That might work for some wannabees. It seems to me that at least some of the people looking online at jihad sites and who are actually interested in it are more likely to pick sides in a flame fest than leave in disgust.
They'll have to be very careful to make their trolling uninteresting and non-inflammatory, which doesn't even make sense. That's not how you troll.
Frankly I don't see how this is going to work. I'm hoping that they are using the word "troll" in a different sense than how I understand it. Unfortunately the article didn't give any examples so who knows.
You have to care about the subject matter to fall for trolling. Like your post could be trolling people who care about America's image in terms of whether it kills innocent people etc. Someone might respond to you acting all indignant about how America's not like that, or other places are so much worse. Others don't care because they know America's history and are proud of it.
That's why I don't get how this is going to work with al Qaeda. What on earth are people going to say to make them feel emotional and defensive? And what makes people think that al Qaeda's emotional reply to trolling won't be even more inspiring to onlookers?
That's a funny example. I wonder what you think would happen in Oogaboogastan if a Muslim political leader announced he or she is an atheist. You think they would get erased from political life? OR erased from life?
I guess you think the crazy religious people over there are just the same as our crazy religious people. You should try reading international news sometime.
You're right that OP was generalizing and exaggerating, but you're being misleading by drawing a false equivalence between Islam and Christianity.
You can't deny that most Christians value Jesus and most Muslim value Mohammed. Then you just have to look at the differences between Jesus and Mohammed to get an idea of where that value will lead. Jesus was the son of God, pure good, so good that nobody can possibly be as good as him. He forgave people of their sins, cured sick people, etc.
Mohammed wasn't like that. He's supposed to be human. Calling him the son of God, or a representation of God, is actually against Islam. Worship of Mohammed is prohibited (thought Muslims revere him). He's a soldier of Allah, a general. He committed atrocities. He tells his soldiers it's okay to rape prisoners. He's a *practical* leader.
Please, name a few atrocities that Jesus personally committed or ordered and that are widely celebrated by Christians. Jesus was an impractical person. Nobody can be like him. Your typical Christian doesn't even aspire to be like Jesus. How many Christians support the death penalty for instance? Plenty. If you ask a Christian who supports the death penalty whether Jesus would support the death penalty, they'd say "No probably not but he's the son of God" or something like that.
Compare that to Muslim contemporary politics. Calling someone an infidel, a bad Muslim, a traitor to Islam, etc is a huge deal. People get killed for doing un-Islamic things. If they are called on doing something un-Islamic, they don't say "So what? This is the law, not religion" or something like that. They rephrase their argument in Islamic terms. If they are supporting girls' education, and their opponent says girls' education is un-Islamic, their argument becomes that Mohammed believed in education for girls. They would never say something like "Yeah Mohammed would do it differently but guess what I'm not Mohammed."
I don't know.. it's like people like you live in a fantasy world where the reality of the Muslim world escapes them. You really should read about it before making these silly arguments about finding a "bad" verse in the Bible and showing that Christianity and Islam are equal. Also, believing that most Muslims are secretly super liberal and really laid back about religion is just dumb.
Large chunks? I'm assuming you mean large in terms of population? Which large chunks are you talking about? Perhaps you should read about Islam in the world's biggest Muslim countries like Indonesia and Pakistan, and large Muslim minorities like India? Have you read about the growing Islamist power in the Middle East due to the Arab Spring?
Any decent human being would feel the same. The important thing is to minimize the loss of human life. Whether there's intentionality behind the deaths is irrelevant.
That's bold. And wrong. There are plenty of decent human beings, myself included, who care about the intentionality behind deaths. Is there a single country in the world that doesn't have separate laws for accidental death, negligence leading to death, self-defense leading to death, and intentional murder, to at least some degree?
The fact is you can't minimize loss to human life. We all die. It's just a matter of how and when. It would be interesting to see the results of a survey asking if you'd rather die at age 30 of some random natural cause or age 31 through a brutal ritualistic murder. A year of life in exchange for your manner of death. By your logic most people would choose age 31 with a brutal death. I don't think that's right, but who knows.
e.g. Afghanistan, we're there to get Bin Laden, but once we get there we stop looking for him and waste years spending money for nothing. Who does that benefit besides military contractors?
That's irrelevant, the problem stemmed from Afghanistan turning into a humanitarian mission. How can you hunt for bin Laden when you are so worried about building a stable government, securing cities, ending the drug trade, etc? That's the question to ask, not "who benefited monetarily."
e.g. Iraq. What reason is there to invent a non-existant link between Saddam Hussein and OBL, and hype up non-existent WMDs based on evidence that was known to be false?
Who knows, paranoia perhaps? I don't remember a serious invention of a link between Saddam and OBL. It was all about the nuclear weapons. And lest you forget, Saddam milked that to his advantage as much as possible. He decided now was the time to stick it to America and gamble on us being entrenched in Afghanistan. He was wrong.
Wait, your argument is that fighting against religious extremism is actually a form of religious extremism? That makes no sense. By your logic you can never have a non-religiously motivated conflict with religious people. That's the same crap religious zealots spout when they claim that every law that people try to apply to them is religious discrimination. They just can't fathom that there are *other reasons* that people don't like them or their behaviors.
