Most of the medical research in the world happens in America. Of course care is more expensive here. Of course care will be cheaper when we inevitably stop paying for that technological advancement. Cheaper short term.
Long term technology is everything for price, and if we were motivated by more than short-term greed, we'd favor whatever system produced the best technological progress, rather than the cheapest care this decade.
A large part -- not most -- of the medical research in the world happens in America. The main reason for that is that we once had a bipartisan consensus to give the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute a lot of money and leave them alone. (Nixon's good deed.) That worked out very well. People with heart disease live about 10 or 20 years longer than they did in 1950. Unfortunately that consensus is unraveling. Thanks to tax-cutting mania, the NIH's budget was cut about 5% last year.
There's also a lot of important research going on around the world. The American pharmaceutical companies come up with new drugs, and they'll do a study to prove it works, get it past the FDA, and sell it for $100,000 a year. The Europeans do studies to see whether the new drugs are better than the old drugs, whether they're worth the money (you know, free market, Adam Smith and all), and how to use them to get the best results with the fewest side effects. (Actually, most of the European research is done in collaboration with the Americans.)
Most of the costs of research doesn't affect the bill you pay your doctor or your insurance plan. If anything, it comes out of your taxes. A researcher with an NIH grant comes up with a new drug, his university sells the rights to develop it to a pharmaceutical company, and the pharmaceutical company sells it for as much as they can get. They also sell the same drugs to national health systems around the world, so foreigners pay for it that way. But don't blame the Europeans if you have to pay $100,000 for a drug that their national health system has negotiated down to $25,000.
Let's look at the latest issue of the world's premier medical journal*, the New England Journal of Medicine. Where do their authors come from? The U.S., Korea, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Spain, France, the U.K.....
Gee, despite what the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America told you, lots of people all around the world do medical research.
Bottom line: While the U.S. does a lot of medical research, we're actually not an island of civilization in a world of barbarian freeloaders. There are other societies around the world where scientists (and their governments) put a lot of effort into not only practical but basic scientific research, and come up with important medical developments, like, oh, uh, penicillin and, uh, the structure of DNA. Science is a worldwide enterprise, and everybody pulls their share. Imagine that, there are kids in Europe who are studying Darwin and Newton just like we do. And even in Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Endo_(biochemist) and China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemesinin#History
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1306494 A Phase 2 Trial of Ponatinib in Philadelphia Chromosome–Positive Leukemias J.E. Cortes and Others Address reprint requests to Dr. Cortes at the Department of Leukemia, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, or at jcortes@mdanderson.org. The authors' affiliations are as follows: the Department of Leukemia, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston (J.E.C., H.K.); Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, South Korea (D.-W.K.); H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL (J.P.-I.); Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin (P.C.), III. Medizinische Klinik, Universitätsmedizin Mannheim, Mannheim (M.C.M.), and Abteilung Hämatologie und Onkologie, Universitätsklinikum Jena, Jena (A.H.) — all in Germany;
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1301064 Intrarenal Resistive Index after Renal Transplantation M. Naesens and Others From the Departments of Nephrology and Renal Transplantation (M.N., L.H., K.C., D.K., P.E., B.B., B.S., B.M., H.J., C.M., K.D.V., Y.V.), Pathology (E.L.), Radiology (L.D.W., F.C., R.O.), and Abdominal Transplant Surgery (J.P., D.M.), University Hospitals Leuven, and the Departments of Microbiology and Immunology (M.N., K.C., D.K., P.E., B.B., B.S., B.M., J.P., D.M., K.D.V., Y.V.) and Imaging and Pathology (E.L., L.D.W., F.C., R.O.), KU Leuven — both in Leuven, Belgium.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1215541 Dolutegravir plus Abacavir–Lamivudine for the Treatment of HIV-1 Infection S.L. Walmsley and Others From the University Health Network, Toronto (S.L.W.); Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela (A.A.), and Hospital General de Elche and Universidad Miguel Hernández, Alicante (F.G.) — both in Spain; Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Saint-Pierre, Brussels (N.C.); Dr. Victor Babes Infectious and Tropical Diseases Hospital, Bucharest, Romania (D.D.); Medizinisches Versorgungszentrum Karlsplatz HIV Research and Clinical Care Center, Munich, Germany (A.E.); Centre Hospitalier Régional d'Orléans, Orléans, France (L.H.); Antiviral Therapy Unit, Ospedali Riuniti, Bergamo, Italy (F.M.); University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha (U.S.); GlaxoSmithKline, Stockley Park, United Kingdom (C.G.); and GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, NC (K.P., B.W., S.M., G.N.).
