It's more than a stretch to call Temple University "downtown Philly" since it's ~2 miles north of Center City. North Philly is not a good area (undertatement), neither is southwest or deep south. Center City, its immediate surroundings, and West Philly (where UPenn is) are all very good places to live and do not share Temple's problems.
The practice of blaming problems on deregulation while not making clear what that deregulation was or how far it went has emerged as one of the chief propaganda tools of centralization proponents.
I have to give them credit: while it's intellectually dishonest, it provides a concise sound bite that takes a lot less time to assert than to refute. They can say, "Such and such worked okay if not great, then they deregulated it, and now it's a big honking mess!" and be correct on the face of things. Dig deeper, as you say, and you find that things worked only "okay" instead of "well" because government got involved decades ago, and that the deregulation they're talking about was incomplete and often designed by those who would stand to benefit most from picking and choosing which rules to cut and which to keep.
The whole reason this works is because we as a culture have grown to rely overmuch on abstraction and generalization--very useful tools--without ever bothering to descend back down the ladder of concepts to the concrete facts they are (or used to be) tethered to. This applies equally across the board, and it's quite sobering to see once you train yourself to look for it: much of our political and social discourse has no substance at all. Perhaps I'm being too harsh in calling users of such phrasing "intellectually dishonest," as many likely don't know that that is what they are doing. "Intellectually lazy" is probably more appropriate.
Exactly. I'm always slightly baffled at how people can rail against "security theater," saying that it causes massive inconvenience to honest people and is often worse than useless in preventing bad people from doing bad things, then turn right around and swear up and down that the same methodology is the only way to protect us from evil corporations.
And then there's the inconvenient fact that it is almost always government intervention that puts these corporations into their powerful positions in the first place...
A most dramatic placebo effect has been reported by Dr. Bruno Klopfer, a researcher involved in the testing of the drug Krebiozen. In 1950, Krebiozen had received sensational national publicity as a âoecureâ for cancer and was being tested by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the US Food and drug administration (FDA).
One of Dr. Klopfer's patients had lymphosarcoma, a generalized far-advanced malignancy involving the lymph nodes. The patient had huge tumor masses throughout his body and was in such desperate physical condition that he frequently had to take oxygen by mask, and fluid had to be removed from his chest every two days. When the patient discovered that Dr. Klopfer was involved in research on Krebiozen, he begged to be given Krebiozen treatments. Dr Klopfer did so, and the patientâ(TM)s recovery was startling. Within a short time the tumors had shrunk dramatically and the patient was able to resume a normal life, including flying a private plane.
Then as AMA and FDA reports of the negative results of Krebiozen started being publicized, the patient took a dramatic turn to the worse. Thinking the circumstances extreme enough to justify unusual measures, Klopfer, told his patient that he obtained a new, super-refined, double-strength Krebiozen, that would produce better results. Actually, the injections Klopfer gave were simply sterile water.. Yet the patientâ(TM)s recovery was even more remarkable.. Once again the tumor masses melted, chest fluid vanished, and he became ambulatory and went back to flying. The patient remained symptoms-free for two months. The patientâ(TM)s belief alone, independent of the value of the medication, produced his recovery.
Then further stories of the AMA and FDA's tests appeared in press: âoeNationwide tests show Krebiozen to be worthless drug treatment of cancer.â Within a few days the patient was dead.
That's one of the most famous examples. More research ought to be done into the power that belief can have over the body, because there is a lot of evidence for it, yet it would be very tricky: every individual's level of faith in each method of treatment is different and can be greatly affected by subtle body language given off by the doctor and hundreds of other factors. In other words, it is not a rational or clear-cut process, and therefore very hard to make scientific.
There's no need to defend yourself - the whole point of discussion is to further knowledge, and we both know more now than when we started.
We wouldn't be asking which of two mutually exclusive policy positions we should uphold, we'd be asking whether a law that meets the the only explicit constitutional requirements of bicameralism and presentment can be invalidated in toto by a prior procedural law.
I think you've hit the crux of the matter with that statement, and it's accurate to say that we are both only guessing at the outcome of a court's ruling. I, not knowing of the issue's existence, was unaware that I had made a guess in the first place.
Now knowing a little bit more about it, I still think that OSTA would be good to pass. The way I see it, if there's enough public pressure to get it passed in the first place, that same pressure would tend to keep congressmen from attaching a rider to the next bill down the line. Some "maverick" aware of repeal by implication may think about using it, forcing a court case. Naturally his or her name would soon be known to the public at large as the one who broke with OSTA, and he or she could kiss elected office goodbye no matter the outcome of the case. It is my opinion that the prospect of being thrown out entirely is enough to keep Congress in line for a number of years, and that those years would see a significant increase in the quality of both the laws coming out of Congress and the political discourse between the elected and the electorate.
If the law were overturned while its popularity remained, it would become clear that we do indeed need a Constitutional amendment. The movement for an amendment has to be a lot stronger than the movement for a law, and I believe the only way to get enough strength to pass an amendment in this case is to first get enough strength to pass a law. If the law isn't challenged, great! If it is challenged and falls, that event would act as a springboard for the population's support, getting many more people fired up than you could by starting out calling for something as rare as an amendment. OSTA is strategic legislation that, if passed, would have a very good chance of checkmating Congress into making a change desired by the people.
