Cali is very unusual. The districts are large -- an average-sized Cali State Senate district is bigger then DE, SD, ND, AK, VT or WY; and state house districts are roughly the size of Atlanta -- and it's quite professional. It would be virtually impossible to actually run that state without giving the legislators full-time offices in their own districts. VT and NH's lower houses, OTOH, have 3,000-4,200 people in their districts. It would be very difficult to run a state if every 3,000 people required a full-time office. 400 offices in New hampshire is an awful lot of rent money in a state that only pays the actual legislators themselves $100 a year.
Michigan could probably use full-time offices, but the GOP and moderates (read: mostly white people) are paranoid that Detroit's pols (read: black people, Arabs, Latinoes, etc.; but mostly black people) would use the offices as political patronage, and set up a Chicago-style political machine. Or at least that's the only reason I can think of for this weird requirement to exist, and when I asked Tobocman why he was the only guy who had a real district office he said that State level-pols weren't allowed to spend their budgets in their own districts.
What actually happens in most districts is that there's a guy whose in the district part-time. There's also the Legislator himself, who can meet a lot more of the people who want to see him personally then Cali guys can because MI State house districts only have 77k-91k residents. To meet with somebody personally you can't really just walk into the office, but you can call the Lansing office, and the Lansing people will set up an appointment with you. This is very important in Michigan, because folks from the Upper Peninsula have to drive 3-4 hours just to get to the bridge that puts them within a 4-hour drive of Lansing.
Keep in mind that in many states a state-level pol won't have a district office.
In Michigan it is illegal for a State-level politician to spend public money anywhere but his Lansing office. The Lansing office budget is quite limited, so that very few of the 148 State Legislators even try to have anything resembling a District Office. The only one I ever saw who got around it was Steve Tobocman, who borrowed space from a friend on the County Commission (Ilona Varga, who was coincidentally also the only County Commissioner to have a local office), and somehow managed to convince the State House to let one of his staffers spend almost all her time there. He's been term-limited, but his successor (Rashida Tlaib) runs the same office. Other pols have a desk they declare the District Office, but it isn't staffed regularly.
This is quite possibly the most important piece of information in your question. Most states have totally non-professional legislatures. This means that even Senators have a single, part-time staffer, and are supposed to have full-time jobs. Many states are proud of this, so if you're in TX or NH you're just screwed. Cali, NY, and my home-state of Michigan aren't that bad; but most states are officially still of the opinion that the best way to avoid tyranny is bar Legislators from working more then 20 hours a week, three months out of the year.
In general the solution is call your State Senator's office. It shows a certain level of commitment to your position, because you actually took the time to call, and spent Cell-phone minutes. OTOH lots of people send email blasts and promptly forget what they were for.
I strongly suspect the main issue here is that a) the State Senator in question isn't terribly tech-savvy, b) the State Senate is under-funded for the reasons I gave in the opening paragraph, or c) a and b.
If their major concern is that if we release it somebody will make money off of it then they need to release it, and release it in such a way that nobody can make money off of it. If somebody's able to make money off it, then clearly it's very useful, and it would be churlish to keep it to yourselves. You release it open source, with a No Guarantees license to prevent you from being sued when some jackass figures out a way to use it to turn over his entire Parket Ticket Payment Database to identity thieves. Then you get your bosses to budget a few hours a week to support it.
So get legal on this, get them to agree to a license. It needs the No Guarantees clause. It should probably have the No Commercial Exploitation clause, even tho that is not terribly effective (see Red Hat).
Keep in mind these people aren't artists, engineers, or anything like that. Their job isn't to do some airy-fairey "improve the world" BS, it's to get the best value for the money for their taxpayers. And if they release this program, somebody gets rich off it, their taxpayers are gonna be pissed. Their tax-money went to getting some guy rich. The question their bosses will be answering at the next Commission meeting isn't "How did you do the great thing of making that dude rich?," it'll be "Why was my tax money spent on making some dude rich while the police budget was being cut?"
It's not likely that this program will actually make anyone rich, so that's probably not the most important objection the OP's facing. Anyone who knows much about government contracting knows it's virtually certain some shifty operator will see this, set himself up as a consultant on code he doesn't understand, charge local municipalities lots of money, and do it so badly he gets sued. Since he doesn't have much cash (stealing programs you don't understand to make money is only a sensible decision if you're poor), whereas the County that wrote the program has insurance, the OP's bosses get sued. The No Guarantees clause can help here, because it means any lawsuit will lose, but nothing can actually stop someone from filing a lawsuit.
Always remember the bureaucrats creed: "I want my tombstone to say "He didn't get his name in the newspapers."
