What needs to change is that we need an informed and engaged electorate
Do you think most of Western Europe just has smarter more engaged people? Americans are just less intelligent or less interested in politics?
This is something of a chicken/egg situation. Until you get the money more regulated in politics, and get TV/Radio ads held to higher standards of honesty, the population will never become more informed. As long as MSNBC and Fox can twist the truth so extremely as to make their message so misleading that is literally is causing harm in society... the electorate will not become more informed.
As for money, there may be an infinite amount of ways to inject money into politics, but there are probably an infinite amount of ways to regulate it. How would we prevent an organization from receiving money from a millionaire and donating that on his/her behalf? Simple. Organizations/Corporations cannot spend money on anything that a court of law would rule is related to politics. The only organization that is allowed to spend money talking about the campaign or politics in general, would be the campaign itself. And that money would be capped each election cycle. Harsh? Yeah. But it could be done. Or... since corporations are apparently people, each corporation is treated like a person. They get to spend that same 100 dollars (total) that a real person can spend. That goes for any PAC as well.
We basically need our constitution amended to fix the democracy.
Let's turn the situation around: suppose you and your children are walking on the street. Will you still prefer the autonomous car to protect it's single driver at all costs and kill you and your children instead? And then imagine how many autonomous cars will be on the road in the future, all with that same logic built-in...
I'm not sure about the world, but that is definitely an issue with the US. Gun laws for instance. Despite data saying you are more likely to get shot if you own a gun, and/or more likely to have the gun wrestled away from you, and/or more likely to have your kid shoot himself....despite lots of data suggesting that more guns does not equal more safety, people basically say "screw the statistics, I am different. I am NOT a cog in society. I am not one of the sheep. I will beat the odds. If someone breaks into my house, they won't wrestle the gun from me!".
There is some odd logic in the US that prioritizes individual freedom over any real world data suggesting a restriction on that individual's freedom is a net benefit to that individual! People continually vote for things that are not in their best interest, justifying that vote because it was against some sort of restriction or regulation.
This has nothing to do with the tea party. If you are a rich person who wants to spend his money on advocating for a particular political cause by buying tv spots, printing signs, etc, I don't see how a free society can make this illegal.
We do limit free speech in cases of that speech harming society. The old saying "Can't yell fire in a crowded theater", etc.. other country's have heavier regulations around the spending of cash on political advertisements.
Right now you can basically say anything, even flat out lies, in political ads and speeches and face no consequences.
Something needs to change. Either level the playing field (between the super wealthy and the average citizen) by restricting the amounts that can be spent, or strengthen libel and slander laws to govern political speech. Most other modern countries do both those things to a greater extent than the US.
I'd think true Liberals, in theory those in favor of liberty one would imagine, would have cheered the ability for anyone to band together and form a PAC to promote their interests.
Liberal's weren't against banding together to spend on political issues. Most were against the notion of "unlimited" spending. Income and wealth inequality is way too great in the US to allow unlimited spending. Realistically (not theoretically) there is no chance of enough average voters pooling resources to overcome something like the Koch Brother's wealth.
I'd be more than happy saying that everyone can donate some small amount to any candidate, like 100 dollars. That includes Bill Gates and Koch. They can donate 100 dollars to candidate X, and that is it. No more.
The goal is to restore the notion of 1 voice 1 vote. Not 1 dollar 1 vote.
I think I would be more happy about the SuperPAC issue if we had some stronger libel and slander laws around political speech. The "issue Ads" basically can flat out lie and no one holds them accountable. That is a trillion or so dollars lying on a massive scale each election cycle.... and we blame the average voter for not voting intelligently....
The point is you really DON'T need rich people to fight these big budgets, regular people can do it in large numbers, and really the numbers are in their favour.
Yes... in theory. However, in practice, the majority of the information flow in this country is controlled by the wealthy 1%. And the average voter is a low information voter. That will never, ever, change. So whoever is informing the masses is in control of the votes of a majority of the population.
So yes, we really do need many altruistic billionaires to fight against the misinformation and distortion machinery that the wealth 1% control in order to effect real change that cuts deep into the power centers of this country.
Curious, do you know if the SCOTUS ever attempted to define the term 'Arms'?
I guess if I am interpreting the second amendment correctly, the purpose of owning the Arms is to ensure the freedom of a State (against a federal gov and/or tyrant). If that is true, then the Arms in question would need to be powerful enough to ensure that freedom. And in that case, Arms should include things like jets/tanks/nukes right?
