That's a hell of a distinction. Two people actually get arrested and charged with treason because some asshole leaked their names to the world in plaintext, but it doesn't count because instead of saying "US Embassy Source cited in cable leaked by Wikileaks," it said "Wikileaks Source."
But I doubt the Belarussians are gonna be satisfied with anything less then jail terms in Stalinist Gulags, and the Ehriopians have already exiled a guy.
Please learn to use your critical thinking skills.
1) Naomi Wolf is American. She knows American law, American prosecutors, and America's obsessive approach to limiting government power via hard Constitutional Limits. This is a Swedish case. Her experience of hoe the Denver PD would take statements from victims claiming to be attacked from the same guy is irrelevant. She doesn't even know Swedish, which means she can't have actually read the documents in question. For all she knows all witness statements were taken separately, and her Wikileaks-friendly translators simply put them together because it looked worse.
2) This is an inherently unusual case. Nobody in Europe has had anything to do with the legal doctrine of "Diplomatic Asylum" for literally centuries. Defendants who can flee to the UK, come up with a $400k bond, then flee to the Ecuadorian Embassy, claiming the whole time that it's all a plot by an evil third government do not grow on trees. They require unusual tactics.
3) Wolf has no evidence of improper political influence from Karl Rove from Swedes. It's not unusual for political parties to ask foreign political consultants for help. Karl Rove, as a guy who actually won a couple Presidential elections in the world's second largest Democracy, as a right-winger is a no-brainer for Sweden's right-wing Moderate party. The Bergstrom she mentions was not a right-winger, but a left-wing Social Democrat. She's accusing the entire Swedish political elite of being in on a conspiracy with the CIA, on the basis that a DC political consultant (Andrew Krieg) says so. And I doubt the DC Political Consultant she quotes knows Swedish either.
Regardless the simple fact is that Sweden is a Democracy. If Assange tuned himself in he'd have a day in court to fight the charges. If they're BS pushed by the US he'll likely win, which implies that his flight to the embassy is either paranoia or an admission of guilt.
You will note that while Assange sits in a comfortable flat in London, complaining of 'witchhunts' because a government he dislikes might possibly consider charging him with crimes, that might eventually include one carrying the death penalty; those two generals in Zimbabwe are actually charged with crimes carrying the Death penalty.
Those cables don't say what you think they say. They say Australian diplomats think the US eventually intends to extradite Assange, and believe that Assange is currently being investigated by someone in the US Government. That should not surprise anybody. Somebody is definitely keeping an eye on Assange, because Wikileaks managed to hurt US Government interests badly. "Keeping an eye on" constitutes an investigation. And if you're not a cop you could easily conclude that they wouldn't investigate him if they had no intention of charging him with a crime.
He's not gonna be charged with anything by the US Government. As a guy who is put on trial for releasing diplomatic cables he's a major embarrassment. As a freedom of information advocate whose trying to flee to Ecuador (which opposes freedom of information) to dodge rape charges? Even if he's vindicated by the Swedes he's a punchline. They'll keep on eye on him just in case, but they ain't gonna make him a martyr.
Seriously. The major reason I don't think the CIA has anything to do with his current plight is simple: I don't think the CIA is that good. I don't think it's humanly possible to be that good.
By taking the modern view you're ignoring one of the major reasons (if not The Major Reason) actual northerners signed up to fight before the Emancipation proclamation.
In 1861 conventional wisdom was that you couldn't run a "Civilized Nation" without a hereditary monarchy. The Republics that existed when the US first became independent were a) tiny and riven by religious differences (Switzerland), b) gone within a few decades (Venice/Poland), or c) basically monarchies (the Netherlands was run by hereditary Stadtholders). The major post-1776 Republic was France, which quickly decided Monarchy was great and wouldn't Napoleon make a wonderful Emperor?. Many, many people concluded it was impossible to keep a country united without a hereditary monarch to order factions to stop being ridiculous and think of the good of the nation.
Note that the evidence from these examples is a lot more damning then I have room to mention. Poland literally gave anyone who could vote the right to start a Confederation in rebellion from the government, which meant the Russians could fund crackpot rebellions 24/7, and most of those rebels honestly did not realize they were selling their principles to the Czarina. They thought they were nobly defending them. France's Republic collapsed into bloody purges of one Republican killing another on the basis of some abstract Republican value no non-Frernchman either understood or cared about. The Empirical Evidence was clear: without a hereditary King to point out when abstract values (ie: limited government as expressed in a specific historic document) should not lead to concrete action (ie: stabbing the guy who supported the faction you think is less into limited government) your country is D-E-D dead.
Now consider the Confederacy's cause: they thought Abe Lincoln might abolish slavery. They didn't know it (his platform was restricting slavery, and it's not clear the Courts would have let him do that), and they seceded before he was inaugurated. It's a cause that they could not explain to non-Southerners, despite the fact that they tried quite eloquently. It's the classic example of a Republic falling apart due to two factions arguing about an abstract principle that nobody who lives elsewhere can understand.
Remember what happened in Mexico a few years after South Carolina seceded. They borrowed a Habsburg Prince and made him Emperor. They decided that this Republicanism thing wasn't working for Mexico, and they had to give Monarchy a chance.
