To be fair, a great many of that 42% have little opportunity to save based on the value of the work they're doing. When you're making $18k a year, even if you have no kids, it's nearly impossible to save anything. Now I know what you're going to say - get a better job - but ultimately, someone has to clean the toilets at your office building and that someone isn't going to make more than $18k because that work just isn't that valuable. Increasing everyone's pay is also not a solution as that merely increases prices to compensate and brings down middle class workers.
Of course, there's an argument to be made that such people should give up something they really like - TV, cell phone, something - to invest in a 401k. Putting aside $50/month in something like a 401k or IRA with no employer match turns into about $220,000 over 40 years ($335k over 45). However, that $50/month can be a huge amount to someone at that end of the scale and it'll be the first thing to go when they have a medical issue and need to pay the doctor to get better. Worse, these people often have one or more kids (and I don't know how they make that all work), which proves an even greater drain on what tiny resources they have.
Perhaps part of every welfare program should include some money and financial management counseling.
Stop being ridiculous; they aren't "endangering" anyone. They simply aren't using the medical tools available to reduce the risk of a threat that already exists completely independent of them and their kids. That threat comes from nature. The default state of all people is unvaccinated. They aren't increasing that threat by not getting vaccinated. You're being absurd.
Your irrational fear of the natural world does not entitle you to strap other peoples' children to gurneys and jam needles in their arms.
Of course there is. Once you go down the road of the state reviewing legitimate health and medical decisions made by parents, you're opening the door to all manner of things that busy-bodies like the GP would like to have enforced by the state upon all the other parents. Which is fine with the GP, right up until someone else decides that the GP isn't doing the right thing and comes down on them. Then, suddenly, they'll turn around and play victim, as if they had nothing to do with laying the groundwork for the mess they'll invariably find themselves in.
Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.
Doesn't this cause Comcast to forfeit 'Common Carrier' status under laws like the DMCA? My understanding was that ISPs basically said "we can't be held liable for copyright infringement because we can't monitor everything going across our wires for violations" and the government agreed that it all made sense. If Comcast now actually can monitor all the content rolling across its wires without any apparent undue burden, can't every copyright owner then sue Comcast for infringement if it isn't actively removing unlawfully distributed copyrighted works from its wires?
In other words, can't I copyright a 10 second video of myself slamming my head against a wall, then upload it to Bit Torrent with a clearly written copyright notice stating that one must send me a check for $50 Billion to view the clip, then sue Comcast into oblivion when someone on their network actually downloads it?
5) giving a false statement 6) dereliction of duty 7) possibly perjury if it's a sworn statement
8) Destruction of evidence 9) Obstruction of justice 10) Witness tampering 11) Deprivation of rights under color of law 12) Criminal conspiracy 13) Possession of a firearm during commission of a crime
Should be able to get about 40+ years worth of charges in play, then plea bargain it down to 5 years in prison for each officer involved. Between that and the 7 mill in cash in compensation for the victim, I'd say that makes everyone square.
I could not agree more. Subject the police to the same laws as everyone else when not in the performance of their duties (and hold them to strict scrutiny while in performance) and when some of these guys start going to prison, the rest will pay a whole lot more attention to the line between lawful and unlawful.
Some people can't get vaccinated because of medical reasons. Also vaccinations do not have a 100% effectiveness.
And sometimes the best of hammers will mangle a perfectly good nail. Yes, the tools we have are imperfect; no one is disputing that.
If too many people decide to not get vaccinated
Whoa whoa whoa, stop right there. The default state of a human body is unvaccinated. No one is removing a vaccine from themselves. No one is removing antibodies from themselves in an effort to make themselves or others more susceptible to disease. The default state is unvaccinated. It isn't about "if too many people decide not to", it's "if enough people decide to do it... positive things can happen". And yes, there's a huge difference. See the previous post.
then an outbreak could spread through all of those people and the ones where the vaccination didn't take as well as the people who could not get a vaccination. If the percentage of people who were successfully vaccinated is high enough then you will have individual cases here and there.
I completely understand that. However, you need to understand that disease is part of the human existence. Don't want to deal with disease? Stop being alive; that fixes the problem. Otherwise, accept the existence of risk and understand that your desire to minimize your risk and the risk of your loved ones does not entitle you or the government to strap a child to a gurney, jam needles in their arm, and pump them full of drugs (albeit very good and beneficial drugs).
Vaccines are a wonderful tool of modern medicine. The fact that that tool's effectiveness increases when more people make use of it does not entitle you or anyone else to force others to make use of that tool. You are not entitled to a risk-free or even a risk-reduced existence. The default state of a human being is naked, defenseless, and susceptible to all manner of diseases and predators. The fact that you're now safer than any other human being in the history of the planet ought to be enough. You have no right to perfect safety and you have no right to force others to help you get closer to perfect safety.
You appear to be confusing "not be able" with "would not be a hardship."
No, you appear to think that everyone else is doing as well as you are. There are plenty of families barely putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads with two incomes. There are plenty of single mothers and fathers who aren't even doing that well. Homeschooling is not an option for them. It simply isn't.
Again, you are advocating that it should be a reasonable option for parents to be unreasonable.
Yes, I am. You seem to be advocating that people who make different decisions than you or I might should be punished by the state. That's not just unreasonable, that's tyrannical. These people have every right to be idiots and if you don't want their kids in school with your kids, free up the tax money so they can send them somewhere else. STOP TRYING TO CONTROL EVERYONE ELSE'S LIFE AND START JUST LIVING YOUR OWN!
