"Consider NEO 433 Eros, a relatively easy target to which we have sent a robotic probe. It has a metal content which, by one estimate, is worth $20 Trillion (US) at current market prices."
Sounds like a way to pay off the national debt -- is there one close enough and small enough that we could send up a couple of robotic engines and drag the thing into a more convenient orbit? I'm wondering whst the cost vs benefits would be, given only current tech. Maybe a trillion spent, but $20T gained??
Okay, MOST people no longer have the balls... people cry for protection and get a nanny gov't, then wonder who will protect them from the nanny... I was pleased with the several bills and resolutions recently passed by Montana, which stand up for states' rights and citizens' rights under the Constitution, and bedamned to the Feds trying to say otherwise.
(I grew up in MT; been in SoCal for 25 years; now trying to move back. CA used to be a great place, but is now building the foundation of the New Iron Curtain.)
Yeah... the moment I heard the term "Homeland Security" I knew we were in big trouble. There's no turning back from that road, short of revolution (or secession, for what good that would do individual states).
And I don't think we've got the balls for that anymore.:(
It might interest you that someone is pushing a ballot proposition in California that would impose a massive exit tax on anyone moving out of CA. I see this as all part of the same road -- to the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_j.htm#1351 Wealth Tax. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. Summary Date: 01/28/09 Circulation Deadline: 06/29/09 Signatures Required: 694,354 Proponent: Paul McCauley In part: "Imposes one-time tax of at least 55% on property in California exceeding $15 million if single, $20 million if married. Imposes one-time tax (between 36.5% - 54.3%) on income exceeding $10 million when resident dies or leaves California. Imposes additional 17.5% tax on total incomes of taxpayers with income exceeding $150,000 if single, $250,000 if married; 35% if incomes exceed $350,000 if single, $500,000 if married. Creates tax credits. Requires State to acquire shares of specified corporations to influence environmental practices."
This amounts to a Soviet-style assets grab -- no one will be able to cough up that much cash for property taxes (even people who own $15M properties don't normally keep $8M in cash laying around), so these expensive properties will be either sold (and a chunk of the proceeds confiscated under this proposal) or ceded to the state for unpaid taxes.
Yeah, we need more illegals in our prison system... cuz privately-run prisons are not yet sufficiently profitable, and states pay 'em per warm body.
Seriously... I don't see the point either. Most of the time the penalty winds up being deportation; if someone is already illegal, just skip the middleman and kick them out. If no one wants them -- shoot them. Maybe that'll cut down the crime by illegals, eh??
As to TFA... I'm all too strongly reminded of the exit procedures from the former Soviet Union. And it still croggles me that anyone thinks we need to "secure" the border with Canada. So the occasional nefarious type will sneak in; isn't that better than having to SNEAK OUT if we merely don't want to be tracked by Big Brother??
And this is why several states have recently passed resolutions reaffirming state sovereignty. Whether that will actually accomplish anything remains to be seen.
But these remedial actions don't always work to restore sovereignty, as your example clearly notes.
As someone above put it, "Any country that abrogates its sovereignty in this manner isn't a country, but a vassal state, in subservience to a higher ruling power."
"Does anyone wonder why the Pirate Party are winning more and more votes?"
Seems to me the Pirate Party is about: Sweden is for *Swedes* and their rights, not for everybody and their asshole and their special interests. And isn't that what government is supposed to be -- FOR ITS OWN PEOPLE, not for random strangers and special interests?
If I were a Swede, I think I'd be joining the PP too.
That's the danger of a treaty that AMENDS some prior treaty -- do you really KNOW what it actually says, in such cases?? What about after 3 or 4 layers of such "amendments" over years and years of whatever being done in practice (not necessarily to the letter of the treaty, either)??
And there you have in a nutshell why some of us Americans are very much against joining any uber-national group that can then dictate policy within our own country.
I say to Sweden -- have the balls to resist. You are Sweden first, Europe second, and no one is going to defend your right to govern your own country if you don't first do it yourself.
If you look at the supporting documents written by the various framers, they weren't speaking of an "organized" anything, but rather the common man's ability to defend himself against future tyranny.
But as you say... however you write, someone can and will find a way to twist it, should they be so inclined.
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." -- Cardinal Richelieu
Oh, I understood it properly -- may not have written clearly tho:)
What I was going for was that under compulsory licensing, you really have no recourse against counterfeiters/pirates -- so long as they pay the mandated royalties. In fact, they become your business partners like it or not, and it behooves you to support them, if you wish to maximize your income from the sectors they serve. If that messes up your distribution monopoly -- oh well!!
