Well, you could have phrased that a little better... I do think it's odd that a Superman costume would be so integral to this monument when the only suggestion that the kid cared about Superman at all was a single comment by his abusive father.
Random Stranger who's organizing this didn't know the kid at all... which is itself also rather odd. Monuments like this aren't for the dead, after all, they're for the living, those who still remember and care about the people who have passed, and Random Stranger never knew this kid. Random Stranger doesn't know the first thing about his personality. Why is it so important to Random Stranger whether or not the statue is dressed like Superman?
Try looking at it this way: the 2012 election cost our economy just shy of $2 billion. If we do it through the voucher system, one of Mayday's proposed solutions, we can set that amount to whatever we like. Say $200 million, roughly the same as funded through FECA. That's a dramatic improvement in efficiency.
Now how you see that depends on your attitude towards money: the efficient method comes out of taxes (partially paid for by you), while the inefficient method is paid by third parties. In other words, the cost of the election in the inefficient case effects you indirectly rather than directly. As long as you are in any way connected to this economy though, you would feel it.
The grandparent was talking about some kind of fictional first-past-the-post campaign funding system that no one has proposed. You are saying that the voucher system will give a massive advantage to incumbents. Could you explain your position? Vouchers are given by voters to the candidates of their choosing - how does this give an advantage to incumbents?
"Allegedly" is right. The level of rhetoric here is nuts: Mayday's stated goal is to change the way that campaigns are funded such that each person (voter) can contribute equally to the campaigns of their choice. This is in opposition to the current method, where each person can contribute an amount limited only be their means, giving drastically more influence (or speech, as the supreme court sees it) to those of significant means.
There is no group being oppressed here, though I'm starting to think that these common sense campaigns could do better by taking some sort of crazy position like that. It's all that people hear nowadays.
So, apparently, it is ok if someone can pay for such airtime out of his own pocket, but not if twenty people pool their pockets to pay for it.
Is this one of those, "If you can't do everything perfectly then you shouldn't do anything at all?" It's true that McCain-Feingold only dealt with corporations. It's true that it was not the end-all of campaign finance reform. So what? The law still had a big impact, and a positive one if you're someone who cares about the corrupting influence of money. Soft-money spending (outside organizational spending) tripled between the 2008 and 2012 elections.
Your concern about "the rich guy" getting heard where the paupers contributing to Citizens United are ignored is misplaced - they're all rich guys. PACs are for rich people and no one else. Anyone with less than $5,000 to contribute just gives it directly to the candidate's campaign. Further, your implication that corporate political spending is just a bunch of like-minded people pooling their money is ridiculous. If I work for Comcast does that mean that I hate anti-trust law and net neutrality? When Comcast spends the tens of millions of dollars that it spends on politics, is it representing me or is it representing just the few people at the top who control how the company spends its money?
Yes, McCain-Feingold blocked spending by non-profits and unions as well as for-profit companies. Some few of those might have been groups with legitimate political interests as you describe. Doubtless those just told their members to make political contributions directly, thereby ensuring that their members still had their speech intact. And if the organization itself can't speak? Companies don't (shouldn't) have first amendment rights.
Ultimately the best argument against the Citizens United decision is to simply look at its consequences - the vast leap in political spending, with so much of it from completely unaccountable anonymous donors.
That's the WolfPAC, Mayday doesn't have an explicit goal of a constitutional amendment. Though, granted, I don't see how they intend to achieve anything without one. If you'd prefer: "it has nothing to do with the existing constitution." Better?
Yeah... a charcoal grill is the hottest thing that a home cook is likely to have and they don't get above 375. You might think that he's talking about professional kitchens, though even they would have fairly limited applications for something that hot. In reality though, since it's Nathan Myhrvold, he's talking about patents and ensuring that no one will ever be able to make more innovative ovens without paying him.
No, that's wholly inaccurate. Mayday is strictly about campaign finance reform and nothing else. It's not about a return to constitutional values, it has nothing to do with the constitution, and it's not right or left wing.
If you want to take away the ability for the government to pursue the maximum possible penalty, you should also recommend taking away their discretion to pursue the minimum possible penalty as well.
