2A guarantees the right to bear arms *as part of a well organized militia*.
This has already been dealt with over an again, even by the Supreme Court now, but in case you missed it I'll go over it again.
The militia clause is a statement of purpose, not a restriction. It does not place a condition on the right to keep and bear arms. It is impossible to have a militia if the people are not allowed to bear arms. There is absolutely no evidence that the framers of the constitution meant it as anything other than an individual right, that argument is exclusive to those with a political agenda incompatible with the 2nd amendment who think that historical revisionism will be more effective than honest argument.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they are accustomed.
I'm sure you can find the source for this quote yourself.
And your gun will do what, exactly, against tanks and choppers?
Well, for the choppers you have these, and their capacity to disable aircraft is exactly the reason given by anti-gunners to have them banned. Idiots.
For the tanks, one resistance group to the USSR upended soup bowls on the road to stop tanks, the crew thought they were mines. I do have the book I got that info from, but I'm in the middle of moving so it's packed away.
We need the right to bear arms and soup bowls! In an age of IEDs you could probably cause significant disruption to military movements by putting things on or near the road.
Anti-gunners lobby for bans to military weapons, and then say you don't need a right to bear arms because you can't take on the military because your weapons aren't good enough. It's some of the most obscene stupidity I've ever encountered.
Personally, I don't see a reason for a normal person to own an assualt rifle or any weapon along those lines other than to fight an organized military, be it an invasion, a gang, or to overthrow the goverment.
Can you define an assault rifle? As far as I can tell, it's a propaganda term coined by Hitler, the term is rarely used to mean anything well defined. Wouldn't it be better to describe a rifle by its functional characteristics? eg: bolt-action, semi-automatic, selective fire etc.
Otherwise, since you can't have a murder weapon unless someone has been murdered, I maintain that there is no such thing as an assault weapon until someone has been assaulted.
Personally, I don't see a reason for a normal person to own an assualt rifle or any weapon along those lines other than to fight an organized military, be it an invasion, a gang, or to overthrow the goverment.
Well, I agree. Since that's the point of the 2nd amendment, I don't see that as any reason for weapons bans.
Personally in the unlikely event that I will ever be fighting government forces, I don't want to be using automatic fire. I won't have the government supplying my ammunition and would try more for "one shot, one kill" than "spray and pray".
However, the degree of training needed to use various weapon types effectively is usually misrepresented. http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/marinefacts/blmarksman.htm Designated marksmen apparently use semi-automatics, snipers often use bolt actions, regular troops use selective fire/automatic. It isn't automatic fire that requires more skill. Automatic fire seems to be best when you have one large group of people firing at another large group of people, like a modern day version of standing in two lines facing each other firing muskets in volleys. Not something I would recommend for civilian militias facing fully equipped military forces.
That said, many civilians are actually ex-military (including my two immediate neighbours), so even if I have it all wrong, there are still civilians capable of using automatic weapons. I have no military experience and doubt I'll ever be in armed conflict with the government, I do think we should retain the capacity though.
So if we just create the right kind of system (no fiat money!) and stick to it, then we'll have no pesky problems with human corruption of our grand system ever again.
This would appear to be circular. Any way you look at it, you're stuck with "eternal vigilance".
The "and stick to it" part is the eternal vilgilance, so it isn't circular. In any case, people will use gold as an exchange medium even without a government enforcing a system, that's why it's called real money. The thing about fiat currency is that it involves government decree in every transaction, so arguments that the free market has failed are always deceptive arguments in a fiat currency system. Even with gold backed currency though, if fractional reserve banking is allowed then you will still have the same problems. Lending money you don't have ought to be prosecuted as fraud. I don't have a problem with someone taking on the risk of financing a project based on another parties promise to pay, but when that promise is allowed to be circulated as currency as though it represented existing wealth rather than future production, then the currency system itself becomes vulnerable. If a significant % of people can't pay it collapses the money supply, which is what we see now.
(By the way, I think you exaggerate the role of fiat money in the present collapse, but they you would, being a gold bug.)
Without fractional reserve banking (which is fiat money, even if you have the appearance of having gold backed currency) the current financial crisis would be impossible. There would be no collapse of the money supply because the same amount of money would exist even if someone didn't pay a debt. The lender would be out of pocket but the money supply wouldn't be affected at all.
Gold, silver, copper, hey make lead money for all I care. The important thing is that all legal tender be based on existing goods, not future production. Even gold doesn't solve the problem if you are creating currency backed by gold you hope do dig up one day. If you fail to dig it up, your money supply collapses, just as if you create currency backed by debt, the money supply collapses if that debt doesn't get paid.