Since 9/11 Americans, including conservatives, have learned a lot about politics in the Muslim world. If you ask the typical person who thought "liberating" Iraq was a great idea and that we'd be welcomed with roses and chocolates for toppling Saddam if they would still support it all, many of those people have changed their minds.
So bringing up the lack of support for the Arab Spring, which has seen a massive increase in power for Islamists, as an apparent contradiction among conservatives is not proving what you think it does. All it proves is conservatives are not idiots and are not bound to believe the same things in perpetuity no matter how the consequences pan out.
Let's say you're going to Walmart. If it's like the one near me, walking from a handicapped spot to the door means crossing the no parking area next to the handicapped spot, two wide lanes of traffic, a fire lane, then a very wide sidewalk. It's got to be at least 60 feet, maybe closer to 80. And then you have to walk around the football-field sized store, gather your goods, and then stand in line waiting for their notoriously slow cashiers.
So you're saying that's all no problem, but if the parking spot were 30-50 feet farther, you couldn't do it? How do you return your cart right now, I mean there's no cart return right next to the handicapped spots at any store I can remember. They're usually in the middle of the parking lot.
It's not that I'm not sympathetic, but I really just don't see the big deal if the parking spots weren't right up front. They could be bigger and wider and more out of the way, less likely to be right next to another car.. and probably less likely to be taken by cheaters since after all proximity is the only benefit to non-handicapped people.
Here's an insensitive question. Are you ashamed that you can walk but you want to use handicapped parking? I do things I'm ashamed of too so it's not a big deal, I'm just curious if you are totally shameless in wanting special spots right up front for your benefit because you think that's your right, or if you're ashamed but really think it's critical for your well being, or you don't really care but take advantage of it since it's available, or what?
Title 47 from what I can find is just part of the US Code. It has nothing to do with the ADA.
The ADA does have titles 1-4, and title 4 of the ADA deals with telecommunication relay services. But it only deals with the physical access to the network -- telecoms have to support certain equipment like tty/tdd phones. It does NOT say that, for example, the phone company has to enable TTY access to every phone in America. For instance, if you call a phone number with a TTY connected and start talking at it, nothing happens. The phone company IS NOT required to transcribe your call for the benefit of the deaf person. (Which is a remarkable similar to a website being required to provide closed captioning on videos. Weird.)
You're right though, there is a bunch of the ADA that applies to non-physical stuff, but those parts are dealing with behavior discrimination (not serving disabled people at restaurants for instance). I have to point out that technically I didn't (nor did the summary) say that the ADA didn't deal with things besides physical structures. The opposite of "physical structures" is "virtual structures", not "everything other than physical structures." It is true that the ADA does not address accessibility to virtual structures like websites, but now it's being applied to that.
I'm curious why you think this case is noteworthy and why the bit about physical structures was pointed out in the summary if you also think that this whole time it's been blatantly obvious that websites need to be accessible just like any other "public accomodation" according to the ADA. And I wonder if you think that every website owner is liable for bringing their website into compliance, just like building owners? "No more blog posts. You can't alter your website until you bring it up to code!"
"Hey this website's alt text on their images doesn't make sense, I'm suing!"
It's crazy to me. A building is expensive and requires an investment and takes up physical space in the midst of society. But anybody can start a website for free and possibly nobody will ever see it. How can the same rules for accessibility apply?
Not California's exactly list, but it applies to at least one state.
I was looking for statistics on how frequently each provision is used.
And I can see how a state like California might end up with 10% of drivers (not people in total) with placards. If they don't remove dead drivers from their database, and the article does mention people using dead relatives placards, that would be a problem.
I think that's a stretch. There's no reason to believe that they don't remove dead drivers.
I would imagine that a higher percentage of disabled people do not have drivers licenses than non-disabled people, so the 10% figure is really high.
There is no reason why they should have to be in a wheelchair just to make your reality feel better, either.
You gave an example of someone who could walk 30 feet from their car to the store, but 50 feet would do them in (not having the handicapped spaces at the very front). To me that rather illustrates that the person is cutting it too close and should be in a wheelchair, not relying on some law that says the spaces have to be in the very front. Imagine what would happen if they came out of the store and their car had been towed. They'd walk to their car, look around for a minute, then be unable to make it back to the store.
You do not get to decide whether a person should be walking or not. You do not have that right. The individuals have that right. By your quote, even though I don't need a wheelchair I should get one just so I can comfortably park in the middle of the lot . . . so what? So you can park closer? So there can be less laws?
So the vast majority of people can park closer. So there aren't always empty parking spots with big ugly yellow pylons, striped pavement, and warning signs right at the front window of every restaurant. Save your argument about how evil and heartless I am. I know I'm not evil or heartless. There's always a balance. It would still work for most handicapped people.
I can't believe you start calling me a shill, calling me heartless, saying I want the right of determining who can walk, etc just because I propose something that would make parking slightly more difficult for a tiny percentage of handicapped people (the ones who can walk 30 feet and up a ramp right now, but not 50 feet and up a ramp). I guess handicapped people are your "think of the children!!!@#" type of argument.
