No. It's not a meaningless phrase. You can't grow government without more and more government interference in the lives of individuals, and the corresponding loss of the individual's freedoms. I value freedom over the supposed security that a larger government offers every time.
Every time... so you are an anarchist then? If you have already made up your mind that there is no legitimate function of government, then I cannot have a rational discussion with you. By that kind of logic you wouldn't want the fire department to kick down your door and come rescue you from your burning house because that would imply a violation of your privacy and property rights. Now of course this is hyperbolic nonsense but it serves to illustrate that the line is much grayer than most libertarians make it out to be. At the end of the day the government isn't the only bully out there waiting to take your lunch money.
LOL. You're kidding me, right? The US was the most prosperous nation that has ever existed on the face of the earth until you progressives came into power.
I don't think providing a date range here should be all that difficult. If you can't tell me when it started maybe at least you can tell me when it ended. I really want to know what you are talking about here because for the life of me I can't figure out what it is. If you can't provide dates then at least give examples of the progressive abominations you are railing against.
How do you think we've done all that consuming that you hate without being very prosperous?
Please don't make assumptions about me and I will attempt to return the favor. And the answer is that a bubble economy is not a prosperous economy. But I still have no idea what time period you are talking about to reply coherently.
Why do the progressives want to redistribute our wealth to the world? Because we have so little of it?
When did I say that? The rest of your post is also irrelevant to this discussion so I won't address it.
American people aren't going to put up with the dishonesty and politicians working against them anymore.
I sincerely hope you are right, but I fear the system is too broken to self-correct at this point.
Take campaign finance for instance. Will we see meaningful reform under the Republicans? I seriously doubt it. At least the Democrats tried, which is more credit I can give the Republicans.
...and vice versa. Of course the advantage to a balancing of power, which is what happened, is that one party can't ramrod whatever it wants down our collective throats like they have for the past 2 years.
You haven't been paying attention the past two years then. Or for the past 10 for that matter.
This is a good thing, especially for people like me that believe both parties are cancer. The less damage either one can do the better. If this means neither party can pass ridiculous legislation full of pork and start more wars, AWESOME!
There are way too many problems in this country for gridlock; we absolutely must have competent leaders and government if we are ever to get out of this mess.
Put the koolaid down and sober up so you can see them both for what they are.
My criticism of the Republicans in no way reflects on my opinion of the Democrats.
No President has ever decided they should be able to hold a US citizen without due process other than Abraham Lincoln and his situation was far, far different than Obama's.
Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi would disagree with you. And to be fair, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus just as the constitution allows him to "...when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
They've grown government way too much.
A meaningless phrase if I've ever heard one. They've grown government in ways you don't like is what you really mean.
We are at a point in our history where we must make a 180 degree turn and go back to what worked, or we will end up bankrupt and all our freedoms will be gone. We can't afford to keep on creating debt for our grandchildren and their children. Debt is slavery, and that's exactly what we've been doing to ourselves and our posterity. We're enslaving ourselves in the vain hope of getting something for nothing. It's unsustainable.
And you are a fool if you think the Republicans will be any different this time around.
Our founding fathers did things right. Under their system we became a country in which even our poorest citizens were better off than a very large percentage of the world, and our country was fiscally sound.
When was this golden age of American prosperity exactly?
So, when the main liberal community has this attitude why should we expect their leaders to have a different attitude? I haven't seen one. I see Obama calling those who disagree with his legislation enemies. I see Pelosi saying bills must be passed so they can be read. I see Obama giving himself the ability to deny US citizens due process. I see Obama giving himself the ability to assassinate US citizens with absolutely no due process. Yeah, real compromise and reaching out. A real effort on his part to preserve and protect the constitution, which is part and parcel of the presidency. He swore a public oath in which he promised to do so, and has violated it again and again.
Everything you just wrote can be said of the Republicans. I don't like the democrats in congress either, but don't act like the "other side" is the only one in the wrong here.
Not much of a reform if costs just keep going up as much as they always have, is it?
That wasn't your point though. You said the legislation itself was responsible for the rate increases, which isn't true. I agree it was bad legislation but get your facts straight.
