Did you miss the countless headlines about OPEC increasing production for the stated purpose of lowering prices?! Quite successfully I might add. Conservation is a red herring, incidentally, whatever improvements we make with technology are more than offset by third world development (*cough* China *cough*)
Lawsuit proceeds are not taxed by the Feds -- the theory being that it's not income, rather it represents an attempt at making you whole after a loss. It's the same theory as your insurance company paying the cash value of your car after you total it. That payment isn't taxed either.
Please give me a single citation of someone facing civil asset forfeiture for a positive drug test. Just one.
The authorities can't compel drug testing, outside of the few exceptions (suspected drugged driving, probation, or CDL holders), so how exactly are they going to use it as a basis for asset forfeiture?
You got caught twice? Dumbass. The extra $150 is a tax on stupid. I spent most of my 20s and early 30s smoking weed, all up and down in the East Coast, in States far stricter than NYS, and I got caught exactly zero times.
Your link discusses what private individuals are doing, not law enforcement, so it's kind of irrelevant here.
Regarding your red herring, cops don't get "career promotions" for busting people for drug possession. And if you're going around pissing the cops off for no particular reason you should probably take care to mind your Ps and Qs.
Example: In New York State marijuana possession is a violation (i.e., less than a misdemeanor) punishable by no more than a $100 fine. It actually costs less than a speeding ticket. The cops don't bother to write the appearance ticket nine out of ten times, it's literally not worth the paperwork, unless of course you do something to piss them off. Cop comes to your house because the neighbors smelled pot smoke? Whatever. He's probably going to be more pissed at them for wasting his time. Cop comes to your house because the neighbors heard you beating your wife and she won't press charges? Here's your appearance ticket for unlawful possession.
Bam, their target is on coke, liable for some of the most egregious penalities in our legal system.
Incidentally, it's not illegal to have drug metabolites in your system. It's not even illegal to use drugs. It's illegal to possess them, in certain jurisdictions, but unless you're on probation or hold certain licenses (a CDL or firearms license) the legal consequences of a positive drug test are non-existent. There may be private consequences, like termination of employment, but you don't go to jail for a positive drug test.
I didn't say we should rely on it; I simply stated that's how it works in the real world.
Hypothetical Anecdote: I threw a McDonald's cup out of my car of my today. My fingerprints are in the system. I have no expectation of privacy with something that I willingly discarded. Fingerprint dusting and testing is comparatively cheap, thanks to advancements in technology. Is there going to be a knock on my door in a few days? Not bloody likely.
Drug testing costs significantly more than fingerprint dusting and in most instances requires either a warrant or cooperative suspect. We can disagree about the merits of the so-called War on Drugs but the particular advancement discussed in TFA is not going to change decades of case law about drug metabolite testing.
Your comment is highly misleading; with very few exceptions the police can't test you for drug metabolites without a warrant. Implied consent laws for driving and people on probation are the two scenarios that are most common. In the case of the former they may well need a court order, depending on the State. In NYS they can't ask for such an order unless you're involved in an accident involving personal injury. Mundane DWI and you refuse the chemical test? They can't do a damn thing about it. Run someone over and refuse the chemical test? They're gonna get a warrant and hold you down to draw blood.
Either way, the cops aren't using drug testing to conduct fishing expeditions. It costs too much money for that. That CSI nonsense where they use DNA and mass spectrometry to figure out who threw the litter on the side of the highway? Doesn't happen in the real world. In the real world law enforcement agencies have finite budgets and testing for drugs, DNA, or even dusting for prints costs money.
Jewish = religious tradition and linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage
Polish = linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage
Native American = too vague without tribe
I fail to see what you're going for here except to dismiss the historical experiences of groups that you choose not to favor. All three of those groups were rounded up and put into camps (two within living memory) for various reasons. As I said, blacks do not have the monopoly on suffering, past or present. They're also not the only historical group that was enslaved; when do Greece, Germany, and France get reparations from Italy?
It's highly amusing that the political group that calls itself progressive is so fixated on the past and pessimistic about the future.
not even taking the 4th amendment into consideration
The 4th amendment regulates the behavior of Government. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your relationship with a private employer. Drug testing is a crock of shit for a lot of reasons but the 4th Amendment is not one of them.
