We have had efficent and safe nuclear power since the 1950s... The goal of the U.S. government at the time was to convert to a nuclear economy by the 1980s.
But then Cold War politics and the "Enviornmental Movement" made nuclear power politically unacceptable.
Well, sorry, but the so-called "Enviornmentalists" need to accept their responsibility for Global Warming (by making viable alternative to fossil fuels politically unnacceptable). I am not going to conserve energy one bit, or make the tinest personal sacrafice, until organizations like Greenpeace stop politically sabataging alternative energy. I understand that converting to nuclear power from fossil fuels could take decades, and if we were making such a transition, I would be happy to conserve energy. But, those confused old hippies are going to have to give up their dream of taking us all back to the 18th century.
Yesterday in the Senate there was a hearing, to "determine" if video games are protected speech under the first amendment. A bipartisan panel of Republicans and Democrats called witnesses, including victims of violent crime "caused by video games", sociologists who assert video games cause violent crime, legal authorities to explain why video games aren't protected under the first amendment, etc.
You got to be utterly braindead to believe that when the Republicans and Democrats both say "Video games cause violences, they are not protected by the first amendment, and we are going to strictly regulate them", that they don't intend to ban or strictly regulate games. I mean, how much more clear do they have to be?
Woman's 'crime' was never illegal By Ellen Miller, Special to the News November 16, 2005
GRAND JUNCTION - Allysan Isaac, 24, was held nearly a year in work release for something that a judge said Tuesday was not even illegal.
"You were incarcerated for a case that was not a crime," said Mesa County District Judge Brian Flynn, who presided over the case.
Flynn, the prosecutor and Isaac's defense attorney were unaware last year that the offense she was charged with was not a violation of the law.
No one had noticed that a prescription drug found in Isaac's possession, an anti-anxiety medication called Buspirone, is not a controlled substance.
A new defense attorney did.
Isaac, 24, "is clearly a troubled young woman with mental and emotional problems requiring pharmaceutical intervention," said her second lawyer, Wiley Christopher, who checked on Buspirone and found it was not a controlled substance.
But that was not the end of her legal troubles.
Isaac pleaded guilty last year to possession of Buspirone, which she had obtained through a prescription. She was sentenced to 90 days in jail and one year in work release.
In work release, she was receiving another prescription drug, Clonazepam, which is a controlled substance. Another inmate talked her into sharing a tablet.
So Isaac pleaded guilty to distributing Clonazepam and appeared before Flynn Tuesday for sentencing. Christopher pleaded for probation and mental health treatment since her underlying offense, for which she was in work release, was not a crime.
Flynn agreed, as did the probation officer and the current prosecutor.
She was ordered to serve probation and receive intensive mental health treatment for passing her medication on to the fellow inmate.
District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said he had "no idea" why Isaac had been charged with and convicted of something that wasn't a crime.
The defense attorney who represented Isaac in the first case was also baffled. "I don't have an answer," assistant public defender John Burkey said. "Nobody caught it. The police were saying it was a controlled substance." Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
The study was designed to show a "failure" by the retailers so as to justify government intervention into the market ("retailers are still letting children buy these horrible games! It is time we do something about it"). And yes, the goal of modern government has become "to cure all of societies ills"... hence the nannie state and welfare state.
In a FEW states, it is actually legal. And then it could still be illegal based on local ordinance. And it could still be considered to fall under something vauge like "child abuse".
But just because something is legal, doesn't mean you can't be arrested, convicted, and go to jail for it!
Actually, the movie industry problem is just harder to detect... ignorance is bliss.
A kid goes to movie multiplex, purchases their ticket, and then walks from the theater with the G rated movie to the theater with the R rated movie. They usually take tickets at the entrance to the movie theaters to the consession stand, not at the door of each theater. As long as the usher doesn't question anyone, all is good (and hell, I haven't seen an usher walk the isles in about 10 years, as long as kids are quiet they will be OK).
It is not just kids getting into R movies where you can cheat the system. You can order tickets with a senior citizen discount online, get the ticket at the machine, and the people tearing the ticket aren't going to check every ticket for the "senior" logo.
Actually, Golden Rice is not sterile, and can be planted in developing nations without any sort of payment.
People, like Greenpeace, oppose Gold Rice because they believe it is a "Trojan Hourse" technology... that Golden Rice will legitamize GM food products, and Greenpeace opposes all GM products regardless of the use.
The anger at GM foods comes from highly subsidized (and often very wealthy) European farmers, who have been looking for a reason to ban foods outside of Europe to protect their market. It IS an economic issue (since most "organic crops" were made with mutation breeding and are thus far more unpredictable and dangerous than GM products, ironicly)... but an issue with farm subsidies and protectionism.
