doesn't affect how people perceive temperature, but that people tend to answer polls in a way that reflects well on their personal beliefs even if they know that answer isn't entirely truthful.
Number 3 could be problematic. If a vote could be verified, then it can also be coerced. Or bought. Or extorted.
They can already tell too much just by watching which elections you vote in and extrapolating your likelihood of voting in other elections based on past preferences.
I strongly agree with this, even though I know they'll do their best to keep anyone but the actual voter from being able to confirm. For the same reasons people fear electronic voting with no paper trail is too is a security flaw that will lead to fraud, I feel that any system that allows confirmation will eventually lead to some people's votes being discovered by those who shouldn't have access to them.
And let's face it, any election that can have the result changed by fraud without it immediately being obvious that it was crooked was very close to begin with. I'm not so worried that someone who should have lost 46% to 49% wins the race as I am that the secret ballot is compromised. The secret nature of the ballot is one of the primary aspects of democracy that I feel must be protected at all costs. So I am strongly against ever implementing anything of the sort.
I haven't seen the video in question, so I'm withholding judgment on it, but I think it's possible to say something is morally wrong without it being hate speech. I think lying is morally wrong, but I admit to lying fairly frequently, and suspect most everyone I know does as well. It doesn't bother me in the least being around liars or being friends with them. I certainly don't hate them in the least.
With that being said, even if saying lying is morally wrong might upset some liars, and might not be the most open-minded thing to say, semantically I don't see how it can be hate speech if hate neither motivated the speech nor was called for in it. If someone else made a similar claim about same-sex marriage, even if I disagreed with them, I wouldn't call it hate speech.
That said, hate speech or no, I fully agree that youtube has every right to remove it.
1. Because of the games that are only available consoles. 2. Because the cost of buying a new console every 6-8 years is less than the cost of keeping a computer current enough to play the new games when they come out. 3. Because some people like simplicity, and when you buy a PS3 game, you know it will play on your PS3 without having to look up a single hardware requirement or driver compatibility crash bug report.
For me it's primarily number 1, although number 3 is nice at times. I play both PC and console games, but honestly, there's just far more console exclusives I want to play than PC exclusives, so I spend more time on my console. As a note, both user mods and keyboard/mouse play are supported for at least some of the consoles, even if developers don't always take advantage of it and their might be some extra red tape around the mods.
Yeah, I won't say racism is completely dead, but I do think it's often blown way out of proportion and gone to as the default motivation for the dislike of any minority figure. We all know politics itself provides more than enough reason for vitriolic hate, lies, conspiracy theories, and the like. Identifying racism in such a situation is like listening carefully to figure out if anyone near you is tapping their foot when you're surrounded by jackhammers tearing up the road.
Obama's a Muslim who wasn't born in the US, wants to turn America into a socialist nation, and doesn't mind if Israel is wiped off the map. Bush was secretly behind 9-11 in order to get the support to invade Iraq for its oil. Bill Clinton was a rapist who sold out to the Chinese for campaign funds. I don't really see any noticeable difference in how they're treated by their opponents that would indicate racism was a significant factor.
I'm up for a discounted phone in June. I'm hoping I can lock in two more years of unlimited before this change goes live. At the prices they currently charge for data, I'll switch to a feature phone and carry around my old smartphone in wifi mode before I switch to one of their limited plans.
There's no rule that they can't let you keep the number. It's just not required. That said, I believe it's up to you current carrier to agree to release your number to the new carrier, and we all know how accommodating companies can be about helping you switch to their competitor. Maybe your old carrier gets high marks for customer service, or someone didn't notice it wasn't a local port and gave the green light anyway. Not everyone will be so fortunate.
You can port your number between any major US carrier... Not sure what you are going on about...
Actually, this is only partly true. The ability to keep your number is regulated by the government in the Wireless Local Number Portability. However, as the name might suggest, it's only applies if you're living in the right area code for your cell phone. I don't have that option because I moved across state lines but didn't want to change my number. If I switch carriers, I lose my number.
Registered republican here. I'm not particularly fond of Romney, but I'd decided a long way back that if Ron Paul won the nomination, I wouldn't just vote for a third party, I would vote for Obama. Ron Paul has ideas that are just too extreme for my tastes, and I strikes me as the type that would fight tooth and nail to get his ideas through, whatever the consequences.
I'm sorry, but as long as he keeps calling for the likes of a return to the gold standard, I simply don't trust him in a position of power.
Sure, Sony has done plenty to legitimately earn the scorn of its customers. Still, I myself am one of those who would readily spend money for the right Sony product. I've bought exactly four pieces of hardware from Sony. The PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP. I don't regret any of those purchases, and I fully expect to buy the PS4 when it comes out. I'll probably get the PS Vita eventually as well.
