Actually, the USPS was forced, by Congress to make a huge and unusual contribution to their employee pension plan. While not a bad idea in and of itself, it did give the wrong impression about the organization's finances.
I'm not a government cheerleader and not saying that the USPS doesn't have problems, but the state of their finances last year badly misrepresented the actual picture.
At least the post office is a power explicitly delegated to Congress in The Constitution. I can name a dozen agencies I'd prefer to see go away before them.
That's funny, but this naturally and frequently arises in casual conversations because most people do watch TV and many TV watchers insist on making this a prime topic of discussion.
"Remember the episode of ______________ where _________ , __________?"
Is it more polite to say "No, I don't own/watch TV" or to say "No, and please don't tell me about it because I don't know the characters and don't want to listen while you explain the entire premise and context of the show before getting to the point you're trying to make."
I've never watched an episode of "Seinfeld" but people have mentioned it to me innumerable times. When I don't "get it" they often seem to have this desire to explain all of the personalities involved so I will possess the requisite knowledge to understand the humor in what they are telling me. I know more about "Kramer"(sp?) than I ever wanted to just from having these chats.
IMO, the reason people get annoyed when you tell them that you don't own or watch TV is that on some level, they also realize that it's wasting their time and polluting their brain.
There's an interesting documentary film about the porn industry called "9 to 5 Days in Porn". One lucrative career path for a female porn star is to make a few films to get name recognition and then become an expensive prostitute. Seems like there are a lot of guys out there who will pay a lot of money for the privilege of having sex with a "movie star". It made me feel terrible about how exploited they were. Working a few hours per week and taking home solid 6-figure salaries. I'm sure many of them are just miserable and desperately waiting for their big opportunity to work behind the counter at Starbucks.
I think there's a lot of truth to that. However, there are also plenty of people who were harsh critics of the Bush administration that have radically evolved their views now that THEIR guy is in office. Where are all the peace demonstrators for example?
The important point is that Texas is doing the right thing NOW. If you agree, don't knock it. The "other" team is going to take power again someday, so any protections that can established now will be welcome both now and in the future.
I'm more than happy to work with any liberal who wants to support civil liberties and stop U.S. military imperialism. These causes require taking power and funding away from government.
However, the same liberals are often promoting the ideas of a government-run healthcare system, new and higher taxes, more social programs, more regulations on energy use and other causes which require expansion of government power.
As long as government has this much wealth and this much power under such centralized control, they will never stop eroding our civil liberties. My leftist friends are helping with a few tactical battles(PIPA/SOPA, etc.), but undermining the overall struggle.
We don't need legislation. The U.S. Constitution does not authorize the president or any branch of the federal government to arbitrarily assassinate people without charge or trial.
If the power is not explicitly delegated to them, they don't have the power. Something most people have never been willing and/or able to understand.
The big Wall St. firms commit tens of millions of instances of fraud, forgery, perjury, insider trading and money laundering every day. Their activities keep up the averages.
I largely agree, but TV isn't enough to distract people from being hungry.
Considering the fact that government deficit spending is being financed by Federal Reserve money printing, and there is no end in sight, I don't see how commodity prices can do anything but rise. What happens when people on food stamps, those on fixed incomes, and people already on the cusp of poverty can't buy enough to feed themselves? Even more government borrowing and spending? Where does this end? I don't know if there would be an "uprising", but I think there's a high probability that we could experience food riots and widespread civil unrest.
Your and the government's line of reasoning is laughable.
Yes, force is sometimes justified. The "circumstances" you're describing are cases where a criminal poses an IMMEDIATE DANGER to those around them. An armed robbery clearly meets that legal standard.
You and the government are trying to equate that with the practice of dropping a missile on someone who isn't actively engaged in any criminal act just because the White House assumes the person is a terrorist.
You say "of course" the president can order this? Where in The Constitution is the president empowered to assassinate U.S. citizens without charge or trial? The fact that he is exercising this power doesn't mean he can LEGALLY do it. In fact, the ACLU has been demanding that the White House publicize their legal justification. They have thus far refused.
