Nobody is a more rabid environmentalist than the hunter who wants to protect their land or the fisherman who wants to protect their livelihood.
I disagree with the term "environmentalist". I believe that a more accurate term is "conservationist". A conservationist believes that humans are part of the environment. This is shown in that a conservationist sees managed hunting as part of preserving a healthy environment. An environmentalist believes that humans are outside of the environment, that any human activity is harmful. An environmentalist seems to think that humans need to be removed from the environment, that "the environment" is something people observe through a window and visit once in a while. That kind of thinking is not that the environment is to be a zoo, something caged off by humans. That kind of thinking is getting humans to place themselves in cages.
Shouldn't government employees be loyal to the Constitution first, the people in an incredibly close second, and all others far behind that?
If government employees were loyal to the Constitution then the EPA would not exist.
The federal government is a construct of the states, the states are sovereign but give certain powers to the federal government. No where in the Constitution was the federal government given the authority to regulate air and water quality. If it is there then I'd like to have someone point it out to me. That was something left to the states.
The US Constitution is primarily a business contract, the states agreeing on how trade is to be done among them. I could imagine some federal environmental regulations. One example would be in the case of ships dumping their shit into federal waters, that would be considered a matter of crimes at sea. Another example would be managing some matters of trade when it comes to things like some states wanting all cars to have catalytic converters, that's a matter of trade between the states. Such an office that manages emission controls on automobiles wouldn't be some huge independent agency like the EPA, it'd be a small office within the Department of Commerce.
I think Trump's craziest followers agree with locking up kids to the point that they would actually chant "Lock kids up" if they heard it at one of Trump's rallies.
I point out that nuclear is cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar and you come back with a comment on how if we space out the solar panels enough we might be able to grow handpicked strawberries in between? That's telling me that you have nothing to counter the safety, cost, and CO2 output of nuclear.
I will concede some points about solar power. It is possible to make solar as cheap as coal, quite safe (though perhaps still not safer than nuclear), low CO2, with storage, and an ability to load follow. This can be done if we figure out molten salt storage, solar thermal collection, and site the collector properly. This might not be technology we have today but if someone puts enough effort in it then it should work in a decade or less. Here's the problem, if you space out the mirrors on your sun tracking solar thermal collector so you can have your organic vegetable garden under the mirrors you've now tripled the space needed and reduced the efficiency. This drives up costs. Now solar isn't cheaper than nuclear any more.
That same molten salt storage, and the same turbines, as that solar thermal plant can be mated with a molten salt nuclear reactor. This gives the same load follow capability, the same energy storage capability, but doesn't require all that land around it for mirrors. You can still have your organic vegetable garden around the power plant too. Put some money on molten salt nuclear reactors and we can have prototypes in 5 years. Another 5 years and we can have some demonstration commercial plants. Another 5 years and we'll have something that can be mass produced. We can invest in solar during that time too but there's no reason we should not start building conventional nuclear now and invest in next generation nuclear for the near future.
Go find a place to plant your solar collectors and strawberries, I won't stop you. Just don't expect it to be profitable in 5 or 10 years. If competition from natural gas doesn't kill it then something else will.
I notice you ignore all the parts of the comment that destroy your argument and give that sentence context, just like you always do.
Destroy my argument? No, I just realized that this is a thread on searching cell phones of illegal aliens in Europe and you've somehow gone down a path of debating the value of "separate but equal" in the USA. Also, you're just not keeping my interest any more, I'm not seeing you bring anything new to the argument. We're going in circles, gone far off topic, and I'm not going to debate a fool because at some point an observer may not know which party is the greater fool.
Oh, and calling me a fascist faggot is not an argument. Yep, and myself calling you a fool is not an argument either.
Funny how all the governments in the world want the same thing, supported by all their scientists.
Here, let me fix that for you...
Funny how all the dictatorships in the world want to take America's wealth, supported by all their government employed scientists.
We have the UN IPCC issue reports periodically on how the world will be uninhabitable in 100 years unless the USA hands out money to all the poor nations of the world. They aren't demanding the USA stop burning oil, in fact if the USA stopped burning oil then many of these dictatorships would collapse as they have nothing else of value to offer in international trade. These nations couldn't bear the USA to stop burning coal either, because then coal mining in the USA could flood the market and make the coal from many of these shithole nations worthless.
What can these shithole nations make that the USA might actually buy? SOLAR PANELS!!! Because of some market manipulations and accidents of history much of the world's silicon production has landed in China. There's some others around the world but mostly if the USA is going to "go green" and still hand out dollars to foreign nations then it has to be through solar panels.
Using natural gas in cars would cut CO2 production per mile traveled in half compared to diesel fuel or gasoline, but the USA makes more than enough natural gas for itself. So, even though natural gas was "good" for the environment maybe a decade ago we see the UN declared it "bad" because exporting natural gas from shithole nations is expensive. Again because of market manipulations and accidents of history the USA imports all kinds of batteries instead of making them domestically. Oh, and same for the rare earth metals used in electric motors and windmill generators.
With the help of a UN funded adverts, compliant international media companies, and a whole lot of useful idiots in the USA, we can't have natural gas cars in the USA to cut down the CO2 we produce. Instead we get electric cars made from a whole lot of imported materials and components. Thankfully, for these shithole nations, electric vehicles are worthless for the big consumers of oil, like large trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft, so there's no real threat of the USA stopping the importation of gobs of oil.
It seems I just talked myself into another conspiracy theory.
The UN might not have created the global warming scare but they've twisted it into knots in a way that the USA is kept handing out dollars for things that it could produce equivalents on its own. If the USA started building nuclear power to replace much of the natural gas it now burns for electricity that leaves a lot of production for something else. That "something else" could be planes, trains, and automobiles. Well, maybe not planes. The USA still produces plenty of its own oil so there would be plenty for aircraft fuel without needing any imports. No need for importing solar panels either if we move to nuclear. No importing large car sized batteries. Yep, that's it. The UN worked up a scare over global warming and then crafted an excuse for the USA to not expand use of domestic nuclear and natural gas to address this scare.
If enough Americans figure this out then the whole global warming scare can't be used as a way to siphon wealth from the USA to the rest of the world. I don't know if I believe my own conspiracy theory but its been fun to think this out.
Yep, the nuclear power industry got about one billion dollars year after year for 50 years in government subsidy. Nuclear power also provides 20% of the electricity generated in the USA. Compare this to what wind and solar get in subsidies. I did some searching on this and I've been getting some conflicting numbers, they vary from 7 billion dollars to 15 billion dollars based on who is providing the number and which year is being discussed. That alone is disproportionate subsidies. Consider that wind and solar combined provide less than 10% of our electricity that is very disproportionate. That's something like a 20 times difference in subsidies, based on money spent and energy produced.
How many have actually been built on time/cost, I couldn't find any, all i can find is massive cost and time overruns.
Probably because being on time and on budget isn't newsworthy.
