You can search for the New York State Sex Offender Registration Act to find out what that is.
I checked the postings to find horror stories of 20-year-old guys busted for having sex with their 16-year-old girlfriends, but I couldn't find any.
These guys seem to be real creeps, having sex with 13-year-old girls, 9-year-old boys, etc.
I wonder what the recidivism rate is. Unless it's very low I wouldn't feel safe letting them out at all.
If they really are likely to re-offend, I'd like to see them kept in a non-punitive, least-restrictive environment. Same with anybody who's convicted of crimes that are a danger to society. Violent crimes too.
But then we'd need rational laws, and I don't see that anywhere on the horizon.
Actually, a liberal arts education is a good preparation for doing practical things.
Look at the biographies of the Nobel laureates in medicine or chemistry. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/ A lot of them were liberal arts majors, before they switched to science. For example, Eric Kandel. The old European scientists knew the value of a broad education. When things weren't going according to the textbook, they knew how to think it out.
They knew how to think.
(BTW, Steve Jobs took a course in calligraphy during his dropout days, and it turned out to be damn useful in designing the first Macintosh. That's why he put all those typefaces in.)
We used to have big demonstrations, but it's hard to get them together any more.
One of the problems is that our "leaders" don't encourage big demonstrations. The unions, the politicians, want to control everything.
When the Ukranian Supreme Court gave an election result that the U.S. and its sponsored Ukranian party didn't like, they organized a million demonstrators to show up in front of the Supreme Court and protest.
When the U.S. Supreme Court violated the Constitution and gave the election to George Bush over Al Gore in 2000, the Democratic Party just accepted it.
As the socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs said, you can't depend on leaders. You have to lead yourself. Of course they put him in jail.
When I went down there and talked to people, the one issue that kept coming up repeatedly was economic injustice.
They repeatedly cited statistics that 1% of the population has a disproportionate share of the income and wealth. If you want specific numbers and definitions, go to Paul Krugman's column in the NYT.
If you want a specific goal, it's to eliminate that injustice. People said we should be more like Finland, which has essentially no poverty.
If you want strategy -- that's what they're discussing. It's a diverse group and they don't all agree on everything. They're not sure what to do. They have to figure it out. It took a while for the American revolution to figure out what they were going to do.
If you're not comfortable with that -- sorry. It's their movement, and they can run it the way they want.
If you have a better idea, start your own demonstration.
The only debts they won't let you walk away from are the ones owed to the GOVERNMENT itself (such as those Federal student loan debts, or tax debts owed to the IRS).
Actually it's even worse than that. You can't walk away from loans owed to a private bank and guaranteed by the government. If you were borrowing from the government, a non-profit organization, they'd design loans to give you the best chance of graduating and contributing to the economy. If you borrown from a private bank, they design loans that make the most profit for them (high compound interest), regardless of the risk (2-year vocational colleges like chef schools).
Furthermore, government is perpetuating the LIE that spending loads of money for a "good education" is the wisest financial move you can make as a young person. Reality is further and further from the truth, as the big colleges and universities prove all the time, burying students in debt while they're unable to get good paying jobs with the diploma they worked so hard to get.
That's a good point. Most of these loans start with a 17-year-old who is below the age of consent for sex, agreeing to take a loan that they don't understand, with worse consequences than sex, on the urging of college admissions counselors that everybody does it and of course you're going to take a loan, and you'll be able to pay it off when you graduate.
There's an element of fraud, which I think excuses some of the responsibility for paying it back. College loans should have the same bankruptcy laws everybody else has.
The real problem is that as soon as you elect a mouse, he turns into a cat.
Now you're thinking.
Mouseland (As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944)
(You can listed to Tommy tell this story in his own words in our Audio Files section )
It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do.
They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.
Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are.
Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.
All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats.
Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever. And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.
You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.
Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!"
So they put him in jail.
But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea.
Then why aren't the protesting their University for putting them tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that isn't worth a tenth of that?
