This person's girlfriend accidentally killed a pet rabbit by not remembering to feed it, and she is facing jail time.
For what charge, and in which jurisdiction??
In my state that would be a Class A Misdemeanor, at most, and you don't do jail time for those unless there are aggravating circumstances and/or you already have a lengthy criminal record.
Stopping my cat from assisting in the destruction of the local ecosystem is selfish? Keeping her away from traffic, aggressive dogs, and asshole humans is selfish? Preventing her from getting fleas and ticks is selfish?
Every cat owner I know who lets their cats go outside has lost at least one of them. The shitty part is they almost never find out why. Did the cat get run over? Did it become a meal for a larger animal? Was it taken in by the crazy cat lady down the street?
A cat's natural instinct is to kill as many small animals as possible while producing as many kittens as she can. We stop them from satisfying these urges all the time and I've never heard it called inhumane. I think the medical care, limitless supply of food, and shelter she doesn't have to compete for is a good trade off, from her point of view, particularly given the alternatives. There's a reason why cats domesticated themselves....
Keep your cat indoors. Problem solved. It's more humane for the cat (indoor cats live longer in general), better for the neighborhood wildlife, and makes it impossible for your cat to suffer traumatic injury from automobiles, dogs, etc. The cat may not like it as much, but there's a reason why you're the owner of the animal.
And yes, I am a cat owner. Rescued one of the neighborhood strays. She still wants to go outside, but it's not happening. Her quality of life is higher and I don't have to worry about her never coming home for reasons forever unknown.
The hard brake (defined by them as deceleration of >=7 mph/sec) is the metric they care the most about. I logged only four of them in my six month evaluation period and received the full 30% discount in spite of a daily mileage average of 61 miles, back when they supposedly wanted to see an average of <=30 miles/day.
A large number of hard brakes would seem to suggest a driver who is frequently distracted. An attentive and defensive driver should be able to avoid the majority of them, even in traffic and even when other drivers do something stupid. There are a few occasions that will be unavoidable but they're the exception, not the rule. Only one of mine was unavoidable (deer ran in front of me), the rest were caused by my own failures.
That's how the system is supposed to work. I'm assuming you went to small claims court, right? Small claims courts can't offer injunctive relief (i.e., a court order compelling her to keep the animal off your property), all they can do is offer monetary relief, and you didn't have any monetary damages.
Frankly I think that's a pretty silly thing to sue over and it must have made you really popular in the neighborhood. There's a ton of effective ways to keep cats out of your yard, ranging from harmless (garden hose) to nasty (anti-freeze), hardly seems like something worth dragging the courts into.
And just where is a lack of neutrality a problem? People always talk about this, but aside from the most obvious examples (Comcast and bittorrent, which was arguably a reasonable attempt at managing congestion....) I've yet to see an American ISP that's been brave enough to proactively stomp on network neutrality. I'm sure that some of them would like to, particularly the MSOs with the legacy video business to protect, but where has it actually happened on a significant scale?
There are things that my ISP does that irritate me, DNS hijacking being the most obnoxious behavior, but I haven't noticed any intentional degradation of specific protocols or content. Last mile congestion was historically my biggest gripe, but that doesn't seem to be an issue around here anymore since they finally deployed DOCSIS 3.
It worked just fine for the most part, and the locks and passengers no longer being instructed to sit quietly and enjoy the stopover in Cuba would have taken care of 9/11 just fine.
Well, yes and no. The folks on Flight 93 paid the ultimate price for resisting the hijackers. They saved a lot of lives on the ground, but the choice between "take the bastards with us" and "keep the bastards off the flight to begin with" is a no-brainer.
That isn't to say that a lot of what TSA does isn't pure security theater. The liquids ban makes precious little sense to me, and even less to those who know more than I do about explosives. Ditto for having to remove your shoes. Both of those were knee jerk reactions to "what might have been", rather than sensible reactions to things that actually happened or were likely to happen. The most effective security is the security we never see, intelligence gathering behind the scenes, catching and/or killing the bad guys before they even get to the airport, that sort of thing.
Few people would advocate a complete return to the pre-9/11 regime. Random example: Do you think people should be allowed to carry box cutters in carry-on? It's inevitable that a few bad guys will slip through the cracks, and if I'm unlucky enough to be on the flight where it happens I'd rather be facing fists than edged weapons. Put edged weapons back into that environment and I want the ability to carry my firearm, which all will agree is a political non-starter.
I'm sorry, what part of my post made you think that moving tens to hundreds of millions of dollars was part of my "day to day activities"?