I'll hear people complain about the money spent on Yucca Mountain. A nuclear waste site that's been a money pit for years and still has not been declared fit for disposing of waste. Well, that's what you get with a government run project that's so politically charged. We had US senators approve funds for the building of the site, because that's federal money spent in states where senators can buy a lot of votes. When it comes to funding the inspections and licensing for declaring it suitable for nuclear waste these same senators deny the funds. Now they can play the hero to their voters because dangerous nuclear waste won't be traveling on the roads through the neighborhoods where their kids play. There is no technical reason we can't put waste in this site, it's been held up only by politics. I imagine this money pit is included in the "nuclear industry subsidy" column when it contains no nuclear material, and may never contain nuclear material if it's not maintained. Maintaining it costs money, even if it's just a security detail to keep homeless and pot smoking teens out of it.
Nuclear power is in fact the safest source of energy we have today.
The claim on nuclear power being a prime target in war is cute. Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? Did you notice something? A big concrete dome perhaps? I'm sure if someone dropped a big enough bomb on the dome it would break open but if that's your standard then consider this, how well protected are windmills from an attack in a time of war? What of solar panels? You want to put windmills off shore too? I wonder how well protected those would be from an attack, or a drunken container ship captain.
If you want to talk about making land unusable then consider how much land would have to be plastered over with solar collectors. We can't grow crops in the shade. Oh, we put the solar panels on the roof you say? That doubles or triples the cost. When prodded on price solar power advocates talk of the price on utility scale solar, which by some estimates is as cheap as coal. When prodded on the enormous amounts of land use it suddenly and magically becomes far more expensive rooftop solar. Well, make up your mind. Do we get cheap solar and make that land unavailable for crops or housing, or do we get expensive solar and put it on our rooftops? You get one or the other to make your case, you can't have both.
Oh, another argument I hear often is that solar will get cheaper in the future. Well, nuclear will get cheaper in the future. We've been subsidizing solar for decades now with the promise that someday, with enough research and development, it will be cheaper than coal. Well, why not subsidize nuclear too to make it cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar? Oh, wait, we don't have to do that because nuclear is already there. You think that's "bollox"? Show me your numbers.
Greenpeace's latest stunt was to crash a drone into a nuclear power plant containment structure. They did this to prove that a terrorist could crash a drone into a nuclear power plant containment structure. In other words they proved themselves to be terrorists.
I was going to say that no damage was done but that's not quite true. Go do a search for Greenpeace and find a news site that allows for people to comment. The drone didn't even leave a mark on the concrete wall but Greenpeace is just looking like idiots right now. The commenters are tearing Greenpeace apart and there seems to be a lot of support for nuclear power.
Here's a video of the founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, talking about why he left and how Greenpeace has lost any basis in facts and science to their arguments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Decommissioning costs are running two orders of magnitude more expensive than proponents said they would be. * This means that nuclear is actually much more expensive than it's stated cost and that means the next generatiosn subsidizes nuclear power used by the prior generations.
That's just a lie. The Forbes article above explicitly point out that decommissioning costs are included in the price. They also point out that past cost overruns in nuclear power were often the result of poor money management, not any flaws in the technology or construction.
Securing the nuclear waste costs millions of dollars per site per year for the foreseeable future. * This cost increases over time. What cost $6 million 10 years ago, costs $8 million a couple years ago.
Prove it.
Private insurance will not cover the risk. That's evidence right there that the risks are unknowable or larger than proponents say. * This means citizens are on the hook for unlimited losses. Corporations and executives get the profits up front and dump the costs on citizens.
The risks are large. That's what happens with any large project. A multi-billion dollar anything will be more than any private insurance company is willing or able to cover. This is a financial risk, which again is often a problem of poor money management and not any flaw with nuclear power itself.
It has benefits for CO2 but we sail thru the 2 degree celcius increase about 2024. Nuclear plants wouldn't be done for 20 years.
Mean construction time for a nuclear power plant is about 7.5 years, though many have been completed in 3 years. Just because the TVA took 42 years to complete a reactor at Watts Barr does not mean all reactor projects are doomed to take as long.
I've seen people flip on their stance on nuclear power right before my eyes when I point out that Fukushima was older than Chernobyl. We don't build nuclear reactors like Fukushima and Chernobyl any more. People understand this. You can complain about nuclear being unsafe, too expensive, and so on, but that's technology from 1980 if you are lucky. I can make wind and solar look bad too if I'm taking state of the art from 1978 and compare that to modern nuclear. Should I base my car purchases from what I learned by reading Unsafe At Any Speed?
I could see using Nuclear only in extreme lattitudes where alternative energy is less practical.
All anyone has to know to understand that nuclear is a boondoggle is that it is absolutely slaughtered by basically everything else at cost per watt.
Maybe that's true in whatever nation you are from but here in the USA nuclear is quite inexpensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Before you say that solar and wind will get cheaper and beat nuclear, consider what the price of nuclear can do in the mean time. That's right, nuclear can get cheaper too. Of course there is a limit on what the bottom can be because of the prices of materials and such. I have a pretty good idea on where that bottom lies, and it doesn't look good for solar. Wind might stay reasonable, the technology for that is pretty simple. Depending on the location it's easy to run out of room for them though.
P.S. We have a solution for long haul freight using electricity, it's called rail.
You have no idea how many trucks are on the road, how far they travel, or how much freight they carry. Electric freight trucks are a fantasy, so don't even bother bringing them up.
I gave my plan on how to reduce CO2 in the USA, what's yours? I saw the math and here's a hint for you, unless you include large helpings of nuclear and/or natural gas it won't work. Maybe you can project out current trends and assume price/performance advances but that's just a fantasy then. The world doesn't run on fantasy.
It's been raping the rest of the world for centuries.
How?
Now it wants to complain about the refugees it's created.
Created them? How?
Waaaaaaaaaah.
I'm sorry if my tone came off a bit harsh, I didn't meant to hurt your feelings. Go and find your "safe space", and come back after you are done crying.
Yet another story about how the world is getting warmer. I'll get excited when I see the federal government start building nuclear reactors to replace the coal power we have now.
Nothing is safer than nuclear. Nothing has a lower CO2 footprint than nuclear. If it wasn't for the government bureaucracy holding up the issuance of licenses then we'd be seeing new nuclear reactors going online at a rate of about one per month.
Here's my conspiracy theory. I am admitting up front that this is approaching tin foil hat territory. The government doesn't want to actually solve the problem of global warming, they just want to be able to use the threat of global warming as an excuse for what they want to do.
I look at the EPA estimates on where the CO2 the USA produces comes from. 34% is electricity. Okay then, go hand out some nuclear reactor licenses and get those coal plants replaced. I find it impossible to believe that the government has not been able to find anyone capable of producing a nuclear power plant for 40 years. We get 20% of our electricity from nuclear power now so it's not like we don't know how to do it. Add in some wind, hydro, maybe even some solar and we can be on the path to taking CO2 production from electricity down to the level of a rounding error. I'm guessing if we really put our minds to it we could get a new nuclear reactor online at a rate of one per month very quickly. I say this because there was a time when the USA had half the population it has now and was able to build them at a rate of one every two months. Keep the paperwork to a sane level and we can keep the cost of electricity the same as it is now.
