Indeed. You don't see the same people suggesting that Martin was legally obligated to run away instead of confronting Zimmerman, therefore it's all Martin's fault. The logic is the same but we all know logic is a small part of this issue.
That's my biggest issue here. We stand no chance of knowing what actually happened here until due process is carried out, and right now, it looks like that's not going to happen.
THAT's your biggest issue?
It's pretty standard that DAs decide whether to proceed with a case on their own. You know that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing? That's part of it. If the DA doesn't think the case is worth pursuing, then why would you want to put someone through the severe trauma of a criminal trial just to satisfy the mobs calling for blood?
There's absolutely no evidence that the DA regularly refuses to prosecute crimes against blacks committed by Hispanics, so I don't see what the issue is.
If you start a fight with someone that doesn't mean you intended for it to escalate to someone dying. If X starts a fight with Y, then Y pulls out a gun, then X pulls out his gun and shoots Y, well, I blame Y for escalating.
Why pay all the premiums when you can just sign up when you're diagnosed and get everything paid for.
That's no different than the current situation when people wait until they need emergency treatment, then don't pay for it. SOMEONE still pays for it.
Of course, the premiums would have to rise to the point that it doesn't make sense to bother buying insurance even then. Then, NO ONE will have insurance, so we'll have to do something, and single payer is something, so we'll have to do that.
Single payer isn't the only way to address the cost of health care, and it has a lot of problems too. A lot of people just don't want the government to have that kind of power. Imagine if instead of giving everybody Social Security checks, the government never sent you money but let you select products and services from a catalog that they controlled. That would be insane, and that's what single payer health care does -- even less because you'll have to demonstrate need for the product or service.
Why is single payer better than, say, a voucher? That would make it exactly like SS.
Then the next step is controlling the cost of health care. Guess what, spreading around the burden with this individual mandate, or by having single payer with universal coverage, does not automatically lower costs. In fact either approach would probably cause health care costs to skyrocket since there's more money in the system, and absolutely nothing being done to control costs. (Or do you really think the Democrats will start rationing health care for women, minorities, the poor, the elderly, children, etc in order to save money? Hah!)
But the thing is, everything that will realistically control costs (not rationing since that will not happen) can be done *without* universal coverage. Number one thing: increase the supply of doctors. Does that need universal coverage? No. Allow imports of drugs. Does that require universal coverage? No. Tort reform (though I don't support that): No universal coverage needed.
Name one thing that requires universal coverage to noticeably lower total cost of health care. And don't bother naming universal preventive care before citing conclusive evidence that it does in fact noticeably lower cost, because the New England Journal of Medicine says "Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."
By not making the individual mandate severable, they seem to have unnecessarily risked the possibility that the entire law will be stricken, resulting in an opportunity for sanity to prevail.
That doesn't make sense. The people who failed to make it severable are the same people who want single-payer care, so if that's really the grand plan why are you calling it an unnecessary risk?
There are no business reasons that can justify the markup Best Buy applies to small ticket items like cables -- 1000% - 10000%. It's not just markup, it's insulting markup. That level of markup creates resentment because it's not understandable or reasonable. Once the customer resents you, they avoid you whenever possible.
Best Buy, and other electronics retailers, seem to have taken a gamble that being competitive on high end items is more important than low end items. They often have the same price as amazon.com for things like TVs. But on the lower end, their xbox games will sit at $59.99 long after Amazon marked them down to $39.99 (I just checked both websites for current prices for Modern Warfare 3). That's just stupid. It's like they don't understand the advantages they have over online retailers. If I'm buying a cable, I don't *care* about the cable. I'm not at all worried that my hdmi cable won't work and I'll have to go through an expensive return process, or that the amazon.com version of Modern Warfare 3 is going to look weird when I play it.
When I make a purchase that I care about, or more importantly that I'm worried about, then I like the comfort of dealing with a local retailer. If Best Buy's prices were within say 10% of Newegg's, I would never order another computer part online again, because I just hate the RMA process, and computer parts like memory and motherboards seem to have high defect rates. But it's not 10%, they rip you off like crazy. I just looked up a video card on Newegg and Best Buy... $69.99 on Newegg, $89.99 on Best Buy, and the Newegg site mentions a rebate that brings it down to $49.99.. no mention of the rebate on Best Buy. So Best Buy is 30% - 80% above Newegg on that one. Same range as the xbox games. Crazy.
