The drilling rigs are not cheap. Having them sit idle will cost millions and millions of dollars. There is demand for them elsewhere in the world. They will contract out to other companies operating in other countries. When the moratorium is lifted in 6 months, there won't be any available rigs to be had which means no jobs either.
I dunno, its kinda in a high crime neighborhood, considering that most of the laws that come out of Washington these days aren't authorized under the Constitution.
Yes, banks are capable of stopping it, but since all those excess fees go to them, why should they? There's a thousand things which could be done to make micro-payments work, but the banks aren't particularly interested in them since they profit quite a bit out of the current system.
Why would they?
I contend that a bank that rakes its customers over the coals in the manner in which you described would quickly have no customers. Word would spread incredibly quickly in today's information age that bank x royally screwed person y and customers would remove their money in droves.
Since the amount of money that a bank can loan is tied to the amount of "reserves" they have on hand, a bank that had any significant number of withdrawals (say 5-10%) would very quickly have its balance sheets become negative rendering the bank insolvent as currently outstanding loans exceed the bank's capital requirements which justify those loans.
Banks compete fiercly for customers with the cost to attract a new customer being quite high. While on the surface it might seem that having more revenue from service charges and fees would be in the best interest of bank x, it clearly would not be worth the tarnished reputation of allowing its customers to be wiped out by some nefarious prankster sending micro-payments.
My point is that sure, banks like to charge fees and penalties, but I think I given compelling reasons why they would be interested in limiting/eliminating the ability of the above mentioned nefarious prankster from wiping someone out.
Every time a law is passed people lose freedom. While each individual law may seem to be reasonable and well-intentioned, the cumulative effect of law upon law upon law is quite restrictive. Additionally, laws are frequently perverted to mean things and to enforce things that they were never intentioned to. Look at abuses of the DMCA, the Patriot act and I am sure countless others that don't come to mind just this moment.
Should sending someone money in small enough chunks that they lose money instead of gaining it be illegal. Almost certainly. Is it actually against any existing law, I'm not entirely sure. Probably one of he many digital loopholes that will eventually get filled by the law. There have been many of them, and the somewhat reactionary ways in which they were filled have been half of what caused this battle in the first place.
I am sorry, buy why should this be illegal? Why should any respectable government waste everyone's time writing yet another pointless ineffectual over-engineered law that will eventually be abused as it evolves into some sort of tyranical restriction. Why don't banks and other organizations that allow micro-payments simply set a minimum transfer amount such that the amount transferred to the recipient must be positive after any fees are subtracted? Or they could make the sender pay the transfer amount (since in any sort of commerce this cost would be built into the product anyway) OR let the recipient specify (via an account setting) the minimum amount that they will accept as a payment. There are countless ways to avoid negative transfers without getting governments and laws involved. If this happened to me, I would complain to the bank, not the government! If the bank were to be unwilling to provide relief, they must not want me as a customer.
People buy used games because of price. It seems to be that as a game ages, publishers could more aggressively lower the price of a game to continue to attract sales. Just as there are some people who wait for a computer component to be on the market for 6-12 months before purchasing so as to not pay an arm and a leg for performance, there will also be people who do the same thing with games. If the publisher lowers their prices to be competitive with what used shops charge, they would automatically attract sales away the used market. There is no need to use draconian DRM or strong-handed licenses or government legislation.
Despite the reasons for the EHR outage and despite almost any amount of IT planning to mitigate this kind of outage, there are scenarios where such an outage are unavoidable. Working for a hospital, I have seen where both of our WAN circuits have gone down due to fiber cuts by construction contractors outside of our facility (a fairly common occurence in general). There are certainly other ways of procurring connectivity like satellite and cellullar, but these are both prone to their own problems (satellite is affected by the weather and has very high latency and cellular is prone to interference, competes with other cellular users for bandwidth), and are relatively low bandwidth. WAN connectivity isn't really the issue though, Inside of a hospital you can have a dual core network infrastructure and have dual paths to all of your assets, you can have 5000 amp/hour batteries in all of the IDF's, you can over-engineer every aspect of the system and still have a failure somewhere that brings down your system.
