it is superior in that respect to the mechanical voting machines they replaced
I would dispute this. The old lever machines were far more intuitive. They would physically not allow you to overvote -- you could not pull down multiple levers for the same position. The new system does nothing to prevent you from corrupting your ballot. The machine will catch said corruption and offer you the chance to get another ballot but I regard that as inferior to the previous system and a huge waste of resources (we had 800 ballots on hand for the primary this Tuesday and only used 120 of them....)
this can be replaced with a much smaller group of well-placed corrupt bureaucrats to manipulate mechanical voting
Except in the case of New York those "well-placed bureaucrats" come from each major political party and have no interest in working together to rig an election. There are multiple layers of checks and balances in place to prevent such rigging:
1) Custodians program and zero the machines, one from each political party.
2) Elections employees verify said programming and zeroing, one from each political party. The machines are then sealed with numbered seals.
3) Poll workers re-verify the programming and zeroing of the machine when they break the seals on the machine to open the polls. We also verify the numbered seals against our paperwork and operate under the same "two-man rule" as the elections commissioners and custodians.
It would be extremely difficult to co-opt all of these people into rigging an election.
I'm a poll worker in New York State and familiar with our system. To address a two of the points in that article:
Some polling sites did not receive the optical scanners needed to read paper ballots by 6 a.m., when voting was supposed to begin.
This is a logistical problem, not an indictment of the new voting technology. Any technology (including pen and paper) is rendered moot if the people in charge of it can't get it deployed on time.
At other polling places, the scanners failed to operate properly when they were switched on, forcing voters to wait while election workers struggled to get the devices going.
The poll workers were not properly trained. We have emergency (pen and paper) ballots on hand for this contingency. If they couldn't get their machines running for whatever reason they should have started issuing these ballots as soon as the polls opened. There is no excuse for requiring a voter to wait. This is a human capital problem and one that can only be addressed by recruiting better people to serve as poll workers. Have you considered volunteering to be one?
No direct representation, but voting for an electorate who in turn votes for who goes to office.
It's called the House of Representatives for a reason....
A dictator with the power to veto the will of the people.
Huh?
A third of the government (the supreme court) isn't elected, but appointed.
Thank the gods for that....
but in many cases unconvicted suspects
Citation needed.
and vagabonds are prevented from voting
In what state?
Only pre-planned voting is allowed. You have to register to vote.
What's wrong with that?
No de-facto freedom of who to vote for. You're generally barred from voting in more than one primary election, and the two-party system doesn't give a lot of real choice.
There is no "two-party system". You are free to vote for any third party candidate that you want.
What we need (since I'm on my soapbox) is to stop regarding corporations as "persons", and forbid them from coming anywhere near a lawmaker or a political party or an election with money, opinion, gifts, or offers of employment before, during or after their elected term.
I agree with you on everything save opinion -- citizens who band together for a common cause (think: the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the NRA, etc.) under the guise of a corporation can not be muzzled if the 1st amendment is to mean anything.
Putting them in control of the voting process -- that's a REALLY really really bad thing. And that's what voting machines do.
No they don't. It's up to your state board of elections to set the specifications for their voting equipment when they request bids on such equipment. If those specifications leave room for manipulation than your grievance is with your state government, not the corporation(s) that responded to said bid. My state (New York) relies on machines to tabulate the vote but the paper ballots are retained and available for review. A certain number of districts are randomly audited to ensure that the machine count is accurate. What is wrong with this type of system?
What will it do when I get pissed at the buggy software and throw it against the wall so hard that it breaks? Not that I've ever done that of course....
Did you read the health care legislation? If you don't have health insurance they will hit you with a penalty on your taxes. I'm pretty sure the Federal Government doesn't raise my taxes if I decline to purchase gasoline.
I'd rather keep the money that I would spend on health insurance and put it to more productive ends. The Federal Government is (starting in 2014) telling me that I can't do this without paying a tax for the privilege. That is a net reduction in freedom no matter how you slice it.
you also still have the choice to not buy health insurance.
Yes, and the Federal Government will punish me if I decide to exercise this choice. They will not punish me if I decline to purchase any other product, so it's obvious that the intent was to make it harder to exercise the freedom to choose whether or not to purchase health insurance.
Then drive to a bookstore or library. Plenty of them still around.