"Wall Street" is actually what William Buckley would call a "synecdouce" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche. They're not exactly protesting against Wall Street (why would you protest against a literal street, anyway? Don't you understand metaphor?). They're protesting against the financial establishment.
As Naomi Klein and others have pointed out, the financial industry has taken over the financing of education, and turned it into a profit center for themselves. This is similar to he way they've taken over the health care industry, the housing industry, etc.
In fact, there was a workshop at Zucotti Park on student loans. They're organizing.
The fact they are blaming Wall St, which has absolutely nothing to do with their degrees' cost, shows their university did not provide them with the necessary critical thinking skills to make it in the world.
Why is it that people always throw out charges that can more accurately be applied to themselves?
1) What are your problems? Not some random vague laundry list like "Wall street is bad," or "The rich suck." A short, specific, list of the things you believe are big enough problems that they warrant protesting over.
2) What shall we do about them? Just whining that there are problems is not useful. Propose solutions. Real, workable, solutions. Understand what the tradeoffs for those solutions are (all actions have cost) and be ok with that.
I spent a day talking to people in Zucotti Park (otherwise known as Occupied Wall Street). They told me that they were in the process of deciding their strategies. That's the big job right now. Democracy is tedious. (The fact that the police wouldn't let them use a sound system didn't make it any easier.)
If you want a formal program with goals and outlines, try the Communist Party. They're better organized. They're up by Union Square.
If you can't identify what it is your goals are and how you might go about achieving them, then I can't really support you because I don't know what I'd be supporting. Also I don't think there is much chance of success.
It doesn't sound like this is the movement for you.
If you ever decide that your way isn't working, we'll be around. Look for the red flag.
I blame Bloomberg for a lot of abuses against the First Amendment. He did everything he could to prevent the two big demonstrations against the Iraq war, including not letting the demonstrators rally in Central Park, on the bullshit excuse that it would harm the grass.
The one that annoyed me the most was a demonstration in support of single payer health care. This wasn't an unwashed rabble, we had local Congressmen like Jerrold Nadler speak. The Bloomberg Administration gave them a permit to hold a rally on 7th Ave. between 41st and 42nd -- on the sidewalk. The demonstration went down 7th Ave. for blocks, but they still had to stay on the sidewalk, on both sides of 7th Ave. The police let traffic -- buses and trucks -- drive through the middle of the demonstration. If you were on the opposite side of the street, or down the street, you couldn't hear what the speakers were saying.
But get this -- Bloomberg closed down 7th Ave. and Broadway above 42nd St. for his pedestrian mall. So on the opposite side of 42nd St., 7th Ave. was closed to traffic for several block, until it crossed Broadway, which was also closed to traffic. We could have held the demonstration on the north side of 42nd St., gathered together on one block, and heard what the speakers were saying. Instead, they had tourists spread out on chairs.
I think the message is that you shouldn't get permits. You should just exercise your constitutional rights to demonstrate in a reasonable manner. The only reason for the permit is to make your legal expression more convenient for the demonstrators and the cops, but if the Mayor's office doesn't cooperate, and only issues illegally over-strict permits, there's no benefit to the demonstrators and they have a right to demonstrate without a permit.
And it seems as if you're just as likely to get arrested with or without a permit.
You should have known when the Democrats at their convention in Boston herded demonstrators off the street, and restricted them to a "free speech zone" surrounded by barbed wire, that the free speech wouldn't be the Obama Administration's greatest accomplishment.
Cynical as I sometimes am, I am impressed by the generosity, sense of community and effectiveness of the Spokane Project Access. I'm going to file this away for future reference.
However, it's not correct to say that people are doing this without the federal government. Two-thirds of its funding comes from the federal and local government.
Project Access has received new federal grant funding for 2 years now with the help of Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers, and Sen. Patty Murray.
According to the pie chart on P. 21 of the latest annual report, Project Access gets 32% of its money from an HRSA Federal grant, and 31% of its funding from city and county government.
This is the way charities work nowadays. The federal government does the heavy lifting, and the private charities fill in the cracks.
