An award will make no difference whatsoever in prosecuting Snowden. The fact that the European Left considers him a hero is no more of a consideration in the US criminal justice system than the Soviet awards given to Kim Philby would have been to the United Kingdom. Oddly enough, both ended up in Russia.
Snowden was and continues to be at far higher risk of assassination than Malala. He's just been luckier.
So far.
Snowden is at no risk of assassination from the United States. He is at risk for arrest and prosecution for the crime of espionage. The most likely outcome of that would be a long sentence in prison. The only American citizens that the US has been targeting are those that have taken up arms against it such as al Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki .
If you want to claim otherwise, I think you need to provide some evidence.
Times change. Europe will be undergoing big changes in the next 50 years. The EU is barely holding together now in some respects, and the Euro itself is in danger. Such military concerns may become necessary again in our lifetime. We haven't reached the end of history yet.
Terrorists are such a vanishingly irrelevant problem that it's not on the scale of things we even need to protect ourselves against.
Terrorism appears to be a small problem in the West since it is under control and active measures are being taken. The result of that is a regular stream of arrests and prosecutions of would-be terrorists in many countries, such as the US and UK. If you want to abandon all efforts at suppressing terrorism, then you should expect truck bombs at public events and massacres at shopping malls as other parts of the world experience. It isn't magic rocks protecting you, it is intelligence work and police work.
In the House elections, the Democrats won the majority of the popular vote, got 3.4% more of the popular vote than last time (the Republicans got 4.8% less than last time), gained 8 seats, but still don't have an overall majority because of the way constituency boundaries are placed.
Or, to put it another way, in 2012: In the Presidental election, 51.1% voted Democrat, 47.2% voted Republican. In the Senate election, 53.7% voted Democrat, 42.1% voted Republican. In the House election, 48.3% voted Democrat, 46.9% voted Republican.
The national "popular vote" is completely irrelevant to elections for the House of Representatives. Completely. Each election is independent, and solely for the district in which it is run. Excess Democratic votes for some district in California have no meaning in Texas or Wyoming. There is no "national popular vote" for House seats.
A majority in the House of Representatives is a majority in the House of Representatives.
By a similar token, the national popular vote is basically irrelevant to the presidential election as well. The voting for presidential elections is state based through the Electoral College. Although that almost always results in a president with a popular majority on a national level, it is entirely possible, constitutional, and legitimate for someone to win the presidency with a minority of the total votes cast in the US. It is an unusual aspect of the American political system that has existed since the US replaced the Articles of Confederation with the current Constitution. Under the Articles of Confederation, the president of the Continental Congress was elected from the other members like a prime minister in a parliamentary system, but without much of the power.
The Democrat-controlled Senate passed its first formal budget proposal in four years early Saturday after hours of non-stop voting that started Friday evening. The non-binding plan for the 2014 budget calls for a trillion dollars in tax increases and passed 50 to 49. No Republicans voted for the bill, and four Democrats voted against it. It now goes to the House, where it is expected to be shot down. Senators recently voted down a budget proposal passed by the Republican-controlled house....
The "vote-a-rama," as it's known on Capitol Hill, typically is an annual affair each budget season. However, because it's been so long since Democrats put a budget on the floor, almost half the current senators had not been through the demanding and exhaustive practice. It involves the consideration of and voting on dozens of amendments to the proposed bill.
Has this "preventing terrorism" lead to anything up until now?
Yes. There is a long list of arrests and convictions in the US for terrorism related offenses, including attempts to use car bombs at public events. That is one of the key ways to differentiate between the efficacy of "anti-terrorist bedside rock," and anti-terrorist intelligence & law enforcement.
American legislators actually represent the voters in their district. Excess votes for Democrats in California have no meaning for an election in Texas. Claiming that the Democrats actually got more votes is nonsense.
Just because the ACA was passed doesn't mean that it can't be revisited. It is just another piece of law, another government program, not part of the Constitution or holy writ. The ACA passed with dodgy political maneuvering, and outrageous promises to individual legislators in terms of pork for their states. There is a lot of bad policy in it that should be revisited.