Lets get the basic stuff first, like EDUCATION, and JOBS, and HOUSING
I think EDUCATION and HOUSING are part of JOBS. If the average person has money from a good job, the education and housing thing works itself out. When people are poor, well then of course they don't have access to many of the things they need.
If I was benevolent dictator of the world, I would ignore all the rest and focus my attention on creating good jobs.
You are mistaken about a police state. While Hungry under the Communists was a much more brutal police state than the United States, for sure, it is not the brutality as such that makes it a police state.
A police state is when nearly every action or behavior is pro-actively controled by the government. Make a telephone call, and virtually everything about that technology is regulated by the government. Watch TV, and virtually everything has been regulated by the FCC. The vast majority of people (well over 90%, probably higher) are educated in government schools, but even private schools are highly controlled by the government. Even your Church, in order to be allowed to get zoning to build, and to get it's tax exempt status and not be regulated as corporation, needs to ask permission from the local zoning board and the IRS... even God in America comes second to zoning beurocrats and the IRS! And even that won't stop the occasional Waco style invasion.
Seriously, is there anything left in America that isn't regulated, controlled, and policed by the government? I challenge you to name something. Political speech? You are very strictly controlled on what type of speech is allowed under the new campaign finance reform laws. Religious speech? If you need to get government permission to practice organized religion, then you don't have freedom of religion. Economic freedom? Half of GDP is consumed by the government, and that doesn't account for the huge costs of regulation, and the cost of lawsuits... Our government has hit truly Soviet proportions! And we got over a million people in prison for victimless crimes. Kids get searched by metal detectors in their schools. I remember seeing footage from a month or two ago when the police raided a middle class suburban school for "drugs", and all the students were forced to the ground by the SWAT team, who kept their assault rifles trained on the kids and told them "you move, you die". They didn't find a trace of drugs, of course. There are now police checkpoints at night where you have to show the police your licence ("show us your papers, comrade"). Your bank is required to give every financial transaction you make to the government, and under orders to freeze your account and contact law enforcement if they find "anything suspicious". We have the Dallas police cheif talking about installing survalence cameras in houses. You are not allowed to smoke in bars, you can be arrested for being drunk in bars, and we even have cities like Calabasis banning smoking in your own home!
How can you say America isn't a police state? The police haven't as yet acted as brutally as the Soviets treated the Hungarians... but that is because the U.S. traditionaly wasn't a police state, the police are just kind of learning their new roles. But just because we are definitly not as bad as Communist Hungary, and are probably not as bad as a lot of Socialist Europe, doesn't mean things aren't pretty bad. And trust me, if things keep going the way they are going, it will be just as bad!
And the whole hoopla about pornography is a part of it. The Internet is full of dirty pictures, and so now the government is planning to put a bunch of restrictions on the Internet. And of course, those restrictions will also effect political sites and such, but hey, we must thinkg of the children.
Really? I just read a study that was trying to explain why women make closer to men, and there are more women at high levels of corporations and the government, in the U.S. than in Sweden or the U.K..
They found it has virtually nothing to do with laws and socialist programs (otherwise women in Sweden would be more equal to their men counterparts than in the U.S., which they obviously aren't).
They found that the richer the society (the more goods and services available to your average consumer), that women tend to be more equal. Prosperity tends to lead to equality, or at least equality of the genders. It has virtually nothing to do with socialism, maternity leave policy, etc. In fact, in terms of gender equality, the U.S. had the least rules/socialism, and highest level of gender equality, the UK had a moderate amount of rules, and a moderate amount of gender equality, and Sweden had the most rules/socialism and the least amount of gender equality. They only included the U.S., Sweden, and the UK, (not Norway, Denmark, Canada) but you can at least see a pattern there.
There are many people who equate "rules and regulations about gender equality" with "gender equality"... they are not the same. A lot of the places that people consider quite "progressive" because of their rules and regulations have extreme disparity between the incomes of men and women.
Perhaps my rhetorical methods are confusing. When I say "you", I am not addressing you specificly, but I am addressing the people who support those things. It makes sense when you are saying it out loud, but maybe not if you are typing it on the internet. I apologize if you thought I was accusing YOU specificly of those things I mentioned.
'll tell that to the next person I see that wants to filter out Gay Rights websites or sex education web sites and force Google to turn over private information to the gov't. Trouble is - I don't know anyone that holds those viewpoints. Do you?