Absolutely. There's no reason why the prosecutor should have any say in sentencing, that's for the judge. And to take that a step further - not only should the prosecutor be unable to pursue the minimum possible penalty, there should be no minimum sentencing in the first place. This is just interference by another route, and worse because the judge can't overrule it even when it's clearly unjust (warning: PDF).
The point where you went wrong is when you threw in the word "effective." Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you have the freedom to do whatever it takes to persuade people to do what you want. The free speech rights of Citizen's United was never in question, the issue was that they wanted to violate campaign finance law by using money in order to make their speech louder and more effective than other peoples' speech.
That's nice and all, but beside the point. Uber isn't competing by paying their drivers more, Uber is competing by skirting regulation. You can say that taxi drivers should get a larger share of the earnings, and you'll get no argument from me, but this argument exists because Uber isn't on a level playing field with existing taxi companies. Whether it's the companies or the drivers who are profitable doesn't matter, someone has to be making money for a private business to operate.
That regulation exists to make sure that taxis, whether the drivers or the companies, are making enough money to keep operating. This is done because they are seen as a vital part of the operation of the city. If there was any danger of the grocery stores going away you can bet your ass there'd be some regulation in place to prop them up.
If Uber can come in and abide by existing taxi regulations and still pay their drivers more than existing taxi companies do then great. Everybody wins. That isn't what's currently happening.
I can't see where you got that impression. Most taxi regulations are about pricing: prices are fixed, mostly so they can't gouge customers or rainy days or at other opportunities; or licensing: taxi licenses are limited to ensure that taxi drivers can still make a decent living despite lost revenue from the first point; or universal service: taxis are required to operate even in those parts of town that are less savory or less profitable.
If your objective is to set up taxis as an alternate means of public transportation, something to complement a subway system, for example, than all of these traits are not just desirable, but necessary.
You'll still be addicted, only the cocaine doesn't do anything. So you'll take more of it. Then you may die.
Well, no. This isn't like a speedball where you have two drugs fighting each other - the enzyme removes the cocaine from your system. You're still addicted and the cocaine isn't doing anything, so you take more and it still doesn't do anything. If you take so much that you start to feel it, all that means is that you've exceeded the capacity of the enzyme to break it down and you now are responding as normal. It's still possible to overdose, I'm sure, but presumably more difficult.
Since you imply that you're not an American, I'm going to pretend that you're not a troll and that you don't actually know this stuff. Yes, the president decides who is a threat. There's a longstanding tradition of the president unilaterally authorizing military force, the United States has only formally declared war six times in its history and most (not all) other military actions undertaken by the US have happened on presidential authority. This is not always because the president is overstepping himself - congress has tacitly, even explicitly, approved of this authoritarian approach on multiple occasions, in particular the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists of 2001 which gives the president the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force." This is the bill under which the justice department is claiming the strike on Anwar al-Awlaki was authorized.
The "gun" that Anwar al-Awlaki was holding was the planning and direction of new attacks against the United States. This is in TFA. It suffices for the authorization of force that the justice department and the president came to the conclusion that he was a threat. Not that he might be a threat in the future, he wasn't killed because they were worried that he might start planning attacks. Police officers are indeed allowed to decide in cases such as that whether a criminal will get a trail. Or, to be more accurate, police officers are allowed to determine situations where a criminal will not get a trail. To return to this previous example: when a suspect is pointing a gun at a police officer the officer is authorized to come to the conclusion that capture is infeasible and that a trial will not be possible. The infeasibility of capture was also part of the justification for the strike on al-Awlaki.
Your implication that this is unusual, that the United States is the only country which authorizes its law enforcement to use lethal force, is way off base. However, I will certainly agree that the endless march towards authoritarianism that our country has been on is detrimental. This was made abundantly clear by our last president, under whom such sweeping powers as the aforementioned Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists was passed. That said, while I don't know enough to have an opinion on whether the strike on al-Awlaki was justified, I'm not so naive to say that all lethal actions should be forbidden in lieu of a trial. The fact that this particular one is being trotted out as an example of overreach while so many thousands of others are ignored is simple partisanship.