You can nitpick it all you want but your earlier remark about specialist authors (whatever that means) being driven out of business because of chain stores is completely wrong. There are lots of distribution channels for books that aren't on the NY Times bestseller list.
What if the specialist store just *CANNOT* cut its overhead so low that it can compete with hypermarket prices?
Then it needs to find a different market niche. Adapt or die. That's the way it works in business and nature. Trying to beat Wally World at it's own game is a losing proposition no matter how you look at it.
Wasn't it a Democratic President that said "The Buck stops here"?
(Go look it up from somewhere other than fox news)
I don't watch Fox News. Or MSNBC or CNN for that matter. Cable isn't worth the money, IMHO.
I'm sick of you assholes that hold the president to a double-standard.
I'm sick of assholes such as yourself that label anyone who disagrees with the President with three and four letter words. For the record, I actually didn't give him much grief for the oil spill until he started grandstanding on the issue. The Federal Government doesn't have the equipment or technical know-how to deal with a leaking oil well. If Obama had just come out and said that he would have earned some karma in my eyes. Wasn't one of his campaign promises to tell the American people what they needed to hear rather than what they wanted to hear?
but you're simply arguing against everything he does even if your arguments conflict with each other
You couldn't be more wrong. I've given him credit where credit is due when I've agreed with him. Hell, I fucking campaigned for him during the primary against Hillary. I've just lost faith in him -- I always knew that I disagreed with him on many issues but I was stupid enough to believe that he was telling the truth when he talked about a new kind of politics. I was stupid enough to believe him when he talked about telling the American people what they need to hear (it will take a long time for the economy to recover) instead of what they want to hear (the recovery summer is on the way!)
What does that have to do with anything? The Saudi Government didn't harbor Al Quada and refuse to turn over their leadership. The Afgan Government did.
Around here, all the Wal-Marts are also grocery stores, yet Hy-Vee is going strong despite higher prices
Same here with Wegmans. They cater to a completely different market than Wal-Mart. Their manger essentially shrugged when asked by a reporter if he was worried about the new Wal-Mart that just opened in our town.
I've never been that impressed by Wal-Mart as a grocery store anyway. Their produce is crap. I've seen fruit flies hovering over it at times. Their prices haven't impressed me much either. For the name brand products there is little difference between them and Wegmans. The Wally World store brand is cheaper than the Wegmans store brand but the Wegmans store brand is much higher quality in most cases.
Everywhere I've been, K-Mart is pretty much killing itself.
They are actually hanging on here, though for the life of me I can't figure out how. They are essentially a ghetto version of Wal-Mart. Same cheap crap (albeit a different name) in a more run-down store.
Sounds neat. Are you going to explain all that to my Mother, Sister and girlfriend? Will you also explain to them why they have no coverage the next time they get a flat tire out in the sticks somewhere?
Go to their coverage webpage and type in '13901' as the zip code. Then zoom out enough to see the surrounding rural areas. Now do the same thing on Verizon. It's not even close. T-Mobile is useless unless you never leave the city. Venture five minutes off the interstate and you have no service.
Well, double duh. It works like this - a supermarket stocks a limited range of the highest selling items (20% of a range makes 80% of profits) and sells them at a lower price than a local specialist store. This takes most of the profit away from the specialist store so it closes.
If the specialist store can't figure out a way to attract customers then it deserves to close. I live in the suburbs of Binghamton New York (population 50k) and I've got two delis, a butcher, a baker and a whole foods store all within a five minute drive of my house. They've all managed to stay in business despite the fact that my region hosts four different supermarket chains (Wal-Mart, Wegmans, Weis and Price Chopper)......
And yes, human suffering is occurring because people like you refuse to compromise.
Give me a break. Not wanting the Government to force me into a one-size-fits-all insurance policy does not imply that I'm not willing to compromise.
Ha! Conservatives and libertarians are calling for exactly that. The compromise was the recent bankruptcy reform law.
You mean the bill that was supported by half of the Democrats in the Senate? Of course that bill did not do away with the bankruptcy code so I'm not entirely sure why you brought it up. That bill didn't do much of anything other than increase the amount of paperwork that goes into filing bankruptcy.
whether we move from free to unfree due to healthcare reform.