That's just my take on it, but I think it's a pretty rational one (assuming I haven't missed anything else!). If this chain of events seems rational to you, would you support OSTA even believing in its failure as a law? Right now support consists of getting the word out, calling your elected reps, and getting others to do the same. It's really a minimal effort for a potentially huge payoff, a cleaner Congress, and it doesn't feel like work: another function of this interesting conversation is to garner more attention and hopefully support from pseudo-random passers-by.
I'm not looking for a pledge or anything so cheesy, but I am interested in knowing how much more willing you are to take action, if at all.
Why should I have the burden and costs of recovering my money over and over and over again because Bank of Stupid (or 50 other banks I've never heard of and never did business with, and have no possible way of determining whether they are or have been a party to frauds like this) kept selling my credit card number to thieves?
Well, you shouldn't stop at blaming the bank. In fact, I'm not sure how much blame the bank deserves: the list had nothing but credit card numbers: no names or expiration dates. It was the credit card companies who processed the transactions without that information because they were such small amounts, so IMO they deserve more blame than the bank, and since you have a direct relationship to the card company you CAN hold them accountable. Or, rather, you could if the contract you signed to get the card didn't strip you of all your rights...
Maybe if we just passed a law stating that you can't sell personally assigned (CC#) or identifiable (Name/address/etc) information to others rather than continuously dancing around the issue, no matter how you received that information, nobody would worry about the cost of compliance, because the only cost would be not doing it.
This seems pretty reasonable at first glance. I'd have to think through the ramifications more fully before passing judgment. I do see a problem in that you'd have to give people the power to consent to such information sharing or sale, as there are lots of legitimate services that rely on being able to give your name and address to a third party (ebay and amazon, for instance). Once you put that in, though, what's to prevent a credit card company or a bank from putting that consent into all of its (generally unread) contracts? That seems to put you nearly back at square one.
I didn't think of the financial sector when you mentioned white collar crime, and this is the first I've heard of Canadian banks' stability. Interesting stuff.
I am of the opinion that what led to the bust was the boom, and that the speculation boom itself was due to a number of factors, not least being the Fed's artificially low interest rates and Congress' "mandate" for affordable housing. I see the entire "Systemic Differences" section of the article you linked as being more influential in the bubble and the bust than any lack of regulation. Canada's different outlook (and their regulations) kept their banks from participating heavily in the boom, so naturally the bust affected them less as well. My belief in a more fundamental cause for the crash sort of sidesteps any meaningful discussion about the financial regulation issue, so I'll focus more on the second half of your post.
Corporations reserve the right to lie about their products, defeating the purpose of the free market entirely. Regulations work - once the public pressure became too great, all of these items were regulated and outright banned in some cases.
They didn't have a right to lie about their products--they all committed fraud by claiming their products were safe when they knew otherwise, and they got caught. It wasn't the regulations that did the job, it was the public's awareness of the problem. If you know that lead paint is harmful especially to children, and you have children, are you going to paint your house with it? Of course not! Once the problem is discovered the market takes care of it on its own: people stop buying lead paint, and companies selling it either change their product or shrivel and die.
If regulations took no effort to follow (i.e. "don't put lead in your paint") then I'd be more okay with them. In reality, the regs are closer to "all of your paint must now be tested for lead," a process which costs money. That cost does two things: (1) raises the price of the good, since the cost of testing gets passed on to the consumer, and (2) crowds out small and medium-sized businesses who can't handle the new overhead of testing, while allowing supercorps with capital to burn to fill the vacuum.
For an example of recent horrible regulation, check out this piece on CPISA, last year's for-the-children lead scare response.
"Either they take all the children's books off the shelves," Associate Executive Director Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association told the Boston Phoenix, "or they ban children from the library."
No, I understand your argument; I'm just not convinced. I don't know much about the topic, so I did a modicum of research. I found a fascinating overview of repeal by implication and the rule against it on Google Books.
My reading of this,
To understand the rule against repeal by implication, Congress cannot bind a future Congress (or a later action by the same Congress). Under this rule, Congress is free to amend or repeal prior legislation as long as it does so directly and explicitly. Although it is also possible for one statute to implicitly amend or repeal a prior statute, it is firmly established that such "repeal by implication" is disfavored, and statutes must be construed to avoid this result whenever reasonably possible. (emphasis mine)
leads me to believe that OSTA will stand up just fine, and due to the nature of OSTA its repeal would require an explicit bill whose sole purpose is the repeal of OSTA. Anything else would run afoul of the rule against repeal by implication. The case law detailed in the link above stands in my favor.
I guess I'm having a hard time seeing how more privacy regs are going to change the fact that you, the victim, can't always follow the chain of cause and effect. As soon as those numbers start being used in fraudulent purchases, you have an existing mechanism for recovering your money. What more are you entitled to?
reducing fraud also translates to "reduced costs"
Good point. So as far as cost/benefit goes, it's a question of how much it costs companies and consumers to prosecute fraud versus how much it costs companies to comply with mandatory regulation, a cost which they will pass on to consumers.