What makes you think that Democrats haven't tried the sorts of maneuvers you suggest? It all comes down to what the voters will endure, and what political capital they are willing to spend.
Wars come in all shapes and sizes A., and pretty much all of them without my supervision.;)
It is still a non-trivial task to take on a nation state, especially one of martial virtue as the Swiss are. Drones aren't really up to taking on a real air force yet, and the Swiss one isn't bad. I expect they will have their own drones in time, assuming they don't now. It would be a great force multiplier for them.
As you see in the story below, drone strikes still serve a purpose in Pakistan.
All the better to keep the black flag from rising over Pakistan. Maybe there is hope since for the first time ever a Pakistani Prime Minister finished his term in office recently.
True, but Switzerland takes it up a level. Permanent tank traps in farmers fields, hidden military installations all over the country, bomb shelters, and a huge military reserve with regular training.
And for some of them, an almost fanatical dedication to the pope.
"When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German soldiers, a Swiss replied: shoot twice and go home. Switzerland also had a decentralized, direct democracy which could not be surrendered to a foreign enemy by a political elite. Some governments surrendered to Hitler without resistance based on the decision of a king or dictator; this was institutionally impossible in Switzerland. If an ordinary Swiss citizen was told that the Federal President--a relatively powerless official--had surrendered the country, the citizen might not even know the president's name, and would have held any "surrender" order in contempt" -- Stephen P. Halbrook - TARGET SWITZERLAND
There is likely to be a lot of variability in how the ACA plays out. It has resulted in many companies dropping health plans they had, forcing spouses off the plans if they could get coverage elsewhere, and dropping children completely. You've probably seen that many businesses have cut the hours for employees to 29 hours or less to keep below the ACA thresholds. Some businesses, such as restaurants, have closed locations to keep below the thresholds. In many places in the last year to two there have been significant increases in premiums due to the coming changes in regulations. Many polices have also increased in price due to the new minimum requirements for policies. An entire class of policy helpful to many people like yourself, high deductible catastrophic care policies, are pretty much going away. There have also been losses coverage for FCA spending, and other things. For many businesses it will be cheaper to pay the fine than to pay for healthcare coverage as it is now required to be under the law, so you can guess where that is going.
Maybe it really is better for you, but I doubt that is the case for everyone. I would suggest looking very carefully before you leap since there still seems to be a lot of unanswered questions in a lot of places. I would also note that not everything in the ACA is taking affect yet. It will be rolling out over the next couple of years. Then there is the funding - it has been prepaid for several years already. That money will temporarily hide some of the costs, but not forever. There are still plenty of prickly and ultimately expensive issues yet to come from this law.
And if you had any sense of decency, you would feel that bankrupting people or dooming they to die because of pre-existing conditions was morally wrong.
A "devil's advocate" question: Why then should everyone be forced to pay healthcare taxes before they need care? Or is that just different?
Hear, hear! Health care should be completely decoupled from employment. That would be pro-business, and I'm always amazed it hasn't been promoted as such. It works for Canada and many other countries.
If we based our views only on what we are generally told during these discussion on Slashdot we would have to believe that nationalized medical care is a bountiful panacea with no drawbacks. For some reason we seldom hear about the problems. Pretty much every nationalized healthcare system has it's problems, often significant ones.
For example, although many Britons are proud of the NHS for the high standard of care they feel it provides, it does have its critics and issues. The same is true for Canada's system, and those of other nations. An honest appraisal should include both sides of the story when they are being advocated.
Americans pay more, it is true, but they don't end up in the long queues for treatment that often exist in those systems. There are various other implications as well in terms of available treatments, and who the system is willing to treat.