By that standard any individual lynch mob participant can't be called a racist, because they only killed that one black guy, and it's impossible to prove that one black dude didn't deserve more then any white guy they've ever seen.
What I can tell is that Sanford's only 30.5% black. Given that it is physically impossible for a teenager to walk in a non-suspicious manner, I'd have to say the odds that he never saw a white dude doing exactly what Trayvon Martin was doing are pretty low.
I have patrolled without a weapon. So has anyone in a legitimate neighborhood watch. It's quite safe. The bad guys who know what they're doing don't mess with you because they know the cops (with real firepower, handcuffs, etc.) would appear in five minutes if one of them actually capped you. Then they'd be on the news. And the criminals on the News get some prestige, but they also get locked up for decades. Their best bet is to walk away and hope you didn't see them doing something that would get them arrested.
Look at it this way: Under what circumstances could a neighborhood watchman's patrol end with gunfire and not be considered a total failure?
"Meanwhile, it was Zimmerman who was rolling around the neighborhood with a gun looking for trouble."
LOL what exactly do you think "Neighborhood watch" is?
In a well-run neighborhood watch you are not allowed to have a gun. This is made extremely clear to you by the police, because if they fail to do so they may be liable when you shoot a kid carrying Skittles.
Someone looking at you, talking on a cellphone, even getting out of their car and walking up to you (which isn't what happened, according to witnesses, but we'll go there) wouldn't meet ANY court's standard of threat of imminent harm, barring the brandishing of a weapon.
So you're claiming that the evidence proves Zimmerman wasn't holding his gun in his hand when he shot Martin?
That's kind of the problem with this law. If Martin's GF is telling the truth it's entirely possible Zimmerman said something ominous, such as "Don't mess with my neighborhood," while carrying the weapon, and walking towards Martin. In that case Martin has every right to attack Zimmerman.
If Zimmerman's telling the truth then he had every right to kill Martin.
Figuring out which is virtually impossible. The evidence released to the public just seems to show a confrontation happened, and that the dude screaming wasn't Zimmerman, which certainly makes Zimmerman's story less credible but is also not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The First Amendment means media blackouts are illegal in the US. Delays in charging Zimmerman might make jury selection a problem here, but not really.
The US legal system is slow. If he'd been charged the day after the murder there wouldn't have been a national media circus, but neighborhood watch captain kills kid with Skittles was always gonna be a top local story. And juries are selected locally.
This isn't Italy, where Courts have actually ruled that true statements can be defamatory, or the UK with notorious libel laws, it's the US with an absolute right to free speech. Which means that attorneys have to prove that a) a statement was false, b) the sayer knew that, and c) he said it anyway just to defame the target. Moreover none of this applies if the plaintiff is a 'public figure,' particularly if said public figure is being defamed for something he does as part of his job. Thus Obama can't sue anybody for obviously false claims that he wasn't born in the US.
Zimmerman was neighborhood watch captain. As such he's a public figure in all actions he takes regarding the neighborhood watch, and he was pretty clearly being a neighborhood watchman when he called in Treyvon. You could make shit up about him that relates to his Neighborhood Watch Captaincy, admit that in Court, and still win the libel suit. Even if that doesn't apply, as a crime suspect he's a limited purpose public figure, which means the media can report just about anything relating to the crime it wants.
All the ones that report one or two guys for basically walking around ("being suspicious" in Zimmermanese) are black kids. One is about a seven-year-old.
He's not alleging that Zimmerman's actions were illegal. he's alleging Zimmerman failed to follow standard neighborhood watch protocol, confronted Martin, and carried a gun. While it's possible his actions were legal, it is not possible that they were anything but stupid.
I've been active in Neighborhood Watch organizations, such as Detroit's CB Radio patrols. The point of these organizations is to take some of the workload of patrolling a neighborhood off the police, so they can do real stuff. And everything Zimmerman did is the exact opposite. He's calling the cops to report a kid who wasn't doing anything. This means they have to send a patrol out to stop a kid with Skittles. Instead of preventing rape the police in Zimmerman's neighborhood were preventing Skittles.
He's following the kid, which is statistically likely to lead to said kid turning around and asking "Why are you following me?," which (best-case scenario) results in an argument and more calls to the cops. The police have to send more then one car, because one cop can't really do much to keep two idiots from beating the shit out of each-other. They probably need three or four to be safe. Which is a significant proportion of the cops they have on duty. And their rape prevention effort grinds to a halt until they can track down the arguing pair, who have now committed at least one actual crime ("disturbing the peace"). Zimmerman's neighborhood watch group increased the number of criminals in his neighborhood. George Zimmerman is an idiot.