As I explained in my other reply http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=998487&cid=25407655 the issue is legal liability, not technical merit. That is, large corporation or political party wants to expose information, doing so incurs legal liability, get "young hacker" to do it. No more multi-million dollar lawsuit. Let "young hacker" take the heat in return for a payout or opportunity later, no political fallout for the organisation involved.
My post makes perfect sense, although this may not actually be the case with David Kernell. That's the point though, you can't tell.
It's not the technical issues that count, it's the legal liability. If it was the Democrats that obtained and released that info it would be more politically damaging to them than to Palin and the legal liability would be huge, but it was just some kid, right?
I'm not being partisan on this by the way, it just appeared suspicious to me. Sarah Palin reminds me a bit of Pauline Hanson here in Oz.
Perhaps a "young hacker" will find the info and expose it. It's a bit suspicious, for example, that the Palin email "hacker" was the son of one of her political opponents. Let's see what his career and net worth is in 10 years. Whether or not he was doing it on others behalf, I'm sure there would be people available to be the designated hacker for much less money than a lawsuit payout would cost.
Now days if, for example, the entire population of new york fought against the US army the whole place could be turned into a blackened crater in the space of a few hours.
Even assuming the army would be uniformly willing to do that, the US Government would then certainly face a general revolution. I know there are some stupid people in the government but I still have more confidence in them than to think they would order the destruction of any major US city. Many in the armed services take their pledge to defend the constitution quite seriously and would immediately turn against anyone who tried to establish a military dictatorship. This is unlikely to happen ever.
The fact is that the police can bring more guns to bear...
and the penalties for using them on police, which you can bet would unofficially include long hours with the camera turned off and a taser being used inventively, are too high for most people to take that option.
If you take up arms without accepting that you may die, you're a fool. If you take up arms against the government without the popular support needed to win, you are exactly the type of batshit crazy idiot the media make such people out to be.
Here's the thing that needs to be dealt with before anyone reaches for their gun. The actions of the governments aren't suprising, government power increases towards tyranny, that has long been observed, understood and predicted. The real question is what on earth is wrong with the juries? How are the governments getting these convictions when they have to pass them by 12 citizens. For as long as the government can easily find passive juries that will comply with the states demand for unjust convictions then resistance has no chance. If the government couldn't find those willing juries, armed resistance would probably be unnecessary. Probably, but don't give up your insurance policy.
Not for one person, but when you have widespread popular support guns make the difference. Maybe you've got some fancy reason why that's not so but history shows that the tyrants of the world disagree with you.
... but how many of them can afford staff to do it for them and also have a heap of other stuff to do they regard as more important (like being a senator and presidential candidate)?
I'm no McCain fan, but the "can't use email" thing isn't much of a criticism. The reality is that he doesn't need to.
Here's the trouble: can you come up with some system -- some set of corporate rules or whatever -- that you can let loose in the wilds and expect it to self-regulate? My contention (and it's hardly controversial) is that the economic incentive to subvert this system of rules is far stronger than the economic incentive to block the subversion.
Hence Moridin's suggestion to stop using fiat currency and return to real money (presumably gold and silver). You have made an excellent summing up of why increasing regulation (even to the point of nationalisation) will not fix the problems inherent with fiat money, which absolutely precludes the possibility of a free market. The fact that some countries temporarily achieve a good standard of living while using this system is irrelevant.
Allowing government and banking corporations to create money out of thin air is a recipe for disaster.
Umm.. no. See, you're a sucker and you believe that a national debt is a bad thing. It's not. A developing nation (and that's what we are) should be in debt. We should be growing and credit is how you do that at a viable pace.
Creation of money supply through fractional reserve lending is done by the authority of the government. Therefore, the government, rather than borrowing money created as debt by its own authority could instead create that money without incurring debt to the Reserve Bank, the value of the money backed by the capital works paid for rather than the governments commitment to repay the debt. Since the increase in the money supply would be matched by increased production (the capital works paid for) there would be no resulting devaluation of the currency.
However if they are communicating with other schools they may have some problems with sharing documents... espectially with the slight differences in formatting which can make a well formatted paper look like crap in an other office suit.
Why would high school students need to share documents with other schools? and since the other NSW schools will have the same software, why would they need to share documents with interstate schools, why in an editable format instead of pdf, and why if this level of cooperation is needed between interstate high school students can they not all install OOo? Don't think the other states participating in this interstate student document sharing project can afford the OOo licenses?