This tripe is not insightful. GP was, because GP deals with the ethics of the situation and the pitfalls of relying on the "playing God" argument, while your post is baseless religion bashing. Look at the other comments: the vast majority of them say "this is a bad idea because it screws up natural selection." Yet you manage to find one of like five posts (in this case marginally) involving religion, probably the most insightful one at that, loosen your sphincter, and attach your bilious reflexive outpouring to it, starting a completely worthless thread and giving the extremists of both "camps" fuel for their fires of intolerance.
Great post. The more eyeballs that meet this info about the Fed the better.
Yes, HR 1207 is an easy bill for House Reps to support, but most of them would not have jumped on board without the fervent prodding done by members of their districts. OSTA could very well be a more difficult battle since it removes the chief vehicle for letting Congress take care of their special interests.
However, if enough people put up enough pressure, Congress is left with no choice. OSTA has widespread support amongst the population, and we're gearing up for more congressional elections. If OSTA is made into a big issue, one that gets spotlighted by the media, anyone running for Congress (including incumbents) will be forced to take a stance. I guarantee that the majority will go with the popular stance. Once they've done that we can hold them to it. The key is to get lots of people to call and to not stop calling until OSTA is a law.
If I am a consumer, what do I care about the employee of HooplaCorp skimming millions off the top of their profits? All I care about is that their HoopySloop works as advertised and has some standard of quality that measures up to what I paid for it. We already have agencies to investigate fraud and theft; are there reasons that those are not sufficient?
Can you perhaps give me an example or two of how corporate secrets or white collar criminals a) adversely affect me as a random consumer, and b) would be stopped or severely curtailed by more government regulations?
Understand, I know that a market with some level of regulation is more free than a rules-free market. I just tend to think that the mandatory regs ought not to extend beyond disallowing fraud and theft.
A BILL To prohibit the abuse of legislative power: by requiring that each bill or amendment hereinafter introduced (other than concurrent resolutions or appropriations bills within the jurisdictional authority of each subcommittee of each Appropriations Committee) be limited to only one subject, so as to end the practice of addressing more than one subject in a single bill; by requiring that each bill's single subject be descriptively expressed in the title thereto; by requiring each appropriation bill, including any supplemental appropriation bill, by amendment or otherwise, not to contain any general legislation or change of existing law not germane to the subject matter of said bill; by requiring each bill amending an existing statutory provision to set forth in full in the amendatory bill the section as it would read if the proposed amendment were adopted; by declaring that all bills enacted in violation of this Act shall be void, having no legal effect whatsoever, which should be treated as nullities by the American people, this Act being mandatory in purpose, not directory only.
The language is strong and unambiguous and rules out the possibility of being repealed by implication.
And now I'm convinced DownsizeDC are idiots. First, de novo is an appellate standard of review and has nothing to do with the original jurisdiction 5(g) grants.
You're telling the wrong person. Why don't you email someone from DownsizeDC with your concerns? If you've actually found something they missed, they'd be glad to hear about it, and if not they can tell you why the bill is sound. They're not infallible, but they do have a legal team working on this stuff; it's not just a bunch of amateurs like me.
The real fact is that protecting profits are far more important than protecting consumers for any business. The only agency that can compel a powerful organization to be honest is a policing authority, which is typically provided by the government. If you have a better idea that isn't based entirely on your own hallucinations and imaginary data, please let me know.
www.consumerreports.org
Reports on quality, including safety. They are not mandatory, so do not count as a policing authority, yet companies love their feedback and will do much to please them because consumers trust their reviews. They also, unlike government regulators, have a very good track record of being on the up-and-up.
So you've found out where the punch came from, and your linked article says that the sites have been ordered to pay up. Yeah, it sucks that it happened, but it seems like restitution is being made. What more do you want? Do you think that privacy regulation will really stop all fraudulent activity? If not then you have to consider the consequences of placing more hoops for companies to jump through with the benefit of reduced fraud, keeping in mind that megacorps can take it all in stride while small- and medium-sized businesses struggle. I am not prepared to make a call on regulation with regards to the privacy thing, though I generally disfavor regulation. It just seems like lots of pro-regulation people only see "reduced fraud" without "increased burden" which translates directly to "increased costs."
A topical anonymous first post is a rare occurrence.
The American Congress looks out for the political class (i.e. themselves) and for whoever lines their pockets. This is very hard to change.
Congress's preferred method for doing so is to attach unrelated unpopular measures to popular multi-hundred page bills. I don't believe that this clause is such a case, but it happens often enough and there are probably other unsavory tidbits hidden within this bill.
The only way Congress will stop such a practice is if we force them to. To that end, DownsizeDC has drawn up the One Subject at a Time Act. This bill would force Congress to bring every measure to a vote instead of burying them inside some behemoth legislation named "Rekindle The American Dream Act of 2009."
Public pressure works: see for example the 224 co-sponsors (over half the House) of The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, which you may not have even heard of yet. But the Campaign for Liberty organized a call-in campaign that has been running for a month, maybe a little longer. C4L has around 100,000 members, easily less than a thousandth of the population, and they've already got half the house behind their bill. The phone call is the most effective means of public pressure. OSTA will law by this time next year or sooner if you call your congressmen and get four friends to do the same.
