Hey, this is slashdot. I thought government was horrible, regulation was crafted by the devil, and a totally free market is the solution to any problem.;)
After all, we are all going to stop buying from BP (Vote with our Wallets!), and that will force them to be more safe in the future right?;)
The citizens united ruling is even worse than you describe. In addition to unlimited and anonymous political ads on tv, radio, print, etc.., corporations can now fund blatantly politically motivated third party organizations, who work around the clock promoting/demoting candidates, issues, and bills.
The candidates are even further from taking responsibility for the political vibe around a given issue/race now.
I am positive that the level of 'crazy talk' on radio, tv, etc.. is going to increase astronomically in an attempt to shift the political window to wherever the money is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
I'm getting tired of all these libertarian'ish folks talking about the miracles of private enterprise.
Many things make sense in a 'for profit' model, but many things do not.
Healthcare insurance (not necessarily healthcare itself), communications/mail, infrastructure/roads, police, fire, military, etc.. are all examples of things that are leaps and bounds better because they are being run not for profit, but for the benefit of the people.
Added bonuses: We can actually vote to change those systems (can't vote for a CEO), private enterprise can provide competing services if there is a market for it (FedEx).
Even if a private company is more efficient (big IF in most cases), that increase in efficiency doesn't necessarily lead to cheaper prices or better service.
When the motive is profit, and the market will accept it, what motive do you have to lower prices, even if you innovate and find a way to make your products cheaper.
The natural response from the "government is always bad" people tends to be: "Well, if service A sucks, I vote with my wallet and get service B instead". Thats all fine and dandy if service B exists. You can't have 22 different telecoms all running wires, so by necessity certain businesses are going to be near monopolies, either by regulation or by practicality.
Next on the wacko thought train is: "But lets de-regulate everything then!. Let the business fight it out, and customers vote with their wallets!"
Which, as history has proven, leads to monopolies orders of magnitudes beyond what anyone in our generation has every experienced. Less competition, worsening conditions, poorer products, etc..
Bah, well anyway. I just felt like ranting after reading about 20 posts yet again spewing the nonsense that government sucks and the glorious free market is always the answer.
Yes. Because nothing major will change (for the good of the people) until meaningful campaign finance reform is put in place. Until then, just try to minimize the damage by voting for the saner candidate.
Even if we had 10 parties, all of them will be corporate owned until campaign financing is drastically changed.
The thing about Education though, is it should be about teaching people facts. As objectively as possible.
I don't like the idea of each local community getting to decide what it considers fact. You just know that there would be many right-wing towns teaching made up crap like intelligent design. And likely worse, completely leaving out real theories.
Education is one area that really needs to be centrally controlled by some organization that is beholden to the people. Whether you'd like that to be the Federal Gov. or some new national education foundation (who's members are voted in by the public), some educated body needs to be in charge of making sure our children are getting facts, and not ideology.
Are the majority of Australians actually in favor of Conroy's actions, or are they rather apathetic to whats going on?
The US seems to have its share of crazy right-wing folks, some of which actually make it into office, but it hasn't seemed to turn into actual laws or policies. Why is Australia different in this regard? Like, in terms of the whole internet filtering thing, I'm pretty positive American's wouldn't stand for it. Is freedom of speech and expression not held in high regard in Australia?
What if my laptop is encrypted because of PCI compliance? What if it is against the law in my country for me to compromise confidential information, but now Australia demands to see it? Does this mean American businessmen can't travel ao Australia with company laptops?
Or will Australia not search encrypted laptops?
What if I have a medical marijuana prescription and carry some amount of it on me while in Oregon (legal). What happens if I travel to a state that does not allow it?
Answer: busted.
You must always respect the laws of the place you are traveling to. That aside, if I hadn't heard of this law being an actual thing, upon entering Australia and being asked, "Hey Mate, got any child porn on your computer?" I would have been pretty offended. It isn't something you'd expect to be asked in any business or professional setting. And while of course I don't have any cp (nor would I bother to put regular p on a travel laptop), I just crossed Australia off the list of places I want to visit.