I agree that it's absolutely crazy, but the reason they do it is that Egypt has a huge military funded by the US. They would pretty much wipe out Ethiopia. It's not fair, and of course Ethiopia argues that it's not fair, and there is a process to change the water sharing status quo. Of course, imported water is crucial for Egypt since they are much more arid than Ethiopia.. on the other hand, it's just not fair. It doesn't help that Egypt is Muslim and Ethiopia is Christian.
Hate to Godwin this, but do you also think it's ok for the grandchildren of a Nazi to keep the gold their grandfather stole from Jews in WWII?
When you start doing that you open a can of worms. Here's a counter-Godwin: wasn't one of Hitler's premises that the Jews had effectively stolen their wealth from the hard-working Germans through high interest rates, economic conspiracy, etc? That idea is just as "right" as yours.
We can't punish people for distasteful things their ancestors did, and whatever you may think taking someone's gold away from them is a punishment that dramatically affects their wealth and well-being (material and emotional).
the nation sits high above much of the rest of Africa making it the source for a dozen or so major rivers. However the nation is a poorly organized communist society - so very little of its fertile land is irrigated by its vast water reserves and it is usually one drought away from disaster.
Nine nations lay claim to the water, but two existing agreements had given the lion’s share to arid Egypt and Sudan.
Under the current agreement, brokered by the British in 1929, Egypt gets 87% of the river’s water and veto power over upstream water projects. A 1959 agreement gave Sudan secondary rights to the water.
Ethiopia hasn't been *allowed* to develop its water sources for economic gain. Egypt has in the past threatened to go to war with Ethiopia if it interferes with the Nile.
Ravi was caught and prosecute because Clementi killed himself, yes. But that doesn't make him a scapegoat.
Heh, you don't know what scapegoat means. Nobody could be prosecuted for Clementi's death, but "justice" was required by the typical squeaky wheels, so they threw the book at Ravi and got some things to stick.
Maybe you should look up scapegoat in the dictionary and educate yourself a bit.
you are just one puny, insignificant, hypocritical bigot who isn't going to change the outcome of this trial
lol what? That came out of nowhere. Oh well you're an idiot who doesn't even know what a scapegoat is. Your insults don't carry much weight.
Home Depot isn't going to let you just leave the lumber there indefinitely.
I said that. ("They'd give you a time limit").
Speculation isn't indefinite either. Nobody would take that deal. There's something called the "time value of money" and an indefinite contract would have indefinite time value.
When you buy oil futures, it doesn't say "at some point, when you feel like it, you get X barrels." It says "On June 3rd, 2012 you get X barrels."
It's HUGE. You are still responsible for that oil, and you still have to make arrangements to store it.
No it's the same, because as soon as you write another contract with the person storing the oil, THEY are responsible for it. Imagine a trial about it.
Judge: Who is responsible for this oil? Oil producer: Stdarg is, see, I have a contract right here that says he is Judge: Okay, yeah, that contract is legitimate Stdarg: S73v3r is, see, I have a contract right here that says he is Judge: Okay, yeah, that contract is legitimate
I'm the middle man. It makes absolutely no difference in the end whether we delegate responsibility by contracting to the next person in the chain, or if we just outright sell the original contract to the next person in the chain. If I can't find a seller, well, then what? Most likely the producer will be able and willing to store it themselves or just cut production to offset it.. for a large price.
If you don't like the fact that people can dodge responsibility if things go wrong, then you must also not like the fact that homeowners can abandon their mortgages, credit card holders can declare bankruptcy and not repay their debts, etc. It's the same thing. We got rid of debtor's prison a long time ago. Now we depend on social trust -- the fact that MOST people will honor their obligations, and MOST people dodging responsibility have legitimate problems that mean you would never have gotten your money anyway.
If I go down to Home Depot and buy all of the lumber they have in stock, Home Depot isn't going to let me leave it on their shelves while I find other people to sell it to at a profit.
You'd be surprised (apparently) at the special deals that get worked out for large transactions. They'd give you a time limit, but they definitely would not require that you get it all out of the store in the same time frame as someone who came in and bought a pack of gum.
The only difference between that and stock market speculation is that it's so common that the speculation process has been formalized and there's a market where the deals happen with many buyers and sellers all at once.
Why can't they hire someone else to take possession on their behalf? I don't much care what Joe Wall Street does with his oil as long as it is environmentally responsible.
If you get someone else to take possession, what's the difference between that and selling them your contract to begin with?
There are just a couple problems with your argument:
1. Affirmative action is nothing like slavery
The analogy was about using ends to justify the means of an unequal and openly racist, discriminatory system. I'm not saying affirmative action is as bad as slavery, and that doesn't matter -- lots of things aren't as bad as slavery, but they're still bad.