We've lost the freedom to decide what kind of health insurance to buy and whether or not to buy it. That's a net reduction in freedom no matter how you try to spin it.
That argument holds no water with me. As I already said, bankruptcy raises the cost for everyone, but nobody is suggesting doing away with the bankruptcy code or requiring everyone who uses credit to purchase default insurance.
And btw, your auto insurance almost certainly does NOT cover major medical expenses in the event of an accident. Auto insurance is for liability and damage to the vehicles
BTW, you know absolutely nothing about insurance. What the heck do you suppose liability coverage is for? It's to cover your liability when you cause me injury. That injury is not limited to property damage.
No hospital in the US will accept your auto insurer as payment.
Actually, they will. So will the EMTs. I guess you've never been involved in an automobile accident, have you?
BTW, you might want to read your health insurance policy. It almost certainly contains an exclusion for situations where another insurance company is responsible for your injuries. Fall down the icy steps because the property owner didn't salt them? That's coming out of his insurance, not your health insurance.
Yes, and conservatives and libertarians hate being reminded that very real human suffering occurs because of their policies.
Human suffering is not occurring because I decline to purchase health insurance. Financial costs may be incurred by others but that's hardly unique to health care. The cost of my credit card goes up every time someone files for bankruptcy but I don't see very many Democrats advocating for a repeal of the bankruptcy code in favor of debtors prisons.
But please explain why a society is no longer free when it places reasonable demands on it's citizens
Forcing me to purchase insurance as a condition of being alive is not a reasonable demand. Going a step further and telling me what kind of insurance I'm allowed to buy (high-deductible plans are out, expensive PPOs and HMOs are in....) is even more obnoxious. You've taken away my freedom of choice and my freedom of association. Neither one of those is compatible with a free society.
Are we not free because we tax everyone to pay for Medicaid?
Except we aren't taxing people. We are forcing them to buy a product that may or may not meet their needs.
then why can't healthcare be a part of that?
There are plenty of ways to fix health care without compelling everybody to purchase health insurance. Health insurance is half the problem with our health care system. The notion that people should use insurance for routine expenses is absurd but that's exactly what the Democrats said when they decided to prohibit high-deductible plans under the new law. Can you imagine using your car insurance to pay for oil changes? Think that might raise the cost of the car insurance and your oil change?
and people who have the means and ability to pay for health insurance but choose not to.
See, that's the problem. Liberals/leftists/progressives can't stand the thought of people having free choice (*) They feel the need to control everybody and everything because they are obviously more educated and in a better position to decide for you than you are.
How I pay for my health care is no business of yours or the Federal Government.
Amazing how Liberals are all for the right to privacy when it comes time to kill their unborn child but run away from it when people want to make decisions that don't mesh with their political philosophy.
So good luck there tough guy. Let me know how much you enjoy living without oil. I'm sure it will be a hoot.
Irrelevant. The point is that I still have choice there. If I want to try my hand at living off the grid in the wilderness nobody is going to try and stop me.
Your behavior has consequences beyond yourself whether you know it or not.
All sorts of behavior imposes costs on society. People who can't pay their credit card bills and mortgages drive up our costs. Perhaps we should do away with the bankruptcy code and go back to debtors prisons? That would certainly be more fair to the rest of us.
If I have to protect myself from your dumb decisions I will do so with any means at my disposal.
Such means can not extend to the Federal Government operating outside of it's enumerated powers.
You buy insurance for what is unlikely but catastrophic if it does happen.
Thanks for the economics 101 lesson. Of course you left out the part where you should calculate the odds of the catastrophic event happening and weigh it against the cost of the insurance. Either way, who the hell are you to make the decision for me?
What's worse, the rest of us will have to pick up the tab for your irresponsible behavior which I don't especially appreciate.
I didn't ask for your charity. Feel free to take it away at any time.
Seriously man, you're playing with fire. You might come out all right (and I hope you do) but you are playing a very dangerous game of Russian roulette.
That's my prerogative.
If you think nothing was done you weren't paying attention.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that "nothing" was done. All I suggested was that the Administration erred in turning down the offer of the Dutch skimmers.