So I guess in addition to business folks with encrypted laptops, you can add tourists to the list of people that might not travel to Australia.
Can someone from Australia please explain why your country seems to be leading the charge in crazy 'right-wing' land? Is the Australian population actually that conservative? If we went out and surveyed average Australians in medium to small towns, are they actually agreeing with this?
In order to do any fact selecting, you must first be aware of all the facts, and even moreso, aware of their relative weight. It is pretty obvious that the Texas board lacks all the facts, is ignoring them, and/or is ignoring or ignorant of the weight of the facts in question (weight as in, of 10 factors, which are primary in describing historical event A).
IMHO you are being far too generous as to the motivations of the Texas School Board!
Possibly. However, I do know many far right wing conservatives. It has been my personal experience that none of them are intentionally trying to argue a falsehood in order to promote a theological/political agenda.
What seems to be happening is that they truly believe that their position is supported by accurate facts, however, those facts have been selected by others (media, 'think tanks', etc..) to support a particular worldview.
While it is possible that the Texas school board is intentionally misrepresenting history to promote their worldview, it is probably more likely that they are just plain ignorant of all the facts, as they have been fed only a selection of facts by other conservative sources throughout their lives.
As long as you are taking Federal Tax dollars for your public schools, and as long as your public school system influences all text books in the country, sorry, you aren't going "to be left the hell alone".
Yet history has shown that complex legal, financial, or other areas are perpetually beyond the ability for average people to navigate. That is why you have a mortgage broker hopefully explaining things to you, or a banker hopefully explaining that "hey, just remember we reserve the right to double your loan payment for any reason!".
People, on average, will never have a level of understanding that matches bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, etc.. who make up the rules of the game, so that they win, and the consumer loses.
Once you admit to yourself that the average person is basically always going to be ignorant of legal and financial matters, and once you admit that if enough people get taken (by a big push for home loans, a big push for more credit cards, whatever) the economy will crash, the next logical step is admitting that the people need protection and clarification, and big business needs regulation.
But in theory, you're right. Person A takes on bad loan deal X, it is person A's fault. But that alone would not have caused any economic harm. A real bank would stop giving out loans to a certain economic class if it started to lose money. The major harm was allowed to occur because of regulations removed during Regan and Clinton's presidencies. (Glass-Stegall, etc...)
"If Texans have a way they want to do something, LET THEM, and don't live there if you don't like it."
Not if their decisions shapes text books all over the country. Not if they are receiving any Federal funding for their schools.
If they want to blur the line between church and state, and between facts and politics, then surely they won't mind the Federal Government taking away funding. After all, the Church will pick up the slack, right:)?
I have to admit though, living in an ultra-blue state (Oregon), it would be amusing to see my communities reaction to receiving a K-12 set of "Texanized" books.
While you are correct that choices will have to be made concerning what facts to put in a book, your statement about there being no objective way to create a history book, while true, is a bit misleading.
There certainly are way to minimize the impact that your personal beliefs have on fact selection.
Take a section on the reasons why Prohibition occurred. There are many reasons, so an unscrupulous (or ignorant) author could choose to focus on whatever reasons they felt need to be stressed. For instance, someone may choose to only focus on domestic violence and how the vast majority of women at that time wanted Prohibition.
And if you wrote just that, technically, you'd be correct. But if you polled 20 historians about what they would have put in that section, it would have been 3 things: 1) income tax, 2) ww2, and 3) womens suffrage.
In order to do any fact selecting, you must first be aware of all the facts, and even moreso, aware of their relative weight. It is pretty obvious that the Texas board lacks all the facts, is ignoring them, and/or is ignoring or ignorant of the weight of the facts in question (weight as in, of 10 factors, which are primary in describing historical event A).