Don't remove the exemption, just exempt the people using the exemption from being able to frequent public areas without protective clothing (protective as in protecting others from them, not protective as in protecting them from everyone else).
Its illegal to be naked in most public places, its illegal to knowingly infect others with dangerous illnesses, so why shouldn't it be illegal to knowingly be in a public place when you are much more open to infection from dangerous illnesses and thus to infect others with them...?
That's not only absurd, but requires the kind of despotic tyranny many would fight with force of arms. Let's take it in another direction so maybe you'll see just how ridiculous it is. How about a law requiring everyone to be armed with a loaded M-16 in public? After all, there are all kinds of threats in the natural world that can be significantly reduced when lots of people have M-16s. Therefore, everyone must always have an M-16, fully loaded and ready to fire, while out in public so the public can be protected from physical threats.
It's also stupidly backwards. People who are not vaccinated are not some kind of super-threat we need to be protected from. They're simply not using the tools of modern medicine to reduce a threat which already exists and has for millions of years. And those threats are quite few among the natural world. If 0% of the population is vaccinated against a disease, then the threat is at the NORMAL level found in NATURE. As more people get vaccinated, that threat is reduced. Does that fact make it right to strap unwilling citizens (children, no less!) to a gurney and jam a needle full of drugs into their arms so they can be injected against their will? No, it does not. To say otherwise is to invite all kinds of other dictatorial bullshit and eventually it'll be the kind of dictatorial bullshit you won't like.
Of course, you won't be able to do anything about it by then.
The simple fix is to do what some countries in Europe already do: have the tax money used for schooling children attached to the individual child. As such, whichever school the parent chooses as best for their child gets the tax money allocated for that child. Schools then compete with one another to get students (and the money that comes with them). Not only does everyone end up with a better education (no monopoly produces better results and that holds true for education as well), but you'll also end up with a small subset of schools allowing unvaccinated kids to attend. That results in no additional cost to the idiot parents who aren't vaccinating their kids and everyone else can take advantage of herd immunity. And perhaps when the first few waves of preventable disease decimate the population at those schools allowing unvaccinated children, some people will take the hint and start using the tools of modern medicine to reduce the natural threats of our world.
Then I guess their kid just has to take their chances with the natural world like everyone other human has for millions of years.
I think it's a stupid decision to not vaccinate your kids (when that's possible which is nearly always), but vaccines are tools of modern medicine used to reduce a threat that already exists because of the fact that we live in a natural world. The moment a person makes the decision to bring a child into this world, they accept all the risks that come with that, and disease is merely a small part of the risk. More people getting vaccinated results in lowering the risk for one of a hundred million different ways to die. If some choose not to do that, so what? They're idiots and it's unfortunate. Would it be beneficial to the kid who can't get vaccinated if more people did? Yes. Does that give them the right to jam a needle full of drugs into someone else's arm and and inject them? No.
Why? Don't get me wrong, I think it's a stupid decision, but parents make stupid decisions all the time. Is every poor decision impacting the health of your child now child abuse? Mac and Cheese is a poor decision impacting the health of your child. Ever feed them that, abuser? Soda? Child abuse! Cotton candy? Child abuse! McDonalds? Child abuse! Ice cream? Child abuse! Failing to get them to the dentist on a perfect schedule? Child abuse! Dishes left in the sink a little too long or trash left in the trash can a little too long? Child abuse! Pizza party? Child abuse! Using [cleaning product that isn't specifically designed to be completely child-safe]? Child abuse!
You really, really want to wander down that slippery slope? Think before you speak, lest you find your own home visited by Child Protective Services.
In some other countries, the money allocated for the schooling of each child follows that child to whatever school the parents decides is best for their kids. That's the easiest way to solve this. So long as there's at least one school in the area allowing unvaccinated kids (and certainly there would be in areas where many parents are dumb enough not to vaccinate their kids), they can all face the full brunt of natures fury together in small, confined spaces. And maybe some of these idiot parents will learn some lessons after the first few waves of preventable diseases decimate those schools' populations.
In the meantime, everyone else wins out because all the schools in the area suddenly have to compete with one another to get the kids (since they're only getting the money attached to the kids actually attending their school).
Ergo, if you don't want to vaccinate your child you're free to do that, but be prepared to pay for private education. You can't have the best of both worlds - taking advantage of the publicly funded education system whilst endangering the health of the other participants.
Fine, refund them all property taxes tied in any way to public education. You can't force them to pay for an education system they're denied access to because of their wrongheaded, stupid beliefs. Or better yet, have the tax money follow the kid so that every parent can actually choose where their child is schooled. That way everyone wins because schools have to compete with one another to get the money from the kids. Hell, even some of the Europeans have figured this out already.
In terms of unvaccinated kids, you'll likely see a concentration of them in a small subset of schools that allow them to attend and you'll also likely see disease after preventable disease make its way through those schools' halls. Maybe after the population there is decimated once or twice, some of those morons will wake up and start vaccinating. Or not; their choice. The diseases are all from nature and refusing to use the tools available to keep nature at bay should be every person's choice for themselves and their kids.
Of course, a government strapping citizens to a gurney and jamming needles into their arms to inject them with drugs will certainly breed the kind of independent thinking and acting individuals who comprise a healthy democratic state. What could go wrong?
Frankly, you shouldn't even be entitled to bring them out in public as long as they're a threat to other children or anyone else who couldn't get vaccinated for some other reason outside of their control. Willful ignorance should come this a heavy cost.