The devalued yuan is what has made china the second largest economy in the world and given them a growth rate of ~10% a year. Without that competitive edge why on earth would you employ a million illiterate workers 10 time zones away from where the production is consumed?
China's currency devaluation is important but I think you're underestimating the willpower of their workforce. If they allowed the currency to appreciate, China's workforce would most likely accept lower wages. The cost of China's productivity is lower than acquiring the same productivity elsewhere -- and they can do that in other ways than currency devaluation.
I'm sure you've seen stories of working conditions in China. I just don't think if the currency appreciated the workers would say "Oh, ok, well I'm done, I'm taking my appreciating savings and going on a world vacation!" They'd say "Oh crap, there are 24 people applying for my position, I better accept a lower wage."
Take the situation greece is in. Either you cut salaries across the country, which is what the germans have required and has been working out so well that their economy is contracting at a soul crushing pace,
There's two sides, the borrowers and the lenders. The borrowers have to sacrifice to live within their means, that's cutting salaries. But don't forget that lenders sacrificed as well, with private lenders taking I believe an immediate 70% cut.
That's a huge reduction in a short time span, which was necessary because Greece was about to miss bond payments which would send them into default.
or you increase inflation and decrease the relative debt. Greece of course, because it can't control its own inflation is effectively trapped on a gold standard, which the 'gold' or 'euro' controlled by the Eurozone.
If they had increased inflation to accomplish the same thing in the same time span, you'd be talking like 100% inflation, not 10%. The net effect to the workers would be the same, they would just feel better because they didn't take a pay cut in absolute numbers.
There are only two advantages of the inflation approach and they both rely on tricks. You trick your population into thinking their debts are "evaporating" and they aren't taking pay cuts, when really they are. The other trick is all the people who loaned you money in good faith weren't expecting a sudden change in inflation. But the second trick is less reliable than the first, because people who lend money are aware of the trick. It doesn't work time and time again. You say for instance that even with massive inflation, your mortgage payment wouldn't change so you'd be happy. Well guess what. When that inflation becomes common, your mortgage payment will not stay the same. (Maybe not you personally but the next person to buy a house with a mortgage. The generic "you".) You'll be forced into a variable rate loan which is pegged to inflation. Or you'll end up with a fixed but "safe" rate. When you try to sell your house, instead of the $X you put into it, you'll get $X/10 because nobody can afford your original price with the new interest rates.
There's no way around it. You can't create value or wealth for the entire society with a government order. For a country to grow in wealth they have to act like China, and the key is not devaluing currency, it's having a population that is willing to be ultra competitive at their own expense.
You might have a point when it comes to situations like Canada where natural resources are another large factor to the country's wealth though. Maybe wages could decrease to remain competitive if the oil wealth were distributed to the population to make up for the decreased wages.
I hate to sound naive, but I assume you read the summary. Let me quote it just in case: "Now, a judge has denied Netflix's attempt to have the suit thrown out, saying that the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination in any venue — not just physical structures."
The ADA used to regulate physical structures. Now it's being applied to websites (not just Netflix). That's more government control over the internet.
"The person pushing the wheelchair?" Where did you get the idea that all - or even most - people who qualify to use accessible parking are wheelchair bound and have able-bodied aides?
I tried to find statistics on how handicapped parking passes are distributed based on disability but couldn't find any information. I did find an article saying that whenever California does an "enforcement run" to find abuse of handicapped parking passes, about 1/3 of cars *with handicapped parking passes* are using them illegally -- seems to be mostly relatives borrowing the car. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/22/local/la-me-disabled-parking-20110522 From the same article, 10% of drivers in California have handicapped parking permits! That seems rather excessive, no? I imagine most of those people aren't in the categories you're talking about.
So maybe it's not most people (I don't know) but - A) the comment I was responding to was about "grandma in her wheel chair" B) it is a group that is traditionally thought of when talking about handicapped parking C) it is a group that I have a little experience with since my grandmother uses a wheelchair D) there's no reason why someone with severe heat sensitivity or inability to walk over a certain distance *couldn't* be in a wheelchair when going to a store with a gigantic parking lot (most places like restaurants, convenience stores, strip malls, gas stations etc don't have giant parking lots anyway.. is an extra 20 feet going to mean the difference between making it or not? if so then that person probably shouldn't be walking to begin with)
And of course there are the older folks who'll use their cane or walker to get from their car to the store and then hop in one of the scooters that some places offer for people who need them. Making them walk all the way across the lot on their own would sort of defeat the purpose of that, wouldn't it?
Sure, in huge parking lots like your local Super Walmart, don't put them in the very back. Problem solved? They still don't need to be front and center.
If the businesses you mentioned really have just put a sign over regular spaces with no extra room, then those business are not ADA compliant and could have problems if someone reports them.
Yeah, probably.. and how silly is it that someone could get in trouble over their parking lot layout? What a country we live in. So civilized it hurts.
Where did you get "corporate control of the internet" from my post?
But yeah, if by corporate control of the internet you mean corporations are allowed to have their own websites and pretty much do whatever they want with them, I support that. Free speech and all that.