Of course, you have to remember that all of this over-engineering costs money. The more money a hospital spends on bulletproofing EHR, the more they have to charge patients or cut corners elsewhere in order to remain profitable. At some point for any system, be it EHR or any other, this process becomes unsustainable as no one could afford the services of the hospital.
Some may see this as a reason why for profit hospitals are bad and why the government should run things. It really wouldn't change. The government is currently effectively bankrupt. We borrow billions from other countries and the Federal Reserve prints up the shortfall causing currency inflation. When our debt becomes so large that our credit rating falters, other countries will be less and less inclined to finance our debts which will bring more inflation as the Fed continues to print the shortfall. Why do people think that the government's budget is any different from a household budget? How long can you keep spending more than you earn and stave off bankruptcy?
The fact of the matter is that a for profit organization has the most incentive to build the most effective and efficient system for dealing with their core business. Of course, governmentrules and regulations and the organizations' leadership (if inept) can stymie this process.
It's clearly not your company's core business to make their own patch cables. It may be fun for you to wittle down your own toothpics from lincoln logs but if it's not in your job description it ain't going to fly. Seriously, just buy the damn stuff and do what your boss has asked.
Sorry, but most companies aren't in the business of any sort of IT as part of their core business. IT enables their core business, but it is overhead. Whether or not making your own IT cables is cost effective or not is one thing, but it definitely falls under IT. If I took your comment to its logical conslusion I would ask, "Why should his company have a network since networks clearly aren't part of his company's core business?"
These aren't necessarily limited to "terrorism". It seems that these signs could be used in preparing for any number of crimes and perhaps even some legitimate activities (if you were a private investigator for example, there may be others...).
Why is it that nowadays any significantly high profile criminal activity has been reclassified as terrorism? I thought that terrorist acts were supposed to invoke terror in the pursuit of some political end by blowing up/killing buildings/planes/hostages, the idea being that a population would be in so much fear (terror) that they would pressure their government to give in to the demands of the terrorists.
The answer is that there are probably too few of the above classification of terrorists to actually have a war against (as in the war on terror) here in the United States. Those in control need to expand the definition of terror so as to actually have something to have war against. Why have a war on terror at all? Many people are willing to cede their liberty and freedom to catch terrorists of the ilk that perpetrated 9/11 (a la the war on terror) and the government is using that sentiment with regards to the newly reclassified definition of terrorist (pretty much anyone they don't like that they are willing to label as terrorist...protesters, constitutionalists, libertarians etc etc etc. See Missouri's MIAC report which associated supporters of Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr, three presidential candidates all espousing constitutional government)being associated with terrorists. The Bush administration (and now Obama administration) has taken full advantage of the flexibility of the term "terrorist" to assault personal freedoms on an unprecedented scale.
Engage the scientific method sections of your brains and challenge the assertions of those inciting the global warming hysteria. Perhaps humans are damning the planet with CO2, perhaps they aren't...but educate yourselves rather than take Al Gore's word for it.
Umm, why are they asking the government for help on this? If they want google to pay for news then they should charge google for the news. Why does the government have to get involved?
We gave them money because if AIG fails, two huge things go down with them. First, Europe's big banks all of them (who used AIG to get cheap insurance--they'd suddenly need new equity on the order of 30-50 billion). Second, money market funds who would be facing much larger losses then they did with Lehman after all of AIG's derivative counterparties get first cut unsecured lenders would take huge haircuts, likely leading to several funds "breaking the buck" and a run on their virtual banks. Since sending $200 billion to AIG is much cheaper than dealing with the carnage those events would cause, the government holds its nose and hopes for the best.
Ok, so AIG is an insurer that insured the mortgage risk of the big banks. All AIG is doing with the bailout money is paying it out to banks in fulfillment of insurance policies. So in effect AIG is the middleman where the government gives money to AIG who then pays it to Citi and BofA and whatever other banks (including foreign banks) took out policies. Why couldn't we have just let AIG fail and bail out these banks as necessary (for those who contend that it was necessary) since thats basically what we are doing anyway?
