I suspect that the DEA and friends know the value of discretion and selective application of the law.
I'm sorry, I can't figure it out: are you really so incredibly stupid that you believe that? Are you being sarcastic? Or do you really believe we should destroy our democracy for a Soviet-style all powerful central government?
Unless somebody unbelievably stupid gets their hands on the levers, very selective application, more or less only to whatever we are moral-panicking about the damn kids doing these days, is the rule.
Unbelievably stupid people have their hands on the levers, and they do use selective application of the law to undermine our democracy and checks and balances, and instead reshape our society according to the will of technocrats and rent seeking corporations. People like you put them there. Whether you're simply too stupid to understand what that means or whether that's what you actually want, it's time it stop.
Yeah, sure, it's like people have never before in history been concerned with preserving their memory or their remains. Oh no, never! What a silly idea! Only stupid people would do THAT! Humans have always just dug a deep hole, tossed the corpses in there, and forgotten about them, because that's the logical thing to do!
The federal government has now created massive programs to mine your financial records to protect you from financial abuse and to obtain lots of medical records and information about you in order to make sure that you're properly insured but don't impose too high costs on the system, In addition, in order to earn a living, you now need to get permission from the federal government to keep illegals from taking away "US jobs" and make the unions happy. And the NSA is tracking and recording everybody at will to protect us from terrorism.
In a few short years, the US has turned from a nation with one of the least intrusive federal governments into a nightmare surveillance state. I think Obama's and the progressives' intent really is to help the American people, they are simply misguided. Their basic view seems to be that most people are so stupid that they can only survive if the federal government helps them with everything. Let's hope that people will start to realize that we are going down the wrong path, and let's hope that we can reverse this over the next few elections.
You need three credit cards (or at least three lines of credit). Less than that and your credit score suffers. Multiple credit cards are a sign that several companies have looked at you and trust you. That's the theory at least.
Because it's Europe. Governments spend a shitload of time and money to indoctrinate their citizens from near birth to worship them, and they don't want their citizens to start doubting them. They do have a few more levels of defense beyond secrecy: control of the media, and if all else fails, they'll just lock up whoever leaked it and blame the US or international bankers or global corporations.
Then there's bad stuff which has little to no use in society, where drug rehab programs should step in. Like PCP and heroin.
Why should society "step in"? As long as people don't hurt anybody, let them take whatever they like. If they can't take care of themselves anymore, then institutionalize them, not before.
Then there's crazy shit, where society in general would benefit if it was uninvented. Like krokodil.
Krokodil is just desomorphine prepared under unsanitary and improvised conditions. If people could just buy desomorphine, there wouldn't be any krokodil or any of the harmful effects from it.
Brilliant! It won't actually do much to reduce recreational drug use, but it will mean a lot more restriction on companies developing legal drugs. Big pharmaceuticals should love that, because in the end, only a few of them will be left who are actually able to pay for the licenses and security associated with drug development under such restrictions. Crony capitalism at its best!
The "traditional" drugs are known risks with known treatments; we should simply legalize them and offer support and treatment to those who want it. There would be less suffering and as a society, we'd be a lot better off.
If you look at this site http://www.transparency.org/co... [transparency.org] You will see that as a nation the US isn't doing that bad as far as corruption goes.
First of all, TI measures perception of corruption, not actual corruption. In addition, the term "corruption" has many meanings. Here, we are talking about rent seeking and lobbying, while TI is mostly concerned with the illegal kind of corruption.
If you take a look at Chicago politics you will see that the most effective targets are often Alderman.
Yes, but they end up determining the pay-out of very large sums of money, and that money is often spent far away from the people who paid for it. I can't have an informed opinion on whether some neighborhood several miles from me really needs its roads redone, I can have an informed opinion whether my HOA needs to do it for my development; all the money that is spent by an HOA is spent where you can see it and determine whether you got your money's worth. And, as I was saying, you can't take your alderman to civil court for hurting you financially through bad decisions, but you can certainly do that with your HOA and its members.
the tax increase for the wealthy is for the people that make $500,000 or more a year per person. people who run small businesses done even beginning to approach that kind of income.