. The annual study “Paying More: Getting Less“ produced by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, found that government-run monopolies established in each province of Canada (simultaneously barring private operators from competing for the delivery of public health services) produce rates of growth in government health care spending that are “not financially sustainable through public means alone.” Each province’s policy of insulating consumers from price signals, such as premiums, co-payments and deductibles, has naturally led to over-consumption of medical treatment. Thus provincial governments, encountering fiscal restraints, must resort to long queues and the rationing of care.
And wait patients must. A hospital survey of five countries (United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australia), conducted by Robert Blendon and colleagues in Health Affairs found that “waits of six months or more for elective surgeries were reported to occur ‘very often’ or ‘often’ by 26–57 percent of executives in the four non-U.S. countries; only 1 percent of U.S. hospitals reported this. Half of all Canadian hospitals reported an average waiting time of over six months for a 65-year-old male requiring a routine hip replacement; no American hospital administrators reported waits this long. --- more
The tax is on medical devices like pacemakers, not the band-aids and q-tips in the article you link to. For little things like that the cost of labor is going to far exceed the actual cost of the item anyway. The structure of the tax, and the industry segment it targets is most unfortunate.
First, it’s a tax on sales, so even companies that are losing money have to pay it. This means the tax disproportionately harms young, innovative start up companies that are building the medical technologies of the future. It takes a ton of money to bring a new medical device to market, between the regulatory hurdles at FDA and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Service, legal bills from protecting patents and intellectual property, manufacturing costs and challenges of building a highly specialized sales forces. Medical device companies generally don’t achieve profitability until they hit at least the $100 million in sales mark (if they’re lucky).
Second, the tax is costing the industry thousands of jobs. In 2012, publicly traded medical device companies cut 10,000 jobs, in part, to brace for the impact of the tax, although it’s impossible to determine how much the tax actually added to those job loss numbers. Still, the amount of money that companies are paying is substantial. Massachusetts’ own Boston Scientific has kicked $35 million back to the feds in the first half of the year; Mansfield, Mass.-based medical device giant Covidien has dropped $30 million; and every company has felt some pain in the wallet investing in the IT systems and tax experts necessary to comply with paying a tax on every single product you sell every two weeks....more
The tax is "incredibly punitive," said John Ray, executive director of the Florida Medical Manufacturers Consortium. "It targets one of the most successful sectors in our country."...
The tax would amount to $230 on the sale of a $10,000 medical device. While that may seem small, opponents say it has a larger impact because it is a tax on sales — not profits. The tax could result in less spending on research and development and lead to job cuts, medical device companies say.
"The biggest issue for medical device industry is the excise tax — 2.3 percent tax on sales, not on net income — to companies like Mako," said Dr. Maurice Ferre, founder and chief executive of Mako Surgical, a Davie, Fla., maker of surgical systems used for knee- and hip-replacement procedures.
If you don't understand the implications of taxing sales versus profits, you should look into that.
If th e US has a civilized Health Care system, I would start my own business much easier. Or join a start up without worrying about health care.
1. Are you in the US now?
2. What is stopping you? Lot's of other people manage to create start-ups. Healthcare is a minor problem compared to developing a viable business plan. Why are you different?
If your argument is that it's only a human being when it's self-sufficient, then you should be perfectly fine with early abortions.
If that is your argument, then you should be perfectly fine with infanticide and euthanasia of the infirm and old. How far do you want to go down that road? As far as a few "crimes against humanity"? You may recall it's been done before in Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
An award will make no difference whatsoever in prosecuting Snowden. The fact that the European Left considers him a hero is no more of a consideration in the US criminal justice system than the Soviet awards given to Kim Philby would have been to the United Kingdom. Oddly enough, both ended up in Russia.
Snowden was and continues to be at far higher risk of assassination than Malala. He's just been luckier.
So far.
Snowden is at no risk of assassination from the United States. He is at risk for arrest and prosecution for the crime of espionage. The most likely outcome of that would be a long sentence in prison. The only American citizens that the US has been targeting are those that have taken up arms against it such as al Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki .
If you want to claim otherwise, I think you need to provide some evidence.