I thought the stats showed something like, for every person who successfully defends against an attack using their personal gun, 5 people are killed with their own gun when it is wrestled away from them? That stat alone (if I remember it correctly) would make me want to carry a gun that couldn't be used against me.
Everyone believes that they will be that 1 person that lives, not the 5 that died by their own gun. Or the 3-4 who get shot by their kid or neighbor kid, or the wife shot by her husband when he wrestles the gun away, etc..
Good CGI (like Gravity) when used appropriately still adds value to a movie. The problem is that CGI is so easy/cheap to do now, it is being used all over the place in movies, and it is replacing character development.
Don't get me started on shaky cam.... I couldn't even watch the new Superman.
The city owns the water pipes and the flow of water through them. I see no reason why the Fiber shouldn't also be owned and maintained by the city. ISP's could lease the Fiber use to deliver connectivity to clients.
Well, Vaph is right that it costs money to maintain the grid infrastructure. So if you are connected to the grid and paying zero dollars, you really are a moocher.
However, what he/she concludes is wrong. The right answer is making everyone, not just solar users, pay a baseline "maintenance fee" for the privilege of being connected to the grid. That is how a physical phone line works. 20-30 bucks a month regardless of whether you make a call.
Ban political contributions altogther, beginning of solving the problem.
It isn't political contributions so much as it is the 3rd party PAC's spending hundreds of millions on advertisements, "studies/reports", and employing talking heads to sway the opinions of the people. We really need to ban TV and radio "issue" advertisements that are obviously of a political nature. As well as extend libel and slander laws to political speech.
Political contributions would still be useful, if by law, it were equalized. Make it so that any single person can donate up to 100 dollars total per year to candidates. That would help restore the notion of 1 voice 1 vote.
But all that aside, none of it matters if the primary system continues to spit out crappy candidates. We need a better system of getting real, honest, "not power hungry" people into politics. I'm not exactly sure how to make that happen.
Solar and wind cannot do the job by themselves due to their unpredictability
If we start building energy storage into the grid, that issues goes away. That could easily be done in a 40 year timescale. The problem, is that year after year, we (the USA) continue to do nothing.
And those 97% of climate scientists would be generally paid nothing if it were determined they'd been flat out wrong
Who has more money: Universities, NSF, etc.. or the oil and coal industry? It boggles my mind that you think a serious climate scientist who observed, tested, and found serious errors in the current understanding of climate science, would not immediately receive a metric ton of funding from oil and coal companies.
That is what I kept telling conservative friends about mandatory health insurance (Obamacare): do you want to pay for the uninsured people to get service from an expensive emergency room, or do you want to pay for regular preventative care, non-emergency care, for the uninsured? Because either way we are going to subsidize health insurance for the poor, so long as we legally mandate that ER's must take care of anyone.
The only reason states are changing the methodology is because protesters have been fairly effective in curtailing supplies of the materials used previously.
I was under the impression that the lack of drugs used for the death penalty, was mainly the result of a decision by the Italian government to not allow a US company to produce their drugs in Italy and subsequently a decision by a Dutch company to not sell its drug recipe/patent to a US company.
Were those decisions lobbied by US protestors? Your sentence makes it sound like they were, but this would be first I'm hearing about it.
The midwest issue is left over corn from distilling. The breweries are left over grains like barely, wheat, etc..
"this widespread, extant problem is being addressed by these new regulations."
I sure hope not. It is two completely different sources of feed, and mostly two different animals. The barely and wheat is being fed to cattle, while the corn is mainly being used to feed hogs.
I like your ideas, but #6 won't work with the current income inequality in the US. As long as we have cities that are basically failed governments (Detroit, etc..), gun violence will be high.
Law will always have many terms that will be defined relative to the time, culture, and norms of a society. Defining something like "reasonable person" will always require some sort of judgement call. Hence, why we have judges.
I speak from experience when I share you exasperation over why law feels so lose and subjective. As a programmer/computer guy, I tend to like more black/white solutions. Unfortunately, Law is always going to contain a lot of grey areas, and require a lot of judgements, in context, to determine outcomes.
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What needs to change is that we need an informed and engaged electorate
Do you think most of Western Europe just has smarter more engaged people? Americans are just less intelligent or less interested in politics?
This is something of a chicken/egg situation. Until you get the money more regulated in politics, and get TV/Radio ads held to higher standards of honesty, the population will never become more informed. As long as MSNBC and Fox can twist the truth so extremely as to make their message so misleading that is literally is causing harm in society... the electorate will not become more informed.