Sure, the post office and roads are very clear examples of interstate activities. But even with interstate highways, which are obviously interstate, I always heard there was no national speed limit, that it's up to each state. The federal government gives states incentives to set certain limits, but they can't just pass a law and say all roads must be 65 mph or less in the whole country.
Also, I don't think the internet is as clear a derivative of the road network or post office as the marines and air force are to the army and navy. Would you be okay with requiring a license to get online, having no privacy (like laws against tinted windows), having yearly government inspections of your internet-enabled devices, etc? To me that would be an extremely unpleasant state.
Out of curiosity, what ADA requirements do UPS and the post office have in terms of delivering products? (Netflix is delivering movies that other people created, similar to UPS/post office.) Is UPS required to provide braille labels when shipping to blind people so they can understand what package they're receiving? Or even more analogous, is the post office required to transcribe non-accessible junk mail and bills into braille for the blind?
You have to draw the line somewhere. There has to be a reason the constitution said "commerce among the states" and not just "commerce." To me it's real clear that there is such thing as a local business that is not interstate. A non-chain locally-owned pet store. A non-chain locally-owned restaurant. Just because there's a way to connect them to people in another state, via the roads, the internet, the phones, remote personal shoppers, third party shipping companies, etc, doesn't mean they can be considered to have an interstate presence.
A clear example of interstate commerce is UPS. Their business is transporting stuff within and between states. Their own property, under their own control, with their own employees, moves from one state to another.
As for the free services and interpreters, this is a strawman par excellence and not worth replying to.
You missed the point of my strawman. The fact that you noticed it was a strawman should clue you in that the original comparison by the judge is also flawed. Nobody said you should be able to strictly limit the definition of your target audience when it comes to essential services like court access. Comparing a movie theater to a court house in terms of accessibility is ridiculous.
First, deaf and hard of hearing moviegoers pay for their tickets like everyone else.
That's irrelevant. The most they should expect is that after paying, when they find out there are no subtitles, they should get their money back.
Second, supporting closed captioning in a movie theater is a ONE TIME cost of $2500 for the equipment.
Great, so that's not a huge deal for an established theater and they. Are we talking about the principle, or whether it can work in practice? Obviously it works in practice, because it IS the law and theaters DO have that equipment. How about the principle of it though?
If it's so cheap, what I think would be a better outcome than forcing every theater to do it is instead to have one theater in the community do it and all the deaf people can go there. They can have more showings with the subtitles on, the crowd would be better, and the theater could provide additional services to make it more convenient for deaf people. What's wrong with that? Why force everybody to do it so you end up with a watered down experience?
Wow, is your summary accurate? Actual federal judges compared an essential service like court access to a movie theater?
I mean, I'm going to give the judges the benefit of the doubt and say they aren't utterly stupid, they just wanted to blatantly expand the power and intrusiveness of the government through the ADA and don't give a shit how their pretenses sound.
Someone should start a lawsuit in the 9th circuit that says movie theaters are required to provide free service to those who can't afford them, and interpreters to those who can't understand the spoken languages of the movie, since that's what courts do and, really, courts and movie theaters are pretty much the same thing.
A group of activists pick a target that most people think doesn't matter (it's Netflix, not the IRS.. you don't go to jail for not complying with a Netflix video), and they make an example of that target in the courts. The activists get all sanctimonious and talk about how it's a victory for everybody or a victory for fairness or some crap.
The hatred of the ADA comes down to its application to nonessential services and its reliance on activists who use the courts to get their way.
Not only that, the principles behind ADA are capricious. Do deaf people "need" Netflix? Do they "need" Netflix more than someone who is too poor to pay for Netflix? No, the "need" is the same, so therefore if society has a moral obligation to provide access to Netflix to deaf people, it must have an equal moral obligation to provide Netflix to poor people. So in trying to help prevent discrimination against one group, it itself is discriminating against many other groups. It's a cognitive dissonance that many find unpleasant.
Reactions to the ADA are similar to reactions against affirmative action programs and stories about gender-related angst (not enough women in IT, etc). And for good reason -- they are conceptually very similar.
So your definition of interstate commerce includes anything that happens on the internet, because the internet is interstate? That's kind of a stretch. The business still operates in one spot, just because the consumer is coming in from somewhere else doesn't make it interstate. Wasn't the interstate commerce clause initially applied to stuff like railroads and trucking and toll roads between states, where there is an actual physical presence (at least temporarily) of the business in multiple states? So UPS is engaged in interstate commerce, but a locally owned pet store in Los Angeles who uses UPS to send something to Vermont is NOT interstate commerce.
Unfortunately the Supreme Court tends to agree more with you. That's not for the good of society but rather an expansion of government power for its own means.
The 14th amendment makes sense for applying the ADA to government services. Imagine a deaf person who was put on trial and the state didn't provide a means for them to understand what was being said!
The commerce clause is supposed to apply to interstate commerce. The government pushes that as far as it can in whatever way it can get away with, but they've gone too far too many times. Applying the ADA to a locally owned pet store for instance.. how is that interstate commerce?
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That might work for some wannabees. It seems to me that at least some of the people looking online at jihad sites and who are actually interested in it are more likely to pick sides in a flame fest than leave in disgust.