Maybe not during. The point I was attempting to make is that charitable giving correlates just as well if not better with religion. I wouldn't be surprised to find the disparity in time given is much smaller when you remove non-religious volunteer work. Not that religious charities don't do good work, they just don't differentiate between time and money spent running a soup kitchen and time and money spent evangelizing.
The single biggest predictor of someone's altruism, Willett says, is religion. It increasingly correlates with conservative political affiliations because, as Brooks' book says, "the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have 'no religion' has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s." America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers, and the former are disproportionately conservative. One demonstration that religion is a strong determinant of charitable behavior is that the least charitable cohort is a relatively small one -- secular conservatives.
How much more likely are they to give to non-religious charities (as in not the church they attend)? Most non-religious people don't go hang out somewhere on Sundays where there is a collection plate going around.
which provides up to three consecutive years of bilingual education--and like prior efforts it tends to fail.
Mandating certain education strategies in legislation is always bound to fail. Is it the goal or the method you are against? You can't learn in a classroom surrounded by a language you don't speak.
Surely this subset of people is so much of a minority, that it doesn't justify the costs.
Yet every damn government publication is produced in English and Spanish.
Well Puerto Rico is a US territory that has Spanish as its primary language, so for that reason alone you really don't have a point. On a side note, it would definitely put an end this discussion if Puerto Rico became a state.
Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work? It's not like the non-citizens can give themselves the right to vote, and it doesn't affect anything other than local government. Now if they were to give them the right to vote in Federal elections that would obviously be unconstitutional. Should such a constitutional amendment come up I would be against it, however if the residents of Portland want to allow legal resident non-citizens to vote in their local elections it should be up to them to decide.
Where exactly did I mention anything that exuded racism??
Racism probably wasn't the word they were looking for. You made a statement that assumes anyone that doesn't speak English obviously wasn't from here, which is definitely not always the case.
Generally speaking, hard to imagine being born and raised in the US without knowing to speak English...is kind of needed to really succeed and operate in this country.
While it may be true that today almost all people born in the USA will learn English, there are still some older citizens that might have not ever bothered to learn because the largely self sufficient communities they live in don't primarily speak English.
It isn't racist to expect visitors to this country to follow the "when in Rome" type thinking, is it?
Isn't it reasonable to use the best understood language to communicate in? There happens to be a very large minority in this country that speaks Spanish as a primary language even if you find that distasteful. Even if they did speak English well enough to pass the citizenship exam, that doesn't mean that they aren't more comfortable with their native language. I think voting is an act that lends itself to having a complete understanding of the situation.
Having taken propranolol (for migraines, it didn't work btw) I find it interesting it is also used for performance anxiety. I wonder if it actually reduces the anxiety or simply removes the physical effects. A while back there was an Olympic sport shooter that was stripped of his medals for using propranolol, presumably to assist aiming.
They obviously feel that marijuana does affect job performance.
With marijuana screening they test for a non-psychoactive metabolite that stays in the body for much longer than the active form of the drug, or most other illegal drugs for that matter. I find it hard to believe that someone who fails a marijuana screening a week after discontinuing use is still impaired. I would argue that marijuana screening has more to do with its legal status than its actual effects.
I think if people have drinking problems that leads to them coming in with hangovers or coming to work drunk, they SHOULD be fired, or otherwise dealt with.
I agree. But you don't see anyone firing employees simply because they drink alcohol responsibly in their own time.
In most places where I have worked, smokers spent at least 10% and sometimes as much as 35% of their day out smoking.
If you are spending 35% of your time not doing your job, what you were actually doing is irrelevant.
I say, let's first legalize marijuana and then see if it is a problem, rather than pre-emptively passing legislation in anticipation. There is nothing radical or unreasonable about my position.
Marijuana would also be the only legal drug that is widely tested for and discriminated against in hiring/firing decisions without this exemption. I largely agree with you, I just think you are being pedantic. And again, we already have this situation in many states with tobacco, I don't see how this is any different.
Civic democracy depends on clarity of political discourse for efficient functioning. Two separate issues should not be combined into one single proposition, law, statute, or bill, or proposal.
While that may be the case, personally I think the greater harm in this situation is the drug law, not the clarity of the proposition repealing it.