Well leaving "Marriage" however defined to the locals sounds great in theory guess what, the federal government *has* to intervene. Why? "Interstate Commerce".
What if you are a gay couple happily married in California and your brokerage account with a company located in Florida.
Leave marriage out of it. Let marriage be something that happens in churches. Let each participant in your aforementioned "gay marriage" in California sign a contract explicitly stating their financial involvement with each other and what would happen if one of them should die. Sort of a combination contract/will.
By doing this everyone could have their cake and eat it too, the religious nuts wouldn't have to allow gays to be "married" in their churches and gays could still get the legal protections of a spouse. Gays could even have their own churches/religious institutions that did recognize gay marriage! Isn't that the idea behind being a FREE country?
My understanding is that governments got involved in marriage in the first place to try to prevent interracial marriages. The whole concept of governments determining who I can love and live with and call my wife/husband/spouse etc is just bollocks. Same should apply to polygamy/polygyny! Who is the government to say that consenting adults shouldn't be able marry/live with however many people they want to. If four men and a woman or four men and four women can get along with each other and live as a family, MORE POWER TO THEM!!
The Federal government does not have the Constitutional authority to make laws about gay marriage
Sure it does. Where does it say "gays cannot marry" in the constitution?
Well exactly, the Federal government has no authority to define marriage of any sort, where does it say in the Constitution that the government has the power to regulate marriage? A constitutional amendment would have to be passed in order for that to fly. Remember, the Constitution and Bill of Rights impose limits on government, not individuals.
stem cells, abortion
Well, some argue that stem cell research is essentially murdering unborn children. Murder is something the federal government deals with, no?
Actually, murder is a law on the books that is enforced at the state level...most crime is. There are exceptions, the murder of a federal judge for example.
bank bailouts, medicare, social security, education
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States".
The government does have the authority to levy taxes, but the must be apportioned amongst the population. Furthermore, any revenue collected needs to be spent on things within the Fed's jurisdiction: interstate commerce, defense etc.
There is even credible data that
1. The 16th amendment was not properly ratified by enough states to be an amendment. An individual went around to each State archive to look up the state votes and published his findings. He was censored by the government for his efforts as they said he was publishing falsehoods. I understand that he sued and was not allowed to enter state archived records to validate his claims.
2. There are contemporary court cases circa the 16th amendment that said that the 16th amendment did not grant the federal government any new taxing powers that it did not have before the 16th amendment. These cases were upheld as recently as 2003. Indeed, participation in the income tax did not become widespread until WWII when people were encouraged to participate in the "victory tax," which was optional. Who of course didn't want to be unpatriotic and not pay? Well it stuck. The IRS used to be an investigative arm of the postal service to investigate postal fraud.
Check out these two propaganda video's featuring Donald Duck as he peddles the income tax:
The only problem I have with the whole "gay marriage" debate is the actual definition of the word.
I concur, I say that the federal government does not have the authority to define marriage PERIOD! It could be three men, a monkey and a mule, but the Federal government couldn't say squat. Now, your state or local government might have something else to say on the matter, but then you are also represented as a larger percentage of the population (ie. more say in what goes on) at the smaller levels of government too.
My significance in a given election:
National level: 1 in 300 odd million
State election: 1 in 5 million
County/City: 1 in 500,000 or so
Where is my voice most heard? If ever a repressive law is passed where I live, there is a good chance I can just move to a suburb or adjoining state, but all bets are off if something inane is made illegal at the Federal level, say blue t-shirts.
say that the rights and powers were limited specifically to that, rather than those just being examples of the general principle. The ninth amendment was added precisely to address that. One of the implications of the 9th amendment is that you're violating the constitution (specifically the 9th amendment) if you try to interpret it in the manner you're suggesting.