Listen to Pat Roberson, or talk to many people on the religious right, and you will see that these are things that many people, probably millions of people in America, and arguably the current administration (although I don't know if Bush is just giving lip service to going after porn or really wants to). There are a lot of people who want to ban pornography and implement a whole Big Brother type system.
And it just isn't relegated to the right-wing people either. Leftist feminists are usually anti-porn, and downright puritanical in their views of sex. It just so happens that they are not as smart or well organized as the religious-right, so I consider them less of a threat.
If porno is, as I believe, harmful to participants, the women it victimizes, and soceity in general than we have grounds to make it illegal or at least to put limits on it
No, not really. I mean, just about anything is regulated by the government nowadays, so using police-state tactics to go after pornography is not breaking with modern interpretation of what the state is for. But traditionally, the idea of liberal democracy is that you only have the right to ban something if it is a clear and immediate danger to the public and the peace. So, for example, you could ban people from killing or stealing... you can ban someone from dumping harmful chemicals into a river, or make it illegal to allow a vicious dog to run around on the streets. But we both no that any "danger" from pornography is not like dumping toxic chemicals into a river. Pornography is harmful to society the same way unprotected sex is dangerous to society... or dangerous to society, in the same way fake "mediums" claiming to talk to dead spirits for a fee is dangerous to society...
And there is no long tradition of banning pornography, either. In the time of our founding fathers, there was no pornography, because there was no movies, video, or even photographs... and a pornographic wood cut is just not that thrilling. But all evidence suggests that the founding fathers had no problem with singing a bawdy drinking song in public... and there is every reason to believe that Franklin and Jefferson were quite the sex-hounds, even by modern standards.
If you feel some types of media, like pornography, are bad, that is fine. I respect your decision. Like gambling, recreational drugs, or anything else, I can see how many people would see it as a little scary.
But when you want to steal my money from me to give to some special interest group to "study the health effects of porn", that is bullshit. When you want to create a whole censorship infrastructure, just so you might not be accidentaly exposed to porn, that is bullshit. When you want to filter Gay Rights websites, or Sex Education websites, or you want to force Google to turn over private information to the government, you have crossed the line, and YOU are the problem!
I am far less afraid of pornography, than I am afraid of a police state.
The idea isn't that everyone thinks porn is OK, it is that restricting porn, even if there is some "health issues" with it, entails a whole lot of stuff more than just "restricting porn".
What is porn? I heard some religious christian people claiming that sex ed materials for high school students was "Child Pornography" (after all, it included illustrations of sexual intercourse that were "presumably" between under age people). The Bare Naked Ladies (the lame rock band), were once banned from an outdoor public performance in Toronto because the name was "pornographic, and offensive and degrading to women". I have heard people who want to ban Gay Pride parades or celebrations, saying that a Gay Pride parade is lewd and a form of pornography. Clearly, people will totally stretch the definition of what is porn in order to have whatever they want banned to be banned.
But even assuming that we could 100% say, without any manipulation or mis-interpretation, what "porn" is, there is other problems.
How do we stop web porn?... well, we have all internet traffic monitored by the government, that is how. We licence web sites, and make sure only government apporved and licenced web sites are allowed on the internet. We give the ability for the government to track everything that a person does on the internet. There is a whole bunch of technical changes and a whole infrastructure that has to be created to "do something about porn". And the infrastructure, once in place, can be used for all sorts of police state tactics.
But my guess is there is no evidence that porn is harmfull. Much like Hillary Clinton wants the government to "investigate health issues with videogames", it is a way to circumvent constitutional protection by making it a "health issue". By determining certain types of expression to be "harmful", they can claim they are acting in a public health capacity and not implementing government censorship.
Where do you live? I am not trying to be a smart-ass, if you can tell me a relativly free country that isn't dirt poor I would highly consider moving there. But looking at all the first world nations, I found censorship and invasion of privacy almost universal. I can see you being glad to not live in the U.S. maybe if you live in Iceland, or Switzerland, or something like that. But Germany, France, and all those E.U. countries are just as bad, and the UK has gone totally Big Brother apeshit. Where is this bastion of freedom that you hail from?
What your forgetting about pork, is that pork projects are almost always things that no-one in their right mind would invest in, or donate their own money to.
You might say that "Well, there are some things that could be really useful that no-one is going to invest in or donate money to"... and that is true. But there is always going to be more people looking to make a quick buck off of Uncle Sam, than there is people with truly good ideas that could use government funding.
That means that the vast majority of pork spending, is pure and utter crap.
