Correct me if I'm wrong, but only one of the movements actually had people bringing guns to the rallies, and it wasn't OWS.
Yes, a few carried firearms. Legally. Peacefully. Responsibly. As is their Constitutional right. I carry a firearm every day. Many, probably far more than you think, do. Without anyone getting hurt or arrested.
How many TEA Party protesters were arrested again? How many people were shot?
Oh yeah, none & none. You have no point.
OWS didn't even *need* guns to become violent. Judging by their behavior so far, it's probably a very, very good thing for everybody's safety that they generally don't believe in carrying firearms.
Violence and hatred comes from men, not inanimate tools.
OWS has to do these things to get attention because (unlike the teabaggers) they're not anywhere near a large enough block of voters to achieve their goals through the democratic voting process and must resort to rioting, violence, and intimidation to achieve their goals over the will of the majority just as every gang, despot, or warlord does.
Not really. There's a distinction between rational protesting for and irrational protesting against. 2011 has seen a lot of rational, constructive protesting. The Tea Party was all about irrational, destructive rabble-rousing.
OWS: We want the "rich" (anyone who makes more than we do) to pay more taxes so the government can give us free stuff! Only evil people are rich (except for the rich politicians and other rich political players on *our* side...that's *different*!)! And if we don't get what we demand despite being a voting minority, we'll use violence (*this* is what democracy looks like!!!1!!one) to achieve our goals.
TEA Party: We want government to stop taxing us so much and wasting so much of the taxes they take from us, and to actually start obeying the laws and the limitations on government power that's in the Constitution.
You were saying something about irrationality and destructive rabble-rousing? I must have missed the TEA Party riots, arrests, violence & assaults, drug dealing/use, rapes, property destruction, and the massive clean-ups needed like that which occur/occurred at OWS protests.
How about a Barrett M-107 or other semi-auto high-velocity, large-caliber weapon attached to a gimbal-mount actuated by servos connected to an optical comparator, sort of like the solar-power panels that have an automatic sun-tracking unit.
Design it to track & align on a laser source of the wavelength of these lasers, and then start firing when the servos align the weapon to the coherent beam, halting when the coherent light source ceases or changes position until it's re-acquired & aligned.
Scratch one operator and one very expensive piece of mangled "modern art" that *was* the former laser-blinding unit before the.50BMG round. After a couple incidents like that, the authorities won't be able to get anyone to operate their expensive new toys, even at gunpoint.
NO BODY agrees with you. There is no cognitive bias. You are a shill, trying to establish some authority to dictate what a movement is about. You're ego is stunning in it's simplicity. You can have the last word - but ill have the last laugh, because you can't kill an idea no matter how many people, like you, try. Suck on it.
Go dust your portrait of Goebbels, or some of your OWS buddies might think you're a Jewish sympathizer.
and saying that anti-Semitism is a key characteristic of the occupy movement means I DONT LIKE YOU - MOVE ALONG.
Sorry, your entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Don't hate me for pointing it out to you, hate the anti-Semitic OWS'ers.
Maybe you could get Adam Sandler to go down to OWS protests and sing the Hanukkah Song. You might want to provide a security detail to escort him, though, as it seems many of the OWS'ers have a lot of hate-ukkah for those who celebrate Hanukkah.
whoa and YOU will really buy that the KKK represents the whole thing? REALLY? You damn well know if you read the news that, yes, the KKK put out a press release asking their members to go out and say that. so that rubes like you could mad at it, i guess. Yes it hurt the image, but only a jackass would associate the two in any thing but the loosest sense. Fuck off
Just...wow.
I don't really need to say anything here, do I?
Your post is a near-perfect example of the Left's extreme hatred, intolerance, and contempt for anyone that doesn't hold the same views that I was talking about. Thanks for making my point on hatred with your reply to my post. It couldn't have been a better example if I'd typed your reply for you.