This practice is totally illegal and totally un-Constitutional.
"What boggles my mind the most is that no one rises up, no one shouts, no one cries for a revolution"
The Ron Paul movement was the best organized resistance against the police state that We, The People could muster. It was a valiant effort, but the MSM and political establishment still crushed it easily. I think the liberty movement is in re-appraisal mode right now. However, if there is one civil liberties issue that people care about, it's the 2nd Amendment. Hopefully we can leverage the anti-gun threat to inform people that gun control is just a piece of a systematic effort to destroy freedom in the USA.
No, we're not at war with Al Qaeda, our government is at war with "terrorism" AND according to DHS documents, reports from some of the various "fusion centers" and the West Point counter-terrorism center, a "terrorist" might be anyone who engages in political activism and especially anyone who wants to cut government budgets(a clear threat!). The whole world (including U.S. soil) is the battlefield.
The concepts of "right" and "wrong" no longer apply. It's a matter of who the government likes and who they don't like. Wall Street bankers get a free pass, Wall Street protestors get beaten and pepper-sprayed.
That's why it is important to protect yourself by filming every interaction you have with the police. Also, make sure to use a streaming video app in case they confiscate your phone as "evidence".
The most important thing is to KNOW YOUR RIGHTS in any particular situation.
It is easy to say "don't talk to the cops" but in a stress situation, it's hard to keep your wits about you. Print one of the fliers from copblock and keep it in your car or on your person. Having a "script" will really help.
If you capture any good video upload them to "copblock.org" and "filmingcops.org".
"Fast Enough" so that the number of applications that can benefit from increased speed and processing power has increasingly dwindled. Animation, scientific research and running HFT algorithms are definitely flop-intensive, but they're also a niche market. My guess would be that the overwhelming amount of current processing capability is being used for mundane applications that wouldn't much benefit from increased speed, simply because the end user experience wouldn't be enriched. These days, it's mostly about doing the same old tasks that we've been doing, but with less hardware and less power.
What if they just toss it onto your property from a public sidewalk or street?
If you can get people motivated enough to organize and contribute money for a cause, I think you can find something better than an anti-phonebook campaign. How about some anti-CISPA activism instead?
That's what I did with the literature that some religious group dropped on my doorstep. It partially dissolved over the summer and then froze into a solid mass. No new documents have since appeared. Phone book was delivered in a plastic bag though which I didn't want decomposing into the environment.
Government created this monster called "The Corporation" and now Government(and many citizens who like the idea of government) wants us to grant them all sorts of new powers to deal with the damages being caused by their monster.
The way to address this and other corporate abuses is through reform of corporate charter law. The charter grants privileges to a corporation and there is no good reason that it can't also include restrictions. There should also be a clear mechanism by which the charter can be revoked and the corporation dissolved.
The Founders recognized that the institution of government is the primary, and perhaps only mechanism by which individuals are ever deprived of their Rights. Therefore, our rights are elaborated as explicit limitations on government power.
Corporations were created BY government. Rather than granting government more power to deal with the monster which government created, we should limit the government's power to grant special legal privileges in the first place.
A corporate charter is basically a contract granting the corporation certain privileges. There is no reason whatsoever that the charter cannot include restrictions such as a ban on campaign contributions and political activity. That's where reform efforts should be focused. It would be insane to amend The Constitution to give the federal government any more power.
The Citizens United case has absolutely NOTHING to do with the concept of corporate personhood. The fundamental issue is the power of the federal government to restrict speech by a group of people as opposed to an individual. Conflating the two is completely disingenuous. The laws and court decisions affirming the "corporate person" idea date back to the late 1800s!
Our Right to free speech isn't a gift that was granted to people by the government. It is instead, a strict limit on government power.
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech"
NO LAW! The federal government has NO POWER to abridge the freedom of speech in any way, shape or form!
Telling a group of people that they can't run political ads on TV (the crux of Citizens United v. FEC) is a blatant and obvious violation of this prohibition and it was rightly struck down.
Agreed. Automation hella-sucks when you have a problem and have already done your DD in attempting to solve it.