The person in question was wanted for his actions, not for his thoughts. But he wasn't killed for being a criminal, he was killed for being a threat. This is the point. You try criminals, you eliminate threats. Perhaps, in your opinion, he was not really a threat. That's fine. You can certainly question the assessment that they made, maybe it was made poorly, maybe it had insufficient justification, all of that should come out under examination. What you're suggesting though, is that if a suspect pulls out a gun and points it at a police officer than that police officer should not be allowed to shoot that suspect, because that suspect has not had a trial.
Your claim that every bombing is an "assassination" is perhaps technically accurate, but misses some subtleties in what that word implies.
Of course there was no trial. How often does our military try people before they're killed? Seriously, among the dumb criticisms of Obama's presidency this is possibly the dumbest... Well, it's not dumber than Bengahzi. And it's not dumber than Solyndra... and it's not dumber than that stupid IRS controversy... fourth dumbest. This is the fourth dumbest criticism of Obama's presidency.
We kill people without trial all the time and no one says a thing. How many hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan are dead? How many of those got trials? Oh, wait, they're not Americans so they don't count? Non-Americans don't have rights, "All [American] are men created equal" yada yada. Fine. How about Christopher Dorner? He was unequivocally American and had no trial. What made killing him okay?
The answer there is the same as here: 'continued' and 'imminent' threat. It's the same justification used for every single lethal action by law enforcement - if a person poses an immediate threat (perhaps because they're pointing a gun at a police officer) and can't be captured without either making good on that threat or some other, then killing is appropriate and justified.
Now, it's possible that you don't think that Anwar al-Awlaki posed such a threat. That's fine. An examination (a real examination, not a partisan smear) of the events surrounding his death is certainly appropriate and I believe is mandatory whenever law enforcement kills someone. No doubt this particular incident has, and will, be examined far more than it actually needs to be. Ranting about a lack of trial is meaningless though, just another partisan talking point.
Is this really that hard to follow? Human related climate change has raised the average surface temperature by about half a degree over the last hundred years. Natural climate change can indeed change the surface temperature as well, but much less dramatically. You're talking about a six hundred million year time span and trying to make the claim that slow warming over that extremely long period of time is comparable to the rapid warming that we're experiencing right now.
From TFS: 'We decide, based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be canceled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered,'
It certainly seems as though they are considering the historical context. Maybe there's a difference between referring to people as "red skinned" and referring to people as "redskins"? Just as, nowadays, there's a difference between talking about "gay people" and talking about "the gays"? Maybe the people working on this case know more about it than you do?
The rocky mountain locust wasn't eliminated intentionally, that was just habitat destruction - they needed the great plains for breeding and the farmers took care of that. The passenger pigeon was hunted the same way we hunt fish now: with nets and with little regard for conservation. They were seen as a cheap source of protein, to be fed to pigs and slaves.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some poisoning, but that wasn't a concerted effort. Congress did made a half-assed attempt to prevent their extinction towards the end there, so they clearly weren't trying to exterminate them. The last flock of 250,000 was killed by hunters, knowingly and deliberately, but that wasn't about extermination either. Reputedly they did it because they knew that this was going to be the last opportunity
No doubt. Unfortunately, the way it works in the US is that almost everything, including a lot of infrastructure, is privately owned. So despite the fact that building out that infrastructure is so difficult that it can't really be done without assistance, thus precluding real competition, we have statements like these: "I think the Tea Party way would be that anyone who wants to offer better, faster service should be allowed to do so, and the government shouldn't stop them." And the guy is probably right. That probably is the stated ideal of the Tea Party, no matter how foolish it is.
It's not unlawful to run cabling, it's just really difficult. Making it easier for one company is not the same thing as outlawing other companies from doing it.
In order to humor you, I have Googled the term "cable franchise." It seems to be exactly what I said: a grant of privileged status given in exchange for promises of particular service. Something quite different from outlawing competition. However, the legal dictionary had a result pertaining to cable television franchises: "The 1992 Cable Act... abolished the exclusive franchise agreement."
It then went on to talk about how later deregulation (in 1996) has since led to cable consolidation, less competition, and higher prices.