There are two reasons I won't shy away from those purchases. First, I can hardly imagine a feasible scenario where I would withhold money from a company as punishment for a past action. Perhaps in protest an ongoing action such as "I won't buy anything from this company until they stop donating money to terrorist organization X every month." Other than that, I'll take how trustworthy I consider a company into consideration, but ultimately choose the option that provides me the greatest benefit.
There are games exclusive to Sony's system that more than justify buying those gaming consoles in my eyes. It doesn't hurt that I don't believe I've ever actually been harmed by any of Sony's actions, which makes it easier to take a logical rather than emotional approach.
The second reason I'll buy from them is that, whatever laws are in place, I don't consider a corporation a person. Kaz Hirai became the new President and CEO of Sony two weeks ago. What kind of turnover have other executives had? Who was actually responsible for the decisions you loathe, and how many of them even still work for Sony?
I believe the quote from Juan Williams you're looking for is the following:
Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.
It may be a bit pedantic, but that statement is definitely not racist. You can argue it's bigoted, but I wouldn't say it's racist at all. Muslim is not a race, and if you take his statement at face value, it's not even Muslims that make him nervous. Only Muslims that choose to wear Muslim garb on a plane. Not to mention that saying he gets worried and nervous doesn't seem to me as if it should be very controversial at all. Even the claim about identifying primarily as Muslims is still just presented as what's going through his mind when he sees them.
I'll admit to not having the whole context around the statement, but from what I see he never claimed any of those thoughts were fair to the person in question. It speaks of an instinctive response that could speak as much of the culture of country and the nature of what our mass media exposes us to that it would have become an instinctive reaction. Nor is such a statement without merit in discussion.
If that sort of reaction is normal, perhaps we need to rethink how the topic is presented in the media. Or maybe that information would actually be appreciated by Muslims who might not even have considered how their choice of clothing could influence people's first impression of them. They would still have the right to choose to wear that garb, but perhaps for some of them, it isn't important and they want to avoid it. Regardless, I think discussion of this level should be encouraged rather than squelched.
I don't think they'll delay it, as that would be a bit too irresponsible. The individual mandate goes into effect in 2014, and the longer businesses are unsure of which way it will go, the worse off we are. Uncertainty is almost never good for encouraging businesses to hire. The court wants to make their decision and give congress and the president as much time as possible to try to pass new laws to save the bill.
I do find it interesting that they could have crafted it to have almost the same effect while having almost no chance of being declared unconstitutional. Raise taxes on everyone by the amount the fee for not buying health insurance would have been. Anyone who buys health insurance gets a credit on their taxes equal to that amount. Those with earnings low enough that they would have avoided the mandate also avoid the tax in this scenario.
The effect is virtually identical, but it's clearly within congress's power. Of course they took the path they did because raising taxes on the middle class is all but political suicide so it was unlikely to have made it through congress. So they picked their path, and now they have to deal with a congress even less likely to pass a tax increase than the one back when they first made the choice.
PS - My prediction is that the individual mandate is declared unconstitutional. They'll also decide that the parts requiring insurance companies to accept people regardless of preexisting conditions and charge the same amount will be struck as not being able to stand without the mandate. The rest of the law will be left as is.
Oregon Republican Representative Greg Walden responded to Perlmutter during the floor debate by saying:
I think it’s awful that employers think they can demand our passwords and can go snooping around. There is no disagreement with that. Here is the flaw: Your amendment doesn’t protect them. It doesn’t do that. Actually, what this amendment does is say that all of the reforms that we are trying to put in place at the Federal Communications Commission, in order to have them have an open and transparent process where they are required to publish their rules in advance so that you can see what they’re proposing, would basically be shoved aside. They could do whatever they wanted on privacy if they wanted to, and you wouldn’t know it until they published their text afterward. There is no protection here.
I'm not so naive as to take his reasoning at face value, but neither am I so cynical as to assume it's a lie outright. The one thing the text does show me is that I don't know enough about how things currently stand or how the amendment is worded to make an informed decision on whether I would have supported it or not.
Because I don't generally take to boycotts or activism against corporations. When I buy something I ask myself two questions.
1. Do I think the value of this object is greater than the money I'm paying for it.
2. Is there a more cost efficient way to get the same value.
My Sony purchases over my life have been limited to a PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP (and of course related software.) At least for those four items, I don't regret my purchases in the least. I definitely got my money's worth. To be honest, it's pure speculation that I wouldn't feel the same way most people here do if I'd actually been harmed by the company.