"a badly conceived law could be a reason for the poor performance of the site if it puts overly burdensome constraints on the system." the law is a set of rules to apply. Nothing more. That is no reason for broken code. If you are talking about adding a second or three to a responce, you would be right.
The law is not necessarily a logical or consistent system.
If you had to write a billing system for the Canadian health care system, it would be easy. You just pay everything that's covered.
If you have to write a billing system for the American health care system, it's complicated. Different people have different levels of subsidy, deductibles, co-payments, eligibility, etc. Is psychotherapy covered? Is chiropractic covered? For how long? It depends on the state. When somebody goes to the hospital, it can take a month for them to figure out their bills and reconcile the mistakes. If you can't figure out the actual charges by hand, how can you write a program to do it automatically?
The reason the law is so complex is that American health policy is made not by a process of examining the options rationally and picking out the best ones, but by a process of political compromise,
If we looked around the world for health care systems that are working (in terms of price, quality and service), we would probably pick something like the Canadian single payer system.
Instead, we had to accommodate every powerful interest group, campaign contributor, and free-market ideologue. Why do we need a private insurance industry? We don't, they just have a good lobby.
The free market health care system doesn't work unless you're willing to let people die when they can't afford health care. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1312793 So how do the right-wingers get out of that? They come up with a system of subsidies (which they call tax refunds). In order to figure out who "deserves" to get what subsidy, they have to examine every applicant's income, expenses, and circumstances and apply arbitrary formulas.
Because it incorporates tax payments and other grants, you have a system which is as complicated as the entire tax system and a welfare application combined.
Then you have to please these economic theorists who believe (despite 40 years of evidence) that if people have to pay co-payments, they'll be wiser medical consumers. So you've just made a simple system complex. Then you have to provide "choice" of silver, gold, platinum and lead policies, so you have to do the same thing four times over.
By the time you've finished compromising with every interest group, you have an enormously complicated health care financing system, which may not even be precisely designed or logically consistent. So when you try to write code, you have to go back and clarify the policy that you're implementing in code.
Compare that to the Canadian system: You hand your Canadian Medicare card to the receptionist, and she swipes it. The government pays for it.
To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".
There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability. But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.
If I had to choose between living in 1984 -- which is what we're doing -- and the consequences of not having any secret spying at all, I'd go with the consequences. I think I'm more likely to be arrested for expressing my Constitutional rights than I am to be killed by terrorists.
Eliot Spitzer was the Democratic governor of New York State, and most Democrats thought he was an effective, aggressive governor, especially when it came to fighting the Republicans.
As a result of the money-laundering provisions of the PATRIOT act, Spitzer's bank reported his money transfers to a federal agency. They were required to report transactions of $10,000 and over, but they chose to also report transactions under $10,000 because they looked suspicious.
It turned out that Spitzer was using that money to pay an escort service -- which is legal in New York State. When the (Republican) federal prosecutors found that out, they started "investigating" and found some theoretical law-breaking because he had ordered an escort not just in New York State, but also in Washington, DC, which made it an interstate matter. Then they leaked the investigation to the press, and the (Republican) prosecutor made a deal with the effective (Democratic) governor that they would drop the prosecution if he would resign as governor. He was replaced in succession by his Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, whom everybody, including Paterson himself, agreed was a nice guy who wasn't an effective (Democratic) governor.
So here's a case where the Republicans used their investigative powers under the PATRIOT Act for a partisan attack against an effective Democratic governor, by leaking accusations of lawbreaking that didn't hold up. (Several other clients were caught in this trap, and none of them was prosecuted -- because they hadn't broken any laws.)
When you give unaccountable spying power to a secret agency, they can and will use it for their own selfish purposes.
The only consolation was that Spitzer had done the same thing himself during his career. A big part of his career was prostitution busts. Tartuffe, anyone?