And FYI, I never mentioned the KKK. Nice straw-man argument. The anti-Semitic signs and banners I referred to seeing at OWS weren't being held by KKK members. I saw them being proudly waved by a number of different people from several different groups (including some Union groups) as well as a few individuals that didn't appear to be part of a group of any kind.
That's not painting with a broad brush. That's simply observing an obvious fact. Antisemitism was and is broadly on display throughout the protests and is one of the major themes occurring repeatedly across various OWS groups, sub-groups, and individuals. Attempting to portray it as limited to a few fringe outsiders is disingenuous at best and an outright propaganda lie at it's worst.
Turn away from the dark side. The hatred filling you will only destroy you and all you care about. In the end, hatred always destroys itself. Once loosed, hatred grows until it consumes the hater.
...maybe you could toss "jew" and "n*gger" in there, too?
No, you're confused. It's the ones at the "occupy" protests that are (once again...history repeats) blaming the "Jew bankers" and "Jews/Zionists controlling Obama/the government" for the country's woes. I saw more anti-Semitic signs at just *one* "occupy" event than I saw racist signs of any kind at *all* the TEA Party events combined.
Please stop buying into the class and race warfare hatred being pimped by the Left. You're drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. What kind of government do you hope for if those whose beliefs are based around hatred and envy are the ones to build it?
...because you can't handle the fact a movement can be composed of nutjobs, anarchists, crackheads, anti-Semites, paid protesters, and members of the Communist Party USA from all walks of life.
Fanaticism of most any kind, including fanatical humanists, secularists and atheists, as well as religious & political fanatics, and non-interference are mutually exclusive.
Bonus points added for it being a law enforcement vehicle(soon to be declared an officer). I'll wager that, by the fifth year after deployment, shooting at a drone will bring charges of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.
Unless something remarkable happens in AI research in the next 5 years, that seems remarkably implausible. You don't get charged with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer for shooting their car, unless they're in it.
You DO however get charged with attempted murder of a police officer if you use what a judge/DA/jury decides is "lethal force with intent to kill" against a police dog. An animal which neither knows nor cares about rights & protections under the law while it chews off someone's gonads (or their throat) after they've already surrendered. I would think that the inability of a suspect to be able to surrender peacefully to a dog would disqualify it from "officer" status.
How many bacon-treats does it typically take for the average police dog to pass the required 4-year Criminal Justice college courses and the police cadet exams, anyway?
Any power the central government doesn't hold, the corporations, local landowners, and other wealthy entities will simply use directly.
This is incorrect, as the "food chain" of powers is already spelled out in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.".
The Federal government has been usurping the powers of the States and the People. This is a major cause of the problems the US is facing.
The key to controlling the attempts by those with wealth to corrupt the system lies in first keeping any central power & authority as weak as possible, with only those powers it absolutely must have to perform it's basic limited functions. As much of the actual governance of the country as possible must be as local and close to the people as possible in order for people to have as much oversight and control as possible.
No, it's the concentration of wealth into few hands that does, but that's an inevitable result of capitalism, unless rigorously fought by progressive taxation and forcibly splitting up large corporations.
The concentration of wealth happens when government becomes too large & powerful, which guarantees corruption and "crony capitalism" which seeks to prevent competition from small players and erects barriers to entry into the market by the "little guy", as has increasingly been the case in the US over the last 80-100 years. Simply handing wealth over to the government by taxation doesn't solve disparities in private sector wealth, it only empowers government to become more corrupt. Forced wealth redistribution by the government has never, ever, in all of history, turned out well and does not lift up the poor, but rather brings everyone down to equal poverty and misery.
Corporations only have the amount of power they currently enjoy and can only act as criminally as they do without real fear because the government has power they can co-opt, and are able to do it safely because of the sheer size of government. If the government wasn't so all-encompassing and huge, corporations wouldn't have the power they do.
This makes absolutely no sense.