The next largest chunk of CO2 production in the USA is transportation, also about 34%. This is a more difficult problem because people can't merely be told to buy a new energy efficient vehicle. What happens though with the shift of electricity from coal and natural gas to nuclear then natural gas gets real cheap. While natural gas as a fuel isn't perfect it still gives half the CO2 output than gasoline per mile. I'm not sure the government needs to really do much on getting people to buy a natural gas car but merely set the rules on how to make them safe to drive. This has been done for a large number of vehicles used in commercial fleets so just make it clear to the auto makers that offering these same cars to the public will not meet resistance by regulators. This might mean road funding not being from gasoline taxes any more, so have people pay for the roads through sales taxes or something.
Here's another tin foil hat theory. No one is more addicted to gasoline vehicles than the federal government. The government makes more money through road taxes than the oil companies do in selling the fuel. The only way to break that addiction is to wean off the taxes.
Of course electric cars will play a part but passenger cars are not near as much a tax income for the government as over the road trucks, same goes for CO2. We haven't figured out long haul trucking on electricity yet, but we know how to make natural gas burn. No need for subsidies to make this work, just shift the electricity market from natural gas with nuclear power, make it clear that natural gas for transportation won't have any regulatory barriers beyond what already exists, and the market will move naturally.
There, a plan to more than halve the CO2 output from the USA. Making that happen could take less than a decade once it gets started and with proper motivation.
Don't give me more about the problems. I want solutions. Telling me the trees look different on a bicycle race is nice and all but let's get this done already.
The laws regarding drugs are abusive to the people.
I agree but that does not mean we should allow people in prison to vote.
Follow the law. If you don't like the law, then work to change it. Breaking the law means you run the risk of going to prison. So don't break the law if you don't want to go to prison and lose your ability to vote.
While I can understand that there are laws we should break out of defending a greater justice the drug laws are not one of these laws. Also understand that if you break an unjust law that it still can result in going to prison. People do this all the time, and they willingly go to prison as this is part of what it means to bring down bad law and achieve a more just world.
But can do nothing to verify that the person casting that ballot is a US citizen. Trying to require something as simple as ID is labelled as "racism" and results in lawsuits.
Here's what's racist about this, assuming minorities are too poor, ignorant, or lazy to register to vote and get an ID like everyone else.
That said I do have some objection to requiring an ID to vote.
We should be able to vote based on something like a sworn testimony of the identity of the person casting the vote much like we have done for ages with other legal documents like birth certificates, marriage licenses, licenses to drive, and so forth. Those that sign as witness to a ballot cast under false pretenses should be charged with the same crime as the person casting the ballot. Require the signature of two or three people for those voting without ID so no one person can allow a vote. Perhaps have other controls like the witnesses cannot be registered for the same party, age limits (of course), living in the community, and so forth. Having a person walk in, with no government issued ID, and no one willing to attest to their identity, should be denied a ballot.
I've seen this happen at Amateur radio license testing sessions. Someone that's under the age of 16 is unlikely to have a photo ID. Maybe they have a school ID but that's not necessarily a legal document. In such cases there's a process of something like both parents showing ID, signing something that the person taking the test is their child, there's three examiners that have to sign off on it (as do all exams, even for adults with proper ID), and this is deemed acceptable by the FCC. There's a paper trail to the examiners and the witnesses by means of noting their identifying details on a document.
Here's what I heard, and I'm willing to see evidence to the contrary, that voter participation GOES UP when voter ID laws are in place. This happens because now people have greater faith in that their vote actually counts. I don't much care if voter ID laws deny access to voting to some people. If they can't be bothered to get a photo ID to vote then I don't want them voting. I'm not racist enough to think minorities are too ignorant, poor, or lazy to get an ID and register to vote like I did.
Nothing here shows any fear of immigrants. It shows a disdain for criminals, however. Not every immigrant is a criminal.
Stop calling them "immigrants" if they have failed to enter the country legally and have no intention of obtaining citizenship. They are aliens. They are illegal aliens. If they do in fact plan to stay but did so by crossing the border illegally then they are squatters, invaders, or perhaps even spies. We used to hang spies, do we still do that? I'm getting real close to thinking we should take a stronger stance on this and declare these border crossings an invasion by a hostile nation. Perhaps even charge a few people with spying. If Mexico won't do their part in stopping this then maybe make an example of a few of the worst offenders and hang them high.
Again, I'm not saying we SHOULD hang any of these people for spying, only that I'd consider it something that needs to be discussed openly and with representatives from Mexico.
Because no vaccine is 100% effective. Even with modern vaccines, and a common practice of multiple doses, there is still a small chance it won't prevent an infection. When dealing with illnesses that can result in deafness, amputation, and death, then it seems prudent to have a herd immunity to reduce the risk of infection. Vaccines are as effective as they are because of how prevalent the vaccinations are in the whole population. Some dingbat that thinks vaccines can give someone autism does not have the right to share a classroom with myself or anyone I care about. We've seen the return of the spread of these diseases in places where parents haven't vaccinated children, even in children that had their vaccinations. It's also a problem in places with a high population of people with "lost papers", to put it euphemistically.
Also there are plenty of totally valid reasons why somebody may chose not to vaccinate their kids.
I agree that people have valid reasons for not vaccinating, and I'm not talking about them. These people will often know that they are at risk and therefore rely on herd immunity for their safety, as well as other precautions one might take.
People should have the right to ignore popular trends for whatever reason (even ignorant reasons).
Sure, I'm fine with that. Just don't expect me to attend a university that has had outbreaks of meningitis or mumps because a bunch of idiots can't be bothered with getting a $150 vaccine along with buying their $150 statistics text book, $80 calculus textbook, $1500 laptop, and whatever else they spend on top of the fees and tuition to attend university. Those shots in the arm are not cheap but that is the cost of going to school. If they don't want to get the vaccines then they can go to a school that does not require them. I'll just expect that the place will be under quarantine in a few years once there's thousands of students packed buttcheek to buttcheek in a lecture hall for several hours, week after week.
Even if I'm in that lecture hall, and I got all my shots, but no one else did then I'm still at considerable risk of getting sick. Maybe I don't catch meningitis but I'm still in a room with people with compromised immune systems that might carry something that tags along with something more serious.
Even with vaccines being quite commonplace I'll still hear about someone getting sick from something. I'll read reminders of getting a "booster" when this happens because now everyone on campus has an increased risk.
Prison is a punishment. In an ideal world, it would be a punishment for anti-social behavior, but prison is often used as a political tool. For example. a lot of people in prison are there on non-violent drug charges, and a good chunk of those in there for violent charges because the prior drug charges hurt their employment opportunities. These people were unjustly put in the cage by the state, so they certainly need the ability to vote.
There was a time that I would have agreed with you that "a lot" of people are in prison for non-violent drug charges. Assuming I agree with that premise I still see a problem. These people in prison had to know the drugs they possessed were illegal, and by possessing them they run the risk of imprisonment if caught. Perhaps they should have considered voting for people to legalize these drugs BEFORE they went about using or dealing them. If they broke the law as a means of civil disobedience then this only works as an act of civil disobedience if they run the risk of imprisonment. Either way they had to know the risks of their drug possession but chose to disobey the law regardless. I'm not going to "reward" what could be an act of civil disobedience with the ability to vote while in prison because, again, if by voting they believed they could overturn the law then they should have just voted and stayed out of prison.