"The wealthy" means people with high net worth; left wing demagogues like to conflate wealth with high income, but they have little to do with one another. High income individuals often are not rich, and many wealthy people were never high income earners.
As for the high income earners, you demonize them as some distinct, evil class of people sucking the country dry. In reality, most high income earners are middle class people who have a few good years some time towards the end of their careers, money they often desperately need to save for retirement. But, hey, don't let facts get in the way of some good bigotry and hatred.
Get some real education before you claim how hurt the small business owner will be by taxing the ultra rich.... We need a 30% flat tax on all assholes that makes $500K or more a year, and tax at 50% any stock or trading incomes.
That's not going to hurt the "ultra rich"; they don't have much income and if you tax their trading, they simply won't bother and instead engage in other money-making activities that you can't tax. Your suggestions are going to hurt a real-estate agent who has an unusually good year, or an Apple employee who is selling stock in order to buy a house in Cupertino. In the long term, it's going to hurt the stock market, and with it everybody's retirement portfolios. It's jerks like you that are screwing the middle class with your idiotic and ignorant proposals.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about personal finance, US demographics, or economics. If there is one consolation, ignorance and stupidity like yours means you'll likely never be able to live or retire comfortably. But because you can't figure out why others can, you lash out.
Once sex in space is common, natural selection will take care of this. Even if nobody dies, a brittle boned, dizzy guy/gal just isn't particularly attractive as a potential mate.
The HOA idea is interesting but also scary. HOAs are not corruption free and might be worse than a large government.
That's a different kind of "corruption". Your HOA officers may steal your money, but they are not usually a worthwhile target for lobbyists or unions, they are too small. Furthermore, when corruption occurs, since they are private, you can take them to court on equal terms and for much more than you can take a city to court. And in the worst case, you can always sell your stake (if at a loss) and move across the street; you don't have to leave the entire city.
The real cure for corruption is a strong middle class.
Empty words and a ridiculous proposition. The middle class is doing just fine, and it's strong. But it didn't manage to prevent either Bush or Obama from paying off their corporate cronies, and they aren't able to stop the corruption or financial disaster in California either.
The problems of Greece and Spain have more to do with overspending and the European central bank rather than being socialist.
Yes: the problems of Greece and Spain are entirely due to overspending, just like those of Detroit.
It's "socialist" in the sense that this overspending is justified in terms of socialist terms, although, of course, there is no intrinsic reason socialist nations need to overspend; the other choice they have is to simply push their populations into poverty directly without first running up a huge debt. Historically, that's the more usual course, since nobody would lend them money.
The high unemployment is due to the harsh measures that were handed down which just made things worse.
Yes: Greece and Spain employed many people in fake, unproductive jobs and financed that by borrowing from countries like Germany. But what you call "harsh measures" is simply an understandable desire of Germans not to waste any more money on this arrangement. Why should Germans pay (and lose their money on) Greeks to be employed in useless jobs?
Another big problem in Europe is that governments lack a lot of control over their currency since it is all handled by the central bank
By itself, that isn't a problem. It became a problem only because it enabled countries like Spain and Greece to spend more than they otherwise would.
Other socialists countries are also doing fairly well. The Chinese economy has been doing fairly well though now many Chinese are upset about the things the government has ignored (like the environment, human rights and corruption).
Fairly well? China is below the Dominican Republic and below world average in terms of per-capita GDP, and that's probably with lots of fake data and hidden government debt. Furthermore, China is not a "progressive" or "liberal" country in the sense of Detroit: government services are extremely limited for most Chinese.
Yes, it "can work" if you happen to be a tiny nation sitting on vast amounts of oil (Norway) or an even tinier tax haven and banking capital wedged between two major and powerful neighbors (Luxembourg).
For nations that don't have these unusual featuers, however, the outcome is more like Greece or Spain: massive debt, risk of default, massive unemployment, deteriorating economy, etc.. Just like Detroit.