What you are saying is really dead on, until I got to the end:
U.S. economy manufactures or exports next to nothing
Not true. The U.S. is both the worlds largest manufacturer, and the worlds largest exporter. However, manufacturing is taking less and less of the labor force (similiar to agriculture... at the turn of the century nearly half of people were working in agriculture, now about 2% are working in agriculture... but we produce more agricultural goods than ever before). We also export more goods than anyone else... our problem is that we import much much more than we export.
It is a small detail, but the rest of your post was so dead-on-accurate that I felt the need to make the correction.
No. Corruption and pork are pretty universal when the government has vast resources. You find it in nearly every country which has a large, central government. You need to read up on other countries for a few minutes if you think pork and corruption are somehow limited to the United States.
If the government has lots of money to spend, and lots of resources, and lots of power, it is only natural that those who have an interest in gaining money and power will manipulate the government. In the U.S., the government comsumes about 50% of GDP, meaning that the government divies up half the goods and services created in this country. Combine truly Soviet Union style resources, with the fact that the United States is just so so rich, and it is inevitable... truly inevitable that you will have corruption. It is IMPOSSIBLE to eliminate corruption when you are talking that kind of money and power. People will kill their own family member for a lot less than a billion, so there is no chance of getting rid of pork when the government is spending trillions.
Entrophy is universal. The bigger something is, the more it has to fight entrophy, and the more resources it takes just to survive. And yes, as much as people like to believe the government is omnipotent, even governments run into entrophy. Don't think that it is the fault of some party, or a fault of lack of laws, or some inherent problem only in the system - It is the law of the universe, no getting around it.
It didn't happen in 6 years... it has been going on for the last 50. You just noticed it in the last 6 years, because the current president is not charasmatic enough to sell it to you properly. Don't worry, come next election we will have a president who can properly lull you back to sleep with his smooth talkin'.
Leave the country until it collapses or someone cleans it up. Depending on how you look at it this could be construed as an abandonment of one's responsibilities as a US citizen but those of you with family and small children, like me, should seriously think about what kind of country they are going to grow up in. If they can't defend themselves then you have to move them elsewhere.
The trouble is, where are you going to go? Europe and Canada are becoming totalitarian too, and everywhere else in the world is poor, or oppressive, or too small to defend themselves from the big guys when they decide to spread their totalitarianism.
Sure, people might complain about this technology when it is being used "to catch terrorists" or something like that... but all they have to do is give it some politically correct spin, say it is "to catch polluters who are destroying our enviornemnt", or tell people "we will use these over parks and playgrounds to track pedophiles", or "to monitor buisnesses so we can collect taxes and support our social welfare system"... or simply that these things will "aid in urban planning"... and the same people who protest the Patriot Act or whatever will gladly accept these things.
In the same way people who supposedly support free speech can be convinced to support government censorship by selling it as "banning hate speech", or "campaign finance reform", or some other politically correct cause... in a couple years, when they are able to find some kid who fell down a well with a UAV, all of you will be screaming and holloring that only "cold blooded conservatives" would be against these "public services".
In the same way people won't shop at Walmart because "it is a big multinational corporation that irresponsibly makes cheap consumer items overseas, and sells them in big box stores that undermine local buisnesses, and pays it's workers low wages, etc., etc.", have no problem shopping at Ikea (which does the same thing), because Ikea is much better and managing it's image... all of you will support Big Brother once they are able to figure out how to sexy it up.
And in 20 years, our children will learn in public schools about the "horrible dark ages" and "terrible oppression" before mass government survalence programs.
Banning the purchase of perfectly good 2nd hand items, in order to "stimulate the economy", is a perfect example of "The Broken Window Fallacy". Apparently government central planners haven't taken basic high school level economics:
To sum it up... yes, a person by being forced to purchase brand new TV, instead of second hand TV, does spend more money on the new item than second hand... but it doesn't add more money to the economy. The person might have been purchasing a second hand TV, so that they could purchase a new watch. Or they might have purchased a second hand TV, and then spent the money saved on school books. In order words, they have to do without some other item in order to spend more on the television. And that doesn't even include the hidden enviornmental costs - not only is there poluttion from building the new TV, but now you have a perfectly good old TV that you need to get rid of.
Not too long ago, Boeing sold a couple 747's to the Chinese government to be used for government officials. The Chinese found out they were loaded with listening devices. They bought a couple Airbuses for the Chinese officials instead, but it didn't effect the sale of Boeing planes to airlines and such that aren't worried about spying.
Slashdot Mirror
We have had efficent and safe nuclear power since the 1950s... The goal of the U.S. government at the time was to convert to a nuclear economy by the 1980s.
But then Cold War politics and the "Enviornmental Movement" made nuclear power politically unacceptable.