As for your concern about criminals buying pardons, it just doesn't work out unless there is a ridiculous, yet legitimate prison population. El Salvador has the highest homicide rate, at 83 per 100k. If we multiply that over 10 years, that's still only 0.83%, even in the murder capital of the world, easily within the margin of error. If there are enough violent criminals that they constitute a major voting block, your country has far bigger problems.
Tight elections can be won with far smaller margins. I recall that an election for POTUS was won based on the margin of less than 600 votes in a district in Florida. I agree it's a small margin of the total vote. Where I disagree is that it does not matter. Let's also consider the logistics on this, should a person in prison vote based on where they lived before being incarcerated? Based on which district the prison is in now? Where their children go to school? What of the security of the vote? Getting impartial observers into a prison to observe the vote will be difficult. Getting the ballots and election workers in and out runs a risk of an escape or some "funny" ballots.
If what you claim is true, that the voting block of prisoners are unlikely to change the results of the vote then that only means that allowing prisoners to vote gains us little to nothing in determining the outcome. It raises a lot of questions on who votes, how the votes are counted, and all kinds of logistic issues. No, we don't need prisoners voting. They can vote on laws that might get them in prison before violating those laws. As I recall a person can often petition for the right to vote being returned once out of prison, or even in some states those that served their sentence get the right to vote restored automatically. As you say the votes from those in prison are unlikely to shift the vote either way so there's no value in counting them. On top of that I don't want criminals voting in other criminals should the margin be close enough that it might get them past the post.
I think I've only run into a CD that couldn't be ripped once, and it was paired with an audio DVD that ripped and converted to MP3 just fine, so I don't think you need to worry too much.
Sure, but why bother when I'm looking for music that I'm already buying on an impulse? I'll peruse the offerings of the music in a brick and mortar store with the intent to listen to it on my truck stereo on my drive. I'll rip it when I get home so I'll have it in lossless format on my desktop and loaded as a high bit rate compressed audio to fit on my cheap iPhone. (Cheap is relative, the iPhone cost a lot of money but I saved quite a bit by getting one with less storage knowing I'll be listening to it from cheap headphones most of the time and therefore the lossy compression is tolerable.)
The only hardware with CD readers in them these days are probably off-the-shelf CDROMs inside anyway.
I don't know what is in my truck dash, or in my cheap CD player I bought at the base PX, or even what my Mac on my desk uses. What I do know is that CDDA works in all three. I'm not willing to argue with a know-nothing jobsworth at the Best Buy over the CD I bought there was not playable when I tried to play it in my truck and was trying to get cash back on it before I even left the parking lot.
No CDDA emblem means no sale. If Best Buy had a cash back policy for opened CDs that don't work, instead of like-for-like, then I'd be willing to shop there. If they wanted to keep my business then they'd need reasonable policy on returns, or stock products that met the expectations of their buyers.
I will agree that most CD players sold today, and for many years, are often really just small computers with a CD-ROM but that's not what I own. What I own are CDDA players, not computers with CD-ROM drives. Therefore I will purchase media that meets CDDA because I've read enough about the failures of non-spec CD media and Best Buy return policy that I've not bought anything at Best Buy for a very long time.
I will say that my policy on not shopping at Best Buy has changed recently. I've found Best Buy changed their attitude on the premium they can charge for the convenience of brick and mortar shopping, the prices are more reasonable now. They also have the convenience of buying online for same day pickup in a store. My policy on not buying music there has remained though.
I will agree that prisoners have the right to vote if you agree that prisoners have the right carry weapons.
I'm fine with felons released from prison being allowed to vote, just as I am fine with them being allowed to carry weapons. Prison is punishment for antisocial behavior, as well as confinement to prevent them from doing further harm to polite society. By putting people in prison we've determined in a court of law that this person has violated the social contract. With rights comes responsibilities. These people have demonstrated that they are not responsible and therefore they lose their rights for a while, and that includes the right to vote.
That's not saying we remove all ability to voice their grievances. I expect that prisoners would be allowed to voice their grievances by means of letters and phone calls to those in office. I expect them to have access to visits from legal representation, family, religious clergy and laypersons, and others that might offer guidance and means to seek a return to polite society. They can still make their grievances known, I just don't want criminals able to "buy" a shortened sentence from a governor with a promise of a pardon in return for their vote.
In my estimation the lack of childhood vaccinations really became an issue due to compulsory public education. I'm fine with you not vaccinating your child, just don't send them to the same schools as the children in my family.
Here's another solution instead of imposing compulsory vaccinations, doing away with compulsory primary education. "But we can't allow children to go uneducated!!" I agree. However it is rare for someone attending a public school to get an education. Public schools don't get paid based on the quality of their education, they get paid on the number of students attending. When attending is required then they don't even care if the students show up. They'll get marked as present regardless to make the books look good.
Abolish public education. If parents want their children to learn they can send them to a private school, educate them at home, or whatever. If parents don't much care if their children get an education then requiring attendance in a public school only distracts from the students that are there to learn. We'd be better off, as a whole, if these children weren't in school. I know that's harsh but I'm not responsible for your children, you are. If you can't come up with the funds to feed and educate your own children then it may be best if they were removed from you and adopted out to someone willing to take on that burden.
If you don't want your child vaccinated then you should be free to not send them to a school were vaccinations are required. Go set up your own school. I'm willing to let Darwinian selection run its course if it means my family don't have to suffer because of your poor choices.
If we didn't have somewhere safer and cleaner to get power, it would make sense to use nuclear, but we do, so it doesn't.
There is no energy that is safer and cleaner than nuclear. Therefore using nuclear power is a very rational choice. Believing nuclear power is unsafe or otherwise a threat greater than other energy sources is not supported by evidence. Perhaps a case can be made in some situations that nuclear is not the cheapest option but it is almost always the energy with the least risk to health and life, as well as the choice with the lowest pollution and CO2 output.
Go search the internet on deaths per terawatt, you will find nuclear power is the safest choice we have for energy right now. Go search on CO2 output per watt-hour, if you find something with a lower CO2 output then it's going to be a limited resource like hydro or an unreliable one like wind. Go search on costs, if nuclear power isn't the cheapest then it will become the cheapest once factors like a need for storage and/or backup power for unreliable energy sources like wind and solar are taken into account.
Europe is using smartphone data as a tool to help repatriate lost runaways.
Precisely. We want to see families reunited. We know that ripping children from their mothers cannot be tolerated, therefore we should do the best we can to send children back to their mothers. Or at least returned to their motherland and their extended family.
(Question: Is giving non-citizens legislative power like that insane? Asking for a friend...)
Yes, that is insane.
We are now seeing Democrats advocating for allowing people in prison to vote. I don't mean allowing people that were once in prison and now out free, I'm talking about people in prison having a polling booth available to them inside the prison walls. That's insane. I could be convinced of allowing convicted felons being allowed to vote after being released and serving out any probation. Letting people that immigrated illegally to get a vote, get a license to drive, get a job, send their kids to school, is encouraging more law breaking.