Unless we have one world government, we won't stand a chance of living in a completely sustainable manner. Country vs Country competition will always bring out destructive business practices. And even if we were one nation, assuming we retained a political system similar to the US now, politicians would be governing with 4 and 8 year goals in mind, not long term.
But regardless of that, we are going to need more energy if we want to do more. And by 'do more' I mean everything from every farm in Africa having an electric tractor and recharging stations all over, to synthesizing some new exotic fuel in mass quantities to power space flight.
Unlimited power opens up tons of doors, and I don't see mankind ever moving towards less energy consumption. So lets move to cleaner sources as soon as possible, and increase research into better and better energy production methods.
You might like to read http://www.amazon.com/Screwed-Undeclared-Against-Middle-Currents/dp/1576754146
It is a bit different in terms of cause/effect than your post. But the bottom line remains similar, "we the people" are getting the shaft. I'm about halfway through, and some of the most interesting parts are the founding father's views on capitalism/corporatism.
I don't have the time to go through all your points, but one of them is a bit off base: "Then they tried to subdue us by removing our booze in 1920 with the 18th amendment." It wasn't the government, it was quite literally the will of the people and timing.
Prohibition was only possible because of 3 things: 1. WWI. Most of the big brewers were German companies, and that tainted the image of beer. 2. The income tax. Prior to the income tax, a large part of the Government's revenue was taxes on alcohol. 3. Women's Suffrage. Lax laws on prostitution and almost zero enforcement of physical abuse laws against women meant nearly 100% support of prohibition by women voters.
There was also a large amount of racism involved. People feared being attacked by 'wild drunk black' men, etc.. The KKK fully supported Women's Suffrage because they knew that that massive influx of women voters would surely mean the passing of Prohibition.
I'm not sure what type of people you work with or are friends with, but everyone I know loves chromes UI.
IT department, server admins, check. IT department, web developers, check. IT department, programmers, check. Family and Friends, check.
I really like the extra space the UI gives me by not having so many of its extensions in toolbar format. For instance, the web developer add-on in Firefox is a whole toolbar. Whereas the Pendule extension in Chrome is a button, that when clicked, exposes about 35 choices. I prefer that space savings.
One row of tabs, one row with the address and five buttons to the side of it (gwave,gmail,resolution test, pendule, jquery window) is pretty perfect for most day to day stuff I do.
I don't think that liability limit can prevent civil lawsuits from taking money from BP though right?
Fisherman Joe sues in civil court for damages, and the Judge says, sorry, they've been sued enough? Or is that exactly what the limit is designed to prevent?
For some reason I thought it was a liability limit for federal/state penalties, not citizens or class actions.
"The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others"
That would be a step in the right direction, but I don't think it is enough.
In addition to all the other factors stated in posts above, we have to consider the massive infrastructure in place to support the status quo.
Without subsidizing alternative energy, it might end up taking 50-100 years to completely replace all the infrastructure that currently supports coal and oil.
If I were to try to compete with series of coal-->electricity plants by building up a series of say, wind farms, I'd face pretty large obstacles that coal does not face.
Where to store the energy for later use or low wind times? Not being able to build near existing lines if there isn't wind there. Power grid not designed to handle spikes in power, etc etc etc
Likewise if I wanted to start an electric car line. No 'recharge stations', no bulk battery makers, battery technology research needs to be furthered, etc..
Subsidize should be used to encourage industry to move in the direction the benefits the public. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be used in that fashion very consistently.
I think back to what we had in grade and middle school.... blowguns, knives, firecrackers, lighters, some people with drugs, cigs, etc...Basically, anything destructive that we wanted to show off.
I actually did get caught once with my blowgun. I didn't notice the principle peeking around the corner as I shot a needle dart into a kids leg. It was a crappy homemade blowgun, so the needle+Q-tip tail didn't really sink in that far.
The kid yelps, the principle grabs me by the collar, drags me to the kid, and despite the dart still sticking out of his leg, and me holding a blowgun, the kid is like "nothing happened, he didn't shoot me" hehe.