As for money, there may be an infinite amount of ways to inject money into politics, but there are probably an infinite amount of ways to regulate it. How would we prevent an organization from receiving money from a millionaire and donating that on his/her behalf? Simple. Organizations/Corporations cannot spend money on anything that a court of law would rule is related to politics. The only organization that is allowed to spend money talking about the campaign or politics in general, would be the campaign itself. And that money would be capped each election cycle. Harsh? Yeah. But it could be done. Or... since corporations are apparently people, each corporation is treated like a person. They get to spend that same 100 dollars (total) that a real person can spend. That goes for any PAC as well.
We basically need our constitution amended to fix the democracy.
Screw other people
And this is what is wrong with the world.
Let's turn the situation around: suppose you and your children are walking on the street. Will you still prefer the autonomous car to protect it's single driver at all costs and kill you and your children instead? And then imagine how many autonomous cars will be on the road in the future, all with that same logic built-in...
I'm not sure about the world, but that is definitely an issue with the US. Gun laws for instance. Despite data saying you are more likely to get shot if you own a gun, and/or more likely to have the gun wrestled away from you, and/or more likely to have your kid shoot himself....despite lots of data suggesting that more guns does not equal more safety, people basically say "screw the statistics, I am different. I am NOT a cog in society. I am not one of the sheep. I will beat the odds. If someone breaks into my house, they won't wrestle the gun from me!".
There is some odd logic in the US that prioritizes individual freedom over any real world data suggesting a restriction on that individual's freedom is a net benefit to that individual! People continually vote for things that are not in their best interest, justifying that vote because it was against some sort of restriction or regulation.
This has nothing to do with the tea party. If you are a rich person who wants to spend his money on advocating for a particular political cause by buying tv spots, printing signs, etc, I don't see how a free society can make this illegal.
We do limit free speech in cases of that speech harming society. The old saying "Can't yell fire in a crowded theater", etc.. other country's have heavier regulations around the spending of cash on political advertisements.
Right now you can basically say anything, even flat out lies, in political ads and speeches and face no consequences.
Something needs to change. Either level the playing field (between the super wealthy and the average citizen) by restricting the amounts that can be spent, or strengthen libel and slander laws to govern political speech. Most other modern countries do both those things to a greater extent than the US.
I'd think true Liberals, in theory those in favor of liberty one would imagine, would have cheered the ability for anyone to band together and form a PAC to promote their interests.
Liberal's weren't against banding together to spend on political issues. Most were against the notion of "unlimited" spending. Income and wealth inequality is way too great in the US to allow unlimited spending. Realistically (not theoretically) there is no chance of enough average voters pooling resources to overcome something like the Koch Brother's wealth.
I'd be more than happy saying that everyone can donate some small amount to any candidate, like 100 dollars. That includes Bill Gates and Koch. They can donate 100 dollars to candidate X, and that is it. No more.
The goal is to restore the notion of 1 voice 1 vote. Not 1 dollar 1 vote.
I think I would be more happy about the SuperPAC issue if we had some stronger libel and slander laws around political speech. The "issue Ads" basically can flat out lie and no one holds them accountable. That is a trillion or so dollars lying on a massive scale each election cycle.... and we blame the average voter for not voting intelligently....
This has nothing to do with banning corporate (or wealthy) political speech.
The point is you really DON'T need rich people to fight these big budgets, regular people can do it in large numbers, and really the numbers are in their favour.
Yes... in theory. However, in practice, the majority of the information flow in this country is controlled by the wealthy 1%. And the average voter is a low information voter. That will never, ever, change. So whoever is informing the masses is in control of the votes of a majority of the population.
So yes, we really do need many altruistic billionaires to fight against the misinformation and distortion machinery that the wealth 1% control in order to effect real change that cuts deep into the power centers of this country.
How does this work exactly? You walk into a Versizon store and just ask to sign up for a plan, and ask just for a SIM card, not a phone?
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/sims/pay-as-you-go
Is this a UK/Europe thing only?
Is it still only AT&T or T-Mobile networks?
Curious, do you know if the SCOTUS ever attempted to define the term 'Arms'?
I guess if I am interpreting the second amendment correctly, the purpose of owning the Arms is to ensure the freedom of a State (against a federal gov and/or tyrant). If that is true, then the Arms in question would need to be powerful enough to ensure that freedom. And in that case, Arms should include things like jets/tanks/nukes right?
I thought the stats showed something like, for every person who successfully defends against an attack using their personal gun, 5 people are killed with their own gun when it is wrestled away from them? That stat alone (if I remember it correctly) would make me want to carry a gun that couldn't be used against me.