They'll have to be very careful to make their trolling uninteresting and non-inflammatory, which doesn't even make sense. That's not how you troll.
Frankly I don't see how this is going to work. I'm hoping that they are using the word "troll" in a different sense than how I understand it. Unfortunately the article didn't give any examples so who knows.
You have to care about the subject matter to fall for trolling. Like your post could be trolling people who care about America's image in terms of whether it kills innocent people etc. Someone might respond to you acting all indignant about how America's not like that, or other places are so much worse. Others don't care because they know America's history and are proud of it.
That's why I don't get how this is going to work with al Qaeda. What on earth are people going to say to make them feel emotional and defensive? And what makes people think that al Qaeda's emotional reply to trolling won't be even more inspiring to onlookers?
I don't think you know much about the Koran.
Haven't you heard that America is controlled by the Religious Right?
And that the vast majority of Muslims are good peaceful people?
By that logic America is more in the grip of extremists than any Muslim country. So there's some problem somewhere...
That's a funny example. I wonder what you think would happen in Oogaboogastan if a Muslim political leader announced he or she is an atheist. You think they would get erased from political life? OR erased from life?
I guess you think the crazy religious people over there are just the same as our crazy religious people. You should try reading international news sometime.
You're right that OP was generalizing and exaggerating, but you're being misleading by drawing a false equivalence between Islam and Christianity.
You can't deny that most Christians value Jesus and most Muslim value Mohammed. Then you just have to look at the differences between Jesus and Mohammed to get an idea of where that value will lead. Jesus was the son of God, pure good, so good that nobody can possibly be as good as him. He forgave people of their sins, cured sick people, etc.
Mohammed wasn't like that. He's supposed to be human. Calling him the son of God, or a representation of God, is actually against Islam. Worship of Mohammed is prohibited (thought Muslims revere him). He's a soldier of Allah, a general. He committed atrocities. He tells his soldiers it's okay to rape prisoners. He's a *practical* leader.
Please, name a few atrocities that Jesus personally committed or ordered and that are widely celebrated by Christians. Jesus was an impractical person. Nobody can be like him. Your typical Christian doesn't even aspire to be like Jesus. How many Christians support the death penalty for instance? Plenty. If you ask a Christian who supports the death penalty whether Jesus would support the death penalty, they'd say "No probably not but he's the son of God" or something like that.
Compare that to Muslim contemporary politics. Calling someone an infidel, a bad Muslim, a traitor to Islam, etc is a huge deal. People get killed for doing un-Islamic things. If they are called on doing something un-Islamic, they don't say "So what? This is the law, not religion" or something like that. They rephrase their argument in Islamic terms. If they are supporting girls' education, and their opponent says girls' education is un-Islamic, their argument becomes that Mohammed believed in education for girls. They would never say something like "Yeah Mohammed would do it differently but guess what I'm not Mohammed."
I don't know.. it's like people like you live in a fantasy world where the reality of the Muslim world escapes them. You really should read about it before making these silly arguments about finding a "bad" verse in the Bible and showing that Christianity and Islam are equal. Also, believing that most Muslims are secretly super liberal and really laid back about religion is just dumb.
Large chunks? I'm assuming you mean large in terms of population? Which large chunks are you talking about? Perhaps you should read about Islam in the world's biggest Muslim countries like Indonesia and Pakistan, and large Muslim minorities like India? Have you read about the growing Islamist power in the Middle East due to the Arab Spring?
Any decent human being would feel the same. The important thing is to minimize the loss of human life. Whether there's intentionality behind the deaths is irrelevant.
That's bold. And wrong. There are plenty of decent human beings, myself included, who care about the intentionality behind deaths. Is there a single country in the world that doesn't have separate laws for accidental death, negligence leading to death, self-defense leading to death, and intentional murder, to at least some degree?
The fact is you can't minimize loss to human life. We all die. It's just a matter of how and when. It would be interesting to see the results of a survey asking if you'd rather die at age 30 of some random natural cause or age 31 through a brutal ritualistic murder. A year of life in exchange for your manner of death. By your logic most people would choose age 31 with a brutal death. I don't think that's right, but who knows.
e.g. Afghanistan, we're there to get Bin Laden, but once we get there we stop looking for him and waste years spending money for nothing. Who does that benefit besides military contractors?
That's irrelevant, the problem stemmed from Afghanistan turning into a humanitarian mission. How can you hunt for bin Laden when you are so worried about building a stable government, securing cities, ending the drug trade, etc? That's the question to ask, not "who benefited monetarily."
e.g. Iraq. What reason is there to invent a non-existant link between Saddam Hussein and OBL, and hype up non-existent WMDs based on evidence that was known to be false?
Who knows, paranoia perhaps? I don't remember a serious invention of a link between Saddam and OBL. It was all about the nuclear weapons. And lest you forget, Saddam milked that to his advantage as much as possible. He decided now was the time to stick it to America and gamble on us being entrenched in Afghanistan. He was wrong.
Wait, your argument is that fighting against religious extremism is actually a form of religious extremism? That makes no sense. By your logic you can never have a non-religiously motivated conflict with religious people. That's the same crap religious zealots spout when they claim that every law that people try to apply to them is religious discrimination. They just can't fathom that there are *other reasons* that people don't like them or their behaviors.
