I really like this kind of system. It simplifies the tax code, reduces administrative overhead, and creates incentive to be a productive part of society.
My main criticism is that free money could be used for things other than basic needs. Someone gets a nice 75 inch TV instead of paying for food and clothes for their kids, and then complain to the government that their kids can't be left to starve. Someone else puts the money toward drugs and hookers. Eventually the government caves and puts more money into the system, and before you know it the incentive to work has disappeared.
So I would like to turn this into a restricted debit card that divides the total based on each specific type of use, such as food, clothing, shelter, child care, transportation, etc. The amounts can vary by region (e.g. San Francisco would need higher allotments for housing) and other details like number of dependents.
Most driving deaths are not caused by the act of an individual or organization whose goal is to kill people. They tend to be call "accidents" for a reason.
Blowing up an aircraft or flying it into a building is no accident.
Well, there are two solutions I can think of to fix this:
1) Stop profiling and only use hard evidence. The downside is that they may be giving up a weapon that, for all its bad, is a net good. (As in, inconveniencing a few million people is worth saving a few hundred lives.)
2) Stop profiling and put everyone on the no-fly list. Then make everyone clear their names before being allowed to fly.
If you aren't willing to pay for alternative energy, then don't be surprised when you don't get it. Google helps advance that cause and all you can do is complain that they are a business.
I would love to see crowdfunding for Cutaia to take this all the way through court. If he loses then the DMCA loses and he deserves something for accomplishing that. If he wins (or settles), he returns the money to those who funded him.
CNN and CBC would do well to settle. Fighting this would be admitting that they don't truly believe that copyright deserves protection, and could be used against them in future lawsuits in which they are plaintiff.
Unless you're going to assassinate the speaker of the house and the president pro-tem of the senate after you resign, your secretary of state pick won't become President.
Their role in the order of succession is provided by... LAW. It can be changed by... guess what... LAW!
The same LAW I've been talking about this whole time.
Damn... I don't generally mind having a reasonable conversation, but you are completely ignoring the things I've explained time and time again.
This whole argument is pointless because you cannot constitutionally do what you want to do,
The Constitution provides for Presidential power of veto. Sure, veto does not grant absolute authority... but Congress will have to pass everything by a veto-proof supermajority in both houses. Have you met our Congress? They can barely pass anything with a simple majority.
But, if Congress would rather screw over this nation for 4 years instead of passing this (provably) popular legislation... that blood is on their hands.
Your whole plan is smoke built on wishes and a complete ignorance of the political system in the US.
The plan is to circumvent said political system in the US in order to install corrective measures... it's one of only a handful of ways this could happen, and most of the rest involve bullets.
with the concurrence of the Senate PRIOR to the President resigning
... which happens through the same law that I've been talking about this whole time. The law is all-or-nothing, I veto it if any parts are missing.
The people are actually voting on who replaces me. The appointment process is a formality because that's the way the Constitution requires it to be done; I would gladly do a direct election if I didn't have to push a constitutional amendment to make it happen. (And if anyone doesn't trust that I will actually nominate the winners of that vote, then they wouldn't trust any of what I'm doing, so that argument is pointless.)
In fact, there is NO popular majority, because there is no "popular vote". Adding up all the state-level elections means nothing.
If 60 million people vote for me and 40 million people vote for the other guys, and if I win the election, then yes... I won the election AND a popular majority (even if that doesn't officially count for anything).
I'm arguing this because you are so caught up on the idea that the only way this could work is if the majority backs me. It's not only plausible that my winning would indicate that a majority approve of my position... it's also quite likely, based on past results.
Every Presidential "mandate" came from winning the election, and you are claiming that YOUR mandate will come from winning the election.
I have stated several times that the campaign will be crystal clear: IF YOU VOTE FOR ME THEN YOU ARE VOTING FOR THIS LAW TO BE PASSED, AND YOU ARE APPROVING ME TO USE EVERY ASPECT OF MY POWER TO ENSURE THIS LAW PASSES. No reading between the lines are necessary.
Every congressman has a mandate from their constituents, and those mandates don't necessarily agree with yours.
Since when has Congress done everything their constituents want? You seem to forget how much time our representatives spend in Washington, away from the voices of their constituents, and how many lobbyists they interact with.
Nonsense. Absolute malarky. Every politician makes promises to get elected and then calls them a "mandate", and yours will be no different.
That's a legitimate concern... I might just be blowing smoke, and will completely reverse course the day my opponents concede. For that matter, so could any elected official, so I'm not seeing how this concern is greater for me.
A majority vote of the electors chosen by the states. Not a majority vote of the sum of the total votes case nationwide. NOBODY won a Presidential election by getting a majority of the "popular vote" -- it just doesn't work that way in the US.