OSTA is a bitter pill for Congress to swallow, yet you'll be hard pressed to find 10 average Americans against its principles. If just a hundredth of those who say "it sounds like a good idea" were to actually call and ask their congressmen to support it, the congressmen would have no choice.
I'm suggesting some higher level of civic engagement among people who want to live in a sane society, rather than the yell loudly about possibly scary things society that we have today
Despite being so often called a wacky fringe revolution, this is half of the purpose of the Campaign for Liberty, the other half being civic education. You might not agree with everything they're pushing for, but their effectiveness is undeniable. On the Real ID front, C4L members have been fighting hard at the state level to get blocking legislation passed, and in my home state there is even a class-action lawsuit being filed against the Department of Transportation for trying to sneak in Real ID requirements without citizens' knowledge or consent.
There is a bill that was introduced in the House, H.R. 1207, to audit the Federal Reserve, which fiscal conservatives believe is undermining the soundness of our currency through massive inflation. Through the effort of C4L members as well as other organizations like DownsizeDC, over half of the House has been pressed to sign on as co-sponsors, including more than 50 Democrats.
That level of engagement exists and is proving to be an active force in America. It's true that GP will never have his America back, because it's impossible to rewind the clock. It is entirely possible to get enough people excited about the good bits found in historical America to make sure they re-emerge in the future America, and even easier to get people fired up enough about bad legislation to do something about it. The message will win people over if it's a good one, but it requires organization to make people aware of it.
I think there's something about it in the FAQ. Funny comments tend to be low-hanging fruit, so they've gotten rid of the karma you got from them in order to encourage more thoughtful posts. I don't know if it works or not, but I don't like the misuse of Insightful et. al. either.
Shit, son, you think I'm done? You show your lack of wit 'cause I ain't even begun.
Y'all think you got me broken down and beat-ah but the truth is that I just don't like the heat-ah I got ways to run around all of your careful treatments evolution's bit shiftin' my genetic sequence so just wait until the autumn comes around, then we'll see who's runnin' in the breaking news again, because we mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply we mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply
Crossed species once (oink) crossed species twice (chirp) pick up some more alleles, I'll make you wear a mask the rest of your life which won't be long, 'cause I'm gettin' stronger my body count is rising, gonna outdo Mao Zedong with mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply
I wanna give a shout out to all the H1N1 strains--they may get some of us but they can't get all of us! Much love for my sibs in quarantine, keep hope alive!
The banks who have repaid TARP funds mostly consist of the banks that were strong-armed into taking the money in the first place. They've been itching to get rid of it since they took it, and they tried to give it back months ago but were told that they couldn't, because "then consumers would know which banks are fnord insolvent, and that would cause a crisis." Why the government changed their tune I don't know, but I would not be surprised if we don't see much more than twice what we've recovered so far (around $60 billion IIRC) because the banks who have yet to pay the money back are the ones who won't be able to.
Also keep in mind that TARP is worded to allow $750 billion worth of bailout at once. That is, as soon as money starts coming back in, it can be pushed right back out the door again. This is why I'm skeptical that they are using the conventional definition of "profit."
Regarding the bill for all of this, it's on its way as either tax increases if we're lucky or a drop in purchasing power if we're not. The third option, to stop spending ridiculous amounts of money overseas and on defense (read: offense) and use that money to pay off the debt, well...that's just not supported by the people in power.
Ah, so it was a third option, and others appear to have gotten it so I guess I was just slow. Your statement didn't seem stupid, only a little impenetrable, but then again I'm an American;)
It's interesting to me that your issue with the summary author is that he implies that the US approach is better than the EU approach. I guess my thought was that's his opinion and he's entitled to it. He didn't have to state it so condescendingly though, and the bit about deplaning was petulant. I disliked that and not the fact that he had an opinion, so assumed that's what your focus was on in your response. I am not condescending and petulant (unless provoked) and, thinking that I was being lumped into that mold, was provoked into becoming condescending and petulant. Mea culpa.
To me it seems only natural that an American would tend to think his land's ways superior and a European likewise, though I myself often hesitate to paint such broad strokes.
Seriously, how is the parent insightful? All I get from it is "Americans have this attitude that they can do whatever they want; that personal freedom trumps everything else," or maybe "Americans believe that Europeans believe otherwise." I can't figure out which of those (if not a third option) is implied, I'm given no reason to care, and I'm left with the impression that whatever generalization the parent is accusing Americans of perpetrating, there is at least one that is being applied to Americans here as well.
This is not to slight the parent poster for not providing any real insight--the original intent may have been a one-off joke or something. It is Ye Mods who have failed by giving it a serious moderation when without additional context it deserves a funny one if anything.
Adrian Lopez, if you care to elaborate on your original statement, I for one would be interested in reading it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more than a stretch to call Temple University "downtown Philly" since it's ~2 miles north of Center City. North Philly is not a good area (undertatement), neither is southwest or deep south. Center City, its immediate surroundings, and West Philly (where UPenn is) are all very good places to live and do not share Temple's problems.
The practice of blaming problems on deregulation while not making clear what that deregulation was or how far it went has emerged as one of the chief propaganda tools of centralization proponents.