That's because you fail to understand that centralization of power provides a simple one-stop-shop for corruption to exercise power over the entire system. In addition, that huge bureaucracies are ideal for hiding corruption and deflecting guilt. It's like the situation of corruption occurring in a government department that hands out money to favored private corporations. Some would argue that it requires even more bureaucracy to oversee the handing out of taxpayer money to favored corporate interests, when the question should be why is the government in the business of handing out taxpayer money to certain politically-chosen private interests.
It's not capitalism that's given corporations the power they have these days as so many like the OWS protesters scream about, it's a too-large government that by it's very nature of being so large & powerful, attracts corruption and covers up corruption in it's labyrinthine maze of finger-pointers, always blaming something/someone else and muddying the waters such that curbing corruption is impossible. It becomes a circular self-reinforcing system until it collapses and leaves the poor sucker citizens to suffer the consequences.
And this is akin to saying "the problem with all this crime is that we have laws!"
No, this is saying that huge, powerful government bureaucracies that hand out money and favorable laws & regulations to the politically-connected are the ideal place for corruption to fester while remaining hidden by their sheer size muddying the trail of accountability and making it near impossible to determine who is guilty.
More's the pity that the truth in those words isn't clear. It's the reason why no solution is possible at this time, and perhaps ever.
Thanks.
Some don't want to understand those truths in my post above for ideological reasons, nor do they want anyone else to hear such truths. To accept & acknowledge those truths invalidates their entire worldview. They do the mental equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going; "I can't hear you!...lalalalala!" while attempting to silence any dissenting views. There's simply no arguing with these types, as they've drank the kool-aid. They live in an armored ideological echo chamber. They are "true believers", no different than any religious fanatic. They simply must be defeated politically.
Some are simply incapable of understanding, as they were never taught much history, nor were they taught how to think...rather, they were simply taught what to think. Some of these types can be reasoned with, if they're open-minded enough to listen and to try thinking differently than they've been taught all their lives.
Frankly, we don't dare even allow Space-X or any single government to get a controlling foothold off-planet until we've evolved the necessary collective awareness and wisdom to prevent the result from reading like the plot from any one of dozens of dystopian science fiction novels. WE NEED TO OWN THAT INFRASTRUCTURE, all of us; it needs to be a co-op enterprise. The human push into space must be a SOCIAL endeavor, and by social I mean the entire human tribe, not just one splinter group of it.
I don't have all the answers, or even a fraction of them. But, what you advocate here could only turn out well if basic human nature suddenly and totally changed.
As long as government is the all-encompassing megalith it's become over the last 100 years, mortgaged up past it's eyeballs with fingers in every pie and control over everything, thereby guaranteeing massive corruption by anyone that has money, the space program (and all other worthwhile works) will only go as far as the politicians (and those who pay them) want it to go.
Corporations only have the amount of power they currently enjoy and can only act as criminally as they do without real fear because the government has power they can co-opt, and are able to do it safely because of the sheer size of government. If the government wasn't so all-encompassing and huge, corporations wouldn't have the power they do.
It's not capitalism that's given corporations the power they have these days as so many like the OWS protesters scream about, it's a too-large government that by it's very nature of being so large & powerful, attracts corruption and covers up corruption in it's labyrinthine maze of finger-pointers, always blaming something/someone else and muddying the waters such that curbing corruption is impossible. It becomes a circular self-reinforcing system until it collapses and leaves the poor sucker citizens to suffer the consequences.
That hasn't been even remotely true for so long that most people alive today have never known a government that actually represents what the people making up society want.
Is the NFL going to install miniature anti-aircraft guns/missiles at stadiums nationwide, or maybe lobby to have laws enacted that ban all civilian model aircraft?
O/T, but can you imagine the crapstorm resulting from dozens of quadrocopters with cameras swarming someplace like the White House, Pentagon, and/or other sensitive government installations, live-streaming video taken through the windows?