Compromise my online banking if you wish, it's an consumer account and you won't gain anything other than the ability to move funds between my accounts. No real way to "drain" my accounts through online banking, and even if you managed to do so my liability is limited under the law. It'd be a royal PITA to be sure, but at the end of the day I'd be made whole.
New York State has a service like that, called LENS (license event notification service), where you can get near real-time notification on convictions and accidents. It's primarily used by employers to monitor employees driving company vehicles. AFAIK it would be legal for insurance carriers to use it, but it's not cheap, and I'm sure they've crunched the numbers and concluded it would be a financial loser for them. I'm not aware of any carrier that uses it, mostly they rely on MVRs when the policy is first issued, then randomly at renewal, and of course self-disclosure.
WA could be different of course, but my hunch is you lost the dice roll and were a victim of crappy luck/timing. Did it happen around the time of your renewal? My condolences on the three year traffic ticket, that was my pattern for the longest time, one every three years.... then I got three inside of two weeks. After that I invested in a car with cruise control.:)
Those provisions overlap a bit with the FCC's authority under its own net neutrality law, the Open Internet Order,
Unless we've amended the Constitution while I was sleeping. The Open Internet Order is a regulation, one that many people (Verizon) dispute they have the statutory authority to issue. The courts will eventually solve that question, though Congress could render the whole matter moot by passing an actual law and/or granting the FCC clear authority to act in this area.
Every residential ISP I've ever seen promises "up to X mbit/s", the part in bold being key. If you want a dedicated connection with a 1:1 contention ratio you're going to have to pony up more than $50/mo.
The point is not to centralize trust chains, but to put you in control of your trust chain -- you decide who is trustworthy and who isn't. You don't have to have everyone sign everybody else's keys to accomplish this.
Perhaps the point should be to have an appropriate level of security for the task at hand. I'm not going to trust the certificate authorities with the location of the bodies I've buried, but the existing system provides sufficient security for my day to day activities. I seriously doubt anyone is going to go to the effort of compromising a CA just so they can intercept my credit card number the next time I place an Amazon order. Just what does the average person do on the internet that requires complete and unfettered trust?
Today I haven't relied upon https to secure anything more important than my/. username and password. In the last month the most important thing I've entrusted to it was my credit card number. The loss of either of these things would be a minor annoyance at best, and practically speaking neither is worth enough to justify the effort of compromising a CA and setting up a MITM attack.
The only thing I do that I want total control/trust over is remotely accessing my server. Thankfully ssh has provided for this since the very beginning. You create the private key, you control the machine it runs on, and you have the ability to easily verify the key fingerprint. If I was in a situation where I truly needed confidence in the security of my communication to another human being I would simply exchange encryption keys (better yet, one time pads) in person. I've yet to encounter such a situation in my 32 years.:)
Looked that up a few minutes ago and found that New York State specifically exempted texting while the vehicle is not in motion, which is rather disappointing to say the least. I guess we're too busy worrying about law-abiding gun owners and large capacity soda cups to worry that much about distracted driving.
* 1. Except as otherwise provided in this section, no person shall operate a motor vehicle while using any portable electronic device while such vehicle is in motion; provided, however, that no person shall operate a commercial motor vehicle while using any portable electronic device on a public highway including while temporarily stationary because of traffic, a traffic control device, or other momentary delays. Provided further, however, that a person shall not be deemed to be operating a commercial motor vehicle while using a portable electronic device on a public highway when such vehicle is stopped at the side of, or off, a public highway in a location where such vehicle is not otherwise prohibited from stopping by law, rule, regulation or any lawful order or direction of a police officer.
Curious that they prohibit commercial drivers from texting at the red light but allow it for personal automobiles. I shall have to ask my Assemblywoman about this the next time I see her.
We're not more advanced. We just tend to be more individualistic than many other peoples. That said, I have yet to meet a human being (American or otherwise) who likes being crammed into a small space with no exit and a large mass of humanity. Maybe the perverts in Tokyo who are behind the groping problem there (try that with an American woman and you're apt to get a knee in the groin) but aside from them.....
It doesn't require 100% of my attention in the sense of "I can't do this without exclusively focusing on it", I just choose not to devote any of my attention to other matters while I'm piloting several tons of metal on the public roadways. All things being equal, will the coffee get anyone killed? Nope. But what happens if a deer runs out at the same moment you're reaching for it? What happens if you come across a patch of black ice? What if some dipshit comes around the corner in your lane?