I have to give them credit: while it's intellectually dishonest, it provides a concise sound bite that takes a lot less time to assert than to refute. They can say, "Such and such worked okay if not great, then they deregulated it, and now it's a big honking mess!" and be correct on the face of things. Dig deeper, as you say, and you find that things worked only "okay" instead of "well" because government got involved decades ago, and that the deregulation they're talking about was incomplete and often designed by those who would stand to benefit most from picking and choosing which rules to cut and which to keep.
The whole reason this works is because we as a culture have grown to rely overmuch on abstraction and generalization--very useful tools--without ever bothering to descend back down the ladder of concepts to the concrete facts they are (or used to be) tethered to. This applies equally across the board, and it's quite sobering to see once you train yourself to look for it: much of our political and social discourse has no substance at all. Perhaps I'm being too harsh in calling users of such phrasing "intellectually dishonest," as many likely don't know that that is what they are doing. "Intellectually lazy" is probably more appropriate.
Exactly. I'm always slightly baffled at how people can rail against "security theater," saying that it causes massive inconvenience to honest people and is often worse than useless in preventing bad people from doing bad things, then turn right around and swear up and down that the same methodology is the only way to protect us from evil corporations.
And then there's the inconvenient fact that it is almost always government intervention that puts these corporations into their powerful positions in the first place...
*sigh*
Widely reported, verified stories prove otherwise.
A most dramatic placebo effect has been reported by Dr. Bruno Klopfer, a researcher involved in the testing of the drug Krebiozen. In 1950, Krebiozen had received sensational national publicity as a âoecureâ for cancer and was being tested by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the US Food and drug administration (FDA).
One of Dr. Klopfer's patients had lymphosarcoma, a generalized far-advanced malignancy involving the lymph nodes. The patient had huge tumor masses throughout his body and was in such desperate physical condition that he frequently had to take oxygen by mask, and fluid had to be removed from his chest every two days. When the patient discovered that Dr. Klopfer was involved in research on Krebiozen, he begged to be given Krebiozen treatments. Dr Klopfer did so, and the patientâ(TM)s recovery was startling. Within a short time the tumors had shrunk dramatically and the patient was able to resume a normal life, including flying a private plane.
Then as AMA and FDA reports of the negative results of Krebiozen started being publicized, the patient took a dramatic turn to the worse. Thinking the circumstances extreme enough to justify unusual measures, Klopfer, told his patient that he obtained a new, super-refined, double-strength Krebiozen, that would produce better results. Actually, the injections Klopfer gave were simply sterile water.. Yet the patientâ(TM)s recovery was even more remarkable.. Once again the tumor masses melted, chest fluid vanished, and he became ambulatory and went back to flying. The patient remained symptoms-free for two months. The patientâ(TM)s belief alone, independent of the value of the medication, produced his recovery.
Then further stories of the AMA and FDA's tests appeared in press: âoeNationwide tests show Krebiozen to be worthless drug treatment of cancer.â Within a few days the patient was dead.
That's one of the most famous examples. More research ought to be done into the power that belief can have over the body, because there is a lot of evidence for it, yet it would be very tricky: every individual's level of faith in each method of treatment is different and can be greatly affected by subtle body language given off by the doctor and hundreds of other factors. In other words, it is not a rational or clear-cut process, and therefore very hard to make scientific.
There's no need to defend yourself - the whole point of discussion is to further knowledge, and we both know more now than when we started.
We wouldn't be asking which of two mutually exclusive policy positions we should uphold, we'd be asking whether a law that meets the the only explicit constitutional requirements of bicameralism and presentment can be invalidated in toto by a prior procedural law.
I think you've hit the crux of the matter with that statement, and it's accurate to say that we are both only guessing at the outcome of a court's ruling. I, not knowing of the issue's existence, was unaware that I had made a guess in the first place.
Now knowing a little bit more about it, I still think that OSTA would be good to pass. The way I see it, if there's enough public pressure to get it passed in the first place, that same pressure would tend to keep congressmen from attaching a rider to the next bill down the line. Some "maverick" aware of repeal by implication may think about using it, forcing a court case. Naturally his or her name would soon be known to the public at large as the one who broke with OSTA, and he or she could kiss elected office goodbye no matter the outcome of the case. It is my opinion that the prospect of being thrown out entirely is enough to keep Congress in line for a number of years, and that those years would see a significant increase in the quality of both the laws coming out of Congress and the political discourse between the elected and the electorate.
If the law were overturned while its popularity remained, it would become clear that we do indeed need a Constitutional amendment. The movement for an amendment has to be a lot stronger than the movement for a law, and I believe the only way to get enough strength to pass an amendment in this case is to first get enough strength to pass a law. If the law isn't challenged, great! If it is challenged and falls, that event would act as a springboard for the population's support, getting many more people fired up than you could by starting out calling for something as rare as an amendment. OSTA is strategic legislation that, if passed, would have a very good chance of checkmating Congress into making a change desired by the people.