Legalization of tobacco or alcohol is not tied to anti-discrimination laws in any way. Why does there need to be a link for marijuana?
I think that text is in Prop. 19 to address the question of drug testing, specifically the fact that so many companies will not hire someone that does not pass a marijuana screening. What is the point of making it legal if nobody that uses it can get a job? Would you support testing for alcohol and not hiring/firing anyone that failed the screening? I think if a big enough percentage of companies implemented nicotine or alcohol screening we would see the law changed to protect those people as well.
Also, it isn't legal in every state to deny employment based on tobacco use.
From your link:
About half of all states have laws that protect employees from being fired or not hired because they smoke.
Apparently you don't realize that in a free society, when you place shares into the free market, anyone can buy them. There's nothing you can do to stop them - it's a free country.
HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, Chairman of Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) met with Mr. Rupert Murdoch Chairman and CEO of News Corporation (News Corp.) at the company's headquarters in New York on Thursday 14th January, 2010.
The meeting began as Prince Alwaleed and Mr. Murdoch discussed economic and investment issues especially in the media sector and the two discussed Rotana and LBCSAT 90% owned by HRH. Moreover, the meetings touched upon future potential alliance with News Corp.
and you have to wonder about the real motives behind those who want to place a "victory" mosque next to Ground Zero.
And I wonder about the motives of those who deliberately distort language to further a bigoted political agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
No. It's not a meaningless phrase. You can't grow government without more and more government interference in the lives of individuals, and the corresponding loss of the individual's freedoms. I value freedom over the supposed security that a larger government offers every time.
Every time... so you are an anarchist then? If you have already made up your mind that there is no legitimate function of government, then I cannot have a rational discussion with you. By that kind of logic you wouldn't want the fire department to kick down your door and come rescue you from your burning house because that would imply a violation of your privacy and property rights. Now of course this is hyperbolic nonsense but it serves to illustrate that the line is much grayer than most libertarians make it out to be. At the end of the day the government isn't the only bully out there waiting to take your lunch money.
LOL. You're kidding me, right? The US was the most prosperous nation that has ever existed on the face of the earth until you progressives came into power.
I don't think providing a date range here should be all that difficult. If you can't tell me when it started maybe at least you can tell me when it ended. I really want to know what you are talking about here because for the life of me I can't figure out what it is. If you can't provide dates then at least give examples of the progressive abominations you are railing against.
How do you think we've done all that consuming that you hate without being very prosperous?
Please don't make assumptions about me and I will attempt to return the favor. And the answer is that a bubble economy is not a prosperous economy. But I still have no idea what time period you are talking about to reply coherently.
Why do the progressives want to redistribute our wealth to the world? Because we have so little of it?
When did I say that? The rest of your post is also irrelevant to this discussion so I won't address it.
American people aren't going to put up with the dishonesty and politicians working against them anymore.
I sincerely hope you are right, but I fear the system is too broken to self-correct at this point.
Take campaign finance for instance. Will we see meaningful reform under the Republicans? I seriously doubt it. At least the Democrats tried, which is more credit I can give the Republicans.
These ones.
...and vice versa. Of course the advantage to a balancing of power, which is what happened, is that one party can't ramrod whatever it wants down our collective throats like they have for the past 2 years.
You haven't been paying attention the past two years then. Or for the past 10 for that matter.
This is a good thing, especially for people like me that believe both parties are cancer. The less damage either one can do the better. If this means neither party can pass ridiculous legislation full of pork and start more wars, AWESOME!
There are way too many problems in this country for gridlock; we absolutely must have competent leaders and government if we are ever to get out of this mess.
Put the koolaid down and sober up so you can see them both for what they are.
My criticism of the Republicans in no way reflects on my opinion of the Democrats.
No President has ever decided they should be able to hold a US citizen without due process other than Abraham Lincoln and his situation was far, far different than Obama's.
Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi would disagree with you. And to be fair, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus just as the constitution allows him to "...when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
They've grown government way too much.
A meaningless phrase if I've ever heard one. They've grown government in ways you don't like is what you really mean.