He's carrying a gun. It's loaded, so he clearly wasn't planning on bluffing. This proves that he knew that his following the kid could result in a confrontation, and he was prepared to win it. This was the biggest no-no of all in every meeting our group had with the cops. People who feel safe because they're armed take risks. neighborhood watchman, who typically have no training whatsoever, don't know how to make those smart risks. Somebody's gonna die if you let your neighborhood watchman carry their Glocks on patrol, and odds are that it won't be an actual criminal. It'll be a 17-year-old kid on a Skittles run.
It's entirely possible George Zimmerman can prove he isn't a murderer. In fact with Florida's stand-your-ground-law he can probably skate even if forensics prove he beat himself up to make his story more credible. But the simple facts are a) his overly-aggressive tactics turned a simple Skittles-run by a 17-year-old kid into a murder case, b) he dragged his hometown's name through the mud, c) he probably ruined his life and d) if he wasn't an idiot none of this shit would have happened.
If you believe everyone has a right to vote, then none of the Northern states had legitimate government either, since they didn't let women vote.
In general I would agree that no government is legitimate unless almost every adult it actually governs can vote for it. Which means that nobody had a legitimate government before 1850, and legitimate governments weren't really the norm even in the West until the 1960s ended US Segregation and European Imperialism.
In this situation I'm discussing the relative legitimacy of a specific decision. If the South had had a government that allowed blacks to vote there's no way they would have seceded, which means the OP's contention that the war was caused by Northern oppression of Southern states is wrong. The war was caused by a minority (a sizable minority, but as minority nonetheless) clinging to the levers of power illegitimately.
Lincoln's announced plans would not have actually affected any of these state's internal policies on slavery. He wanted to ban it from the territories, not emancipate it nation-wide.
And the South correctly recognized that any system that prevented new slave states from coming into being would eventually result in the abolishment of slavery. Since abolition would destroy the economy of the South, they decided not to wait until the North had an even larger lead but instead gambled that the North would leave them alone. They were wrong.
Southern Political Theory was incredibly stupid during this period.
At this time the Supreme Court was extremely unsympathetic to any rule banning slavery from a state without that state's permission. It was also not sympathetic to arguments that slaves could be freed simply by moving them to free states. Which means that even if Lincoln pushed his bill banning slavery in the territories through Congress it's likely Chief Justice Taney would have ruled that slaves brought to said territory were still slaves.
Moreover he'd have to get his bill through Congress. And in 1860 he'd only have been able to do that with the help of Democrats in the Senate.
Many Native Americans weren't US Citizens until 1924. They were citizens of their tribe because they weren't subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal government.
Moreover very few of them died as a result of conflict with the US. They died due to the fact that they had no immunity to European diseases. We would sweep in and conquer the weakened state afterwards, but the war wasn't the cause of the disease it was the result.
The US Census is every 10 years, years ending in zero. For both sides the draft lasted from 1862-1865. So draft-dodging would not affect these numbers.
People leaving the country to serve with the Khedive in Egypt, or joining the french Foreign legion, would afect the numbers.
There was no significant number of free blacks fighting for the South for a simple reason: the South made it illegal for free blacks to fight. While a handful joined state militia units, they weren't allowed to fight for the national army, and the militia regulations the CSA Congress passed specifically banned them from state militia service. The most prominent exception (the confusingly named Louisiana Native Guard Regiment, whose "Natives" were all black) was put on display for the papers in grand parades three times, and then abolished when Louisiana adopted the national Miltia regulations.
The magazine "Civil War Gazette" did a good blog post on this. Their low estimate is 6 guys actually fired their weapons in Confederate service. The highest estimate is 300. The highest estimate raised in the comments is 3%, or 15k-60k. It's unsourced, with poorly done math (29 in a regiment would be less then 3% because most regiments had 1100-1200 guys). Many others quote Frederick Douglas, who had no access to military records North or (especially not) South, was probably extrapolating any numbers he got from the aforementioned Louisiana Native Guards, and was a fairly biased source anyway. He wanted to convince the North to use black troops, which was a lot more likely to happen if the South was doing it. He stopped when the alleged black troops never appeared in battle. The rest are all "My Great-Grandpa swore he had a buddy..."
Keep in mind that 40% of the Southern population were slaves. Given that the reason all the states gave for seceding was protecting slavery, it's quite clear that the majority of the people in almost every Southern state actually opposed secession. South Carolina and Mississippi were actually majority slave at the time.
In other words if you believe that everyone has the right to vote you cannot claim any of these secession acts was legitimate.
Also note that the Federal government actually hadn't done anything when most of the states seceded. Lincoln was elected in November 1860, he took office on March 4th 1861. Seven states seceded by February 1. Only four others actually managed to secede.