Do you realise the utility companies can't broadcast a 2.4GHz signal, don't you?
Not sure if they're allowed/being licensed to transmit a 2.4gHz radio signal for this application or not. How would one check to see if they're being licensed/permitted to do so, particularly if the utilities and the government don't want to advertise the fact too soon?
That's not really the point, however. They can absolutely receive a 2.4gHz radio signal (and any data carried on it, like details of your usage patterns, possibly even exactly what types of devices in your home may be using power) though. That kind of granular real-time or near real-time data would be a gold mine of intel for the utilities, marketers, and government/law enforcement/TLAs/regulatory agencies in this ever-more-intrusive and controlled societal environment we live in.
Because the "smart" part of the meter is the part where it gives the utility company (and the powers that be) the ability to monitor in real-time what you've got running and at what times, along with the ability to take control of heating/cooling of a residence away from the consumer.
This is why I simply don't buy what they're selling when they tell consumers it's simply to inform you of usage and keep your rates down by saving on employing people for meter reading. If that was the entire truth, they wouldn't need such capabilities.
This, but make sure to keep it mobile. While turning it off from time to time. Police: you maybe able to beat me, but you can't beat my radio. What radio you say.
Don't have to do all that. Simple and fairly powerful brute-force RF jammers are relatively easy & cheap to make. Make a dozen or so (or a hundred...or two hundred...) with the first unit triggerable by a phone call to a disposable cellphone incorporated into the jammer. Include a very simple receiver in each one that senses when it's brother-jammer stops transmitting. Carefully conceal them across your chosen area of denial. Bonus points for hiding them in relatively close proximity...1/16th of a mile or less...to police radio repeater & cell towers.
The simple receiver in each jammer listens for it's companion. You trigger the first one with a call. It starts broadcasting and the simple receivers in the other jammers arm upon receiving the signal. Authorities manage to find the first one and shut it down. The simple receiver in the next jammer loses it's brother's signal, and starts up it's jammer. Police find that one and shut it down. Next one automatically fires up...
Rinse & repeat as needed.
You could deny authorities practically any radio communications whatsoever across an entire city or county for a significant amount of time for a couple hundred or thousand dollars, depending on the size of the denial-area desired. Would work for cell phone communications as well, depending on how broadbanded you make the jammers.
A police officer without the ability to communicate by either radio or cell phone to call in backup, receive or transmit information, or coordinate an attack or defense is just another lone asshole with a gun, no different than any other lone asshole with a gun. Lone assholes with guns behaving like assholes don't survive long among an armed populace.
You would greatly benefit from educating yourself before trying to participate in conversations that are so clearly beyond your ability to understand. Your attempts at participation are only making you look ignorant and stupid.
No, your attempts to insult and somehow discredit me to distract from your lack of understanding of how capitalism works is the typical reaction I see from those on the Left. You can't dispute my posts, so you make feeble attempts to attack and discredit me rather than reply to the actual meaning and content of my posts.
I'm sure you'll be in a better mood after the holidays are over, and you're not as frustrated by having been relegated (again) to the "kiddy table" during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
People make moonshine, even tho alcohol is legally available. People traffic in and smuggle cigarettes to avoid paying cigarette taxes.
And where are the state-and-national-prison-system-filling numbers of cigarette and moonshine criminals to match the numbers imprisoned because of the war on drugs? Where are the cigarette and alcohol cartels capable of waging a shooting war against entire nations and even threatening to overthrow their governments? Oh, that's right. Cigarettes and alcohol aren't illegal in and of themselves, are legally obtainable, and are taxed & regulated.
But other than those minor details, I guess they're almost exactly the same, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but only one of the movements actually had people bringing guns to the rallies, and it wasn't OWS.
Yes, a few carried firearms. Legally. Peacefully. Responsibly. As is their Constitutional right. I carry a firearm every day. Many, probably far more than you think, do. Without anyone getting hurt or arrested.