I didn't blame the Government Mr. Tea Party asshat. I simply said the Government could do more than it currently does. Despite the belief of the knee jerk Liberals around here, I am not anti-Government nor what passes for Conservative in the US these days.
Stupid historical revisionists and PC nazis don't justify going off in the *other* direction from the truth and all but completely ignoring the sins committed against black Americans for over 90% of this nation's history.
TFA is about Asian-Americans; you're familiar with Executive Order 9066, right? Blacks don't have a monopoly on victimization. Neither do minorities. My family background is Jewish, Polish, and Native American. I'm "white" according to the US Government; I'll see your slavery and raise you three attempted genocides, two of them occurring within living memory. Nobody is offering me a break, nor am I looking for one.
"You're talking to the wrong white man, my friend. My people were the white man's nigger when yours were still painting their faces and chasing zebras." - Hesh Rabkin, The Sopranos
Affirmative action is what t says it is; instead of passively assuming that civil rights makes people equal overnight, there needed to be an active response to try and make things equal.
Meanwhile, those of us who came of age having nothing whatsoever to do with slavery or Jim Crow are disadvantaged because of the crimes of yesteryear. Corruption of blood is antithetical to American values. So is ignoring both the letter and spirit of the Equal Protection Clause. The only people who advocate in favor of Affirmative Action are those that believe the "original sin" is being born with a low melanin count.
By the by, since TFA is about Asian-Americans, perhaps you'd care to explain why that group has done so well for itself? They were rounded up and put into camps within recent memory, to say nothing of the racially biased immigration laws of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, or the more subtle racism directed towards their group even into modern times.
Here's another inconvenient truth for you: The biggest predictor of success in life isn't how much money your family has or what your melanin count is. It's whether or not you come from a two parent household. That Tea Party zealot known as Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed this out decades ago but was completely ignored by the policymakers of the day. Government can't compel people to stay in relationships (nor should it try) but it could provide mechanisms to remove some of the stresses of American society on families. We could start with a decent family leave system (something half as good as the Nordic Countries and/or Canada) that would actually enable both parents to spend time in the household without worrying about destroying their career prospects.
What's so hard about going to the proper fucking polling place?
What makes you think we have internet access, a PC, or anything at our polling place other than a landline phone to call in the unofficial results at 9:15PM?
Selling information on how to cheat isn't the same as cheating. In the case of those who used his information, those individuals should be subject to sanction. for example, I can tell you how to hotwire a car. I can even demonstrate it on my own vehicle and provide teaching aids that can allow you to be able to do it yourself.
Scenario #1: "Can you teach me how to hot wire a car? I think it's a neat technical exercise." <--- No crime.
Scenario #2: "Can you teach me how to hot wire a car so I can steal my neighbor's slick ride?" <--- You're now an accessory.
It's no different than the difference between, "Will you sell me that rifle so I can go deer hunting?" and "Will you sell me that rifle so I can shoot my bitch ex-wife?"
I'm trying to figure out exactly what LAW was broken here?
Mail fraud for starters. I read the indictment when this story originally happened. Instructing people to lie to the Federal Government is a crime. Charging them money for your "services" that you receive via the USPS is an even bigger crime.
Question: "I'm nervous, what if they ask me about that time I used drugs?"
Answer #1: "Just remain calm. Do math in your head." <--- not illegal
Answer #2: "Lie to them and stay calm." <--- illegal
Answer #3: "Lie to them and stay calm. Now send me a postal money order for my services." <--- really illegal
If you read the charging documents you'll see that it's not really a first amendment issue. Mr. Williams also let his greed get the better of him. He identified one of the agents as such, even said, "I think you're a Fed. I'm not doing this." but later called the guy back and changed his mind. It was for a lousy five thousand dollars too if I recall correctly. For a lousy five grand he ignored the little voice inside his head and committed a Federal felony. I have zero sympathy.
Polling stations should have (and probably do have) policies and procedures for handling an out-of-area voter.
Uhh no. The County that I work in as a poll worker has 16 different towns, 7 villages, and 1 city. Most of those political subdivisions are further divided into districts. That's just at the local level. At the State level the county is represented by four different Assembly Districts. At the Federal level we have two different Congressional Districts.