Do you think you "objectivist" types could actually try dealing with reality once in awhile? Theory is nice, freedom is cool, but at some point you've got to come to grips with the real problems
Real problems like the collapse of the fraudulent fiat money supply system perhaps?
e.g. there's always an asymmetry of power between the democratic citizen and the corporation interested in rigging the system, so the system is always going to be rigged, ergo we can't get an actual "free market", so the theory is pretty close to useless.
I agree that corporations as they exist preclude the possibility of a free market, but wouldn't therefore abandon the idea of a free market. Strip corporations of any rights as "persons" or citizens. The individuals who make up that corporation still have their rights, but not the corporate entity itself as separate from those people. So all the individuals in a corp have the right to petition the government for example, but the corporation itself does not.
I'm not really an objectivist though I think they have some interesting ideas, but wouldn't a true objectivist see corporations as a form of collectivism?
Wouldn't a free market have to be tried before it can fail? When you have the currency of exchange established by government decree (fiat currency as used by every country on earth today) and government sanctioned fraud/counterfeiting (fractional reserve lending, where the banks lend money that doesn't exist, and that loan money is legally redeemable for the fiat currency) how can it be said that we have a free market?
We have a command economy, it's that simple. Our money supply is not determined by production levels, supply and demand but by the edict of government and central banks. They openly control the money supply in order to direct the market, any free market principles in operation are allowed only so far as they conform to the approval of those organisations. If we had a system where you could do whatever you want until I don't like it, and I control necessities of your life to make you do my will, we don't call that freedom. I don't know why people think we have any real implementation of a free market when that is precisely the situation we have with the economy.
In general The Left tend to be castigated for believing that societies can benefit broadly by providing a helping hand to their less fortunate members.
No, the left is castigated for believing that charity is best done by compulsion. Implying that conservatives are less inclined to help the unfortunate is manifestly false, but it's a quite common view so I'll assume you held it sincerely.
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Really-Cares-Compassionate-Conservatism/dp/B000WCTRPA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224047886&sr=8-1 "We all know we should give to charity, but who really does? Approximately three-quarters of Americans give their time and money to various charities, churches, and causes; the other quarter of the population does not. Why has America split into two nations: givers and non-givers? Arthur Brooks, a top scholar of economics and public policy, has spent years researching this trend, and even he was surprised by what he found. In Who Really Cares, he demonstrates conclusively that conservatives really are compassionate-far more compassionate than their liberal foes. Strong families, church attendance, earned income (as opposed to state-subsidized income), and the belief that individuals, not government, offer the best solution to social ills-all of these factors determine how likely one is to give."
There is almost nothing you could have done to deter me from those actions. I felt as if I was a part of a "wild frontier", and had control and abilities that very few others possessed (and, I was probably right). The feeling was that of real power - something that most people in their very early teens (when I was arrested for the crimes mentioned) don't often get a lot of... especially as the "geeky kid" at school who got picked on all the time (this was the early 90s in small town New Zealand - not the best place for a geek). Trying to convince anyone to willingly give up that sense of "worth" without getting something equal in return is pretty much impossible.
[Makes note to teach kids to shoot and take them hunting regularly.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#Legislative_changes_1992http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act%23Legislative_changes_1992
Well, this section of the page I linked starts "Although not part of the CRA" (so you and plasmacutter are correct as far as that goes) but continues "in order to achieve similar aims the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government sponsored enterprises that purchase and securitize mortgages, to devote a percentage of their lending to support affordable housing."
and
In November 2000 Fannie Mae announced that the Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD") would soon require it to dedicate 50% of its business to low- and moderate-income families.
So while I referenced the wrong law, lending to more low income people was indeed a requirement and I'm not sure how that could be achieved without relaxing credit requirements, which is what sub-prime lending and interest only loans are designed to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Ethics aside, it didn't seem likely to me that if the government ordered you to do something you would be breaking a law to do so.
In an absolute monarchy that would be correct. In a constitutional republic, incorrect.
2A guarantees the right to bear arms *as part of a well organized militia*.
This has already been dealt with over an again, even by the Supreme Court now, but in case you missed it I'll go over it again.
The militia clause is a statement of purpose, not a restriction. It does not place a condition on the right to keep and bear arms. It is impossible to have a militia if the people are not allowed to bear arms. There is absolutely no evidence that the framers of the constitution meant it as anything other than an individual right, that argument is exclusive to those with a political agenda incompatible with the 2nd amendment who think that historical revisionism will be more effective than honest argument.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
I'm sure you can find the source for this quote yourself.
