Whatever you think of Obamacare, it was passed into law by a majority of both houses and the president's signature, just like the Constitution requires. Now the house R's, instead of trying to repeal the law, are instituting a tyranny of the minority. Don't do what we want, and we'll screw up everything. Much as it sucks to have the federal government largely shut down, the D's are right not to give into this extortion. Let this kind of crap get started, and we'll have a situation where an overall minority that controls one house, or the presidency, gets a chance every year to effectively veto any law they don't like.
So to paraphrase you: Whatever you think of the end of discretionary appropriation funding, it was passed into law by a majority of both houses and the president's signature, just like the Constitution requires. Now the Senate D's and Obama, instead of passing the new appropriations law, are instituting a tyranny of the minority. Don't do what we want, and we'll screw up everything. Much as it sucks to have (the least essential 20% of) the federal government largely shut down, the R's are right not to give into this extortion. Let this kind of crap get started, and we'll have a situation where an overall minority that controls one house, or the presidency, gets a chance every year to effectively continue funding any law they don't like.
Now see if you can come up with an argument that doesn't cut in exactly the opposite direction... like, how about, Harry Reid would never do anything like this (of course, he did...), or if Obama was in Congress he would never oppose a debt ceiling increase or a funding bill over a partisan issue (of course, he did...)
In addition to your comments, "partially funding the government" is a misnomer. The government is what has been legally funded by Congress in a appropriations bill that must originate in the House. Unfunded bureaucratic departments aren't "the government" anymore. They might be "what the government used to do", but hey, things change and the funding ran out.
That I think implies that the site is protected by federal police, and in light of the widespread shutdown it seems plausible that they felt it couldn't be properly supervised. They may have their hands full as it is.
Right... even though federal police are considered "essential" and are still working? These private business reports are places with contracted leases that weren't closed during previous "shutdown"s. They produce revenue for the government, they don't consume it.
What right do the Interior Department people have to violate their lease and keep them from operating? Because they're trying to throw the biggest bureaucratic temper tantrum possible?
"1) The bill is law. The debate is settled. It's been signed into law. The court has ruled. The president has been re-elected, he has been endorsed by the majority of voting people to be on the right track." - The "shutdown" is also law, signed into law by President Obama himself. The debate here is about a new law authorizing new discretionary spending. The Republicans in the House were also re-elected and endorsed by their constituents while running on a platform of repealing the ACA. Elections have consequences, right? "2) Conservative lawmakers planned on using "the power of the purse" to get their way -- i.e. shut down government." - Since the power of the purse for raising and spending money was explicitly given to the House of Representatives by those designing our system of government because they, having the smallest constituent/representative ratio and being required to run for re-election every 2 years are the closest to the "people" who are supposed to be truly in charge, it's a bit disingenuous to imply that the House functioning exactly as designed, using the power of the purse to defund an unpopular law, is somehow a bad thing in and of itself. "3)" - I won't quote your whole complaint, but the majority of the House agrees it's in the best interests of their constituents to stick together.They're the elected representatives, so that's their right to decide.If you don't like it, feel free to run for Congress in the next election and make your case. No one who could walk out the door any time they want to is a "hostage" as you state. The Representatives in the House are free to vote however they want to, they aren't "hostages" to a rule they themselves agree on and are supporting.
Exactly. It's easy to have enough "jobs" for everyone. Give anyone without a job a teaspoon and point them to a ditch that needs digging or a hole that needs filling.
The point is to have people doing jobs that contribute the most/build the most wealth. For that, anything that can be done more economically by machines should be so those humans (the real scarce resource) can be freed up to do more of things that they do better than machines.
It gets worse... they sold it for -40 million (price minus leftover pensions), but they rejected an offer to buy it a couple of years ago for 300 million (410 million including pensions in that deal) . Apparently they're great at losing money on an investment rapidly....
Ah, so we finally come to the crux of the matter. You don't want to admit that your definition of a socialist government is an ideal one not shared by most people who aren't socialists. Your ideal is of the "No True Scotsman" line of fallacies.
So let's just agree to disagree on the definitions we are using in the original discussion. My claim is based on a definition of socialism that includes every government led by political leaders who favor purported socialist policies, while your definition appears to be an idealistic view of only governments that manage to fully implement socialism in a form acceptable to you.
By your definition style, there are no existing capitalist countries and no existing socialist countries, in large part because of public-choice economics reasons. By my definition style, most countries can be classified along a spectrum of public sentiment for socialist or free market style policies, said spectrum evidenced by the policies they appear to support. I'd classify any country that primarily supports socialist ideals in their stated public policy as socialist, while you'd only allow that classification for successfully implementing your ideals. As socialism as a governing philosophy is unworkable and corrupted, by your definition, it doesn't exist, except perhaps fleetingly.
For example, I'd classify Castro in Cuba, Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, Lagos and Bachelet in Chile, da Silva and Rousseff in Brazil, the Kirchners in Argentina, Medina in the DR, Mujica in Uruguay, Morales in Bolivia, Zelaya in Honduras, Ortega in Nicaragua, Correa in Ecuador, Lugo in Paraguay, Funes in El Salvador and Humala in Peru as all being left-wing socialist Presidents in Latin America. So would most people, as evidenced by popular sources such as Wikipedia, news organizations such as the BBC, the Boston Globe, etc...
Do you consider those Latin American leaders socialists under your definition? If so, you've agreed to my point, at least as to Latin America. If not, then you're simply using a definition of a socialist government not commonly in widespread use.
The point wasn't to accuse you of hypocrisy (although now that you bring it up, I suppose it does that as well), but to point out the logical inconsistency of your arguments.