2. It ignores the historical reality of slavery, and it's effect on the black population.
No it doesn't, that's part of it, just like the present day reality of affirmative action and its effect on non-black populations.
3. A racist policy is one that seeks to keep a people in subservience, such as apartheid, or for that matter slavery. Affirmative action seeks to raise people up who have been marginalized by society.
By that definition a government scholarship available only to white people is not racist, as long as they're marginalized in some way (say, from rural areas). So if they said "WHITES ONLY: If you grew up on a farm, you get this scholarship" then that's fine with you?
Most people understand that uplifting one group at the expense of another is still not fair and it's racism if it's based on race.
1. This wouldn't have gone to trial if Clementi hadn't killed himself. If you think otherwise you're only fooling yourself. 2. From an NY Times article:
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
That's a second way in which it was Clementi, not Ravi, who defined the "crime".
Did Ravi "tamper" with evidence and witnesses? Yeah, according to the book. Just like Al Capone was guilty of tax evasion. Does that mean we nailed Al Capone for tax evasion? No, some huge percent of the population engages in tax evasion every year. It was because of Al Capone's other activities. In Ravi's case, it was because of Clementi's death, which they couldn't prosecute, so instead they threw the book at Ravi for every little thing they could find, regardless of the real importance of it. No mistake about it, this case was about "justice" for Clementi's death. It's nothing more than a witch hunt, and Ravi was the closest witch on hand who had made a few prosecutable mistakes.
I think there's a good argument for taxing the sale of new shares as capital gains. The company created the new shares at a cost of $0, and sold them for profit. It's no different than if an employee of the company created something for $0 (out of the goodness of their heart) and the company sold it for a profit.
Imagine applying the same thing to something like a painting. You buy a painting and it doubles in value. Instead of selling the painting, you sell a 100% share in the painting, and then claim that money is not income since you created a substantial future obligation on the future income of the painting (if it's really truly "sold" in the future you get nothing).
Of course, what normally happens is the money from the sale goes immediately into buying things to improve the business, thus the income and the expenses cancel out and there's no net profit to tax. At that's what I assumed up until now.. maybe there is some special rule about stock sales?
Yes, that's what we disagree on. Since a webcam is legitimate personal property to have in the dorm room I think it's not any different from the person being there. Maybe it would be different if Clementi didn't know about webcams or if Ravi hid his webcam.. maybe they went over more detail about that in the trial, who knows, but I haven't heard anything that suggested it was hidden.
Note to all college students in shared rooms: Cover the webcam prior to doing anything:)
That's why I think Ravi had no intent of doing anything wrong. To many people who have webcams, which is most people with laptops these days, it's rather obvious that you wouldn't do something private (especially sexual in nature) in front of a webcam connected to a running computer with an internet connection. To such people the idea that Clementi was "spied on" is a ridiculous and overblown claim, just like how people these days get charged with using a "weapon of mass destruction" if they had a handgun. Or another example that I definitely remember, the Jena 6 case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Six#Mychal_Bell_proceedings):
Because aggravated battery requires the use of a "dangerous weapon",[29] Walters argued that the tennis shoes that Bell had worn while allegedly kicking Barker were dangerous weapons.
So.. legitimate placement of a functioning webcam in your own dorm room = spying really only makes sense in the same world that tennis shoes = dangerous weapons. I don't support either one, they're just dirty tricks and abuses of language by DAs to get convictions.
Nobody said motivation is irrelevant to criminal cases, just that the motive isn't what distinguishes between premeditated murder, regular old murder, manslaughter, etc.
One problem I have with hate crime law is that motive can be really hard to determine so we rely on certain shortcuts that I feel are often misleading. For instance if a black guy is killed by a gang of Latinos, and they are calling him a nigger while killing him, is that suddenly a hate crime? What if the actual motive has nothing to do with the fact that he's black? We don't know, but we let the language they use be a shortcut to determining motive. To me, such superficial things are most likely wrong. In general when you're fighting with someone you tend to say things to hurt them, it doesn't mean you believe them or apply them to the rest of your life.
Back when hate crime was established, it made sense. People would say things like "we need to kill all the blacks, let's go get one." That's spelling out motive. Easy. But today it's become a perversion of justice where we hunt for something to justify a "hate crime" charge. It should only be used when it's really obvious.