Maybe an improved system would be to have human tech support that issues harsh rebukes to customers who called support before they RTFM or look at the web page?
Wow! Where do I have to go to find the stores where they actually enforce that maximum number of items rule? I'm the guy with 6 things and a $20 bill waiting behind the person with 25 items and a malfunctioning debit card. The kids at this store where I often buy groceries have told me they're not supposed to give the customers a hard time even if they're over the limit.
Government thinks it's a great idea to allow companies to cut IT expenses by importing cheap foreign workers. I think it would be a great idea to import a bunch of people to take over government jobs. I'm sure we could find plenty of TSA workers who could do a better job at half the cost. We should also fill up the financial regulatory agencies (OTS, CFTC, SEC, FDIC, OCC) with H1B candidates. Nobody could possibly do a worse job than the employees of these agencies. I'd rather have incompetent people working there than the current people who are either past or future employees of the companies they're supposed to regulate. Let the mass layoffs of federal workers begin. Welcome H1B replacements.
We have this thing called "government". We also implicitly subscribe to the concept of a "nation" with physical borders and an idea of citizenship of that nation.
As long as we are operating in this framework, the government of a nation should be implementing policies which are to the benefit of the citizens. Importing 20 million illegal immigrants to compete for unskilled labor positions and importing hundreds of thousands of foreign IT workers to compete with citizens for jobs are policies which are detrimental to the vast majority of the citizens.
A technological innovation creates an increase in productivity. Importing a foreign worker to do the exact same work as a citizen doesn't make an hour of labor more productive. It simply increases supply and drives down the price of labor.
There is NO "shortage" of labor, skilled or unskilled, in this country. In fact, we have a vast surplus as demonstrated by the employment picture(the real data, not the BLS BS).
Let's see MS publish an ad for an IT position. $120,000 salary plus benefits. They'd have no problem whatsoever finding skilled applicants.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the USPS was forced, by Congress to make a huge and unusual contribution to their employee pension plan. While not a bad idea in and of itself, it did give the wrong impression about the organization's finances.
I'm not a government cheerleader and not saying that the USPS doesn't have problems, but the state of their finances last year badly misrepresented the actual picture.
At least the post office is a power explicitly delegated to Congress in The Constitution. I can name a dozen agencies I'd prefer to see go away before them.
That's funny, but this naturally and frequently arises in casual conversations because most people do watch TV and many TV watchers insist on making this a prime topic of discussion.
"Remember the episode of ______________ where _________ , __________?"
Is it more polite to say "No, I don't own/watch TV" or to say "No, and please don't tell me about it because I don't know the characters and don't want to listen while you explain the entire premise and context of the show before getting to the point you're trying to make."
I've never watched an episode of "Seinfeld" but people have mentioned it to me innumerable times. When I don't "get it" they often seem to have this desire to explain all of the personalities involved so I will possess the requisite knowledge to understand the humor in what they are telling me. I know more about "Kramer"(sp?) than I ever wanted to just from having these chats.
IMO, the reason people get annoyed when you tell them that you don't own or watch TV is that on some level, they also realize that it's wasting their time and polluting their brain.
There's an interesting documentary film about the porn industry called "9 to 5 Days in Porn". One lucrative career path for a female porn star is to make a few films to get name recognition and then become an expensive prostitute. Seems like there are a lot of guys out there who will pay a lot of money for the privilege of having sex with a "movie star".
It made me feel terrible about how exploited they were. Working a few hours per week and taking home solid 6-figure salaries. I'm sure many of them are just miserable and desperately waiting for their big opportunity to work behind the counter at Starbucks.
I think there's a lot of truth to that. However, there are also plenty of people who were harsh critics of the Bush administration that have radically evolved their views now that THEIR guy is in office. Where are all the peace demonstrators for example?
The important point is that Texas is doing the right thing NOW. If you agree, don't knock it. The "other" team is going to take power again someday, so any protections that can established now will be welcome both now and in the future.
I'm more than happy to work with any liberal who wants to support civil liberties and stop U.S. military imperialism. These causes require taking power and funding away from government.