Either "broad sweeping statements" are meaningless and/or pointless without additional specific substantiation, or they aren't. You yourself demonstrate that you find them useful in making your arguments, invalidating your broad, sweeping claim that they aren't.
I can reasonably opine that water is generally wet. If I agree that "proving" that would require a more formal definition of wet vs. frozen or gaseous, whether water typically refers to the liquid form, or if it could be considered to include water ice, or water vapor, or if those are distinct, then based on that you'd have to really show some data about actual water samples... sure, proving it like that would be more convincing, but also somewhat beyond the level of proof required of a/. post.
Especially when most folks familiar with the facts can conclude that yes, water is indeed generally wet, based on their personal experience and knowledge.
So yeah, I guess that many people aren't familiar enough with the history of the various regions mentioned and their governments that they think there is something controversial with describing them as socialist in nature, but that doesn't mean they aren't. If you presented some sort of actual analysis based on commonly agreed definitions, I'm open to change my mind, but like my opinion that water is generally wet, my opinion is based on knowledge from disparate sources gained over an extended period of time, not a specific analysis completed to prove a single point on/. If I were a historian or sociologist by profession, or even a political consultant or some such, I might undertake a paper proving the point, but for the purposes of a comment, it's not exactly required for something so uncontroversial.
I did acknowledge early in this discussion that definitions of words can differ and if you have a different working definition of socialism than I have, we could only be disagreeing on semantics and not on substance, but if you disagree with me on the substance of the statement, why have you failed to put forth even one alternate hypothesis? Instead, you've just been arguing in the negative.
So let me ask, how would you describe the majority (or largest plurality, if that's too much for you) of the governments of the regions in question? Keep in mind that to be a point against my statement, your alternate description should be something that fundamentally contradicts the idea that they are socialist in name or nature. So while totalitarian, or kleptocracy, or mob rule might describe some of them, those descriptions don't exclude a socialist government and might even be argued to indicate one. You'll need to find something that excludes high levels of government power "socializing" the nation's resources.
I wasn't the one making broad sweeping statements.
...Followed later in the same response by several paragraphs of broad, sweeping statements makes your argument criticizing such statements as coming from the nether regions quite amusing, but not very convincing.
There's a difference between knowledge in your head and detailed knowledge written up as evidence. Yeah, I have a general idea of the governing philosophies of the ruling parties of most countries through history. I doubt you had to go put together an economic and political analysis of Venezuela before making your comment about they way they do things. Your premise there is false. I'm happy to have you present your contradictory evidence to my conclusions, though. If I'm wrong, I'll readily admit it if you show me.
the goal of socialism isn't necessarily to have things as a collective, but to provide (and ensure) things for the collective.
I'd have to disagree here. You could have an anarcho-libertarian state with it's members believing that it's the best way to organize for everyone's benefit in that state and it fits a goal of ensuring things for the collective, but you would never call it socialism. Socialism is more about the means to the goal, rather than the goal itself.
There are still some Germans around that would need to talk to you.
If you're familiar with history, you know that the National Socialists were competing with the Soviet Socialists for world power. Sure, they hated each other as part of that competition, but if you look back at newspaper and historical accounts of the time, you'll see that socialism was widely considered to be the modern, scientific way of governing for the future and the Germans were considered just as socialist.
Many Americans (and some very famous ones) considered the National Socialists the future of world socialism. It wasn't until they were on the other side in a war that they lost that retroactively they were written as non-socialist. You have to rely on more contemporary accounts, rather than accounts written by the winners.
(Just a note here, to not be misunderstood, this is by way of explanation. I don't support the ideals of either the National Socialists, nor the Red ones, and certainly don't condone the massive massacres done in their names.)
It's not a coincidence that many South American countries, like Venezuela, act more like the National Socialists. There was a heavy German influence there, both pre-war and after they lost and many fled from Germany.
having things such as public roads are inherently socialistic and very, very few people would argue that (proper) roads are not important to an economy.
There's a long history of private roads, even in the United States. Typically, they are better roads than public roads, so it's interesting that you seem to conflate "proper" roads with public roads. It's also funny you bring this up at a time where despite all the other moves towards socialism in the U.S., roads are one of the few areas where the technocrats are starting to consider privatizing much more as the latest fad in city/state management. Public roads suffer from many of the same issues as public commons, having a difficult time balancing over- (congestion) and under-use (waste), fair payment for them, determining when it's efficient to build more or expand them, etc... Privately owned and managed roads are starting to be seen by governments as a solution to those issues.
we should be systematically looking at what design works for what specific industry or goal
To quote a famous economist, "Markets are flawed, use markets." There is definitely an issue when a central planner believes they have the knowledge (socialist calculation problem) to design what works for an industry, or even knows what the "right" goal is for companies in that industry to pursue. Back to the original corruption level discussion, per public choice economics, that also leads to conflicts of interest related to possessing that power that end well for the politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies, but not for the rest of us.
That's a much better argument... we could almost agree, except you seem to be focusing only on financial measures of socialism within a country.
Percent of GDP spent on government and tax rates aren't socialism per se, but they're highly correlated with socialism because of the causal relationship between a socialist desire for those conditions and those conditions becoming law. If you focus only on monetary measurements, you miss the affect of socialist attitudes on laws and regulations transferring effective control of non-government resources from private individuals to government agents.
As an illustrative example, if a particular government bureaucracy can tell a particular private industry what decisions to make 80% of the time (arbitrary number), the government isn't spending much money on that and the regulations don't show up in the tax rates, but they've effectively socialized that industry to a great extent as a result of their control over it.