The challenge will be keeping the peace within for the long term, and meeting external threats.
Neither are guaranteed to be easy.
When you get the sorbet, if it doesn't please your palate you can put it on the pallets and ship it back for a refund. Two birds, one stone. ;D
Times change. Europe will be undergoing big changes in the next 50 years. The EU is barely holding together now in some respects, and the Euro itself is in danger. Such military concerns may become necessary again in our lifetime. We haven't reached the end of history yet.
Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser
Terrorists are such a vanishingly irrelevant problem that it's not on the scale of things we even need to protect ourselves against.
Terrorism appears to be a small problem in the West since it is under control and active measures are being taken. The result of that is a regular stream of arrests and prosecutions of would-be terrorists in many countries, such as the US and UK. If you want to abandon all efforts at suppressing terrorism, then you should expect truck bombs at public events and massacres at shopping malls as other parts of the world experience. It isn't magic rocks protecting you, it is intelligence work and police work.
In the House elections, the Democrats won the majority of the popular vote, got 3.4% more of the popular vote than last time (the Republicans got 4.8% less than last time), gained 8 seats, but still don't have an overall majority because of the way constituency boundaries are placed.
Or, to put it another way, in 2012:
In the Presidental election, 51.1% voted Democrat, 47.2% voted Republican.
In the Senate election, 53.7% voted Democrat, 42.1% voted Republican.
In the House election, 48.3% voted Democrat, 46.9% voted Republican.
The national "popular vote" is completely irrelevant to elections for the House of Representatives. Completely. Each election is independent, and solely for the district in which it is run. Excess Democratic votes for some district in California have no meaning in Texas or Wyoming. There is no "national popular vote" for House seats.
A majority in the House of Representatives is a majority in the House of Representatives.
By a similar token, the national popular vote is basically irrelevant to the presidential election as well. The voting for presidential elections is state based through the Electoral College. Although that almost always results in a president with a popular majority on a national level, it is entirely possible, constitutional, and legitimate for someone to win the presidency with a minority of the total votes cast in the US. It is an unusual aspect of the American political system that has existed since the US replaced the Articles of Confederation with the current Constitution. Under the Articles of Confederation, the president of the Continental Congress was elected from the other members like a prime minister in a parliamentary system, but without much of the power.
* The Senate rejects it
* The Senate rejects it
* The Senate rejects it
The ever efficient Democratic Senate.
Senate passes its first budget proposal in four years - Sat March 23, 2013
The Democrat-controlled Senate passed its first formal budget proposal in four years early Saturday after hours of non-stop voting that started Friday evening. The non-binding plan for the 2014 budget calls for a trillion dollars in tax increases and passed 50 to 49. No Republicans voted for the bill, and four Democrats voted against it. It now goes to the House, where it is expected to be shot down. Senators recently voted down a budget proposal passed by the Republican-controlled house. ...
The "vote-a-rama," as it's known on Capitol Hill, typically is an annual affair each budget season. However, because it's been so long since Democrats put a budget on the floor, almost half the current senators had not been through the demanding and exhaustive practice. It involves the consideration of and voting on dozens of amendments to the proposed bill.
Has this "preventing terrorism" lead to anything up until now?
Yes. There is a long list of arrests and convictions in the US for terrorism related offenses, including attempts to use car bombs at public events. That is one of the key ways to differentiate between the efficacy of "anti-terrorist bedside rock," and anti-terrorist intelligence & law enforcement.
Apparently USDA is considered non-essential. They've already pulled the plug on the site:
Politics at its finest.
American legislators actually represent the voters in their district. Excess votes for Democrats in California have no meaning for an election in Texas. Claiming that the Democrats actually got more votes is nonsense.
Just because the ACA was passed doesn't mean that it can't be revisited. It is just another piece of law, another government program, not part of the Constitution or holy writ. The ACA passed with dodgy political maneuvering, and outrageous promises to individual legislators in terms of pork for their states. There is a lot of bad policy in it that should be revisited.