My punishment? The principle made me break the blowgun in half and sent a note home with my parents. If I were in middle school now, I suspect I would have been sent to Gitmo or set on fire in the town square.
1 more liberal supreme court during the Gore vs Bush presidential race would have meant (bunch of maybe's ahead) Bush not being president, no war with Iraq, no war with Afghanistan, no oil spill in the Gulf, etc. etc. etc..
A single judge in the US supreme court can very much influence the entire world.
Listening to the radio this morning, I was under the impression that the job of the solicitor general is to argue on behalf of the government. Basically an employee of the current Presidency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Solicitor_General
The radio show mentioned that a solicitor can object and not argue the case if they find it morally or legally wrong, but that this is rare. I imagine if you do that, you are fired and a more compliant solicitor is installed.
while there certainly will be propaganda from those who have the power to spread it, it'll be merely a drop in the bucket.
I think you are hugely underestimating the the volume of propaganda that those with power/money can generate, and most likely hugely underestimating how concentrated that propaganda's message is.
We simply have to have some level of expected accuracy in reporting. The bucket is 99% propaganda.
For instance, here's a list of "think tanks" in the US. These organizations, with various backing, but usually from large business or the rich, are the ones putting out 'studies' and 'blog posts' in mass that drastically shape our media climate. The majority of them are not interested in the truth. The are 'activists', promoting specific political philosophies. It is where radio talk show hosts, and other opinion based news get all of their 'news'. And the vast majority of americans rely on opinion/editorial news, as it is more entertaining.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, this is slashdot. I thought government was horrible, regulation was crafted by the devil, and a totally free market is the solution to any problem. ;)
After all, we are all going to stop buying from BP (Vote with our Wallets!), and that will force them to be more safe in the future right? ;)
The citizens united ruling is even worse than you describe. In addition to unlimited and anonymous political ads on tv, radio, print, etc.., corporations can now fund blatantly politically motivated third party organizations, who work around the clock promoting/demoting candidates, issues, and bills.
The candidates are even further from taking responsibility for the political vibe around a given issue/race now.
I am positive that the level of 'crazy talk' on radio, tv, etc.. is going to increase astronomically in an attempt to shift the political window to wherever the money is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Finally, a post that actually makes sense.
I'm getting tired of all these libertarian'ish folks talking about the miracles of private enterprise.
Many things make sense in a 'for profit' model, but many things do not.
Healthcare insurance (not necessarily healthcare itself), communications/mail, infrastructure/roads, police, fire, military, etc.. are all examples of things that are leaps and bounds better because they are being run not for profit, but for the benefit of the people.
Added bonuses: We can actually vote to change those systems (can't vote for a CEO), private enterprise can provide competing services if there is a market for it (FedEx).
Even if a private company is more efficient (big IF in most cases), that increase in efficiency doesn't necessarily lead to cheaper prices or better service.
When the motive is profit, and the market will accept it, what motive do you have to lower prices, even if you innovate and find a way to make your products cheaper.
The natural response from the "government is always bad" people tends to be: "Well, if service A sucks, I vote with my wallet and get service B instead". Thats all fine and dandy if service B exists. You can't have 22 different telecoms all running wires, so by necessity certain businesses are going to be near monopolies, either by regulation or by practicality.
Next on the wacko thought train is:
"But lets de-regulate everything then!. Let the business fight it out, and customers vote with their wallets!"
Which, as history has proven, leads to monopolies orders of magnitudes beyond what anyone in our generation has every experienced. Less competition, worsening conditions, poorer products, etc..
Bah, well anyway. I just felt like ranting after reading about 20 posts yet again spewing the nonsense that government sucks and the glorious free market is always the answer.
What's better? Voting for the lesser evil, ...
Yes. Because nothing major will change (for the good of the people) until meaningful campaign finance reform is put in place. Until then, just try to minimize the damage by voting for the saner candidate.