In first world, wealthier socialist-leaning (because really, it's all a mixed economy nowadays, the mix just differs) economies, much of the control is financial, because a wealthier, more established nation will tend to have institutions like property/land records with established rights going back hundreds, if not thousands of years, bank accounts, electronic transactions, public records, etc... Wealthier nations are correlated with more internal/external trade and transactions that can be used as a basis for taxation, for example.
In a less established nation, without much in the way of real property rights, where most transactions are in a "grey" market system, you're going to have more direct control by government agents and (while "official" tax rates can be high) less formal taxation and spending structures. The transaction level, control and wealth just isn't there to support that style of system without resorting to direct control.
In France, if the government wants to get more resources from an industry, they raise taxes on it. In Venezuela, the government declares they own part of the company and have the right to jointly make decisions about where the company spends it's resources. I think it's difficult to argue that one method of resource control is inherently more socialist then the other. The axis of methodology seems much more correlated with overall historical wealth and income levels (probably as a result of those established institutions and internal/external trade).
So yeah, while it can yield some false positives, because of the difficulty of cross-country comparisons, which are affected by many other factors, my typical measurement of socialism in a country would be more of a political one. What policies do the rulers publicly advocate? Do they refer to themselves as socialist/worker's party/whatever standard euphemism for socialism that represents a bundle of policies that matches to a large extent the same bundle of policies that officially socialist groups advocate.
Typically, socialism (specifically, Marxist socialism) was the ostensible political policy of the former colonial nations influenced by the Soviet Union during the cold war to demand independence. Other countries were taken over by "revolutionaries" funded by the soviets, sometimes directly, many times indirectly, such as via Cuban subsidies, troops, etc... Do they all perfectly achieve their ideals? Of course not. Are they clinging to their socialist ideals, yeah, they mostly still are, although a few places are starting to turn around their actual policies as the reality of of failing economies sticks around.
This is already too long, but the only way you'd establish a real, provable answer, would be to analyze in depth the political and economic situation of each country in question, which is a bit much for a/. argument.:)
I wasn't aware it was necessary to prove common knowledge. I wasn't trying to argue anything about which countries are socialist and which aren't, just commenting on common knowledge as to which are which. Ok, common knowledge to anyone with a modicum of world history knowledge of the last 100 years.
Since your first response didn't even directly disagree with anything specific, let alone provide any evidence or argument, it wasn't exactly very convincing.
Here, try starting with wikipedia's pretty map of socialist countries by duration. Notice where they are mostly located? Ah yes, Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe... and those are primarily the states that have been "officially" socialist via self-declaration or their constitution, let alone all the others that are socialist in ongoing sentiment.
If you're going to argue against that, you're going to have to provide your own special definition of what a socialist country is (ignoring people who openly state they are socialists to define them away) and then explain which countries fit or don't fit. Here's a hint: Socialist doesn't equal "Democratic", They're different concepts and one neither implies, nor doesn't imply the other.
Your actual conclusion seems to be that Democratic countries are generally less corrupt than dictatorships. That makes more sense than his point, because it stands to reason that societies with arbitrary and personal rule, versus the rule of law, will result in more bribery and other forms of corruption designed to influence the real decision maker.
A nation of laws is supposed to provide for all being treated equally, without much discretion by the "rulers" in how they treat folks, but in the U.S. that's been eroded by an overwhelming number of laws and regulations as well as a disturbing trend for Congress to give the executive branch bureaucracies the power to make laws as regulations and to then grant exceptions to them as they see fit.
To be fair, the police, the police chief and the prosecutor decided not to prosecute. After the media frenzy, the state kicked the normal prosecutor off the case and brought in a special prosecutor (with quite a history).
The special prosecutor then kicked the medical examiner off the case and brought in a new one who "owed" the new prosecutor because of a very checkered past related to mistakes and outright fraud. Then the special prosecutor kicked the lead detective off the case and demoted him. The same lead detective who stated under oath in court that all the evidence related to the case was completely consistent with Zimmerman's story of self-defense.
Then the new special prosecutor decided to charge Zimmerman. If you actually look at the history of the whole thing, you'll see that it's a complete witch hunt as a result of the media attention.
The defense didn't know about it until literally about 2 days before the trial. They only knew about it at all because of this whistle-blower.
They tried to use the evidence in the trial, but the judge wouldn't let them because they didn't have witnesses on their witness list already who could testify that the texts/pictures were from Martin (i.e. Authenticate them as having come from Martin). In the process, the Judge ignored a legal precedent that because they were found on Martin's own cell phone, they could be presumed to be his enough to let the jury decide.
Of course, the defense hadn't had any time to go find and depose all the witnesses needed to authenticate the evidence, because they only learned about the evidence right before the trial because the prosecution actively hid it's existence from them. The prosecution not intending to use the evidence in court is irrelevant. They have a duty to tell the defense about ANY evidence they find that may help the defense. Of course the prosecution isn't going to use it if they think it's bad for their case. That doesn't mean they don't have to tell the defense about it during discovery, which was well before this whistle-blower let the world know about it.
This whole situation was one of several where if Zimmerman had actually been convicted, his lawyers would have had en excellent case to have the verdict thrown out on appeal because of reversible error by the judge.
Um.... did you go to that link and stop to think that most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... are socialist and also rank much lower on that corruption index than the U.S.?
What you're link really shows is that established first world countries are less corrupt than 2nd and 2rd world countries that haven't quite figured out the rule of law yet. There are obviously a few exceptions, but that's much more the pattern.