I see that you didn't understand what I said. I'll rephrase: By far, in most Presidential elections which were won, the winner also held a popular majority. Obviously that doesn't matter to the outcome, but to assume that no President ever achieved popular majority is wrong.
Until you resign there is no constitutional authority for the congress to call for such an election
I've covered this in other responses to you... it would be a non-binding recommendation.
and after you resign the new President and congress will make it their first priority to annul any such bill.
Political suicide.
Yes, they may, by law, change how a resigned, dead, or unable to serve President will be replaced. YOU, until you resign, will be none of those.
The law that changes how this work is part of the same law that I would force Congress to sign. It would be on the books before I resign... that's the whole point.
No, WE have not established any such thing, because I understand the system a lot better than you seem to.
You don't seem to even understand anything I'm saying. So how can you judge how well I know the system?
Even with a plurality of the "popular vote", your support will have vaporized the day you actually veto a bill that causes a government shutdown
All of which would have been made very clear and unambiguous during the campaign. If you vote for this measure and then get mad when I do exactly what I said I would do, well, you shouldn't have voted for it.
Every "winner" who gets a large plurality claims a "mandate" to carry out his platform
And yet, congress is filled with people who have stood up to the Presidential "mandate"
There's a huge difference. Most Presidents run to become and remain President for the full term. I would run to pass the bill that I state I will pass while vetoing anything that is not that bill, until I sign it into law. The first one is a "mandate", the second is actually a mandate.
If I don't have clearance, if I don't have any reasonable access to classified/secret documents, if I don't have any reason to suspect that the document I am in possession of is classified/secret, and if there is no reasonable suspicion that I have illegally attempted to obtain such documents, then there is little reason to go after me.
Clinton had clearance, access to classified/secret documents, and promoted the use of her personal server for storing those items instead of one that was provided for the purpose of handling secure information. Plus, there is suspicion that she did this in order to hide political information for a future run for office.
If he can get Congress to cooperate enough on important matters to override a veto, he will have done something that is thought practically unimaginable today.
That's the fun thing about plural words. They can mean anything between 2 and a gazillopetainfinigoogolplex.
For 2014, it seems that despite Microsoft's reputation and much larger marketshare, there were many fewer vulnerabilities in Windows than competing products. (And no, you can't just sum the numbers for different Windows versions, most are the same vulnerabilities that existed across versions.)
- the law creates two temporary new executive offices: "Presidential Successor" and "Vice Presidential Successor" - the law provides for a special election to recommend whom the President appoints to those executive offices - the President would appoint the winners to those offices - the President and Vice President resign - line of succession takes effect, causing "Presidential Successor" to become President and "Vice Presidential Successor" to become VP - the law automatically removes those executive offices at this time, and restores the line of succession that existed prior
gives Congress the authority to spell out which current officer takes over, not to hold a special election
There is nothing in the Constitution prohibiting Congress from holding a special election as a means for recommending to the President who should be appointed as executive officers. And nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from temporarily overriding the 1947 Presidential Succession Act in order to declare that those executive officers would be the next in line.
As an outside observer, less political cooperation doesn't seem to be what the US needs.
In general I absolutely agree. But this isn't the normal situation; this is a subversion of the current system in order to provide a path to direct democracy.
I don't think you can do that. IIRC the schedule of presidential elections in the US is fixed in the constitution.
The normal election cycle is fixed, but read some of my other comments in this thread. This wouldn't be a standard election.
I had not forgotten about the 25th Amendment; it was simply irrelevant beyond the fact of the Vice President being the person who immediately succeeds the President.
The Constitution does not give Congress the authority to declare a special election for a President, only that they can pass a law stating who, already elected or appointed, takes over until the expiration of the current term.
To qualify as "already elected or appointed" would require simply appointing the to-be President and VP as executive officers. I can't find anywhere in the Constitution that prohibits Congress from passing a law to hold an election for the sole purpose of recommending such executive appointments to the President.
Sure they could, that's what the "by Law" allows them to do... they are allowed to pass any law that provides the procedure for succession, which would include holding a new election.
Remember that the current process for succession was created in law. The Constitution provides quite a bit of flexibility here, including rewriting that law.
Slashdot Mirror
if applied in practice, produce a police force entirely compatible with anarchism.
But only guaranteed if someone were to enforce your rule #1... which of course would be incompatible with anarchism.
Indeed. The issue here isn't "right to privacy", it's "right to be forgotten".
I really like this kind of system. It simplifies the tax code, reduces administrative overhead, and creates incentive to be a productive part of society.
