I'm pretty damn far to "the left" (whatever that means) and I'd vote for Ron Paul for just about any office he'd run for. I agree with his views that the federal government should be greatly reduced, his opposition to the Iraqi war, his pro-gun views, etc. Of course, he's dead wrong on birthright citizenship and the estate tax, but he's right on enough to make me enthusiastic to support him.
Bingo. Gerrymandering is the #1 impediment to democracy today. We'll see how it goes next census. The redistricting after the 2000 census was done with some pretty good software. The stuff in 2010 might be good enough to ensure a majority delegation for $STATE for a very, very long time.
One thing I've noticed recently is the prevalence of the bi-partisian gerrymander that happens when a legislature is closely divided. California did this. The bi-partisan gerrymander ensures safe seats for all but the most incompetent of incumbents. Of course here in Ohio we've got the "pound the Democrats in the ass" gerrymander, as they do in Texas and Georgia. The only thing I worry about is that the Democrats if in total control will do the exact same thing.
It was actually in Fairborn (a suburb). The amount of money wasn't too much, and a cost-benefit analysis, wasn't worth my time -- especially with the legal advice I had gotten.
Did you provide the forwarding address when you moved out? Can you prove that? Unless you can prove that you provided the forwarding address at that time (and I honestly don't know how you would, you would have to in effect have somebody "serve" them), the judge is going to think that 7 days late is reasonable.
Yes and yes. I have a signature from an agent of my landlord attesting to that fact (and it was spelled out in my rental agreement I could go through the agent to do business; in fact, most of the time I did).
Basically, you got your money, and if you weren't harmed, I'd let it go.
It isn't even so much about the money as it is being amazed that judges won't uphold plain, black letter law. Doubling my money would have only netted me another $275 or so (and from where I'm sitting, a very poor college student, that is a lot of money). If 7 days late is not really that big of a deal, then where is the cut off? 14 days late? 30 days late? 2 years late?
You and others have echoed the fact that I did get it back. That isn't my point.
My point is that the law, in plain language, says that I am entitled to double the deposit (less deductions for property damage). To wit ( 5321.16):
(B) Upon termination of the rental agreement any property or money held by the landlord as a security deposit may be applied to the payment of past due rent and to the payment of the amount of damages that the landlord has suffered by reason of the tenant's noncompliance with section 5321.05 of the Revised Code or the rental agreement. Any deduction from the security deposit shall be itemized and identified by the landlord in a written notice delivered to the tenant together with the amount due, within thirty days after termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession. The tenant shall provide the landlord in writing with a forwarding address or new address to which the written notice and amount due from the landlord may be sent. If the tenant fails to provide the landlord with the forwarding or new address as required, the tenant shall not be entitled to damages or attorneys fees under division (C) of this section.
(C) If the landlord fails to comply with division (B) of this section, the tenant may recover the property and money due him, together with damages in an amount equal to the amount wrongfully withheld, and reasonable attorneys fees.
This is the law of the state of Ohio and judges are not upholding it. If the intent of the legislature is to be sure tenants get their security deposits back in a timely fashion, then the law should say "in a reasonable time" or something to that effect. It does not. It says 30 days. If it takes 31 days, the law clearly states the rights of the tenant. This seems to be a no-brainer.
I can attest to the outright activism in at least my local (Dayton, OH) area judges.
It is Ohio law that any security deposit should be returned to a tenant 30 days after the tenant moves out, assuming the tenant left a forwarding address for the deposit. If the landlord fails to do this, the tenant can get double the money they were supposed to recieve. Two lawyers both said that while my landlord was in violation of the statute (it took her 37 days to return my deposit), I'd be hard pressed to find any judge that would find in my favor. The law is in plain black and white, but apparently no judge in the area will "enforce" it.
I think its pretty obvious that they are contrary to the doctrine of first sale. For some reason people tend to think that code is some magical entity that should have copyright and patent protection along with an exemption from the first-sale doctrine. Why, I have no clue but I think it has to do with some hardcore lobbying and an fundamental misunderstanding of what software is.
In reality, Bush's cuts are called "for the rich" purely to divide and polarize
Certainly. They are a roundabout way of making an appeal to emotion. In of themselves they aren't, but the choosing of words is such that they are an appeal to emotion.
In fact, I believe most political discourse these days is based on appeals to emotion, fear, and consequences of a belief. Equivocation is a big one in there as well (hence my previous allusion to intellectual laziness). It is a shame that people can't debate an issue without relying on semantics and faulty logic to advance their position.
Of course on an absolute basis the rich got the majority of the cut; there is simply no other way to do it and still have a tax cut.
