First, saying that a candidate for office is not involved with political speech is absurd. It's a tautology that the communications of the candidate IS speech, right? And it must be, by definition, related to politics. How can you claim otherwise.
Second, umm... McCain-Feingold doesn't deal with what a candidate can say, for example, in a news interview or public forum. Rather, it limits what the candidate or his supporters can disseminate themselves. Thus, it's prior restraint on what groups of people, whether or not they're candidates, can say.
In order to regulate speech, there must be a compelling reason (the old rationale used to be "clear and present danger", but that seems to have been discarded). In the case of M-F, the Supreme Court ruled that the compelling reason was to avoid any APPEARANCE of impropriety -- the judges don't even care about whether any actual impropriety is occurring. Apparently it's crucial to the health of our society that no citizen become so jaded as to think their elected officials are dishonest -- and let's all hope that day never comes!
Interestingly, it appears to me that the M-F regulation is only on GROUPS of people -- I as an individual can still buy an ad spot. This seems to violate the right to associate freely, and I don't believe that aspect was argued before the Court.
Your first two points are good. But #3 is insane: > If the public decides it can share copies, > then the publisher is not entitled to expect > to be paid
No, a consensus of the public cannot take away something that is currently private property. The 5th Amendment says "Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." Even if you don't think it SHOULD be private property, the fact is that significant investments have been made in it, and declaring it public would be robbing the current holders of those investments.
(On my soapbox) This is the problem with democracy unbridled by Constitutional limitations -- it's nothing but mob rules. The reason we need government is to protect the rights of the little guys, but thinking as above is doing the opposite, enabling the majority to take what they want just because they've got the strength of numbers.
> In the past typically one party becomes very > un-popular (federalists, whigs, etc.), and the > other party sorta takes over.
I don't see this happening any more. In the past it seems that parties were guided more by actual ideologies. Today the guiding principles are political expedience and polling. Your own message acknowledges this.
Consider the Democrat backing of the war, and the Republican backing of the prescription drug plan. Both of these stands are contradictory to the respective Party's "ideals", yet they abandon their putative philosophies to maintain power.
To paraphrase Annihilator, the only solution is a violent revolution.
To be correct, the system isn't "written in Microsoft Access".
Access is a RAD development system that uses Microsoft's JET database engine for data storage. (Actually, these days it prefers to use MSDE, which is a stripped-down SQL Server, but JET is still supported).
I have developed many departmental-scope apps in Access, and more in "real" languages using the JET engine. But anyone who would choose to use Access for such a large-scale system really needs their head examined. This isn't MS-bashing, they tell you what Access and JET are good for, and I don't think that Microsoft themselves would advocate this usage.
Reading through the Wired article, it appears that the Diebold programmers know very little about the correct usage of relational databases. Anyone who builds a data model that looks like what this article implies should not be entrusted with the keys to our democratic process.
I think that a lot of posters here need to get some basic education in economics.
The point was made that outsourcing forces domestic wages down. This may be true, but it's not relevant. You're mixing up currency with wealth. Wages in dollars may decrease, but the lowered costs to industry lower prices, which increases buying power per unit currency. Overall, buying power remains constant (other things being equal).
However, other things aren't equal. For one thing, the countries supplying the labor now have more dollars. There's only one thing that dollars are good for, and that's paying for things that are priced in dollars -- i.e., American goods (actually, it might go through many hands first, but since the only source of dollars is America, they've got to wind up there eventually). This increases what the rest of the world can import from us, improving our trade balance.
Someone suggested that it's easy to see the damage that outsourcing does to a locality, but that's absurd. If I expected that all of my purchased goods be produced in my own town, I wouldn't have acces to nearly the goods that I own. It's crazy to suggest that the huge breadth of computers, entertainment devices, entertainment content (books, etc), food, tools, housewares, etc., all be produced in my town. To support the huge range of choices we have, we need to allow specialization, which requires large groups. The degree of specialization we have today requires globalization.
Please look at this book, it explains economic issues such as this better than any other source I've seen: Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/05 17548232/
God knows, a terrorist would never illegally carry an overweight payload on the aircraft, and they can be relied on to get properly licensed before their suicide missions.
Umm, maybe because that's standard marketing practice. The guy in front doesn't acknowledge the existence of any competitors. Remember back to the Burger King "We're #2 so we try harder" campaign, which was met with silence from McDonald's.
This is a central issue, and one that I haven't seen pro-lifers directly address. Even if we stipulate for the argument that a fetus is a full-fledged "person", whatever that means, deserving of all attendant rights, what is it that forces the mother to assume full responsibility for it?