However, the same liberals are often promoting the ideas of a government-run healthcare system, new and higher taxes, more social programs, more regulations on energy use and other causes which require expansion of government power.
As long as government has this much wealth and this much power under such centralized control, they will never stop eroding our civil liberties. My leftist friends are helping with a few tactical battles(PIPA/SOPA, etc.), but undermining the overall struggle.
Impairs your navigational ability because you're always pointing North.
We don't need legislation. The U.S. Constitution does not authorize the president or any branch of the federal government to arbitrarily assassinate people without charge or trial.
If the power is not explicitly delegated to them, they don't have the power. Something most people have never been willing and/or able to understand.
The big Wall St. firms commit tens of millions of instances of fraud, forgery, perjury, insider trading and money laundering every day. Their activities keep up the averages.
I largely agree, but TV isn't enough to distract people from being hungry.
Considering the fact that government deficit spending is being financed by Federal Reserve money printing, and there is no end in sight, I don't see how commodity prices can do anything but rise. What happens when people on food stamps, those on fixed incomes, and people already on the cusp of poverty can't buy enough to feed themselves? Even more government borrowing and spending? Where does this end?
I don't know if there would be an "uprising", but I think there's a high probability that we could experience food riots and widespread civil unrest.
Your and the government's line of reasoning is laughable.
Yes, force is sometimes justified. The "circumstances" you're describing are cases where a criminal poses an IMMEDIATE DANGER to those around them. An armed robbery clearly meets that legal standard.
You and the government are trying to equate that with the practice of dropping a missile on someone who isn't actively engaged in any criminal act just because the White House assumes the person is a terrorist.
You say "of course" the president can order this? Where in The Constitution is the president empowered to assassinate U.S. citizens without charge or trial? The fact that he is exercising this power doesn't mean he can LEGALLY do it. In fact, the ACLU has been demanding that the White House publicize their legal justification. They have thus far refused.
This practice is totally illegal and totally un-Constitutional.
"What boggles my mind the most is that no one rises up, no one shouts, no one cries for a revolution"
The Ron Paul movement was the best organized resistance against the police state that We, The People could muster. It was a valiant effort, but the MSM and political establishment still crushed it easily.
I think the liberty movement is in re-appraisal mode right now. However, if there is one civil liberties issue that people care about, it's the 2nd Amendment. Hopefully we can leverage the anti-gun threat to inform people that gun control is just a piece of a systematic effort to destroy freedom in the USA.
No, we're not at war with Al Qaeda, our government is at war with "terrorism" AND according to DHS documents, reports from some of the various "fusion centers" and the West Point counter-terrorism center, a "terrorist" might be anyone who engages in political activism and especially anyone who wants to cut government budgets(a clear threat!). The whole world (including U.S. soil) is the battlefield.
The concepts of "right" and "wrong" no longer apply. It's a matter of who the government likes and who they don't like.
Wall Street bankers get a free pass, Wall Street protestors get beaten and pepper-sprayed.
That's why it is important to protect yourself by filming every interaction you have with the police. Also, make sure to use a streaming video app in case they confiscate your phone as "evidence".
The most important thing is to KNOW YOUR RIGHTS in any particular situation.
http://www.copblock.org/tag/know-your-rights
It is easy to say "don't talk to the cops" but in a stress situation, it's hard to keep your wits about you. Print one of the fliers from copblock and keep it in your car or on your person. Having a "script" will really help.
If you capture any good video upload them to "copblock.org" and "filmingcops.org".
"Fast Enough" so that the number of applications that can benefit from increased speed and processing power has increasingly dwindled. Animation, scientific research and running HFT algorithms are definitely flop-intensive, but they're also a niche market.
My guess would be that the overwhelming amount of current processing capability is being used for mundane applications that wouldn't much benefit from increased speed, simply because the end user experience wouldn't be enriched.
These days, it's mostly about doing the same old tasks that we've been doing, but with less hardware and less power.
What if they just toss it onto your property from a public sidewalk or street?
If you can get people motivated enough to organize and contribute money for a cause, I think you can find something better than an anti-phonebook campaign. How about some anti-CISPA activism instead?