Your margin for error and recovery is improved if you devote your complete and undivided attention to the task at hand. Each additional distraction increases the likelihood that you'll fail to notice a potential problem in time to safely react. I choose to devote my full attention to the task at hand, and I regard it as incredibly selfish when people place their coffee/big-mac/text message ahead of the safety and well being of their fellow citizens.
I work in the insurance industry, and you seriously misread their motivation. Surcharges for violations are not a profit source for the industry, far from it. They exist to try and equalize the risk associated with bad drivers and if you crunch the numbers on premiums vs. claims you'll find that they barely manage to break even on some of these drivers even with the surcharges. Additionally, it takes at least two small violations or one really big one (speeding >25mph, reckless driving, DWI, fleeing an officer, etc.) before the surcharges even start in most jurisdictions. The first minor violation is a mulligan in every jurisdiction I've ever worked, with every carrier I've ever represented.
Another point to consider is that a lot of drivers with violations will slip through the cracks and never get surcharged. Most insurance carriers do not run your license at each renewal, since they pay a fee to DMV for each report they request. It's a randomized process, occurring every X+[random fudge factor] number of renewals. Some events (coverage changes, moving) will trip a report regardless of how long it has been since the last one, though this is carrier specific and each has its own way of handling such occurrences.
You aren't obligated to report violations to your insurance company either. You can't lie to them if they ask (as they will on an application for new business) but you're under no obligation to volunteer the information during your policy period or even at renewal in most states. If you get a conviction the safest thing to do is nothing. Don't make any coverage changes, don't shop for new insurance, just pay your renewal when it comes and keep your mouth shut. The odds are good it falls off your drivers license before they run your report, and even if they do find it you've got a better than 50/50 shot at it happening towards the end of the surcharging period. Surcharges aren't retroactive, if they surcharge for 36 months (typical for minor violations) but don't find out about it until 30 months after the fact you're only going to be on the hook for one policy period.
My Nextel Motorola i700 phone with an LCD had a primitive text based browser (by primitive I mean Lynx put it to shame) back in 2000. We used to use it to cheat at^W^Wverify the judges on trivia night. I'm sure someone had something with similar functionality years before that.
The really cool thing about that phone was using it to 'tether', via a serial cable, at 9600 baud to my dial-up ISP back home. It was good enough to ssh into the boxes at work for administration purposes. You could even surf the web in a semi-usable fashion if you turned off images (or had a LOT of patience).
.... the fact that the light is red does not negate your responsibility to pay attention to your surroundings. From a legal and moral point of view you're operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway regardless of the color of the light, and you have an obligation to give that task your full attention.
The same goes for touching up your cosmetics, reading your snail mail, drinking your coffee, or any of the other items on the huge list of things people do when they're supposed to be devoting their full attention to the safe piloting of a ton or more of steel.
China has about the same number of nuclear weapons (200 - 300)
Nobody knows for sure just how many warheads China actually has, because they don't operate as transparently as the other members of the Big Five. The US and Russia disclose their arsenals through the treaty frameworks established during the Cold War, the UK and France through public debate in their respective political systems.
The US gave up its IRBMs in part because it was losing the basing rights for them in foreign countries.
Uhhh, no. NATO (primarily Germany) agreed to host US IRBMs for two reasons, one being deterrence, the other being to encourage the Soviet Union to give up her IRBMs. The basing wasn't popular with certain European political parties (the Greens in particular) but the US was never in danger of losing those basing rights. Deployments were expanded in the 80s prior to the ratification of the INF treaty.
If you tried to regain them (I presume somewhere convenient near China as it is the current perceived threat) where would you put them?
We don't need them. I'm not advocating for them. I'm advocating the need to bring China into a modern treaty framework and encourage her to give up (or at least become transparent with) her IRBMs, lest Russia feel the need to rebuild her own IRBM force.
If we did want them we could always deploy them on Guam. Not much that anybody could say about that.
No, it's a trade agreement wherein two of the participating countries have nuclear weapons. The EU doesn't command a single solider from its member states, much less the nuclear weapons possessed by the UK and France.
No need to get the bought off politicians to fine them when you can simply stop doing business with them. Cable television is not a life essential service. One month of your cable bill is likely enough cash to purchase everything that most people would need for solid OTA reception.
Slashdot Mirror
This person's girlfriend accidentally killed a pet rabbit by not remembering to feed it, and she is facing jail time.
For what charge, and in which jurisdiction??
In my state that would be a Class A Misdemeanor, at most, and you don't do jail time for those unless there are aggravating circumstances and/or you already have a lengthy criminal record.