Everyone believes that they will be that 1 person that lives, not the 5 that died by their own gun. Or the 3-4 who get shot by their kid or neighbor kid, or the wife shot by her husband when he wrestles the gun away, etc..
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/04/carry-a-gun-you-get-shot-more/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2014/02/having-gun-house-doesnt-make-woman-safer/8474/
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
http://www.examiner.com/article/possessing-a-gun-makes-you-less-safe-not-more-safe
http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-person-youre-most-likely-to-kill-with-your-gun-is-you/
Good CGI (like Gravity) when used appropriately still adds value to a movie. The problem is that CGI is so easy/cheap to do now, it is being used all over the place in movies, and it is replacing character development.
Don't get me started on shaky cam.... I couldn't even watch the new Superman.
The city owns the water pipes and the flow of water through them. I see no reason why the Fiber shouldn't also be owned and maintained by the city. ISP's could lease the Fiber use to deliver connectivity to clients.
Well, Vaph is right that it costs money to maintain the grid infrastructure. So if you are connected to the grid and paying zero dollars, you really are a moocher.
However, what he/she concludes is wrong. The right answer is making everyone, not just solar users, pay a baseline "maintenance fee" for the privilege of being connected to the grid. That is how a physical phone line works. 20-30 bucks a month regardless of whether you make a call.
Ban political contributions altogther, beginning of solving the problem.
It isn't political contributions so much as it is the 3rd party PAC's spending hundreds of millions on advertisements, "studies/reports", and employing talking heads to sway the opinions of the people. We really need to ban TV and radio "issue" advertisements that are obviously of a political nature. As well as extend libel and slander laws to political speech.
Political contributions would still be useful, if by law, it were equalized. Make it so that any single person can donate up to 100 dollars total per year to candidates. That would help restore the notion of 1 voice 1 vote.
But all that aside, none of it matters if the primary system continues to spit out crappy candidates. We need a better system of getting real, honest, "not power hungry" people into politics. I'm not exactly sure how to make that happen.
Solar and wind cannot do the job by themselves due to their unpredictability
If we start building energy storage into the grid, that issues goes away. That could easily be done in a 40 year timescale. The problem, is that year after year, we (the USA) continue to do nothing.
And those 97% of climate scientists would be generally paid nothing if it were determined they'd been flat out wrong
Who has more money: Universities, NSF, etc.. or the oil and coal industry? It boggles my mind that you think a serious climate scientist who observed, tested, and found serious errors in the current understanding of climate science, would not immediately receive a metric ton of funding from oil and coal companies.
So do you want to pay more or less taxes?
That is what I kept telling conservative friends about mandatory health insurance (Obamacare): do you want to pay for the uninsured people to get service from an expensive emergency room, or do you want to pay for regular preventative care, non-emergency care, for the uninsured? Because either way we are going to subsidize health insurance for the poor, so long as we legally mandate that ER's must take care of anyone.
The only reason states are changing the methodology is because protesters have been fairly effective in curtailing supplies of the materials used previously.
I was under the impression that the lack of drugs used for the death penalty, was mainly the result of a decision by the Italian government to not allow a US company to produce their drugs in Italy and subsequently a decision by a Dutch company to not sell its drug recipe/patent to a US company.
Were those decisions lobbied by US protestors? Your sentence makes it sound like they were, but this would be first I'm hearing about it.
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/upcoming-debates/item/1046-the-president-has-constitutional-power-to-target-and-kill-us-citizens-abroad
This debate is very informative about what legal changes and strategies are used to justify drone killing.
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/upcoming-debates/item/1046-the-president-has-constitutional-power-to-target-and-kill-us-citizens-abroad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
The midwest issue is left over corn from distilling. The breweries are left over grains like barely, wheat, etc..
"this widespread, extant problem is being addressed by these new regulations."
I sure hope not. It is two completely different sources of feed, and mostly two different animals. The barely and wheat is being fed to cattle, while the corn is mainly being used to feed hogs.
I like your ideas, but #6 won't work with the current income inequality in the US. As long as we have cities that are basically failed governments (Detroit, etc..), gun violence will be high.
We need stronger definitions with multi-way consistency checking
Define "reasonable person". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person)
Law will always have many terms that will be defined relative to the time, culture, and norms of a society. Defining something like "reasonable person" will always require some sort of judgement call. Hence, why we have judges.
I speak from experience when I share you exasperation over why law feels so lose and subjective. As a programmer/computer guy, I tend to like more black/white solutions. Unfortunately, Law is always going to contain a lot of grey areas, and require a lot of judgements, in context, to determine outcomes.