It is physically impossible to have ballots on hand for every conceivable voter within our County, never mind trying to accommodate people from different Counties or States. Civics is a two way street and a voter has the obligation to learn where his or her polling place is located. There are websites that make this virtually idiot proof and your Board of Elections will send you postcards as well.
That's your problem. Four hours is more than reasonable for the vast majority of people. If you can't make it to the polling place you can always request an absentee ballot.
First "those unavoidably out of town" should not be an excuse unless the distance between postal zip codes is greater than say 200 miles, and if the post marks indicate otherwise your ballot is invalid.
That's hard to enforce. Generally you get the absentee ballot some weeks before the election and can mail it in whenever. It simply has to be postmarked no later than election day and received by so many days thereafter. Some "absentee" voting is actually done in person too; when I worked as an Elections Inspector we all had the option of voting absentee rather than leaving our assigned polling places on election day. My absentee vote was on a voting machine specifically set up for this purpose, at the Board of Elections, the day before the actual election.
As a rule of thumb I think it's sufficient to make the person swear an oath that they are unavoidably out of town on election day or that physical impairments make it burdensome for them to arrive in person.
We need to be fair and make election day a National Holiday!
It's a laudable goal, but technically speaking National Holidays don't mean anything in the United States. A private employer is not obligated to give you the day off simply because it's a Federal Holiday. I think it's sufficient to do what New York State does; our law says your employer has to let you leave work for at least four hours on election day, unless your shift begins or ends more than four hours after the polls open or close.
Slashdot Mirror
You are confusing "oil" and "gasoline"
You're kidding right?
so you can declare a "win" in your mind
If you think I care that much about the "win" you've completely misunderstood me.
with an argument nobody is having with you.
*shrug*, I re-read your post I initially replied to and parsed it more carefully; in fairness you didn't directly link supply and demand to price.
Where you're building up the skill level of your character rather than yourself?
Why do some people smoke weed rather than building up themselves? Because it's easier and they're unmotivated. *shrug*
Did you miss the countless headlines about OPEC increasing production for the stated purpose of lowering prices?! Quite successfully I might add. Conservation is a red herring, incidentally, whatever improvements we make with technology are more than offset by third world development (*cough* China *cough*)
Uhh, have you been paying attention to oil prices and the reasons for the decline?
Commodities are not magically insulated from the law of supply and demand.
Lawsuit proceeds are not taxed by the Feds -- the theory being that it's not income, rather it represents an attempt at making you whole after a loss. It's the same theory as your insurance company paying the cash value of your car after you total it. That payment isn't taxed either.
Please give me a single citation of someone facing civil asset forfeiture for a positive drug test. Just one.
The authorities can't compel drug testing, outside of the few exceptions (suspected drugged driving, probation, or CDL holders), so how exactly are they going to use it as a basis for asset forfeiture?
You got caught twice? Dumbass. The extra $150 is a tax on stupid. I spent most of my 20s and early 30s smoking weed, all up and down in the East Coast, in States far stricter than NYS, and I got caught exactly zero times.
A little common sense goes a long way.
It was a hypothetical, I don't litter, though my prints are actually on file in Albany and presumably in Washington. Firearms licenses....
Your link discusses what private individuals are doing, not law enforcement, so it's kind of irrelevant here.
Regarding your red herring, cops don't get "career promotions" for busting people for drug possession. And if you're going around pissing the cops off for no particular reason you should probably take care to mind your Ps and Qs.
Example: In New York State marijuana possession is a violation (i.e., less than a misdemeanor) punishable by no more than a $100 fine. It actually costs less than a speeding ticket. The cops don't bother to write the appearance ticket nine out of ten times, it's literally not worth the paperwork, unless of course you do something to piss them off. Cop comes to your house because the neighbors smelled pot smoke? Whatever. He's probably going to be more pissed at them for wasting his time. Cop comes to your house because the neighbors heard you beating your wife and she won't press charges? Here's your appearance ticket for unlawful possession.
Bam, their target is on coke, liable for some of the most egregious penalities in our legal system.