"What about the 20+ million unemployed US citizens?" the GOP says, "fuck em"
No, the GOP says that the Democrats are fucking the unemployed by destroying jobs and opportunities.
Obama's and the Democrat's stimulus program that they ran on in 2008 worked like shit and failed to achieve anything of what they promised. We are worse off today than Obama said we'd be without his stimulus program. Democrats are incompetent on the economy.
Until people get off their asses and votes these entitled assholes out of office that are afraid of upsetting their rich donors by calling them the scumbags they really are, nothing will change.
Exactly. You are talking about the Democrats, of course, many of whom are very rich.
I'm not anti republican, I'm anti GOP, those rich scumbag protecting assholes are NOT republicans.
Many of those "rich scumbag protecting assholes" are people who run small businesses, saved a lifetime, and/or spent a long time getting to the top of their profession for a few years of high income.
Furthermore, above median earners (i.e., middle class, far from rich) are generally split evenly between independents, Republicans, and Democrats.
Of course, people at the bottom of the income scale, of course, vote overwhelmingly Democratic, because Democrats promise them more and more free government handouts.
The easy solution for Detroit would be a lot of money.
Adding money to a corrupt government and union town is like throwing gasoline on a fire.
A better solution would be to break up Detroit into a large number of small, independent private developments in which the residents actually own shares, similar to an HOA. They can then individually contract out security, trash pickup, maintenance, and other services. Corruption doesn't pay if you have to corrupt thousands of HOAs one at a time. Developments that remain blighted and whose blight harms neighboring developments can be sued and taken over or razed by their neighbors (no central authority establishing blight).
Corruption becomes worse the bigger the units of governance become, because the bigger they become, the more return on investment corporations and unions get on their efforts to corrupt government.
Oh, those evil Republicans! They deliberately sabotaged Detroit by putting up bad candidates, hoping Democrats would get into power bankrupt the city and then! Obviously, it's a sinister plot by Republicans to buy all that real estate for cheap and make the 1% even wealthier!
I suspect that another fairly straightforward idea (automating the laying of carbon fiber in a 3D printer), and something every 3D printer would have done within a few years anyway, will be locked up in patent hell for 20 years. MarkForge itself will likely be bought by a big player like Stratasys, who will then ship $500k printers to the auto manufacturers.
The theory of greenhouse gasses is backed up by over a century of research, but the initial research done in the 1800's is not enough to prove the most recent findings so we cannot trust it. Sound.
Correct. You cannot make useful climate change predictions based on the greenhouse effect that was discovered in the 19th century. Predicting climate change requires a huge amount of research results that are very recent and largely untested. Furthermore, evaluating approaches to mitigating climate change (carbon taxes etc.) require economic models that are speculative and even less tested.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I can't figure it out: are you really so incredibly stupid that you believe that? Are you being sarcastic? Or do you really believe we should destroy our democracy for a Soviet-style all powerful central government?
Unbelievably stupid people have their hands on the levers, and they do use selective application of the law to undermine our democracy and checks and balances, and instead reshape our society according to the will of technocrats and rent seeking corporations. People like you put them there. Whether you're simply too stupid to understand what that means or whether that's what you actually want, it's time it stop.
Your tax dollars subsidize the stadiums, the wealthy owners, the games, and their idiotic and useless "trademarks" too.
Didn't we elect someone to stop crony capitalism? Oh, right: he's now the crony capitalist in chief.
Did I say I wanted to buy this? Did I say this particular approach was a good idea?
I simply explained to you why people want this since you obviously do not understand the impulse to preserve oneself past one's death.
Yeah, sure, it's like people have never before in history been concerned with preserving their memory or their remains. Oh no, never! What a silly idea! Only stupid people would do THAT! Humans have always just dug a deep hole, tossed the corpses in there, and forgotten about them, because that's the logical thing to do!
Geez, some people's ignorance is just astounding.
Because it may help your family and friends get over losing you, and they may want to have something to remember you by.
Of course, if you have broken with your family and don't have any friends, you needn't bother.