If you were going on sheer count of socialist vs not-as-socialist (in the world of "mixed" economies, not much in the way of actual capitalism out there in the last 100 years), you'd have to say that the U.S. is well above the vast majority of the "socialist" countries in the world, but that's really mostly because most of them are 3rd world countries still recovering from or even still believing Marxist lies spread by the soviets successfully trying to inflame revolution around the world during the cold war.
Characters in stories are created to suffer through most of the plot. Droids are just a little easier to do that with in a serious way than people are, although ultimately, people are more fun.
As much as I don't necessarily agree with the logic of this USSC ruling, you've got how it works completely wrong.
If you say "I have the right to remain silent. 5th amendment.", you've invoked your rights, the cops/prosecutor must respect that and it can't be used against you at trial.
What the ruling said was that if you aren't being held (you're answering voluntarily) and you just stay silent in response to a questions, you haven't explicitly invoked your 5th amendment rights and so the prosecutor can bring up your silence to the jury. The opinion specifically says that if you actually invoke your 5th amendment rights, then they can use that invocation, nor the following silence, against you.
None of those groups were actually denied non-profit status
Having your tax exempt status held up for years while they hassle you any way they can think of, asking for donor lists, copies of everything you publish, everyone who's ever worked for or with you, any other groups you associate with, etc... so that you can be discouraged from doing anything and your efforts can be delayed beyond election dates is a total abuse of power. Especially while similar, but left-wing groups are sailing through and other Obama-related groups are getting special treatment with approval times measured in a few days to get fast tracked to the head of the agency and approved for retroactive tax exempt status back years instead of fined for never applying, but claiming it.
Justices Scalia and Thomas only agree about 86% of the time over the long haul. Most of the other Justices also have 80%+ agree percentages with at least one other Justice.
The more interesting contrast is Scalia and Breyer.
"Justice Scalia has been on the defense side of every non-unanimous Fourth Amendment case this term: King (today’s case in which he wrote the dissent), Bailey (in which he joined the 6-3 majority), Jardines (in which he wrote the majority), and McNeely (in which he joined the Sotomayor plurality/majority opinion). In contrast, Justice Breyer has been on the government’s side in each of the Term’s non-unanimous Fourth Amendment cases: King (in which he joined Kennedy’s majority), Bailey (in which he wrote the dissent), Jardines (in which he joined the dissent) and McNeely (in which he joined the more government-friendly Roberts concurrence/dissent with Alito)." - Orin Kerr
So someone gets paid and they broadcast political information from all sides of the political spectrum, but you don't have political advertising?
Sounds like a distinction without much difference. You just have the political advertising that the government or the media has decided to allow. I agree, that will certainly result in less political advertising.
You say all sides of the political spectrum, but does anyone get to decide whose side is shown how much in a particular context? Someone other than the person who wants to get their views out? It sounds like what you have is a set of elites who get to filter political information for the "proles". I wonder whose interests they serve...
Does the BBC not seem to have a political opinion on anything? Never criticized for any sort of bias? How come people who work at the BBC get to give out their political opinion in Britain, but other people can't broadcast theirs?
How come Rupert Murdoch gets to put out all the print political opinions he wants in Britain? Isn't that political advertising?
It sounds to me more like you're looking at Britain and because you're ok with whose opinions get to be expressed, you're ok with blocking everyone else.
In theory, you could ban all "political advertisements". In reality, you need an enforcement mechanism, which comes with regulators, prosecutors, etc... You also get a government board or committee to setup rules defining what is allowed and what isn't under your law banning "political advertisements".
Pretty soon, that board is run by either big media companies or else entrenched political consultants, because hey, they're the ones that really care enough to really study the laws and the regulations and gosh darn it, they have all sorts of relevant experience that makes them perfect for the job, right? So the board starts defining terms like "political" and "advertisement". Is a movie about events in Benghazi political? Is it an advertisement? Perhaps that depends on who is making the movie, some right-wing group, of course it's political. Hollywood? Of course not, they're not political, right? Maybe it depends on if Hilary or Obama are mentioned by name in the movie or not? Or perhaps we can just exclude stuff like that when it's shown say, within 60 days of an election where people mentioned in the move are involved?
Not sure if you're movie is going to fall afoul of the regulations? Better to just make sure your movie gets pre-clearance from the regulators who report to the board. That way you can be sure you aren't wasting your money on that Benghazi movie the government will order you to not release, or fine you or throw you in prison for showing.
Of course, like with all other laws, there's prosecutorial discretion. I mean, we have to allow for the prosecutor to have some common sense in only going after the actual bad guys, right? Maybe if the prosecuting attorney happens to be appointed by someone who is politically friendly to you, you get a little more leeway in what kind of movies and advertisements you can put out there? Perhaps everyone knows that if old Joe wasn't the prosecutor, you couldn't put that union "Let's all work together!" ad out there because someone else might call it political, but since Joe doesn't prosecute that sort of thing, you're ok.
I mean, it's not as if your elected and bureaucratic representatives have any incentives around caring which politicians get elected, right? No incentive to ensure the system can be gamed for their benefit?
Hopefully you can begin to see why banning "political advertisements" is in effect, the same as giving whoever is in power a filter to tilt media and advertising in their direction. That's what campaign finance "reform" has always been about in Congress in this country. Gaining an advantage over your political foes, tilting the playing field and ensuring you keep power.