That's what I did with the literature that some religious group dropped on my doorstep. It partially dissolved over the summer and then froze into a solid mass. No new documents have since appeared.
Phone book was delivered in a plastic bag though which I didn't want decomposing into the environment.
Government created this monster called "The Corporation" and now Government(and many citizens who like the idea of government) wants us to grant them all sorts of new powers to deal with the damages being caused by their monster.
The way to address this and other corporate abuses is through reform of corporate charter law. The charter grants privileges to a corporation and there is no good reason that it can't also include restrictions. There should also be a clear mechanism by which the charter can be revoked and the corporation dissolved.
The Founders recognized that the institution of government is the primary, and perhaps only mechanism by which individuals are ever deprived of their Rights. Therefore, our rights are elaborated as explicit limitations on government power.
Corporations were created BY government. Rather than granting government more power to deal with the monster which government created, we should limit the government's power to grant special legal privileges in the first place.
A corporate charter is basically a contract granting the corporation certain privileges. There is no reason whatsoever that the charter cannot include restrictions such as a ban on campaign contributions and political activity. That's where reform efforts should be focused. It would be insane to amend The Constitution to give the federal government any more power.
The Citizens United case has absolutely NOTHING to do with the concept of corporate personhood. The fundamental issue is the power of the federal government to restrict speech by a group of people as opposed to an individual. Conflating the two is completely disingenuous. The laws and court decisions affirming the "corporate person" idea date back to the late 1800s!
Our Right to free speech isn't a gift that was granted to people by the government. It is instead, a strict limit on government power.
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"
NO LAW! The federal government has NO POWER to abridge the freedom of speech in any way, shape or form!
Telling a group of people that they can't run political ads on TV (the crux of Citizens United v. FEC) is a blatant and obvious violation of this prohibition and it was rightly struck down.
That's the most annoying requirement of all.
Home Depot? Tell me Ms. computer, how am I supposed to put this 6' long shovel in the bagging area, and what's the point?
Agreed. Automation hella-sucks when you have a problem and have already done your DD in attempting to solve it.
Maybe an improved system would be to have human tech support that issues harsh rebukes to customers who called support before they RTFM or look at the web page?
Wow! Where do I have to go to find the stores where they actually enforce that maximum number of items rule? I'm the guy with 6 things and a $20 bill waiting behind the person with 25 items and a malfunctioning debit card. The kids at this store where I often buy groceries have told me they're not supposed to give the customers a hard time even if they're over the limit.
Government thinks it's a great idea to allow companies to cut IT expenses by importing cheap foreign workers. I think it would be a great idea to import a bunch of people to take over government jobs. I'm sure we could find plenty of TSA workers who could do a better job at half the cost.
We should also fill up the financial regulatory agencies (OTS, CFTC, SEC, FDIC, OCC) with H1B candidates. Nobody could possibly do a worse job than the employees of these agencies. I'd rather have incompetent people working there than the current people who are either past or future employees of the companies they're supposed to regulate.
Let the mass layoffs of federal workers begin. Welcome H1B replacements.
We have this thing called "government". We also implicitly subscribe to the concept of a "nation" with physical borders and an idea of citizenship of that nation.
As long as we are operating in this framework, the government of a nation should be implementing policies which are to the benefit of the citizens. Importing 20 million illegal immigrants to compete for unskilled labor positions and importing hundreds of thousands of foreign IT workers to compete with citizens for jobs are policies which are detrimental to the vast majority of the citizens.
A technological innovation creates an increase in productivity. Importing a foreign worker to do the exact same work as a citizen doesn't make an hour of labor more productive. It simply increases supply and drives down the price of labor.
There is NO "shortage" of labor, skilled or unskilled, in this country. In fact, we have a vast surplus as demonstrated by the employment picture(the real data, not the BLS BS).
Let's see MS publish an ad for an IT position. $120,000 salary plus benefits. They'd have no problem whatsoever finding skilled applicants.
The authorization for the regulation goes back to the DMCA. Unfortunately, we don't elect government bureaucrats who make some of these rules.