Ninth amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Its text here states that the enumeration in the Constitution is not limiting rights of the people by not having them listed in the Bill of Rights. The whole point of the Bill of Rights was to protect the people from government, not to protect government from the Bill of Rights. I think that perhaps in your haste to point out my ignorance that you misconstrued the intent of the Ninth amendment.
My interpretation?...There is nothing in the constitution about stem cell research, but the constitution will tell us the proper way to resolve the controversies brought forward by its advances. The constitution tells us the president cannot write a law that bans it, the congress writes said law and passes it to the president for approval. The constitution doesn't say "no stem cell research"...The constitution only provides us a process to follow, not the solution.
Boy, you are ignorant. The Constitution specifically lists things that the Federal government CAN do, anything else not specifically granted to the Federal government is reserved for the States and People (read local government) to determine within the context of their own constitutions and laws. This is codified in the 10th amendment among other places.
The Federal government does not have the Constitutional authority to make laws about gay marriage (or any marriage for that matter), stem cells, bank bailouts, abortion, medicare, social security, education or any of the other crazy things that the Fed legislates at the national level. All of the above issues should be within the purview of state and local governments though. By having the Fed pass all sorts of laws, you wind up with laws that go into the category of one size fits noone at worst, or at best one size fits the tryanical majority (issues that our Constitution was supposed to prevent!)...these are symptoms of a Democracy, not the Republic that we are supposed to have.
Some would argue the the "General welfare" clause in the Constitution authorizes all of the above activities; an argument that doesn't make logical sense...why would the founders take time to specifically enumerate all of the things that the Federal government CAN do and then slip in an innocuous phrase that countermands basically the whole rest of the Constitution (basically saying that you can make any law that you think would help someone, enumerated powers be damned). It makes more sense (logically) that the "General welfare" clause referred to welfare to the States as it pertains to the benefits afforded by the aforementioned enumerated powers.
The second Iraq was has already been won. Bush said it himself in May of 2003 when he announced from the USS Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Look at what we did. We, America, for the first time ever, invaded (as in we strike first vice reacting to someone else's aggression) a sovereign nation and deposed its ruler, toppled its government and facilitated the erection of a new government in its place. If that isn't winning a war, I do not know what is.
Now lets look at the reason we went over there (well, the reason they told us at any rate). We went over there because Saddam was (according to "reliable" intelligence, heh) in possession of/developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD's). So, we go over there, win the war as mentioned above...lo' and behold no WMD's. Surprise surprise! Well, since the reason we went over there was to insure that Iraq has no WMD's and we have confirmed they don't, I don't see any reason to stay over there...MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!
What we have been doing since the "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," statement is acting as the country's police force, nothing more. There is no war, the war ended in 2003. Since then its just been neo-imperialism. We went to war without a congressional declaration of war and have been meddling in the country since the war ended. When was the last time we as a country have actually "declared war" as is constitutionally needed for us to legitimately be in a state of war? It was in 1941 for WWII.
So, who is to blame for this state of affairs? Try our whole freakin' government...not just the Bush administration alone as so many of you/.ers would suggest. Sure the Bush administration had its part, but Congress (who controls the military's purse strings) is controlled by the Democrats and has been for the last two years. They were elected with campaign promises of ending the "war." They have done nothing but pander to the people and the Bush administration since then. Why, its not like Bush is a really popular president or anything? They have been all too willing to sign appropriations bills giving more funding to the "war" effort so long as they get funding for their pet projects. This is what happens when you allow completely unrelated items to be inserted into legislation. This war is bankrupting our country.
States were supposed to govern their own borders and the Constitution was there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights).
That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves. Now if you'd like to make some big spiel about how the Union winning the civil war lead to negative repercussions for your state's rights, then I'm simply going to point out that the previous system was far, far worse. It allowed slavery. Yes it did. So arguing for states rights to be reinstated in order to protect people's rights is not really a solid argument.