"Authorizes fines and/or imprisonment for up to 30 years for U.S. citizens or residents who engage in illicit sexual conduct abroad, with or without the intent of engaging in such sexual misconduct."
WTF? This makes it a felony for a U.S. citizen to engage in "illicit sexual conduct" while out of the country??? How outrageous can a law get?
This law is a prosecutor's dream. If he (or she) doesn't have enough evidence to convict for a crime, it lets them prosecute for the intent.
All our laws these days seem to be written for the prosecutors. It's up to the prosecutor to charge you with a crime that has a penalty of 5 days in jail or 30 years.
One of the guys who got caught in his own trap was New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, who made his career prosecuting prostitution and got caught with an escort himself.
The Spitzer case shows you how arbitrary, unfair and politicized it is. Republican prosecutors going after a Democratic governor decided to make a deal to drop the charges against him if he agreed to resign his office to be replaced by his lieutenant governor that everybody agreed was a nice guy who couldn't handle tough fights with the Republicans. They almost got a Republican governor.
It seems from some of the comments here that it would be entrapment in many European countries, and therefore could not be prosecuted, and in fact they may not have broken European laws.
Perhaps the European cops have better things to do with their time, like stopping real child abuse, which takes a lot of work, rather than on-line fake child abuse, which just takes an investigator sitting on his ass eating donuts and pretending to be a 14-year-old.
They may have decided that filling up the jails like the U.S. and former Soviet Union does more harm than good.
Actually we don't know. There was a story in I think Wired about how the police in a town were running stings, pretending to be underage girls, and when you read the transcript, they clearly manipulated and tricked the men into breaking the law, when they might never have done so without the manipulation and trickery. But if you asked the prosecutor whether they enticed the guy, the prosecutor would say the same thing that Terre des Hommes did -- no, we didn't solicit anything.
We haven't seen the evidence, we'll never see the evidence, because Terre Des Hommes has not and will not release it, and the police have said that they're not going to prosecute.
BTW, Terre des Hommes has had its own problems with child molestation -- the real thing, not the fantasy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terre_des_hommes#Ethiopian_paedophilia_allegations Are they concerned with the online sexual molestation of children -- or are they just setting up a smokescreen to make themselves look good in spite of the charges against them?
You're arguing for the rights of pedophiles to abuse minors against the protection of children. How can you possibly think that's a valid interpretation of basic human rights?
I would argue for the rights of 18-year-old pedophiles to abuse consenting 17-year-old minors against the protection of children.
I think 17- and 18-year olds have a basic human right to have consentual sex any way they want.
During the debate over the Communications Decency Act, one of the uptight lobbyists said that a minor seeing a nude picture would be harmful per se. Therefore, we have to keep nudity off the Internet, where children could see it.
So if Sister Wendy Beckett, the British nun, were to continue her art classes online, she would have broken the law.
Fortunately, the stupid side lost this one, for a change.
The defendant could bring in witnesses who would testify that they were about to have sex with him but when they told him their age, he said, "What? You're under 18? I can't have sex with you."
In 2008 Terre Des Hommes-Lausanne brought a defamation suit against a teacher in Ethiopia, Jill Campbell, for accusing the branch of knowingly hiding child abuse in one of its centres in the village of Jari.[2] Mrs Campbell compiled evidence which helped to convict[3] a British paedophile who was sentenced in 2003 to 9 years hard labour in prison. Another suspect committed suicide after posting a confession on the internet.[2] However Mrs Campbell alleged that senior staff running the centre knew of the abuse, covered it up and failed to inform the authorities.[2]
Mrs Campbell faced 6 months in prison if she failed to withdraw the allegations.[2] Her husband Gary had already withdrawn similar allegations in order to avoid prison and ensure that one of the couple would be able to look after their two ten-year-old adopted children.[2] The charity eventually withdraw its suit before Campbell was due to be sentenced on 7 March, saying that her husband's apology was sufficient.[3]
In a statement the charity said that it asked the court not to sentence Mrs Campbell because her husband had made a full apology.
“The case is now closed with the Campbells' acknowledgement of wrongdoing and promise to halt their illegal defamation campaign which has been wrongly interpreted as ‘whistle blowing'”.