Even if we had 10 parties, all of them will be corporate owned until campaign financing is drastically changed.
Don't you think it would be important to know the exact flow rate in order to put the proper amount of dispersant into the water?
I'm assuming that 5K barrels per day of oil would require less dispersant than 200K barrels of oil......
The thing about Education though, is it should be about teaching people facts. As objectively as possible.
I don't like the idea of each local community getting to decide what it considers fact. You just know that there would be many right-wing towns teaching made up crap like intelligent design. And likely worse, completely leaving out real theories.
Education is one area that really needs to be centrally controlled by some organization that is beholden to the people. Whether you'd like that to be the Federal Gov. or some new national education foundation (who's members are voted in by the public), some educated body needs to be in charge of making sure our children are getting facts, and not ideology.
Failure of media to accurately portray the ramifications of new laws I guess?
America is heading that way. Media conglomeration/concentration into the hands of small pool of ultra-rich conservatives.
Are the majority of Australians actually in favor of Conroy's actions, or are they rather apathetic to whats going on?
The US seems to have its share of crazy right-wing folks, some of which actually make it into office, but it hasn't seemed to turn into actual laws or policies. Why is Australia different in this regard? Like, in terms of the whole internet filtering thing, I'm pretty positive American's wouldn't stand for it. Is freedom of speech and expression not held in high regard in Australia?
What if my laptop is encrypted because of PCI compliance? What if it is against the law in my country for me to compromise confidential information, but now Australia demands to see it? Does this mean American businessmen can't travel ao Australia with company laptops?
Or will Australia not search encrypted laptops?
What if I have a medical marijuana prescription and carry some amount of it on me while in Oregon (legal). What happens if I travel to a state that does not allow it?
Answer: busted.
You must always respect the laws of the place you are traveling to. That aside, if I hadn't heard of this law being an actual thing, upon entering Australia and being asked, "Hey Mate, got any child porn on your computer?" I would have been pretty offended. It isn't something you'd expect to be asked in any business or professional setting. And while of course I don't have any cp (nor would I bother to put regular p on a travel laptop), I just crossed Australia off the list of places I want to visit.
So I guess in addition to business folks with encrypted laptops, you can add tourists to the list of people that might not travel to Australia.
Can someone from Australia please explain why your country seems to be leading the charge in crazy 'right-wing' land? Is the Australian population actually that conservative? If we went out and surveyed average Australians in medium to small towns, are they actually agreeing with this?
In order to do any fact selecting, you must first be aware of all the facts, and even moreso, aware of their relative weight. It is pretty obvious that the Texas board lacks all the facts, is ignoring them, and/or is ignoring or ignorant of the weight of the facts in question (weight as in, of 10 factors, which are primary in describing historical event A).
IMHO you are being far too generous as to the motivations of the Texas School Board!
Possibly. However, I do know many far right wing conservatives. It has been my personal experience that none of them are intentionally trying to argue a falsehood in order to promote a theological/political agenda.
What seems to be happening is that they truly believe that their position is supported by accurate facts, however, those facts have been selected by others (media, 'think tanks', etc..) to support a particular worldview.
While it is possible that the Texas school board is intentionally misrepresenting history to promote their worldview, it is probably more likely that they are just plain ignorant of all the facts, as they have been fed only a selection of facts by other conservative sources throughout their lives.
As long as you are taking Federal Tax dollars for your public schools, and as long as your public school system influences all text books in the country, sorry, you aren't going "to be left the hell alone".
It is a big interconnected world out there.
Yet history has shown that complex legal, financial, or other areas are perpetually beyond the ability for average people to navigate. That is why you have a mortgage broker hopefully explaining things to you, or a banker hopefully explaining that "hey, just remember we reserve the right to double your loan payment for any reason!".
People, on average, will never have a level of understanding that matches bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, etc.. who make up the rules of the game, so that they win, and the consumer loses.