What makes you think that Democrats haven't tried the sorts of maneuvers you suggest? It all comes down to what the voters will endure, and what political capital they are willing to spend.
Read past the headline.
Wars come in all shapes and sizes A., and pretty much all of them without my supervision. ;)
It is still a non-trivial task to take on a nation state, especially one of martial virtue as the Swiss are. Drones aren't really up to taking on a real air force yet, and the Swiss one isn't bad. I expect they will have their own drones in time, assuming they don't now. It would be a great force multiplier for them.
As you see in the story below, drone strikes still serve a purpose in Pakistan.
Car bomb kills 40 in northwest Pakistan
All the better to keep the black flag from rising over Pakistan. Maybe there is hope since for the first time ever a Pakistani Prime Minister finished his term in office recently.
er, palate.
Just think of it as a sorbet to cleanse the pallet. You needn't indulge in the story if you aren't interested.
True, but Switzerland takes it up a level. Permanent tank traps in farmers fields, hidden military installations all over the country, bomb shelters, and a huge military reserve with regular training.
And for some of them, an almost fanatical dedication to the pope.
"When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German soldiers, a Swiss replied: shoot twice and go home. Switzerland also had a decentralized, direct democracy which could not be surrendered to a foreign enemy by a political elite. Some governments surrendered to Hitler without resistance based on the decision of a king or dictator; this was institutionally impossible in Switzerland. If an ordinary Swiss citizen was told that the Federal President--a relatively powerless official--had surrendered the country, the citizen might not even know the president's name, and would have held any "surrender" order in contempt" -- Stephen P. Halbrook - TARGET SWITZERLAND
There is likely to be a lot of variability in how the ACA plays out. It has resulted in many companies dropping health plans they had, forcing spouses off the plans if they could get coverage elsewhere, and dropping children completely. You've probably seen that many businesses have cut the hours for employees to 29 hours or less to keep below the ACA thresholds. Some businesses, such as restaurants, have closed locations to keep below the thresholds. In many places in the last year to two there have been significant increases in premiums due to the coming changes in regulations. Many polices have also increased in price due to the new minimum requirements for policies. An entire class of policy helpful to many people like yourself, high deductible catastrophic care policies, are pretty much going away. There have also been losses coverage for FCA spending, and other things. For many businesses it will be cheaper to pay the fine than to pay for healthcare coverage as it is now required to be under the law, so you can guess where that is going.
Maybe it really is better for you, but I doubt that is the case for everyone. I would suggest looking very carefully before you leap since there still seems to be a lot of unanswered questions in a lot of places. I would also note that not everything in the ACA is taking affect yet. It will be rolling out over the next couple of years. Then there is the funding - it has been prepaid for several years already. That money will temporarily hide some of the costs, but not forever. There are still plenty of prickly and ultimately expensive issues yet to come from this law.
Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%
And if you had any sense of decency, you would feel that bankrupting people or dooming they to die because of pre-existing conditions was morally wrong.
A "devil's advocate" question: Why then should everyone be forced to pay healthcare taxes before they need care? Or is that just different?
Hear, hear! Health care should be completely decoupled from employment. That would be pro-business, and I'm always amazed it hasn't been promoted as such. It works for Canada and many other countries.
If we based our views only on what we are generally told during these discussion on Slashdot we would have to believe that nationalized medical care is a bountiful panacea with no drawbacks. For some reason we seldom hear about the problems. Pretty much every nationalized healthcare system has it's problems, often significant ones.
For example, although many Britons are proud of the NHS for the high standard of care they feel it provides, it does have its critics and issues. The same is true for Canada's system, and those of other nations. An honest appraisal should include both sides of the story when they are being advocated.
Americans pay more, it is true, but they don't end up in the long queues for treatment that often exist in those systems. There are various other implications as well in terms of available treatments, and who the system is willing to treat.
The Canadian Patients’ Remedy for Health Care: Go to America!