“From the First Instance Court to the Ethiopian Supreme Court the judges have upheld the Terre Des Hommes argument in this respect and ruled accordingly.”[4]
What many foreign states want is actually unlimited access to any and all customers data without the need for probable cause, which is against the Swiss constitution.
Not us. Access without probable cause is against the U.S. constitution too.
It doesn't make any difference whether you're driving a 1967 Volvo or a 2013 car. 2013 cars are safer at 55 mph and safer at 65 mph. But a 2013 car is still safer at 55 mph than 65 mph.
There's a tradeoff between safety and convenience, and in this country we're probably willing to take the risks that come with driving at 70 mph. On the straightaway, in perfect weather, under perfect conditions, the accident rate and additional death and injury rate would be relatively low. But above 70 mph the death rate increases very rapidly.
When I've looked at the actual survival curves from large numbers of accident reports in the engineering papers, the fatality rate goes up by about 10% or 20% from 55 to 65 mph. It goes up much faster from 65 mph to 75 mph, maybe 50% or 100%. You can understand why this happens if you understand the physics of a collision.
The forces in a collision are determined by basic laws of physics that you learn in high school. If you have 50 inches of crush space in the engine compartment, and you can tolerate a 50-g deceleration, that pretty much determines how fast a front-end collision you can survive. It's about 50 mph. It's the same for 1967 cars as 2013 cars. There is no magic foam or magic airbag that can let you survive at a higher speed.
The death rate has gone down significantly thanks in large part to auto safety studies, which I played a small part in publishing (you're welcome). They're now down to about 30,000 deaths a year, which is still one of the major causes of preventable death. On the statistics, it's likely that you know at least one person who died in an auto accident. And on some level, that death was preventable.
One of the worst things you can do is pass laws that everybody ignores. If the speed limit is 65 mph, and I'm driving at 65 mph, I'm following the law, and it's hard to blame me for not violating the law like everybody else. Highways should be designed with lanes for different minimum and maximum speeds, and the police should enforce them. Unfortunately, traffic laws have become a game, and they're not designed or enforced to maximize the tradeoff between safety and convenience. Still, whatever the speed limit is, whatever the speed distribution of vehicles is, the same distribution will have more fatal accidents if you increase it by 10 mph.
The original discussion was about whether the cross-country race was responsible or safe.
I'm familiar with the literature on lower speeds, which is about as convincing as you can get in science that higher speeds result in more fatalities. So the answer seems to be that it was not responsible or safe.
I'm not as familiar with the literature on behavioral aspects of speed limits. It seems reasonable that if you pass laws to restrict speed, and the police and drivers ignore them, they will have no effect. It also seems reasonable that if local jurisdictions use speeding laws for the purpose of raising money rather than for reducing traffic injuries, they might not have any effect.
It also seems reasonable that if you pass laws to restrict speed, and they're effectively enforced, they should reduce fatalities. But I don't know enough about it to find a study. It may be impossible to enforce speed laws rationally in the U.S.
I suspect your wording was specifically designed to impart images of slavery and prejudice
That's right.
I grew up during the 1960s when the southern states were arguing that the federal government had no constitutional role in passing and enforcing federal voting laws that would force the states to allow black people to vote, much less a constitutional role in interfering with their free choice to discriminate against black people in hiring, education, and seating on buses. Those were decisions to be made democratically by the states and the (white) people.
That's what "states' rights" meant for 50 years.
You can look up the Wall Street Journal editorials from those days in the library.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the medical research in the world happens in America. Of course care is more expensive here. Of course care will be cheaper when we inevitably stop paying for that technological advancement. Cheaper short term.
Long term technology is everything for price, and if we were motivated by more than short-term greed, we'd favor whatever system produced the best technological progress, rather than the cheapest care this decade.
A large part -- not most -- of the medical research in the world happens in America. The main reason for that is that we once had a bipartisan consensus to give the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute a lot of money and leave them alone. (Nixon's good deed.) That worked out very well. People with heart disease live about 10 or 20 years longer than they did in 1950. Unfortunately that consensus is unraveling. Thanks to tax-cutting mania, the NIH's budget was cut about 5% last year.