And your gun will do what, exactly, against tanks and choppers?
Well, for the choppers you have these, and their capacity to disable aircraft is exactly the reason given by anti-gunners to have them banned. Idiots.
For the tanks, one resistance group to the USSR upended soup bowls on the road to stop tanks, the crew thought they were mines. I do have the book I got that info from, but I'm in the middle of moving so it's packed away.
We need the right to bear arms and soup bowls! In an age of IEDs you could probably cause significant disruption to military movements by putting things on or near the road.
Anti-gunners lobby for bans to military weapons, and then say you don't need a right to bear arms because you can't take on the military because your weapons aren't good enough. It's some of the most obscene stupidity I've ever encountered.
The suppression of one means the suppression of the other, does it not?
Yes. The bill of rights ought to be taken in it's entirety.
Personally, I don't see a reason for a normal person to own an assualt rifle or any weapon along those lines other than to fight an organized military, be it an invasion, a gang, or to overthrow the goverment.
Can you define an assault rifle? As far as I can tell, it's a propaganda term coined by Hitler, the term is rarely used to mean anything well defined. Wouldn't it be better to describe a rifle by its functional characteristics? eg: bolt-action, semi-automatic, selective fire etc.
Otherwise, since you can't have a murder weapon unless someone has been murdered, I maintain that there is no such thing as an assault weapon until someone has been assaulted.
Personally, I don't see a reason for a normal person to own an assualt rifle or any weapon along those lines other than to fight an organized military, be it an invasion, a gang, or to overthrow the goverment.
Well, I agree. Since that's the point of the 2nd amendment, I don't see that as any reason for weapons bans.
Personally in the unlikely event that I will ever be fighting government forces, I don't want to be using automatic fire. I won't have the government supplying my ammunition and would try more for "one shot, one kill" than "spray and pray".
However, the degree of training needed to use various weapon types effectively is usually misrepresented. http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/marinefacts/blmarksman.htm Designated marksmen apparently use semi-automatics, snipers often use bolt actions, regular troops use selective fire/automatic. It isn't automatic fire that requires more skill. Automatic fire seems to be best when you have one large group of people firing at another large group of people, like a modern day version of standing in two lines facing each other firing muskets in volleys. Not something I would recommend for civilian militias facing fully equipped military forces.
That said, many civilians are actually ex-military (including my two immediate neighbours), so even if I have it all wrong, there are still civilians capable of using automatic weapons. I have no military experience and doubt I'll ever be in armed conflict with the government, I do think we should retain the capacity though.
So if we just create the right kind of system (no fiat money!) and stick to it, then we'll have no pesky problems with human corruption of our grand system ever again.
This would appear to be circular. Any way you look at it, you're stuck with "eternal vigilance".
The "and stick to it" part is the eternal vilgilance, so it isn't circular. In any case, people will use gold as an exchange medium even without a government enforcing a system, that's why it's called real money. The thing about fiat currency is that it involves government decree in every transaction, so arguments that the free market has failed are always deceptive arguments in a fiat currency system. Even with gold backed currency though, if fractional reserve banking is allowed then you will still have the same problems. Lending money you don't have ought to be prosecuted as fraud. I don't have a problem with someone taking on the risk of financing a project based on another parties promise to pay, but when that promise is allowed to be circulated as currency as though it represented existing wealth rather than future production, then the currency system itself becomes vulnerable. If a significant % of people can't pay it collapses the money supply, which is what we see now.
(By the way, I think you exaggerate the role of fiat money in the present collapse, but they you would, being a gold bug.)
Without fractional reserve banking (which is fiat money, even if you have the appearance of having gold backed currency) the current financial crisis would be impossible. There would be no collapse of the money supply because the same amount of money would exist even if someone didn't pay a debt. The lender would be out of pocket but the money supply wouldn't be affected at all.
Gold, silver, copper, hey make lead money for all I care. The important thing is that all legal tender be based on existing goods, not future production. Even gold doesn't solve the problem if you are creating currency backed by gold you hope do dig up one day. If you fail to dig it up, your money supply collapses, just as if you create currency backed by debt, the money supply collapses if that debt doesn't get paid.
As I explained in my other reply http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=998487&cid=25407655 the issue is legal liability, not technical merit. That is, large corporation or political party wants to expose information, doing so incurs legal liability, get "young hacker" to do it. No more multi-million dollar lawsuit. Let "young hacker" take the heat in return for a payout or opportunity later, no political fallout for the organisation involved.