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Well, you could have phrased that a little better... I do think it's odd that a Superman costume would be so integral to this monument when the only suggestion that the kid cared about Superman at all was a single comment by his abusive father.
Random Stranger who's organizing this didn't know the kid at all... which is itself also rather odd. Monuments like this aren't for the dead, after all, they're for the living, those who still remember and care about the people who have passed, and Random Stranger never knew this kid. Random Stranger doesn't know the first thing about his personality. Why is it so important to Random Stranger whether or not the statue is dressed like Superman?
Try looking at it this way: the 2012 election cost our economy just shy of $2 billion. If we do it through the voucher system, one of Mayday's proposed solutions, we can set that amount to whatever we like. Say $200 million, roughly the same as funded through FECA. That's a dramatic improvement in efficiency.
Now how you see that depends on your attitude towards money: the efficient method comes out of taxes (partially paid for by you), while the inefficient method is paid by third parties. In other words, the cost of the election in the inefficient case effects you indirectly rather than directly. As long as you are in any way connected to this economy though, you would feel it.
The grandparent was talking about some kind of fictional first-past-the-post campaign funding system that no one has proposed. You are saying that the voucher system will give a massive advantage to incumbents. Could you explain your position? Vouchers are given by voters to the candidates of their choosing - how does this give an advantage to incumbents?
"Allegedly" is right. The level of rhetoric here is nuts: Mayday's stated goal is to change the way that campaigns are funded such that each person (voter) can contribute equally to the campaigns of their choice. This is in opposition to the current method, where each person can contribute an amount limited only be their means, giving drastically more influence (or speech, as the supreme court sees it) to those of significant means.
There is no group being oppressed here, though I'm starting to think that these common sense campaigns could do better by taking some sort of crazy position like that. It's all that people hear nowadays.
So, apparently, it is ok if someone can pay for such airtime out of his own pocket, but not if twenty people pool their pockets to pay for it.
Is this one of those, "If you can't do everything perfectly then you shouldn't do anything at all?" It's true that McCain-Feingold only dealt with corporations. It's true that it was not the end-all of campaign finance reform. So what? The law still had a big impact, and a positive one if you're someone who cares about the corrupting influence of money. Soft-money spending (outside organizational spending) tripled between the 2008 and 2012 elections.
Your concern about "the rich guy" getting heard where the paupers contributing to Citizens United are ignored is misplaced - they're all rich guys. PACs are for rich people and no one else. Anyone with less than $5,000 to contribute just gives it directly to the candidate's campaign. Further, your implication that corporate political spending is just a bunch of like-minded people pooling their money is ridiculous. If I work for Comcast does that mean that I hate anti-trust law and net neutrality? When Comcast spends the tens of millions of dollars that it spends on politics, is it representing me or is it representing just the few people at the top who control how the company spends its money?
Yes, McCain-Feingold blocked spending by non-profits and unions as well as for-profit companies. Some few of those might have been groups with legitimate political interests as you describe. Doubtless those just told their members to make political contributions directly, thereby ensuring that their members still had their speech intact. And if the organization itself can't speak? Companies don't (shouldn't) have first amendment rights.
Ultimately the best argument against the Citizens United decision is to simply look at its consequences - the vast leap in political spending, with so much of it from completely unaccountable anonymous donors.
Had to read that three times before it stopped saying dictatorship and started saying directorship.
That's the WolfPAC, Mayday doesn't have an explicit goal of a constitutional amendment. Though, granted, I don't see how they intend to achieve anything without one. If you'd prefer: "it has nothing to do with the existing constitution." Better?
Yeah... a charcoal grill is the hottest thing that a home cook is likely to have and they don't get above 375. You might think that he's talking about professional kitchens, though even they would have fairly limited applications for something that hot. In reality though, since it's Nathan Myhrvold, he's talking about patents and ensuring that no one will ever be able to make more innovative ovens without paying him.
No, that's wholly inaccurate. Mayday is strictly about campaign finance reform and nothing else. It's not about a return to constitutional values, it has nothing to do with the constitution, and it's not right or left wing.
If you want to take away the ability for the government to pursue the maximum possible penalty, you should also recommend taking away their discretion to pursue the minimum possible penalty as well.