Fortunately, we (all forms) have a right to free speech and the current supreme court is interested in preserving it more than they're interested in letting those in power in the government restrict it.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever you think of Obamacare, it was passed into law by a majority of both houses and the president's signature, just like the Constitution requires. Now the house R's, instead of trying to repeal the law, are instituting a tyranny of the minority. Don't do what we want, and we'll screw up everything. Much as it sucks to have the federal government largely shut down, the D's are right not to give into this extortion. Let this kind of crap get started, and we'll have a situation where an overall minority that controls one house, or the presidency, gets a chance every year to effectively veto any law they don't like.
So to paraphrase you:
Whatever you think of the end of discretionary appropriation funding, it was passed into law by a majority of both houses and the president's signature, just like the Constitution requires. Now the Senate D's and Obama, instead of passing the new appropriations law, are instituting a tyranny of the minority. Don't do what we want, and we'll screw up everything. Much as it sucks to have (the least essential 20% of) the federal government largely shut down, the R's are right not to give into this extortion. Let this kind of crap get started, and we'll have a situation where an overall minority that controls one house, or the presidency, gets a chance every year to effectively continue funding any law they don't like.
Now see if you can come up with an argument that doesn't cut in exactly the opposite direction... like, how about, Harry Reid would never do anything like this (of course, he did...), or if Obama was in Congress he would never oppose a debt ceiling increase or a funding bill over a partisan issue (of course, he did...)
In addition to your comments, "partially funding the government" is a misnomer. The government is what has been legally funded by Congress in a appropriations bill that must originate in the House. Unfunded bureaucratic departments aren't "the government" anymore. They might be "what the government used to do", but hey, things change and the funding ran out.
That I think implies that the site is protected by federal police, and in light of the widespread shutdown it seems plausible that they felt it couldn't be properly supervised. They may have their hands full as it is.
Right... even though federal police are considered "essential" and are still working? These private business reports are places with contracted leases that weren't closed during previous "shutdown"s. They produce revenue for the government, they don't consume it.
What right do the Interior Department people have to violate their lease and keep them from operating? Because they're trying to throw the biggest bureaucratic temper tantrum possible?
"1) The bill is law. The debate is settled. It's been signed into law. The court has ruled. The president has been re-elected, he has been endorsed by the majority of voting people to be on the right track." - The "shutdown" is also law, signed into law by President Obama himself. The debate here is about a new law authorizing new discretionary spending. The Republicans in the House were also re-elected and endorsed by their constituents while running on a platform of repealing the ACA. Elections have consequences, right?
"2) Conservative lawmakers planned on using "the power of the purse" to get their way -- i.e. shut down government." - Since the power of the purse for raising and spending money was explicitly given to the House of Representatives by those designing our system of government because they, having the smallest constituent/representative ratio and being required to run for re-election every 2 years are the closest to the "people" who are supposed to be truly in charge, it's a bit disingenuous to imply that the House functioning exactly as designed, using the power of the purse to defund an unpopular law, is somehow a bad thing in and of itself.
"3)" - I won't quote your whole complaint, but the majority of the House agrees it's in the best interests of their constituents to stick together.They're the elected representatives, so that's their right to decide.If you don't like it, feel free to run for Congress in the next election and make your case. No one who could walk out the door any time they want to is a "hostage" as you state. The Representatives in the House are free to vote however they want to, they aren't "hostages" to a rule they themselves agree on and are supporting.
Exactly. It's easy to have enough "jobs" for everyone. Give anyone without a job a teaspoon and point them to a ditch that needs digging or a hole that needs filling.
The point is to have people doing jobs that contribute the most/build the most wealth. For that, anything that can be done more economically by machines should be so those humans (the real scarce resource) can be freed up to do more of things that they do better than machines.
It gets worse... they sold it for -40 million (price minus leftover pensions), but they rejected an offer to buy it a couple of years ago for 300 million (410 million including pensions in that deal) . Apparently they're great at losing money on an investment rapidly....
Ah, so we finally come to the crux of the matter. You don't want to admit that your definition of a socialist government is an ideal one not shared by most people who aren't socialists. Your ideal is of the "No True Scotsman" line of fallacies.
So let's just agree to disagree on the definitions we are using in the original discussion. My claim is based on a definition of socialism that includes every government led by political leaders who favor purported socialist policies, while your definition appears to be an idealistic view of only governments that manage to fully implement socialism in a form acceptable to you.
By your definition style, there are no existing capitalist countries and no existing socialist countries, in large part because of public-choice economics reasons. By my definition style, most countries can be classified along a spectrum of public sentiment for socialist or free market style policies, said spectrum evidenced by the policies they appear to support. I'd classify any country that primarily supports socialist ideals in their stated public policy as socialist, while you'd only allow that classification for successfully implementing your ideals. As socialism as a governing philosophy is unworkable and corrupted, by your definition, it doesn't exist, except perhaps fleetingly.
For example, I'd classify Castro in Cuba, Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, Lagos and Bachelet in Chile, da Silva and Rousseff in Brazil, the Kirchners in Argentina, Medina in the DR, Mujica in Uruguay, Morales in Bolivia, Zelaya in Honduras, Ortega in Nicaragua, Correa in Ecuador, Lugo in Paraguay, Funes in El Salvador and Humala in Peru as all being left-wing socialist Presidents in Latin America. So would most people, as evidenced by popular sources such as Wikipedia, news organizations such as the BBC, the Boston Globe, etc...
Do you consider those Latin American leaders socialists under your definition? If so, you've agreed to my point, at least as to Latin America. If not, then you're simply using a definition of a socialist government not commonly in widespread use.
The point wasn't to accuse you of hypocrisy (although now that you bring it up, I suppose it does that as well), but to point out the logical inconsistency of your arguments.