Stopping my cat from assisting in the destruction of the local ecosystem is selfish? Keeping her away from traffic, aggressive dogs, and asshole humans is selfish? Preventing her from getting fleas and ticks is selfish?
Every cat owner I know who lets their cats go outside has lost at least one of them. The shitty part is they almost never find out why. Did the cat get run over? Did it become a meal for a larger animal? Was it taken in by the crazy cat lady down the street?
A cat's natural instinct is to kill as many small animals as possible while producing as many kittens as she can. We stop them from satisfying these urges all the time and I've never heard it called inhumane. I think the medical care, limitless supply of food, and shelter she doesn't have to compete for is a good trade off, from her point of view, particularly given the alternatives. There's a reason why cats domesticated themselves....
Keep your cat indoors. Problem solved. It's more humane for the cat (indoor cats live longer in general), better for the neighborhood wildlife, and makes it impossible for your cat to suffer traumatic injury from automobiles, dogs, etc. The cat may not like it as much, but there's a reason why you're the owner of the animal.
And yes, I am a cat owner. Rescued one of the neighborhood strays. She still wants to go outside, but it's not happening. Her quality of life is higher and I don't have to worry about her never coming home for reasons forever unknown.
The hard brake (defined by them as deceleration of >=7 mph/sec) is the metric they care the most about. I logged only four of them in my six month evaluation period and received the full 30% discount in spite of a daily mileage average of 61 miles, back when they supposedly wanted to see an average of <=30 miles/day.
A large number of hard brakes would seem to suggest a driver who is frequently distracted. An attentive and defensive driver should be able to avoid the majority of them, even in traffic and even when other drivers do something stupid. There are a few occasions that will be unavoidable but they're the exception, not the rule. Only one of mine was unavoidable (deer ran in front of me), the rest were caused by my own failures.
That's how the system is supposed to work. I'm assuming you went to small claims court, right? Small claims courts can't offer injunctive relief (i.e., a court order compelling her to keep the animal off your property), all they can do is offer monetary relief, and you didn't have any monetary damages.
Frankly I think that's a pretty silly thing to sue over and it must have made you really popular in the neighborhood. There's a ton of effective ways to keep cats out of your yard, ranging from harmless (garden hose) to nasty (anti-freeze), hardly seems like something worth dragging the courts into.
And just where is a lack of neutrality a problem? People always talk about this, but aside from the most obvious examples (Comcast and bittorrent, which was arguably a reasonable attempt at managing congestion....) I've yet to see an American ISP that's been brave enough to proactively stomp on network neutrality. I'm sure that some of them would like to, particularly the MSOs with the legacy video business to protect, but where has it actually happened on a significant scale?
There are things that my ISP does that irritate me, DNS hijacking being the most obnoxious behavior, but I haven't noticed any intentional degradation of specific protocols or content. Last mile congestion was historically my biggest gripe, but that doesn't seem to be an issue around here anymore since they finally deployed DOCSIS 3.
It worked just fine for the most part, and the locks and passengers no longer being instructed to sit quietly and enjoy the stopover in Cuba would have taken care of 9/11 just fine.
Well, yes and no. The folks on Flight 93 paid the ultimate price for resisting the hijackers. They saved a lot of lives on the ground, but the choice between "take the bastards with us" and "keep the bastards off the flight to begin with" is a no-brainer.
That isn't to say that a lot of what TSA does isn't pure security theater. The liquids ban makes precious little sense to me, and even less to those who know more than I do about explosives. Ditto for having to remove your shoes. Both of those were knee jerk reactions to "what might have been", rather than sensible reactions to things that actually happened or were likely to happen. The most effective security is the security we never see, intelligence gathering behind the scenes, catching and/or killing the bad guys before they even get to the airport, that sort of thing.
Few people would advocate a complete return to the pre-9/11 regime. Random example: Do you think people should be allowed to carry box cutters in carry-on? It's inevitable that a few bad guys will slip through the cracks, and if I'm unlucky enough to be on the flight where it happens I'd rather be facing fists than edged weapons. Put edged weapons back into that environment and I want the ability to carry my firearm, which all will agree is a political non-starter.
I'm sorry, what part of my post made you think that moving tens to hundreds of millions of dollars was part of my "day to day activities"?
Compromise my online banking if you wish, it's an consumer account and you won't gain anything other than the ability to move funds between my accounts. No real way to "drain" my accounts through online banking, and even if you managed to do so my liability is limited under the law. It'd be a royal PITA to be sure, but at the end of the day I'd be made whole.