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it is superior in that respect to the mechanical voting machines they replaced
I would dispute this. The old lever machines were far more intuitive. They would physically not allow you to overvote -- you could not pull down multiple levers for the same position. The new system does nothing to prevent you from corrupting your ballot. The machine will catch said corruption and offer you the chance to get another ballot but I regard that as inferior to the previous system and a huge waste of resources (we had 800 ballots on hand for the primary this Tuesday and only used 120 of them....)
this can be replaced with a much smaller group of well-placed corrupt bureaucrats to manipulate mechanical voting
Except in the case of New York those "well-placed bureaucrats" come from each major political party and have no interest in working together to rig an election. There are multiple layers of checks and balances in place to prevent such rigging:
1) Custodians program and zero the machines, one from each political party.
2) Elections employees verify said programming and zeroing, one from each political party. The machines are then sealed with numbered seals.
3) Poll workers re-verify the programming and zeroing of the machine when they break the seals on the machine to open the polls. We also verify the numbered seals against our paperwork and operate under the same "two-man rule" as the elections commissioners and custodians.
It would be extremely difficult to co-opt all of these people into rigging an election.
I'm a poll worker in New York State and familiar with our system. To address a two of the points in that article:
Some polling sites did not receive the optical scanners needed to read paper ballots by 6 a.m., when voting was supposed to begin.
This is a logistical problem, not an indictment of the new voting technology. Any technology (including pen and paper) is rendered moot if the people in charge of it can't get it deployed on time.
At other polling places, the scanners failed to operate properly when they were switched on, forcing voters to wait while election workers struggled to get the devices going.
The poll workers were not properly trained. We have emergency (pen and paper) ballots on hand for this contingency. If they couldn't get their machines running for whatever reason they should have started issuing these ballots as soon as the polls opened. There is no excuse for requiring a voter to wait. This is a human capital problem and one that can only be addressed by recruiting better people to serve as poll workers. Have you considered volunteering to be one?
No direct representation, but voting for an electorate who in turn votes for who goes to office.
It's called the House of Representatives for a reason....
A dictator with the power to veto the will of the people.
Huh?
A third of the government (the supreme court) isn't elected, but appointed.
Thank the gods for that....
but in many cases unconvicted suspects
Citation needed.
and vagabonds are prevented from voting
In what state?
Only pre-planned voting is allowed. You have to register to vote.
What's wrong with that?
No de-facto freedom of who to vote for. You're generally barred from voting in more than one primary election, and the two-party system doesn't give a lot of real choice.
There is no "two-party system". You are free to vote for any third party candidate that you want.
What we need (since I'm on my soapbox) is to stop regarding corporations as "persons", and forbid them from coming anywhere near a lawmaker or a political party or an election with money, opinion, gifts, or offers of employment before, during or after their elected term.
I agree with you on everything save opinion -- citizens who band together for a common cause (think: the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the NRA, etc.) under the guise of a corporation can not be muzzled if the 1st amendment is to mean anything.
Putting them in control of the voting process -- that's a REALLY really really bad thing. And that's what voting machines do.
No they don't. It's up to your state board of elections to set the specifications for their voting equipment when they request bids on such equipment. If those specifications leave room for manipulation than your grievance is with your state government, not the corporation(s) that responded to said bid. My state (New York) relies on machines to tabulate the vote but the paper ballots are retained and available for review. A certain number of districts are randomly audited to ensure that the machine count is accurate. What is wrong with this type of system?
What will it do when I get pissed at the buggy software and throw it against the wall so hard that it breaks? Not that I've ever done that of course....
I was convinced Microsoft had the patent on feature creep
They tried to file for that patent but Uncle Sam had prior art on it.....
Did you read the health care legislation? If you don't have health insurance they will hit you with a penalty on your taxes. I'm pretty sure the Federal Government doesn't raise my taxes if I decline to purchase gasoline.
I'd rather keep the money that I would spend on health insurance and put it to more productive ends. The Federal Government is (starting in 2014) telling me that I can't do this without paying a tax for the privilege. That is a net reduction in freedom no matter how you slice it.
you also still have the choice to not buy health insurance.
Yes, and the Federal Government will punish me if I decide to exercise this choice. They will not punish me if I decline to purchase any other product, so it's obvious that the intent was to make it harder to exercise the freedom to choose whether or not to purchase health insurance.
Then drive to a bookstore or library. Plenty of them still around.