There's also a lot of important research going on around the world. The American pharmaceutical companies come up with new drugs, and they'll do a study to prove it works, get it past the FDA, and sell it for $100,000 a year. The Europeans do studies to see whether the new drugs are better than the old drugs, whether they're worth the money (you know, free market, Adam Smith and all), and how to use them to get the best results with the fewest side effects. (Actually, most of the European research is done in collaboration with the Americans.)
Most of the costs of research doesn't affect the bill you pay your doctor or your insurance plan. If anything, it comes out of your taxes. A researcher with an NIH grant comes up with a new drug, his university sells the rights to develop it to a pharmaceutical company, and the pharmaceutical company sells it for as much as they can get. They also sell the same drugs to national health systems around the world, so foreigners pay for it that way. But don't blame the Europeans if you have to pay $100,000 for a drug that their national health system has negotiated down to $25,000.
Let's look at the latest issue of the world's premier medical journal*, the New England Journal of Medicine. Where do their authors come from? The U.S., Korea, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Spain, France, the U.K.....
Gee, despite what the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America told you, lots of people all around the world do medical research.
For another way to look at it, count the Nobel laureates in medicine http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/
Bottom line: While the U.S. does a lot of medical research, we're actually not an island of civilization in a world of barbarian freeloaders. There are other societies around the world where scientists (and their governments) put a lot of effort into not only practical but basic scientific research, and come up with important medical developments, like, oh, uh, penicillin and, uh, the structure of DNA. Science is a worldwide enterprise, and everybody pulls their share. Imagine that, there are kids in Europe who are studying Darwin and Newton just like we do. And even in Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Endo_(biochemist) and China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemesinin#History
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1306494
A Phase 2 Trial of Ponatinib in Philadelphia Chromosome–Positive Leukemias
J.E. Cortes and Others
Address reprint requests to Dr. Cortes at the Department of Leukemia, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, or at jcortes@mdanderson.org.
The authors' affiliations are as follows: the Department of Leukemia, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston (J.E.C., H.K.); Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, South Korea (D.-W.K.); H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL (J.P.-I.); Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin (P.C.), III. Medizinische Klinik, Universitätsmedizin Mannheim, Mannheim (M.C.M.), and Abteilung Hämatologie und Onkologie, Universitätsklinikum Jena, Jena (A.H.) — all in Germany;
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1301064
Intrarenal Resistive Index after Renal Transplantation
M. Naesens and Others
From the Departments of Nephrology and Renal Transplantation (M.N., L.H., K.C., D.K., P.E., B.B., B.S., B.M., H.J., C.M., K.D.V., Y.V.), Pathology (E.L.), Radiology (L.D.W., F.C., R.O.), and Abdominal Transplant Surgery (J.P., D.M.), University Hospitals Leuven, and the Departments of Microbiology and Immunology (M.N., K.C., D.K., P.E., B.B., B.S., B.M., J.P., D.M., K.D.V., Y.V.) and Imaging and Pathology (E.L., L.D.W., F.C., R.O.), KU Leuven — both in Leuven, Belgium.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1215541
Dolutegravir plus Abacavir–Lamivudine for the Treatment of HIV-1 Infection
S.L. Walmsley and Others
From the University Health Network, Toronto (S.L.W.); Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela (A.A.), and Hospital General de Elche and Universidad Miguel Hernández, Alicante (F.G.) — both in Spain; Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Saint-Pierre, Brussels (N.C.); Dr. Victor Babes Infectious and Tropical Diseases Hospital, Bucharest, Romania (D.D.); Medizinisches Versorgungszentrum Karlsplatz HIV Research and Clinical Care Center, Munich, Germany (A.E.); Centre Hospitalier Régional d'Orléans, Orléans, France (L.H.); Antiviral Therapy Unit, Ospedali Riuniti, Bergamo, Italy (F.M.); University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha (U.S.); GlaxoSmithKline, Stockley Park, United Kingdom (C.G.); and GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, NC (K.P., B.W., S.M., G.N.).
"a badly conceived law could be a reason for the poor performance of the site if it puts overly burdensome constraints on the system."
the law is a set of rules to apply. Nothing more. That is no reason for broken code. If you are talking about adding a second or three to a responce, you would be right.
The law is not necessarily a logical or consistent system.