There are many great private charities around the country, but they always say that they need the federal government too and can't make up for the federal government.
I'm also surprised that there wasn't more media coverage about it. This is the kind of thing that the Journal of the American Medical Association used to love to write about.
Project Access, for all its accomplishments, is funded by wealthy contributors and depends on volunteers for a large part of its services.
Volunteers can only do so much. For medical care, if more people find out about it, they will quickly get swamped.
I wonder what city you're in that can provide top-notch care for everyone who can't afford it -- unless they're covering most of it with Medicaid.
One of the big reasons the American Medical Association finally accepted Medicare and Medicaid is that those programs paid them for work that they used to write off as charity. The volunteer hospitals and health organizations will be the first to tell you that they can't do it all themselves.
I agree with you in general but I would make certain subtle distinctions.
You have a *right* to have a peaceful demonstration. That doesn't mean the government will follow the law and let you exercise that right.
The Bill of Rights doesn't doesn't *give* you the right to free expression. It merely *recognizes* that right. If you want to exercise your rights, you have to fight for them.
How can you have a peaceful demonstration (with or without a permit) while being beaten by the NYPD?
This means that according to the Constitution you must cease any and all protest or other assembly when threatened with violence (that revokes your right to assemble.)
You have a right to peaceably assemble. Maybe your demonstration won't stay peaceable when somebody else attacks you, but your peaceable assembly continues to be legal. If the cops attack you for exercising your constitutional rights, you still haven't broken the law. That's why if they want to prosecute you, they have to lie and claim you were violent, obstructing the street or committing some other, different crime.
Of course the attacker would be acting unconstitutionally (you had a right to be there,) but good luck suing them. They can always say that you were preventing some street peddler from peddling. There are too many laws on the books and most of them are only useful to stick it to you when the police needs you taken out.
Surprisingly, when the ACLU and other lawyers sue the police for not allowing demonstrators to exercise their rights, and for beating the protesters up, they sometimes win. They don't win often, but they do win. There are a few maverick judges out there who do uphold the Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As long as they're peaceful, and as long as they don't block traffic, they have a right to assemble and demonstrate. Permits are merely a convenience for the police and demonstrators to coordinate things. But if the police are uncooperative, as the NYC police have been under the Bloomberg Administration, you have a right to have a peaceful demonstration without the permit.
Permits are not required to hold a demonstration. Demonstrators are required only to be peaceful and not disrupt traffic.
Permits are only for the mutual convenience of the police and the demonstrators, and if the police are uncooperative (as they frequently are in NYC with demonstrators who criticize government policies) the demonstrators can have their peaceful, non-disruptive demonstration without a permit or police permission.
The First Amendment is always worth rereading:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If I were paying that kind of money, and a teacher gave me a C, I'd go to the dean's office and complain, and I'd expect that grade to be raised. As I understand it, that happens a lot these days.
If you're in the UK, maybe you can answer some questions that I've been wondering about.
As I understand it, the UK is the only European, or EU, country that has raised its tuition to a significant amount. True?
As I understand it, the UK has the greatest inequality (Gini coefficients, etc.) and the least social mobility (correlation of parents' income with children's income) of any EU country. Some economists say it's as bad as the US. (There was an article about that in Science by Samuel Bowles if anybody wants to look it up.) True?
I did like the way UK students were demonstrating in the streets against the tuition raises. Maybe that will serve as a model to students in less politically sophisticated countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they're not allowed to post Level 1 sex offenders online.
http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/SomsSUBDirectory/search_index.jsp
You can search for the New York State Sex Offender Registration Act to find out what that is.
I checked the postings to find horror stories of 20-year-old guys busted for having sex with their 16-year-old girlfriends, but I couldn't find any.
These guys seem to be real creeps, having sex with 13-year-old girls, 9-year-old boys, etc.
I wonder what the recidivism rate is. Unless it's very low I wouldn't feel safe letting them out at all.
If they really are likely to re-offend, I'd like to see them kept in a non-punitive, least-restrictive environment. Same with anybody who's convicted of crimes that are a danger to society. Violent crimes too.