. The annual study “Paying More: Getting Less“ produced by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, found that government-run monopolies established in each province of Canada (simultaneously barring private operators from competing for the delivery of public health services) produce rates of growth in government health care spending that are “not financially sustainable through public means alone.” Each province’s policy of insulating consumers from price signals, such as premiums, co-payments and deductibles, has naturally led to over-consumption of medical treatment. Thus provincial governments, encountering fiscal restraints, must resort to long queues and the rationing of care.
And wait patients must. A hospital survey of five countries (United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australia), conducted by Robert Blendon and colleagues in Health Affairs found that “waits of six months or more for elective surgeries were reported to occur ‘very often’ or ‘often’ by 26–57 percent of executives in the four non-U.S. countries; only 1 percent of U.S. hospitals reported this. Half of all Canadian hospitals reported an average waiting time of over six months for a 65-year-old male requiring a routine hip replacement; no American hospital administrators reported waits this long. --- more
The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
The Canadian Patients’ Remedy for Health Care: Go to America!
Patients facing eight-hour waits in ambulances outside A&E departments
'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed
British healthcare in crisis despite massive investment
'Right to die' can become a 'duty to die'
they could limit themselves to just USA.. and end up on government subsidies.
They won't be getting government subsidies in the US.
What's to stop Europeans from continuing to use Google even if they don't have a local presence in the EU?
The tax is on medical devices like pacemakers, not the band-aids and q-tips in the article you link to. For little things like that the cost of labor is going to far exceed the actual cost of the item anyway. The structure of the tax, and the industry segment it targets is most unfortunate.
What’s All This Federal Fuss Over An Obscure Medical Device Tax?
First, it’s a tax on sales, so even companies that are losing money have to pay it. This means the tax disproportionately harms young, innovative start up companies that are building the medical technologies of the future. It takes a ton of money to bring a new medical device to market, between the regulatory hurdles at FDA and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Service, legal bills from protecting patents and intellectual property, manufacturing costs and challenges of building a highly specialized sales forces. Medical device companies generally don’t achieve profitability until they hit at least the $100 million in sales mark (if they’re lucky).
Second, the tax is costing the industry thousands of jobs. In 2012, publicly traded medical device companies cut 10,000 jobs, in part, to brace for the impact of the tax, although it’s impossible to determine how much the tax actually added to those job loss numbers. Still, the amount of money that companies are paying is substantial. Massachusetts’ own Boston Scientific has kicked $35 million back to the feds in the first half of the year; Mansfield, Mass.-based medical device giant Covidien has dropped $30 million; and every company has felt some pain in the wallet investing in the IT systems and tax experts necessary to comply with paying a tax on every single product you sell every two weeks....more
Medical-device companies say new excise tax will hurt industry
The tax is "incredibly punitive," said John Ray, executive director of the Florida Medical Manufacturers Consortium. "It targets one of the most successful sectors in our country."...
The tax would amount to $230 on the sale of a $10,000 medical device. While that may seem small, opponents say it has a larger impact because it is a tax on sales — not profits. The tax could result in less spending on research and development and lead to job cuts, medical device companies say.
"The biggest issue for medical device industry is the excise tax — 2.3 percent tax on sales, not on net income — to companies like Mako," said Dr. Maurice Ferre, founder and chief executive of Mako Surgical, a Davie, Fla., maker of surgical systems used for knee- and hip-replacement procedures.
If you don't understand the implications of taxing sales versus profits, you should look into that.
If th e US has a civilized Health Care system, I would start my own business much easier. Or join a start up without worrying about health care.
1. Are you in the US now?
2. What is stopping you? Lot's of other people manage to create start-ups. Healthcare is a minor problem compared to developing a viable business plan. Why are you different?
If your argument is that it's only a human being when it's self-sufficient, then you should be perfectly fine with early abortions.
If that is your argument, then you should be perfectly fine with infanticide and euthanasia of the infirm and old. How far do you want to go down that road? As far as a few "crimes against humanity"? You may recall it's been done before in Europe.