If you look at this particular case, Ravi was convicted of this "bias intimidation" even though the jury SAID he probably didn't intend it. Does that make sense to you? From NY Times:
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
So.. he didn't know he was being intimidating, or he wasn't doing it on purpose.. but he's guilty anyway. Do you see how far we've come from the original intent of hate crime law?
Hopefully this will be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court and dismissed, and the law overturned. Not only is it vague, it seems.. very wrong. Look at this NY Times article:
Reflecting the difficulty of defining hate crimes, it had taken the judge more than an hour simply to instruct the jury on the questions they had to answer to reach a verdict.
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
So.. his *speech* was unintentionally intimidating, and that makes him guilty. He wasn't calling for violence or harassing the "victim".. but the victim felt targeted even though he wasn't being targeted by the admission of the jury.. that's absolutely RIDICULOUS.
Tyler Clementi chose to kill himself. Nobody made him do it. Nobody made him have gay sex in a dorm room he shared with a straight man. Nobody made him value Ravi's opinion so much that he was "intimidated" that Ravi was joking about him with his friends.
Tyler Clementi is the only person to blame for the unhappiness of Tyler Clementi and his subsequent death.
This is like America's version of the blasphemy laws so popular in Muslim countries. Oh you laughed at a gay man and made him feel bad?? Go to jail!
Mr. Ravi had rejected plea deals, because prosecutors would have required him to admit to bias intimidation. His lawyers said he simply did not believe he had committed a hate crime. They argued that he was “a kid” with little experience of homosexuality who had stumbled into a situation that scared him.
So it's not that he refused to accept a slap on the wrist, it's that he refused to have a hate crime on his permanent criminal record. Even if there was no prison sentence, that's a pretty serious thing to have to talk about on your future job interviews, if you really believe you didn't commit a hate crime.
I think what Ravi did was completely okay. He set up a camera in his own dorm room, big deal. There's no expectation for sexual privacy in a dorm, I know, I've lived in one. Your dorm mate has just as much right to be there as you, and has the right to have personal property like a PC and webcam as well. It's a dorm room, not a private bedroom!
It's like setting up a webcam pointing to your own front lawn, and then some people have sex on your front lawn and sue you for filming it. In a place where there's no expectation of privacy for sex, you cannot get in trouble for violating that privacy.
A motive, in law, especially criminal law, is the cause that moves people to induce a certain action.[1] Motive, in itself, is not an element of any given crime; however, the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused's reasons for committing a crime, at least when those motives may be obscure or hard to identify with.
Based on that, which I agree with, how are you differentiating murder and manslaughter based on "circumstance and motivation?" Motive has nothing to do with it.
Maybe I misunderstood your rationale for bringing in different degrees of murder. To me, it indicates that you think motive is the difference between manslaughter and murder, as in, "If John killed Susan because he thinks she's a slut, that's murder, but if John killed Susan because he didn't like her makeup, that's just manslaughter."
If I'm right, can you explain more of what you think rather than posting links? If I'm wrong, I apologize for leaping to conclusions, but surely you would admit your statement about murder vs manslaughter being based on motive was incorrect.
Nope, they exaggerate the punishment to satisfy the racist urges that many people have. Some people get so much more angry when someone of their own race is attacked that they have to have more justice than other people.
If someone kills somebody else for wearing the color red (or whatever gang colors are relevant locally), that is just as hateful as killing someone because their skin is dark.
Killing somebody because they are black is not worse than killing someone because they annoy you.
Those are typically crimes targeting individuals. Multiple individuals, one at a time, but individuals nonetheless.
From what I know from my extensive background of movie and tv watching, serial killers often target groups, not individuals.
For instance, Jack the Ripper targeted prostitutes. The "Son of Sam" killer claimed his neighbor's dog demanded the blood of young, pretty girls. The DC sniper targeted Americans. I don't remember their names but I know there are serial killers who have targeted the homeless.
In fact it's pretty rare for a serial killer to just pick people at random. They usually have a group they are after.
On another note, it's sad to me that on TV whenever there's a serial killer some "expert" will say "Ok we're probably looking for a white male, age 30, who doesn't have many friends" or something like that. It's sad because you never, ever hear those kinds of stereotypes for other criminals. There's never a robbery and then someone says "Ok we're probably looking for a black male" for instance.
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Indeed. You don't see the same people suggesting that Martin was legally obligated to run away instead of confronting Zimmerman, therefore it's all Martin's fault. The logic is the same but we all know logic is a small part of this issue.
That's my biggest issue here. We stand no chance of knowing what actually happened here until due process is carried out, and right now, it looks like that's not going to happen.