The federal government has now created massive programs to mine your financial records to protect you from financial abuse and to obtain lots of medical records and information about you in order to make sure that you're properly insured but don't impose too high costs on the system, In addition, in order to earn a living, you now need to get permission from the federal government to keep illegals from taking away "US jobs" and make the unions happy. And the NSA is tracking and recording everybody at will to protect us from terrorism.
In a few short years, the US has turned from a nation with one of the least intrusive federal governments into a nightmare surveillance state. I think Obama's and the progressives' intent really is to help the American people, they are simply misguided. Their basic view seems to be that most people are so stupid that they can only survive if the federal government helps them with everything. Let's hope that people will start to realize that we are going down the wrong path, and let's hope that we can reverse this over the next few elections.
You need three credit cards (or at least three lines of credit). Less than that and your credit score suffers. Multiple credit cards are a sign that several companies have looked at you and trust you. That's the theory at least.
Because it's Europe. Governments spend a shitload of time and money to indoctrinate their citizens from near birth to worship them, and they don't want their citizens to start doubting them. They do have a few more levels of defense beyond secrecy: control of the media, and if all else fails, they'll just lock up whoever leaked it and blame the US or international bankers or global corporations.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop losers from becoming president.
Why should society "step in"? As long as people don't hurt anybody, let them take whatever they like. If they can't take care of themselves anymore, then institutionalize them, not before.
Krokodil is just desomorphine prepared under unsanitary and improvised conditions. If people could just buy desomorphine, there wouldn't be any krokodil or any of the harmful effects from it.
Brilliant! It won't actually do much to reduce recreational drug use, but it will mean a lot more restriction on companies developing legal drugs. Big pharmaceuticals should love that, because in the end, only a few of them will be left who are actually able to pay for the licenses and security associated with drug development under such restrictions. Crony capitalism at its best!
The "traditional" drugs are known risks with known treatments; we should simply legalize them and offer support and treatment to those who want it. There would be less suffering and as a society, we'd be a lot better off.
People are good at that sort of thing: "Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it. Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it"
First of all, TI measures perception of corruption, not actual corruption. In addition, the term "corruption" has many meanings. Here, we are talking about rent seeking and lobbying, while TI is mostly concerned with the illegal kind of corruption.
Yes, but they end up determining the pay-out of very large sums of money, and that money is often spent far away from the people who paid for it. I can't have an informed opinion on whether some neighborhood several miles from me really needs its roads redone, I can have an informed opinion whether my HOA needs to do it for my development; all the money that is spent by an HOA is spent where you can see it and determine whether you got your money's worth. And, as I was saying, you can't take your alderman to civil court for hurting you financially through bad decisions, but you can certainly do that with your HOA and its members.
"The wealthy" means people with high net worth; left wing demagogues like to conflate wealth with high income, but they have little to do with one another. High income individuals often are not rich, and many wealthy people were never high income earners.
As for the high income earners, you demonize them as some distinct, evil class of people sucking the country dry. In reality, most high income earners are middle class people who have a few good years some time towards the end of their careers, money they often desperately need to save for retirement. But, hey, don't let facts get in the way of some good bigotry and hatred.
That's not going to hurt the "ultra rich"; they don't have much income and if you tax their trading, they simply won't bother and instead engage in other money-making activities that you can't tax. Your suggestions are going to hurt a real-estate agent who has an unusually good year, or an Apple employee who is selling stock in order to buy a house in Cupertino. In the long term, it's going to hurt the stock market, and with it everybody's retirement portfolios. It's jerks like you that are screwing the middle class with your idiotic and ignorant proposals.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about personal finance, US demographics, or economics. If there is one consolation, ignorance and stupidity like yours means you'll likely never be able to live or retire comfortably. But because you can't figure out why others can, you lash out.
Once sex in space is common, natural selection will take care of this. Even if nobody dies, a brittle boned, dizzy guy/gal just isn't particularly attractive as a potential mate.