My post makes perfect sense, although this may not actually be the case with David Kernell. That's the point though, you can't tell.
It's not the technical issues that count, it's the legal liability. If it was the Democrats that obtained and released that info it would be more politically damaging to them than to Palin and the legal liability would be huge, but it was just some kid, right?
I'm not being partisan on this by the way, it just appeared suspicious to me. Sarah Palin reminds me a bit of Pauline Hanson here in Oz.
When will people say NO to their overzealous pious government types?
After the revolution, for a period of about 5 minutes.
Perhaps a "young hacker" will find the info and expose it. It's a bit suspicious, for example, that the Palin email "hacker" was the son of one of her political opponents. Let's see what his career and net worth is in 10 years. Whether or not he was doing it on others behalf, I'm sure there would be people available to be the designated hacker for much less money than a lawsuit payout would cost.
Now days if, for example, the entire population of new york fought against the US army the whole place could be turned into a blackened crater in the space of a few hours.
Even assuming the army would be uniformly willing to do that, the US Government would then certainly face a general revolution. I know there are some stupid people in the government but I still have more confidence in them than to think they would order the destruction of any major US city. Many in the armed services take their pledge to defend the constitution quite seriously and would immediately turn against anyone who tried to establish a military dictatorship. This is unlikely to happen ever.
The fact is that the police can bring more guns to bear ...
Rubbish. The police are vastly outnumbered and require the cooperation of the public for the performance of their duties. Total number of FBI employees: 28,576. Total number of BATF employees (2006): 4,559. USA population (2008 estimate): 305,421,000. Really, think before you post. What's wrong with you people?
and the penalties for using them on police, which you can bet would unofficially include long hours with the camera turned off and a taser being used inventively, are too high for most people to take that option.
If you take up arms without accepting that you may die, you're a fool. If you take up arms against the government without the popular support needed to win, you are exactly the type of batshit crazy idiot the media make such people out to be.
Here's the thing that needs to be dealt with before anyone reaches for their gun. The actions of the governments aren't suprising, government power increases towards tyranny, that has long been observed, understood and predicted. The real question is what on earth is wrong with the juries? How are the governments getting these convictions when they have to pass them by 12 citizens. For as long as the government can easily find passive juries that will comply with the states demand for unjust convictions then resistance has no chance. If the government couldn't find those willing juries, armed resistance would probably be unnecessary. Probably, but don't give up your insurance policy.
Not for one person, but when you have widespread popular support guns make the difference. Maybe you've got some fancy reason why that's not so but history shows that the tyrants of the world disagree with you.
... but how many of them can afford staff to do it for them and also have a heap of other stuff to do they regard as more important (like being a senator and presidential candidate)?
I'm no McCain fan, but the "can't use email" thing isn't much of a criticism. The reality is that he doesn't need to.
While it's difficult for me to understand the need to watch movies on your telephone, I guess I could see the appeal to some.
Sometimes I see interesting/funny videos and want to share them with people at work or elsewhere, by phone is convenient.
Here's the trouble: can you come up with some system -- some set of corporate rules or whatever -- that you can let loose in the wilds and expect it to self-regulate? My contention (and it's hardly controversial) is that the economic incentive to subvert this system of rules is far stronger than the economic incentive to block the subversion.
Hence Moridin's suggestion to stop using fiat currency and return to real money (presumably gold and silver). You have made an excellent summing up of why increasing regulation (even to the point of nationalisation) will not fix the problems inherent with fiat money, which absolutely precludes the possibility of a free market. The fact that some countries temporarily achieve a good standard of living while using this system is irrelevant.
Allowing government and banking corporations to create money out of thin air is a recipe for disaster.
Umm.. no. See, you're a sucker and you believe that a national debt is a bad thing. It's not. A developing nation (and that's what we are) should be in debt. We should be growing and credit is how you do that at a viable pace.
Creation of money supply through fractional reserve lending is done by the authority of the government. Therefore, the government, rather than borrowing money created as debt by its own authority could instead create that money without incurring debt to the Reserve Bank, the value of the money backed by the capital works paid for rather than the governments commitment to repay the debt. Since the increase in the money supply would be matched by increased production (the capital works paid for) there would be no resulting devaluation of the currency.
Money as Debt: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279 (45 mins)
or if you prefer to read:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_99/hannigan092099.html
"You are accessing /." + "Only know of using computers for porn" = "You consider /. to be porn"
Scary.