Really? Who says the tax cuts have to be across the board? A 5% tax cut in every bracket is indeed a tax cut that benefits the rich more than it does anyone else. Of course, the main problem in most tax discussions of this vein are that people like me look at overall benefits while people like you look at benefits by percentage. The intellectual laziness on both sides of the debate as well as the inaccuracy of the English language is how flamewars start. Example:
Family A paid $100 in taxes last year. After a tax cut, they now pay $0. That is a 100% reduction in their taxes. Family B paid $100,000 in taxes last year. After a tax cut they now pay $75,000. That is a 25% reduction in their taxes.
I (and others on my side) look at that and say the rich benefited much more than the poor because we see that the poor family only got $100 of relief and the rich got $25,000 of relief. I suspect you would argue the other side.
There is no reason why we couldn't just cut the tax rates of particular tax brackets rather than across the board. I think that a reasonable person could call a tax liability reduction of only the poorest 50% of Americans a tax cut. Now, I'll agree with your position that an across the board tax cut necessarily benefits the rich by definition. I think that you must concede that not every tax cut is by definition a tax cut for the rich.
Once again I renew my call for the editors to get with the program and use an Ubuntu icon rather than a Debian icon when posting stories about Ubuntu. Yes, Ubuntu is derived from Debian, but it is arguably the most popular GNU/Linux distro on the desktop. I would think this warrants its own icon.
I switched from Dapper to Debian testing about a month ago. I used quite a few programs from universe which tend to get out of date pretty quickly, hence the switch. I plan to just stay with testing rather than keep with Etch as it moves into stable. Testing is a nice balance between the staleness of stable and the "danger" of unstable. It may be the distro of choice for someone who can fix some bad packages here and there, but that person isn't me.
Lets assume that I agree with that for the purposes of this rebuttal.
President Bush has the authority to declare anyone in the United States (citizen or otherwise) an enemy combatant. He may then hold them without charge indefinitely. If he does feel like charging them, he can coerce a confession using torture, and then use that information at a military tribunal. This is all done without the oversight of congress.
Do you believe this is consistent with the 5th amendment?
Also note while Congress (and Congress alone) has the power to suspend habeas corpus, it only has the power to do so in times of rebellion, invasion, or when the public safety would require it. There is no armed rebellion. We haven't been invaded by a foreign power, and the public safety certainly doesn't require it.
You can't give a tax cut to the poor in this country because they don't pay taxes
For the record, I'll assume you're talking about the federal income tax. You are wrong in that you can't give the poor a cut in the federal income tax, though. Right now many poor people have a 0% federal income tax liability. If you cut their taxes by, lets say %5, they will now have a -5% income tax liability. Negative numbers do exist and we can use them in tax policy.
That is just the point. It takes so long for any law to make it through the appeals process that tomorrow Congress could pass a law making it a crime to criticize the President and it'd take 3 years to get it in front of the Supreme Court.
Kissinger once said "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." Apparently we can do the unconstitutional immediately as well.
While I don't agree with your politics, I would suggest you vote for a minor party candidate who shares your views. Perhaps the Libertarian or Constitution party are more your style. While you might believe voting for a minor party is a waste of a vote, then certainly abstaining is at least as bad.
Also, to be sure if you are for reducing government spending, having divided government is the best way to go. President Bush will get to know that veto stamp quite well if the Democrats win one or both houses.
The counting of write-in votes is done under different circumstances in different states. Rhode Island, for example, counts every last write-in vote made for any "candidate". They count votes for "Mickey Mouse". In my state of Ohio, any write-in vote for anyone who is not a registered write-in candidate is not counted. You may not make a write-in vote in Oklahoma. AFAIK, Nevada is the only state with a mandatory ballot line of "none of the above".
So here there really is no way to say "none of the above" consistently. Most places just register no vote as an "undervote" that isn't usually tallied in the official returns. That is to say, if 100 people vote for Senator Foo and 100 people abstain. Senator Foo will be listed as having 100% of the vote. This might be different in other jurisdictions, but that is how we do it in Ohio.
Judicial activism to me is any decision which is pretty obviously wrong. See Kelo v. New London for an example of judicial activism. Thomas is an activist in that he believes that when Congress declares war, President Bush becomes King Bush. As far as I can tell, the Constitution does not grant the President any extra powers during times of war. He is simply Commander-in-Chief as he always has been. His activism has put him to the right of Scalia, specifically his dissenting opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which he conveniently forgets that it is Congress who must suspend habeas corpus and not the King.
That contract is unenforceable under the doctrine of first sale*. Once you buy a copy of a copyrighted work, you may do what you wish with it so long as you don't run afoul of copyright as that copy is your property.
*there have been conflicting decisions regarding whether copyrighted materials can be put under a EULA, so this is just my opinion.
Thomas is an activist as well. He pretty much said that the Executive has near unlimited powers in times of war.
Scalia tends to rule on the right side of most issues. For whatever reason, he decided that the local cultivation and consumption of marijuana is subject to the regulation of the Feds. I think it was just because he didn't want people smoking marijuana. And oddly enough, O'Connor wrote the main dissenting opinion with regards to the aforementioned marijuana case.