THAT's your biggest issue?
It's pretty standard that DAs decide whether to proceed with a case on their own. You know that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing? That's part of it. If the DA doesn't think the case is worth pursuing, then why would you want to put someone through the severe trauma of a criminal trial just to satisfy the mobs calling for blood?
There's absolutely no evidence that the DA regularly refuses to prosecute crimes against blacks committed by Hispanics, so I don't see what the issue is.
If you start a fight with someone that doesn't mean you intended for it to escalate to someone dying. If X starts a fight with Y, then Y pulls out a gun, then X pulls out his gun and shoots Y, well, I blame Y for escalating.
Why pay all the premiums when you can just sign up when you're diagnosed and get everything paid for.
That's no different than the current situation when people wait until they need emergency treatment, then don't pay for it. SOMEONE still pays for it.
Of course, the premiums would have to rise to the point that it doesn't make sense to bother buying insurance even then. Then, NO ONE will have insurance, so we'll have to do something, and single payer is something, so we'll have to do that.
Single payer isn't the only way to address the cost of health care, and it has a lot of problems too. A lot of people just don't want the government to have that kind of power. Imagine if instead of giving everybody Social Security checks, the government never sent you money but let you select products and services from a catalog that they controlled. That would be insane, and that's what single payer health care does -- even less because you'll have to demonstrate need for the product or service.
Why is single payer better than, say, a voucher? That would make it exactly like SS.
Then the next step is controlling the cost of health care. Guess what, spreading around the burden with this individual mandate, or by having single payer with universal coverage, does not automatically lower costs. In fact either approach would probably cause health care costs to skyrocket since there's more money in the system, and absolutely nothing being done to control costs. (Or do you really think the Democrats will start rationing health care for women, minorities, the poor, the elderly, children, etc in order to save money? Hah!)
But the thing is, everything that will realistically control costs (not rationing since that will not happen) can be done *without* universal coverage. Number one thing: increase the supply of doctors. Does that need universal coverage? No. Allow imports of drugs. Does that require universal coverage? No. Tort reform (though I don't support that): No universal coverage needed.
Name one thing that requires universal coverage to noticeably lower total cost of health care. And don't bother naming universal preventive care before citing conclusive evidence that it does in fact noticeably lower cost, because the New England Journal of Medicine says "Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."
By not making the individual mandate severable, they seem to have unnecessarily risked the possibility that the entire law will be stricken, resulting in an opportunity for sanity to prevail.
That doesn't make sense. The people who failed to make it severable are the same people who want single-payer care, so if that's really the grand plan why are you calling it an unnecessary risk?
There are no business reasons that can justify the markup Best Buy applies to small ticket items like cables -- 1000% - 10000%. It's not just markup, it's insulting markup. That level of markup creates resentment because it's not understandable or reasonable. Once the customer resents you, they avoid you whenever possible.
Best Buy, and other electronics retailers, seem to have taken a gamble that being competitive on high end items is more important than low end items. They often have the same price as amazon.com for things like TVs. But on the lower end, their xbox games will sit at $59.99 long after Amazon marked them down to $39.99 (I just checked both websites for current prices for Modern Warfare 3). That's just stupid. It's like they don't understand the advantages they have over online retailers. If I'm buying a cable, I don't *care* about the cable. I'm not at all worried that my hdmi cable won't work and I'll have to go through an expensive return process, or that the amazon.com version of Modern Warfare 3 is going to look weird when I play it.
When I make a purchase that I care about, or more importantly that I'm worried about, then I like the comfort of dealing with a local retailer. If Best Buy's prices were within say 10% of Newegg's, I would never order another computer part online again, because I just hate the RMA process, and computer parts like memory and motherboards seem to have high defect rates. But it's not 10%, they rip you off like crazy. I just looked up a video card on Newegg and Best Buy... $69.99 on Newegg, $89.99 on Best Buy, and the Newegg site mentions a rebate that brings it down to $49.99.. no mention of the rebate on Best Buy. So Best Buy is 30% - 80% above Newegg on that one. Same range as the xbox games. Crazy.
Yeah it's a single river, but it's the biggest river and has a tremendous drainage basin. All of the water in the drainage basin is subject to the water sharing rights. Same thing happens in the US: http://www.rainwatercollecting.com/blog/2009/01/is-rainwater-collecting-really-illegal-in-some-states/
I agree that it's absolutely crazy, but the reason they do it is that Egypt has a huge military funded by the US. They would pretty much wipe out Ethiopia. It's not fair, and of course Ethiopia argues that it's not fair, and there is a process to change the water sharing status quo. Of course, imported water is crucial for Egypt since they are much more arid than Ethiopia.. on the other hand, it's just not fair. It doesn't help that Egypt is Muslim and Ethiopia is Christian.