That's a different kind of "corruption". Your HOA officers may steal your money, but they are not usually a worthwhile target for lobbyists or unions, they are too small. Furthermore, when corruption occurs, since they are private, you can take them to court on equal terms and for much more than you can take a city to court. And in the worst case, you can always sell your stake (if at a loss) and move across the street; you don't have to leave the entire city.
Empty words and a ridiculous proposition. The middle class is doing just fine, and it's strong. But it didn't manage to prevent either Bush or Obama from paying off their corporate cronies, and they aren't able to stop the corruption or financial disaster in California either.
Yes: the problems of Greece and Spain are entirely due to overspending, just like those of Detroit.
It's "socialist" in the sense that this overspending is justified in terms of socialist terms, although, of course, there is no intrinsic reason socialist nations need to overspend; the other choice they have is to simply push their populations into poverty directly without first running up a huge debt. Historically, that's the more usual course, since nobody would lend them money.
Yes: Greece and Spain employed many people in fake, unproductive jobs and financed that by borrowing from countries like Germany. But what you call "harsh measures" is simply an understandable desire of Germans not to waste any more money on this arrangement. Why should Germans pay (and lose their money on) Greeks to be employed in useless jobs?
By itself, that isn't a problem. It became a problem only because it enabled countries like Spain and Greece to spend more than they otherwise would.
Fairly well? China is below the Dominican Republic and below world average in terms of per-capita GDP, and that's probably with lots of fake data and hidden government debt. Furthermore, China is not a "progressive" or "liberal" country in the sense of Detroit: government services are extremely limited for most Chinese.
Yes, it "can work" if you happen to be a tiny nation sitting on vast amounts of oil (Norway) or an even tinier tax haven and banking capital wedged between two major and powerful neighbors (Luxembourg).
For nations that don't have these unusual featuers, however, the outcome is more like Greece or Spain: massive debt, risk of default, massive unemployment, deteriorating economy, etc.. Just like Detroit.
No, the GOP says that the Democrats are fucking the unemployed by destroying jobs and opportunities.
Obama's and the Democrat's stimulus program that they ran on in 2008 worked like shit and failed to achieve anything of what they promised. We are worse off today than Obama said we'd be without his stimulus program. Democrats are incompetent on the economy.
Exactly. You are talking about the Democrats, of course, many of whom are very rich.
Many of those "rich scumbag protecting assholes" are people who run small businesses, saved a lifetime, and/or spent a long time getting to the top of their profession for a few years of high income.
Furthermore, above median earners (i.e., middle class, far from rich) are generally split evenly between independents, Republicans, and Democrats.
Of course, people at the bottom of the income scale, of course, vote overwhelmingly Democratic, because Democrats promise them more and more free government handouts.
Adding money to a corrupt government and union town is like throwing gasoline on a fire.
A better solution would be to break up Detroit into a large number of small, independent private developments in which the residents actually own shares, similar to an HOA. They can then individually contract out security, trash pickup, maintenance, and other services. Corruption doesn't pay if you have to corrupt thousands of HOAs one at a time. Developments that remain blighted and whose blight harms neighboring developments can be sued and taken over or razed by their neighbors (no central authority establishing blight).
Corruption becomes worse the bigger the units of governance become, because the bigger they become, the more return on investment corporations and unions get on their efforts to corrupt government.
Oh, those evil Republicans! They deliberately sabotaged Detroit by putting up bad candidates, hoping Democrats would get into power bankrupt the city and then! Obviously, it's a sinister plot by Republicans to buy all that real estate for cheap and make the 1% even wealthier!
Including your own, obviously.
I suspect that another fairly straightforward idea (automating the laying of carbon fiber in a 3D printer), and something every 3D printer would have done within a few years anyway, will be locked up in patent hell for 20 years. MarkForge itself will likely be bought by a big player like Stratasys, who will then ship $500k printers to the auto manufacturers.
Correct. You cannot make useful climate change predictions based on the greenhouse effect that was discovered in the 19th century. Predicting climate change requires a huge amount of research results that are very recent and largely untested. Furthermore, evaluating approaches to mitigating climate change (carbon taxes etc.) require economic models that are speculative and even less tested.