I don't listen to music, so I had no impact from the rootkit fiasco. I never had any intention to put Linux on my PS3. Even for the hacking, I'd used a one off password that wasn't reused anywhere else, and didn't have any desire to use the PSN while it was down. So I basically got free games out of the deal without paying any cost.
An interesting take, straight out of "Hugs not Drugs!" But also utter bullshit.
Legalization leads to less abuse by youths, and less abuse overall, lower rates of addiction, and less overall harm.
If you're really trying to "protect" people from dangerous drugs and their ill effects on society, you should be working to legalize or decriminalize just about everything, since the Netherlands experiment shows pretty conclusively that young people have less access to drugs in a legalized marketplace (because black marketeers don't check ID) there's less experimentation among youth, less addiction among youth, and less addiction overall in society. Overall, fewer people take drugs in the Netherlands now that they're de facto legal.
Interesting if true. I'm big on letting people ruin their own lives if they want to. My largest concerns are how it affects people who choose not to take the drugs, and how many children are able to get their hands on them. So I would want to see some very detailed studies, not just on usage numbers, but on how their used as well. Along the lines of alcohol. We know that making it illegal didn't stop consumption, but would people be less likely to drive drunk if even getting caught having consumed alcohol would get you thrown in prison?
I have the same concerns for items such as LSD. If it became legalized, would people be more likely to consume it in public places, while driving, or at other times where they would be more of a danger to others? Would they be more likely to spike food/drink with drugs because they think it's funny? I don't know the answers to these questions, and I'm not implying the answer is likely yes. If everything looks good, I would happily support full legalization.
Maybe we could even take advantage of human nature for a little drug social engineering too. Legalize everything except marijuana. Make it legal to grow and sell in the US to keep down organized crime and drug cartels, but illegal to smoke. Even that can just be a misdemeanor with maybe a fine and community service, but leaving it just edgy enough that kids will tend to favor marijuana as a recreational drug and thus do less damage to themselves than with other options.
There's some truth to the breaking down issue. However, I would think the blame for that falls more in the hands of the universities for not planning ahead if they did have such issues. It's much the same as any piece of hardware. It's not evil to stop producing it. Yeah there were no more new units being made that could replace the ones they originally had. At least there were tens of millions of them out in the wild already. If they hadn't bought enough to last the life of their project prior to change, they should have stocked up once it was announced to make sure there wouldn't be a shortage.
If I recall correctly, the PS3 Slim consoles were announced to not support linux even before they came out and well before the firmware update that removed it from older units. There would have been plenty in store shelves they could have bought up. Granted many university professors might not stay up-to-date on the latest video game news. Still, I'd really like to hear the details of a university that actually was harmed by this prior calling Sony out for it.
You have a lot of things you can be angry at Sony at, but I doubt the universities cared about the removal. How many of them that were using PS3 clusters needed them to access the PSN or play the latest games? You could continue to use linux as long as you wanted if you didn't care about these features.
I would like to highlight the following part in particular.
In a recent Gallup survey, physicians attributed 34 percent of overall healthcare costs to defensive medicine and 21 percent of their practice to be defensive in nature. Specifically, they estimated that 35 percent of diagnostic tests, 29 percent of lab tests, 19 percent of hospitalizations, 14 percent of prescriptions, and 8 percent of surgeries were performed to avoid lawsuits.
Liability reform has been estimated to result in anywhere from a 5 percent to a 34 percent reduction in medical expenditures by reducing defensive medicine practices, with estimates of savings from $54 billion to $650 billion.
I don't know the details about the Texas case in particular, but the very article that gave these numbers mentions Texas and some of the benefits that occurred from the legislative changes. There are other explanations why it wouldn't make a dent in the rate of inflation other than the overall cost being miniscule. It's possible Texas had another area of cost that grew faster than other states and countered the effect. It's also possible that despite the change, doctors didn't change their practice of defensive medicine. Perhaps out of habit, lack of knowledge of the changes, or the changes being too small. I don't know enough to say.
Your criticism of the fraud claim is much more deserved. The examples I gave were small and tended to focus only on the side of the little guy when fraud can also include things such as doctors, hospitals, and the like making fraudulent charges against insurance. I'm sure there are countless ways fraud occurs I haven't even thought of, much less mentioned. Overall though, the matter is far from a joke. The NPR estimated the cost of fraud in the US system at $60 billion to $600 billion a year. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/08/cost-medical-fraud-could-pay-health-care-reform
Yes, this is one of the arguments I like to use when someone is pushing single payer or public health. Just imagine you get the system exactly how you want it. Now the political winds shift as they always do. You don't even have to get too crazy. Just imagine the President/congress combination you've lived through that you hated the most. Now imagine what would happen if they were put in charge of your system.