Since 9/11 Americans, including conservatives, have learned a lot about politics in the Muslim world. If you ask the typical person who thought "liberating" Iraq was a great idea and that we'd be welcomed with roses and chocolates for toppling Saddam if they would still support it all, many of those people have changed their minds.
So bringing up the lack of support for the Arab Spring, which has seen a massive increase in power for Islamists, as an apparent contradiction among conservatives is not proving what you think it does. All it proves is conservatives are not idiots and are not bound to believe the same things in perpetuity no matter how the consequences pan out.
Let's say you're going to Walmart. If it's like the one near me, walking from a handicapped spot to the door means crossing the no parking area next to the handicapped spot, two wide lanes of traffic, a fire lane, then a very wide sidewalk. It's got to be at least 60 feet, maybe closer to 80. And then you have to walk around the football-field sized store, gather your goods, and then stand in line waiting for their notoriously slow cashiers.
So you're saying that's all no problem, but if the parking spot were 30-50 feet farther, you couldn't do it? How do you return your cart right now, I mean there's no cart return right next to the handicapped spots at any store I can remember. They're usually in the middle of the parking lot.
It's not that I'm not sympathetic, but I really just don't see the big deal if the parking spots weren't right up front. They could be bigger and wider and more out of the way, less likely to be right next to another car.. and probably less likely to be taken by cheaters since after all proximity is the only benefit to non-handicapped people.
Here's an insensitive question. Are you ashamed that you can walk but you want to use handicapped parking? I do things I'm ashamed of too so it's not a big deal, I'm just curious if you are totally shameless in wanting special spots right up front for your benefit because you think that's your right, or if you're ashamed but really think it's critical for your well being, or you don't really care but take advantage of it since it's available, or what?
Title 47 from what I can find is just part of the US Code. It has nothing to do with the ADA.
The ADA does have titles 1-4, and title 4 of the ADA deals with telecommunication relay services. But it only deals with the physical access to the network -- telecoms have to support certain equipment like tty/tdd phones. It does NOT say that, for example, the phone company has to enable TTY access to every phone in America. For instance, if you call a phone number with a TTY connected and start talking at it, nothing happens. The phone company IS NOT required to transcribe your call for the benefit of the deaf person. (Which is a remarkable similar to a website being required to provide closed captioning on videos. Weird.)
You're right though, there is a bunch of the ADA that applies to non-physical stuff, but those parts are dealing with behavior discrimination (not serving disabled people at restaurants for instance). I have to point out that technically I didn't (nor did the summary) say that the ADA didn't deal with things besides physical structures. The opposite of "physical structures" is "virtual structures", not "everything other than physical structures." It is true that the ADA does not address accessibility to virtual structures like websites, but now it's being applied to that.
I'm curious why you think this case is noteworthy and why the bit about physical structures was pointed out in the summary if you also think that this whole time it's been blatantly obvious that websites need to be accessible just like any other "public accomodation" according to the ADA. And I wonder if you think that every website owner is liable for bringing their website into compliance, just like building owners? "No more blog posts. You can't alter your website until you bring it up to code!"
"Hey this website's alt text on their images doesn't make sense, I'm suing!"
It's crazy to me. A building is expensive and requires an investment and takes up physical space in the midst of society. But anybody can start a website for free and possibly nobody will ever see it. How can the same rules for accessibility apply?
Not California's exactly list, but it applies to at least one state.
I was looking for statistics on how frequently each provision is used.
And I can see how a state like California might end up with 10% of drivers (not people in total) with placards. If they don't remove dead drivers from their database, and the article does mention people using dead relatives placards, that would be a problem.
I think that's a stretch. There's no reason to believe that they don't remove dead drivers.
I would imagine that a higher percentage of disabled people do not have drivers licenses than non-disabled people, so the 10% figure is really high.
There is no reason why they should have to be in a wheelchair just to make your reality feel better, either.
You gave an example of someone who could walk 30 feet from their car to the store, but 50 feet would do them in (not having the handicapped spaces at the very front). To me that rather illustrates that the person is cutting it too close and should be in a wheelchair, not relying on some law that says the spaces have to be in the very front. Imagine what would happen if they came out of the store and their car had been towed. They'd walk to their car, look around for a minute, then be unable to make it back to the store.
You do not get to decide whether a person should be walking or not. You do not have that right. The individuals have that right. By your quote, even though I don't need a wheelchair I should get one just so I can comfortably park in the middle of the lot . . . so what? So you can park closer? So there can be less laws?
So the vast majority of people can park closer. So there aren't always empty parking spots with big ugly yellow pylons, striped pavement, and warning signs right at the front window of every restaurant. Save your argument about how evil and heartless I am. I know I'm not evil or heartless. There's always a balance. It would still work for most handicapped people.
I can't believe you start calling me a shill, calling me heartless, saying I want the right of determining who can walk, etc just because I propose something that would make parking slightly more difficult for a tiny percentage of handicapped people (the ones who can walk 30 feet and up a ramp right now, but not 50 feet and up a ramp). I guess handicapped people are your "think of the children!!!@#" type of argument.