Well, sorry, but the so-called "Enviornmentalists" need to accept their responsibility for Global Warming (by making viable alternative to fossil fuels politically unnacceptable). I am not going to conserve energy one bit, or make the tinest personal sacrafice, until organizations like Greenpeace stop politically sabataging alternative energy. I understand that converting to nuclear power from fossil fuels could take decades, and if we were making such a transition, I would be happy to conserve energy. But, those confused old hippies are going to have to give up their dream of taking us all back to the 18th century.
Idiot...
a uto3/news.html?sid=6146902
Yesterday in the Senate there was a hearing, to "determine" if video games are protected speech under the first amendment. A bipartisan panel of Republicans and Democrats called witnesses, including victims of violent crime "caused by video games", sociologists who assert video games cause violent crime, legal authorities to explain why video games aren't protected under the first amendment, etc.
You got to be utterly braindead to believe that when the Republicans and Democrats both say "Video games cause violences, they are not protected by the first amendment, and we are going to strictly regulate them", that they don't intend to ban or strictly regulate games. I mean, how much more clear do they have to be?
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/adventure/grandtheft
Woman's 'crime' was never illegal
_ sched.shtml#comments
By Ellen Miller, Special to the News
November 16, 2005
GRAND JUNCTION - Allysan Isaac, 24, was held nearly a year in work release for something that a judge said Tuesday was not even illegal.
"You were incarcerated for a case that was not a crime," said Mesa County District Judge Brian Flynn, who presided over the case.
Flynn, the prosecutor and Isaac's defense attorney were unaware last year that the offense she was charged with was not a violation of the law.
No one had noticed that a prescription drug found in Isaac's possession, an anti-anxiety medication called Buspirone, is not a controlled substance.
A new defense attorney did.
Isaac, 24, "is clearly a troubled young woman with mental and emotional problems requiring pharmaceutical intervention," said her second lawyer, Wiley Christopher, who checked on Buspirone and found it was not a controlled substance.
But that was not the end of her legal troubles.
Isaac pleaded guilty last year to possession of Buspirone, which she had obtained through a prescription. She was sentenced to 90 days in jail and one year in work release.
In work release, she was receiving another prescription drug, Clonazepam, which is a controlled substance. Another inmate talked her into sharing a tablet.
So Isaac pleaded guilty to distributing Clonazepam and appeared before Flynn Tuesday for sentencing.
Christopher pleaded for probation and mental health treatment since her underlying offense, for which she was in work release, was not a crime.
Flynn agreed, as did the probation officer and the current prosecutor.
She was ordered to serve probation and receive intensive mental health treatment for passing her medication on to the fellow inmate.
District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said he had "no idea" why Isaac had been charged with and convicted of something that wasn't a crime.
The defense attorney who represented Isaac in the first case was also baffled. "I don't have an answer," assistant public defender John Burkey said. "Nobody caught it. The police were saying it was a controlled substance."
Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.5280.com/blog/?p=1377
http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/11/check_the
The study was designed to show a "failure" by the retailers so as to justify government intervention into the market ("retailers are still letting children buy these horrible games! It is time we do something about it"). And yes, the goal of modern government has become "to cure all of societies ills"... hence the nannie state and welfare state.
In a FEW states, it is actually legal. And then it could still be illegal based on local ordinance. And it could still be considered to fall under something vauge like "child abuse".
But just because something is legal, doesn't mean you can't be arrested, convicted, and go to jail for it!
Actually, the movie industry problem is just harder to detect... ignorance is bliss.
A kid goes to movie multiplex, purchases their ticket, and then walks from the theater with the G rated movie to the theater with the R rated movie. They usually take tickets at the entrance to the movie theaters to the consession stand, not at the door of each theater. As long as the usher doesn't question anyone, all is good (and hell, I haven't seen an usher walk the isles in about 10 years, as long as kids are quiet they will be OK).
It is not just kids getting into R movies where you can cheat the system. You can order tickets with a senior citizen discount online, get the ticket at the machine, and the people tearing the ticket aren't going to check every ticket for the "senior" logo.
Actually, Golden Rice is not sterile, and can be planted in developing nations without any sort of payment.
People, like Greenpeace, oppose Gold Rice because they believe it is a "Trojan Hourse" technology... that Golden Rice will legitamize GM food products, and Greenpeace opposes all GM products regardless of the use.
The anger at GM foods comes from highly subsidized (and often very wealthy) European farmers, who have been looking for a reason to ban foods outside of Europe to protect their market. It IS an economic issue (since most "organic crops" were made with mutation breeding and are thus far more unpredictable and dangerous than GM products, ironicly)... but an issue with farm subsidies and protectionism.