Either "broad sweeping statements" are meaningless and/or pointless without additional specific substantiation, or they aren't. You yourself demonstrate that you find them useful in making your arguments, invalidating your broad, sweeping claim that they aren't.
I can reasonably opine that water is generally wet. If I agree that "proving" that would require a more formal definition of wet vs. frozen or gaseous, whether water typically refers to the liquid form, or if it could be considered to include water ice, or water vapor, or if those are distinct, then based on that you'd have to really show some data about actual water samples... sure, proving it like that would be more convincing, but also somewhat beyond the level of proof required of a /. post.
Especially when most folks familiar with the facts can conclude that yes, water is indeed generally wet, based on their personal experience and knowledge.
So yeah, I guess that many people aren't familiar enough with the history of the various regions mentioned and their governments that they think there is something controversial with describing them as socialist in nature, but that doesn't mean they aren't. If you presented some sort of actual analysis based on commonly agreed definitions, I'm open to change my mind, but like my opinion that water is generally wet, my opinion is based on knowledge from disparate sources gained over an extended period of time, not a specific analysis completed to prove a single point on /. If I were a historian or sociologist by profession, or even a political consultant or some such, I might undertake a paper proving the point, but for the purposes of a comment, it's not exactly required for something so uncontroversial.
I did acknowledge early in this discussion that definitions of words can differ and if you have a different working definition of socialism than I have, we could only be disagreeing on semantics and not on substance, but if you disagree with me on the substance of the statement, why have you failed to put forth even one alternate hypothesis? Instead, you've just been arguing in the negative.
So let me ask, how would you describe the majority (or largest plurality, if that's too much for you) of the governments of the regions in question? Keep in mind that to be a point against my statement, your alternate description should be something that fundamentally contradicts the idea that they are socialist in name or nature. So while totalitarian, or kleptocracy, or mob rule might describe some of them, those descriptions don't exclude a socialist government and might even be argued to indicate one. You'll need to find something that excludes high levels of government power "socializing" the nation's resources.
There's a difference between knowledge in your head and detailed knowledge written up as evidence. Yeah, I have a general idea of the governing philosophies of the ruling parties of most countries through history. I doubt you had to go put together an economic and political analysis of Venezuela before making your comment about they way they do things. Your premise there is false. I'm happy to have you present your contradictory evidence to my conclusions, though. If I'm wrong, I'll readily admit it if you show me.
I'd have to disagree here. You could have an anarcho-libertarian state with it's members believing that it's the best way to organize for everyone's benefit in that state and it fits a goal of ensuring things for the collective, but you would never call it socialism. Socialism is more about the means to the goal, rather than the goal itself.
If you're familiar with history, you know that the National Socialists were competing with the Soviet Socialists for world power. Sure, they hated each other as part of that competition, but if you look back at newspaper and historical accounts of the time, you'll see that socialism was widely considered to be the modern, scientific way of governing for the future and the Germans were considered just as socialist.
Many Americans (and some very famous ones) considered the National Socialists the future of world socialism. It wasn't until they were on the other side in a war that they lost that retroactively they were written as non-socialist. You have to rely on more contemporary accounts, rather than accounts written by the winners.
(Just a note here, to not be misunderstood, this is by way of explanation. I don't support the ideals of either the National Socialists, nor the Red ones, and certainly don't condone the massive massacres done in their names.)
It's not a coincidence that many South American countries, like Venezuela, act more like the National Socialists. There was a heavy German influence there, both pre-war and after they lost and many fled from Germany.
There's a long history of private roads, even in the United States. Typically, they are better roads than public roads, so it's interesting that you seem to conflate "proper" roads with public roads. It's also funny you bring this up at a time where despite all the other moves towards socialism in the U.S., roads are one of the few areas where the technocrats are starting to consider privatizing much more as the latest fad in city/state management. Public roads suffer from many of the same issues as public commons, having a difficult time balancing over- (congestion) and under-use (waste), fair payment for them, determining when it's efficient to build more or expand them, etc... Privately owned and managed roads are starting to be seen by governments as a solution to those issues.
To quote a famous economist, "Markets are flawed, use markets." There is definitely an issue when a central planner believes they have the knowledge (socialist calculation problem) to design what works for an industry, or even knows what the "right" goal is for companies in that industry to pursue. Back to the original corruption level discussion, per public choice economics, that also leads to conflicts of interest related to possessing that power that end well for the politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies, but not for the rest of us.
That's a much better argument... we could almost agree, except you seem to be focusing only on financial measures of socialism within a country.
Percent of GDP spent on government and tax rates aren't socialism per se, but they're highly correlated with socialism because of the causal relationship between a socialist desire for those conditions and those conditions becoming law. If you focus only on monetary measurements, you miss the affect of socialist attitudes on laws and regulations transferring effective control of non-government resources from private individuals to government agents.
As an illustrative example, if a particular government bureaucracy can tell a particular private industry what decisions to make 80% of the time (arbitrary number), the government isn't spending much money on that and the regulations don't show up in the tax rates, but they've effectively socialized that industry to a great extent as a result of their control over it.
In first world, wealthier socialist-leaning (because really, it's all a mixed economy nowadays, the mix just differs) economies, much of the control is financial, because a wealthier, more established nation will tend to have institutions like property/land records with established rights going back hundreds, if not thousands of years, bank accounts, electronic transactions, public records, etc... Wealthier nations are correlated with more internal/external trade and transactions that can be used as a basis for taxation, for example.