But then we'd need rational laws, and I don't see that anywhere on the horizon.
Methusalah lived 900 years,
Methusalah lived 900 years,
If you call that livin'
when no gal is givin'
to no man that's 900 years.
Actually, a liberal arts education is a good preparation for doing practical things.
Look at the biographies of the Nobel laureates in medicine or chemistry. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/ A lot of them were liberal arts majors, before they switched to science. For example, Eric Kandel. The old European scientists knew the value of a broad education. When things weren't going according to the textbook, they knew how to think it out.
They knew how to think.
(BTW, Steve Jobs took a course in calligraphy during his dropout days, and it turned out to be damn useful in designing the first Macintosh. That's why he put all those typefaces in.)
Feel free to come down to Zucotti Park and discuss it with them.
We've got a problem with demonstrations.
We used to have big demonstrations, but it's hard to get them together any more.
One of the problems is that our "leaders" don't encourage big demonstrations. The unions, the politicians, want to control everything.
When the Ukranian Supreme Court gave an election result that the U.S. and its sponsored Ukranian party didn't like, they organized a million demonstrators to show up in front of the Supreme Court and protest.
When the U.S. Supreme Court violated the Constitution and gave the election to George Bush over Al Gore in 2000, the Democratic Party just accepted it.
As the socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs said, you can't depend on leaders. You have to lead yourself. Of course they put him in jail.
When I went down there and talked to people, the one issue that kept coming up repeatedly was economic injustice.
They repeatedly cited statistics that 1% of the population has a disproportionate share of the income and wealth. If you want specific numbers and definitions, go to Paul Krugman's column in the NYT.
If you want a specific goal, it's to eliminate that injustice. People said we should be more like Finland, which has essentially no poverty.
If you want strategy -- that's what they're discussing. It's a diverse group and they don't all agree on everything. They're not sure what to do. They have to figure it out. It took a while for the American revolution to figure out what they were going to do.
If you're not comfortable with that -- sorry. It's their movement, and they can run it the way they want.
If you have a better idea, start your own demonstration.
The only debts they won't let you walk away from are the ones owed to the GOVERNMENT itself (such as those Federal student loan debts, or tax debts owed to the IRS).
Actually it's even worse than that. You can't walk away from loans owed to a private bank and guaranteed by the government. If you were borrowing from the government, a non-profit organization, they'd design loans to give you the best chance of graduating and contributing to the economy. If you borrown from a private bank, they design loans that make the most profit for them (high compound interest), regardless of the risk (2-year vocational colleges like chef schools).
Furthermore, government is perpetuating the LIE that spending loads of money for a "good education" is the wisest financial move you can make as a young person. Reality is further and further from the truth, as the big colleges and universities prove all the time, burying students in debt while they're unable to get good paying jobs with the diploma they worked so hard to get.
That's a good point. Most of these loans start with a 17-year-old who is below the age of consent for sex, agreeing to take a loan that they don't understand, with worse consequences than sex, on the urging of college admissions counselors that everybody does it and of course you're going to take a loan, and you'll be able to pay it off when you graduate.
There's an element of fraud, which I think excuses some of the responsibility for paying it back. College loans should have the same bankruptcy laws everybody else has.
You will have to do some work to find out the answer to your question.
I suggest you start out with Paul Krugman's columns at the New York Times, since he's an economics professor and can explain these things well. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html
The real problem is that as soon as you elect a mouse, he turns into a cat.
Now you're thinking.
Mouseland (As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944)
(You can listed to Tommy tell this story in his own words in our Audio Files section )
It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do.
They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.
Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are.
Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.
All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats.
Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever. And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.
You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.
Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!"
So they put him in jail.
But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea.
Then why aren't the protesting their University for putting them tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that isn't worth a tenth of that?
"Wall Street" is actually what William Buckley would call a "synecdouce" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche. They're not exactly protesting against Wall Street (why would you protest against a literal street, anyway? Don't you understand metaphor?). They're protesting against the financial establishment.