Lincoln's announced plans would not have actually affected any of these state's internal policies on slavery. He wanted to ban it from the territories, not emancipate it nation-wide.
So you're wrong on all counts. The states you're talking about were inherently illegitimate because 40% of their people were slaves, and thus unable to vote. Most of them seceded not to protest any action the Union had actually taken, but to protest the actions they had convinced themselves the Union was about to take.
I proved that less then 55% of Canada's population is generic Anglo-Canadian. 25% is not Anglo, 20% was born outside of the country, and some of the remainder are descendants the first two groups. The equivalent US number, OTOH, is 66% white non-Hispanic.
I sincerely doubt you'll find any first world country that is less homogenous then Canada.
In technical terms you're probably right. But that's because the technical terms we're talking about were designed specifically to recognize the diversity of the US, and therefore don't really apply to non-US countries.
If you look at Canada without US-specific terms you'll find it's quite diverse. A full quarter of the population belongs to an ancient nation that's sole relationship with Anglo-Canadians is that they both remained loyal to King George III when we rebelled. Another fifth is foreign-born. That's 45% of the population who aren't part of the majority Anglo-Canadian ethnic group, and many of those 55% aren't really Anglo-Canadian. They're the children of French-Canadians who acculturated, Indian immigrants, etc.
Life expectancy gets thrown around because it's what you're shooting for in a health system. The problems using it are over-blown.
For example while our lifestyle means we're all fat-asses (and thus likely to die), we're also basically teetotalers when compared to the Irish or British.
But in many cases seeing a ridiculously misinformed chiropractor is helpful to stay healthy. The reason is simple: The most stubborn diseases we face today are caused by people doing shit they know they shouldn't do. If you're pre-diabetic and you have to explain to your chiropractor that you pigged out on donuts you're a lot less likely to pig out on donuts. You're also less likely to be allowed to rationalize getting back into cigarettes or booze.
Yeah you could get the same from an MD, but who can afford a half-hour appointment with an MD every week? A chiropractor is a lot cheaper, which means he's a lot more likely to get results.
This is why a lot of modern docs are trying to usurp Chiropractors, Massage therapists, and other Alt-Med types. If they can be convinced to cut down on the woo, tell people to get their vaccinations, and the MDs simply tolerate their BS explanations of why their particular placeboes "work," we'll probably end up with better health.
Everybody benefits from ridiculous quoted prices. The hospital increases prices 10%. The insurance company negotiator negotiates some of that price increase away. Because the discount for his company is now 55% of list price, rather then 50%, he gets a bonus. The hospital gets a) 5% more profits for no extra work, or b) 5% more to waste on sexy prestige-bringing, low-revenue crap like brain surgeons; so their executives get a bonus. The insurer can jack up premiums and 'prove' they're justified to the Insurance Commissioner because they're paying more for the same medical care, so that guy gets a bonus...
And the people who end up paying for the jacked-up rices, and executive bonuses, don't notice because their health insurance is a "fringe benefit." The bad guy to them isn't the health system, it's their boss who had to gut the budget for raises this year to keep their health plan.
Your analogy is specious. A US Law is not a simple thing to change, especially unilaterally. No single person or group can close the door unilaterally.
To make it work we need a bicameral door-opening committee, and a door-opening Executive Officer separate from the committee. Once the committee has voted to close the door, and the executive agreed, is the executive overstepping his bounds by telling everyone else "Don't worry, the door won't open?"
As for stopping ACTA, in the US that battle is lost. Wyden's strategy could work, but only to the extent it will make Poland/Denmark/etc. less likely to join us in our ACTA-compliant foolishness. There is no way to put the ACTA genie back into the bottle in the US until at least the election. Given the sheer number of interest groups who love ACTA it's pretty hard to see any of it's provisions being overturned as a result of the election.
For example, remember the Chinese Dog Food killing puppies? ACTA's anti-counterfeiting provisions help prevent that from happening again because they mean when you buy Crest or Purina it is actually Crest or Purina-approved. Logically it's a non sequiter, but it makes a hell of an attack ad. How about a flood of fake Chinese Fords destroying UAW jobs in Michigan? A totally irrational, and frankly insane, fear. But you show me the Midwestern pol with the balls to risk that ad and I'll show you a guy who lost to Ron Johnson a year-and-half ago.
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Cali is very unusual. The districts are large -- an average-sized Cali State Senate district is bigger then DE, SD, ND, AK, VT or WY; and state house districts are roughly the size of Atlanta -- and it's quite professional. It would be virtually impossible to actually run that state without giving the legislators full-time offices in their own districts. VT and NH's lower houses, OTOH, have 3,000-4,200 people in their districts. It would be very difficult to run a state if every 3,000 people required a full-time office. 400 offices in New hampshire is an awful lot of rent money in a state that only pays the actual legislators themselves $100 a year.