This is, frankly, every bit as stupid a thought process as not getting your kids vaccinated because some guy somewhere said maybe it might be harmful (in the face of decades of blatantly obvious evidence that it saves tremendous numbers of people). Why? Because YOU AREN'T A THREAT SIMPLY BY THE NATURE OF YOUR EXISTENCE ALONE. Vaccines are great tools of modern medicine that are saving huge numbers of people from diseases. But the diseases ALL COME FROM NATURE. They're PART OF THE NATURAL FUCKING WORLD and THAT is where the "threat" is coming from! If you don't want to live under that threat, remove yourself from the natural world.
I think people who don't get themselves or their kids vaccinated against preventable, dangerous diseases are idiots because there's nearly no downside to doing that. However, they aren't increasing any threat toward anyone. They're simply not acting to DECREASE the threat which is being posed by the natural world. There's a huge difference. Now, are the odds increased that an individual who cannot receive a vaccination will contracted a the disease inoculated against by that vaccine if those in regular contact with them are unvaccinated? Yes. But if 0% of the people around them get the vaccine, their level of threat is EQUAL to the level of threat in the NATURAL WORLD. As the people around them get vaccinated, the level of threat drops.
To be as crystal clear as possible, here's the difference between increasing the level of threat and not acting to decrease it:
If I purposely inject myself with active Influenza, get sick, and then walk through an airport coughing on people, I am increasing the level of Influenza threat
If I inject you with active Influenza, I'm increasing the level of Influenza threat
If I simply don't get a Flu vaccine, I'm not increasing anything; the threat was already there. I'm simply not acting to decrease that threat to myself or others.
Why do I care about the difference? Because it's horseshit to accuse these idiots of being a threat. The fact that they're acting like morons is no excuse for everyone else doing the same.
Why? Because you demand it? Let the tax dollars used to educate children follow the children to any reasonable education facility and this whole debate goes away. The fact that everyone is forced to fund some of the most garbage public schools in the modern world is the problem. Hell, even some of the Europeans have choice in education. Let the money follow the kids and this whole problem goes away. All these idiots who aren't getting their kids vaccinated can concentrate on some private institution run by idiots who let them all congregate there and then maybe when some easily preventable disease wipes out half that school's population, some of those morons will take the hint.
So, basically, there's very little reason to think that a parent refusing to vaccinate their child would not be able to home school them
Why would there be little reason to think that? Aside from all the expenses of homeschooling itself (books, materials, etc - both for parents and students), there's also the loss of income from at least one parent (when there even are two) not working. That can easily be half the household income gone, plus the expenses, and they still have to pay the taxes. And in a single parent household, what's the option? Live 100% on public assistance all the time?
The poster above hit the nail on the head: "That might be a reasonable compromise if every parent had a real choice where they send their kids to school. Governments take thousands in school taxes, then tell you that if you don't want to send your kids to their public school that you'll have to send thousands more to a private one."
That right there is the problem. If they had a choice, this would all be moot. Dumbasses who refuse to vaccinate their kids couple simply send them elsewhere with little or no cost. As it stands, if you're stupid enough to honestly believe vaccines will damage your child, your options come down to bending to the will of the state that you inject poison into your child or lose half/all of your household income and try to educate them yourself.
But fuck these assholes. Fuck all of them; every one of them who voted for this shit. Fuck them regardless of their party or their stances on other issues, or their charity work, or their stupid kids, or their veteran status. Fuck 'em. Burn in Hell you pieces of shit.
I'll provide an example I gave in another post. If the law prohibits minors gambling at the horse track, but Little Johnny stands right there listing off bets to an adult who parrots those bets to the track employee taking bets, then hands the money for those bets to the adult who hands it to the track employee, the law is clearly and obviously being circumvented and the entire intent of the law undermined by a simple loophole. (this actually works by the way, did it for years as a teen) Is this a capital crime that needs huge resources dumped into it? No, but ignoring it breeds disrespect for the law.
Perhaps another example. Let's assume there's a declaration requirement when entering the US which states that you have to declare when they're entering the US with cash in excess of $10,000 USD in value. Now let's say John Smith withdraws $50k from his bank, then flies to the US, where it's discovered that he, his wife, and each of his three young children each have $9,980 on their person. Then the law states that deposits in excess of $10,000 into US financial institutions must be reported, but John Smith fills out 5 separate deposit slips for $9,980 each. These are easy enough to cover in the legislation, you say. Sure, but there are 50 permutations of this you can come up with without getting creative. Then another 50 when you start thinking harder. Then another 100 when you involved a lawyer. And another 1,000 when you involve a creative lawyer. And in a week, you'll find another hundred ways to work around the letter of the law.
The point is that while I agree poorly written legislation is a problem and one that should be addressed, no legislation can ever be written in such a way that its intent cannot be undermined by a motivated individual with an agenda. If we begin with the idea that the intent of the law is valid, just, and good policy, we must endeavor to do all we can to keep obvious circumvention attempts at bay. The idea that one can easily violate the spirit of the law by "rules lawyering" the words and letters within it is just absurd. It's how you end up with ridiculous things like "it depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Language is an imprecise means of conveying ideas. The intent of a law should be clearly defined and all attempts to violate that intent punishable in the same fashion. Anything less makes the whole thing a stupid game and the law ought to be above that.
Game companies do it because they depend on people playing the game stop make money, hence the need for a semblance of fairness.
And societies based on the rule of law only work when people largely understand the rules to be fair and applicable to all. The "some animals are more equal than others" crap doesn't fly for long in a mature modern democracy.
If you can be charged with breaking the intent how would you know what is legal? In the end a simple disagreement could cost you your job whether or not your position is correct.