Once you admit to yourself that the average person is basically always going to be ignorant of legal and financial matters, and once you admit that if enough people get taken (by a big push for home loans, a big push for more credit cards, whatever) the economy will crash, the next logical step is admitting that the people need protection and clarification, and big business needs regulation.
But in theory, you're right. Person A takes on bad loan deal X, it is person A's fault. But that alone would not have caused any economic harm. A real bank would stop giving out loans to a certain economic class if it started to lose money. The major harm was allowed to occur because of regulations removed during Regan and Clinton's presidencies. (Glass-Stegall, etc...)
"If Texans have a way they want to do something, LET THEM, and don't live there if you don't like it."
Not if their decisions shapes text books all over the country. Not if they are receiving any Federal funding for their schools.
If they want to blur the line between church and state, and between facts and politics, then surely they won't mind the Federal Government taking away funding. After all, the Church will pick up the slack, right:)?
I have to admit though, living in an ultra-blue state (Oregon), it would be amusing to see my communities reaction to receiving a K-12 set of "Texanized" books.
While you are correct that choices will have to be made concerning what facts to put in a book, your statement about there being no objective way to create a history book, while true, is a bit misleading.
There certainly are way to minimize the impact that your personal beliefs have on fact selection.
Take a section on the reasons why Prohibition occurred. There are many reasons, so an unscrupulous (or ignorant) author could choose to focus on whatever reasons they felt need to be stressed. For instance, someone may choose to only focus on domestic violence and how the vast majority of women at that time wanted Prohibition.
And if you wrote just that, technically, you'd be correct. But if you polled 20 historians about what they would have put in that section, it would have been 3 things: 1) income tax, 2) ww2, and 3) womens suffrage.
In order to do any fact selecting, you must first be aware of all the facts, and even moreso, aware of their relative weight. It is pretty obvious that the Texas board lacks all the facts, is ignoring them, and/or is ignoring or ignorant of the weight of the facts in question (weight as in, of 10 factors, which are primary in describing historical event A).
Unless we have one world government, we won't stand a chance of living in a completely sustainable manner. Country vs Country competition will always bring out destructive business practices. And even if we were one nation, assuming we retained a political system similar to the US now, politicians would be governing with 4 and 8 year goals in mind, not long term.
But regardless of that, we are going to need more energy if we want to do more. And by 'do more' I mean everything from every farm in Africa having an electric tractor and recharging stations all over, to synthesizing some new exotic fuel in mass quantities to power space flight.
Unlimited power opens up tons of doors, and I don't see mankind ever moving towards less energy consumption. So lets move to cleaner sources as soon as possible, and increase research into better and better energy production methods.
You might like to read http://www.amazon.com/Screwed-Undeclared-Against-Middle-Currents/dp/1576754146
It is a bit different in terms of cause/effect than your post. But the bottom line remains similar, "we the people" are getting the shaft. I'm about halfway through, and some of the most interesting parts are the founding father's views on capitalism/corporatism.
I don't have the time to go through all your points, but one of them is a bit off base: "Then they tried to subdue us by removing our booze in 1920 with the 18th amendment." It wasn't the government, it was quite literally the will of the people and timing.
Prohibition was only possible because of 3 things:
1. WWI. Most of the big brewers were German companies, and that tainted the image of beer.
2. The income tax. Prior to the income tax, a large part of the
Government's revenue was taxes on alcohol.
3. Women's Suffrage. Lax laws on prostitution and almost zero
enforcement of physical abuse laws against women meant nearly 100%
support of prohibition by women voters.
There was also a large amount of racism involved. People feared being attacked by 'wild drunk black' men, etc.. The KKK fully supported Women's Suffrage because they knew that that massive influx of women voters would surely mean the passing of Prohibition.
"No. Most people hate it."
I'm not sure what type of people you work with or are friends with, but everyone I know loves chromes UI.
IT department, server admins, check.