At least, I think that's where I was going. The patent on my brain has expired since the original discussion.:)
"Staccato" is a good description of CJ Cherryh's action scenes -- they work in part because you wind up reading the action in realtime, not dragging along word by word.
As a good general rule, if you have trouble making a sentence work, you are overstuffing it and it needs to be broken up.
Which principles I do well by when writing fiction, but often ignore when writing comments like this one, where I often delve into layers of parentheticals and other hideous constructions:)
There's a sentence in the prologue of Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER that goes on for a bit over *two pages* in 5 point type. Being at the time a bored 10th grader and this book being required but very dull reading, the only fun to be had was in diagramming that sentence.
It took a full sheet of paper writ small, and the diagram twisted in new and different ways never before seen by grammarians.
Some blog comments rival this antique literary nightmare. And a problem thereby arises: sometimes that overstuffed sentence can arrive at grammatical and therefore legal ambiguity which an evil-minded lawyer or prosecutor could twist in novel ways. (Witness the legal arguments derived from comma placement in the 2nd Amendment!)
So -- learn to write clearly, for your own protection.
Obviously mapped out by someone who has never been to Quebec (land of religious coercion), and completely fails to grasp that the midwestern farm states/provinces have a generally higher level of education than the rest of the continent.
Likely not, tho the "compulsory" part here is the threat of being sued and/or busted, depending on your level of activity, rather than a must-license factor.
Slashdot Mirror
"Consider NEO 433 Eros, a relatively easy target to which we have sent a robotic probe. It has a metal content which, by one estimate, is worth $20 Trillion (US) at current market prices."
Sounds like a way to pay off the national debt -- is there one close enough and small enough that we could send up a couple of robotic engines and drag the thing into a more convenient orbit? I'm wondering whst the cost vs benefits would be, given only current tech. Maybe a trillion spent, but $20T gained??
If it's using up an extremely finite resource -- how "green" is it, really??
I'd say -- not at all, and that any "greenery" is a temporary illusion.
Billings is the most "city-like" of MT cities, but still a cow town around the edges. Wyoming has a better tax structure, tho, from what I understand.
Either way -- it's still somewhere that personal responsibility trumps the nanny state.
What's this about the Free State Project having a western offshoot?? Hadn't paid much attention since the northeast is out of the question for me.
I think that's a better name for it!!
Okay, MOST people no longer have the balls... people cry for protection and get a nanny gov't, then wonder who will protect them from the nanny... I was pleased with the several bills and resolutions recently passed by Montana, which stand up for states' rights and citizens' rights under the Constitution, and bedamned to the Feds trying to say otherwise.
(I grew up in MT; been in SoCal for 25 years; now trying to move back. CA used to be a great place, but is now building the foundation of the New Iron Curtain.)
Yeah... the moment I heard the term "Homeland Security" I knew we were in big trouble. There's no turning back from that road, short of revolution (or secession, for what good that would do individual states).
And I don't think we've got the balls for that anymore. :(
One begins to wonder what our own Iron Curtain or Berlin Wall will look like...
It might interest you that someone is pushing a ballot proposition in California that would impose a massive exit tax on anyone moving out of CA. I see this as all part of the same road -- to the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_j.htm#1351
Wealth Tax. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute.
Summary Date: 01/28/09 Circulation Deadline: 06/29/09 Signatures Required: 694,354
Proponent: Paul McCauley
In part: "Imposes one-time tax of at least 55% on property in California exceeding $15 million if single, $20 million if married. Imposes one-time tax (between 36.5% - 54.3%) on income exceeding $10 million when resident dies or leaves California. Imposes additional 17.5% tax on total incomes of taxpayers with income exceeding $150,000 if single, $250,000 if married; 35% if incomes exceed $350,000 if single, $500,000 if married. Creates tax credits. Requires State to acquire shares of specified corporations to influence environmental practices."
This amounts to a Soviet-style assets grab -- no one will be able to cough up that much cash for property taxes (even people who own $15M properties don't normally keep $8M in cash laying around), so these expensive properties will be either sold (and a chunk of the proceeds confiscated under this proposal) or ceded to the state for unpaid taxes.
Yeah, we need more illegals in our prison system... cuz privately-run prisons are not yet sufficiently profitable, and states pay 'em per warm body.