I'm not saying that this couldn't be argued, just that I don't believe it has. In fact, many pro-lifers are willing to allow abortion in cases of rape and incest, which would seem to concede this point.
Yes, I see the word "parent". In the sentence you refer to the parent, using a construct that clearly reveals that you believe that parent contained the "direct quote". Either you don't know how to formulate a coherent sentence, or you simply can't be bothered to read the item you're referring to.
I suspect the latter, because you also claim that I've jumped to conclusions regarding the issues in Moore's film. Go back through the thread, and point to one single instance where I said "Moore is wrong" or "Moore is right" regarding any specific issue.
You won't be able to do this, because there aren't any -- the farthest I went is to say that Moore has a bad track record. YOU have preconceived notions of what my beliefs are, and are viewing my writing through that lens.
Read my post again. I didnt say the article quoted Eisner.
Revisionism. Luckily, we've got a "paper" trail:
Is it not enough for you to read a direct quote from the CEO of disney
It's true that I haven't seen the movie. After the anti-capitalist undercurrents of Roger and Me and the outright fabrications of Bowling for Columbine, I'm not going to put money in Moore's pocket. Still, it would be far from the truth to say that I'm a Conservative stooge. There's absolutely plenty to criticize the Bush administration for. But you're right for the wrong reasons, and to my mind, that's not the way to do it.
You're inventing things that weren't in the article. There was no direct quote. The article said that other people said that Eisner was worried about tax breaks. The article also said that another possible explanation is the influence of a major shareholder from Saudi Arabia.
You not understanding the meaning of "direct quote" isn't proof that something was really said.
Any number of respondents have posted that the Governor of Florida is GWB's brother (duh), and thus a potential channel through which influence can flow.
But still, not a single person has even suggested a specific instance of favoritism actually exercised on Disney's behalf.
So are all of you just saying that Eisner is just hedging his bets to secure *future* favoritism, or do you believe that something has actually transpired?
Assuming that's true, what does Bush have to do with it? As I'm sure you're aware, the President is not responsible for levying taxes. If he's got anything to worry about, it's from Congress.
But as soon as Disney tried to put the movie away because of benefits they've received from the Bush family
Which benefits are those? The only special treatment Disney's received (that I'm aware of) is the absurd copyright protections, and that had nothing to do with Bush -- it was Congress under Clinton, and later the Supreme Court.
But tell me why it is that when the State breaks the rules, the only repurcussions are that they can't use the information they got -- no punishment at all.
The 4th Amendment clearly says that the government does not have authority to execute searches that are unreasonable, or without probable cause. Yet in common usage, they seem to allowed to sidestep this at will, so long as they say, "Well, we just won't use the information we got".
I think that the purpose of the Amendment is to keep the government off the average guy's back just as much as it is to prevent incarceration of innocents.
The way I read the 4th Amendment, it says that people should be free of unreasonable searches PERIOD. It doesn't say that the gov't can check anything it wants, but can't use the product in any prosecution. The Constitution says, very simply, to leave the people alone.
So they restructured and let a bunch of people go. Is this right? Hell no! Is this honorable, definantly not. Is this standart buisness practice in every industry in the uninted states of america, yes. Sorry, this is how buisness s works
Of course it's right! You expect to keep employing people to do stuff that doesn't earn them money? Then how are they going to keep paying the employees? If they can't deliver any profit, how are they going to raise capital to exapnd (and thereby employ more people)?
The thing that employs people and raises standards of living is that people will do anything to earn profit -- and if consumers demand a product, a corporation will supply it to get the buck. And they need employees to make the product, etc.
Or should we go communist? I don't see any communist economies producing enough food for their people, let alone thriving.
If this treaty commits both nations to DMCA-style regulation, how strongly does that cement DMCA here in the USA? Politics aside, it would today be possible to repeal DMCA, but if it's part of a treaty with the Aussies, doesn't that now take it out of the hands of American legislature?
Why is everyone so concerned about airline security, anyway? I mean, the terrorists aren't out to destroy that industry specifically. They're goal is presumably to make us afraid that a danger lurks behind every corner. And if this is the case, then they'll almost certainly be looking elsewhere for the next attacks.
We're trying to put an inch-think steel door up while forgetting that we've got screen windows.
As far as that goes, you're correct. But I submit that if we take a step farther back from the problem, it reveals that a government to which we've surrendered too much power, thus allowing that government to pander by selling favors. The spoiled-brat children wouldn't always try the same gambit were it not for the over-indulgent parent.
And if that's true, then the real culprit is us sheep for allowing the government to do so virtually unchecked.