That's just my take on it, but I think it's a pretty rational one (assuming I haven't missed anything else!). If this chain of events seems rational to you, would you support OSTA even believing in its failure as a law? Right now support consists of getting the word out, calling your elected reps, and getting others to do the same. It's really a minimal effort for a potentially huge payoff, a cleaner Congress, and it doesn't feel like work: another function of this interesting conversation is to garner more attention and hopefully support from pseudo-random passers-by.
I'm not looking for a pledge or anything so cheesy, but I am interested in knowing how much more willing you are to take action, if at all.
Why should I have the burden and costs of recovering my money over and over and over again because Bank of Stupid (or 50 other banks I've never heard of and never did business with, and have no possible way of determining whether they are or have been a party to frauds like this) kept selling my credit card number to thieves?
Well, you shouldn't stop at blaming the bank. In fact, I'm not sure how much blame the bank deserves: the list had nothing but credit card numbers: no names or expiration dates. It was the credit card companies who processed the transactions without that information because they were such small amounts, so IMO they deserve more blame than the bank, and since you have a direct relationship to the card company you CAN hold them accountable. Or, rather, you could if the contract you signed to get the card didn't strip you of all your rights...
Maybe if we just passed a law stating that you can't sell personally assigned (CC#) or identifiable (Name/address/etc) information to others rather than continuously dancing around the issue, no matter how you received that information, nobody would worry about the cost of compliance, because the only cost would be not doing it.
This seems pretty reasonable at first glance. I'd have to think through the ramifications more fully before passing judgment. I do see a problem in that you'd have to give people the power to consent to such information sharing or sale, as there are lots of legitimate services that rely on being able to give your name and address to a third party (ebay and amazon, for instance). Once you put that in, though, what's to prevent a credit card company or a bank from putting that consent into all of its (generally unread) contracts? That seems to put you nearly back at square one.
It's a tricky issue.
Thanks, I appreciate your response.
I didn't think of the financial sector when you mentioned white collar crime, and this is the first I've heard of Canadian banks' stability. Interesting stuff.
I am of the opinion that what led to the bust was the boom, and that the speculation boom itself was due to a number of factors, not least being the Fed's artificially low interest rates and Congress' "mandate" for affordable housing. I see the entire "Systemic Differences" section of the article you linked as being more influential in the bubble and the bust than any lack of regulation. Canada's different outlook (and their regulations) kept their banks from participating heavily in the boom, so naturally the bust affected them less as well. My belief in a more fundamental cause for the crash sort of sidesteps any meaningful discussion about the financial regulation issue, so I'll focus more on the second half of your post.
Corporations reserve the right to lie about their products, defeating the purpose of the free market entirely. Regulations work - once the public pressure became too great, all of these items were regulated and outright banned in some cases.
They didn't have a right to lie about their products--they all committed fraud by claiming their products were safe when they knew otherwise, and they got caught. It wasn't the regulations that did the job, it was the public's awareness of the problem. If you know that lead paint is harmful especially to children, and you have children, are you going to paint your house with it? Of course not! Once the problem is discovered the market takes care of it on its own: people stop buying lead paint, and companies selling it either change their product or shrivel and die.
If regulations took no effort to follow (i.e. "don't put lead in your paint") then I'd be more okay with them. In reality, the regs are closer to "all of your paint must now be tested for lead," a process which costs money. That cost does two things: (1) raises the price of the good, since the cost of testing gets passed on to the consumer, and (2) crowds out small and medium-sized businesses who can't handle the new overhead of testing, while allowing supercorps with capital to burn to fill the vacuum.
For an example of recent horrible regulation, check out this piece on CPISA, last year's for-the-children lead scare response.
"Either they take all the children's books off the shelves," Associate Executive Director Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association told the Boston Phoenix, "or they ban children from the library."
No, I understand your argument; I'm just not convinced. I don't know much about the topic, so I did a modicum of research. I found a fascinating overview of repeal by implication and the rule against it on Google Books.
My reading of this,
To understand the rule against repeal by implication, Congress cannot bind a future Congress (or a later action by the same Congress). Under this rule, Congress is free to amend or repeal prior legislation as long as it does so directly and explicitly. Although it is also possible for one statute to implicitly amend or repeal a prior statute, it is firmly established that such "repeal by implication" is disfavored, and statutes must be construed to avoid this result whenever reasonably possible. (emphasis mine)
leads me to believe that OSTA will stand up just fine, and due to the nature of OSTA its repeal would require an explicit bill whose sole purpose is the repeal of OSTA. Anything else would run afoul of the rule against repeal by implication. The case law detailed in the link above stands in my favor.
Why do you believe differently?
I guess I'm having a hard time seeing how more privacy regs are going to change the fact that you, the victim, can't always follow the chain of cause and effect. As soon as those numbers start being used in fraudulent purchases, you have an existing mechanism for recovering your money. What more are you entitled to?
reducing fraud also translates to "reduced costs"
Good point. So as far as cost/benefit goes, it's a question of how much it costs companies and consumers to prosecute fraud versus how much it costs companies to comply with mandatory regulation, a cost which they will pass on to consumers.