If you had to write a billing system for the Canadian health care system, it would be easy. You just pay everything that's covered.
If you have to write a billing system for the American health care system, it's complicated. Different people have different levels of subsidy, deductibles, co-payments, eligibility, etc. Is psychotherapy covered? Is chiropractic covered? For how long? It depends on the state. When somebody goes to the hospital, it can take a month for them to figure out their bills and reconcile the mistakes. If you can't figure out the actual charges by hand, how can you write a program to do it automatically?
The reason the law is so complex is that American health policy is made not by a process of examining the options rationally and picking out the best ones, but by a process of political compromise,
If we looked around the world for health care systems that are working (in terms of price, quality and service), we would probably pick something like the Canadian single payer system.
Instead, we had to accommodate every powerful interest group, campaign contributor, and free-market ideologue. Why do we need a private insurance industry? We don't, they just have a good lobby.
The free market health care system doesn't work unless you're willing to let people die when they can't afford health care. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1312793 So how do the right-wingers get out of that? They come up with a system of subsidies (which they call tax refunds). In order to figure out who "deserves" to get what subsidy, they have to examine every applicant's income, expenses, and circumstances and apply arbitrary formulas.
Because it incorporates tax payments and other grants, you have a system which is as complicated as the entire tax system and a welfare application combined.
Then you have to please these economic theorists who believe (despite 40 years of evidence) that if people have to pay co-payments, they'll be wiser medical consumers. So you've just made a simple system complex. Then you have to provide "choice" of silver, gold, platinum and lead policies, so you have to do the same thing four times over.
By the time you've finished compromising with every interest group, you have an enormously complicated health care financing system, which may not even be precisely designed or logically consistent. So when you try to write code, you have to go back and clarify the policy that you're implementing in code.
Compare that to the Canadian system: You hand your Canadian Medicare card to the receptionist, and she swipes it. The government pays for it.
And you're just being a demagogue.
To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".
There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability.
But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.
If I had to choose between living in 1984 -- which is what we're doing -- and the consequences of not having any secret spying at all, I'd go with the consequences. I think I'm more likely to be arrested for expressing my Constitutional rights than I am to be killed by terrorists.
You at least *have* a pretty good constitution to return to, hard as that goal may be to reach.
FOR SALE. A Constitution. In perfect condition. Hardly ever used.
That sounds like the Spitzer scandal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer#Prostitution_scandal
Eliot Spitzer was the Democratic governor of New York State, and most Democrats thought he was an effective, aggressive governor, especially when it came to fighting the Republicans.
As a result of the money-laundering provisions of the PATRIOT act, Spitzer's bank reported his money transfers to a federal agency. They were required to report transactions of $10,000 and over, but they chose to also report transactions under $10,000 because they looked suspicious.
It turned out that Spitzer was using that money to pay an escort service -- which is legal in New York State. When the (Republican) federal prosecutors found that out, they started "investigating" and found some theoretical law-breaking because he had ordered an escort not just in New York State, but also in Washington, DC, which made it an interstate matter. Then they leaked the investigation to the press, and the (Republican) prosecutor made a deal with the effective (Democratic) governor that they would drop the prosecution if he would resign as governor. He was replaced in succession by his Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, whom everybody, including Paterson himself, agreed was a nice guy who wasn't an effective (Democratic) governor.
So here's a case where the Republicans used their investigative powers under the PATRIOT Act for a partisan attack against an effective Democratic governor, by leaking accusations of lawbreaking that didn't hold up. (Several other clients were caught in this trap, and none of them was prosecuted -- because they hadn't broken any laws.)
When you give unaccountable spying power to a secret agency, they can and will use it for their own selfish purposes.
The only consolation was that Spitzer had done the same thing himself during his career. A big part of his career was prostitution busts. Tartuffe, anyone?
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003"
Holy crap. Take a look at this provision:
"Authorizes fines and/or imprisonment for up to 30 years for U.S. citizens or residents who engage in illicit sexual conduct abroad, with or without the intent of engaging in such sexual misconduct."
WTF? This makes it a felony for a U.S. citizen to engage in "illicit sexual conduct" while out of the country??? How outrageous can a law get?
This law is a prosecutor's dream. If he (or she) doesn't have enough evidence to convict for a crime, it lets them prosecute for the intent.