It would be an avoidable situation if there was an adult in charge to communicate and design a workable solution.
You keep alluding to a "workable solution", but I don't really understand what the problem is. I'm not trying to troll or flame, but I don't understand.
What I see is that RMS saw people using GPLed code according to the license and using hardware tricks to keep people from modifying that code to run on the hardware. The effectively negates the freedom to run the program. RMS is trying to fix this by changing the GPL. What other "workable solution" is there than changing the GPL?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty damn far to "the left" (whatever that means) and I'd vote for Ron Paul for just about any office he'd run for. I agree with his views that the federal government should be greatly reduced, his opposition to the Iraqi war, his pro-gun views, etc. Of course, he's dead wrong on birthright citizenship and the estate tax, but he's right on enough to make me enthusiastic to support him.
Bingo. Gerrymandering is the #1 impediment to democracy today. We'll see how it goes next census. The redistricting after the 2000 census was done with some pretty good software. The stuff in 2010 might be good enough to ensure a majority delegation for $STATE for a very, very long time.
One thing I've noticed recently is the prevalence of the bi-partisian gerrymander that happens when a legislature is closely divided. California did this. The bi-partisan gerrymander ensures safe seats for all but the most incompetent of incumbents. Of course here in Ohio we've got the "pound the Democrats in the ass" gerrymander, as they do in Texas and Georgia. The only thing I worry about is that the Democrats if in total control will do the exact same thing.
It was actually in Fairborn (a suburb). The amount of money wasn't too much, and a cost-benefit analysis, wasn't worth my time -- especially with the legal advice I had gotten.
It isn't even so much about the money as it is being amazed that judges won't uphold plain, black letter law. Doubling my money would have only netted me another $275 or so (and from where I'm sitting, a very poor college student, that is a lot of money). If 7 days late is not really that big of a deal, then where is the cut off? 14 days late? 30 days late? 2 years late?
You and others have echoed the fact that I did get it back. That isn't my point.
My point is that the law, in plain language, says that I am entitled to double the deposit (less deductions for property damage). To wit ( 5321.16):
(B) Upon termination of the rental agreement any property or money held by the landlord as a security deposit may be applied to the payment of past due rent and to the payment of the amount of damages that the landlord has suffered by reason of the tenant's noncompliance with section 5321.05 of the Revised Code or the rental agreement. Any deduction from the security deposit shall be itemized and identified by the landlord in a written notice delivered to the tenant together with the amount due, within thirty days after termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession. The tenant shall provide the landlord in writing with a forwarding address or new address to which the written notice and amount due from the landlord may be sent. If the tenant fails to provide the landlord with the forwarding or new address as required, the tenant shall not be entitled to damages or attorneys fees under division (C) of this section.
(C) If the landlord fails to comply with division (B) of this section, the tenant may recover the property and money due him, together with damages in an amount equal to the amount wrongfully withheld, and reasonable attorneys fees.
This is the law of the state of Ohio and judges are not upholding it. If the intent of the legislature is to be sure tenants get their security deposits back in a timely fashion, then the law should say "in a reasonable time" or something to that effect. It does not. It says 30 days. If it takes 31 days, the law clearly states the rights of the tenant. This seems to be a no-brainer.
I can attest to the outright activism in at least my local (Dayton, OH) area judges.
It is Ohio law that any security deposit should be returned to a tenant 30 days after the tenant moves out, assuming the tenant left a forwarding address for the deposit. If the landlord fails to do this, the tenant can get double the money they were supposed to recieve. Two lawyers both said that while my landlord was in violation of the statute (it took her 37 days to return my deposit), I'd be hard pressed to find any judge that would find in my favor. The law is in plain black and white, but apparently no judge in the area will "enforce" it.
Activist judges, indeed.
That was worded very poorly.
Even then the part regarding killing the accused rapist is bad enough. That is even putting aside the fact that I'm against the death penalty.
I respectfully suggest that you:
1) Get over your hatred of women.
2) Get laid. (in fact, 2 may help with 1)
I don't think I need to say what is wrong with that sentence. The fact that this drivel got modded +3 is beyond belief.
I think its pretty obvious that they are contrary to the doctrine of first sale. For some reason people tend to think that code is some magical entity that should have copyright and patent protection along with an exemption from the first-sale doctrine. Why, I have no clue but I think it has to do with some hardcore lobbying and an fundamental misunderstanding of what software is.
In fact, I believe most political discourse these days is based on appeals to emotion, fear, and consequences of a belief. Equivocation is a big one in there as well (hence my previous allusion to intellectual laziness). It is a shame that people can't debate an issue without relying on semantics and faulty logic to advance their position.