Incidentally, it's not illegal to have drug metabolites in your system. It's not even illegal to use drugs. It's illegal to possess them, in certain jurisdictions, but unless you're on probation or hold certain licenses (a CDL or firearms license) the legal consequences of a positive drug test are non-existent. There may be private consequences, like termination of employment, but you don't go to jail for a positive drug test.
I didn't say we should rely on it; I simply stated that's how it works in the real world.
Hypothetical Anecdote: I threw a McDonald's cup out of my car of my today. My fingerprints are in the system. I have no expectation of privacy with something that I willingly discarded. Fingerprint dusting and testing is comparatively cheap, thanks to advancements in technology. Is there going to be a knock on my door in a few days? Not bloody likely.
Drug testing costs significantly more than fingerprint dusting and in most instances requires either a warrant or cooperative suspect. We can disagree about the merits of the so-called War on Drugs but the particular advancement discussed in TFA is not going to change decades of case law about drug metabolite testing.
Your comment is highly misleading; with very few exceptions the police can't test you for drug metabolites without a warrant. Implied consent laws for driving and people on probation are the two scenarios that are most common. In the case of the former they may well need a court order, depending on the State. In NYS they can't ask for such an order unless you're involved in an accident involving personal injury. Mundane DWI and you refuse the chemical test? They can't do a damn thing about it. Run someone over and refuse the chemical test? They're gonna get a warrant and hold you down to draw blood.
Either way, the cops aren't using drug testing to conduct fishing expeditions. It costs too much money for that. That CSI nonsense where they use DNA and mass spectrometry to figure out who threw the litter on the side of the highway? Doesn't happen in the real world. In the real world law enforcement agencies have finite budgets and testing for drugs, DNA, or even dusting for prints costs money.
Jewish = religious tradition and linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage
Polish = linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage
Native American = too vague without tribe
I fail to see what you're going for here except to dismiss the historical experiences of groups that you choose not to favor. All three of those groups were rounded up and put into camps (two within living memory) for various reasons. As I said, blacks do not have the monopoly on suffering, past or present. They're also not the only historical group that was enslaved; when do Greece, Germany, and France get reparations from Italy?
It's highly amusing that the political group that calls itself progressive is so fixated on the past and pessimistic about the future.
not even taking the 4th amendment into consideration
The 4th amendment regulates the behavior of Government. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your relationship with a private employer. Drug testing is a crock of shit for a lot of reasons but the 4th Amendment is not one of them.
Now it falls squarely into the "troll submission" category.
Every Slashdot article about politics falls into the "troll submission" category.
I didn't blame the Government Mr. Tea Party asshat. I simply said the Government could do more than it currently does. Despite the belief of the knee jerk Liberals around here, I am not anti-Government nor what passes for Conservative in the US these days.
Stupid historical revisionists and PC nazis don't justify going off in the *other* direction from the truth and all but completely ignoring the sins committed against black Americans for over 90% of this nation's history.
TFA is about Asian-Americans; you're familiar with Executive Order 9066, right? Blacks don't have a monopoly on victimization. Neither do minorities. My family background is Jewish, Polish, and Native American. I'm "white" according to the US Government; I'll see your slavery and raise you three attempted genocides, two of them occurring within living memory. Nobody is offering me a break, nor am I looking for one.
"You're talking to the wrong white man, my friend. My people were the white man's nigger when yours were still painting their faces and chasing zebras." - Hesh Rabkin, The Sopranos
Affirmative action is what t says it is; instead of passively assuming that civil rights makes people equal overnight, there needed to be an active response to try and make things equal.
Meanwhile, those of us who came of age having nothing whatsoever to do with slavery or Jim Crow are disadvantaged because of the crimes of yesteryear. Corruption of blood is antithetical to American values. So is ignoring both the letter and spirit of the Equal Protection Clause. The only people who advocate in favor of Affirmative Action are those that believe the "original sin" is being born with a low melanin count.
By the by, since TFA is about Asian-Americans, perhaps you'd care to explain why that group has done so well for itself? They were rounded up and put into camps within recent memory, to say nothing of the racially biased immigration laws of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, or the more subtle racism directed towards their group even into modern times.