How many TEA Party protesters were arrested again? How many people were shot?
Oh yeah, none & none. You have no point.
OWS didn't even *need* guns to become violent. Judging by their behavior so far, it's probably a very, very good thing for everybody's safety that they generally don't believe in carrying firearms.
Violence and hatred comes from men, not inanimate tools.
Strat
OWS has to do these things to get attention because (unlike the teabaggers) they're not anywhere near a large enough block of voters to achieve their goals through the democratic voting process and must resort to rioting, violence, and intimidation to achieve their goals over the will of the majority just as every gang, despot, or warlord does.
FTFY
Strat
Not really. There's a distinction between rational protesting for and irrational protesting against. 2011 has seen a lot of rational, constructive protesting. The Tea Party was all about irrational, destructive rabble-rousing.
OWS: We want the "rich" (anyone who makes more than we do) to pay more taxes so the government can give us free stuff! Only evil people are rich (except for the rich politicians and other rich political players on *our* side...that's *different*!)! And if we don't get what we demand despite being a voting minority, we'll use violence (*this* is what democracy looks like!!!1!!one) to achieve our goals.
TEA Party: We want government to stop taxing us so much and wasting so much of the taxes they take from us, and to actually start obeying the laws and the limitations on government power that's in the Constitution.
You were saying something about irrationality and destructive rabble-rousing? I must have missed the TEA Party riots, arrests, violence & assaults, drug dealing/use, rapes, property destruction, and the massive clean-ups needed like that which occur/occurred at OWS protests.
Strat
How about a Barrett M-107 or other semi-auto high-velocity, large-caliber weapon attached to a gimbal-mount actuated by servos connected to an optical comparator, sort of like the solar-power panels that have an automatic sun-tracking unit.
Design it to track & align on a laser source of the wavelength of these lasers, and then start firing when the servos align the weapon to the coherent beam, halting when the coherent light source ceases or changes position until it's re-acquired & aligned.
Scratch one operator and one very expensive piece of mangled "modern art" that *was* the former laser-blinding unit before the .50BMG round. After a couple incidents like that, the authorities won't be able to get anyone to operate their expensive new toys, even at gunpoint.
Strat
NO BODY agrees with you. There is no cognitive bias. You are a shill, trying to establish some authority to dictate what a movement is about. You're ego is stunning in it's simplicity. You can have the last word - but ill have the last laugh, because you can't kill an idea no matter how many people, like you, try. Suck on it.
Go dust your portrait of Goebbels, or some of your OWS buddies might think you're a Jewish sympathizer.
Strat
and saying that anti-Semitism is a key characteristic of the occupy movement means I DONT LIKE YOU - MOVE ALONG.
Sorry, your entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Don't hate me for pointing it out to you, hate the anti-Semitic OWS'ers.
Maybe you could get Adam Sandler to go down to OWS protests and sing the Hanukkah Song. You might want to provide a security detail to escort him, though, as it seems many of the OWS'ers have a lot of hate-ukkah for those who celebrate Hanukkah.
Strat
whoa and YOU will really buy that the KKK represents the whole thing? REALLY? You damn well know if you read the news that, yes, the KKK put out a press release asking their members to go out and say that. so that rubes like you could mad at it, i guess. Yes it hurt the image, but only a jackass would associate the two in any thing but the loosest sense. Fuck off
Just...wow.
I don't really need to say anything here, do I?
Your post is a near-perfect example of the Left's extreme hatred, intolerance, and contempt for anyone that doesn't hold the same views that I was talking about. Thanks for making my point on hatred with your reply to my post. It couldn't have been a better example if I'd typed your reply for you.
And FYI, I never mentioned the KKK. Nice straw-man argument. The anti-Semitic signs and banners I referred to seeing at OWS weren't being held by KKK members. I saw them being proudly waved by a number of different people from several different groups (including some Union groups) as well as a few individuals that didn't appear to be part of a group of any kind.