You my friend are the victim of revisionist history. Don't feel put out though, most of us are. The civil war was not about slavery. It was about the economy. The south produced the feedstock for the northern textile industry and the Europeans were cutting the south a better deal. As such the south was exporting to Europe vice the north. The north just couldn't have that. The secession of the south was totally legitimate. Now I am not saying that slavery is good and that the war didn't end it, but the war was not fought over slavery. I know that what I am saying sounds like heresy, but have an open mind and do a little research, you might be surprised.
After all, the market for $2/watt panels is likely 4X that of $4/watt panels. And orders of magnitude more if they can manage to make $1/watt panels - installed, since that's the price point for commercial power parity.
No one ever seems to consider the payback time with the cost indexed against inflation. With our real inflation at or above 10% (you don't really believe the Consumer Price Index that leaves out the cost of energy, food and housing do you?) The payback time could be as quick as 10 years with current prices. Add in state/federal incentives and it could be as low as 5.
Slashdot Mirror
There are hacks that allow speakers to be used as microphones.
In our increasingly Orwellian society, I would be quite happy to have facial recognition technology be less effective on my skin tone (fair).
Then they can bomb them out of existence.
It seems that if he knows about the crime before it happens then he is an accessory to the crime and perhaps co-conspirator.
The drilling rigs are not cheap. Having them sit idle will cost millions and millions of dollars. There is demand for them elsewhere in the world. They will contract out to other companies operating in other countries. When the moratorium is lifted in 6 months, there won't be any available rigs to be had which means no jobs either.
I dunno, its kinda in a high crime neighborhood, considering that most of the laws that come out of Washington these days aren't authorized under the Constitution.
A Stephen King book, pretty well written.
Yes, banks are capable of stopping it, but since all those excess fees go to them, why should they? There's a thousand things which could be done to make micro-payments work, but the banks aren't particularly interested in them since they profit quite a bit out of the current system.
Why would they?
I contend that a bank that rakes its customers over the coals in the manner in which you described would quickly have no customers. Word would spread incredibly quickly in today's information age that bank x royally screwed person y and customers would remove their money in droves.
Since the amount of money that a bank can loan is tied to the amount of "reserves" they have on hand, a bank that had any significant number of withdrawals (say 5-10%) would very quickly have its balance sheets become negative rendering the bank insolvent as currently outstanding loans exceed the bank's capital requirements which justify those loans.
Banks compete fiercly for customers with the cost to attract a new customer being quite high. While on the surface it might seem that having more revenue from service charges and fees would be in the best interest of bank x, it clearly would not be worth the tarnished reputation of allowing its customers to be wiped out by some nefarious prankster sending micro-payments.
My point is that sure, banks like to charge fees and penalties, but I think I given compelling reasons why they would be interested in limiting/eliminating the ability of the above mentioned nefarious prankster from wiping someone out.
Every time a law is passed people lose freedom. While each individual law may seem to be reasonable and well-intentioned, the cumulative effect of law upon law upon law is quite restrictive. Additionally, laws are frequently perverted to mean things and to enforce things that they were never intentioned to. Look at abuses of the DMCA, the Patriot act and I am sure countless others that don't come to mind just this moment.
Should sending someone money in small enough chunks that they lose money instead of gaining it be illegal. Almost certainly. Is it actually against any existing law, I'm not entirely sure. Probably one of he many digital loopholes that will eventually get filled by the law. There have been many of them, and the somewhat reactionary ways in which they were filled have been half of what caused this battle in the first place.
I am sorry, buy why should this be illegal? Why should any respectable government waste everyone's time writing yet another pointless ineffectual over-engineered law that will eventually be abused as it evolves into some sort of tyranical restriction. Why don't banks and other organizations that allow micro-payments simply set a minimum transfer amount such that the amount transferred to the recipient must be positive after any fees are subtracted? Or they could make the sender pay the transfer amount (since in any sort of commerce this cost would be built into the product anyway) OR let the recipient specify (via an account setting) the minimum amount that they will accept as a payment. There are countless ways to avoid negative transfers without getting governments and laws involved. If this happened to me, I would complain to the bank, not the government! If the bank were to be unwilling to provide relief, they must not want me as a customer.