Michigan could probably use full-time offices, but the GOP and moderates (read: mostly white people) are paranoid that Detroit's pols (read: black people, Arabs, Latinoes, etc.; but mostly black people) would use the offices as political patronage, and set up a Chicago-style political machine. Or at least that's the only reason I can think of for this weird requirement to exist, and when I asked Tobocman why he was the only guy who had a real district office he said that State level-pols weren't allowed to spend their budgets in their own districts.
What actually happens in most districts is that there's a guy whose in the district part-time. There's also the Legislator himself, who can meet a lot more of the people who want to see him personally then Cali guys can because MI State house districts only have 77k-91k residents. To meet with somebody personally you can't really just walk into the office, but you can call the Lansing office, and the Lansing people will set up an appointment with you. This is very important in Michigan, because folks from the Upper Peninsula have to drive 3-4 hours just to get to the bridge that puts them within a 4-hour drive of Lansing.
Keep in mind that in many states a state-level pol won't have a district office.
In Michigan it is illegal for a State-level politician to spend public money anywhere but his Lansing office. The Lansing office budget is quite limited, so that very few of the 148 State Legislators even try to have anything resembling a District Office. The only one I ever saw who got around it was Steve Tobocman, who borrowed space from a friend on the County Commission (Ilona Varga, who was coincidentally also the only County Commissioner to have a local office), and somehow managed to convince the State House to let one of his staffers spend almost all her time there. He's been term-limited, but his successor (Rashida Tlaib) runs the same office. Other pols have a desk they declare the District Office, but it isn't staffed regularly.
This is quite possibly the most important piece of information in your question. Most states have totally non-professional legislatures. This means that even Senators have a single, part-time staffer, and are supposed to have full-time jobs. Many states are proud of this, so if you're in TX or NH you're just screwed. Cali, NY, and my home-state of Michigan aren't that bad; but most states are officially still of the opinion that the best way to avoid tyranny is bar Legislators from working more then 20 hours a week, three months out of the year.
In general the solution is call your State Senator's office. It shows a certain level of commitment to your position, because you actually took the time to call, and spent Cell-phone minutes. OTOH lots of people send email blasts and promptly forget what they were for.
I strongly suspect the main issue here is that a) the State Senator in question isn't terribly tech-savvy, b) the State Senate is under-funded for the reasons I gave in the opening paragraph, or c) a and b.
If their major concern is that if we release it somebody will make money off of it then they need to release it, and release it in such a way that nobody can make money off of it. If somebody's able to make money off it, then clearly it's very useful, and it would be churlish to keep it to yourselves. You release it open source, with a No Guarantees license to prevent you from being sued when some jackass figures out a way to use it to turn over his entire Parket Ticket Payment Database to identity thieves. Then you get your bosses to budget a few hours a week to support it.
So get legal on this, get them to agree to a license. It needs the No Guarantees clause. It should probably have the No Commercial Exploitation clause, even tho that is not terribly effective (see Red Hat).
Keep in mind these people aren't artists, engineers, or anything like that. Their job isn't to do some airy-fairey "improve the world" BS, it's to get the best value for the money for their taxpayers. And if they release this program, somebody gets rich off it, their taxpayers are gonna be pissed. Their tax-money went to getting some guy rich. The question their bosses will be answering at the next Commission meeting isn't "How did you do the great thing of making that dude rich?," it'll be "Why was my tax money spent on making some dude rich while the police budget was being cut?"
It's not likely that this program will actually make anyone rich, so that's probably not the most important objection the OP's facing. Anyone who knows much about government contracting knows it's virtually certain some shifty operator will see this, set himself up as a consultant on code he doesn't understand, charge local municipalities lots of money, and do it so badly he gets sued. Since he doesn't have much cash (stealing programs you don't understand to make money is only a sensible decision if you're poor), whereas the County that wrote the program has insurance, the OP's bosses get sued. The No Guarantees clause can help here, because it means any lawsuit will lose, but nothing can actually stop someone from filing a lawsuit.
Always remember the bureaucrats creed: "I want my tombstone to say "He didn't get his name in the newspapers."
By that standard any individual lynch mob participant can't be called a racist, because they only killed that one black guy, and it's impossible to prove that one black dude didn't deserve more then any white guy they've ever seen.
What I can tell is that Sanford's only 30.5% black. Given that it is physically impossible for a teenager to walk in a non-suspicious manner, I'd have to say the odds that he never saw a white dude doing exactly what Trayvon Martin was doing are pretty low.