A bit off topic, but here goes:
Lets get the basic stuff first, like EDUCATION, and JOBS, and HOUSING
I think EDUCATION and HOUSING are part of JOBS. If the average person has money from a good job, the education and housing thing works itself out. When people are poor, well then of course they don't have access to many of the things they need.
If I was benevolent dictator of the world, I would ignore all the rest and focus my attention on creating good jobs.
You are mistaken about a police state. While Hungry under the Communists was a much more brutal police state than the United States, for sure, it is not the brutality as such that makes it a police state.
A police state is when nearly every action or behavior is pro-actively controled by the government. Make a telephone call, and virtually everything about that technology is regulated by the government. Watch TV, and virtually everything has been regulated by the FCC. The vast majority of people (well over 90%, probably higher) are educated in government schools, but even private schools are highly controlled by the government. Even your Church, in order to be allowed to get zoning to build, and to get it's tax exempt status and not be regulated as corporation, needs to ask permission from the local zoning board and the IRS... even God in America comes second to zoning beurocrats and the IRS! And even that won't stop the occasional Waco style invasion.
Seriously, is there anything left in America that isn't regulated, controlled, and policed by the government? I challenge you to name something. Political speech? You are very strictly controlled on what type of speech is allowed under the new campaign finance reform laws. Religious speech? If you need to get government permission to practice organized religion, then you don't have freedom of religion. Economic freedom? Half of GDP is consumed by the government, and that doesn't account for the huge costs of regulation, and the cost of lawsuits... Our government has hit truly Soviet proportions! And we got over a million people in prison for victimless crimes. Kids get searched by metal detectors in their schools. I remember seeing footage from a month or two ago when the police raided a middle class suburban school for "drugs", and all the students were forced to the ground by the SWAT team, who kept their assault rifles trained on the kids and told them "you move, you die". They didn't find a trace of drugs, of course. There are now police checkpoints at night where you have to show the police your licence ("show us your papers, comrade"). Your bank is required to give every financial transaction you make to the government, and under orders to freeze your account and contact law enforcement if they find "anything suspicious". We have the Dallas police cheif talking about installing survalence cameras in houses. You are not allowed to smoke in bars, you can be arrested for being drunk in bars, and we even have cities like Calabasis banning smoking in your own home!
How can you say America isn't a police state? The police haven't as yet acted as brutally as the Soviets treated the Hungarians... but that is because the U.S. traditionaly wasn't a police state, the police are just kind of learning their new roles. But just because we are definitly not as bad as Communist Hungary, and are probably not as bad as a lot of Socialist Europe, doesn't mean things aren't pretty bad. And trust me, if things keep going the way they are going, it will be just as bad!
And the whole hoopla about pornography is a part of it. The Internet is full of dirty pictures, and so now the government is planning to put a bunch of restrictions on the Internet. And of course, those restrictions will also effect political sites and such, but hey, we must thinkg of the children.
Really? I just read a study that was trying to explain why women make closer to men, and there are more women at high levels of corporations and the government, in the U.S. than in Sweden or the U.K..
They found it has virtually nothing to do with laws and socialist programs (otherwise women in Sweden would be more equal to their men counterparts than in the U.S., which they obviously aren't).
They found that the richer the society (the more goods and services available to your average consumer), that women tend to be more equal. Prosperity tends to lead to equality, or at least equality of the genders. It has virtually nothing to do with socialism, maternity leave policy, etc. In fact, in terms of gender equality, the U.S. had the least rules/socialism, and highest level of gender equality, the UK had a moderate amount of rules, and a moderate amount of gender equality, and Sweden had the most rules/socialism and the least amount of gender equality. They only included the U.S., Sweden, and the UK, (not Norway, Denmark, Canada) but you can at least see a pattern there.
There are many people who equate "rules and regulations about gender equality" with "gender equality"... they are not the same. A lot of the places that people consider quite "progressive" because of their rules and regulations have extreme disparity between the incomes of men and women.
Perhaps my rhetorical methods are confusing. When I say "you", I am not addressing you specificly, but I am addressing the people who support those things. It makes sense when you are saying it out loud, but maybe not if you are typing it on the internet. I apologize if you thought I was accusing YOU specificly of those things I mentioned.
'll tell that to the next person I see that wants to filter out Gay Rights websites or sex education web sites and force Google to turn over private information to the gov't. Trouble is - I don't know anyone that holds those viewpoints. Do you?