Hate to Godwin this, but do you also think it's ok for the grandchildren of a Nazi to keep the gold their grandfather stole from Jews in WWII?
When you start doing that you open a can of worms. Here's a counter-Godwin: wasn't one of Hitler's premises that the Jews had effectively stolen their wealth from the hard-working Germans through high interest rates, economic conspiracy, etc? That idea is just as "right" as yours.
We can't punish people for distasteful things their ancestors did, and whatever you may think taking someone's gold away from them is a punishment that dramatically affects their wealth and well-being (material and emotional).
the nation sits high above much of the rest of Africa making it the source for a dozen or so major rivers. However the nation is a poorly organized communist society - so very little of its fertile land is irrigated by its vast water reserves and it is usually one drought away from disaster.
It's not that simple. For instance:
Nine nations lay claim to the water, but two existing agreements had given the lion’s share to arid Egypt and Sudan.
Under the current agreement, brokered by the British in 1929, Egypt gets 87% of the river’s water and veto power over upstream water projects. A 1959 agreement gave Sudan secondary rights to the water.
Ethiopia hasn't been *allowed* to develop its water sources for economic gain. Egypt has in the past threatened to go to war with Ethiopia if it interferes with the Nile.
Ravi was caught and prosecute because Clementi killed himself, yes. But that doesn't make him a scapegoat.
Heh, you don't know what scapegoat means. Nobody could be prosecuted for Clementi's death, but "justice" was required by the typical squeaky wheels, so they threw the book at Ravi and got some things to stick.
Maybe you should look up scapegoat in the dictionary and educate yourself a bit.
you are just one puny, insignificant, hypocritical bigot who isn't going to change the outcome of this trial
lol what? That came out of nowhere. Oh well you're an idiot who doesn't even know what a scapegoat is. Your insults don't carry much weight.
Here's to Ravi being freed on appeal! Cheers.
Home Depot isn't going to let you just leave the lumber there indefinitely.
I said that. ("They'd give you a time limit").
Speculation isn't indefinite either. Nobody would take that deal. There's something called the "time value of money" and an indefinite contract would have indefinite time value.
When you buy oil futures, it doesn't say "at some point, when you feel like it, you get X barrels." It says "On June 3rd, 2012 you get X barrels."
It's HUGE. You are still responsible for that oil, and you still have to make arrangements to store it.
No it's the same, because as soon as you write another contract with the person storing the oil, THEY are responsible for it. Imagine a trial about it.
Judge: Who is responsible for this oil?
Oil producer: Stdarg is, see, I have a contract right here that says he is
Judge: Okay, yeah, that contract is legitimate
Stdarg: S73v3r is, see, I have a contract right here that says he is
Judge: Okay, yeah, that contract is legitimate
I'm the middle man. It makes absolutely no difference in the end whether we delegate responsibility by contracting to the next person in the chain, or if we just outright sell the original contract to the next person in the chain. If I can't find a seller, well, then what? Most likely the producer will be able and willing to store it themselves or just cut production to offset it.. for a large price.
If you don't like the fact that people can dodge responsibility if things go wrong, then you must also not like the fact that homeowners can abandon their mortgages, credit card holders can declare bankruptcy and not repay their debts, etc. It's the same thing. We got rid of debtor's prison a long time ago. Now we depend on social trust -- the fact that MOST people will honor their obligations, and MOST people dodging responsibility have legitimate problems that mean you would never have gotten your money anyway.
I really wanted to use my xbox for movie watching but it was too loud. How is the ps3 in terms of noise?
If I go down to Home Depot and buy all of the lumber they have in stock, Home Depot isn't going to let me leave it on their shelves while I find other people to sell it to at a profit.
You'd be surprised (apparently) at the special deals that get worked out for large transactions. They'd give you a time limit, but they definitely would not require that you get it all out of the store in the same time frame as someone who came in and bought a pack of gum.
The only difference between that and stock market speculation is that it's so common that the speculation process has been formalized and there's a market where the deals happen with many buyers and sellers all at once.
Why can't they hire someone else to take possession on their behalf? I don't much care what Joe Wall Street does with his oil as long as it is environmentally responsible.
If you get someone else to take possession, what's the difference between that and selling them your contract to begin with?