I have patrolled without a weapon. So has anyone in a legitimate neighborhood watch. It's quite safe. The bad guys who know what they're doing don't mess with you because they know the cops (with real firepower, handcuffs, etc.) would appear in five minutes if one of them actually capped you. Then they'd be on the news. And the criminals on the News get some prestige, but they also get locked up for decades. Their best bet is to walk away and hope you didn't see them doing something that would get them arrested.
Look at it this way:
Under what circumstances could a neighborhood watchman's patrol end with gunfire and not be considered a total failure?
"Meanwhile, it was Zimmerman who was rolling around the neighborhood with a gun looking for trouble."
LOL what exactly do you think "Neighborhood watch" is?
In a well-run neighborhood watch you are not allowed to have a gun. This is made extremely clear to you by the police, because if they fail to do so they may be liable when you shoot a kid carrying Skittles.
Someone looking at you, talking on a cellphone, even getting out of their car and walking up to you (which isn't what happened, according to witnesses, but we'll go there) wouldn't meet ANY court's standard of threat of imminent harm, barring the brandishing of a weapon.
So you're claiming that the evidence proves Zimmerman wasn't holding his gun in his hand when he shot Martin?
That's kind of the problem with this law. If Martin's GF is telling the truth it's entirely possible Zimmerman said something ominous, such as "Don't mess with my neighborhood," while carrying the weapon, and walking towards Martin. In that case Martin has every right to attack Zimmerman.
If Zimmerman's telling the truth then he had every right to kill Martin.
Figuring out which is virtually impossible. The evidence released to the public just seems to show a confrontation happened, and that the dude screaming wasn't Zimmerman, which certainly makes Zimmerman's story less credible but is also not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The First Amendment means media blackouts are illegal in the US. Delays in charging Zimmerman might make jury selection a problem here, but not really.
The US legal system is slow. If he'd been charged the day after the murder there wouldn't have been a national media circus, but neighborhood watch captain kills kid with Skittles was always gonna be a top local story. And juries are selected locally.
This isn't Italy, where Courts have actually ruled that true statements can be defamatory, or the UK with notorious libel laws, it's the US with an absolute right to free speech. Which means that attorneys have to prove that a) a statement was false, b) the sayer knew that, and c) he said it anyway just to defame the target. Moreover none of this applies if the plaintiff is a 'public figure,' particularly if said public figure is being defamed for something he does as part of his job. Thus Obama can't sue anybody for obviously false claims that he wasn't born in the US.
Zimmerman was neighborhood watch captain. As such he's a public figure in all actions he takes regarding the neighborhood watch, and he was pretty clearly being a neighborhood watchman when he called in Treyvon. You could make shit up about him that relates to his Neighborhood Watch Captaincy, admit that in Court, and still win the libel suit. Even if that doesn't apply, as a crime suspect he's a limited purpose public figure, which means the media can report just about anything relating to the crime it wants.
All the people he called in about for "acting suspicious" were black kids. One was seven to nine years old by his own estimate.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/trayvon-shooters-911-calls-potholes-piles-trash-black-men
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/23/did-trayvon-shooter-abuse-911.html
His tendency to report blacks has been widely reported. Both Mother Jones and the Daily Beast listened to every 911 call still on record, and most of the ones about people are young black males:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/trayvon-shooters-911-calls-potholes-piles-trash-black-men
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/23/did-trayvon-shooter-abuse-911.html
All the ones that report one or two guys for basically walking around ("being suspicious" in Zimmermanese) are black kids. One is about a seven-year-old.
Reread his post.
He's not alleging that Zimmerman's actions were illegal. he's alleging Zimmerman failed to follow standard neighborhood watch protocol, confronted Martin, and carried a gun. While it's possible his actions were legal, it is not possible that they were anything but stupid.
I've been active in Neighborhood Watch organizations, such as Detroit's CB Radio patrols. The point of these organizations is to take some of the workload of patrolling a neighborhood off the police, so they can do real stuff. And everything Zimmerman did is the exact opposite. He's calling the cops to report a kid who wasn't doing anything. This means they have to send a patrol out to stop a kid with Skittles. Instead of preventing rape the police in Zimmerman's neighborhood were preventing Skittles.
He's following the kid, which is statistically likely to lead to said kid turning around and asking "Why are you following me?," which (best-case scenario) results in an argument and more calls to the cops. The police have to send more then one car, because one cop can't really do much to keep two idiots from beating the shit out of each-other. They probably need three or four to be safe. Which is a significant proportion of the cops they have on duty. And their rape prevention effort grinds to a halt until they can track down the arguing pair, who have now committed at least one actual crime ("disturbing the peace"). Zimmerman's neighborhood watch group increased the number of criminals in his neighborhood. George Zimmerman is an idiot.