That's not painting with a broad brush. That's simply observing an obvious fact. Antisemitism was and is broadly on display throughout the protests and is one of the major themes occurring repeatedly across various OWS groups, sub-groups, and individuals. Attempting to portray it as limited to a few fringe outsiders is disingenuous at best and an outright propaganda lie at it's worst.
Turn away from the dark side. The hatred filling you will only destroy you and all you care about. In the end, hatred always destroys itself. Once loosed, hatred grows until it consumes the hater.
Strat
...maybe you could toss "jew" and "n*gger" in there, too?
No, you're confused. It's the ones at the "occupy" protests that are (once again...history repeats) blaming the "Jew bankers" and "Jews/Zionists controlling Obama/the government" for the country's woes. I saw more anti-Semitic signs at just *one* "occupy" event than I saw racist signs of any kind at *all* the TEA Party events combined.
Please stop buying into the class and race warfare hatred being pimped by the Left. You're drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. What kind of government do you hope for if those whose beliefs are based around hatred and envy are the ones to build it?
Strat
...because you can't handle the fact a movement can be composed of nutjobs, anarchists, crackheads, anti-Semites, paid protesters, and members of the Communist Party USA from all walks of life.
FTFY
Strat
Cool, another Pinto, but electric this time. I'm sure the story is overblown, but anything that stores energy is going to be a fire risk.
Must be why we've heard so much about all those Soapbox Racers with their stored kinetic energy going up in flames.
Oh, wait...
Strat
Fanaticism of most any kind, including fanatical humanists, secularists and atheists, as well as religious & political fanatics, and non-interference are mutually exclusive.
FTFY
Strat
You DO however get charged with attempted murder of a police officer if you use what a judge/DA/jury decides is "lethal force with intent to kill" against a police dog. An animal which neither knows nor cares about rights & protections under the law while it chews off someone's gonads (or their throat) after they've already surrendered. I would think that the inability of a suspect to be able to surrender peacefully to a dog would disqualify it from "officer" status.
How many bacon-treats does it typically take for the average police dog to pass the required 4-year Criminal Justice college courses and the police cadet exams, anyway?
Stat
Any power the central government doesn't hold, the corporations, local landowners, and other wealthy entities will simply use directly.
This is incorrect, as the "food chain" of powers is already spelled out in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.".
The Federal government has been usurping the powers of the States and the People. This is a major cause of the problems the US is facing.
The key to controlling the attempts by those with wealth to corrupt the system lies in first keeping any central power & authority as weak as possible, with only those powers it absolutely must have to perform it's basic limited functions. As much of the actual governance of the country as possible must be as local and close to the people as possible in order for people to have as much oversight and control as possible.
No, it's the concentration of wealth into few hands that does, but that's an inevitable result of capitalism, unless rigorously fought by progressive taxation and forcibly splitting up large corporations.
The concentration of wealth happens when government becomes too large & powerful, which guarantees corruption and "crony capitalism" which seeks to prevent competition from small players and erects barriers to entry into the market by the "little guy", as has increasingly been the case in the US over the last 80-100 years. Simply handing wealth over to the government by taxation doesn't solve disparities in private sector wealth, it only empowers government to become more corrupt. Forced wealth redistribution by the government has never, ever, in all of history, turned out well and does not lift up the poor, but rather brings everyone down to equal poverty and misery.
Strat
That's because you fail to understand that centralization of power provides a simple one-stop-shop for corruption to exercise power over the entire system. In addition, that huge bureaucracies are ideal for hiding corruption and deflecting guilt. It's like the situation of corruption occurring in a government department that hands out money to favored private corporations. Some would argue that it requires even more bureaucracy to oversee the handing out of taxpayer money to favored corporate interests, when the question should be why is the government in the business of handing out taxpayer money to certain politically-chosen private interests.