New York State has a service like that, called LENS (license event notification service), where you can get near real-time notification on convictions and accidents. It's primarily used by employers to monitor employees driving company vehicles. AFAIK it would be legal for insurance carriers to use it, but it's not cheap, and I'm sure they've crunched the numbers and concluded it would be a financial loser for them. I'm not aware of any carrier that uses it, mostly they rely on MVRs when the policy is first issued, then randomly at renewal, and of course self-disclosure.
WA could be different of course, but my hunch is you lost the dice roll and were a victim of crappy luck/timing. Did it happen around the time of your renewal? My condolences on the three year traffic ticket, that was my pattern for the longest time, one every three years.... then I got three inside of two weeks. After that I invested in a car with cruise control. :)
Those provisions overlap a bit with the FCC's authority under its own net neutrality law, the Open Internet Order,
Unless we've amended the Constitution while I was sleeping. The Open Internet Order is a regulation, one that many people (Verizon) dispute they have the statutory authority to issue. The courts will eventually solve that question, though Congress could render the whole matter moot by passing an actual law and/or granting the FCC clear authority to act in this area.
If you can't deliver on what you promise
Every residential ISP I've ever seen promises "up to X mbit/s", the part in bold being key. If you want a dedicated connection with a 1:1 contention ratio you're going to have to pony up more than $50/mo.
The point is not to centralize trust chains, but to put you in control of your trust chain -- you decide who is trustworthy and who isn't. You don't have to have everyone sign everybody else's keys to accomplish this.
Perhaps the point should be to have an appropriate level of security for the task at hand. I'm not going to trust the certificate authorities with the location of the bodies I've buried, but the existing system provides sufficient security for my day to day activities. I seriously doubt anyone is going to go to the effort of compromising a CA just so they can intercept my credit card number the next time I place an Amazon order. Just what does the average person do on the internet that requires complete and unfettered trust?
Today I haven't relied upon https to secure anything more important than my /. username and password. In the last month the most important thing I've entrusted to it was my credit card number. The loss of either of these things would be a minor annoyance at best, and practically speaking neither is worth enough to justify the effort of compromising a CA and setting up a MITM attack.
The only thing I do that I want total control/trust over is remotely accessing my server. Thankfully ssh has provided for this since the very beginning. You create the private key, you control the machine it runs on, and you have the ability to easily verify the key fingerprint. If I was in a situation where I truly needed confidence in the security of my communication to another human being I would simply exchange encryption keys (better yet, one time pads) in person. I've yet to encounter such a situation in my 32 years. :)
Wisdom is knowing that Jurassic Park is fiction, and that we contain wild animals in zoos all the time just fine
That's because Wayne Knight doesn't have any financial incentive to shut down the security fences keeping the gray wolves secure at your local zoo. ;)
Looked that up a few minutes ago and found that New York State specifically exempted texting while the vehicle is not in motion, which is rather disappointing to say the least. I guess we're too busy worrying about law-abiding gun owners and large capacity soda cups to worry that much about distracted driving.
* 1. Except as otherwise provided in this section, no person shall operate a motor vehicle while using any portable electronic device while such vehicle is in motion; provided, however, that no person shall operate a commercial motor vehicle while using any portable electronic device on a public highway including while temporarily stationary because of traffic, a traffic control device, or other momentary delays. Provided further, however, that a person shall not be deemed to be operating a commercial motor vehicle while using a portable electronic device on a public highway when such vehicle is stopped at the side of, or off, a public highway in a location where such vehicle is not otherwise prohibited from stopping by law, rule, regulation or any lawful order or direction of a police officer.
Curious that they prohibit commercial drivers from texting at the red light but allow it for personal automobiles. I shall have to ask my Assemblywoman about this the next time I see her.
My gearshift says 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and R. I don't see a 'P' anywhere. Did I get ripped off?
We're not more advanced. We just tend to be more individualistic than many other peoples. That said, I have yet to meet a human being (American or otherwise) who likes being crammed into a small space with no exit and a large mass of humanity. Maybe the perverts in Tokyo who are behind the groping problem there (try that with an American woman and you're apt to get a knee in the groin) but aside from them.....
It doesn't require 100% of my attention in the sense of "I can't do this without exclusively focusing on it", I just choose not to devote any of my attention to other matters while I'm piloting several tons of metal on the public roadways. All things being equal, will the coffee get anyone killed? Nope. But what happens if a deer runs out at the same moment you're reaching for it? What happens if you come across a patch of black ice? What if some dipshit comes around the corner in your lane?