Here's another inconvenient truth for you: The biggest predictor of success in life isn't how much money your family has or what your melanin count is. It's whether or not you come from a two parent household. That Tea Party zealot known as Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed this out decades ago but was completely ignored by the policymakers of the day. Government can't compel people to stay in relationships (nor should it try) but it could provide mechanisms to remove some of the stresses of American society on families. We could start with a decent family leave system (something half as good as the Nordic Countries and/or Canada) that would actually enable both parents to spend time in the household without worrying about destroying their career prospects.
Sounds good? How is this remotely compatible with the spirit of network neutrality?
What's so hard about going to the proper fucking polling place?
What makes you think we have internet access, a PC, or anything at our polling place other than a landline phone to call in the unofficial results at 9:15PM?
Selling information on how to cheat isn't the same as cheating. In the case of those who used his information, those individuals should be subject to sanction. for example, I can tell you how to hotwire a car. I can even demonstrate it on my own vehicle and provide teaching aids that can allow you to be able to do it yourself.
Scenario #1: "Can you teach me how to hot wire a car? I think it's a neat technical exercise." <--- No crime.
Scenario #2: "Can you teach me how to hot wire a car so I can steal my neighbor's slick ride?" <--- You're now an accessory.
It's no different than the difference between, "Will you sell me that rifle so I can go deer hunting?" and "Will you sell me that rifle so I can shoot my bitch ex-wife?"
I'm trying to figure out exactly what LAW was broken here?
Mail fraud for starters. I read the indictment when this story originally happened. Instructing people to lie to the Federal Government is a crime. Charging them money for your "services" that you receive via the USPS is an even bigger crime.
Question: "I'm nervous, what if they ask me about that time I used drugs?"
Answer #1: "Just remain calm. Do math in your head." <--- not illegal
Answer #2: "Lie to them and stay calm." <--- illegal
Answer #3: "Lie to them and stay calm. Now send me a postal money order for my services." <--- really illegal
If you read the charging documents you'll see that it's not really a first amendment issue. Mr. Williams also let his greed get the better of him. He identified one of the agents as such, even said, "I think you're a Fed. I'm not doing this." but later called the guy back and changed his mind. It was for a lousy five thousand dollars too if I recall correctly. For a lousy five grand he ignored the little voice inside his head and committed a Federal felony. I have zero sympathy.
Polling stations should have (and probably do have) policies and procedures for handling an out-of-area voter.
Uhh no. The County that I work in as a poll worker has 16 different towns, 7 villages, and 1 city. Most of those political subdivisions are further divided into districts. That's just at the local level. At the State level the county is represented by four different Assembly Districts. At the Federal level we have two different Congressional Districts.
It is physically impossible to have ballots on hand for every conceivable voter within our County, never mind trying to accommodate people from different Counties or States. Civics is a two way street and a voter has the obligation to learn where his or her polling place is located. There are websites that make this virtually idiot proof and your Board of Elections will send you postcards as well.
That's your problem. Four hours is more than reasonable for the vast majority of people. If you can't make it to the polling place you can always request an absentee ballot.
First "those unavoidably out of town" should not be an excuse unless the distance between postal zip codes is greater than say 200 miles, and if the post marks indicate otherwise your ballot is invalid.
That's hard to enforce. Generally you get the absentee ballot some weeks before the election and can mail it in whenever. It simply has to be postmarked no later than election day and received by so many days thereafter. Some "absentee" voting is actually done in person too; when I worked as an Elections Inspector we all had the option of voting absentee rather than leaving our assigned polling places on election day. My absentee vote was on a voting machine specifically set up for this purpose, at the Board of Elections, the day before the actual election.
As a rule of thumb I think it's sufficient to make the person swear an oath that they are unavoidably out of town on election day or that physical impairments make it burdensome for them to arrive in person.
We need to be fair and make election day a National Holiday!
It's a laudable goal, but technically speaking National Holidays don't mean anything in the United States. A private employer is not obligated to give you the day off simply because it's a Federal Holiday. I think it's sufficient to do what New York State does; our law says your employer has to let you leave work for at least four hours on election day, unless your shift begins or ends more than four hours after the polls open or close.