KY was Union. There was not much chance of the Confederates taking the state after Shiloh, where the Confederate governor of Kentucky was killed.
The fact MO was more contested was not necessarily due to the actual will of Kentuckians, but geography and Union Military success. After Shiloh TN was never really under Confederate control, which meant that it was virtually impossible for Confederates to make trouble in KY.
That's not the only problem. Basically the reason Canada is great right now is that a) it never de-regulated it's banks, so no financial crisis, and b) they have loads of oil to sell from Alberta. a) will probably continue, but b) is associated with loads of prosperity for a few years, and then a major crash. It's called the Dutch Disease, and it's a major reason why South Korea is richer then Nigeria in 2012, despite the fact Nigeria was economically better off in the 50s and then discovered billion$ worth of oil.
I'd actually say the US is the best bet. The debt situation isn't ideal, but since the US uses the US Dollar the problems this can cause are pretty limited. Inflation is the main one. We're basically printing money, which means there's more dollars but the same amount of stuff, which means that (in theory) every dollar should be worth less, in turn it should take more dollars to buy the same amount of stuff, and that is the definition of inflation; but so far the reality is we haven't experienced any. We would probably be better off with some, if only because that would make all the debts holding us back easier to pay off.
Southern Europe is in a much different situation. They don't control their currencies, and inflation is anethema to their Euro-zone partners, so they have to balance their budgets. But they can't do that without economic growth, and their economies are designed to grow only under conditions of extreme global prosperity or high inflation. Since neither is likely to be the case anytime in the foreseeable future they are totally, 100% screwed.
I'm not saying the South was alone in being racist, or that Reconstruction was a perfect solution to the problem of reintegrating the South into the Union on a non-racist basis. I'm just saying that in US history evils of the type this is designed to thwart don't happen very often.
As for the merits of reconstruction, I submit that by your own argument the worst thing it did was under-price grain. OTOH the best thing it did was prevent innocent people from being ripped to shreds by mobs. Modern Americans have very little idea of the brutality of lynch mobs. Pardon me if I see that as a fair trade.
Like many intellectuals on the internet this guy does not understand that the greatest threat to freedom is not the government. It's your neighbors.
What happens in this system if 40% decides to screw 60%? Then anybody in that 60% who verifies anyone else will get beaten to death, and juries won't be able to convict the perpetrators because 40% think it's justifiable homicide. Higher levels of the government may intervene, but appealing to a technocrat in DC to implement Martial Law is pretty much the opposite of open-source collaborative government.
Note this exact scenario has actually happened in the US. After the Civil War the old Confederacy was 40% black. South Carolina and Mississippi were majority black, and every Confederate state had Unionist whites and Carpetbagging immigrants from the North. As long as the technocrats in DC were willing to fund a massive occupation army the fact that most southerners were anti-racist (or at least anti-official-government-racism) prevailed. Then Reconstruction ended, the troops imposed by DC went away, and we got decades of racism.
Pretty much every example of a Democracy stopping being a Democracy includes a similar period where the actual government is too weak to stop some group of thugs from beating up their neighbors. The Nazis, for example.
As for the US Election system, remember that a) it's basically unchanged since anonymous voting was invented the early 19th century, partly because b) the only people who actually pay attention to it are partisan hacks, but also because it works pretty well most of the time.. Both sets of hacks know that, all other things being equal, the left-wing hacks are better off if more people vote. Therefore the right-wing hacks try to arrange things to make it impossible to vote, and the left-wingers try to make it easy.
As for the meat of the argument, as a left-wing hack I (surprise surprise) oppose ID requirements. Stealing an election one vote at a time is just something that doesn't happen, so forcing people to buy ID (as almost all these laws do -- there's no option to use your free, government issued health card and a phone bill) hurts my pet causes and solves no problems.
They have absolutely no idea how actual power works. They have all these theories, which they think about a lot, but they have no practical experience.
Here's why people who actually run things are surprised when they read the bills they just voted on: those bills are complicated as hell, and they change up to the last minute. You probably know Johnson from Kansas really wants to change some regulation, but a) unless you are actually the Speaker you have no way of knowing whether Johnson got enough votes together to force the change through at the last minute and b) unless you are very knowledgeable about the regulation in question you have no idea whether it's a good idea or not.
It is physically impossible to become very knowledgeable about every issue that will ever come up for a vote. Defense, the EPA, HUD, etc. are all very different. And you have to learn all this shit every year or you won't be able to vote on the departmental budgets, much less Joe Wilson's quixotic Crusade to strengthen State Defense Forces.
Moreover you're ignoring half a legislators job: constituent service. If somebody has an idea they want to turn into a law, or thinks they deserve SSI: Disability but got denied, etc. it's his Congressman's job to check that shit out. In a lot of ways this part of a Congressman's job is more important then the actual votes he makes, because his vote is only one of 435. OTOH the guy depending on him to get the Social Security Administration to reconsider doesn't have a lot of other options.
>>>I'd still have a major advantage because audio books are not cheap.
Neither are the actual books you have to buy to read on the train. BESIDES we both know you don't actually need to pay for anything. Did you see the websites I listed? They are all free. (Also there's tons of radio podcasts and college lectures I listen to while driving... all free.)
$8 paperbacks are a lot cheaper then any Audiobook I've seen.