Listen to Pat Roberson, or talk to many people on the religious right, and you will see that these are things that many people, probably millions of people in America, and arguably the current administration (although I don't know if Bush is just giving lip service to going after porn or really wants to). There are a lot of people who want to ban pornography and implement a whole Big Brother type system.
And it just isn't relegated to the right-wing people either. Leftist feminists are usually anti-porn, and downright puritanical in their views of sex. It just so happens that they are not as smart or well organized as the religious-right, so I consider them less of a threat.
If porno is, as I believe, harmful to participants, the women it victimizes, and soceity in general than we have grounds to make it illegal or at least to put limits on it
No, not really. I mean, just about anything is regulated by the government nowadays, so using police-state tactics to go after pornography is not breaking with modern interpretation of what the state is for. But traditionally, the idea of liberal democracy is that you only have the right to ban something if it is a clear and immediate danger to the public and the peace. So, for example, you could ban people from killing or stealing... you can ban someone from dumping harmful chemicals into a river, or make it illegal to allow a vicious dog to run around on the streets. But we both no that any "danger" from pornography is not like dumping toxic chemicals into a river. Pornography is harmful to society the same way unprotected sex is dangerous to society... or dangerous to society, in the same way fake "mediums" claiming to talk to dead spirits for a fee is dangerous to society...
And there is no long tradition of banning pornography, either. In the time of our founding fathers, there was no pornography, because there was no movies, video, or even photographs... and a pornographic wood cut is just not that thrilling. But all evidence suggests that the founding fathers had no problem with singing a bawdy drinking song in public... and there is every reason to believe that Franklin and Jefferson were quite the sex-hounds, even by modern standards.
If you feel some types of media, like pornography, are bad, that is fine. I respect your decision. Like gambling, recreational drugs, or anything else, I can see how many people would see it as a little scary.
But when you want to steal my money from me to give to some special interest group to "study the health effects of porn", that is bullshit. When you want to create a whole censorship infrastructure, just so you might not be accidentaly exposed to porn, that is bullshit. When you want to filter Gay Rights websites, or Sex Education websites, or you want to force Google to turn over private information to the government, you have crossed the line, and YOU are the problem!
I am far less afraid of pornography, than I am afraid of a police state.
The idea isn't that everyone thinks porn is OK, it is that restricting porn, even if there is some "health issues" with it, entails a whole lot of stuff more than just "restricting porn".
What is porn? I heard some religious christian people claiming that sex ed materials for high school students was "Child Pornography" (after all, it included illustrations of sexual intercourse that were "presumably" between under age people). The Bare Naked Ladies (the lame rock band), were once banned from an outdoor public performance in Toronto because the name was "pornographic, and offensive and degrading to women". I have heard people who want to ban Gay Pride parades or celebrations, saying that a Gay Pride parade is lewd and a form of pornography. Clearly, people will totally stretch the definition of what is porn in order to have whatever they want banned to be banned.
But even assuming that we could 100% say, without any manipulation or mis-interpretation, what "porn" is, there is other problems.
How do we stop web porn?... well, we have all internet traffic monitored by the government, that is how. We licence web sites, and make sure only government apporved and licenced web sites are allowed on the internet. We give the ability for the government to track everything that a person does on the internet. There is a whole bunch of technical changes and a whole infrastructure that has to be created to "do something about porn". And the infrastructure, once in place, can be used for all sorts of police state tactics.
But my guess is there is no evidence that porn is harmfull. Much like Hillary Clinton wants the government to "investigate health issues with videogames", it is a way to circumvent constitutional protection by making it a "health issue". By determining certain types of expression to be "harmful", they can claim they are acting in a public health capacity and not implementing government censorship.
Where do you live? I am not trying to be a smart-ass, if you can tell me a relativly free country that isn't dirt poor I would highly consider moving there. But looking at all the first world nations, I found censorship and invasion of privacy almost universal. I can see you being glad to not live in the U.S. maybe if you live in Iceland, or Switzerland, or something like that. But Germany, France, and all those E.U. countries are just as bad, and the UK has gone totally Big Brother apeshit. Where is this bastion of freedom that you hail from?
What your forgetting about pork, is that pork projects are almost always things that no-one in their right mind would invest in, or donate their own money to.
You might say that "Well, there are some things that could be really useful that no-one is going to invest in or donate money to"... and that is true. But there is always going to be more people looking to make a quick buck off of Uncle Sam, than there is people with truly good ideas that could use government funding.
That means that the vast majority of pork spending, is pure and utter crap.