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Nobody is a more rabid environmentalist than the hunter who wants to protect their land or the fisherman who wants to protect their livelihood.
I disagree with the term "environmentalist". I believe that a more accurate term is "conservationist". A conservationist believes that humans are part of the environment. This is shown in that a conservationist sees managed hunting as part of preserving a healthy environment. An environmentalist believes that humans are outside of the environment, that any human activity is harmful. An environmentalist seems to think that humans need to be removed from the environment, that "the environment" is something people observe through a window and visit once in a while. That kind of thinking is not that the environment is to be a zoo, something caged off by humans. That kind of thinking is getting humans to place themselves in cages.
Shouldn't government employees be loyal to the Constitution first, the people in an incredibly close second, and all others far behind that?
If government employees were loyal to the Constitution then the EPA would not exist.
The federal government is a construct of the states, the states are sovereign but give certain powers to the federal government. No where in the Constitution was the federal government given the authority to regulate air and water quality. If it is there then I'd like to have someone point it out to me. That was something left to the states.
The US Constitution is primarily a business contract, the states agreeing on how trade is to be done among them. I could imagine some federal environmental regulations. One example would be in the case of ships dumping their shit into federal waters, that would be considered a matter of crimes at sea. Another example would be managing some matters of trade when it comes to things like some states wanting all cars to have catalytic converters, that's a matter of trade between the states. Such an office that manages emission controls on automobiles wouldn't be some huge independent agency like the EPA, it'd be a small office within the Department of Commerce.
I think Trump's craziest followers agree with locking up kids to the point that they would actually chant "Lock kids up" if they heard it at one of Trump's rallies.
If that's what you think then you are insane.
I point out that nuclear is cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar and you come back with a comment on how if we space out the solar panels enough we might be able to grow handpicked strawberries in between? That's telling me that you have nothing to counter the safety, cost, and CO2 output of nuclear.
I will concede some points about solar power. It is possible to make solar as cheap as coal, quite safe (though perhaps still not safer than nuclear), low CO2, with storage, and an ability to load follow. This can be done if we figure out molten salt storage, solar thermal collection, and site the collector properly. This might not be technology we have today but if someone puts enough effort in it then it should work in a decade or less. Here's the problem, if you space out the mirrors on your sun tracking solar thermal collector so you can have your organic vegetable garden under the mirrors you've now tripled the space needed and reduced the efficiency. This drives up costs. Now solar isn't cheaper than nuclear any more.
That same molten salt storage, and the same turbines, as that solar thermal plant can be mated with a molten salt nuclear reactor. This gives the same load follow capability, the same energy storage capability, but doesn't require all that land around it for mirrors. You can still have your organic vegetable garden around the power plant too. Put some money on molten salt nuclear reactors and we can have prototypes in 5 years. Another 5 years and we can have some demonstration commercial plants. Another 5 years and we'll have something that can be mass produced. We can invest in solar during that time too but there's no reason we should not start building conventional nuclear now and invest in next generation nuclear for the near future.
Go find a place to plant your solar collectors and strawberries, I won't stop you. Just don't expect it to be profitable in 5 or 10 years. If competition from natural gas doesn't kill it then something else will.
I don't think your information is very realistic.
I noticed you offered no links for me to see where you got your information.
I notice you ignore all the parts of the comment that destroy your argument and give that sentence context, just like you always do.
Destroy my argument? No, I just realized that this is a thread on searching cell phones of illegal aliens in Europe and you've somehow gone down a path of debating the value of "separate but equal" in the USA. Also, you're just not keeping my interest any more, I'm not seeing you bring anything new to the argument. We're going in circles, gone far off topic, and I'm not going to debate a fool because at some point an observer may not know which party is the greater fool.
Oh, and calling me a fascist faggot is not an argument. Yep, and myself calling you a fool is not an argument either.
Funny how all the governments in the world want the same thing, supported by all their scientists.
Here, let me fix that for you...
Funny how all the dictatorships in the world want to take America's wealth, supported by all their government employed scientists.
We have the UN IPCC issue reports periodically on how the world will be uninhabitable in 100 years unless the USA hands out money to all the poor nations of the world. They aren't demanding the USA stop burning oil, in fact if the USA stopped burning oil then many of these dictatorships would collapse as they have nothing else of value to offer in international trade. These nations couldn't bear the USA to stop burning coal either, because then coal mining in the USA could flood the market and make the coal from many of these shithole nations worthless.
What can these shithole nations make that the USA might actually buy? SOLAR PANELS!!! Because of some market manipulations and accidents of history much of the world's silicon production has landed in China. There's some others around the world but mostly if the USA is going to "go green" and still hand out dollars to foreign nations then it has to be through solar panels.
Using natural gas in cars would cut CO2 production per mile traveled in half compared to diesel fuel or gasoline, but the USA makes more than enough natural gas for itself. So, even though natural gas was "good" for the environment maybe a decade ago we see the UN declared it "bad" because exporting natural gas from shithole nations is expensive. Again because of market manipulations and accidents of history the USA imports all kinds of batteries instead of making them domestically. Oh, and same for the rare earth metals used in electric motors and windmill generators.
With the help of a UN funded adverts, compliant international media companies, and a whole lot of useful idiots in the USA, we can't have natural gas cars in the USA to cut down the CO2 we produce. Instead we get electric cars made from a whole lot of imported materials and components. Thankfully, for these shithole nations, electric vehicles are worthless for the big consumers of oil, like large trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft, so there's no real threat of the USA stopping the importation of gobs of oil.
It seems I just talked myself into another conspiracy theory.
The UN might not have created the global warming scare but they've twisted it into knots in a way that the USA is kept handing out dollars for things that it could produce equivalents on its own. If the USA started building nuclear power to replace much of the natural gas it now burns for electricity that leaves a lot of production for something else. That "something else" could be planes, trains, and automobiles. Well, maybe not planes. The USA still produces plenty of its own oil so there would be plenty for aircraft fuel without needing any imports. No need for importing solar panels either if we move to nuclear. No importing large car sized batteries. Yep, that's it. The UN worked up a scare over global warming and then crafted an excuse for the USA to not expand use of domestic nuclear and natural gas to address this scare.
If enough Americans figure this out then the whole global warming scare can't be used as a way to siphon wealth from the USA to the rest of the world. I don't know if I believe my own conspiracy theory but its been fun to think this out.
Yep, the nuclear power industry got about one billion dollars year after year for 50 years in government subsidy. Nuclear power also provides 20% of the electricity generated in the USA. Compare this to what wind and solar get in subsidies. I did some searching on this and I've been getting some conflicting numbers, they vary from 7 billion dollars to 15 billion dollars based on who is providing the number and which year is being discussed. That alone is disproportionate subsidies. Consider that wind and solar combined provide less than 10% of our electricity that is very disproportionate. That's something like a 20 times difference in subsidies, based on money spent and energy produced.
How many have actually been built on time/cost, I couldn't find any, all i can find is massive cost and time overruns.