I think this is where we get into "clear and obvious". For example, if the law prohibits minors gambling at the horse track, but Little Johnny stands right there listing off bets to an adult who parrots those bets to the track employee taking bets, then hands the money for those bets to the adult who hands it to the track employee, the law is clearly and obviously being circumvented and the entire intent of the law undermined by a simple loophole. (this actually works by the way, did it for years as a teen) Is this a capital crime that needs huge resources dumped into it? No, but ignoring it breeds disrespect for the law.
I agree there are plenty of cases where this would not be a preferable addition to the law due to its potentially chilling effect on normal, legal activities. So in those cases, don't enact this kind of provision. In fact, you could even apply this just to laws that specifically govern the actions of government entities and employees in the commission of their official duties. The point is to ensure that legal games don't undermine the protections built into the law for all citizens. In fact, I think legislators should be one of the prime targets of this kind of legislation; when they pass laws that clearly and obviously violate the rights of citizens, they should face stiff legal penalties up to and including prison.
Gaming companies have dealt with issues like this for many years whereby players will attempt to engage in "rules lawyering" to get around the letter of the game's rules in order to exploit loopholes to essentially cheat to win. Game companies dealt with that by including a catch-all to simply say that if what you're doing is clearly and obviously designed to bypass the rules or exploit loopholes to gain an unfair or unintended advantage, you get punished.
Legislatures could learn a lesson from this. For each law written, write in a catch-all such that clear and obvious attempts to circumvent the law by exploiting loopholes in the wording brings about similar or the same penalties as violating the law itself. For laws designed to control groups, such as intelligence services, ensure that everyone involved bears the punishment of violating the law. In other words, get the guy who ordered it, the guy(s) who disseminated the orders, and everyone who carried out the orders. Then also include strong whistleblower protections and rewards for reporting the worst abuses. When everyone from the top of the organization to the bottom has their ass on the line and when enough carrots are dangled in front of the guys doing the grunt work, stuff like that will unravel in a hurry. I love my job for numerous reasons. Would I risk 20 years in prison for it if the higher-ups decided to start doing illegal stuff? Not a chance.
To be fair, South Africa is now the rape capital of the world.
Which is not to say that a system of racial oppression was to thank for keeping rape down, but rather to point out that strict policing can be associated with safer streets.
As some others have said in more colorful ways, being a good cop means doing everything you can under the law to get bad cops off the street. Bad cops doesn't just mean those taking bribes, planting evidence, etc. Bad cops includes police officers who unnecessarily approach situations with undue aggression and who unnecessarily escalate situations. I understand that much of an officer's interactions are either with people who aren't at their best or are with people who are just pain rotten to the core, but if that drives them into a pattern of cynicism and aggression not warranted by the situation, they can either self-report and get behind a desk and get counseling until their head gets back to a better place or they're bad cops.
I'm a law-abiding citizen. Minus some exceeding the posted speed limit here and there, I'm not causing trouble. I also happen to work late quite a bit, which has led to numerous interactions with the police. Nearly all of those have been completely reasonable where everyone was decent and the situation was handled without any issue (usually just a "why are you here at [late time]?" followed up with a reasonable explanation, maybe running plates, in and out in 3 minutes kind of thing). In a very small number of cases, I was met by an adrenaline-pumped idiot who was very obviously itching to rip me out of the car and beat the Hell out of me. I've been berated and goaded by a cop who was doing everything he could to escalate the situation to where he could take stronger action. As I said, it's a very tiny number of issues out of all the times I've had contact with officers and I've always kept my cool and been in the right to the point where it didn't turn into anything. But all it would take is one of those adrenaline-pumped alpha assholes deciding I looked at him wrong and but for a camera recording the incident, he could very easily write up the report such that I was the aggressor and was threatening toward him and resisted arrest, thereby justifying any injuries. With that report and the word of the sworn officer, I end up with a criminal record and losing everything I've earned in life.
And that's why it doesn't matter if there are 99 good cops for every one bad cop. Because that one bad cop can ruin so many peoples' lives. We as citizens are second-class when we file a report or step into a court room trying to stop a bad cop doing bad stuff. What's really needed are for all those cops who are decent people to start standing up against the ones who aren't, start calling them on their bullshit, start reporting them at work, and start testifying on behalf of people who are wronged by them. I understand that that hyper-aggressive adrenaline junky alpha asshole is great to have by your side when you're under fire, but you have a duty and a responsibility to either see that he gets right in the head or see that he finds a new profession where he doesn't have any legal authority. The more you protect assholes like that, the more of them you'll find around you and the more the citizens in your community will distrust and even hate the police.
I support the good cops out there trying to help good and decent people and do the right thing. As for the bad cops out for a thrill? Well at the very very least, I want them off the streets and getting help. Stop protecting them. Stop protecting people who protect them.
How many tax subsidies finance into your average power plant?...long term storage costs for nuclear waste
Now that's just unfair. Long term storage costs for nuclear "waste" only exist because the government doesn't allow for the reprocessing of perfectly good fuel. If they did, we'd be more like France, where the total final long-term waste of a family of four's entire lifetime fits in a soda can. And as all the usable energy has been removed from it, it actually is waste, meaning there's no energy radiating from it and no danger from it. At which point, those costs look vastly easier to manage and all subsidies can come off with virtually no impact to costs.
Government created a problem (basically a tax) by disallowing the reuse of perfectly good fuel. It then partially solved the problem it created by generating a subsidy to offset the tax. In the meantime, good fuel is wasted, exposed, and dangerous. It's about the dumbest thing in the world, but then again, it was something our government came up with, so at least that makes some sense.