What you are saying is really dead on, until I got to the end:
U.S. economy manufactures or exports next to nothing
Not true. The U.S. is both the worlds largest manufacturer, and the worlds largest exporter. However, manufacturing is taking less and less of the labor force (similiar to agriculture... at the turn of the century nearly half of people were working in agriculture, now about 2% are working in agriculture... but we produce more agricultural goods than ever before). We also export more goods than anyone else... our problem is that we import much much more than we export.
It is a small detail, but the rest of your post was so dead-on-accurate that I felt the need to make the correction.
No. Corruption and pork are pretty universal when the government has vast resources. You find it in nearly every country which has a large, central government. You need to read up on other countries for a few minutes if you think pork and corruption are somehow limited to the United States.
If the government has lots of money to spend, and lots of resources, and lots of power, it is only natural that those who have an interest in gaining money and power will manipulate the government. In the U.S., the government comsumes about 50% of GDP, meaning that the government divies up half the goods and services created in this country. Combine truly Soviet Union style resources, with the fact that the United States is just so so rich, and it is inevitable... truly inevitable that you will have corruption. It is IMPOSSIBLE to eliminate corruption when you are talking that kind of money and power. People will kill their own family member for a lot less than a billion, so there is no chance of getting rid of pork when the government is spending trillions.
Entrophy is universal. The bigger something is, the more it has to fight entrophy, and the more resources it takes just to survive. And yes, as much as people like to believe the government is omnipotent, even governments run into entrophy. Don't think that it is the fault of some party, or a fault of lack of laws, or some inherent problem only in the system - It is the law of the universe, no getting around it.
It didn't happen in 6 years... it has been going on for the last 50. You just noticed it in the last 6 years, because the current president is not charasmatic enough to sell it to you properly. Don't worry, come next election we will have a president who can properly lull you back to sleep with his smooth talkin'.
Leave the country until it collapses or someone cleans it up. Depending on how you look at it this could be construed as an abandonment of one's responsibilities as a US citizen but those of you with family and small children, like me, should seriously think about what kind of country they are going to grow up in. If they can't defend themselves then you have to move them elsewhere.
The trouble is, where are you going to go? Europe and Canada are becoming totalitarian too, and everywhere else in the world is poor, or oppressive, or too small to defend themselves from the big guys when they decide to spread their totalitarianism.
The only reasonably free countries I can think of off hand is:
Switzerland, Iceland.
But even these have problems. Iceland is defended by the U.S., and Switzerland in right in the middle of the totalitarian EU.
Sure, people might complain about this technology when it is being used "to catch terrorists" or something like that... but all they have to do is give it some politically correct spin, say it is "to catch polluters who are destroying our enviornemnt", or tell people "we will use these over parks and playgrounds to track pedophiles", or "to monitor buisnesses so we can collect taxes and support our social welfare system"... or simply that these things will "aid in urban planning"... and the same people who protest the Patriot Act or whatever will gladly accept these things.
In the same way people who supposedly support free speech can be convinced to support government censorship by selling it as "banning hate speech", or "campaign finance reform", or some other politically correct cause... in a couple years, when they are able to find some kid who fell down a well with a UAV, all of you will be screaming and holloring that only "cold blooded conservatives" would be against these "public services".
In the same way people won't shop at Walmart because "it is a big multinational corporation that irresponsibly makes cheap consumer items overseas, and sells them in big box stores that undermine local buisnesses, and pays it's workers low wages, etc., etc.", have no problem shopping at Ikea (which does the same thing), because Ikea is much better and managing it's image... all of you will support Big Brother once they are able to figure out how to sexy it up.
And in 20 years, our children will learn in public schools about the "horrible dark ages" and "terrible oppression" before mass government survalence programs.
Banning the purchase of perfectly good 2nd hand items, in order to "stimulate the economy", is a perfect example of "The Broken Window Fallacy". Apparently government central planners haven't taken basic high school level economics:
y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallac
To sum it up... yes, a person by being forced to purchase brand new TV, instead of second hand TV, does spend more money on the new item than second hand... but it doesn't add more money to the economy. The person might have been purchasing a second hand TV, so that they could purchase a new watch. Or they might have purchased a second hand TV, and then spent the money saved on school books. In order words, they have to do without some other item in order to spend more on the television. And that doesn't even include the hidden enviornmental costs - not only is there poluttion from building the new TV, but now you have a perfectly good old TV that you need to get rid of.
Not nessicarily,
Not too long ago, Boeing sold a couple 747's to the Chinese government to be used for government officials. The Chinese found out they were loaded with listening devices. They bought a couple Airbuses for the Chinese officials instead, but it didn't effect the sale of Boeing planes to airlines and such that aren't worried about spying.
The Hughes thing had approval from the President.
How the hell did they get your DNA?