My main criticism is that free money could be used for things other than basic needs. Someone gets a nice 75 inch TV instead of paying for food and clothes for their kids, and then complain to the government that their kids can't be left to starve. Someone else puts the money toward drugs and hookers. Eventually the government caves and puts more money into the system, and before you know it the incentive to work has disappeared.
So I would like to turn this into a restricted debit card that divides the total based on each specific type of use, such as food, clothing, shelter, child care, transportation, etc. The amounts can vary by region (e.g. San Francisco would need higher allotments for housing) and other details like number of dependents.
Statistically, more people without AIDS die each year than people with AIDS. Therefore, shouldn't we give everyone AIDS?
Most driving deaths are not caused by the act of an individual or organization whose goal is to kill people. They tend to be call "accidents" for a reason.
Blowing up an aircraft or flying it into a building is no accident.
Well, there are two solutions I can think of to fix this:
1) Stop profiling and only use hard evidence. The downside is that they may be giving up a weapon that, for all its bad, is a net good. (As in, inconveniencing a few million people is worth saving a few hundred lives.)
2) Stop profiling and put everyone on the no-fly list. Then make everyone clear their names before being allowed to fly.
If you aren't willing to pay for alternative energy, then don't be surprised when you don't get it. Google helps advance that cause and all you can do is complain that they are a business.
America needs to ditch the world's worst voting system.
Not bad for something that costs the same as an appetizer at an average restaurant.
I would love to see crowdfunding for Cutaia to take this all the way through court. If he loses then the DMCA loses and he deserves something for accomplishing that. If he wins (or settles), he returns the money to those who funded him.
CNN and CBC would do well to settle. Fighting this would be admitting that they don't truly believe that copyright deserves protection, and could be used against them in future lawsuits in which they are plaintiff.
Unless you're going to assassinate the speaker of the house and the president pro-tem of the senate after you resign, your secretary of state pick won't become President.
Their role in the order of succession is provided by... LAW. It can be changed by... guess what... LAW!
The same LAW I've been talking about this whole time.
Damn... I don't generally mind having a reasonable conversation, but you are completely ignoring the things I've explained time and time again.
This whole argument is pointless because you cannot constitutionally do what you want to do,
The Constitution provides for Presidential power of veto. Sure, veto does not grant absolute authority... but Congress will have to pass everything by a veto-proof supermajority in both houses. Have you met our Congress? They can barely pass anything with a simple majority.
But, if Congress would rather screw over this nation for 4 years instead of passing this (provably) popular legislation... that blood is on their hands.
Your whole plan is smoke built on wishes and a complete ignorance of the political system in the US.
The plan is to circumvent said political system in the US in order to install corrective measures... it's one of only a handful of ways this could happen, and most of the rest involve bullets.
with the concurrence of the Senate PRIOR to the President resigning
... which happens through the same law that I've been talking about this whole time. The law is all-or-nothing, I veto it if any parts are missing.
The people are actually voting on who replaces me. The appointment process is a formality because that's the way the Constitution requires it to be done; I would gladly do a direct election if I didn't have to push a constitutional amendment to make it happen. (And if anyone doesn't trust that I will actually nominate the winners of that vote, then they wouldn't trust any of what I'm doing, so that argument is pointless.)
In fact, there is NO popular majority, because there is no "popular vote". Adding up all the state-level elections means nothing.
If 60 million people vote for me and 40 million people vote for the other guys, and if I win the election, then yes... I won the election AND a popular majority (even if that doesn't officially count for anything).
I'm arguing this because you are so caught up on the idea that the only way this could work is if the majority backs me. It's not only plausible that my winning would indicate that a majority approve of my position... it's also quite likely, based on past results.
Every Presidential "mandate" came from winning the election, and you are claiming that YOUR mandate will come from winning the election.
I have stated several times that the campaign will be crystal clear: IF YOU VOTE FOR ME THEN YOU ARE VOTING FOR THIS LAW TO BE PASSED, AND YOU ARE APPROVING ME TO USE EVERY ASPECT OF MY POWER TO ENSURE THIS LAW PASSES. No reading between the lines are necessary.
Every congressman has a mandate from their constituents, and those mandates don't necessarily agree with yours.
Since when has Congress done everything their constituents want? You seem to forget how much time our representatives spend in Washington, away from the voices of their constituents, and how many lobbyists they interact with.
Nonsense. Absolute malarky. Every politician makes promises to get elected and then calls them a "mandate", and yours will be no different.
That's a legitimate concern... I might just be blowing smoke, and will completely reverse course the day my opponents concede. For that matter, so could any elected official, so I'm not seeing how this concern is greater for me.