Absolutely. There's no reason why the prosecutor should have any say in sentencing, that's for the judge. And to take that a step further - not only should the prosecutor be unable to pursue the minimum possible penalty, there should be no minimum sentencing in the first place. This is just interference by another route, and worse because the judge can't overrule it even when it's clearly unjust (warning: PDF).
The point where you went wrong is when you threw in the word "effective." Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you have the freedom to do whatever it takes to persuade people to do what you want. The free speech rights of Citizen's United was never in question, the issue was that they wanted to violate campaign finance law by using money in order to make their speech louder and more effective than other peoples' speech.
That's nice and all, but beside the point. Uber isn't competing by paying their drivers more, Uber is competing by skirting regulation. You can say that taxi drivers should get a larger share of the earnings, and you'll get no argument from me, but this argument exists because Uber isn't on a level playing field with existing taxi companies. Whether it's the companies or the drivers who are profitable doesn't matter, someone has to be making money for a private business to operate.
That regulation exists to make sure that taxis, whether the drivers or the companies, are making enough money to keep operating. This is done because they are seen as a vital part of the operation of the city. If there was any danger of the grocery stores going away you can bet your ass there'd be some regulation in place to prop them up.
If Uber can come in and abide by existing taxi regulations and still pay their drivers more than existing taxi companies do then great. Everybody wins. That isn't what's currently happening.
I can't see where you got that impression. Most taxi regulations are about pricing: prices are fixed, mostly so they can't gouge customers or rainy days or at other opportunities; or licensing: taxi licenses are limited to ensure that taxi drivers can still make a decent living despite lost revenue from the first point; or universal service: taxis are required to operate even in those parts of town that are less savory or less profitable.
If your objective is to set up taxis as an alternate means of public transportation, something to complement a subway system, for example, than all of these traits are not just desirable, but necessary.
I don't... I don't get it. Woosh?
You'll still be addicted, only the cocaine doesn't do anything. So you'll take more of it. Then you may die.
Well, no. This isn't like a speedball where you have two drugs fighting each other - the enzyme removes the cocaine from your system. You're still addicted and the cocaine isn't doing anything, so you take more and it still doesn't do anything. If you take so much that you start to feel it, all that means is that you've exceeded the capacity of the enzyme to break it down and you now are responding as normal. It's still possible to overdose, I'm sure, but presumably more difficult.
Since you imply that you're not an American, I'm going to pretend that you're not a troll and that you don't actually know this stuff. Yes, the president decides who is a threat. There's a longstanding tradition of the president unilaterally authorizing military force, the United States has only formally declared war six times in its history and most (not all) other military actions undertaken by the US have happened on presidential authority. This is not always because the president is overstepping himself - congress has tacitly, even explicitly, approved of this authoritarian approach on multiple occasions, in particular the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists of 2001 which gives the president the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force." This is the bill under which the justice department is claiming the strike on Anwar al-Awlaki was authorized.
The "gun" that Anwar al-Awlaki was holding was the planning and direction of new attacks against the United States. This is in TFA. It suffices for the authorization of force that the justice department and the president came to the conclusion that he was a threat. Not that he might be a threat in the future, he wasn't killed because they were worried that he might start planning attacks. Police officers are indeed allowed to decide in cases such as that whether a criminal will get a trail. Or, to be more accurate, police officers are allowed to determine situations where a criminal will not get a trail. To return to this previous example: when a suspect is pointing a gun at a police officer the officer is authorized to come to the conclusion that capture is infeasible and that a trial will not be possible. The infeasibility of capture was also part of the justification for the strike on al-Awlaki.
Your implication that this is unusual, that the United States is the only country which authorizes its law enforcement to use lethal force, is way off base. However, I will certainly agree that the endless march towards authoritarianism that our country has been on is detrimental. This was made abundantly clear by our last president, under whom such sweeping powers as the aforementioned Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists was passed. That said, while I don't know enough to have an opinion on whether the strike on al-Awlaki was justified, I'm not so naive to say that all lethal actions should be forbidden in lieu of a trial. The fact that this particular one is being trotted out as an example of overreach while so many thousands of others are ignored is simple partisanship.