CD Audiobooks in particular seem to cost as much as a full TV series on DVD.
>>>But for a vacation I win hands down.
I don't "vacate" often, but when I do I usually stay home and just enjoy the time off. My last major vacation was a drive across the states..... the drive was the whole point, and riding a train would have not been the same (looking at tall weeds growing alongside the track gets boring).
As for the claim of train travel across 850 miles in 5 hours... not true. You have to add another 2 hours for various stops along the way (dropping-off and picking-up passengers). Plus an hour to leave your home and drive to the station/check your baggage. Plus another 2 hours to find a rental car at the opposite end, go through their annoying checkout/payment process, and drive to your hotel for the night.
About 10 hours total. Same amount of time it took my coworkers who flew by plane across the same distance. In contrast my drive time was 11.
The French have 170+ MPH trip-speed. Actual train-speed is 200 MPH. So you've lost two hours. You're also being quite pessimistic in assuming that a) car rental is actually necessary, b) that it would take an hour, and c) that the Hotel would be 60 miles from the station.
Moreover I'm being pretty generous in saying you get 850 miles in 10 hours. That's 85 MPH trip speed, which is technically above the speed limit almost everywhere. It also assumes you can maintain that 85 MPH despite physically stopping to buy junk-food and gas up at least once.
You can probably get away with that out West, but I live in Ohio. the cops here will let out-of-staters get away with 85 on the toll road, but you try that shit on 94 with a Oklahoma plates and you're gonna spend at least an hour getting speeding tickets. Hell you go the actual speed limit here you're in trouble. Quotas are technically illegal, but the police don't act like it, and they know perfectly well if they stop an Oklahoman he's not gonna be able to make a Court date in Akron.
And no Montana doesn't need high speed rail..... almost-all the population is concentrated in one spot (Billings). Where else would they need to go? The tiny 1000-person village of Glendive??? Doubtful. You'd have a superspeed billion-dollar trainline from Billings to Glendive, and just 1 passenger. That's called: Waste.
Billings is only about 10% of the population. Missoula is 6-7% and 350 miles from Billings on the roads. Helena's 240 miles from Billings by car, another 2-3% of the population, and on a straight-line from Billings to Missoula. And even if Billings was a half-million people they'd still have plenty of places to go out-state.
And yes, if we're forced to the studies of ridership you;d insist on it would be too low. But a) nobody insists on ridership studies for highways, and b) I'm only claiming Highspeed rail would be more useful for MT residents then high-population density places, if the Missoula-Helena line was part of a massive line connecting NYC to Seattle...
Your probably right about the tie if we did the rail system I mentioned. But I'd still have a major advantage because audio books are not cheap. If your boss is still paying you mileage and the mileage is actually cheaper then gas and wear on your vehicle; you probably come out ahead. But for a vacation I win hands down.
But if they did a system like the French made in the 70s my trip velocity would be more then 170 MPH. That's trip velocity, so in in five hours I've gone 850 miles, counting stops. It'll take you 9 hours to catch me, assuming your gas tank doesn't need re-filling and you don't get hungry.
There's a reason liberals read a Conservative say: "But with our low population densities trains are inefficient," and simply walk away. Montana needs 170 MPH transportation a hell of a lot more then NYC does.
What the fuck are you talking about? We're not talking about the 12th and 20th amendments. And no, the 16th amendment has absolutely no effect on the 1st amendment. The 16th amendment could have amended the 1st, but it didn't.
You have completely deflected from the point of the discussion.
If the 20th Amends the 12th, then it follows that the 16th Amends the 1st.
Trains are a lot more convenient then aircraft. There's security theatre, but there's less of it. You typically don't have to show up an hour before your train leaves. Rail stations are also usually located in fairly densely populated areas, rather then way out in the boonies. It's actually practical to show up 15 minutes before the train leaves. You still have to park somewhere, but since rail stations also tend to be on mass transit lines you can generally park anywhere in the City (including right in front of your own personal house), leave an hour before your train leaves, and still make it.
And then for the next ten hours you can play on your computer, read a book, bone up on the info you'll need for your business meeting, etc. instead of trying to navigate traffic yourself. And there's none of that "turn off your personal electronic devices for a half-hour before take-off and landing" BS.
The problem in the US is that train routes just don't exist. To get from Cleveland to Detroit by train, for example, you have to a) go through Chicago (which is two states out of the way) or b) go through Canada. The most sensible route (via Toledo) just isn't there. I did an experiment to see how quickly you could get to OKC from Minneapolis and Amtrak's website was unable to tell me. Apparently you have to go through Arkansas and Texas because the only passenger line into Oklahoma is Fort Worth-OKC.
If the feds were willing to put some money into passenger rail, so that you could actually make these trips, and incidentally upgrade the main rail lines so the trains could go 80, it would be a really good thing for the country. We'd use less oil, be less vulnerable to terrorism, and we'd have more travel options. But that ain't happening anytime soon.
Surely you recognize the difference between being taxed for being a live and being taxed because you bought something or are employed.
The 16th amendment does not amend the 1st amendment. It amends the Constitution.