Even if the system has become so popular it'd be political suicide to roll major parts of it back, they can still choose exactly what's covered and to what extent. Who is denied coverage for this or that procedure on moral or financial grounds. Since they're the only game in town, now you have very few options. That's why I want to keep my options open rather than giving control to government.
America is not Britain, France, Canada, Germany, or any other country. America has it's own citizens with their own culture and their own viewpoints. The fact that we haven't implemented any of the systems these other countries have is proof enough of that. Do you think it won't take years to get public healthcare pushed through? Or even a single payer system? America has too many people that fear big government electing too many politicians who share that view to replicate the system of any of these countries quickly.
While I'll readily admit that some government control and regulation is necessary to fix the system, and described some I would support above, there are no shortage of people who won't make that admission. The less obvious government involvement there is in a proposed system, the more likely you are to be able to get it passed and have it survive legal challenges. It's not a question of coming up with the perfect system, or even the best system. It's a matter of tailoring a system for the US that's the best possible pill the country can actually swallow.
What's sad is when I see people of all stripes debating against public healthcare, forgetting that they're condemning future thinkers or leaders or writers just because they (or their families) can't afford their own healthcare.
I'm normally a very staunch conservative, but healthcare is one of my most liberal viewpoints. Even so, public healthcare isn't necessary to fix the US system. Nor is it a solution by itself. Unless we fix the other major issues, it won't solve the insanely cost inefficient US system. Profits and executive salaries make for a very small fraction of health care cost. (I believe less than 5% combined, although I'd have to research the exact numbers again to confirm.) There are some big issues that need to be addressed however to reign in cost. All three of the following individually add more to costs than the evil profits and executive salaries combined.
1. Wasted administrative costs - Centralize and standardize records, billing, procedure codes, pretty much everything you can. The process should be the same regardless of who your insurance is so less staff and training needed to handle all the different procedures.
2. Lawsuits - The cost of this is twofold and huge. First there's the actual insurance costs, which for high risk practices like neurosurgery can be astronomical. Second is the overly defensive medicine practiced. Doctors will perform more expensive tests and scans even though they know there's no need for them just so that if something does come up down the road, they've covered their rears. Mistakes happen. Caps should be put on the size of payouts against doctors and they should only have any payout if gross negligence can be proven.
3. Fraud - Whether it's homeless people calling 911 for free room and board for night and taking an ambulance to save on cab fair, or those leaving phony names and addresses with the emergency room to skip out on the bill, fraud adds significantly to cost. It can take up bed/staff/ambulance resources that can be needed in real emergencies as well. If we could properly deal with the homeless problem, it would solve part of the issue, and universal healthcare would solve more. No need to skip the bill if you're not paying. Still, we do need to go after and prosecute serial abusers of the system.
Now, if you solve all the issues above, I think you'll find the cost efficiency of the US system will come more in line with other countries. Then you can solve the other gaping problems without bankrupting the nation. Obviously universal healthcare, but you don't need to make it public or single payer. First regulate standard coverage that [b]must[/b] be covered by all insurance providers. Then require everyone to purchase health insurance (the government subsidizes the cost for those of low income.) There's no denial for preexisting conditions, and no dropping people or refusing to pay the mandated coverage.
Now, insurance companies can only compete it cost and value added services, such as covering no mandatory procedures like certain cosmetic surgeries or the like. You can even have nonprofit insurance organizes like co-ops compete with banks if people are really afraid of the cost of profits.
That's very true, but we're a long way from that sort of market penetration at the moment. Nor is it likely to help me the next time I go car shopping. Despite paying for pools, tennis courts, playgrounds, and other such features I never use, I find it doubtful I'll convince the other members of the association to hook up plugs for electric cars in the parking lots anytime soon.
Well, if I was wrong, at least I already apologized for it in my first post and all my yous after the first paragraph were universal yous anyway. As I said, I mostly wanted to rant. Anyway, I won't go in to much detail, because others have already done so in reply to you. But I will summarize that, while the source your electricity may vary by region, electric cars are at least, on average, significantly greener than gasoline cars. They also have the potential to become even greener as, presumably, more renewable power sources are going to be added to the grid.
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Well in my mind there's no question that tobacco is far worse than marjiuana, claiming there's no bad side effects at all is always a risky claim to make. There have been studies that indicate that's not the case as it leads to increased risk of schizophrenia, especially when used by adolescents.
I'm not even claiming that's a strong enough reason to keep it banned, just that there are bad side effects.