People buy used games because of price. It seems to be that as a game ages, publishers could more aggressively lower the price of a game to continue to attract sales. Just as there are some people who wait for a computer component to be on the market for 6-12 months before purchasing so as to not pay an arm and a leg for performance, there will also be people who do the same thing with games. If the publisher lowers their prices to be competitive with what used shops charge, they would automatically attract sales away the used market. There is no need to use draconian DRM or strong-handed licenses or government legislation.
Of course, you have to remember that all of this over-engineering costs money. The more money a hospital spends on bulletproofing EHR, the more they have to charge patients or cut corners elsewhere in order to remain profitable. At some point for any system, be it EHR or any other, this process becomes unsustainable as no one could afford the services of the hospital.
Some may see this as a reason why for profit hospitals are bad and why the government should run things. It really wouldn't change. The government is currently effectively bankrupt. We borrow billions from other countries and the Federal Reserve prints up the shortfall causing currency inflation. When our debt becomes so large that our credit rating falters, other countries will be less and less inclined to finance our debts which will bring more inflation as the Fed continues to print the shortfall. Why do people think that the government's budget is any different from a household budget? How long can you keep spending more than you earn and stave off bankruptcy?
The fact of the matter is that a for profit organization has the most incentive to build the most effective and efficient system for dealing with their core business. Of course, governmentrules and regulations and the organizations' leadership (if inept) can stymie this process.
It's clearly not your company's core business to make their own patch cables. It may be fun for you to wittle down your own toothpics from lincoln logs but if it's not in your job description it ain't going to fly. Seriously, just buy the damn stuff and do what your boss has asked.
Sorry, but most companies aren't in the business of any sort of IT as part of their core business. IT enables their core business, but it is overhead. Whether or not making your own IT cables is cost effective or not is one thing, but it definitely falls under IT. If I took your comment to its logical conslusion I would ask, "Why should his company have a network since networks clearly aren't part of his company's core business?"
Why is it that nowadays any significantly high profile criminal activity has been reclassified as terrorism? I thought that terrorist acts were supposed to invoke terror in the pursuit of some political end by blowing up/killing buildings/planes/hostages, the idea being that a population would be in so much fear (terror) that they would pressure their government to give in to the demands of the terrorists.
The answer is that there are probably too few of the above classification of terrorists to actually have a war against (as in the war on terror) here in the United States. Those in control need to expand the definition of terror so as to actually have something to have war against. Why have a war on terror at all? Many people are willing to cede their liberty and freedom to catch terrorists of the ilk that perpetrated 9/11 (a la the war on terror) and the government is using that sentiment with regards to the newly reclassified definition of terrorist (pretty much anyone they don't like that they are willing to label as terrorist...protesters, constitutionalists, libertarians etc etc etc. See Missouri's MIAC report which associated supporters of Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr, three presidential candidates all espousing constitutional government)being associated with terrorists. The Bush administration (and now Obama administration) has taken full advantage of the flexibility of the term "terrorist" to assault personal freedoms on an unprecedented scale.
If you see the scales of freedom tipping in the wrong direction, get involved. There are left and right leaning organizations that are trying to restore our freedom:
American Freedom Campaign
The Pen
DownsizeDc.org
The Campaign for Liberty
Restore the Republic
Young Americans for Liberty
Engage the scientific method sections of your brains and challenge the assertions of those inciting the global warming hysteria. Perhaps humans are damning the planet with CO2, perhaps they aren't...but educate yourselves rather than take Al Gore's word for it.
Umm, why are they asking the government for help on this? If they want google to pay for news then they should charge google for the news. Why does the government have to get involved?
Ok, so AIG is an insurer that insured the mortgage risk of the big banks. All AIG is doing with the bailout money is paying it out to banks in fulfillment of insurance policies. So in effect AIG is the middleman where the government gives money to AIG who then pays it to Citi and BofA and whatever other banks (including foreign banks) took out policies. Why couldn't we have just let AIG fail and bail out these banks as necessary (for those who contend that it was necessary) since thats basically what we are doing anyway?