If the Amendments weren't part of the Constitution laws violating freedom of religion would be Antiamendmental, not Unconstitutional. Moreover parts of the 12th Amendment which set the Presidential Inauguration to March, are superseded by the 20th Amendment which sets a January inauguration date; despite the fact the 20th does not include the words "12th Amendment." It just says Inauguration day is in January, and *poof* all previous disagreeing Amendments don't count.
Which means the later Amendments Amend earlier Amendments, and the 16th must Amend the first. In other words Congress can't ban the Jewish religion, but it's power to set income taxes "from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration" can tax the Jewish religion into nonexistence.
I'm not saying I support this, or that if Congress tried this BS I wouldn't be right out there protesting it. Hell, if you could find a rationalization I'd sleep a lot better. But the simple fact is that Congress has this power.
This is what happens when you read the Constitution literally. To get around your literalism and run the damn country they have to Amend it, and since the Amendments amend the Bill of Rights as well as the enumerated powers you end up giving Congress powers willy-nilly.
1) If you think this is new you should re-read the 16th Amendment. the government has had this power since before your grandfather was born.
2) It's not used because it's less useful then you think. If Congress has the votes for your welfare taxes then it has the votes to abolish Welfare. Period. the Abortion tax is probably a violation of Roe vs. Wade. The Illegal Immigrant Tax is quite possible politically, but what are you gonna do if they simply refuse to pay?
1) The price won't go up appreciably. Most Americans whose health plans will change are in the hideously inefficient Small Group market. Administrative overhead is 30% of revenue. 40%+ of revenue not being spent on healthcare isn't uncommon. OTOH US Medicare, Canadian Medicare, the NHS, and the large employer markets in the US spend less then 5% on administrative overhead. Most of them are less then 2%. The law makes much more efficient by centralizing it into an Exchange that everyone can understand, and capping total non-medical expenses (including profit) at 20%. Massachusetts tried exactly this system, added tens of thousands to the rolls, and their health cost increases over that time period were actually lower then the rest of the country's.
2) Health Management Organizations. The theory was your insurer would manage all the treatments you got, and would only pay for treatments that proved they were worth it (ie: if a cheap generic drug is available you get that. you only the $3,000 a year patented new thing if the cheapie doesn't work). The problem was this required saying no to a lot of treatments people really wanted needed, which is really bad marketing for an insurance company.
So in practice, since 2000, and HMO is just another insurance company.
3) This is complicated. Americans really distrust Government Power. Especially white Americans.
The hope is that as time goes on more employers will start paying the penalty (I believe it's $2k per employee), and stop providing insurance. It'll take forever, but hey. If we wanted rapid change in response to new conditions we wouldn't have Separation of Powers.
The advantage of the system for start-ups is that job-lock is dead. Pre-ObamaCare a programmer who had breast cancer could not leave her job because the next insurer would not pay for anything it could relate to her breast cancer. She couldn't go off on her own, and even moving to another big company was difficult. Now she can quit, join your start-up as a contracter, and buy her own insurance on the exchange without worrying that the pre-existing condition clause will screw her when/if the cancer comes back.
It's $695 a year. And you don't have to pay it. They can't arrest you solely for not paying it.
If you have an income tax refund it's gonna be $695 smaller, and I wouldn't put it past the IRS to roll over the penalties so if you don't pay it for two years your refund gets docked $1,390.
The people this'll add to the rolls are demanding health insurance for the first time but since the insurance companies have to spend 80% on actual care the demand increase all goes to actual healthcare.
And the new people won't use a huge amount of care because if they actually needed a huge amount of care they'd be insured. They'd be unemployable (Medicare), or would have arranged a job with coverage.
This is why when MA implemented this exact system under Mitt Romney overall health costs didn't change much.
the government already gives favorable tax treatment for homeowners and college grads.
Hell the 16th Amendment which allows the income tax is broadly written, and it's 16th so it amends the First Amendment, which means that a 110% income tax on Jews is almost certainly Constitutional.
I meant "Which means a lot of Congresscritters who don't want to lose subsidies for (insert interest group) or (company in district) have a very good reason to vote for it.
It's possible we'll get it eventually. The Accountants estimated it woulod save the country $5-$10 Billion a year. That is a lot of money, and eventually Congress is gonna have to balance the budget. Which means a lot of Congresscritters who don't want to lose subsidies for group or have a very good reason to vote for it.
It'll really depend on how the elections work out.
For you in the short term it won't change much. You'll have to tell the IRS you have insurance at tax time, or they'll dock your refund $695, but other than that?
Changes to insurance coverage (like mid-20s kids staying on Mom's insurance) aree already implemented.
The whole point of the mandate is to avoid the problem of people not buying insurance until they get sick, and then getting really pissed off that the insurers insist that they pay the whole cost of treatment.
Long-term if you switch jobs, move to a small employer, or anything else the Insurance Exchange plus the subsidies plus guaranteed issue mean you will almost certainly be able to keep your health insurance.
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That's a hell of a distinction. Two people actually get arrested and charged with treason because some asshole leaked their names to the world in plaintext, but it doesn't count because instead of saying "US Embassy Source cited in cable leaked by Wikileaks," it said "Wikileaks Source."