IT department, web developers, check.
IT department, programmers, check.
Family and Friends, check.
I really like the extra space the UI gives me by not having so many of its extensions in toolbar format. For instance, the web developer add-on in Firefox is a whole toolbar. Whereas the Pendule extension in Chrome is a button, that when clicked, exposes about 35 choices. I prefer that space savings.
One row of tabs, one row with the address and five buttons to the side of it (gwave,gmail,resolution test, pendule, jquery window) is pretty perfect for most day to day stuff I do.
To each their own.
I don't think that liability limit can prevent civil lawsuits from taking money from BP though right?
Fisherman Joe sues in civil court for damages, and the Judge says, sorry, they've been sued enough? Or is that exactly what the limit is designed to prevent?
For some reason I thought it was a liability limit for federal/state penalties, not citizens or class actions.
"The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others"
That would be a step in the right direction, but I don't think it is enough.
In addition to all the other factors stated in posts above, we have to consider the massive infrastructure in place to support the status quo.
Without subsidizing alternative energy, it might end up taking 50-100 years to completely replace all the infrastructure that currently supports coal and oil.
If I were to try to compete with series of coal-->electricity plants by building up a series of say, wind farms, I'd face pretty large obstacles that coal does not face.
Where to store the energy for later use or low wind times?
Not being able to build near existing lines if there isn't wind there.
Power grid not designed to handle spikes in power,
etc etc etc
Likewise if I wanted to start an electric car line. No 'recharge stations', no bulk battery makers, battery technology research needs to be furthered, etc..
Subsidize should be used to encourage industry to move in the direction the benefits the public. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be used in that fashion very consistently.
There are various theories, but one is CTC's, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve
I think back to what we had in grade and middle school.... blowguns, knives, firecrackers, lighters, some people with drugs, cigs, etc...Basically, anything destructive that we wanted to show off.
I actually did get caught once with my blowgun. I didn't notice the principle peeking around the corner as I shot a needle dart into a kids leg. It was a crappy homemade blowgun, so the needle+Q-tip tail didn't really sink in that far.
The kid yelps, the principle grabs me by the collar, drags me to the kid, and despite the dart still sticking out of his leg, and me holding a blowgun, the kid is like "nothing happened, he didn't shoot me" hehe.
My punishment? The principle made me break the blowgun in half and sent a note home with my parents. If I were in middle school now, I suspect I would have been sent to Gitmo or set on fire in the town square.
The Solicitor General has a nickname: "The 10th Justice".
She is very well qualified. She also clerked for a justice.
1 more liberal supreme court during the Gore vs Bush presidential race would have meant (bunch of maybe's ahead) Bush not being president, no war with Iraq, no war with Afghanistan, no oil spill in the Gulf, etc. etc. etc..
A single judge in the US supreme court can very much influence the entire world.
Listening to the radio this morning, I was under the impression that the job of the solicitor general is to argue on behalf of the government. Basically an employee of the current Presidency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Solicitor_General
The radio show mentioned that a solicitor can object and not argue the case if they find it morally or legally wrong, but that this is rare. I imagine if you do that, you are fired and a more compliant solicitor is installed.
while there certainly will be propaganda from those who have the power to spread it, it'll be merely a drop in the bucket.
I think you are hugely underestimating the the volume of propaganda that those with power/money can generate, and most likely hugely underestimating how concentrated that propaganda's message is.
We simply have to have some level of expected accuracy in reporting. The bucket is 99% propaganda.
For instance, here's a list of "think tanks" in the US. These organizations, with various backing, but usually from large business or the rich, are the ones putting out 'studies' and 'blog posts' in mass that drastically shape our media climate. The majority of them are not interested in the truth. The are 'activists', promoting specific political philosophies. It is where radio talk show hosts, and other opinion based news get all of their 'news'. And the vast majority of americans rely on opinion/editorial news, as it is more entertaining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_think_tanks#United_States