Seriously... I don't see the point either. Most of the time the penalty winds up being deportation; if someone is already illegal, just skip the middleman and kick them out. If no one wants them -- shoot them. Maybe that'll cut down the crime by illegals, eh??
As to TFA... I'm all too strongly reminded of the exit procedures from the former Soviet Union. And it still croggles me that anyone thinks we need to "secure" the border with Canada. So the occasional nefarious type will sneak in; isn't that better than having to SNEAK OUT if we merely don't want to be tracked by Big Brother??
And most so-called revolutionaries are actually pursuing short-term benefits. Very few look to the unintended consequences of their actions.
And this is why several states have recently passed resolutions reaffirming state sovereignty. Whether that will actually accomplish anything remains to be seen.
But these remedial actions don't always work to restore sovereignty, as your example clearly notes.
As someone above put it, "Any country that abrogates its sovereignty in this manner isn't a country, but a vassal state, in subservience to a higher ruling power."
[adding up numbers] Hell, I can get more troops than that just from snagging the uniforms that walk into our local Walmart. Time to invade Europe!!
"Does anyone wonder why the Pirate Party are winning more and more votes?"
Seems to me the Pirate Party is about: Sweden is for *Swedes* and their rights, not for everybody and their asshole and their special interests. And isn't that what government is supposed to be -- FOR ITS OWN PEOPLE, not for random strangers and special interests?
If I were a Swede, I think I'd be joining the PP too.
My brain hurts. Did this actually SAY anything??
That's the danger of a treaty that AMENDS some prior treaty -- do you really KNOW what it actually says, in such cases?? What about after 3 or 4 layers of such "amendments" over years and years of whatever being done in practice (not necessarily to the letter of the treaty, either)??
And there you have in a nutshell why some of us Americans are very much against joining any uber-national group that can then dictate policy within our own country.
I say to Sweden -- have the balls to resist. You are Sweden first, Europe second, and no one is going to defend your right to govern your own country if you don't first do it yourself.
And if they do kick drugs, the next thing most wind up addicted to is -- religion. :/
Well, at least it's usually less destructive.
[laughing] Considering that this was in 1970, perhaps you're right :)
And back to the original point: write clearly the first time, so you don't become someone's argument or crime stat. :)
If you look at the supporting documents written by the various framers, they weren't speaking of an "organized" anything, but rather the common man's ability to defend himself against future tyranny.
But as you say... however you write, someone can and will find a way to twist it, should they be so inclined.
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." -- Cardinal Richelieu
Oh, I understood it properly -- may not have written clearly tho :)
What I was going for was that under compulsory licensing, you really have no recourse against counterfeiters/pirates -- so long as they pay the mandated royalties. In fact, they become your business partners like it or not, and it behooves you to support them, if you wish to maximize your income from the sectors they serve. If that messes up your distribution monopoly -- oh well!!
At least, I think that's where I was going. The patent on my brain has expired since the original discussion. :)
"Staccato" is a good description of CJ Cherryh's action scenes -- they work in part because you wind up reading the action in realtime, not dragging along word by word.
As a good general rule, if you have trouble making a sentence work, you are overstuffing it and it needs to be broken up.
Which principles I do well by when writing fiction, but often ignore when writing comments like this one, where I often delve into layers of parentheticals and other hideous constructions :)
(A side effect of having a brainfull of clutter :)
There's a sentence in the prologue of Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER that goes on for a bit over *two pages* in 5 point type. Being at the time a bored 10th grader and this book being required but very dull reading, the only fun to be had was in diagramming that sentence.
It took a full sheet of paper writ small, and the diagram twisted in new and different ways never before seen by grammarians.
Some blog comments rival this antique literary nightmare. And a problem thereby arises: sometimes that overstuffed sentence can arrive at grammatical and therefore legal ambiguity which an evil-minded lawyer or prosecutor could twist in novel ways. (Witness the legal arguments derived from comma placement in the 2nd Amendment!)
So -- learn to write clearly, for your own protection.
Obviously mapped out by someone who has never been to Quebec (land of religious coercion), and completely fails to grasp that the midwestern farm states/provinces have a generally higher level of education than the rest of the continent.
Likely not, tho the "compulsory" part here is the threat of being sued and/or busted, depending on your level of activity, rather than a must-license factor.
Here's a better idea. What if we gave some of the Dem states to Canada and Mexico??