You can nitpick it all you want but your earlier remark about specialist authors (whatever that means) being driven out of business because of chain stores is completely wrong. There are lots of distribution channels for books that aren't on the NY Times bestseller list.
Or what did I misunderstand?
The fact that every book that's currently in print is only a few mouse clicks and a credit card away?
What if the specialist store just *CANNOT* cut its overhead so low that it can compete with hypermarket prices?
Then it needs to find a different market niche. Adapt or die. That's the way it works in business and nature. Trying to beat Wally World at it's own game is a losing proposition no matter how you look at it.
The EPA blocked the ships, not Obama.
Wasn't it a Democratic President that said "The Buck stops here"?
(Go look it up from somewhere other than fox news)
I don't watch Fox News. Or MSNBC or CNN for that matter. Cable isn't worth the money, IMHO.
I'm sick of you assholes that hold the president to a double-standard.
I'm sick of assholes such as yourself that label anyone who disagrees with the President with three and four letter words. For the record, I actually didn't give him much grief for the oil spill until he started grandstanding on the issue. The Federal Government doesn't have the equipment or technical know-how to deal with a leaking oil well. If Obama had just come out and said that he would have earned some karma in my eyes. Wasn't one of his campaign promises to tell the American people what they needed to hear rather than what they wanted to hear?
but you're simply arguing against everything he does even if your arguments conflict with each other
You couldn't be more wrong. I've given him credit where credit is due when I've agreed with him. Hell, I fucking campaigned for him during the primary against Hillary. I've just lost faith in him -- I always knew that I disagreed with him on many issues but I was stupid enough to believe that he was telling the truth when he talked about a new kind of politics. I was stupid enough to believe him when he talked about telling the American people what they need to hear (it will take a long time for the economy to recover) instead of what they want to hear (the recovery summer is on the way!)
What does that have to do with anything? The Saudi Government didn't harbor Al Quada and refuse to turn over their leadership. The Afgan Government did.
Around here, all the Wal-Marts are also grocery stores, yet Hy-Vee is going strong despite higher prices
Same here with Wegmans. They cater to a completely different market than Wal-Mart. Their manger essentially shrugged when asked by a reporter if he was worried about the new Wal-Mart that just opened in our town.
I've never been that impressed by Wal-Mart as a grocery store anyway. Their produce is crap. I've seen fruit flies hovering over it at times. Their prices haven't impressed me much either. For the name brand products there is little difference between them and Wegmans. The Wally World store brand is cheaper than the Wegmans store brand but the Wegmans store brand is much higher quality in most cases.
Everywhere I've been, K-Mart is pretty much killing itself.
They are actually hanging on here, though for the life of me I can't figure out how. They are essentially a ghetto version of Wal-Mart. Same cheap crap (albeit a different name) in a more run-down store.
Sounds neat. Are you going to explain all that to my Mother, Sister and girlfriend? Will you also explain to them why they have no coverage the next time they get a flat tire out in the sticks somewhere?
Go to their coverage webpage and type in '13901' as the zip code. Then zoom out enough to see the surrounding rural areas. Now do the same thing on Verizon. It's not even close. T-Mobile is useless unless you never leave the city. Venture five minutes off the interstate and you have no service.
Well, double duh. It works like this - a supermarket stocks a limited range of the highest selling items (20% of a range makes 80% of profits) and sells them at a lower price than a local specialist store. This takes most of the profit away from the specialist store so it closes.
If the specialist store can't figure out a way to attract customers then it deserves to close. I live in the suburbs of Binghamton New York (population 50k) and I've got two delis, a butcher, a baker and a whole foods store all within a five minute drive of my house. They've all managed to stay in business despite the fact that my region hosts four different supermarket chains (Wal-Mart, Wegmans, Weis and Price Chopper)......
Is it easier for you to dismiss me if you assume I'm operating in bad faith and only adopt this position because I hate Obama?
And yes, human suffering is occurring because people like you refuse to compromise.
Give me a break. Not wanting the Government to force me into a one-size-fits-all insurance policy does not imply that I'm not willing to compromise.
Ha! Conservatives and libertarians are calling for exactly that. The compromise was the recent bankruptcy reform law.
You mean the bill that was supported by half of the Democrats in the Senate? Of course that bill did not do away with the bankruptcy code so I'm not entirely sure why you brought it up. That bill didn't do much of anything other than increase the amount of paperwork that goes into filing bankruptcy.
whether we move from free to unfree due to healthcare reform.