Skimming the article, it doesn't even seem they considered a very real possibility. That political bias doesn't affect how people perceive temperature, but that people tend to answer polls in a way that reflects well on their personal beliefs even if they know that answer isn't entirely truthful.
Number 3 could be problematic. If a vote could be verified, then it can also be coerced. Or bought. Or extorted.
They can already tell too much just by watching which elections you vote in and extrapolating your likelihood of voting in other elections based on past preferences.
I strongly agree with this, even though I know they'll do their best to keep anyone but the actual voter from being able to confirm. For the same reasons people fear electronic voting with no paper trail is too is a security flaw that will lead to fraud, I feel that any system that allows confirmation will eventually lead to some people's votes being discovered by those who shouldn't have access to them.
And let's face it, any election that can have the result changed by fraud without it immediately being obvious that it was crooked was very close to begin with. I'm not so worried that someone who should have lost 46% to 49% wins the race as I am that the secret ballot is compromised. The secret nature of the ballot is one of the primary aspects of democracy that I feel must be protected at all costs. So I am strongly against ever implementing anything of the sort.
I haven't seen the video in question, so I'm withholding judgment on it, but I think it's possible to say something is morally wrong without it being hate speech. I think lying is morally wrong, but I admit to lying fairly frequently, and suspect most everyone I know does as well. It doesn't bother me in the least being around liars or being friends with them. I certainly don't hate them in the least.
With that being said, even if saying lying is morally wrong might upset some liars, and might not be the most open-minded thing to say, semantically I don't see how it can be hate speech if hate neither motivated the speech nor was called for in it. If someone else made a similar claim about same-sex marriage, even if I disagreed with them, I wouldn't call it hate speech.
That said, hate speech or no, I fully agree that youtube has every right to remove it.
1. Because of the games that are only available consoles.
2. Because the cost of buying a new console every 6-8 years is less than the cost of keeping a computer current enough to play the new games when they come out.
3. Because some people like simplicity, and when you buy a PS3 game, you know it will play on your PS3 without having to look up a single hardware requirement or driver compatibility crash bug report.
For me it's primarily number 1, although number 3 is nice at times. I play both PC and console games, but honestly, there's just far more console exclusives I want to play than PC exclusives, so I spend more time on my console. As a note, both user mods and keyboard/mouse play are supported for at least some of the consoles, even if developers don't always take advantage of it and their might be some extra red tape around the mods.
Yeah, I won't say racism is completely dead, but I do think it's often blown way out of proportion and gone to as the default motivation for the dislike of any minority figure. We all know politics itself provides more than enough reason for vitriolic hate, lies, conspiracy theories, and the like. Identifying racism in such a situation is like listening carefully to figure out if anyone near you is tapping their foot when you're surrounded by jackhammers tearing up the road.
Obama's a Muslim who wasn't born in the US, wants to turn America into a socialist nation, and doesn't mind if Israel is wiped off the map. Bush was secretly behind 9-11 in order to get the support to invade Iraq for its oil. Bill Clinton was a rapist who sold out to the Chinese for campaign funds. I don't really see any noticeable difference in how they're treated by their opponents that would indicate racism was a significant factor.
I'm up for a discounted phone in June. I'm hoping I can lock in two more years of unlimited before this change goes live. At the prices they currently charge for data, I'll switch to a feature phone and carry around my old smartphone in wifi mode before I switch to one of their limited plans.
There's no rule that they can't let you keep the number. It's just not required. That said, I believe it's up to you current carrier to agree to release your number to the new carrier, and we all know how accommodating companies can be about helping you switch to their competitor. Maybe your old carrier gets high marks for customer service, or someone didn't notice it wasn't a local port and gave the green light anyway. Not everyone will be so fortunate.
You can port your number between any major US carrier... Not sure what you are going on about...
Actually, this is only partly true. The ability to keep your number is regulated by the government in the Wireless Local Number Portability. However, as the name might suggest, it's only applies if you're living in the right area code for your cell phone. I don't have that option because I moved across state lines but didn't want to change my number. If I switch carriers, I lose my number.
Registered republican here. I'm not particularly fond of Romney, but I'd decided a long way back that if Ron Paul won the nomination, I wouldn't just vote for a third party, I would vote for Obama. Ron Paul has ideas that are just too extreme for my tastes, and I strikes me as the type that would fight tooth and nail to get his ideas through, whatever the consequences.
I'm sorry, but as long as he keeps calling for the likes of a return to the gold standard, I simply don't trust him in a position of power.