Probably because being on time and on budget isn't newsworthy.
I'll hear people complain about the money spent on Yucca Mountain. A nuclear waste site that's been a money pit for years and still has not been declared fit for disposing of waste. Well, that's what you get with a government run project that's so politically charged. We had US senators approve funds for the building of the site, because that's federal money spent in states where senators can buy a lot of votes. When it comes to funding the inspections and licensing for declaring it suitable for nuclear waste these same senators deny the funds. Now they can play the hero to their voters because dangerous nuclear waste won't be traveling on the roads through the neighborhoods where their kids play. There is no technical reason we can't put waste in this site, it's been held up only by politics. I imagine this money pit is included in the "nuclear industry subsidy" column when it contains no nuclear material, and may never contain nuclear material if it's not maintained. Maintaining it costs money, even if it's just a security detail to keep homeless and pot smoking teens out of it.
You are living in the land of unicorns
Yep, and it seems you are as well.
I noticed a lack of citations on your claims. Here's mine:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
Nuclear power is in fact the safest source of energy we have today.
The claim on nuclear power being a prime target in war is cute. Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? Did you notice something? A big concrete dome perhaps? I'm sure if someone dropped a big enough bomb on the dome it would break open but if that's your standard then consider this, how well protected are windmills from an attack in a time of war? What of solar panels? You want to put windmills off shore too? I wonder how well protected those would be from an attack, or a drunken container ship captain.
If you want to talk about making land unusable then consider how much land would have to be plastered over with solar collectors. We can't grow crops in the shade. Oh, we put the solar panels on the roof you say? That doubles or triples the cost. When prodded on price solar power advocates talk of the price on utility scale solar, which by some estimates is as cheap as coal. When prodded on the enormous amounts of land use it suddenly and magically becomes far more expensive rooftop solar. Well, make up your mind. Do we get cheap solar and make that land unavailable for crops or housing, or do we get expensive solar and put it on our rooftops? You get one or the other to make your case, you can't have both.
Oh, another argument I hear often is that solar will get cheaper in the future. Well, nuclear will get cheaper in the future. We've been subsidizing solar for decades now with the promise that someday, with enough research and development, it will be cheaper than coal. Well, why not subsidize nuclear too to make it cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar? Oh, wait, we don't have to do that because nuclear is already there. You think that's "bollox"? Show me your numbers.
Greenpeace's latest stunt was to crash a drone into a nuclear power plant containment structure. They did this to prove that a terrorist could crash a drone into a nuclear power plant containment structure. In other words they proved themselves to be terrorists.
I was going to say that no damage was done but that's not quite true. Go do a search for Greenpeace and find a news site that allows for people to comment. The drone didn't even leave a mark on the concrete wall but Greenpeace is just looking like idiots right now. The commenters are tearing Greenpeace apart and there seems to be a lot of support for nuclear power.
Here's a video of the founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, talking about why he left and how Greenpeace has lost any basis in facts and science to their arguments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Nuclear energy is not safe and is not inexpensive when humans are involved.
It's safe...
https://ourworldindata.org/wha...
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
It's inexpensive...
https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
https://insideclimatenews.org/...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Decommissioning costs are running two orders of magnitude more expensive than proponents said they would be.
* This means that nuclear is actually much more expensive than it's stated cost and that means the next generatiosn subsidizes nuclear power used by the prior generations.
That's just a lie. The Forbes article above explicitly point out that decommissioning costs are included in the price. They also point out that past cost overruns in nuclear power were often the result of poor money management, not any flaws in the technology or construction.
Securing the nuclear waste costs millions of dollars per site per year for the foreseeable future.
* This cost increases over time. What cost $6 million 10 years ago, costs $8 million a couple years ago.
Prove it.
Private insurance will not cover the risk. That's evidence right there that the risks are unknowable or larger than proponents say.
* This means citizens are on the hook for unlimited losses. Corporations and executives get the profits up front and dump the costs on citizens.
The risks are large. That's what happens with any large project. A multi-billion dollar anything will be more than any private insurance company is willing or able to cover. This is a financial risk, which again is often a problem of poor money management and not any flaw with nuclear power itself.
It has benefits for CO2 but we sail thru the 2 degree celcius increase about 2024. Nuclear plants wouldn't be done for 20 years.
Mean construction time for a nuclear power plant is about 7.5 years, though many have been completed in 3 years. Just because the TVA took 42 years to complete a reactor at Watts Barr does not mean all reactor projects are doomed to take as long.
The public hate them.
That's changing.
https://www.statista.com/stati...
https://www.thedailystar.net/o...
I've seen people flip on their stance on nuclear power right before my eyes when I point out that Fukushima was older than Chernobyl. We don't build nuclear reactors like Fukushima and Chernobyl any more. People understand this. You can complain about nuclear being unsafe, too expensive, and so on, but that's technology from 1980 if you are lucky. I can make wind and solar look bad too if I'm taking state of the art from 1978 and compare that to modern nuclear. Should I base my car purchases from what I learned by reading Unsafe At Any Speed?
I could see using Nuclear only in extreme lattitudes where alternative energy is less practical.
Then you need your vision checked.
Most of the people going to prison for drug offenses are short on opportunity.
That's no excuse, and you should know better than to use that as an excuse.
The rest of your post is an off topic rant, assuming the above is even on topic.
All anyone has to know to understand that nuclear is a boondoggle is that it is absolutely slaughtered by basically everything else at cost per watt.
Maybe that's true in whatever nation you are from but here in the USA nuclear is quite inexpensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Before you say that solar and wind will get cheaper and beat nuclear, consider what the price of nuclear can do in the mean time. That's right, nuclear can get cheaper too. Of course there is a limit on what the bottom can be because of the prices of materials and such. I have a pretty good idea on where that bottom lies, and it doesn't look good for solar. Wind might stay reasonable, the technology for that is pretty simple. Depending on the location it's easy to run out of room for them though.
P.S. We have a solution for long haul freight using electricity, it's called rail.
You have no idea how many trucks are on the road, how far they travel, or how much freight they carry. Electric freight trucks are a fantasy, so don't even bother bringing them up.
I gave my plan on how to reduce CO2 in the USA, what's yours? I saw the math and here's a hint for you, unless you include large helpings of nuclear and/or natural gas it won't work. Maybe you can project out current trends and assume price/performance advances but that's just a fantasy then. The world doesn't run on fantasy.
The West is the criminal.
How?
It's been raping the rest of the world for centuries.
How?
Now it wants to complain about the refugees it's created.
Created them? How?
Waaaaaaaaaah.
I'm sorry if my tone came off a bit harsh, I didn't meant to hurt your feelings. Go and find your "safe space", and come back after you are done crying.
Yet another story about how the world is getting warmer. I'll get excited when I see the federal government start building nuclear reactors to replace the coal power we have now.
Nothing is safer than nuclear. Nothing has a lower CO2 footprint than nuclear. If it wasn't for the government bureaucracy holding up the issuance of licenses then we'd be seeing new nuclear reactors going online at a rate of about one per month.