In a less established nation, without much in the way of real property rights, where most transactions are in a "grey" market system, you're going to have more direct control by government agents and (while "official" tax rates can be high) less formal taxation and spending structures. The transaction level, control and wealth just isn't there to support that style of system without resorting to direct control.
In France, if the government wants to get more resources from an industry, they raise taxes on it. In Venezuela, the government declares they own part of the company and have the right to jointly make decisions about where the company spends it's resources. I think it's difficult to argue that one method of resource control is inherently more socialist then the other. The axis of methodology seems much more correlated with overall historical wealth and income levels (probably as a result of those established institutions and internal/external trade).
So yeah, while it can yield some false positives, because of the difficulty of cross-country comparisons, which are affected by many other factors, my typical measurement of socialism in a country would be more of a political one. What policies do the rulers publicly advocate? Do they refer to themselves as socialist/worker's party/whatever standard euphemism for socialism that represents a bundle of policies that matches to a large extent the same bundle of policies that officially socialist groups advocate.
Typically, socialism (specifically, Marxist socialism) was the ostensible political policy of the former colonial nations influenced by the Soviet Union during the cold war to demand independence. Other countries were taken over by "revolutionaries" funded by the soviets, sometimes directly, many times indirectly, such as via Cuban subsidies, troops, etc... Do they all perfectly achieve their ideals? Of course not. Are they clinging to their socialist ideals, yeah, they mostly still are, although a few places are starting to turn around their actual policies as the reality of of failing economies sticks around.
This is already too long, but the only way you'd establish a real, provable answer, would be to analyze in depth the political and economic situation of each country in question, which is a bit much for a /. argument. :)
I wasn't aware it was necessary to prove common knowledge. I wasn't trying to argue anything about which countries are socialist and which aren't, just commenting on common knowledge as to which are which. Ok, common knowledge to anyone with a modicum of world history knowledge of the last 100 years.
Since your first response didn't even directly disagree with anything specific, let alone provide any evidence or argument, it wasn't exactly very convincing.
Here, try starting with wikipedia's pretty map of socialist countries by duration. Notice where they are mostly located? Ah yes, Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe... and those are primarily the states that have been "officially" socialist via self-declaration or their constitution, let alone all the others that are socialist in ongoing sentiment.
If you're going to argue against that, you're going to have to provide your own special definition of what a socialist country is (ignoring people who openly state they are socialists to define them away) and then explain which countries fit or don't fit. Here's a hint: Socialist doesn't equal "Democratic", They're different concepts and one neither implies, nor doesn't imply the other.
Thank you for your well-reasoned argument about which countries are socialist and which aren't. It was very convincing to many people, I'm sure...
Your actual conclusion seems to be that Democratic countries are generally less corrupt than dictatorships. That makes more sense than his point, because it stands to reason that societies with arbitrary and personal rule, versus the rule of law, will result in more bribery and other forms of corruption designed to influence the real decision maker.
A nation of laws is supposed to provide for all being treated equally, without much discretion by the "rulers" in how they treat folks, but in the U.S. that's been eroded by an overwhelming number of laws and regulations as well as a disturbing trend for Congress to give the executive branch bureaucracies the power to make laws as regulations and to then grant exceptions to them as they see fit.
To be fair, the police, the police chief and the prosecutor decided not to prosecute. After the media frenzy, the state kicked the normal prosecutor off the case and brought in a special prosecutor (with quite a history).
The special prosecutor then kicked the medical examiner off the case and brought in a new one who "owed" the new prosecutor because of a very checkered past related to mistakes and outright fraud. Then the special prosecutor kicked the lead detective off the case and demoted him. The same lead detective who stated under oath in court that all the evidence related to the case was completely consistent with Zimmerman's story of self-defense.
Then the new special prosecutor decided to charge Zimmerman. If you actually look at the history of the whole thing, you'll see that it's a complete witch hunt as a result of the media attention.
The defense didn't know about it until literally about 2 days before the trial. They only knew about it at all because of this whistle-blower.
They tried to use the evidence in the trial, but the judge wouldn't let them because they didn't have witnesses on their witness list already who could testify that the texts/pictures were from Martin (i.e. Authenticate them as having come from Martin). In the process, the Judge ignored a legal precedent that because they were found on Martin's own cell phone, they could be presumed to be his enough to let the jury decide.
Of course, the defense hadn't had any time to go find and depose all the witnesses needed to authenticate the evidence, because they only learned about the evidence right before the trial because the prosecution actively hid it's existence from them. The prosecution not intending to use the evidence in court is irrelevant. They have a duty to tell the defense about ANY evidence they find that may help the defense. Of course the prosecution isn't going to use it if they think it's bad for their case. That doesn't mean they don't have to tell the defense about it during discovery, which was well before this whistle-blower let the world know about it.
This whole situation was one of several where if Zimmerman had actually been convicted, his lawyers would have had en excellent case to have the verdict thrown out on appeal because of reversible error by the judge.
Um.... did you go to that link and stop to think that most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... are socialist and also rank much lower on that corruption index than the U.S.?
What you're link really shows is that established first world countries are less corrupt than 2nd and 2rd world countries that haven't quite figured out the rule of law yet. There are obviously a few exceptions, but that's much more the pattern.
If you were going on sheer count of socialist vs not-as-socialist (in the world of "mixed" economies, not much in the way of actual capitalism out there in the last 100 years), you'd have to say that the U.S. is well above the vast majority of the "socialist" countries in the world, but that's really mostly because most of them are 3rd world countries still recovering from or even still believing Marxist lies spread by the soviets successfully trying to inflame revolution around the world during the cold war.