The devalued yuan is what has made china the second largest economy in the world and given them a growth rate of ~10% a year. Without that competitive edge why on earth would you employ a million illiterate workers 10 time zones away from where the production is consumed?
China's currency devaluation is important but I think you're underestimating the willpower of their workforce. If they allowed the currency to appreciate, China's workforce would most likely accept lower wages. The cost of China's productivity is lower than acquiring the same productivity elsewhere -- and they can do that in other ways than currency devaluation.
I'm sure you've seen stories of working conditions in China. I just don't think if the currency appreciated the workers would say "Oh, ok, well I'm done, I'm taking my appreciating savings and going on a world vacation!" They'd say "Oh crap, there are 24 people applying for my position, I better accept a lower wage."
Take the situation greece is in. Either you cut salaries across the country, which is what the germans have required and has been working out so well that their economy is contracting at a soul crushing pace,
There's two sides, the borrowers and the lenders. The borrowers have to sacrifice to live within their means, that's cutting salaries. But don't forget that lenders sacrificed as well, with private lenders taking I believe an immediate 70% cut.
That's a huge reduction in a short time span, which was necessary because Greece was about to miss bond payments which would send them into default.
or you increase inflation and decrease the relative debt. Greece of course, because it can't control its own inflation is effectively trapped on a gold standard, which the 'gold' or 'euro' controlled by the Eurozone.
If they had increased inflation to accomplish the same thing in the same time span, you'd be talking like 100% inflation, not 10%. The net effect to the workers would be the same, they would just feel better because they didn't take a pay cut in absolute numbers.
There are only two advantages of the inflation approach and they both rely on tricks. You trick your population into thinking their debts are "evaporating" and they aren't taking pay cuts, when really they are. The other trick is all the people who loaned you money in good faith weren't expecting a sudden change in inflation. But the second trick is less reliable than the first, because people who lend money are aware of the trick. It doesn't work time and time again. You say for instance that even with massive inflation, your mortgage payment wouldn't change so you'd be happy. Well guess what. When that inflation becomes common, your mortgage payment will not stay the same. (Maybe not you personally but the next person to buy a house with a mortgage. The generic "you".) You'll be forced into a variable rate loan which is pegged to inflation. Or you'll end up with a fixed but "safe" rate. When you try to sell your house, instead of the $X you put into it, you'll get $X/10 because nobody can afford your original price with the new interest rates.
There's no way around it. You can't create value or wealth for the entire society with a government order. For a country to grow in wealth they have to act like China, and the key is not devaluing currency, it's having a population that is willing to be ultra competitive at their own expense.
You might have a point when it comes to situations like Canada where natural resources are another large factor to the country's wealth though. Maybe wages could decrease to remain competitive if the oil wealth were distributed to the population to make up for the decreased wages.
I hate to sound naive, but I assume you read the summary. Let me quote it just in case: "Now, a judge has denied Netflix's attempt to have the suit thrown out, saying that the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination in any venue — not just physical structures."
The ADA used to regulate physical structures. Now it's being applied to websites (not just Netflix). That's more government control over the internet.
"The person pushing the wheelchair?" Where did you get the idea that all - or even most - people who qualify to use accessible parking are wheelchair bound and have able-bodied aides?
I tried to find statistics on how handicapped parking passes are distributed based on disability but couldn't find any information. I did find an article saying that whenever California does an "enforcement run" to find abuse of handicapped parking passes, about 1/3 of cars *with handicapped parking passes* are using them illegally -- seems to be mostly relatives borrowing the car. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/22/local/la-me-disabled-parking-20110522 From the same article, 10% of drivers in California have handicapped parking permits! That seems rather excessive, no? I imagine most of those people aren't in the categories you're talking about.
So maybe it's not most people (I don't know) but -
A) the comment I was responding to was about "grandma in her wheel chair"
B) it is a group that is traditionally thought of when talking about handicapped parking
C) it is a group that I have a little experience with since my grandmother uses a wheelchair
D) there's no reason why someone with severe heat sensitivity or inability to walk over a certain distance *couldn't* be in a wheelchair when going to a store with a gigantic parking lot (most places like restaurants, convenience stores, strip malls, gas stations etc don't have giant parking lots anyway.. is an extra 20 feet going to mean the difference between making it or not? if so then that person probably shouldn't be walking to begin with)
And of course there are the older folks who'll use their cane or walker to get from their car to the store and then hop in one of the scooters that some places offer for people who need them. Making them walk all the way across the lot on their own would sort of defeat the purpose of that, wouldn't it?
Sure, in huge parking lots like your local Super Walmart, don't put them in the very back. Problem solved? They still don't need to be front and center.
If the businesses you mentioned really have just put a sign over regular spaces with no extra room, then those business are not ADA compliant and could have problems if someone reports them.
Yeah, probably.. and how silly is it that someone could get in trouble over their parking lot layout? What a country we live in. So civilized it hurts.
Where did you get "corporate control of the internet" from my post?
But yeah, if by corporate control of the internet you mean corporations are allowed to have their own websites and pretty much do whatever they want with them, I support that. Free speech and all that.