No, this is saying that huge, powerful government bureaucracies that hand out money and favorable laws & regulations to the politically-connected are the ideal place for corruption to fester while remaining hidden by their sheer size muddying the trail of accountability and making it near impossible to determine who is guilty.
Strat
More's the pity that the truth in those words isn't clear. It's the reason why no solution is possible at this time, and perhaps ever.
Thanks.
Some don't want to understand those truths in my post above for ideological reasons, nor do they want anyone else to hear such truths. To accept & acknowledge those truths invalidates their entire worldview. They do the mental equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going; "I can't hear you!...lalalalala!" while attempting to silence any dissenting views. There's simply no arguing with these types, as they've drank the kool-aid. They live in an armored ideological echo chamber. They are "true believers", no different than any religious fanatic. They simply must be defeated politically.
Some are simply incapable of understanding, as they were never taught much history, nor were they taught how to think...rather, they were simply taught what to think. Some of these types can be reasoned with, if they're open-minded enough to listen and to try thinking differently than they've been taught all their lives.
Strat
Frankly, we don't dare even allow Space-X or any single government to get a controlling foothold off-planet until we've evolved the necessary collective awareness and wisdom to prevent the result from reading like the plot from any one of dozens of dystopian science fiction novels. WE NEED TO OWN THAT INFRASTRUCTURE, all of us; it needs to be a co-op enterprise. The human push into space must be a SOCIAL endeavor, and by social I mean the entire human tribe, not just one splinter group of it.
I don't have all the answers, or even a fraction of them. But, what you advocate here could only turn out well if basic human nature suddenly and totally changed.
As long as government is the all-encompassing megalith it's become over the last 100 years, mortgaged up past it's eyeballs with fingers in every pie and control over everything, thereby guaranteeing massive corruption by anyone that has money, the space program (and all other worthwhile works) will only go as far as the politicians (and those who pay them) want it to go.
Corporations only have the amount of power they currently enjoy and can only act as criminally as they do without real fear because the government has power they can co-opt, and are able to do it safely because of the sheer size of government. If the government wasn't so all-encompassing and huge, corporations wouldn't have the power they do.
It's not capitalism that's given corporations the power they have these days as so many like the OWS protesters scream about, it's a too-large government that by it's very nature of being so large & powerful, attracts corruption and covers up corruption in it's labyrinthine maze of finger-pointers, always blaming something/someone else and muddying the waters such that curbing corruption is impossible. It becomes a circular self-reinforcing system until it collapses and leaves the poor sucker citizens to suffer the consequences.
Strat
The government merely represents society...
I don't know whether to laugh or cry here.
That hasn't been even remotely true for so long that most people alive today have never known a government that actually represents what the people making up society want.
Strat
More generally, how do they keep somebody from livestreaming it -- or, at the very least, recording it and streaming it later.
We have cameras that are the size of a pack of cards that record very high quality 1080p video, after all.
How about using a quadrocopter with a camera as was used at the Poland Independence Day riots?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocIDVaHtcpc
Is the NFL going to install miniature anti-aircraft guns/missiles at stadiums nationwide, or maybe lobby to have laws enacted that ban all civilian model aircraft?
O/T, but can you imagine the crapstorm resulting from dozens of quadrocopters with cameras swarming someplace like the White House, Pentagon, and/or other sensitive government installations, live-streaming video taken through the windows?
Strat
Do you realise the utility companies can't broadcast a 2.4GHz signal, don't you?
Not sure if they're allowed/being licensed to transmit a 2.4gHz radio signal for this application or not. How would one check to see if they're being licensed/permitted to do so, particularly if the utilities and the government don't want to advertise the fact too soon?
That's not really the point, however. They can absolutely receive a 2.4gHz radio signal (and any data carried on it, like details of your usage patterns, possibly even exactly what types of devices in your home may be using power) though. That kind of granular real-time or near real-time data would be a gold mine of intel for the utilities, marketers, and government/law enforcement/TLAs/regulatory agencies in this ever-more-intrusive and controlled societal environment we live in.