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To be fair, a great many of that 42% have little opportunity to save based on the value of the work they're doing. When you're making $18k a year, even if you have no kids, it's nearly impossible to save anything. Now I know what you're going to say - get a better job - but ultimately, someone has to clean the toilets at your office building and that someone isn't going to make more than $18k because that work just isn't that valuable. Increasing everyone's pay is also not a solution as that merely increases prices to compensate and brings down middle class workers.
Of course, there's an argument to be made that such people should give up something they really like - TV, cell phone, something - to invest in a 401k. Putting aside $50/month in something like a 401k or IRA with no employer match turns into about $220,000 over 40 years ($335k over 45). However, that $50/month can be a huge amount to someone at that end of the scale and it'll be the first thing to go when they have a medical issue and need to pay the doctor to get better. Worse, these people often have one or more kids (and I don't know how they make that all work), which proves an even greater drain on what tiny resources they have.
Perhaps part of every welfare program should include some money and financial management counseling.
Stop being ridiculous; they aren't "endangering" anyone. They simply aren't using the medical tools available to reduce the risk of a threat that already exists completely independent of them and their kids. That threat comes from nature. The default state of all people is unvaccinated. They aren't increasing that threat by not getting vaccinated. You're being absurd.
Your irrational fear of the natural world does not entitle you to strap other peoples' children to gurneys and jam needles in their arms.
Of course there is. Once you go down the road of the state reviewing legitimate health and medical decisions made by parents, you're opening the door to all manner of things that busy-bodies like the GP would like to have enforced by the state upon all the other parents. Which is fine with the GP, right up until someone else decides that the GP isn't doing the right thing and comes down on them. Then, suddenly, they'll turn around and play victim, as if they had nothing to do with laying the groundwork for the mess they'll invariably find themselves in.
Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.
Doesn't this cause Comcast to forfeit 'Common Carrier' status under laws like the DMCA? My understanding was that ISPs basically said "we can't be held liable for copyright infringement because we can't monitor everything going across our wires for violations" and the government agreed that it all made sense. If Comcast now actually can monitor all the content rolling across its wires without any apparent undue burden, can't every copyright owner then sue Comcast for infringement if it isn't actively removing unlawfully distributed copyrighted works from its wires?
In other words, can't I copyright a 10 second video of myself slamming my head against a wall, then upload it to Bit Torrent with a clearly written copyright notice stating that one must send me a check for $50 Billion to view the clip, then sue Comcast into oblivion when someone on their network actually downloads it?
Let's play the prosecutors' game!
1) Vandalism.
2) Unlawful destruction of private property.
3) Assault.
4) Battery.
5) giving a false statement
6) dereliction of duty
7) possibly perjury if it's a sworn statement
8) Destruction of evidence
9) Obstruction of justice
10) Witness tampering
11) Deprivation of rights under color of law
12) Criminal conspiracy
13) Possession of a firearm during commission of a crime
Should be able to get about 40+ years worth of charges in play, then plea bargain it down to 5 years in prison for each officer involved. Between that and the 7 mill in cash in compensation for the victim, I'd say that makes everyone square.
I could not agree more. Subject the police to the same laws as everyone else when not in the performance of their duties (and hold them to strict scrutiny while in performance) and when some of these guys start going to prison, the rest will pay a whole lot more attention to the line between lawful and unlawful.
Some people can't get vaccinated because of medical reasons. Also vaccinations do not have a 100% effectiveness.
And sometimes the best of hammers will mangle a perfectly good nail. Yes, the tools we have are imperfect; no one is disputing that.
If too many people decide to not get vaccinated
Whoa whoa whoa, stop right there. The default state of a human body is unvaccinated. No one is removing a vaccine from themselves. No one is removing antibodies from themselves in an effort to make themselves or others more susceptible to disease. The default state is unvaccinated. It isn't about "if too many people decide not to", it's "if enough people decide to do it... positive things can happen". And yes, there's a huge difference. See the previous post.
then an outbreak could spread through all of those people and the ones where the vaccination didn't take as well as the people who could not get a vaccination. If the percentage of people who were successfully vaccinated is high enough then you will have individual cases here and there.
I completely understand that. However, you need to understand that disease is part of the human existence. Don't want to deal with disease? Stop being alive; that fixes the problem. Otherwise, accept the existence of risk and understand that your desire to minimize your risk and the risk of your loved ones does not entitle you or the government to strap a child to a gurney, jam needles in their arm, and pump them full of drugs (albeit very good and beneficial drugs).
Vaccines are a wonderful tool of modern medicine. The fact that that tool's effectiveness increases when more people make use of it does not entitle you or anyone else to force others to make use of that tool. You are not entitled to a risk-free or even a risk-reduced existence. The default state of a human being is naked, defenseless, and susceptible to all manner of diseases and predators. The fact that you're now safer than any other human being in the history of the planet ought to be enough. You have no right to perfect safety and you have no right to force others to help you get closer to perfect safety.
You appear to be confusing "not be able" with "would not be a hardship."
No, you appear to think that everyone else is doing as well as you are. There are plenty of families barely putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads with two incomes. There are plenty of single mothers and fathers who aren't even doing that well. Homeschooling is not an option for them. It simply isn't.
Again, you are advocating that it should be a reasonable option for parents to be unreasonable.
Yes, I am. You seem to be advocating that people who make different decisions than you or I might should be punished by the state. That's not just unreasonable, that's tyrannical. These people have every right to be idiots and if you don't want their kids in school with your kids, free up the tax money so they can send them somewhere else. STOP TRYING TO CONTROL EVERYONE ELSE'S LIFE AND START JUST LIVING YOUR OWN!