We've lost the freedom to decide what kind of health insurance to buy and whether or not to buy it. That's a net reduction in freedom no matter how you try to spin it.
That argument holds no water with me. As I already said, bankruptcy raises the cost for everyone, but nobody is suggesting doing away with the bankruptcy code or requiring everyone who uses credit to purchase default insurance.
And btw, your auto insurance almost certainly does NOT cover major medical expenses in the event of an accident. Auto insurance is for liability and damage to the vehicles
BTW, you know absolutely nothing about insurance. What the heck do you suppose liability coverage is for? It's to cover your liability when you cause me injury. That injury is not limited to property damage.
No hospital in the US will accept your auto insurer as payment.
Actually, they will. So will the EMTs. I guess you've never been involved in an automobile accident, have you?
BTW, you might want to read your health insurance policy. It almost certainly contains an exclusion for situations where another insurance company is responsible for your injuries. Fall down the icy steps because the property owner didn't salt them? That's coming out of his insurance, not your health insurance.
Yes, and conservatives and libertarians hate being reminded that very real human suffering occurs because of their policies.
Human suffering is not occurring because I decline to purchase health insurance. Financial costs may be incurred by others but that's hardly unique to health care. The cost of my credit card goes up every time someone files for bankruptcy but I don't see very many Democrats advocating for a repeal of the bankruptcy code in favor of debtors prisons.
But please explain why a society is no longer free when it places reasonable demands on it's citizens
Forcing me to purchase insurance as a condition of being alive is not a reasonable demand. Going a step further and telling me what kind of insurance I'm allowed to buy (high-deductible plans are out, expensive PPOs and HMOs are in....) is even more obnoxious. You've taken away my freedom of choice and my freedom of association. Neither one of those is compatible with a free society.
Are we not free because we tax everyone to pay for Medicaid?
Except we aren't taxing people. We are forcing them to buy a product that may or may not meet their needs.
then why can't healthcare be a part of that?
There are plenty of ways to fix health care without compelling everybody to purchase health insurance. Health insurance is half the problem with our health care system. The notion that people should use insurance for routine expenses is absurd but that's exactly what the Democrats said when they decided to prohibit high-deductible plans under the new law. Can you imagine using your car insurance to pay for oil changes? Think that might raise the cost of the car insurance and your oil change?
and people who have the means and ability to pay for health insurance but choose not to.
See, that's the problem. Liberals/leftists/progressives can't stand the thought of people having free choice (*) They feel the need to control everybody and everything because they are obviously more educated and in a better position to decide for you than you are.
(*) Exceptions: Killing your unborn child.
How I pay for my health care is no business of yours or the Federal Government.
Amazing how Liberals are all for the right to privacy when it comes time to kill their unborn child but run away from it when people want to make decisions that don't mesh with their political philosophy.
So good luck there tough guy. Let me know how much you enjoy living without oil. I'm sure it will be a hoot.
Irrelevant. The point is that I still have choice there. If I want to try my hand at living off the grid in the wilderness nobody is going to try and stop me.
Your behavior has consequences beyond yourself whether you know it or not.
All sorts of behavior imposes costs on society. People who can't pay their credit card bills and mortgages drive up our costs. Perhaps we should do away with the bankruptcy code and go back to debtors prisons? That would certainly be more fair to the rest of us.
If I have to protect myself from your dumb decisions I will do so with any means at my disposal.
Such means can not extend to the Federal Government operating outside of it's enumerated powers.
You buy insurance for what is unlikely but catastrophic if it does happen.
Thanks for the economics 101 lesson. Of course you left out the part where you should calculate the odds of the catastrophic event happening and weigh it against the cost of the insurance. Either way, who the hell are you to make the decision for me?
What's worse, the rest of us will have to pick up the tab for your irresponsible behavior which I don't especially appreciate.
I didn't ask for your charity. Feel free to take it away at any time.
Seriously man, you're playing with fire. You might come out all right (and I hope you do) but you are playing a very dangerous game of Russian roulette.
That's my prerogative.
If you think nothing was done you weren't paying attention.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that "nothing" was done. All I suggested was that the Administration erred in turning down the offer of the Dutch skimmers.