There are just a couple problems with your argument:
1. Affirmative action is nothing like slavery
The analogy was about using ends to justify the means of an unequal and openly racist, discriminatory system. I'm not saying affirmative action is as bad as slavery, and that doesn't matter -- lots of things aren't as bad as slavery, but they're still bad.
2. It ignores the historical reality of slavery, and it's effect on the black population.
No it doesn't, that's part of it, just like the present day reality of affirmative action and its effect on non-black populations.
3. A racist policy is one that seeks to keep a people in subservience, such as apartheid, or for that matter slavery. Affirmative action seeks to raise people up who have been marginalized by society.
By that definition a government scholarship available only to white people is not racist, as long as they're marginalized in some way (say, from rural areas). So if they said "WHITES ONLY: If you grew up on a farm, you get this scholarship" then that's fine with you?
Most people understand that uplifting one group at the expense of another is still not fair and it's racism if it's based on race.
You're right, except for a few points.
1. This wouldn't have gone to trial if Clementi hadn't killed himself. If you think otherwise you're only fooling yourself.
2. From an NY Times article:
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
That's a second way in which it was Clementi, not Ravi, who defined the "crime".
Did Ravi "tamper" with evidence and witnesses? Yeah, according to the book. Just like Al Capone was guilty of tax evasion. Does that mean we nailed Al Capone for tax evasion? No, some huge percent of the population engages in tax evasion every year. It was because of Al Capone's other activities. In Ravi's case, it was because of Clementi's death, which they couldn't prosecute, so instead they threw the book at Ravi for every little thing they could find, regardless of the real importance of it. No mistake about it, this case was about "justice" for Clementi's death. It's nothing more than a witch hunt, and Ravi was the closest witch on hand who had made a few prosecutable mistakes.
I think there's a good argument for taxing the sale of new shares as capital gains. The company created the new shares at a cost of $0, and sold them for profit. It's no different than if an employee of the company created something for $0 (out of the goodness of their heart) and the company sold it for a profit.
Imagine applying the same thing to something like a painting. You buy a painting and it doubles in value. Instead of selling the painting, you sell a 100% share in the painting, and then claim that money is not income since you created a substantial future obligation on the future income of the painting (if it's really truly "sold" in the future you get nothing).
Of course, what normally happens is the money from the sale goes immediately into buying things to improve the business, thus the income and the expenses cancel out and there's no net profit to tax. At that's what I assumed up until now.. maybe there is some special rule about stock sales?
Yes, that's what we disagree on. Since a webcam is legitimate personal property to have in the dorm room I think it's not any different from the person being there. Maybe it would be different if Clementi didn't know about webcams or if Ravi hid his webcam.. maybe they went over more detail about that in the trial, who knows, but I haven't heard anything that suggested it was hidden.
Note to all college students in shared rooms: Cover the webcam prior to doing anything :)
That's why I think Ravi had no intent of doing anything wrong. To many people who have webcams, which is most people with laptops these days, it's rather obvious that you wouldn't do something private (especially sexual in nature) in front of a webcam connected to a running computer with an internet connection. To such people the idea that Clementi was "spied on" is a ridiculous and overblown claim, just like how people these days get charged with using a "weapon of mass destruction" if they had a handgun. Or another example that I definitely remember, the Jena 6 case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Six#Mychal_Bell_proceedings):
Because aggravated battery requires the use of a "dangerous weapon",[29] Walters argued that the tennis shoes that Bell had worn while allegedly kicking Barker were dangerous weapons.
So.. legitimate placement of a functioning webcam in your own dorm room = spying really only makes sense in the same world that tennis shoes = dangerous weapons. I don't support either one, they're just dirty tricks and abuses of language by DAs to get convictions.
Nobody said motivation is irrelevant to criminal cases, just that the motive isn't what distinguishes between premeditated murder, regular old murder, manslaughter, etc.
One problem I have with hate crime law is that motive can be really hard to determine so we rely on certain shortcuts that I feel are often misleading. For instance if a black guy is killed by a gang of Latinos, and they are calling him a nigger while killing him, is that suddenly a hate crime? What if the actual motive has nothing to do with the fact that he's black? We don't know, but we let the language they use be a shortcut to determining motive. To me, such superficial things are most likely wrong. In general when you're fighting with someone you tend to say things to hurt them, it doesn't mean you believe them or apply them to the rest of your life.
Back when hate crime was established, it made sense. People would say things like "we need to kill all the blacks, let's go get one." That's spelling out motive. Easy. But today it's become a perversion of justice where we hunt for something to justify a "hate crime" charge. It should only be used when it's really obvious.