Don't remove the exemption, just exempt the people using the exemption from being able to frequent public areas without protective clothing (protective as in protecting others from them, not protective as in protecting them from everyone else).
Its illegal to be naked in most public places, its illegal to knowingly infect others with dangerous illnesses, so why shouldn't it be illegal to knowingly be in a public place when you are much more open to infection from dangerous illnesses and thus to infect others with them...?
That's not only absurd, but requires the kind of despotic tyranny many would fight with force of arms. Let's take it in another direction so maybe you'll see just how ridiculous it is. How about a law requiring everyone to be armed with a loaded M-16 in public? After all, there are all kinds of threats in the natural world that can be significantly reduced when lots of people have M-16s. Therefore, everyone must always have an M-16, fully loaded and ready to fire, while out in public so the public can be protected from physical threats.
It's also stupidly backwards. People who are not vaccinated are not some kind of super-threat we need to be protected from. They're simply not using the tools of modern medicine to reduce a threat which already exists and has for millions of years. And those threats are quite few among the natural world. If 0% of the population is vaccinated against a disease, then the threat is at the NORMAL level found in NATURE. As more people get vaccinated, that threat is reduced. Does that fact make it right to strap unwilling citizens (children, no less!) to a gurney and jam a needle full of drugs into their arms so they can be injected against their will? No, it does not. To say otherwise is to invite all kinds of other dictatorial bullshit and eventually it'll be the kind of dictatorial bullshit you won't like.
Of course, you won't be able to do anything about it by then.
The simple fix is to do what some countries in Europe already do: have the tax money used for schooling children attached to the individual child. As such, whichever school the parent chooses as best for their child gets the tax money allocated for that child. Schools then compete with one another to get students (and the money that comes with them). Not only does everyone end up with a better education (no monopoly produces better results and that holds true for education as well), but you'll also end up with a small subset of schools allowing unvaccinated kids to attend. That results in no additional cost to the idiot parents who aren't vaccinating their kids and everyone else can take advantage of herd immunity. And perhaps when the first few waves of preventable disease decimate the population at those schools allowing unvaccinated children, some people will take the hint and start using the tools of modern medicine to reduce the natural threats of our world.
Then I guess their kid just has to take their chances with the natural world like everyone other human has for millions of years.
I think it's a stupid decision to not vaccinate your kids (when that's possible which is nearly always), but vaccines are tools of modern medicine used to reduce a threat that already exists because of the fact that we live in a natural world. The moment a person makes the decision to bring a child into this world, they accept all the risks that come with that, and disease is merely a small part of the risk. More people getting vaccinated results in lowering the risk for one of a hundred million different ways to die. If some choose not to do that, so what? They're idiots and it's unfortunate. Would it be beneficial to the kid who can't get vaccinated if more people did? Yes. Does that give them the right to jam a needle full of drugs into someone else's arm and and inject them? No.
Why? Don't get me wrong, I think it's a stupid decision, but parents make stupid decisions all the time. Is every poor decision impacting the health of your child now child abuse? Mac and Cheese is a poor decision impacting the health of your child. Ever feed them that, abuser? Soda? Child abuse! Cotton candy? Child abuse! McDonalds? Child abuse! Ice cream? Child abuse! Failing to get them to the dentist on a perfect schedule? Child abuse! Dishes left in the sink a little too long or trash left in the trash can a little too long? Child abuse! Pizza party? Child abuse! Using [cleaning product that isn't specifically designed to be completely child-safe]? Child abuse!
You really, really want to wander down that slippery slope? Think before you speak, lest you find your own home visited by Child Protective Services.
In some other countries, the money allocated for the schooling of each child follows that child to whatever school the parents decides is best for their kids. That's the easiest way to solve this. So long as there's at least one school in the area allowing unvaccinated kids (and certainly there would be in areas where many parents are dumb enough not to vaccinate their kids), they can all face the full brunt of natures fury together in small, confined spaces. And maybe some of these idiot parents will learn some lessons after the first few waves of preventable diseases decimate those schools' populations.
In the meantime, everyone else wins out because all the schools in the area suddenly have to compete with one another to get the kids (since they're only getting the money attached to the kids actually attending their school).
Ergo, if you don't want to vaccinate your child you're free to do that, but be prepared to pay for private education. You can't have the best of both worlds - taking advantage of the publicly funded education system whilst endangering the health of the other participants.
Fine, refund them all property taxes tied in any way to public education. You can't force them to pay for an education system they're denied access to because of their wrongheaded, stupid beliefs. Or better yet, have the tax money follow the kid so that every parent can actually choose where their child is schooled. That way everyone wins because schools have to compete with one another to get the money from the kids. Hell, even some of the Europeans have figured this out already.
In terms of unvaccinated kids, you'll likely see a concentration of them in a small subset of schools that allow them to attend and you'll also likely see disease after preventable disease make its way through those schools' halls. Maybe after the population there is decimated once or twice, some of those morons will wake up and start vaccinating. Or not; their choice. The diseases are all from nature and refusing to use the tools available to keep nature at bay should be every person's choice for themselves and their kids.
Of course, a government strapping citizens to a gurney and jamming needles into their arms to inject them with drugs will certainly breed the kind of independent thinking and acting individuals who comprise a healthy democratic state. What could go wrong?
Frankly, you shouldn't even be entitled to bring them out in public as long as they're a threat to other children or anyone else who couldn't get vaccinated for some other reason outside of their control. Willful ignorance should come this a heavy cost.