Characters in stories are created to suffer through most of the plot. Droids are just a little easier to do that with in a serious way than people are, although ultimately, people are more fun.
As much as I don't necessarily agree with the logic of this USSC ruling, you've got how it works completely wrong.
If you say "I have the right to remain silent. 5th amendment.", you've invoked your rights, the cops/prosecutor must respect that and it can't be used against you at trial.
What the ruling said was that if you aren't being held (you're answering voluntarily) and you just stay silent in response to a questions, you haven't explicitly invoked your 5th amendment rights and so the prosecutor can bring up your silence to the jury. The opinion specifically says that if you actually invoke your 5th amendment rights, then they can use that invocation, nor the following silence, against you.
"... it did not violate Salinas’s Fifth Amendment right to comment on his silence because he never formally asserted his Fifth Amendment right ..."
See this from a law professor for a more detailed explanation.
At least the NSA's database of records will be useful for helping criminal defendants once the cell phone company has destroyed them...
Having your tax exempt status held up for years while they hassle you any way they can think of, asking for donor lists, copies of everything you publish, everyone who's ever worked for or with you, any other groups you associate with, etc... so that you can be discouraged from doing anything and your efforts can be delayed beyond election dates is a total abuse of power. Especially while similar, but left-wing groups are sailing through and other Obama-related groups are getting special treatment with approval times measured in a few days to get fast tracked to the head of the agency and approved for retroactive tax exempt status back years instead of fined for never applying, but claiming it.
The bias and abuses of power are practically endless. Here's comprehensive coverage from the TaxProf.
Look, when even Jon Stewart is making fun of the IRS and their "being audited", you know it's bad.
Justices Scalia and Thomas only agree about 86% of the time over the long haul. Most of the other Justices also have 80%+ agree percentages with at least one other Justice.
The more interesting contrast is Scalia and Breyer.
"Justice Scalia has been on the defense side of every non-unanimous Fourth Amendment case this term: King (today’s case in which he wrote the dissent), Bailey (in which he joined the 6-3 majority), Jardines (in which he wrote the majority), and McNeely (in which he joined the Sotomayor plurality/majority opinion). In contrast, Justice Breyer has been on the government’s side in each of the Term’s non-unanimous Fourth Amendment cases: King (in which he joined Kennedy’s majority), Bailey (in which he wrote the dissent), Jardines (in which he joined the dissent) and McNeely (in which he joined the more government-friendly Roberts concurrence/dissent with Alito)." - Orin Kerr
So someone gets paid and they broadcast political information from all sides of the political spectrum, but you don't have political advertising?
Sounds like a distinction without much difference. You just have the political advertising that the government or the media has decided to allow. I agree, that will certainly result in less political advertising.
You say all sides of the political spectrum, but does anyone get to decide whose side is shown how much in a particular context? Someone other than the person who wants to get their views out? It sounds like what you have is a set of elites who get to filter political information for the "proles". I wonder whose interests they serve...
Britain is a good example, then.
Does the BBC not seem to have a political opinion on anything? Never criticized for any sort of bias? How come people who work at the BBC get to give out their political opinion in Britain, but other people can't broadcast theirs?
How come Rupert Murdoch gets to put out all the print political opinions he wants in Britain? Isn't that political advertising?
It sounds to me more like you're looking at Britain and because you're ok with whose opinions get to be expressed, you're ok with blocking everyone else.
In theory, you could ban all "political advertisements". In reality, you need an enforcement mechanism, which comes with regulators, prosecutors, etc... You also get a government board or committee to setup rules defining what is allowed and what isn't under your law banning "political advertisements".
Pretty soon, that board is run by either big media companies or else entrenched political consultants, because hey, they're the ones that really care enough to really study the laws and the regulations and gosh darn it, they have all sorts of relevant experience that makes them perfect for the job, right? So the board starts defining terms like "political" and "advertisement". Is a movie about events in Benghazi political? Is it an advertisement? Perhaps that depends on who is making the movie, some right-wing group, of course it's political. Hollywood? Of course not, they're not political, right? Maybe it depends on if Hilary or Obama are mentioned by name in the movie or not? Or perhaps we can just exclude stuff like that when it's shown say, within 60 days of an election where people mentioned in the move are involved?
Not sure if you're movie is going to fall afoul of the regulations? Better to just make sure your movie gets pre-clearance from the regulators who report to the board. That way you can be sure you aren't wasting your money on that Benghazi movie the government will order you to not release, or fine you or throw you in prison for showing.
Of course, like with all other laws, there's prosecutorial discretion. I mean, we have to allow for the prosecutor to have some common sense in only going after the actual bad guys, right? Maybe if the prosecuting attorney happens to be appointed by someone who is politically friendly to you, you get a little more leeway in what kind of movies and advertisements you can put out there? Perhaps everyone knows that if old Joe wasn't the prosecutor, you couldn't put that union "Let's all work together!" ad out there because someone else might call it political, but since Joe doesn't prosecute that sort of thing, you're ok.
I mean, it's not as if your elected and bureaucratic representatives have any incentives around caring which politicians get elected, right? No incentive to ensure the system can be gamed for their benefit?
Hopefully you can begin to see why banning "political advertisements" is in effect, the same as giving whoever is in power a filter to tilt media and advertising in their direction. That's what campaign finance "reform" has always been about in Congress in this country. Gaining an advantage over your political foes, tilting the playing field and ensuring you keep power.
Fortunately, we (all forms) have a right to free speech and the current supreme court is interested in preserving it more than they're interested in letting those in power in the government restrict it.