Slashdot Mirror
First, saying that a candidate for office is not involved with political speech is absurd. It's a tautology that the communications of the candidate IS speech, right? And it must be, by definition, related to politics. How can you claim otherwise.
Second, umm... McCain-Feingold doesn't deal with what a candidate can say, for example, in a news interview or public forum. Rather, it limits what the candidate or his supporters can disseminate themselves. Thus, it's prior restraint on what groups of people, whether or not they're candidates, can say.
In order to regulate speech, there must be a compelling reason (the old rationale used to be "clear and present danger", but that seems to have been discarded). In the case of M-F, the Supreme Court ruled that the compelling reason was to avoid any APPEARANCE of impropriety -- the judges don't even care about whether any actual impropriety is occurring. Apparently it's crucial to the health of our society that no citizen become so jaded as to think their elected officials are dishonest -- and let's all hope that day never comes!
Interestingly, it appears to me that the M-F regulation is only on GROUPS of people -- I as an individual can still buy an ad spot. This seems to violate the right to associate freely, and I don't believe that aspect was argued before the Court.
Your first two points are good. But #3 is insane:
> If the public decides it can share copies,
> then the publisher is not entitled to expect
> to be paid
No, a consensus of the public cannot take away something that is currently private property. The 5th Amendment says "Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." Even if you don't think it SHOULD be private property, the fact is that significant investments have been made in it, and declaring it public would be robbing the current holders of those investments.
(On my soapbox) This is the problem with democracy unbridled by Constitutional limitations -- it's nothing but mob rules. The reason we need government is to protect the rights of the little guys, but thinking as above is doing the opposite, enabling the majority to take what they want just because they've got the strength of numbers.
> In the past typically one party becomes very
> un-popular (federalists, whigs, etc.), and the
> other party sorta takes over.
I don't see this happening any more. In the past it seems that parties were guided more by actual ideologies. Today the guiding principles are political expedience and polling. Your own message acknowledges this.
Consider the Democrat backing of the war, and the Republican backing of the prescription drug plan. Both of these stands are contradictory to the respective Party's "ideals", yet they abandon their putative philosophies to maintain power.
To paraphrase Annihilator, the only solution is a violent revolution.
To be correct, the system isn't "written in Microsoft Access".
Access is a RAD development system that uses Microsoft's JET database engine for data storage. (Actually, these days it prefers to use MSDE, which is a stripped-down SQL Server, but JET is still supported).
I have developed many departmental-scope apps in Access, and more in "real" languages using the JET engine. But anyone who would choose to use Access for such a large-scale system really needs their head examined. This isn't MS-bashing, they tell you what Access and JET are good for, and I don't think that Microsoft themselves would advocate this usage.
Reading through the Wired article, it appears that the Diebold programmers know very little about the correct usage of relational databases. Anyone who builds a data model that looks like what this article implies should not be entrusted with the keys to our democratic process.
I think that a lot of posters here need to get some basic education in economics.
5 17548232/
The point was made that outsourcing forces domestic wages down. This may be true, but it's not relevant. You're mixing up currency with wealth. Wages in dollars may decrease, but the lowered costs to industry lower prices, which increases buying power per unit currency. Overall, buying power remains constant (other things being equal).
However, other things aren't equal. For one thing, the countries supplying the labor now have more dollars. There's only one thing that dollars are good for, and that's paying for things that are priced in dollars -- i.e., American goods (actually, it might go through many hands first, but since the only source of dollars is America, they've got to wind up there eventually). This increases what the rest of the world can import from us, improving our trade balance.
Someone suggested that it's easy to see the damage that outsourcing does to a locality, but that's absurd. If I expected that all of my purchased goods be produced in my own town, I wouldn't have acces to nearly the goods that I own. It's crazy to suggest that the huge breadth of computers, entertainment devices, entertainment content (books, etc), food, tools, housewares, etc., all be produced in my town. To support the huge range of choices we have, we need to allow specialization, which requires large groups. The degree of specialization we have today requires globalization.
Please look at this book, it explains economic issues such as this better than any other source I've seen:
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0
God knows, a terrorist would never illegally carry an overweight payload on the aircraft, and they can be relied on to get properly licensed before their suicide missions.
Umm, maybe because that's standard marketing practice. The guy in front doesn't acknowledge the existence of any competitors. Remember back to the Burger King "We're #2 so we try harder" campaign, which was met with silence from McDonald's.
Move along, there's no conspiracy to see here.
This is a central issue, and one that I haven't seen pro-lifers directly address. Even if we stipulate for the argument that a fetus is a full-fledged "person", whatever that means, deserving of all attendant rights, what is it that forces the mother to assume full responsibility for it?