Family A paid $100 in taxes last year. After a tax cut, they now pay $0. That is a 100% reduction in their taxes.
Family B paid $100,000 in taxes last year. After a tax cut they now pay $75,000. That is a 25% reduction in their taxes.
I (and others on my side) look at that and say the rich benefited much more than the poor because we see that the poor family only got $100 of relief and the rich got $25,000 of relief. I suspect you would argue the other side.
There is no reason why we couldn't just cut the tax rates of particular tax brackets rather than across the board. I think that a reasonable person could call a tax liability reduction of only the poorest 50% of Americans a tax cut. Now, I'll agree with your position that an across the board tax cut necessarily benefits the rich by definition. I think that you must concede that not every tax cut is by definition a tax cut for the rich.
Actually, yes. But I do believe that I said more along the lines of what he meant. :-)
Once again I renew my call for the editors to get with the program and use an Ubuntu icon rather than a Debian icon when posting stories about Ubuntu. Yes, Ubuntu is derived from Debian, but it is arguably the most popular GNU/Linux distro on the desktop. I would think this warrants its own icon.
Seconded.
I switched from Dapper to Debian testing about a month ago. I used quite a few programs from universe which tend to get out of date pretty quickly, hence the switch. I plan to just stay with testing rather than keep with Etch as it moves into stable. Testing is a nice balance between the staleness of stable and the "danger" of unstable. It may be the distro of choice for someone who can fix some bad packages here and there, but that person isn't me.
Lets assume that I agree with that for the purposes of this rebuttal.
President Bush has the authority to declare anyone in the United States (citizen or otherwise) an enemy combatant. He may then hold them without charge indefinitely. If he does feel like charging them, he can coerce a confession using torture, and then use that information at a military tribunal. This is all done without the oversight of congress.
Do you believe this is consistent with the 5th amendment?
Also note while Congress (and Congress alone) has the power to suspend habeas corpus, it only has the power to do so in times of rebellion, invasion, or when the public safety would require it. There is no armed rebellion. We haven't been invaded by a foreign power, and the public safety certainly doesn't require it.
That is just the point. It takes so long for any law to make it through the appeals process that tomorrow Congress could pass a law making it a crime to criticize the President and it'd take 3 years to get it in front of the Supreme Court.
Kissinger once said "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." Apparently we can do the unconstitutional immediately as well.
While I don't agree with your politics, I would suggest you vote for a minor party candidate who shares your views. Perhaps the Libertarian or Constitution party are more your style. While you might believe voting for a minor party is a waste of a vote, then certainly abstaining is at least as bad.
Also, to be sure if you are for reducing government spending, having divided government is the best way to go. President Bush will get to know that veto stamp quite well if the Democrats win one or both houses.
The counting of write-in votes is done under different circumstances in different states. Rhode Island, for example, counts every last write-in vote made for any "candidate". They count votes for "Mickey Mouse". In my state of Ohio, any write-in vote for anyone who is not a registered write-in candidate is not counted. You may not make a write-in vote in Oklahoma. AFAIK, Nevada is the only state with a mandatory ballot line of "none of the above".
So here there really is no way to say "none of the above" consistently. Most places just register no vote as an "undervote" that isn't usually tallied in the official returns. That is to say, if 100 people vote for Senator Foo and 100 people abstain. Senator Foo will be listed as having 100% of the vote. This might be different in other jurisdictions, but that is how we do it in Ohio.
Depending on your definition...
Judicial activism to me is any decision which is pretty obviously wrong. See Kelo v. New London for an example of judicial activism. Thomas is an activist in that he believes that when Congress declares war, President Bush becomes King Bush. As far as I can tell, the Constitution does not grant the President any extra powers during times of war. He is simply Commander-in-Chief as he always has been. His activism has put him to the right of Scalia, specifically his dissenting opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which he conveniently forgets that it is Congress who must suspend habeas corpus and not the King.
That contract is unenforceable under the doctrine of first sale*. Once you buy a copy of a copyrighted work, you may do what you wish with it so long as you don't run afoul of copyright as that copy is your property.
*there have been conflicting decisions regarding whether copyrighted materials can be put under a EULA, so this is just my opinion.
Thomas is an activist as well. He pretty much said that the Executive has near unlimited powers in times of war.
Scalia tends to rule on the right side of most issues. For whatever reason, he decided that the local cultivation and consumption of marijuana is subject to the regulation of the Feds. I think it was just because he didn't want people smoking marijuana. And oddly enough, O'Connor wrote the main dissenting opinion with regards to the aforementioned marijuana case.
"257" is part of no subnet mask that I know of.
What I see is that RMS saw people using GPLed code according to the license and using hardware tricks to keep people from modifying that code to run on the hardware. The effectively negates the freedom to run the program. RMS is trying to fix this by changing the GPL. What other "workable solution" is there than changing the GPL?