All our laws these days seem to be written for the prosecutors. It's up to the prosecutor to charge you with a crime that has a penalty of 5 days in jail or 30 years.
One of the guys who got caught in his own trap was New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, who made his career prosecuting prostitution and got caught with an escort himself.
The Spitzer case shows you how arbitrary, unfair and politicized it is. Republican prosecutors going after a Democratic governor decided to make a deal to drop the charges against him if he agreed to resign his office to be replaced by his lieutenant governor that everybody agreed was a nice guy who couldn't handle tough fights with the Republicans. They almost got a Republican governor.
Let's take it to Kickstarter.
A virtual porno Turing test.
It seems from some of the comments here that it would be entrapment in many European countries, and therefore could not be prosecuted, and in fact they may not have broken European laws.
Perhaps the European cops have better things to do with their time, like stopping real child abuse, which takes a lot of work, rather than on-line fake child abuse, which just takes an investigator sitting on his ass eating donuts and pretending to be a 14-year-old.
They may have decided that filling up the jails like the U.S. and former Soviet Union does more harm than good.
They may know more about Terre des Hommes than you do, and they may have decided not to get involved with an organization that has its own problems with child sex abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terre_des_hommes#Ethiopian_paedophilia_allegations
You might bet a better idea of the intention of the project if you read their Wikipedia entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terre_des_hommes#Ethiopian_paedophilia_allegations
When the cop encourages the illegal behavior before any action is taken by the "suspect", it is entrapment.
Not true. A cop can go around the park asking people to sell him drugs, and then arresting anyone who takes him up on it. Not entrapment.
Actually we don't know. There was a story in I think Wired about how the police in a town were running stings, pretending to be underage girls, and when you read the transcript, they clearly manipulated and tricked the men into breaking the law, when they might never have done so without the manipulation and trickery. But if you asked the prosecutor whether they enticed the guy, the prosecutor would say the same thing that Terre des Hommes did -- no, we didn't solicit anything.
We haven't seen the evidence, we'll never see the evidence, because Terre Des Hommes has not and will not release it, and the police have said that they're not going to prosecute.
BTW, Terre des Hommes has had its own problems with child molestation -- the real thing, not the fantasy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terre_des_hommes#Ethiopian_paedophilia_allegations Are they concerned with the online sexual molestation of children -- or are they just setting up a smokescreen to make themselves look good in spite of the charges against them?
You're arguing for the rights of pedophiles to abuse minors against the protection of children. How can you possibly think that's a valid interpretation of basic human rights?
I would argue for the rights of 18-year-old pedophiles to abuse consenting 17-year-old minors against the protection of children.
I think 17- and 18-year olds have a basic human right to have consentual sex any way they want.
During the debate over the Communications Decency Act, one of the uptight lobbyists said that a minor seeing a nude picture would be harmful per se. Therefore, we have to keep nudity off the Internet, where children could see it.
So if Sister Wendy Beckett, the British nun, were to continue her art classes online, she would have broken the law.
Fortunately, the stupid side lost this one, for a change.
The defendant could bring in witnesses who would testify that they were about to have sex with him but when they told him their age, he said, "What? You're under 18? I can't have sex with you."
They've established that online web-cam pornography with digital images of imaginary under-age girls is possible and commercially feasible.
In the U.S., and other jurisdictions, it would be legal.
It's waiting for the next Internet entrepreneur to come along and make a fortune.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terre_des_hommes#Ethiopian_paedophilia_allegations
Ethiopian paedophilia allegations
In 2008 Terre Des Hommes-Lausanne brought a defamation suit against a teacher in Ethiopia, Jill Campbell, for accusing the branch of knowingly hiding child abuse in one of its centres in the village of Jari.[2] Mrs Campbell compiled evidence which helped to convict[3] a British paedophile who was sentenced in 2003 to 9 years hard labour in prison. Another suspect committed suicide after posting a confession on the internet.[2] However Mrs Campbell alleged that senior staff running the centre knew of the abuse, covered it up and failed to inform the authorities.[2]
Mrs Campbell faced 6 months in prison if she failed to withdraw the allegations.[2] Her husband Gary had already withdrawn similar allegations in order to avoid prison and ensure that one of the couple would be able to look after their two ten-year-old adopted children.[2] The charity eventually withdraw its suit before Campbell was due to be sentenced on 7 March, saying that her husband's apology was sufficient.[3]
In a statement the charity said that it asked the court not to sentence Mrs Campbell because her husband had made a full apology.