As glad as I am we got rid of CFCs, it's actually a bit of a funny story where things went from there. The replacement chemicals for CFCs are greenhouses gasses over 4,000 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901817.html
Sure, Sony has done plenty to legitimately earn the scorn of its customers. Still, I myself am one of those who would readily spend money for the right Sony product. I've bought exactly four pieces of hardware from Sony. The PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP. I don't regret any of those purchases, and I fully expect to buy the PS4 when it comes out. I'll probably get the PS Vita eventually as well.
There are two reasons I won't shy away from those purchases. First, I can hardly imagine a feasible scenario where I would withhold money from a company as punishment for a past action. Perhaps in protest an ongoing action such as "I won't buy anything from this company until they stop donating money to terrorist organization X every month." Other than that, I'll take how trustworthy I consider a company into consideration, but ultimately choose the option that provides me the greatest benefit.
There are games exclusive to Sony's system that more than justify buying those gaming consoles in my eyes. It doesn't hurt that I don't believe I've ever actually been harmed by any of Sony's actions, which makes it easier to take a logical rather than emotional approach.
The second reason I'll buy from them is that, whatever laws are in place, I don't consider a corporation a person. Kaz Hirai became the new President and CEO of Sony two weeks ago. What kind of turnover have other executives had? Who was actually responsible for the decisions you loathe, and how many of them even still work for Sony?
I believe the quote from Juan Williams you're looking for is the following:
Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.
It may be a bit pedantic, but that statement is definitely not racist. You can argue it's bigoted, but I wouldn't say it's racist at all. Muslim is not a race, and if you take his statement at face value, it's not even Muslims that make him nervous. Only Muslims that choose to wear Muslim garb on a plane. Not to mention that saying he gets worried and nervous doesn't seem to me as if it should be very controversial at all. Even the claim about identifying primarily as Muslims is still just presented as what's going through his mind when he sees them.
I'll admit to not having the whole context around the statement, but from what I see he never claimed any of those thoughts were fair to the person in question. It speaks of an instinctive response that could speak as much of the culture of country and the nature of what our mass media exposes us to that it would have become an instinctive reaction. Nor is such a statement without merit in discussion.
If that sort of reaction is normal, perhaps we need to rethink how the topic is presented in the media. Or maybe that information would actually be appreciated by Muslims who might not even have considered how their choice of clothing could influence people's first impression of them. They would still have the right to choose to wear that garb, but perhaps for some of them, it isn't important and they want to avoid it. Regardless, I think discussion of this level should be encouraged rather than squelched.
I don't think they'll delay it, as that would be a bit too irresponsible. The individual mandate goes into effect in 2014, and the longer businesses are unsure of which way it will go, the worse off we are. Uncertainty is almost never good for encouraging businesses to hire. The court wants to make their decision and give congress and the president as much time as possible to try to pass new laws to save the bill.
I do find it interesting that they could have crafted it to have almost the same effect while having almost no chance of being declared unconstitutional. Raise taxes on everyone by the amount the fee for not buying health insurance would have been. Anyone who buys health insurance gets a credit on their taxes equal to that amount. Those with earnings low enough that they would have avoided the mandate also avoid the tax in this scenario.
The effect is virtually identical, but it's clearly within congress's power. Of course they took the path they did because raising taxes on the middle class is all but political suicide so it was unlikely to have made it through congress. So they picked their path, and now they have to deal with a congress even less likely to pass a tax increase than the one back when they first made the choice.
PS - My prediction is that the individual mandate is declared unconstitutional. They'll also decide that the parts requiring insurance companies to accept people regardless of preexisting conditions and charge the same amount will be struck as not being able to stand without the mandate. The rest of the law will be left as is.
Oregon Republican Representative Greg Walden responded to Perlmutter during the floor debate by saying:
I think it’s awful that employers think they can demand our passwords and can go snooping around. There is no disagreement with that. Here is the flaw: Your amendment doesn’t protect them. It doesn’t do that. Actually, what this amendment does is say that all of the reforms that we are trying to put in place at the Federal Communications Commission, in order to have them have an open and transparent process where they are required to publish their rules in advance so that you can see what they’re proposing, would basically be shoved aside. They could do whatever they wanted on privacy if they wanted to, and you wouldn’t know it until they published their text afterward. There is no protection here.
I'm not so naive as to take his reasoning at face value, but neither am I so cynical as to assume it's a lie outright. The one thing the text does show me is that I don't know enough about how things currently stand or how the amendment is worded to make an informed decision on whether I would have supported it or not.
Because I don't generally take to boycotts or activism against corporations. When I buy something I ask myself two questions.