He's carrying a gun. It's loaded, so he clearly wasn't planning on bluffing. This proves that he knew that his following the kid could result in a confrontation, and he was prepared to win it. This was the biggest no-no of all in every meeting our group had with the cops. People who feel safe because they're armed take risks. neighborhood watchman, who typically have no training whatsoever, don't know how to make those smart risks. Somebody's gonna die if you let your neighborhood watchman carry their Glocks on patrol, and odds are that it won't be an actual criminal. It'll be a 17-year-old kid on a Skittles run.
It's entirely possible George Zimmerman can prove he isn't a murderer. In fact with Florida's stand-your-ground-law he can probably skate even if forensics prove he beat himself up to make his story more credible. But the simple facts are a) his overly-aggressive tactics turned a simple Skittles-run by a 17-year-old kid into a murder case, b) he dragged his hometown's name through the mud, c) he probably ruined his life and d) if he wasn't an idiot none of this shit would have happened.
If you believe everyone has a right to vote, then none of the Northern states had legitimate government either, since they didn't let women vote.
In general I would agree that no government is legitimate unless almost every adult it actually governs can vote for it. Which means that nobody had a legitimate government before 1850, and legitimate governments weren't really the norm even in the West until the 1960s ended US Segregation and European Imperialism.
In this situation I'm discussing the relative legitimacy of a specific decision. If the South had had a government that allowed blacks to vote there's no way they would have seceded, which means the OP's contention that the war was caused by Northern oppression of Southern states is wrong. The war was caused by a minority (a sizable minority, but as minority nonetheless) clinging to the levers of power illegitimately.
Lincoln's announced plans would not have actually affected any of these state's internal policies on slavery. He wanted to ban it from the territories, not emancipate it nation-wide.
And the South correctly recognized that any system that prevented new slave states from coming into being would eventually result in the abolishment of slavery. Since abolition would destroy the economy of the South, they decided not to wait until the North had an even larger lead but instead gambled that the North would leave them alone. They were wrong.
Southern Political Theory was incredibly stupid during this period.
At this time the Supreme Court was extremely unsympathetic to any rule banning slavery from a state without that state's permission. It was also not sympathetic to arguments that slaves could be freed simply by moving them to free states. Which means that even if Lincoln pushed his bill banning slavery in the territories through Congress it's likely Chief Justice Taney would have ruled that slaves brought to said territory were still slaves.
Moreover he'd have to get his bill through Congress. And in 1860 he'd only have been able to do that with the help of Democrats in the Senate.
Many Native Americans weren't US Citizens until 1924. They were citizens of their tribe because they weren't subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal government.
Moreover very few of them died as a result of conflict with the US. They died due to the fact that they had no immunity to European diseases. We would sweep in and conquer the weakened state afterwards, but the war wasn't the cause of the disease it was the result.
The US Census is every 10 years, years ending in zero. For both sides the draft lasted from 1862-1865. So draft-dodging would not affect these numbers.
People leaving the country to serve with the Khedive in Egypt, or joining the french Foreign legion, would afect the numbers.
There was no significant number of free blacks fighting for the South for a simple reason: the South made it illegal for free blacks to fight. While a handful joined state militia units, they weren't allowed to fight for the national army, and the militia regulations the CSA Congress passed specifically banned them from state militia service. The most prominent exception (the confusingly named Louisiana Native Guard Regiment, whose "Natives" were all black) was put on display for the papers in grand parades three times, and then abolished when Louisiana adopted the national Miltia regulations.
The magazine "Civil War Gazette" did a good blog post on this. Their low estimate is 6 guys actually fired their weapons in Confederate service. The highest estimate is 300. The highest estimate raised in the comments is 3%, or 15k-60k. It's unsourced, with poorly done math (29 in a regiment would be less then 3% because most regiments had 1100-1200 guys). Many others quote Frederick Douglas, who had no access to military records North or (especially not) South, was probably extrapolating any numbers he got from the aforementioned Louisiana Native Guards, and was a fairly biased source anyway. He wanted to convince the North to use black troops, which was a lot more likely to happen if the South was doing it. He stopped when the alleged black troops never appeared in battle. The rest are all "My Great-Grandpa swore he had a buddy..."
Keep in mind that 40% of the Southern population were slaves. Given that the reason all the states gave for seceding was protecting slavery, it's quite clear that the majority of the people in almost every Southern state actually opposed secession. South Carolina and Mississippi were actually majority slave at the time.