We are at a point in our history where we must make a 180 degree turn and go back to what worked, or we will end up bankrupt and all our freedoms will be gone. We can't afford to keep on creating debt for our grandchildren and their children. Debt is slavery, and that's exactly what we've been doing to ourselves and our posterity. We're enslaving ourselves in the vain hope of getting something for nothing. It's unsustainable.
And you are a fool if you think the Republicans will be any different this time around.
Our founding fathers did things right. Under their system we became a country in which even our poorest citizens were better off than a very large percentage of the world, and our country was fiscally sound.
When was this golden age of American prosperity exactly?
So, when the main liberal community has this attitude why should we expect their leaders to have a different attitude? I haven't seen one. I see Obama calling those who disagree with his legislation enemies. I see Pelosi saying bills must be passed so they can be read. I see Obama giving himself the ability to deny US citizens due process. I see Obama giving himself the ability to assassinate US citizens with absolutely no due process. Yeah, real compromise and reaching out. A real effort on his part to preserve and protect the constitution, which is part and parcel of the presidency. He swore a public oath in which he promised to do so, and has violated it again and again.
Everything you just wrote can be said of the Republicans. I don't like the democrats in congress either, but don't act like the "other side" is the only one in the wrong here.
The unemployment rate in November of 2008 was 6.9%. Today, it's at 9.6%.
Numbers might not lie, but one set of them doesn't tell the whole story. Job losses by month is a much more telling statistic.
but if they don't, you can't blame them alone for setting the tone.
I'll ignore the whole "who started it" kindergarten mess and just reply that it would be nice to see our elected officials to act like adults.
Explain this. Note the date on that article.
Not much of a reform if costs just keep going up as much as they always have, is it?
That wasn't your point though. You said the legislation itself was responsible for the rate increases, which isn't true. I agree it was bad legislation but get your facts straight.
Sounds like the same old bullshit to me. Compromise to the Republicans is the Democrats doing what they tell them to do.
Maybe not during. The point I was attempting to make is that charitable giving correlates just as well if not better with religion. I wouldn't be surprised to find the disparity in time given is much smaller when you remove non-religious volunteer work. Not that religious charities don't do good work, they just don't differentiate between time and money spent running a soup kitchen and time and money spent evangelizing.
From your link:
The single biggest predictor of someone's altruism, Willett says, is religion. It increasingly correlates with conservative political affiliations because, as Brooks' book says, "the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have 'no religion' has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s." America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers, and the former are disproportionately conservative. One demonstration that religion is a strong determinant of charitable behavior is that the least charitable cohort is a relatively small one -- secular conservatives.
How much more likely are they to give to non-religious charities (as in not the church they attend)? Most non-religious people don't go hang out somewhere on Sundays where there is a collection plate going around.
Also courts are inferior to legislatures.
They are? You ever heard the phrase "co-equal branch of government"?
Case "law" is inferior to Local law
Local law trumps Supreme court decisions? Tell me another one...
Decisions made by judges are the weakest form. They are akin to advisements, and not much else.
You have a very serious misunderstanding of how the government of this country works.
that there is no way to know (exactly) how many people are eligible to vote as such things are not registered.
Voters are generally required to register in the USA. In the states I have lived in, you cannot vote if you are not registered.
This is, as it seems to be from my point of view, also the reason for the decennial census.
The reason for the census is to determine the population for the purposes of drawing congressional districts.
Unlike prior immigrants, some (many?) have no desire to assimilate.
Cultural assimilation is a lot more complicated than you make it out to be.
which provides up to three consecutive years of bilingual education--and like prior efforts it tends to fail.
Mandating certain education strategies in legislation is always bound to fail. Is it the goal or the method you are against? You can't learn in a classroom surrounded by a language you don't speak.
Surely this subset of people is so much of a minority, that it doesn't justify the costs.
Tell that to these places
Yet every damn government publication is produced in English and Spanish.
Well Puerto Rico is a US territory that has Spanish as its primary language, so for that reason alone you really don't have a point. On a side note, it would definitely put an end this discussion if Puerto Rico became a state.
Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work? It's not like the non-citizens can give themselves the right to vote, and it doesn't affect anything other than local government. Now if they were to give them the right to vote in Federal elections that would obviously be unconstitutional. Should such a constitutional amendment come up I would be against it, however if the residents of Portland want to allow legal resident non-citizens to vote in their local elections it should be up to them to decide.