This tripe is not insightful. GP was, because GP deals with the ethics of the situation and the pitfalls of relying on the "playing God" argument, while your post is baseless religion bashing. Look at the other comments: the vast majority of them say "this is a bad idea because it screws up natural selection." Yet you manage to find one of like five posts (in this case marginally) involving religion, probably the most insightful one at that, loosen your sphincter, and attach your bilious reflexive outpouring to it, starting a completely worthless thread and giving the extremists of both "camps" fuel for their fires of intolerance.
I have no mod points, so welcome to my foes list.
Great post. The more eyeballs that meet this info about the Fed the better.
Yes, HR 1207 is an easy bill for House Reps to support, but most of them would not have jumped on board without the fervent prodding done by members of their districts. OSTA could very well be a more difficult battle since it removes the chief vehicle for letting Congress take care of their special interests.
However, if enough people put up enough pressure, Congress is left with no choice. OSTA has widespread support amongst the population, and we're gearing up for more congressional elections. If OSTA is made into a big issue, one that gets spotlighted by the media, anyone running for Congress (including incumbents) will be forced to take a stance. I guarantee that the majority will go with the popular stance. Once they've done that we can hold them to it. The key is to get lots of people to call and to not stop calling until OSTA is a law.
If I am a consumer, what do I care about the employee of HooplaCorp skimming millions off the top of their profits? All I care about is that their HoopySloop works as advertised and has some standard of quality that measures up to what I paid for it. We already have agencies to investigate fraud and theft; are there reasons that those are not sufficient?
Can you perhaps give me an example or two of how corporate secrets or white collar criminals a) adversely affect me as a random consumer, and b) would be stopped or severely curtailed by more government regulations?
Understand, I know that a market with some level of regulation is more free than a rules-free market. I just tend to think that the mandatory regs ought not to extend beyond disallowing fraud and theft.
The summary of the bill reads as follows:
A BILL
To prohibit the abuse of legislative power: by requiring that each bill or amendment hereinafter introduced (other than concurrent resolutions or appropriations bills within the jurisdictional authority of each subcommittee of each Appropriations Committee) be limited to only one subject, so as to end the practice of addressing more than one subject in a single bill; by requiring that each bill's single subject be descriptively expressed in the title thereto; by requiring each appropriation bill, including any supplemental appropriation bill, by amendment or otherwise, not to contain any general legislation or change of existing law not germane to the subject matter of said bill; by requiring each bill amending an existing statutory provision to set forth in full in the amendatory bill the section as it would read if the proposed amendment were adopted; by declaring that all bills enacted in violation of this Act shall be void, having no legal effect whatsoever, which should be treated as nullities by the American people, this Act being mandatory in purpose, not directory only.
The language is strong and unambiguous and rules out the possibility of being repealed by implication.
And now I'm convinced DownsizeDC are idiots. First, de novo is an appellate standard of review and has nothing to do with the original jurisdiction 5(g) grants.
You're telling the wrong person. Why don't you email someone from DownsizeDC with your concerns? If you've actually found something they missed, they'd be glad to hear about it, and if not they can tell you why the bill is sound. They're not infallible, but they do have a legal team working on this stuff; it's not just a bunch of amateurs like me.
The real fact is that protecting profits are far more important than protecting consumers for any business. The only agency that can compel a powerful organization to be honest is a policing authority, which is typically provided by the government. If you have a better idea that isn't based entirely on your own hallucinations and imaginary data, please let me know.
www.consumerreports.org
Reports on quality, including safety. They are not mandatory, so do not count as a policing authority, yet companies love their feedback and will do much to please them because consumers trust their reviews. They also, unlike government regulators, have a very good track record of being on the up-and-up.
So you've found out where the punch came from, and your linked article says that the sites have been ordered to pay up. Yeah, it sucks that it happened, but it seems like restitution is being made. What more do you want? Do you think that privacy regulation will really stop all fraudulent activity? If not then you have to consider the consequences of placing more hoops for companies to jump through with the benefit of reduced fraud, keeping in mind that megacorps can take it all in stride while small- and medium-sized businesses struggle. I am not prepared to make a call on regulation with regards to the privacy thing, though I generally disfavor regulation. It just seems like lots of pro-regulation people only see "reduced fraud" without "increased burden" which translates directly to "increased costs."
A topical anonymous first post is a rare occurrence.
The American Congress looks out for the political class (i.e. themselves) and for whoever lines their pockets. This is very hard to change.
Congress's preferred method for doing so is to attach unrelated unpopular measures to popular multi-hundred page bills. I don't believe that this clause is such a case, but it happens often enough and there are probably other unsavory tidbits hidden within this bill.
The only way Congress will stop such a practice is if we force them to. To that end, DownsizeDC has drawn up the One Subject at a Time Act. This bill would force Congress to bring every measure to a vote instead of burying them inside some behemoth legislation named "Rekindle The American Dream Act of 2009."
Public pressure works: see for example the 224 co-sponsors (over half the House) of The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, which you may not have even heard of yet. But the Campaign for Liberty organized a call-in campaign that has been running for a month, maybe a little longer. C4L has around 100,000 members, easily less than a thousandth of the population, and they've already got half the house behind their bill. The phone call is the most effective means of public pressure. OSTA will law by this time next year or sooner if you call your congressmen and get four friends to do the same.