Your margin for error and recovery is improved if you devote your complete and undivided attention to the task at hand. Each additional distraction increases the likelihood that you'll fail to notice a potential problem in time to safely react. I choose to devote my full attention to the task at hand, and I regard it as incredibly selfish when people place their coffee/big-mac/text message ahead of the safety and well being of their fellow citizens.
The problem with "public transit" can be found in the first of the two words I put in quotes.
I work in the insurance industry, and you seriously misread their motivation. Surcharges for violations are not a profit source for the industry, far from it. They exist to try and equalize the risk associated with bad drivers and if you crunch the numbers on premiums vs. claims you'll find that they barely manage to break even on some of these drivers even with the surcharges. Additionally, it takes at least two small violations or one really big one (speeding >25mph, reckless driving, DWI, fleeing an officer, etc.) before the surcharges even start in most jurisdictions. The first minor violation is a mulligan in every jurisdiction I've ever worked, with every carrier I've ever represented.
Another point to consider is that a lot of drivers with violations will slip through the cracks and never get surcharged. Most insurance carriers do not run your license at each renewal, since they pay a fee to DMV for each report they request. It's a randomized process, occurring every X+[random fudge factor] number of renewals. Some events (coverage changes, moving) will trip a report regardless of how long it has been since the last one, though this is carrier specific and each has its own way of handling such occurrences.
You aren't obligated to report violations to your insurance company either. You can't lie to them if they ask (as they will on an application for new business) but you're under no obligation to volunteer the information during your policy period or even at renewal in most states. If you get a conviction the safest thing to do is nothing. Don't make any coverage changes, don't shop for new insurance, just pay your renewal when it comes and keep your mouth shut. The odds are good it falls off your drivers license before they run your report, and even if they do find it you've got a better than 50/50 shot at it happening towards the end of the surcharging period. Surcharges aren't retroactive, if they surcharge for 36 months (typical for minor violations) but don't find out about it until 30 months after the fact you're only going to be on the hook for one policy period.
My Nextel Motorola i700 phone with an LCD had a primitive text based browser (by primitive I mean Lynx put it to shame) back in 2000. We used to use it to cheat at^W^Wverify the judges on trivia night. I'm sure someone had something with similar functionality years before that.
The really cool thing about that phone was using it to 'tether', via a serial cable, at 9600 baud to my dial-up ISP back home. It was good enough to ssh into the boxes at work for administration purposes. You could even surf the web in a semi-usable fashion if you turned off images (or had a LOT of patience).
.... the fact that the light is red does not negate your responsibility to pay attention to your surroundings. From a legal and moral point of view you're operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway regardless of the color of the light, and you have an obligation to give that task your full attention.
The same goes for touching up your cosmetics, reading your snail mail, drinking your coffee, or any of the other items on the huge list of things people do when they're supposed to be devoting their full attention to the safe piloting of a ton or more of steel.
First post while driving down Interstate 49#`%dAq{%&dkj19Z{`%.NO CARRIER
China has about the same number of nuclear weapons (200 - 300)
Nobody knows for sure just how many warheads China actually has, because they don't operate as transparently as the other members of the Big Five. The US and Russia disclose their arsenals through the treaty frameworks established during the Cold War, the UK and France through public debate in their respective political systems.
The US gave up its IRBMs in part because it was losing the basing rights for them in foreign countries.
Uhhh, no. NATO (primarily Germany) agreed to host US IRBMs for two reasons, one being deterrence, the other being to encourage the Soviet Union to give up her IRBMs. The basing wasn't popular with certain European political parties (the Greens in particular) but the US was never in danger of losing those basing rights. Deployments were expanded in the 80s prior to the ratification of the INF treaty.
If you tried to regain them (I presume somewhere convenient near China as it is the current perceived threat) where would you put them?
We don't need them. I'm not advocating for them. I'm advocating the need to bring China into a modern treaty framework and encourage her to give up (or at least become transparent with) her IRBMs, lest Russia feel the need to rebuild her own IRBM force.
If we did want them we could always deploy them on Guam. Not much that anybody could say about that.
No, it's a trade agreement wherein two of the participating countries have nuclear weapons. The EU doesn't command a single solider from its member states, much less the nuclear weapons possessed by the UK and France.
No need to get the bought off politicians to fine them when you can simply stop doing business with them. Cable television is not a life essential service. One month of your cable bill is likely enough cash to purchase everything that most people would need for solid OTA reception.