As Naomi Klein and others have pointed out, the financial industry has taken over the financing of education, and turned it into a profit center for themselves. This is similar to he way they've taken over the health care industry, the housing industry, etc.
In fact, there was a workshop at Zucotti Park on student loans. They're organizing.
The fact they are blaming Wall St, which has absolutely nothing to do with their degrees' cost, shows their university did not provide them with the necessary critical thinking skills to make it in the world.
Why is it that people always throw out charges that can more accurately be applied to themselves?
I want to know two things:
1) What are your problems? Not some random vague laundry list like "Wall street is bad," or "The rich suck." A short, specific, list of the things you believe are big enough problems that they warrant protesting over.
They keep telling you. Why do you have so much trouble understanding
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/10/1024469/-But-what-do-they-want?detail=hide&via=blog_1
2) What shall we do about them? Just whining that there are problems is not useful. Propose solutions. Real, workable, solutions. Understand what the tradeoffs for those solutions are (all actions have cost) and be ok with that.
I spent a day talking to people in Zucotti Park (otherwise known as Occupied Wall Street). They told me that they were in the process of deciding their strategies. That's the big job right now. Democracy is tedious. (The fact that the police wouldn't let them use a sound system didn't make it any easier.)
If you want a formal program with goals and outlines, try the Communist Party. They're better organized. They're up by Union Square.
If you can't identify what it is your goals are and how you might go about achieving them, then I can't really support you because I don't know what I'd be supporting. Also I don't think there is much chance of success.
It doesn't sound like this is the movement for you.
If you ever decide that your way isn't working, we'll be around. Look for the red flag.
New cats. http://www.saskndp.com/mouseland
Your argument is specious in that you have presented nothing in support of your allegations.
Conservatives don't understand what that means.
LOL I'm not even an American and I do know the history,
Smart alec. You must live in one of those countries with free college education.
I blame Bloomberg for a lot of abuses against the First Amendment. He did everything he could to prevent the two big demonstrations against the Iraq war, including not letting the demonstrators rally in Central Park, on the bullshit excuse that it would harm the grass.
The one that annoyed me the most was a demonstration in support of single payer health care. This wasn't an unwashed rabble, we had local Congressmen like Jerrold Nadler speak. The Bloomberg Administration gave them a permit to hold a rally on 7th Ave. between 41st and 42nd -- on the sidewalk. The demonstration went down 7th Ave. for blocks, but they still had to stay on the sidewalk, on both sides of 7th Ave. The police let traffic -- buses and trucks -- drive through the middle of the demonstration. If you were on the opposite side of the street, or down the street, you couldn't hear what the speakers were saying.
But get this -- Bloomberg closed down 7th Ave. and Broadway above 42nd St. for his pedestrian mall. So on the opposite side of 42nd St., 7th Ave. was closed to traffic for several block, until it crossed Broadway, which was also closed to traffic. We could have held the demonstration on the north side of 42nd St., gathered together on one block, and heard what the speakers were saying. Instead, they had tourists spread out on chairs.
I think the message is that you shouldn't get permits. You should just exercise your constitutional rights to demonstrate in a reasonable manner. The only reason for the permit is to make your legal expression more convenient for the demonstrators and the cops, but if the Mayor's office doesn't cooperate, and only issues illegally over-strict permits, there's no benefit to the demonstrators and they have a right to demonstrate without a permit.
And it seems as if you're just as likely to get arrested with or without a permit.
You should have known when the Democrats at their convention in Boston herded demonstrators off the street, and restricted them to a "free speech zone" surrounded by barbed wire, that the free speech wouldn't be the Obama Administration's greatest accomplishment.
Cynical as I sometimes am, I am impressed by the generosity, sense of community and effectiveness of the Spokane Project Access. I'm going to file this away for future reference.
However, it's not correct to say that people are doing this without the federal government. Two-thirds of its funding comes from the federal and local government.
According to the 2008-2009 annual report,
http://www.spcms.org/projectaccess/annual_report_6.pdf
Project Access has received new federal grant funding for 2 years now with the help of Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers, and Sen. Patty Murray.