For the record the Generals in question are not gonna be shot:
http://www.zimpapers.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6015:chiwenga-speaks-on-wikileaks-&catid=37:top-stories&Itemid=130
But I doubt the Belarussians are gonna be satisfied with anything less then jail terms in Stalinist Gulags, and the Ehriopians have already exiled a guy.
Please learn to use your critical thinking skills.
1) Naomi Wolf is American. She knows American law, American prosecutors, and America's obsessive approach to limiting government power via hard Constitutional Limits. This is a Swedish case. Her experience of hoe the Denver PD would take statements from victims claiming to be attacked from the same guy is irrelevant. She doesn't even know Swedish, which means she can't have actually read the documents in question. For all she knows all witness statements were taken separately, and her Wikileaks-friendly translators simply put them together because it looked worse.
2) This is an inherently unusual case. Nobody in Europe has had anything to do with the legal doctrine of "Diplomatic Asylum" for literally centuries. Defendants who can flee to the UK, come up with a $400k bond, then flee to the Ecuadorian Embassy, claiming the whole time that it's all a plot by an evil third government do not grow on trees. They require unusual tactics.
3) Wolf has no evidence of improper political influence from Karl Rove from Swedes. It's not unusual for political parties to ask foreign political consultants for help. Karl Rove, as a guy who actually won a couple Presidential elections in the world's second largest Democracy, as a right-winger is a no-brainer for Sweden's right-wing Moderate party. The Bergstrom she mentions was not a right-winger, but a left-wing Social Democrat. She's accusing the entire Swedish political elite of being in on a conspiracy with the CIA, on the basis that a DC political consultant (Andrew Krieg) says so. And I doubt the DC Political Consultant she quotes knows Swedish either.
Regardless the simple fact is that Sweden is a Democracy. If Assange tuned himself in he'd have a day in court to fight the charges. If they're BS pushed by the US he'll likely win, which implies that his flight to the embassy is either paranoia or an admission of guilt.
If that's all he'd done nobody would care. But:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/15/whats_happening_to_those_named_wikileaks_sources
You will note that while Assange sits in a comfortable flat in London, complaining of 'witchhunts' because a government he dislikes might possibly consider charging him with crimes, that might eventually include one carrying the death penalty; those two generals in Zimbabwe are actually charged with crimes carrying the Death penalty.
Those cables don't say what you think they say. They say Australian diplomats think the US eventually intends to extradite Assange, and believe that Assange is currently being investigated by someone in the US Government. That should not surprise anybody. Somebody is definitely keeping an eye on Assange, because Wikileaks managed to hurt US Government interests badly. "Keeping an eye on" constitutes an investigation. And if you're not a cop you could easily conclude that they wouldn't investigate him if they had no intention of charging him with a crime.
He's not gonna be charged with anything by the US Government. As a guy who is put on trial for releasing diplomatic cables he's a major embarrassment. As a freedom of information advocate whose trying to flee to Ecuador (which opposes freedom of information) to dodge rape charges? Even if he's vindicated by the Swedes he's a punchline. They'll keep on eye on him just in case, but they ain't gonna make him a martyr.
Seriously. The major reason I don't think the CIA has anything to do with his current plight is simple: I don't think the CIA is that good. I don't think it's humanly possible to be that good.
By taking the modern view you're ignoring one of the major reasons (if not The Major Reason) actual northerners signed up to fight before the Emancipation proclamation.
In 1861 conventional wisdom was that you couldn't run a "Civilized Nation" without a hereditary monarchy. The Republics that existed when the US first became independent were a) tiny and riven by religious differences (Switzerland), b) gone within a few decades (Venice/Poland), or c) basically monarchies (the Netherlands was run by hereditary Stadtholders). The major post-1776 Republic was France, which quickly decided Monarchy was great and wouldn't Napoleon make a wonderful Emperor?. Many, many people concluded it was impossible to keep a country united without a hereditary monarch to order factions to stop being ridiculous and think of the good of the nation.
Note that the evidence from these examples is a lot more damning then I have room to mention. Poland literally gave anyone who could vote the right to start a Confederation in rebellion from the government, which meant the Russians could fund crackpot rebellions 24/7, and most of those rebels honestly did not realize they were selling their principles to the Czarina. They thought they were nobly defending them. France's Republic collapsed into bloody purges of one Republican killing another on the basis of some abstract Republican value no non-Frernchman either understood or cared about. The Empirical Evidence was clear: without a hereditary King to point out when abstract values (ie: limited government as expressed in a specific historic document) should not lead to concrete action (ie: stabbing the guy who supported the faction you think is less into limited government) your country is D-E-D dead.
Now consider the Confederacy's cause: they thought Abe Lincoln might abolish slavery. They didn't know it (his platform was restricting slavery, and it's not clear the Courts would have let him do that), and they seceded before he was inaugurated. It's a cause that they could not explain to non-Southerners, despite the fact that they tried quite eloquently. It's the classic example of a Republic falling apart due to two factions arguing about an abstract principle that nobody who lives elsewhere can understand.
Remember what happened in Mexico a few years after South Carolina seceded. They borrowed a Habsburg Prince and made him Emperor. They decided that this Republicanism thing wasn't working for Mexico, and they had to give Monarchy a chance.
KY was Union. There was not much chance of the Confederates taking the state after Shiloh, where the Confederate governor of Kentucky was killed.