Sure, the post office and roads are very clear examples of interstate activities. But even with interstate highways, which are obviously interstate, I always heard there was no national speed limit, that it's up to each state. The federal government gives states incentives to set certain limits, but they can't just pass a law and say all roads must be 65 mph or less in the whole country.
Also, I don't think the internet is as clear a derivative of the road network or post office as the marines and air force are to the army and navy. Would you be okay with requiring a license to get online, having no privacy (like laws against tinted windows), having yearly government inspections of your internet-enabled devices, etc? To me that would be an extremely unpleasant state.
Out of curiosity, what ADA requirements do UPS and the post office have in terms of delivering products? (Netflix is delivering movies that other people created, similar to UPS/post office.) Is UPS required to provide braille labels when shipping to blind people so they can understand what package they're receiving? Or even more analogous, is the post office required to transcribe non-accessible junk mail and bills into braille for the blind?
You have to draw the line somewhere. There has to be a reason the constitution said "commerce among the states" and not just "commerce." To me it's real clear that there is such thing as a local business that is not interstate. A non-chain locally-owned pet store. A non-chain locally-owned restaurant. Just because there's a way to connect them to people in another state, via the roads, the internet, the phones, remote personal shoppers, third party shipping companies, etc, doesn't mean they can be considered to have an interstate presence.
A clear example of interstate commerce is UPS. Their business is transporting stuff within and between states. Their own property, under their own control, with their own employees, moves from one state to another.
As for the free services and interpreters, this is a strawman par excellence and not worth replying to.
You missed the point of my strawman. The fact that you noticed it was a strawman should clue you in that the original comparison by the judge is also flawed. Nobody said you should be able to strictly limit the definition of your target audience when it comes to essential services like court access. Comparing a movie theater to a court house in terms of accessibility is ridiculous.
First, deaf and hard of hearing moviegoers pay for their tickets like everyone else.
That's irrelevant. The most they should expect is that after paying, when they find out there are no subtitles, they should get their money back.
Second, supporting closed captioning in a movie theater is a ONE TIME cost of $2500 for the equipment.
Great, so that's not a huge deal for an established theater and they. Are we talking about the principle, or whether it can work in practice? Obviously it works in practice, because it IS the law and theaters DO have that equipment. How about the principle of it though?
If it's so cheap, what I think would be a better outcome than forcing every theater to do it is instead to have one theater in the community do it and all the deaf people can go there. They can have more showings with the subtitles on, the crowd would be better, and the theater could provide additional services to make it more convenient for deaf people. What's wrong with that? Why force everybody to do it so you end up with a watered down experience?
Wow, is your summary accurate? Actual federal judges compared an essential service like court access to a movie theater?
I mean, I'm going to give the judges the benefit of the doubt and say they aren't utterly stupid, they just wanted to blatantly expand the power and intrusiveness of the government through the ADA and don't give a shit how their pretenses sound.
Someone should start a lawsuit in the 9th circuit that says movie theaters are required to provide free service to those who can't afford them, and interpreters to those who can't understand the spoken languages of the movie, since that's what courts do and, really, courts and movie theaters are pretty much the same thing.
A group of activists pick a target that most people think doesn't matter (it's Netflix, not the IRS.. you don't go to jail for not complying with a Netflix video), and they make an example of that target in the courts. The activists get all sanctimonious and talk about how it's a victory for everybody or a victory for fairness or some crap.
The hatred of the ADA comes down to its application to nonessential services and its reliance on activists who use the courts to get their way.
Not only that, the principles behind ADA are capricious. Do deaf people "need" Netflix? Do they "need" Netflix more than someone who is too poor to pay for Netflix? No, the "need" is the same, so therefore if society has a moral obligation to provide access to Netflix to deaf people, it must have an equal moral obligation to provide Netflix to poor people. So in trying to help prevent discrimination against one group, it itself is discriminating against many other groups. It's a cognitive dissonance that many find unpleasant.
Reactions to the ADA are similar to reactions against affirmative action programs and stories about gender-related angst (not enough women in IT, etc). And for good reason -- they are conceptually very similar.
So your definition of interstate commerce includes anything that happens on the internet, because the internet is interstate? That's kind of a stretch. The business still operates in one spot, just because the consumer is coming in from somewhere else doesn't make it interstate. Wasn't the interstate commerce clause initially applied to stuff like railroads and trucking and toll roads between states, where there is an actual physical presence (at least temporarily) of the business in multiple states? So UPS is engaged in interstate commerce, but a locally owned pet store in Los Angeles who uses UPS to send something to Vermont is NOT interstate commerce.
Unfortunately the Supreme Court tends to agree more with you. That's not for the good of society but rather an expansion of government power for its own means.
The 14th amendment makes sense for applying the ADA to government services. Imagine a deaf person who was put on trial and the state didn't provide a means for them to understand what was being said!
The commerce clause is supposed to apply to interstate commerce. The government pushes that as far as it can in whatever way it can get away with, but they've gone too far too many times. Applying the ADA to a locally owned pet store for instance.. how is that interstate commerce?
Are corporations required to receive a federal charter? I don't think so, I think it's just from the state in which they're incorporated.