Well leaving "Marriage" however defined to the locals sounds great in theory guess what, the federal government *has* to intervene. Why? "Interstate Commerce". What if you are a gay couple happily married in California and your brokerage account with a company located in Florida.
Leave marriage out of it. Let marriage be something that happens in churches. Let each participant in your aforementioned "gay marriage" in California sign a contract explicitly stating their financial involvement with each other and what would happen if one of them should die. Sort of a combination contract/will.
By doing this everyone could have their cake and eat it too, the religious nuts wouldn't have to allow gays to be "married" in their churches and gays could still get the legal protections of a spouse. Gays could even have their own churches/religious institutions that did recognize gay marriage! Isn't that the idea behind being a FREE country?
My understanding is that governments got involved in marriage in the first place to try to prevent interracial marriages. The whole concept of governments determining who I can love and live with and call my wife/husband/spouse etc is just bollocks. Same should apply to polygamy/polygyny! Who is the government to say that consenting adults shouldn't be able marry/live with however many people they want to. If four men and a woman or four men and four women can get along with each other and live as a family, MORE POWER TO THEM!!
Sure it does. Where does it say "gays cannot marry" in the constitution?
Well exactly, the Federal government has no authority to define marriage of any sort, where does it say in the Constitution that the government has the power to regulate marriage? A constitutional amendment would have to be passed in order for that to fly. Remember, the Constitution and Bill of Rights impose limits on government, not individuals.
Well, some argue that stem cell research is essentially murdering unborn children. Murder is something the federal government deals with, no?
Actually, murder is a law on the books that is enforced at the state level...most crime is. There are exceptions, the murder of a federal judge for example.
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States".
The government does have the authority to levy taxes, but the must be apportioned amongst the population. Furthermore, any revenue collected needs to be spent on things within the Fed's jurisdiction: interstate commerce, defense etc.
There is even credible data that
1. The 16th amendment was not properly ratified by enough states to be an amendment. An individual went around to each State archive to look up the state votes and published his findings. He was censored by the government for his efforts as they said he was publishing falsehoods. I understand that he sued and was not allowed to enter state archived records to validate his claims.
2. There are contemporary court cases circa the 16th amendment that said that the 16th amendment did not grant the federal government any new taxing powers that it did not have before the 16th amendment. These cases were upheld as recently as 2003. Indeed, participation in the income tax did not become widespread until WWII when people were encouraged to participate in the "victory tax," which was optional. Who of course didn't want to be unpatriotic and not pay? Well it stuck. The IRS used to be an investigative arm of the postal service to investigate postal fraud.
Check out these two propaganda video's featuring Donald Duck as he peddles the income tax:
Vid 1
Vid 2
The only problem I have with the whole "gay marriage" debate is the actual definition of the word.
I concur, I say that the federal government does not have the authority to define marriage PERIOD! It could be three men, a monkey and a mule, but the Federal government couldn't say squat. Now, your state or local government might have something else to say on the matter, but then you are also represented as a larger percentage of the population (ie. more say in what goes on) at the smaller levels of government too.
My significance in a given election:
National level: 1 in 300 odd million
State election: 1 in 5 million
County/City: 1 in 500,000 or so
Where is my voice most heard? If ever a repressive law is passed where I live, there is a good chance I can just move to a suburb or adjoining state, but all bets are off if something inane is made illegal at the Federal level, say blue t-shirts.
Ninth amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Its text here states that the enumeration in the Constitution is not limiting rights of the people by not having them listed in the Bill of Rights. The whole point of the Bill of Rights was to protect the people from government, not to protect government from the Bill of Rights. I think that perhaps in your haste to point out my ignorance that you misconstrued the intent of the Ninth amendment.
1) Get elected as president
2) steal the Hope Diamond
3) Profits!
1) Get elected as president
2) Steal the Heart of Gold
3) Profits!