The person in question was wanted for his actions, not for his thoughts. But he wasn't killed for being a criminal, he was killed for being a threat. This is the point. You try criminals, you eliminate threats. Perhaps, in your opinion, he was not really a threat. That's fine. You can certainly question the assessment that they made, maybe it was made poorly, maybe it had insufficient justification, all of that should come out under examination. What you're suggesting though, is that if a suspect pulls out a gun and points it at a police officer than that police officer should not be allowed to shoot that suspect, because that suspect has not had a trial.
Your claim that every bombing is an "assassination" is perhaps technically accurate, but misses some subtleties in what that word implies.
Of course there was no trial. How often does our military try people before they're killed? Seriously, among the dumb criticisms of Obama's presidency this is possibly the dumbest... Well, it's not dumber than Bengahzi. And it's not dumber than Solyndra... and it's not dumber than that stupid IRS controversy... fourth dumbest. This is the fourth dumbest criticism of Obama's presidency.
We kill people without trial all the time and no one says a thing. How many hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan are dead? How many of those got trials? Oh, wait, they're not Americans so they don't count? Non-Americans don't have rights, "All [American] are men created equal" yada yada. Fine. How about Christopher Dorner? He was unequivocally American and had no trial. What made killing him okay?
The answer there is the same as here: 'continued' and 'imminent' threat. It's the same justification used for every single lethal action by law enforcement - if a person poses an immediate threat (perhaps because they're pointing a gun at a police officer) and can't be captured without either making good on that threat or some other, then killing is appropriate and justified.
Now, it's possible that you don't think that Anwar al-Awlaki posed such a threat. That's fine. An examination (a real examination, not a partisan smear) of the events surrounding his death is certainly appropriate and I believe is mandatory whenever law enforcement kills someone. No doubt this particular incident has, and will, be examined far more than it actually needs to be. Ranting about a lack of trial is meaningless though, just another partisan talking point.
Is this really that hard to follow? Human related climate change has raised the average surface temperature by about half a degree over the last hundred years. Natural climate change can indeed change the surface temperature as well, but much less dramatically. You're talking about a six hundred million year time span and trying to make the claim that slow warming over that extremely long period of time is comparable to the rapid warming that we're experiencing right now.
So sayeth the Market. Amen.
From TFS: 'We decide, based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be canceled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered,'
It certainly seems as though they are considering the historical context. Maybe there's a difference between referring to people as "red skinned" and referring to people as "redskins"? Just as, nowadays, there's a difference between talking about "gay people" and talking about "the gays"? Maybe the people working on this case know more about it than you do?
The rocky mountain locust wasn't eliminated intentionally, that was just habitat destruction - they needed the great plains for breeding and the farmers took care of that. The passenger pigeon was hunted the same way we hunt fish now: with nets and with little regard for conservation. They were seen as a cheap source of protein, to be fed to pigs and slaves.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some poisoning, but that wasn't a concerted effort. Congress did made a half-assed attempt to prevent their extinction towards the end there, so they clearly weren't trying to exterminate them. The last flock of 250,000 was killed by hunters, knowingly and deliberately, but that wasn't about extermination either. Reputedly they did it because they knew that this was going to be the last opportunity
No doubt. Unfortunately, the way it works in the US is that almost everything, including a lot of infrastructure, is privately owned. So despite the fact that building out that infrastructure is so difficult that it can't really be done without assistance, thus precluding real competition, we have statements like these: "I think the Tea Party way would be that anyone who wants to offer better, faster service should be allowed to do so, and the government shouldn't stop them." And the guy is probably right. That probably is the stated ideal of the Tea Party, no matter how foolish it is.
It's not unlawful to run cabling, it's just really difficult. Making it easier for one company is not the same thing as outlawing other companies from doing it.
In order to humor you, I have Googled the term "cable franchise." It seems to be exactly what I said: a grant of privileged status given in exchange for promises of particular service. Something quite different from outlawing competition. However, the legal dictionary had a result pertaining to cable television franchises: "The 1992 Cable Act ... abolished the exclusive franchise agreement."
It then went on to talk about how later deregulation (in 1996) has since led to cable consolidation, less competition, and higher prices.