However if they are communicating with other schools they may have some problems with sharing documents... espectially with the slight differences in formatting which can make a well formatted paper look like crap in an other office suit.
Why would high school students need to share documents with other schools? and since the other NSW schools will have the same software, why would they need to share documents with interstate schools, why in an editable format instead of pdf, and why if this level of cooperation is needed between interstate high school students can they not all install OOo? Don't think the other states participating in this interstate student document sharing project can afford the OOo licenses?
Do you think you "objectivist" types could actually try dealing with reality once in awhile? Theory is nice, freedom is cool, but at some point you've got to come to grips with the real problems
Real problems like the collapse of the fraudulent fiat money supply system perhaps?
e.g. there's always an asymmetry of power between the democratic citizen and the corporation interested in rigging the system, so the system is always going to be rigged, ergo we can't get an actual "free market", so the theory is pretty close to useless.
I agree that corporations as they exist preclude the possibility of a free market, but wouldn't therefore abandon the idea of a free market. Strip corporations of any rights as "persons" or citizens. The individuals who make up that corporation still have their rights, but not the corporate entity itself as separate from those people. So all the individuals in a corp have the right to petition the government for example, but the corporation itself does not.
I'm not really an objectivist though I think they have some interesting ideas, but wouldn't a true objectivist see corporations as a form of collectivism?
promote the often failed free market scam.
Wouldn't a free market have to be tried before it can fail? When you have the currency of exchange established by government decree (fiat currency as used by every country on earth today) and government sanctioned fraud/counterfeiting (fractional reserve lending, where the banks lend money that doesn't exist, and that loan money is legally redeemable for the fiat currency) how can it be said that we have a free market?
We have a command economy, it's that simple. Our money supply is not determined by production levels, supply and demand but by the edict of government and central banks. They openly control the money supply in order to direct the market, any free market principles in operation are allowed only so far as they conform to the approval of those organisations. If we had a system where you could do whatever you want until I don't like it, and I control necessities of your life to make you do my will, we don't call that freedom. I don't know why people think we have any real implementation of a free market when that is precisely the situation we have with the economy.
In general The Left tend to be castigated for believing that societies can benefit broadly by providing a helping hand to their less fortunate members.
No, the left is castigated for believing that charity is best done by compulsion. Implying that conservatives are less inclined to help the unfortunate is manifestly false, but it's a quite common view so I'll assume you held it sincerely.
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Really-Cares-Compassionate-Conservatism/dp/B000WCTRPA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224047886&sr=8-1
"We all know we should give to charity, but who really does? Approximately three-quarters of Americans give their time and money to various charities, churches, and causes; the other quarter of the population does not. Why has America split into two nations: givers and non-givers? Arthur Brooks, a top scholar of economics and public policy, has spent years researching this trend, and even he was surprised by what he found. In Who Really Cares, he demonstrates conclusively that conservatives really are compassionate-far more compassionate than their liberal foes. Strong families, church attendance, earned income (as opposed to state-subsidized income), and the belief that individuals, not government, offer the best solution to social ills-all of these factors determine how likely one is to give."
The US government had no choice once it got thi.
Damn you've been hit hard! Can't even afford a whole sentence!
Here: [s bad]
No, don't mention it. Glad to help.
There is almost nothing you could have done to deter me from those actions. I felt as if I was a part of a "wild frontier", and had control and abilities that very few others possessed (and, I was probably right). The feeling was that of real power - something that most people in their very early teens (when I was arrested for the crimes mentioned) don't often get a lot of... especially as the "geeky kid" at school who got picked on all the time (this was the early 90s in small town New Zealand - not the best place for a geek). Trying to convince anyone to willingly give up that sense of "worth" without getting something equal in return is pretty much impossible.
[Makes note to teach kids to shoot and take them hunting regularly.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#Legislative_changes_1992http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act%23Legislative_changes_1992
Well, this section of the page I linked starts "Although not part of the CRA" (so you and plasmacutter are correct as far as that goes) but continues "in order to achieve similar aims the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government sponsored enterprises that purchase and securitize mortgages, to devote a percentage of their lending to support affordable housing."
and
In November 2000 Fannie Mae announced that the Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD") would soon require it to dedicate 50% of its business to low- and moderate-income families.
So while I referenced the wrong law, lending to more low income people was indeed a requirement and I'm not sure how that could be achieved without relaxing credit requirements, which is what sub-prime lending and interest only loans are designed to do.