My interpretation?...There is nothing in the constitution about stem cell research, but the constitution will tell us the proper way to resolve the controversies brought forward by its advances. The constitution tells us the president cannot write a law that bans it, the congress writes said law and passes it to the president for approval. The constitution doesn't say "no stem cell research"...The constitution only provides us a process to follow, not the solution.
Boy, you are ignorant. The Constitution specifically lists things that the Federal government CAN do, anything else not specifically granted to the Federal government is reserved for the States and People (read local government) to determine within the context of their own constitutions and laws. This is codified in the 10th amendment among other places.
The Federal government does not have the Constitutional authority to make laws about gay marriage (or any marriage for that matter), stem cells, bank bailouts, abortion, medicare, social security, education or any of the other crazy things that the Fed legislates at the national level. All of the above issues should be within the purview of state and local governments though. By having the Fed pass all sorts of laws, you wind up with laws that go into the category of one size fits noone at worst, or at best one size fits the tryanical majority (issues that our Constitution was supposed to prevent!)...these are symptoms of a Democracy, not the Republic that we are supposed to have.
Some would argue the the "General welfare" clause in the Constitution authorizes all of the above activities; an argument that doesn't make logical sense...why would the founders take time to specifically enumerate all of the things that the Federal government CAN do and then slip in an innocuous phrase that countermands basically the whole rest of the Constitution (basically saying that you can make any law that you think would help someone, enumerated powers be damned). It makes more sense (logically) that the "General welfare" clause referred to welfare to the States as it pertains to the benefits afforded by the aforementioned enumerated powers.
Now lets look at the reason we went over there (well, the reason they told us at any rate). We went over there because Saddam was (according to "reliable" intelligence, heh) in possession of/developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD's). So, we go over there, win the war as mentioned above...lo' and behold no WMD's. Surprise surprise! Well, since the reason we went over there was to insure that Iraq has no WMD's and we have confirmed they don't, I don't see any reason to stay over there...MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!
What we have been doing since the "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," statement is acting as the country's police force, nothing more. There is no war, the war ended in 2003. Since then its just been neo-imperialism. We went to war without a congressional declaration of war and have been meddling in the country since the war ended. When was the last time we as a country have actually "declared war" as is constitutionally needed for us to legitimately be in a state of war? It was in 1941 for WWII.
So, who is to blame for this state of affairs? Try our whole freakin' government...not just the Bush administration alone as so many of you /.ers would suggest. Sure the Bush administration had its part, but Congress (who controls the military's purse strings) is controlled by the Democrats and has been for the last two years. They were elected with campaign promises of ending the "war." They have done nothing but pander to the people and the Bush administration since then. Why, its not like Bush is a really popular president or anything? They have been all too willing to sign appropriations bills giving more funding to the "war" effort so long as they get funding for their pet projects. This is what happens when you allow completely unrelated items to be inserted into legislation. This war is bankrupting our country.
That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves. Now if you'd like to make some big spiel about how the Union winning the civil war lead to negative repercussions for your state's rights, then I'm simply going to point out that the previous system was far, far worse. It allowed slavery. Yes it did. So arguing for states rights to be reinstated in order to protect people's rights is not really a solid argument.
You my friend are the victim of revisionist history. Don't feel put out though, most of us are. The civil war was not about slavery. It was about the economy. The south produced the feedstock for the northern textile industry and the Europeans were cutting the south a better deal. As such the south was exporting to Europe vice the north. The north just couldn't have that. The secession of the south was totally legitimate. Now I am not saying that slavery is good and that the war didn't end it, but the war was not fought over slavery. I know that what I am saying sounds like heresy, but have an open mind and do a little research, you might be surprised.
After all, the market for $2/watt panels is likely 4X that of $4/watt panels. And orders of magnitude more if they can manage to make $1/watt panels - installed, since that's the price point for commercial power parity.
No one ever seems to consider the payback time with the cost indexed against inflation. With our real inflation at or above 10% (you don't really believe the Consumer Price Index that leaves out the cost of energy, food and housing do you?) The payback time could be as quick as 10 years with current prices. Add in state/federal incentives and it could be as low as 5.