Here's my conspiracy theory. I am admitting up front that this is approaching tin foil hat territory. The government doesn't want to actually solve the problem of global warming, they just want to be able to use the threat of global warming as an excuse for what they want to do.
I look at the EPA estimates on where the CO2 the USA produces comes from. 34% is electricity. Okay then, go hand out some nuclear reactor licenses and get those coal plants replaced. I find it impossible to believe that the government has not been able to find anyone capable of producing a nuclear power plant for 40 years. We get 20% of our electricity from nuclear power now so it's not like we don't know how to do it. Add in some wind, hydro, maybe even some solar and we can be on the path to taking CO2 production from electricity down to the level of a rounding error. I'm guessing if we really put our minds to it we could get a new nuclear reactor online at a rate of one per month very quickly. I say this because there was a time when the USA had half the population it has now and was able to build them at a rate of one every two months. Keep the paperwork to a sane level and we can keep the cost of electricity the same as it is now.
The next largest chunk of CO2 production in the USA is transportation, also about 34%. This is a more difficult problem because people can't merely be told to buy a new energy efficient vehicle. What happens though with the shift of electricity from coal and natural gas to nuclear then natural gas gets real cheap. While natural gas as a fuel isn't perfect it still gives half the CO2 output than gasoline per mile. I'm not sure the government needs to really do much on getting people to buy a natural gas car but merely set the rules on how to make them safe to drive. This has been done for a large number of vehicles used in commercial fleets so just make it clear to the auto makers that offering these same cars to the public will not meet resistance by regulators. This might mean road funding not being from gasoline taxes any more, so have people pay for the roads through sales taxes or something.
Here's another tin foil hat theory. No one is more addicted to gasoline vehicles than the federal government. The government makes more money through road taxes than the oil companies do in selling the fuel. The only way to break that addiction is to wean off the taxes.
Of course electric cars will play a part but passenger cars are not near as much a tax income for the government as over the road trucks, same goes for CO2. We haven't figured out long haul trucking on electricity yet, but we know how to make natural gas burn. No need for subsidies to make this work, just shift the electricity market from natural gas with nuclear power, make it clear that natural gas for transportation won't have any regulatory barriers beyond what already exists, and the market will move naturally.
There, a plan to more than halve the CO2 output from the USA. Making that happen could take less than a decade once it gets started and with proper motivation.
Don't give me more about the problems. I want solutions. Telling me the trees look different on a bicycle race is nice and all but let's get this done already.
The laws regarding drugs are abusive to the people.
I agree but that does not mean we should allow people in prison to vote.
Follow the law. If you don't like the law, then work to change it. Breaking the law means you run the risk of going to prison. So don't break the law if you don't want to go to prison and lose your ability to vote.
While I can understand that there are laws we should break out of defending a greater justice the drug laws are not one of these laws. Also understand that if you break an unjust law that it still can result in going to prison. People do this all the time, and they willingly go to prison as this is part of what it means to bring down bad law and achieve a more just world.
But can do nothing to verify that the person casting that ballot is a US citizen. Trying to require something as simple as ID is labelled as "racism" and results in lawsuits.
Here's what's racist about this, assuming minorities are too poor, ignorant, or lazy to register to vote and get an ID like everyone else.
That said I do have some objection to requiring an ID to vote.
We should be able to vote based on something like a sworn testimony of the identity of the person casting the vote much like we have done for ages with other legal documents like birth certificates, marriage licenses, licenses to drive, and so forth. Those that sign as witness to a ballot cast under false pretenses should be charged with the same crime as the person casting the ballot. Require the signature of two or three people for those voting without ID so no one person can allow a vote. Perhaps have other controls like the witnesses cannot be registered for the same party, age limits (of course), living in the community, and so forth. Having a person walk in, with no government issued ID, and no one willing to attest to their identity, should be denied a ballot.
I've seen this happen at Amateur radio license testing sessions. Someone that's under the age of 16 is unlikely to have a photo ID. Maybe they have a school ID but that's not necessarily a legal document. In such cases there's a process of something like both parents showing ID, signing something that the person taking the test is their child, there's three examiners that have to sign off on it (as do all exams, even for adults with proper ID), and this is deemed acceptable by the FCC. There's a paper trail to the examiners and the witnesses by means of noting their identifying details on a document.
Here's what I heard, and I'm willing to see evidence to the contrary, that voter participation GOES UP when voter ID laws are in place. This happens because now people have greater faith in that their vote actually counts. I don't much care if voter ID laws deny access to voting to some people. If they can't be bothered to get a photo ID to vote then I don't want them voting. I'm not racist enough to think minorities are too ignorant, poor, or lazy to get an ID and register to vote like I did.
Nothing here shows any fear of immigrants. It shows a disdain for criminals, however. Not every immigrant is a criminal.
Stop calling them "immigrants" if they have failed to enter the country legally and have no intention of obtaining citizenship. They are aliens. They are illegal aliens. If they do in fact plan to stay but did so by crossing the border illegally then they are squatters, invaders, or perhaps even spies. We used to hang spies, do we still do that? I'm getting real close to thinking we should take a stronger stance on this and declare these border crossings an invasion by a hostile nation. Perhaps even charge a few people with spying. If Mexico won't do their part in stopping this then maybe make an example of a few of the worst offenders and hang them high.
Again, I'm not saying we SHOULD hang any of these people for spying, only that I'd consider it something that needs to be discussed openly and with representatives from Mexico.
Your kids are vaccinated. So why are you worried?
Because no vaccine is 100% effective. Even with modern vaccines, and a common practice of multiple doses, there is still a small chance it won't prevent an infection. When dealing with illnesses that can result in deafness, amputation, and death, then it seems prudent to have a herd immunity to reduce the risk of infection. Vaccines are as effective as they are because of how prevalent the vaccinations are in the whole population. Some dingbat that thinks vaccines can give someone autism does not have the right to share a classroom with myself or anyone I care about. We've seen the return of the spread of these diseases in places where parents haven't vaccinated children, even in children that had their vaccinations. It's also a problem in places with a high population of people with "lost papers", to put it euphemistically.
Also there are plenty of totally valid reasons why somebody may chose not to vaccinate their kids.
I agree that people have valid reasons for not vaccinating, and I'm not talking about them. These people will often know that they are at risk and therefore rely on herd immunity for their safety, as well as other precautions one might take.
People should have the right to ignore popular trends for whatever reason (even ignorant reasons).
Sure, I'm fine with that. Just don't expect me to attend a university that has had outbreaks of meningitis or mumps because a bunch of idiots can't be bothered with getting a $150 vaccine along with buying their $150 statistics text book, $80 calculus textbook, $1500 laptop, and whatever else they spend on top of the fees and tuition to attend university. Those shots in the arm are not cheap but that is the cost of going to school. If they don't want to get the vaccines then they can go to a school that does not require them. I'll just expect that the place will be under quarantine in a few years once there's thousands of students packed buttcheek to buttcheek in a lecture hall for several hours, week after week.
Even if I'm in that lecture hall, and I got all my shots, but no one else did then I'm still at considerable risk of getting sick. Maybe I don't catch meningitis but I'm still in a room with people with compromised immune systems that might carry something that tags along with something more serious.