If you look at this particular case, Ravi was convicted of this "bias intimidation" even though the jury SAID he probably didn't intend it. Does that make sense to you? From NY Times:
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
So.. he didn't know he was being intimidating, or he wasn't doing it on purpose.. but he's guilty anyway. Do you see how far we've come from the original intent of hate crime law?
Forgot the article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/nyregion/defendant-guilty-in-rutgers-case.html
Hopefully this will be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court and dismissed, and the law overturned. Not only is it vague, it seems.. very wrong. Look at this NY Times article:
Reflecting the difficulty of defining hate crimes, it had taken the judge more than an hour simply to instruct the jury on the questions they had to answer to reach a verdict.
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
So.. his *speech* was unintentionally intimidating, and that makes him guilty. He wasn't calling for violence or harassing the "victim".. but the victim felt targeted even though he wasn't being targeted by the admission of the jury.. that's absolutely RIDICULOUS.
Tyler Clementi chose to kill himself. Nobody made him do it. Nobody made him have gay sex in a dorm room he shared with a straight man. Nobody made him value Ravi's opinion so much that he was "intimidated" that Ravi was joking about him with his friends.
Tyler Clementi is the only person to blame for the unhappiness of Tyler Clementi and his subsequent death.
This is like America's version of the blasphemy laws so popular in Muslim countries. Oh you laughed at a gay man and made him feel bad?? Go to jail!
Just wanted to add, I read this in a New York Times article:
Mr. Ravi had rejected plea deals, because prosecutors would have required him to admit to bias intimidation. His lawyers said he simply did not believe he had committed a hate crime. They argued that he was “a kid” with little experience of homosexuality who had stumbled into a situation that scared him.
So it's not that he refused to accept a slap on the wrist, it's that he refused to have a hate crime on his permanent criminal record. Even if there was no prison sentence, that's a pretty serious thing to have to talk about on your future job interviews, if you really believe you didn't commit a hate crime.
I think what Ravi did was completely okay. He set up a camera in his own dorm room, big deal. There's no expectation for sexual privacy in a dorm, I know, I've lived in one. Your dorm mate has just as much right to be there as you, and has the right to have personal property like a PC and webcam as well. It's a dorm room, not a private bedroom!
It's like setting up a webcam pointing to your own front lawn, and then some people have sex on your front lawn and sue you for filming it. In a place where there's no expectation of privacy for sex, you cannot get in trouble for violating that privacy.
The wikipedia article says:
A motive, in law, especially criminal law, is the cause that moves people to induce a certain action.[1] Motive, in itself, is not an element of any given crime; however, the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused's reasons for committing a crime, at least when those motives may be obscure or hard to identify with.
Based on that, which I agree with, how are you differentiating murder and manslaughter based on "circumstance and motivation?" Motive has nothing to do with it.
Maybe I misunderstood your rationale for bringing in different degrees of murder. To me, it indicates that you think motive is the difference between manslaughter and murder, as in, "If John killed Susan because he thinks she's a slut, that's murder, but if John killed Susan because he didn't like her makeup, that's just manslaughter."
If I'm right, can you explain more of what you think rather than posting links? If I'm wrong, I apologize for leaping to conclusions, but surely you would admit your statement about murder vs manslaughter being based on motive was incorrect.
Nope, they exaggerate the punishment to satisfy the racist urges that many people have. Some people get so much more angry when someone of their own race is attacked that they have to have more justice than other people.
If someone kills somebody else for wearing the color red (or whatever gang colors are relevant locally), that is just as hateful as killing someone because their skin is dark.
Killing somebody because they are black is not worse than killing someone because they annoy you.
Those are typically crimes targeting individuals. Multiple individuals, one at a time, but individuals nonetheless.
From what I know from my extensive background of movie and tv watching, serial killers often target groups, not individuals.
For instance, Jack the Ripper targeted prostitutes. The "Son of Sam" killer claimed his neighbor's dog demanded the blood of young, pretty girls. The DC sniper targeted Americans. I don't remember their names but I know there are serial killers who have targeted the homeless.
In fact it's pretty rare for a serial killer to just pick people at random. They usually have a group they are after.
On another note, it's sad to me that on TV whenever there's a serial killer some "expert" will say "Ok we're probably looking for a white male, age 30, who doesn't have many friends" or something like that. It's sad because you never, ever hear those kinds of stereotypes for other criminals. There's never a robbery and then someone says "Ok we're probably looking for a black male" for instance.