OSTA is a bitter pill for Congress to swallow, yet you'll be hard pressed to find 10 average Americans against its principles. If just a hundredth of those who say "it sounds like a good idea" were to actually call and ask their congressmen to support it, the congressmen would have no choice.
Seriously. Call. Slashdot 'em.
I'm suggesting some higher level of civic engagement among people who want to live in a sane society, rather than the yell loudly about possibly scary things society that we have today
Despite being so often called a wacky fringe revolution, this is half of the purpose of the Campaign for Liberty, the other half being civic education. You might not agree with everything they're pushing for, but their effectiveness is undeniable. On the Real ID front, C4L members have been fighting hard at the state level to get blocking legislation passed, and in my home state there is even a class-action lawsuit being filed against the Department of Transportation for trying to sneak in Real ID requirements without citizens' knowledge or consent.
There is a bill that was introduced in the House, H.R. 1207, to audit the Federal Reserve, which fiscal conservatives believe is undermining the soundness of our currency through massive inflation. Through the effort of C4L members as well as other organizations like DownsizeDC, over half of the House has been pressed to sign on as co-sponsors, including more than 50 Democrats.
That level of engagement exists and is proving to be an active force in America. It's true that GP will never have his America back, because it's impossible to rewind the clock. It is entirely possible to get enough people excited about the good bits found in historical America to make sure they re-emerge in the future America, and even easier to get people fired up enough about bad legislation to do something about it. The message will win people over if it's a good one, but it requires organization to make people aware of it.
I think there's something about it in the FAQ. Funny comments tend to be low-hanging fruit, so they've gotten rid of the karma you got from them in order to encourage more thoughtful posts. I don't know if it works or not, but I don't like the misuse of Insightful et. al. either.
Shit, son,
you think I'm done?
You show your lack of wit 'cause I ain't even begun.
Y'all think you got me broken down and beat-ah
but the truth is that I just don't like the heat-ah
I got ways to run around all of your careful treatments
evolution's bit shiftin' my genetic sequence
so just wait until the autumn comes around, then
we'll see who's runnin' in the breaking news again, because we
mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply we
mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply
Crossed species once (oink)
crossed species twice (chirp)
pick up some more alleles, I'll make you wear a mask the rest of your life
which won't be long, 'cause
I'm gettin' stronger
my body count is rising, gonna outdo Mao Zedong with
mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply
mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply
mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply
mutate, mutate and multiply, multiply
I wanna give a shout out to all the H1N1 strains--they may get some of us but they can't get all of us! Much love for my sibs in quarantine, keep hope alive!
"This is a farewell kiss, you dog!"
The banks who have repaid TARP funds mostly consist of the banks that were strong-armed into taking the money in the first place. They've been itching to get rid of it since they took it, and they tried to give it back months ago but were told that they couldn't, because "then consumers would know which banks are fnord insolvent, and that would cause a crisis." Why the government changed their tune I don't know, but I would not be surprised if we don't see much more than twice what we've recovered so far (around $60 billion IIRC) because the banks who have yet to pay the money back are the ones who won't be able to.
Also keep in mind that TARP is worded to allow $750 billion worth of bailout at once. That is, as soon as money starts coming back in, it can be pushed right back out the door again. This is why I'm skeptical that they are using the conventional definition of "profit."
Regarding the bill for all of this, it's on its way as either tax increases if we're lucky or a drop in purchasing power if we're not. The third option, to stop spending ridiculous amounts of money overseas and on defense (read: offense) and use that money to pay off the debt, well...that's just not supported by the people in power.
Except that they would probably have written "Evar."
Ah, so it was a third option, and others appear to have gotten it so I guess I was just slow. Your statement didn't seem stupid, only a little impenetrable, but then again I'm an American ;)
It's interesting to me that your issue with the summary author is that he implies that the US approach is better than the EU approach. I guess my thought was that's his opinion and he's entitled to it. He didn't have to state it so condescendingly though, and the bit about deplaning was petulant. I disliked that and not the fact that he had an opinion, so assumed that's what your focus was on in your response. I am not condescending and petulant (unless provoked) and, thinking that I was being lumped into that mold, was provoked into becoming condescending and petulant. Mea culpa.
To me it seems only natural that an American would tend to think his land's ways superior and a European likewise, though I myself often hesitate to paint such broad strokes.
Lemme' guess... you're an American.
Lemme guess...you're not.
I can has +4 Insightful too?
Seriously, how is the parent insightful? All I get from it is "Americans have this attitude that they can do whatever they want; that personal freedom trumps everything else," or maybe "Americans believe that Europeans believe otherwise." I can't figure out which of those (if not a third option) is implied, I'm given no reason to care, and I'm left with the impression that whatever generalization the parent is accusing Americans of perpetrating, there is at least one that is being applied to Americans here as well.
This is not to slight the parent poster for not providing any real insight--the original intent may have been a one-off joke or something. It is Ye Mods who have failed by giving it a serious moderation when without additional context it deserves a funny one if anything.
Adrian Lopez, if you care to elaborate on your original statement, I for one would be interested in reading it.
At first glance, I read:
"The gist of the accident appears pretty clear: Air France Flight 447 was victimized by a terrorist storm."
Hurray for media saturation, I guess.