In other words if you believe that everyone has the right to vote you cannot claim any of these secession acts was legitimate.
Also note that the Federal government actually hadn't done anything when most of the states seceded. Lincoln was elected in November 1860, he took office on March 4th 1861. Seven states seceded by February 1. Only four others actually managed to secede.
Lincoln's announced plans would not have actually affected any of these state's internal policies on slavery. He wanted to ban it from the territories, not emancipate it nation-wide.
So you're wrong on all counts. The states you're talking about were inherently illegitimate because 40% of their people were slaves, and thus unable to vote. Most of them seceded not to protest any action the Union had actually taken, but to protest the actions they had convinced themselves the Union was about to take.
I proved that less then 55% of Canada's population is generic Anglo-Canadian. 25% is not Anglo, 20% was born outside of the country, and some of the remainder are descendants the first two groups. The equivalent US number, OTOH, is 66% white non-Hispanic.
I sincerely doubt you'll find any first world country that is less homogenous then Canada.
In technical terms you're probably right. But that's because the technical terms we're talking about were designed specifically to recognize the diversity of the US, and therefore don't really apply to non-US countries.
If you look at Canada without US-specific terms you'll find it's quite diverse. A full quarter of the population belongs to an ancient nation that's sole relationship with Anglo-Canadians is that they both remained loyal to King George III when we rebelled. Another fifth is foreign-born. That's 45% of the population who aren't part of the majority Anglo-Canadian ethnic group, and many of those 55% aren't really Anglo-Canadian. They're the children of French-Canadians who acculturated, Indian immigrants, etc.
Life expectancy gets thrown around because it's what you're shooting for in a health system. The problems using it are over-blown.
For example while our lifestyle means we're all fat-asses (and thus likely to die), we're also basically teetotalers when compared to the Irish or British.
In general I agree.
But in many cases seeing a ridiculously misinformed chiropractor is helpful to stay healthy. The reason is simple:
The most stubborn diseases we face today are caused by people doing shit they know they shouldn't do. If you're pre-diabetic and you have to explain to your chiropractor that you pigged out on donuts you're a lot less likely to pig out on donuts. You're also less likely to be allowed to rationalize getting back into cigarettes or booze.
Yeah you could get the same from an MD, but who can afford a half-hour appointment with an MD every week? A chiropractor is a lot cheaper, which means he's a lot more likely to get results.
This is why a lot of modern docs are trying to usurp Chiropractors, Massage therapists, and other Alt-Med types. If they can be convinced to cut down on the woo, tell people to get their vaccinations, and the MDs simply tolerate their BS explanations of why their particular placeboes "work," we'll probably end up with better health.
Dude,
Everybody benefits from ridiculous quoted prices. The hospital increases prices 10%. The insurance company negotiator negotiates some of that price increase away. Because the discount for his company is now 55% of list price, rather then 50%, he gets a bonus. The hospital gets a) 5% more profits for no extra work, or b) 5% more to waste on sexy prestige-bringing, low-revenue crap like brain surgeons; so their executives get a bonus. The insurer can jack up premiums and 'prove' they're justified to the Insurance Commissioner because they're paying more for the same medical care, so that guy gets a bonus...
And the people who end up paying for the jacked-up rices, and executive bonuses, don't notice because their health insurance is a "fringe benefit." The bad guy to them isn't the health system, it's their boss who had to gut the budget for raises this year to keep their health plan.
Your analogy is specious. A US Law is not a simple thing to change, especially unilaterally. No single person or group can close the door unilaterally.
To make it work we need a bicameral door-opening committee, and a door-opening Executive Officer separate from the committee. Once the committee has voted to close the door, and the executive agreed, is the executive overstepping his bounds by telling everyone else "Don't worry, the door won't open?"
As for stopping ACTA, in the US that battle is lost. Wyden's strategy could work, but only to the extent it will make Poland/Denmark/etc. less likely to join us in our ACTA-compliant foolishness. There is no way to put the ACTA genie back into the bottle in the US until at least the election. Given the sheer number of interest groups who love ACTA it's pretty hard to see any of it's provisions being overturned as a result of the election.
For example, remember the Chinese Dog Food killing puppies? ACTA's anti-counterfeiting provisions help prevent that from happening again because they mean when you buy Crest or Purina it is actually Crest or Purina-approved. Logically it's a non sequiter, but it makes a hell of an attack ad. How about a flood of fake Chinese Fords destroying UAW jobs in Michigan? A totally irrational, and frankly insane, fear. But you show me the Midwestern pol with the balls to risk that ad and I'll show you a guy who lost to Ron Johnson a year-and-half ago.