According to the pie chart on P. 21 of the latest annual report, Project Access gets 32% of its money from an HRSA Federal grant, and 31% of its funding from city and county government.
Also, according to their eligibility requirements, they serve only patients who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
http://www.spcms.org/projectaccess/patients.htm
This is the way charities work nowadays. The federal government does the heavy lifting, and the private charities fill in the cracks.
There are many great private charities around the country, but they always say that they need the federal government too and can't make up for the federal government.
I'm also surprised that there wasn't more media coverage about it. This is the kind of thing that the Journal of the American Medical Association used to love to write about.
What is your city?
Project Access, for all its accomplishments, is funded by wealthy contributors and depends on volunteers for a large part of its services.
Volunteers can only do so much. For medical care, if more people find out about it, they will quickly get swamped.
I wonder what city you're in that can provide top-notch care for everyone who can't afford it -- unless they're covering most of it with Medicaid.
One of the big reasons the American Medical Association finally accepted Medicare and Medicaid is that those programs paid them for work that they used to write off as charity. The volunteer hospitals and health organizations will be the first to tell you that they can't do it all themselves.
I don't know why they couldn't release the names of the people on the watchlist.
If you're on, you find out fast enough once you try to board a plane.
I agree with you in general but I would make certain subtle distinctions.
You have a *right* to have a peaceful demonstration. That doesn't mean the government will follow the law and let you exercise that right.
The Bill of Rights doesn't doesn't *give* you the right to free expression. It merely *recognizes* that right. If you want to exercise your rights, you have to fight for them.
How can you have a peaceful demonstration (with or without a permit) while being beaten by the NYPD?
This means that according to the Constitution you must cease any and all protest or other assembly when threatened with violence (that revokes your right to assemble.)
You have a right to peaceably assemble. Maybe your demonstration won't stay peaceable when somebody else attacks you, but your peaceable assembly continues to be legal. If the cops attack you for exercising your constitutional rights, you still haven't broken the law. That's why if they want to prosecute you, they have to lie and claim you were violent, obstructing the street or committing some other, different crime.
Of course the attacker would be acting unconstitutionally (you had a right to be there,) but good luck suing them. They can always say that you were preventing some street peddler from peddling. There are too many laws on the books and most of them are only useful to stick it to you when the police needs you taken out.
Surprisingly, when the ACLU and other lawyers sue the police for not allowing demonstrators to exercise their rights, and for beating the protesters up, they sometimes win. They don't win often, but they do win. There are a few maverick judges out there who do uphold the Constitution.
It's pretty clear:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As long as they're peaceful, and as long as they don't block traffic, they have a right to assemble and demonstrate. Permits are merely a convenience for the police and demonstrators to coordinate things. But if the police are uncooperative, as the NYC police have been under the Bloomberg Administration, you have a right to have a peaceful demonstration without the permit.
Permits are not required to hold a demonstration. Demonstrators are required only to be peaceful and not disrupt traffic.
Permits are only for the mutual convenience of the police and the demonstrators, and if the police are uncooperative (as they frequently are in NYC with demonstrators who criticize government policies) the demonstrators can have their peaceful, non-disruptive demonstration without a permit or police permission.
The First Amendment is always worth rereading:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If I were paying that kind of money, and a teacher gave me a C, I'd go to the dean's office and complain, and I'd expect that grade to be raised. As I understand it, that happens a lot these days.
If you're in the UK, maybe you can answer some questions that I've been wondering about.
As I understand it, the UK is the only European, or EU, country that has raised its tuition to a significant amount. True?
As I understand it, the UK has the greatest inequality (Gini coefficients, etc.) and the least social mobility (correlation of parents' income with children's income) of any EU country. Some economists say it's as bad as the US. (There was an article about that in Science by Samuel Bowles if anybody wants to look it up.) True?
I did like the way UK students were demonstrating in the streets against the tuition raises. Maybe that will serve as a model to students in less politically sophisticated countries.