A majority vote of the electors chosen by the states. Not a majority vote of the sum of the total votes case nationwide. NOBODY won a Presidential election by getting a majority of the "popular vote" -- it just doesn't work that way in the US.
I see that you didn't understand what I said. I'll rephrase: By far, in most Presidential elections which were won, the winner also held a popular majority. Obviously that doesn't matter to the outcome, but to assume that no President ever achieved popular majority is wrong.
Until you resign there is no constitutional authority for the congress to call for such an election
I've covered this in other responses to you... it would be a non-binding recommendation.
and after you resign the new President and congress will make it their first priority to annul any such bill.
Political suicide.
Yes, they may, by law, change how a resigned, dead, or unable to serve President will be replaced. YOU, until you resign, will be none of those.
The law that changes how this work is part of the same law that I would force Congress to sign. It would be on the books before I resign... that's the whole point.
No, WE have not established any such thing, because I understand the system a lot better than you seem to.
You don't seem to even understand anything I'm saying. So how can you judge how well I know the system?
Even with a plurality of the "popular vote", your support will have vaporized the day you actually veto a bill that causes a government shutdown
All of which would have been made very clear and unambiguous during the campaign. If you vote for this measure and then get mad when I do exactly what I said I would do, well, you shouldn't have voted for it.
Every "winner" who gets a large plurality claims a "mandate" to carry out his platform
And yet, congress is filled with people who have stood up to the Presidential "mandate"
There's a huge difference. Most Presidents run to become and remain President for the full term. I would run to pass the bill that I state I will pass while vetoing anything that is not that bill, until I sign it into law. The first one is a "mandate", the second is actually a mandate.
15 out of the 17 people that are in the Presidential line of succession are picked by the President, by current law.
If I don't have clearance, if I don't have any reasonable access to classified/secret documents, if I don't have any reason to suspect that the document I am in possession of is classified/secret, and if there is no reasonable suspicion that I have illegally attempted to obtain such documents, then there is little reason to go after me.
Clinton had clearance, access to classified/secret documents, and promoted the use of her personal server for storing those items instead of one that was provided for the purpose of handling secure information. Plus, there is suspicion that she did this in order to hide political information for a future run for office.
Big difference.
Congress can override a veto.
... by cooperating.
If he can get Congress to cooperate enough on important matters to override a veto, he will have done something that is thought practically unimaginable today.
It would if the election was in the form of a non-binding recommendation, with the winners appointed by the President as said Officers.
That's the fun thing about plural words. They can mean anything between 2 and a gazillopetainfinigoogolplex.
For 2014, it seems that despite Microsoft's reputation and much larger marketshare, there were many fewer vulnerabilities in Windows than competing products. (And no, you can't just sum the numbers for different Windows versions, most are the same vulnerabilities that existed across versions.)
Actually there is a nice way around this:
- the law creates two temporary new executive offices: "Presidential Successor" and "Vice Presidential Successor"
- the law provides for a special election to recommend whom the President appoints to those executive offices
- the President would appoint the winners to those offices
- the President and Vice President resign
- line of succession takes effect, causing "Presidential Successor" to become President and "Vice Presidential Successor" to become VP
- the law automatically removes those executive offices at this time, and restores the line of succession that existed prior
gives Congress the authority to spell out which current officer takes over, not to hold a special election
There is nothing in the Constitution prohibiting Congress from holding a special election as a means for recommending to the President who should be appointed as executive officers. And nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from temporarily overriding the 1947 Presidential Succession Act in order to declare that those executive officers would be the next in line.
As an outside observer, less political cooperation doesn't seem to be what the US needs.
In general I absolutely agree. But this isn't the normal situation; this is a subversion of the current system in order to provide a path to direct democracy.
I don't think you can do that. IIRC the schedule of presidential elections in the US is fixed in the constitution.
The normal election cycle is fixed, but read some of my other comments in this thread. This wouldn't be a standard election.
I had not forgotten about the 25th Amendment; it was simply irrelevant beyond the fact of the Vice President being the person who immediately succeeds the President.
The Constitution does not give Congress the authority to declare a special election for a President, only that they can pass a law stating who, already elected or appointed, takes over until the expiration of the current term.
To qualify as "already elected or appointed" would require simply appointing the to-be President and VP as executive officers. I can't find anywhere in the Constitution that prohibits Congress from passing a law to hold an election for the sole purpose of recommending such executive appointments to the President.
Sure they could, that's what the "by Law" allows them to do... they are allowed to pass any law that provides the procedure for succession, which would include holding a new election.
Remember that the current process for succession was created in law. The Constitution provides quite a bit of flexibility here, including rewriting that law.