“The case is now closed with the Campbells' acknowledgement of wrongdoing and promise to halt their illegal defamation campaign which has been wrongly interpreted as ‘whistle blowing'”.
“From the First Instance Court to the Ethiopian Supreme Court the judges have upheld the Terre Des Hommes argument in this respect and ruled accordingly.”[4]
What many foreign states want is actually unlimited access to any and all customers data without the need for probable cause, which is against the Swiss constitution.
Not us. Access without probable cause is against the U.S. constitution too.
Do you know anybody who died in an automobile accident? I do.
It doesn't make any difference whether you're driving a 1967 Volvo or a 2013 car. 2013 cars are safer at 55 mph and safer at 65 mph. But a 2013 car is still safer at 55 mph than 65 mph.
There's a tradeoff between safety and convenience, and in this country we're probably willing to take the risks that come with driving at 70 mph. On the straightaway, in perfect weather, under perfect conditions, the accident rate and additional death and injury rate would be relatively low. But above 70 mph the death rate increases very rapidly.
When I've looked at the actual survival curves from large numbers of accident reports in the engineering papers, the fatality rate goes up by about 10% or 20% from 55 to 65 mph. It goes up much faster from 65 mph to 75 mph, maybe 50% or 100%. You can understand why this happens if you understand the physics of a collision.
The forces in a collision are determined by basic laws of physics that you learn in high school. If you have 50 inches of crush space in the engine compartment, and you can tolerate a 50-g deceleration, that pretty much determines how fast a front-end collision you can survive. It's about 50 mph. It's the same for 1967 cars as 2013 cars. There is no magic foam or magic airbag that can let you survive at a higher speed.
The death rate has gone down significantly thanks in large part to auto safety studies, which I played a small part in publishing (you're welcome). They're now down to about 30,000 deaths a year, which is still one of the major causes of preventable death. On the statistics, it's likely that you know at least one person who died in an auto accident. And on some level, that death was preventable.
One of the worst things you can do is pass laws that everybody ignores. If the speed limit is 65 mph, and I'm driving at 65 mph, I'm following the law, and it's hard to blame me for not violating the law like everybody else. Highways should be designed with lanes for different minimum and maximum speeds, and the police should enforce them. Unfortunately, traffic laws have become a game, and they're not designed or enforced to maximize the tradeoff between safety and convenience. Still, whatever the speed limit is, whatever the speed distribution of vehicles is, the same distribution will have more fatal accidents if you increase it by 10 mph.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/24/nc-gop-official-fired-after-bragging-voter-id-law-would-kick-the-democrats-butt/
NC GOP official fired after bragging voter ID law would ‘kick the Democrats’ butt’
The original discussion was about whether the cross-country race was responsible or safe.
I'm familiar with the literature on lower speeds, which is about as convincing as you can get in science that higher speeds result in more fatalities. So the answer seems to be that it was not responsible or safe.
I'm not as familiar with the literature on behavioral aspects of speed limits. It seems reasonable that if you pass laws to restrict speed, and the police and drivers ignore them, they will have no effect. It also seems reasonable that if local jurisdictions use speeding laws for the purpose of raising money rather than for reducing traffic injuries, they might not have any effect.
It also seems reasonable that if you pass laws to restrict speed, and they're effectively enforced, they should reduce fatalities. But I don't know enough about it to find a study. It may be impossible to enforce speed laws rationally in the U.S.
I suspect your wording was specifically designed to impart images of slavery and prejudice
That's right.
I grew up during the 1960s when the southern states were arguing that the federal government had no constitutional role in passing and enforcing federal voting laws that would force the states to allow black people to vote, much less a constitutional role in interfering with their free choice to discriminate against black people in hiring, education, and seating on buses. Those were decisions to be made democratically by the states and the (white) people.
That's what "states' rights" meant for 50 years.
You can look up the Wall Street Journal editorials from those days in the library.