The fact MO was more contested was not necessarily due to the actual will of Kentuckians, but geography and Union Military success. After Shiloh TN was never really under Confederate control, which meant that it was virtually impossible for Confederates to make trouble in KY.
Yes it's great right now, but there's a housing bubble:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-19/congratulations-canada-on-your-ongoing-housing-bubble.html
That's not the only problem. Basically the reason Canada is great right now is that a) it never de-regulated it's banks, so no financial crisis, and b) they have loads of oil to sell from Alberta. a) will probably continue, but b) is associated with loads of prosperity for a few years, and then a major crash. It's called the Dutch Disease, and it's a major reason why South Korea is richer then Nigeria in 2012, despite the fact Nigeria was economically better off in the 50s and then discovered billion$ worth of oil.
I'd actually say the US is the best bet. The debt situation isn't ideal, but since the US uses the US Dollar the problems this can cause are pretty limited. Inflation is the main one. We're basically printing money, which means there's more dollars but the same amount of stuff, which means that (in theory) every dollar should be worth less, in turn it should take more dollars to buy the same amount of stuff, and that is the definition of inflation; but so far the reality is we haven't experienced any. We would probably be better off with some, if only because that would make all the debts holding us back easier to pay off.
Southern Europe is in a much different situation. They don't control their currencies, and inflation is anethema to their Euro-zone partners, so they have to balance their budgets. But they can't do that without economic growth, and their economies are designed to grow only under conditions of extreme global prosperity or high inflation. Since neither is likely to be the case anytime in the foreseeable future they are totally, 100% screwed.
I'm not saying the South was alone in being racist, or that Reconstruction was a perfect solution to the problem of reintegrating the South into the Union on a non-racist basis. I'm just saying that in US history evils of the type this is designed to thwart don't happen very often.
As for the merits of reconstruction, I submit that by your own argument the worst thing it did was under-price grain. OTOH the best thing it did was prevent innocent people from being ripped to shreds by mobs. Modern Americans have very little idea of the brutality of lynch mobs. Pardon me if I see that as a fair trade.
Like many intellectuals on the internet this guy does not understand that the greatest threat to freedom is not the government. It's your neighbors.
What happens in this system if 40% decides to screw 60%? Then anybody in that 60% who verifies anyone else will get beaten to death, and juries won't be able to convict the perpetrators because 40% think it's justifiable homicide. Higher levels of the government may intervene, but appealing to a technocrat in DC to implement Martial Law is pretty much the opposite of open-source collaborative government.
Note this exact scenario has actually happened in the US. After the Civil War the old Confederacy was 40% black. South Carolina and Mississippi were majority black, and every Confederate state had Unionist whites and Carpetbagging immigrants from the North. As long as the technocrats in DC were willing to fund a massive occupation army the fact that most southerners were anti-racist (or at least anti-official-government-racism) prevailed. Then Reconstruction ended, the troops imposed by DC went away, and we got decades of racism.
Pretty much every example of a Democracy stopping being a Democracy includes a similar period where the actual government is too weak to stop some group of thugs from beating up their neighbors. The Nazis, for example.
You're mistaken if you think photo ID is required in Canada. According to the actual Canadian government you can get buy with non-photo ID and a bill, or even skip ID completely as long as your buddy with ID will vouch for you:
http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e
As for the US Election system, remember that a) it's basically unchanged since anonymous voting was invented the early 19th century, partly because b) the only people who actually pay attention to it are partisan hacks, but also because it works pretty well most of the time.. Both sets of hacks know that, all other things being equal, the left-wing hacks are better off if more people vote. Therefore the right-wing hacks try to arrange things to make it impossible to vote, and the left-wingers try to make it easy.
As for the meat of the argument, as a left-wing hack I (surprise surprise) oppose ID requirements. Stealing an election one vote at a time is just something that doesn't happen, so forcing people to buy ID (as almost all these laws do -- there's no option to use your free, government issued health card and a phone bill) hurts my pet causes and solves no problems.
You know what I hate about third-parties?
They have absolutely no idea how actual power works. They have all these theories, which they think about a lot, but they have no practical experience.
Here's why people who actually run things are surprised when they read the bills they just voted on: those bills are complicated as hell, and they change up to the last minute. You probably know Johnson from Kansas really wants to change some regulation, but a) unless you are actually the Speaker you have no way of knowing whether Johnson got enough votes together to force the change through at the last minute and b) unless you are very knowledgeable about the regulation in question you have no idea whether it's a good idea or not.
It is physically impossible to become very knowledgeable about every issue that will ever come up for a vote. Defense, the EPA, HUD, etc. are all very different. And you have to learn all this shit every year or you won't be able to vote on the departmental budgets, much less Joe Wilson's quixotic Crusade to strengthen State Defense Forces.
Moreover you're ignoring half a legislators job: constituent service. If somebody has an idea they want to turn into a law, or thinks they deserve SSI: Disability but got denied, etc. it's his Congressman's job to check that shit out. In a lot of ways this part of a Congressman's job is more important then the actual votes he makes, because his vote is only one of 435. OTOH the guy depending on him to get the Social Security Administration to reconsider doesn't have a lot of other options.
>>>I'd still have a major advantage because audio books are not cheap.