This is, frankly, every bit as stupid a thought process as not getting your kids vaccinated because some guy somewhere said maybe it might be harmful (in the face of decades of blatantly obvious evidence that it saves tremendous numbers of people). Why? Because YOU AREN'T A THREAT SIMPLY BY THE NATURE OF YOUR EXISTENCE ALONE. Vaccines are great tools of modern medicine that are saving huge numbers of people from diseases. But the diseases ALL COME FROM NATURE. They're PART OF THE NATURAL FUCKING WORLD and THAT is where the "threat" is coming from! If you don't want to live under that threat, remove yourself from the natural world.
I think people who don't get themselves or their kids vaccinated against preventable, dangerous diseases are idiots because there's nearly no downside to doing that. However, they aren't increasing any threat toward anyone. They're simply not acting to DECREASE the threat which is being posed by the natural world. There's a huge difference. Now, are the odds increased that an individual who cannot receive a vaccination will contracted a the disease inoculated against by that vaccine if those in regular contact with them are unvaccinated? Yes. But if 0% of the people around them get the vaccine, their level of threat is EQUAL to the level of threat in the NATURAL WORLD. As the people around them get vaccinated, the level of threat drops.
To be as crystal clear as possible, here's the difference between increasing the level of threat and not acting to decrease it:
If I purposely inject myself with active Influenza, get sick, and then walk through an airport coughing on people, I am increasing the level of Influenza threat
If I inject you with active Influenza, I'm increasing the level of Influenza threat
If I simply don't get a Flu vaccine, I'm not increasing anything; the threat was already there. I'm simply not acting to decrease that threat to myself or others.
Why do I care about the difference? Because it's horseshit to accuse these idiots of being a threat. The fact that they're acting like morons is no excuse for everyone else doing the same.
Why? Because you demand it? Let the tax dollars used to educate children follow the children to any reasonable education facility and this whole debate goes away. The fact that everyone is forced to fund some of the most garbage public schools in the modern world is the problem. Hell, even some of the Europeans have choice in education. Let the money follow the kids and this whole problem goes away. All these idiots who aren't getting their kids vaccinated can concentrate on some private institution run by idiots who let them all congregate there and then maybe when some easily preventable disease wipes out half that school's population, some of those morons will take the hint.
So, basically, there's very little reason to think that a parent refusing to vaccinate their child would not be able to home school them
Why would there be little reason to think that? Aside from all the expenses of homeschooling itself (books, materials, etc - both for parents and students), there's also the loss of income from at least one parent (when there even are two) not working. That can easily be half the household income gone, plus the expenses, and they still have to pay the taxes. And in a single parent household, what's the option? Live 100% on public assistance all the time?
The poster above hit the nail on the head: "That might be a reasonable compromise if every parent had a real choice where they send their kids to school. Governments take thousands in school taxes, then tell you that if you don't want to send your kids to their public school that you'll have to send thousands more to a private one."
That right there is the problem. If they had a choice, this would all be moot. Dumbasses who refuse to vaccinate their kids couple simply send them elsewhere with little or no cost. As it stands, if you're stupid enough to honestly believe vaccines will damage your child, your options come down to bending to the will of the state that you inject poison into your child or lose half/all of your household income and try to educate them yourself.
But fuck these assholes. Fuck all of them; every one of them who voted for this shit. Fuck them regardless of their party or their stances on other issues, or their charity work, or their stupid kids, or their veteran status. Fuck 'em. Burn in Hell you pieces of shit.
I'll provide an example I gave in another post. If the law prohibits minors gambling at the horse track, but Little Johnny stands right there listing off bets to an adult who parrots those bets to the track employee taking bets, then hands the money for those bets to the adult who hands it to the track employee, the law is clearly and obviously being circumvented and the entire intent of the law undermined by a simple loophole. (this actually works by the way, did it for years as a teen) Is this a capital crime that needs huge resources dumped into it? No, but ignoring it breeds disrespect for the law.
Perhaps another example. Let's assume there's a declaration requirement when entering the US which states that you have to declare when they're entering the US with cash in excess of $10,000 USD in value. Now let's say John Smith withdraws $50k from his bank, then flies to the US, where it's discovered that he, his wife, and each of his three young children each have $9,980 on their person. Then the law states that deposits in excess of $10,000 into US financial institutions must be reported, but John Smith fills out 5 separate deposit slips for $9,980 each. These are easy enough to cover in the legislation, you say. Sure, but there are 50 permutations of this you can come up with without getting creative. Then another 50 when you start thinking harder. Then another 100 when you involved a lawyer. And another 1,000 when you involve a creative lawyer. And in a week, you'll find another hundred ways to work around the letter of the law.
The point is that while I agree poorly written legislation is a problem and one that should be addressed, no legislation can ever be written in such a way that its intent cannot be undermined by a motivated individual with an agenda. If we begin with the idea that the intent of the law is valid, just, and good policy, we must endeavor to do all we can to keep obvious circumvention attempts at bay. The idea that one can easily violate the spirit of the law by "rules lawyering" the words and letters within it is just absurd. It's how you end up with ridiculous things like "it depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Language is an imprecise means of conveying ideas. The intent of a law should be clearly defined and all attempts to violate that intent punishable in the same fashion. Anything less makes the whole thing a stupid game and the law ought to be above that.
Game companies do it because they depend on people playing the game stop make money, hence the need for a semblance of fairness.
And societies based on the rule of law only work when people largely understand the rules to be fair and applicable to all. The "some animals are more equal than others" crap doesn't fly for long in a mature modern democracy.
If you can be charged with breaking the intent how would you know what is legal? In the end a simple disagreement could cost you your job whether or not your position is correct.