Where exactly did I mention anything that exuded racism??
Racism probably wasn't the word they were looking for. You made a statement that assumes anyone that doesn't speak English obviously wasn't from here, which is definitely not always the case.
Generally speaking, hard to imagine being born and raised in the US without knowing to speak English...is kind of needed to really succeed and operate in this country.
While it may be true that today almost all people born in the USA will learn English, there are still some older citizens that might have not ever bothered to learn because the largely self sufficient communities they live in don't primarily speak English.
It isn't racist to expect visitors to this country to follow the "when in Rome" type thinking, is it?
Isn't it reasonable to use the best understood language to communicate in? There happens to be a very large minority in this country that speaks Spanish as a primary language even if you find that distasteful. Even if they did speak English well enough to pass the citizenship exam, that doesn't mean that they aren't more comfortable with their native language. I think voting is an act that lends itself to having a complete understanding of the situation.
Having taken propranolol (for migraines, it didn't work btw) I find it interesting it is also used for performance anxiety. I wonder if it actually reduces the anxiety or simply removes the physical effects. A while back there was an Olympic sport shooter that was stripped of his medals for using propranolol, presumably to assist aiming.
They obviously feel that marijuana does affect job performance.
With marijuana screening they test for a non-psychoactive metabolite that stays in the body for much longer than the active form of the drug, or most other illegal drugs for that matter. I find it hard to believe that someone who fails a marijuana screening a week after discontinuing use is still impaired. I would argue that marijuana screening has more to do with its legal status than its actual effects.
I think if people have drinking problems that leads to them coming in with hangovers or coming to work drunk, they SHOULD be fired, or otherwise dealt with.
I agree. But you don't see anyone firing employees simply because they drink alcohol responsibly in their own time.
In most places where I have worked, smokers spent at least 10% and sometimes as much as 35% of their day out smoking.
If you are spending 35% of your time not doing your job, what you were actually doing is irrelevant.
I say, let's first legalize marijuana and then see if it is a problem, rather than pre-emptively passing legislation in anticipation. There is nothing radical or unreasonable about my position.
Marijuana would also be the only legal drug that is widely tested for and discriminated against in hiring/firing decisions without this exemption. I largely agree with you, I just think you are being pedantic. And again, we already have this situation in many states with tobacco, I don't see how this is any different.
Civic democracy depends on clarity of political discourse for efficient functioning. Two separate issues should not be combined into one single proposition, law, statute, or bill, or proposal.
While that may be the case, personally I think the greater harm in this situation is the drug law, not the clarity of the proposition repealing it.
Legalization of tobacco or alcohol is not tied to anti-discrimination laws in any way. Why does there need to be a link for marijuana?
I think that text is in Prop. 19 to address the question of drug testing, specifically the fact that so many companies will not hire someone that does not pass a marijuana screening. What is the point of making it legal if nobody that uses it can get a job? Would you support testing for alcohol and not hiring/firing anyone that failed the screening? I think if a big enough percentage of companies implemented nicotine or alcohol screening we would see the law changed to protect those people as well.
Also, it isn't legal in every state to deny employment based on tobacco use.
From your link:
About half of all states have laws that protect employees from being fired or not hired because they smoke.
Apparently you don't realize that in a free society, when you place shares into the free market, anyone can buy them. There's nothing you can do to stop them - it's a free country.
It doesn't look like Rupert was telling him to sell his shares in this photo.
HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, Chairman of Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) met with Mr. Rupert Murdoch Chairman and CEO of News Corporation (News Corp.) at the company's headquarters in New York on Thursday 14th January, 2010.
The meeting began as Prince Alwaleed and Mr. Murdoch discussed economic and investment issues especially in the media sector and the two discussed Rotana and LBCSAT 90% owned by HRH. Moreover, the meetings touched upon future potential alliance with News Corp.
and you have to wonder about the real motives behind those who want to place a "victory" mosque next to Ground Zero.
And I wonder about the motives of those who deliberately distort language to further a bigoted political agenda.
More info please.
Really? Your fingers broken?