Neither are the actual books you have to buy to read on the train. BESIDES we both know you don't actually need to pay for anything. Did you see the websites I listed? They are all free. (Also there's tons of radio podcasts and college lectures I listen to while driving... all free.)
$8 paperbacks are a lot cheaper then any Audiobook I've seen.
CD Audiobooks in particular seem to cost as much as a full TV series on DVD.
>>>But for a vacation I win hands down.
I don't "vacate" often, but when I do I usually stay home and just enjoy the time off. My last major vacation was a drive across the states..... the drive was the whole point, and riding a train would have not been the same (looking at tall weeds growing alongside the track gets boring).
As for the claim of train travel across 850 miles in 5 hours... not true. You have to add another 2 hours for various stops along the way (dropping-off and picking-up passengers). Plus an hour to leave your home and drive to the station/check your baggage. Plus another 2 hours to find a rental car at the opposite end, go through their annoying checkout/payment process, and drive to your hotel for the night.
About 10 hours total. Same amount of time it took my coworkers who flew by plane across the same distance. In contrast my drive time was 11.
The French have 170+ MPH trip-speed. Actual train-speed is 200 MPH. So you've lost two hours. You're also being quite pessimistic in assuming that a) car rental is actually necessary, b) that it would take an hour, and c) that the Hotel would be 60 miles from the station.
Moreover I'm being pretty generous in saying you get 850 miles in 10 hours. That's 85 MPH trip speed, which is technically above the speed limit almost everywhere. It also assumes you can maintain that 85 MPH despite physically stopping to buy junk-food and gas up at least once.
You can probably get away with that out West, but I live in Ohio. the cops here will let out-of-staters get away with 85 on the toll road, but you try that shit on 94 with a Oklahoma plates and you're gonna spend at least an hour getting speeding tickets. Hell you go the actual speed limit here you're in trouble. Quotas are technically illegal, but the police don't act like it, and they know perfectly well if they stop an Oklahoman he's not gonna be able to make a Court date in Akron.
And no Montana doesn't need high speed rail..... almost-all the population is concentrated in one spot (Billings). Where else would they need to go? The tiny 1000-person village of Glendive??? Doubtful. You'd have a superspeed billion-dollar trainline from Billings to Glendive, and just 1 passenger. That's called: Waste.
Billings is only about 10% of the population. Missoula is 6-7% and 350 miles from Billings on the roads. Helena's 240 miles from Billings by car, another 2-3% of the population, and on a straight-line from Billings to Missoula. And even if Billings was a half-million people they'd still have plenty of places to go out-state.
And yes, if we're forced to the studies of ridership you;d insist on it would be too low. But a) nobody insists on ridership studies for highways, and b) I'm only claiming Highspeed rail would be more useful for MT residents then high-population density places, if the Missoula-Helena line was part of a massive line connecting NYC to Seattle...
Your probably right about the tie if we did the rail system I mentioned. But I'd still have a major advantage because audio books are not cheap. If your boss is still paying you mileage and the mileage is actually cheaper then gas and wear on your vehicle; you probably come out ahead. But for a vacation I win hands down.
But if they did a system like the French made in the 70s my trip velocity would be more then 170 MPH. That's trip velocity, so in in five hours I've gone 850 miles, counting stops. It'll take you 9 hours to catch me, assuming your gas tank doesn't need re-filling and you don't get hungry.
There's a reason liberals read a Conservative say: "But with our low population densities trains are inefficient," and simply walk away. Montana needs 170 MPH transportation a hell of a lot more then NYC does.
What the fuck are you talking about? We're not talking about the 12th and 20th amendments. And no, the 16th amendment has absolutely no effect on the 1st amendment. The 16th amendment could have amended the 1st, but it didn't.
You have completely deflected from the point of the discussion.
If the 20th Amends the 12th, then it follows that the 16th Amends the 1st.
Trains are a lot more convenient then aircraft. There's security theatre, but there's less of it. You typically don't have to show up an hour before your train leaves. Rail stations are also usually located in fairly densely populated areas, rather then way out in the boonies. It's actually practical to show up 15 minutes before the train leaves. You still have to park somewhere, but since rail stations also tend to be on mass transit lines you can generally park anywhere in the City (including right in front of your own personal house), leave an hour before your train leaves, and still make it.
And then for the next ten hours you can play on your computer, read a book, bone up on the info you'll need for your business meeting, etc. instead of trying to navigate traffic yourself. And there's none of that "turn off your personal electronic devices for a half-hour before take-off and landing" BS.
The problem in the US is that train routes just don't exist. To get from Cleveland to Detroit by train, for example, you have to a) go through Chicago (which is two states out of the way) or b) go through Canada. The most sensible route (via Toledo) just isn't there. I did an experiment to see how quickly you could get to OKC from Minneapolis and Amtrak's website was unable to tell me. Apparently you have to go through Arkansas and Texas because the only passenger line into Oklahoma is Fort Worth-OKC.
If the feds were willing to put some money into passenger rail, so that you could actually make these trips, and incidentally upgrade the main rail lines so the trains could go 80, it would be a really good thing for the country. We'd use less oil, be less vulnerable to terrorism, and we'd have more travel options. But that ain't happening anytime soon.
Surely you recognize the difference between being taxed for being a live and being taxed because you bought something or are employed.