I think this is where we get into "clear and obvious". For example, if the law prohibits minors gambling at the horse track, but Little Johnny stands right there listing off bets to an adult who parrots those bets to the track employee taking bets, then hands the money for those bets to the adult who hands it to the track employee, the law is clearly and obviously being circumvented and the entire intent of the law undermined by a simple loophole. (this actually works by the way, did it for years as a teen) Is this a capital crime that needs huge resources dumped into it? No, but ignoring it breeds disrespect for the law.
I agree there are plenty of cases where this would not be a preferable addition to the law due to its potentially chilling effect on normal, legal activities. So in those cases, don't enact this kind of provision. In fact, you could even apply this just to laws that specifically govern the actions of government entities and employees in the commission of their official duties. The point is to ensure that legal games don't undermine the protections built into the law for all citizens. In fact, I think legislators should be one of the prime targets of this kind of legislation; when they pass laws that clearly and obviously violate the rights of citizens, they should face stiff legal penalties up to and including prison.
Gaming companies have dealt with issues like this for many years whereby players will attempt to engage in "rules lawyering" to get around the letter of the game's rules in order to exploit loopholes to essentially cheat to win. Game companies dealt with that by including a catch-all to simply say that if what you're doing is clearly and obviously designed to bypass the rules or exploit loopholes to gain an unfair or unintended advantage, you get punished.
Legislatures could learn a lesson from this. For each law written, write in a catch-all such that clear and obvious attempts to circumvent the law by exploiting loopholes in the wording brings about similar or the same penalties as violating the law itself. For laws designed to control groups, such as intelligence services, ensure that everyone involved bears the punishment of violating the law. In other words, get the guy who ordered it, the guy(s) who disseminated the orders, and everyone who carried out the orders. Then also include strong whistleblower protections and rewards for reporting the worst abuses. When everyone from the top of the organization to the bottom has their ass on the line and when enough carrots are dangled in front of the guys doing the grunt work, stuff like that will unravel in a hurry. I love my job for numerous reasons. Would I risk 20 years in prison for it if the higher-ups decided to start doing illegal stuff? Not a chance.
To be fair, South Africa is now the rape capital of the world.
Which is not to say that a system of racial oppression was to thank for keeping rape down, but rather to point out that strict policing can be associated with safer streets.
As some others have said in more colorful ways, being a good cop means doing everything you can under the law to get bad cops off the street. Bad cops doesn't just mean those taking bribes, planting evidence, etc. Bad cops includes police officers who unnecessarily approach situations with undue aggression and who unnecessarily escalate situations. I understand that much of an officer's interactions are either with people who aren't at their best or are with people who are just pain rotten to the core, but if that drives them into a pattern of cynicism and aggression not warranted by the situation, they can either self-report and get behind a desk and get counseling until their head gets back to a better place or they're bad cops.
I'm a law-abiding citizen. Minus some exceeding the posted speed limit here and there, I'm not causing trouble. I also happen to work late quite a bit, which has led to numerous interactions with the police. Nearly all of those have been completely reasonable where everyone was decent and the situation was handled without any issue (usually just a "why are you here at [late time]?" followed up with a reasonable explanation, maybe running plates, in and out in 3 minutes kind of thing). In a very small number of cases, I was met by an adrenaline-pumped idiot who was very obviously itching to rip me out of the car and beat the Hell out of me. I've been berated and goaded by a cop who was doing everything he could to escalate the situation to where he could take stronger action. As I said, it's a very tiny number of issues out of all the times I've had contact with officers and I've always kept my cool and been in the right to the point where it didn't turn into anything. But all it would take is one of those adrenaline-pumped alpha assholes deciding I looked at him wrong and but for a camera recording the incident, he could very easily write up the report such that I was the aggressor and was threatening toward him and resisted arrest, thereby justifying any injuries. With that report and the word of the sworn officer, I end up with a criminal record and losing everything I've earned in life.
And that's why it doesn't matter if there are 99 good cops for every one bad cop. Because that one bad cop can ruin so many peoples' lives. We as citizens are second-class when we file a report or step into a court room trying to stop a bad cop doing bad stuff. What's really needed are for all those cops who are decent people to start standing up against the ones who aren't, start calling them on their bullshit, start reporting them at work, and start testifying on behalf of people who are wronged by them. I understand that that hyper-aggressive adrenaline junky alpha asshole is great to have by your side when you're under fire, but you have a duty and a responsibility to either see that he gets right in the head or see that he finds a new profession where he doesn't have any legal authority. The more you protect assholes like that, the more of them you'll find around you and the more the citizens in your community will distrust and even hate the police.
I support the good cops out there trying to help good and decent people and do the right thing. As for the bad cops out for a thrill? Well at the very very least, I want them off the streets and getting help. Stop protecting them. Stop protecting people who protect them.
How many tax subsidies finance into your average power plant? ...long term storage costs for nuclear waste
Now that's just unfair. Long term storage costs for nuclear "waste" only exist because the government doesn't allow for the reprocessing of perfectly good fuel. If they did, we'd be more like France, where the total final long-term waste of a family of four's entire lifetime fits in a soda can. And as all the usable energy has been removed from it, it actually is waste, meaning there's no energy radiating from it and no danger from it. At which point, those costs look vastly easier to manage and all subsidies can come off with virtually no impact to costs.
Government created a problem (basically a tax) by disallowing the reuse of perfectly good fuel. It then partially solved the problem it created by generating a subsidy to offset the tax. In the meantime, good fuel is wasted, exposed, and dangerous. It's about the dumbest thing in the world, but then again, it was something our government came up with, so at least that makes some sense.