I'm not saying that this couldn't be argued, just that I don't believe it has. In fact, many pro-lifers are willing to allow abortion in cases of rape and incest, which would seem to concede this point.
In this action, he was following the law. Releasing the data would be in violation of the legislation that created the NICS system.
Can you provide a citation? (I'm not arguing or disagreeing; I want a citation so I can prove it to other people)
Yes, I see the word "parent". In the sentence you refer to the parent, using a construct that clearly reveals that you believe that parent contained the "direct quote". Either you don't know how to formulate a coherent sentence, or you simply can't be bothered to read the item you're referring to.
I suspect the latter, because you also claim that I've jumped to conclusions regarding the issues in Moore's film. Go back through the thread, and point to one single instance where I said "Moore is wrong" or "Moore is right" regarding any specific issue.
You won't be able to do this, because there aren't any -- the farthest I went is to say that Moore has a bad track record. YOU have preconceived notions of what my beliefs are, and are viewing my writing through that lens.
Sheesh
Revisionism. Luckily, we've got a "paper" trail:
It's true that I haven't seen the movie. After the anti-capitalist undercurrents of Roger and Me and the outright fabrications of Bowling for Columbine, I'm not going to put money in Moore's pocket. Still, it would be far from the truth to say that I'm a Conservative stooge. There's absolutely plenty to criticize the Bush administration for. But you're right for the wrong reasons, and to my mind, that's not the way to do it.
You're inventing things that weren't in the article. There was no direct quote. The article said that other people said that Eisner was worried about tax breaks. The article also said that another possible explanation is the influence of a major shareholder from Saudi Arabia.
You not understanding the meaning of "direct quote" isn't proof that something was really said.
Any number of respondents have posted that the Governor of Florida is GWB's brother (duh), and thus a potential channel through which influence can flow.
But still, not a single person has even suggested a specific instance of favoritism actually exercised on Disney's behalf.
So are all of you just saying that Eisner is just hedging his bets to secure *future* favoritism, or do you believe that something has actually transpired?
Assuming that's true, what does Bush have to do with it? As I'm sure you're aware, the President is not responsible for levying taxes. If he's got anything to worry about, it's from Congress.
Which benefits are those? The only special treatment Disney's received (that I'm aware of) is the absurd copyright protections, and that had nothing to do with Bush -- it was Congress under Clinton, and later the Supreme Court.
But tell me why it is that when the State breaks the rules, the only repurcussions are that they can't use the information they got -- no punishment at all.
The 4th Amendment clearly says that the government does not have authority to execute searches that are unreasonable, or without probable cause. Yet in common usage, they seem to allowed to sidestep this at will, so long as they say, "Well, we just won't use the information we got".
I think that the purpose of the Amendment is to keep the government off the average guy's back just as much as it is to prevent incarceration of innocents.
The way I read the 4th Amendment, it says that people should be free of unreasonable searches PERIOD. It doesn't say that the gov't can check anything it wants, but can't use the product in any prosecution. The Constitution says, very simply, to leave the people alone.
Of course it's right! You expect to keep employing people to do stuff that doesn't earn them money? Then how are they going to keep paying the employees? If they can't deliver any profit, how are they going to raise capital to exapnd (and thereby employ more people)?
The thing that employs people and raises standards of living is that people will do anything to earn profit -- and if consumers demand a product, a corporation will supply it to get the buck. And they need employees to make the product, etc.
Or should we go communist? I don't see any communist economies producing enough food for their people, let alone thriving.
If this treaty commits both nations to DMCA-style regulation, how strongly does that cement DMCA here in the USA? Politics aside, it would today be possible to repeal DMCA, but if it's part of a treaty with the Aussies, doesn't that now take it out of the hands of American legislature?
Why is everyone so concerned about airline security, anyway? I mean, the terrorists aren't out to destroy that industry specifically. They're goal is presumably to make us afraid that a danger lurks behind every corner. And if this is the case, then they'll almost certainly be looking elsewhere for the next attacks.
We're trying to put an inch-think steel door up while forgetting that we've got screen windows.
I'm expecting groomed Chewbacca costumes.
As far as that goes, you're correct. But I submit that if we take a step farther back from the problem, it reveals that a government to which we've surrendered too much power, thus allowing that government to pander by selling favors. The spoiled-brat children wouldn't always try the same gambit were it not for the over-indulgent parent.
And if that's true, then the real culprit is us sheep for allowing the government to do so virtually unchecked.
Someone less cynical might say that consumers are in complete control.
I mean, a corporation is helpless if it's customers bail on them. If we fail to do so, it's only because we're a bunch of sheep.
Better health through penile enlargements? I'd like to see studies on that.