1. Do I think the value of this object is greater than the money I'm paying for it.
2. Is there a more cost efficient way to get the same value.
My Sony purchases over my life have been limited to a PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP (and of course related software.) At least for those four items, I don't regret my purchases in the least. I definitely got my money's worth. To be honest, it's pure speculation that I wouldn't feel the same way most people here do if I'd actually been harmed by the company.
I don't listen to music, so I had no impact from the rootkit fiasco. I never had any intention to put Linux on my PS3. Even for the hacking, I'd used a one off password that wasn't reused anywhere else, and didn't have any desire to use the PSN while it was down. So I basically got free games out of the deal without paying any cost.
An interesting take, straight out of "Hugs not Drugs!" But also utter bullshit.
Legalization leads to less abuse by youths, and less abuse overall, lower rates of addiction, and less overall harm.
If you're really trying to "protect" people from dangerous drugs and their ill effects on society, you should be working to legalize or decriminalize just about everything, since the Netherlands experiment shows pretty conclusively that young people have less access to drugs in a legalized marketplace (because black marketeers don't check ID) there's less experimentation among youth, less addiction among youth, and less addiction overall in society. Overall, fewer people take drugs in the Netherlands now that they're de facto legal.
Interesting if true. I'm big on letting people ruin their own lives if they want to. My largest concerns are how it affects people who choose not to take the drugs, and how many children are able to get their hands on them. So I would want to see some very detailed studies, not just on usage numbers, but on how their used as well. Along the lines of alcohol. We know that making it illegal didn't stop consumption, but would people be less likely to drive drunk if even getting caught having consumed alcohol would get you thrown in prison?
I have the same concerns for items such as LSD. If it became legalized, would people be more likely to consume it in public places, while driving, or at other times where they would be more of a danger to others? Would they be more likely to spike food/drink with drugs because they think it's funny? I don't know the answers to these questions, and I'm not implying the answer is likely yes. If everything looks good, I would happily support full legalization.
Maybe we could even take advantage of human nature for a little drug social engineering too. Legalize everything except marijuana. Make it legal to grow and sell in the US to keep down organized crime and drug cartels, but illegal to smoke. Even that can just be a misdemeanor with maybe a fine and community service, but leaving it just edgy enough that kids will tend to favor marijuana as a recreational drug and thus do less damage to themselves than with other options.
There's some truth to the breaking down issue. However, I would think the blame for that falls more in the hands of the universities for not planning ahead if they did have such issues. It's much the same as any piece of hardware. It's not evil to stop producing it. Yeah there were no more new units being made that could replace the ones they originally had. At least there were tens of millions of them out in the wild already. If they hadn't bought enough to last the life of their project prior to change, they should have stocked up once it was announced to make sure there wouldn't be a shortage.
If I recall correctly, the PS3 Slim consoles were announced to not support linux even before they came out and well before the firmware update that removed it from older units. There would have been plenty in store shelves they could have bought up. Granted many university professors might not stay up-to-date on the latest video game news. Still, I'd really like to hear the details of a university that actually was harmed by this prior calling Sony out for it.
You have a lot of things you can be angry at Sony at, but I doubt the universities cared about the removal. How many of them that were using PS3 clusters needed them to access the PSN or play the latest games? You could continue to use linux as long as you wanted if you didn't care about these features.
I find it hard to consider lawsuits a miniscule part of the problem, have a look at the following link if you disagree. http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/dec10/advocacy2.asp
I would like to highlight the following part in particular.
In a recent Gallup survey, physicians attributed 34 percent of overall healthcare costs to defensive medicine and 21 percent of their practice to be defensive in nature. Specifically, they estimated that 35 percent of diagnostic tests, 29 percent of lab tests, 19 percent of hospitalizations, 14 percent of prescriptions, and 8 percent of surgeries were performed to avoid lawsuits.
Liability reform has been estimated to result in anywhere from a 5 percent to a 34 percent reduction in medical expenditures by reducing defensive medicine practices, with estimates of savings from $54 billion to $650 billion.
I don't know the details about the Texas case in particular, but the very article that gave these numbers mentions Texas and some of the benefits that occurred from the legislative changes. There are other explanations why it wouldn't make a dent in the rate of inflation other than the overall cost being miniscule. It's possible Texas had another area of cost that grew faster than other states and countered the effect. It's also possible that despite the change, doctors didn't change their practice of defensive medicine. Perhaps out of habit, lack of knowledge of the changes, or the changes being too small. I don't know enough to say.