Strat
Why do 'smart' meters need to broadcast anything?
Because the "smart" part of the meter is the part where it gives the utility company (and the powers that be) the ability to monitor in real-time what you've got running and at what times, along with the ability to take control of heating/cooling of a residence away from the consumer.
This is why I simply don't buy what they're selling when they tell consumers it's simply to inform you of usage and keep your rates down by saving on employing people for meter reading. If that was the entire truth, they wouldn't need such capabilities.
Strat
This, but make sure to keep it mobile. While turning it off from time to time. Police: you maybe able to beat me, but you can't beat my radio. What radio you say.
Don't have to do all that. Simple and fairly powerful brute-force RF jammers are relatively easy & cheap to make. Make a dozen or so (or a hundred...or two hundred...) with the first unit triggerable by a phone call to a disposable cellphone incorporated into the jammer. Include a very simple receiver in each one that senses when it's brother-jammer stops transmitting. Carefully conceal them across your chosen area of denial. Bonus points for hiding them in relatively close proximity...1/16th of a mile or less...to police radio repeater & cell towers.
The simple receiver in each jammer listens for it's companion. You trigger the first one with a call. It starts broadcasting and the simple receivers in the other jammers arm upon receiving the signal. Authorities manage to find the first one and shut it down. The simple receiver in the next jammer loses it's brother's signal, and starts up it's jammer. Police find that one and shut it down. Next one automatically fires up...
Rinse & repeat as needed.
You could deny authorities practically any radio communications whatsoever across an entire city or county for a significant amount of time for a couple hundred or thousand dollars, depending on the size of the denial-area desired. Would work for cell phone communications as well, depending on how broadbanded you make the jammers.
A police officer without the ability to communicate by either radio or cell phone to call in backup, receive or transmit information, or coordinate an attack or defense is just another lone asshole with a gun, no different than any other lone asshole with a gun. Lone assholes with guns behaving like assholes don't survive long among an armed populace.
Strat
Shut up.
Why Ed Bailey...are we cross? You know, if I thought that we were no longer friends, why...I just don't think I could bear it.
Strat
You would greatly benefit from educating yourself before trying to participate in conversations that are so clearly beyond your ability to understand. Your attempts at participation are only making you look ignorant and stupid.
No, your attempts to insult and somehow discredit me to distract from your lack of understanding of how capitalism works is the typical reaction I see from those on the Left. You can't dispute my posts, so you make feeble attempts to attack and discredit me rather than reply to the actual meaning and content of my posts.
I'm sure you'll be in a better mood after the holidays are over, and you're not as frustrated by having been relegated (again) to the "kiddy table" during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Strat
You've confused the debt and the deficit, please stop posting until you actually understand the issues.
No, I chose to use the debt numbers as the debt is what really does the damage, not a single years' deficit.
But, let's play it your way.
From the WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703361904576143253522341850.html
Mr. Obama is proposing $3.73 trillion in government spending in the next fiscal year
So, forcibly confiscating the entire $3 trillion of wealth from the top-1% wealthiest still leaves a $730 billion deficit.
Then after that, there's nothing left to collect for following years.
Oops.
Again.
Strat
People make moonshine, even tho alcohol is legally available. People traffic in and smuggle cigarettes to avoid paying cigarette taxes.
And where are the state-and-national-prison-system-filling numbers of cigarette and moonshine criminals to match the numbers imprisoned because of the war on drugs? Where are the cigarette and alcohol cartels capable of waging a shooting war against entire nations and even threatening to overthrow their governments? Oh, that's right. Cigarettes and alcohol aren't illegal in and of themselves, are legally obtainable, and are taxed & regulated.
But other than those minor details, I guess they're almost exactly the same, right?
Equivalency fail.
Strat