The 16th amendment does not amend the 1st amendment. It amends the Constitution.
If the Amendments weren't part of the Constitution laws violating freedom of religion would be Antiamendmental, not Unconstitutional. Moreover parts of the 12th Amendment which set the Presidential Inauguration to March, are superseded by the 20th Amendment which sets a January inauguration date; despite the fact the 20th does not include the words "12th Amendment." It just says Inauguration day is in January, and *poof* all previous disagreeing Amendments don't count.
Which means the later Amendments Amend earlier Amendments, and the 16th must Amend the first. In other words Congress can't ban the Jewish religion, but it's power to set income taxes "from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration" can tax the Jewish religion into nonexistence.
I'm not saying I support this, or that if Congress tried this BS I wouldn't be right out there protesting it. Hell, if you could find a rationalization I'd sleep a lot better. But the simple fact is that Congress has this power.
This is what happens when you read the Constitution literally. To get around your literalism and run the damn country they have to Amend it, and since the Amendments amend the Bill of Rights as well as the enumerated powers you end up giving Congress powers willy-nilly.
Dude,
Two points:
1) If you think this is new you should re-read the 16th Amendment. the government has had this power since before your grandfather was born.
2) It's not used because it's less useful then you think. If Congress has the votes for your welfare taxes then it has the votes to abolish Welfare. Period. the Abortion tax is probably a violation of Roe vs. Wade. The Illegal Immigrant Tax is quite possible politically, but what are you gonna do if they simply refuse to pay?
1) The price won't go up appreciably. Most Americans whose health plans will change are in the hideously inefficient Small Group market. Administrative overhead is 30% of revenue. 40%+ of revenue not being spent on healthcare isn't uncommon. OTOH US Medicare, Canadian Medicare, the NHS, and the large employer markets in the US spend less then 5% on administrative overhead. Most of them are less then 2%. The law makes much more efficient by centralizing it into an Exchange that everyone can understand, and capping total non-medical expenses (including profit) at 20%. Massachusetts tried exactly this system, added tens of thousands to the rolls, and their health cost increases over that time period were actually lower then the rest of the country's.
2) Health Management Organizations. The theory was your insurer would manage all the treatments you got, and would only pay for treatments that proved they were worth it (ie: if a cheap generic drug is available you get that. you only the $3,000 a year patented new thing if the cheapie doesn't work). The problem was this required saying no to a lot of treatments people really wanted needed, which is really bad marketing for an insurance company.
So in practice, since 2000, and HMO is just another insurance company.
3) This is complicated. Americans really distrust Government Power. Especially white Americans.
The hope is that as time goes on more employers will start paying the penalty (I believe it's $2k per employee), and stop providing insurance. It'll take forever, but hey. If we wanted rapid change in response to new conditions we wouldn't have Separation of Powers.
The advantage of the system for start-ups is that job-lock is dead. Pre-ObamaCare a programmer who had breast cancer could not leave her job because the next insurer would not pay for anything it could relate to her breast cancer. She couldn't go off on her own, and even moving to another big company was difficult. Now she can quit, join your start-up as a contracter, and buy her own insurance on the exchange without worrying that the pre-existing condition clause will screw her when/if the cancer comes back.
It's $695 a year. And you don't have to pay it. They can't arrest you solely for not paying it.
If you have an income tax refund it's gonna be $695 smaller, and I wouldn't put it past the IRS to roll over the penalties so if you don't pay it for two years your refund gets docked $1,390.
Health insurance is a weird market.
The people this'll add to the rolls are demanding health insurance for the first time but since the insurance companies have to spend 80% on actual care the demand increase all goes to actual healthcare.
And the new people won't use a huge amount of care because if they actually needed a huge amount of care they'd be insured. They'd be unemployable (Medicare), or would have arranged a job with coverage.
This is why when MA implemented this exact system under Mitt Romney overall health costs didn't change much.
Dude,
Why are you surprised?
the government already gives favorable tax treatment for homeowners and college grads.
Hell the 16th Amendment which allows the income tax is broadly written, and it's 16th so it amends the First Amendment, which means that a 110% income tax on Jews is almost certainly Constitutional.
I meant "Which means a lot of Congresscritters who don't want to lose subsidies for (insert interest group) or (company in district) have a very good reason to vote for it.
Apparently Slashdot hates angle brackets.
Lieberman happened to the Public Option.
It's possible we'll get it eventually. The Accountants estimated it woulod save the country $5-$10 Billion a year. That is a lot of money, and eventually Congress is gonna have to balance the budget. Which means a lot of Congresscritters who don't want to lose subsidies for group or have a very good reason to vote for it.
It'll really depend on how the elections work out.
For you in the short term it won't change much. You'll have to tell the IRS you have insurance at tax time, or they'll dock your refund $695, but other than that?
Changes to insurance coverage (like mid-20s kids staying on Mom's insurance) aree already implemented.
The whole point of the mandate is to avoid the problem of people not buying insurance until they get sick, and then getting really pissed off that the insurers insist that they pay the whole cost of treatment.
Long-term if you switch jobs, move to a small employer, or anything else the Insurance Exchange plus the subsidies plus guaranteed issue mean you will almost certainly be able to keep your health insurance.