Your criticism of the fraud claim is much more deserved. The examples I gave were small and tended to focus only on the side of the little guy when fraud can also include things such as doctors, hospitals, and the like making fraudulent charges against insurance. I'm sure there are countless ways fraud occurs I haven't even thought of, much less mentioned. Overall though, the matter is far from a joke. The NPR estimated the cost of fraud in the US system at $60 billion to $600 billion a year. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/08/cost-medical-fraud-could-pay-health-care-reform
Yes, this is one of the arguments I like to use when someone is pushing single payer or public health. Just imagine you get the system exactly how you want it. Now the political winds shift as they always do. You don't even have to get too crazy. Just imagine the President/congress combination you've lived through that you hated the most. Now imagine what would happen if they were put in charge of your system.
Even if the system has become so popular it'd be political suicide to roll major parts of it back, they can still choose exactly what's covered and to what extent. Who is denied coverage for this or that procedure on moral or financial grounds. Since they're the only game in town, now you have very few options. That's why I want to keep my options open rather than giving control to government.
America is not Britain, France, Canada, Germany, or any other country. America has it's own citizens with their own culture and their own viewpoints. The fact that we haven't implemented any of the systems these other countries have is proof enough of that. Do you think it won't take years to get public healthcare pushed through? Or even a single payer system? America has too many people that fear big government electing too many politicians who share that view to replicate the system of any of these countries quickly.
While I'll readily admit that some government control and regulation is necessary to fix the system, and described some I would support above, there are no shortage of people who won't make that admission. The less obvious government involvement there is in a proposed system, the more likely you are to be able to get it passed and have it survive legal challenges. It's not a question of coming up with the perfect system, or even the best system. It's a matter of tailoring a system for the US that's the best possible pill the country can actually swallow.
What's sad is when I see people of all stripes debating against public healthcare, forgetting that they're condemning future thinkers or leaders or writers just because they (or their families) can't afford their own healthcare.
I'm normally a very staunch conservative, but healthcare is one of my most liberal viewpoints. Even so, public healthcare isn't necessary to fix the US system. Nor is it a solution by itself. Unless we fix the other major issues, it won't solve the insanely cost inefficient US system. Profits and executive salaries make for a very small fraction of health care cost. (I believe less than 5% combined, although I'd have to research the exact numbers again to confirm.) There are some big issues that need to be addressed however to reign in cost. All three of the following individually add more to costs than the evil profits and executive salaries combined.
1. Wasted administrative costs - Centralize and standardize records, billing, procedure codes, pretty much everything you can. The process should be the same regardless of who your insurance is so less staff and training needed to handle all the different procedures.
2. Lawsuits - The cost of this is twofold and huge. First there's the actual insurance costs, which for high risk practices like neurosurgery can be astronomical. Second is the overly defensive medicine practiced. Doctors will perform more expensive tests and scans even though they know there's no need for them just so that if something does come up down the road, they've covered their rears. Mistakes happen. Caps should be put on the size of payouts against doctors and they should only have any payout if gross negligence can be proven.
3. Fraud - Whether it's homeless people calling 911 for free room and board for night and taking an ambulance to save on cab fair, or those leaving phony names and addresses with the emergency room to skip out on the bill, fraud adds significantly to cost. It can take up bed/staff/ambulance resources that can be needed in real emergencies as well. If we could properly deal with the homeless problem, it would solve part of the issue, and universal healthcare would solve more. No need to skip the bill if you're not paying. Still, we do need to go after and prosecute serial abusers of the system.
Now, if you solve all the issues above, I think you'll find the cost efficiency of the US system will come more in line with other countries. Then you can solve the other gaping problems without bankrupting the nation. Obviously universal healthcare, but you don't need to make it public or single payer. First regulate standard coverage that [b]must[/b] be covered by all insurance providers. Then require everyone to purchase health insurance (the government subsidizes the cost for those of low income.) There's no denial for preexisting conditions, and no dropping people or refusing to pay the mandated coverage.
Now, insurance companies can only compete it cost and value added services, such as covering no mandatory procedures like certain cosmetic surgeries or the like. You can even have nonprofit insurance organizes like co-ops compete with banks if people are really afraid of the cost of profits.
That's very true, but we're a long way from that sort of market penetration at the moment. Nor is it likely to help me the next time I go car shopping. Despite paying for pools, tennis courts, playgrounds, and other such features I never use, I find it doubtful I'll convince the other members of the association to hook up plugs for electric cars in the parking lots anytime soon.
Well, if I was wrong, at least I already apologized for it in my first post and all my yous after the first paragraph were universal yous anyway. As I said, I mostly wanted to rant. Anyway, I won't go in to much detail, because others have already done so in reply to you. But I will summarize that, while the source your electricity may vary by region, electric cars are at least, on average, significantly greener than gasoline cars. They also have the potential to become even greener as, presumably, more renewable power sources are going to be added to the grid.