Even with vaccines being quite commonplace I'll still hear about someone getting sick from something. I'll read reminders of getting a "booster" when this happens because now everyone on campus has an increased risk.
Prison is a punishment. In an ideal world, it would be a punishment for anti-social behavior, but prison is often used as a political tool. For example. a lot of people in prison are there on non-violent drug charges, and a good chunk of those in there for violent charges because the prior drug charges hurt their employment opportunities. These people were unjustly put in the cage by the state, so they certainly need the ability to vote.
There was a time that I would have agreed with you that "a lot" of people are in prison for non-violent drug charges. Assuming I agree with that premise I still see a problem. These people in prison had to know the drugs they possessed were illegal, and by possessing them they run the risk of imprisonment if caught. Perhaps they should have considered voting for people to legalize these drugs BEFORE they went about using or dealing them. If they broke the law as a means of civil disobedience then this only works as an act of civil disobedience if they run the risk of imprisonment. Either way they had to know the risks of their drug possession but chose to disobey the law regardless. I'm not going to "reward" what could be an act of civil disobedience with the ability to vote while in prison because, again, if by voting they believed they could overturn the law then they should have just voted and stayed out of prison.
As for your concern about criminals buying pardons, it just doesn't work out unless there is a ridiculous, yet legitimate prison population. El Salvador has the highest homicide rate, at 83 per 100k. If we multiply that over 10 years, that's still only 0.83%, even in the murder capital of the world, easily within the margin of error. If there are enough violent criminals that they constitute a major voting block, your country has far bigger problems.
Tight elections can be won with far smaller margins. I recall that an election for POTUS was won based on the margin of less than 600 votes in a district in Florida. I agree it's a small margin of the total vote. Where I disagree is that it does not matter. Let's also consider the logistics on this, should a person in prison vote based on where they lived before being incarcerated? Based on which district the prison is in now? Where their children go to school? What of the security of the vote? Getting impartial observers into a prison to observe the vote will be difficult. Getting the ballots and election workers in and out runs a risk of an escape or some "funny" ballots.
If what you claim is true, that the voting block of prisoners are unlikely to change the results of the vote then that only means that allowing prisoners to vote gains us little to nothing in determining the outcome. It raises a lot of questions on who votes, how the votes are counted, and all kinds of logistic issues. No, we don't need prisoners voting. They can vote on laws that might get them in prison before violating those laws. As I recall a person can often petition for the right to vote being returned once out of prison, or even in some states those that served their sentence get the right to vote restored automatically. As you say the votes from those in prison are unlikely to shift the vote either way so there's no value in counting them. On top of that I don't want criminals voting in other criminals should the margin be close enough that it might get them past the post.
I think I've only run into a CD that couldn't be ripped once, and it was paired with an audio DVD that ripped and converted to MP3 just fine, so I don't think you need to worry too much.
Sure, but why bother when I'm looking for music that I'm already buying on an impulse? I'll peruse the offerings of the music in a brick and mortar store with the intent to listen to it on my truck stereo on my drive. I'll rip it when I get home so I'll have it in lossless format on my desktop and loaded as a high bit rate compressed audio to fit on my cheap iPhone. (Cheap is relative, the iPhone cost a lot of money but I saved quite a bit by getting one with less storage knowing I'll be listening to it from cheap headphones most of the time and therefore the lossy compression is tolerable.)
The only hardware with CD readers in them these days are probably off-the-shelf CDROMs inside anyway.
I don't know what is in my truck dash, or in my cheap CD player I bought at the base PX, or even what my Mac on my desk uses. What I do know is that CDDA works in all three. I'm not willing to argue with a know-nothing jobsworth at the Best Buy over the CD I bought there was not playable when I tried to play it in my truck and was trying to get cash back on it before I even left the parking lot.
No CDDA emblem means no sale. If Best Buy had a cash back policy for opened CDs that don't work, instead of like-for-like, then I'd be willing to shop there. If they wanted to keep my business then they'd need reasonable policy on returns, or stock products that met the expectations of their buyers.
I will agree that most CD players sold today, and for many years, are often really just small computers with a CD-ROM but that's not what I own. What I own are CDDA players, not computers with CD-ROM drives. Therefore I will purchase media that meets CDDA because I've read enough about the failures of non-spec CD media and Best Buy return policy that I've not bought anything at Best Buy for a very long time.
I will say that my policy on not shopping at Best Buy has changed recently. I've found Best Buy changed their attitude on the premium they can charge for the convenience of brick and mortar shopping, the prices are more reasonable now. They also have the convenience of buying online for same day pickup in a store. My policy on not buying music there has remained though.
I will agree that prisoners have the right to vote if you agree that prisoners have the right carry weapons.
I'm fine with felons released from prison being allowed to vote, just as I am fine with them being allowed to carry weapons. Prison is punishment for antisocial behavior, as well as confinement to prevent them from doing further harm to polite society. By putting people in prison we've determined in a court of law that this person has violated the social contract. With rights comes responsibilities. These people have demonstrated that they are not responsible and therefore they lose their rights for a while, and that includes the right to vote.
That's not saying we remove all ability to voice their grievances. I expect that prisoners would be allowed to voice their grievances by means of letters and phone calls to those in office. I expect them to have access to visits from legal representation, family, religious clergy and laypersons, and others that might offer guidance and means to seek a return to polite society. They can still make their grievances known, I just don't want criminals able to "buy" a shortened sentence from a governor with a promise of a pardon in return for their vote.
In my estimation the lack of childhood vaccinations really became an issue due to compulsory public education. I'm fine with you not vaccinating your child, just don't send them to the same schools as the children in my family.
Here's another solution instead of imposing compulsory vaccinations, doing away with compulsory primary education. "But we can't allow children to go uneducated!!" I agree. However it is rare for someone attending a public school to get an education. Public schools don't get paid based on the quality of their education, they get paid on the number of students attending. When attending is required then they don't even care if the students show up. They'll get marked as present regardless to make the books look good.
Abolish public education. If parents want their children to learn they can send them to a private school, educate them at home, or whatever. If parents don't much care if their children get an education then requiring attendance in a public school only distracts from the students that are there to learn. We'd be better off, as a whole, if these children weren't in school. I know that's harsh but I'm not responsible for your children, you are. If you can't come up with the funds to feed and educate your own children then it may be best if they were removed from you and adopted out to someone willing to take on that burden.
If you don't want your child vaccinated then you should be free to not send them to a school were vaccinations are required. Go set up your own school. I'm willing to let Darwinian selection run its course if it means my family don't have to suffer because of your poor choices.
If we didn't have somewhere safer and cleaner to get power, it would make sense to use nuclear, but we do, so it doesn't.
There is no energy that is safer and cleaner than nuclear. Therefore using nuclear power is a very rational choice. Believing nuclear power is unsafe or otherwise a threat greater than other energy sources is not supported by evidence. Perhaps a case can be made in some situations that nuclear is not the cheapest option but it is almost always the energy with the least risk to health and life, as well as the choice with the lowest pollution and CO2 output.
Go search the internet on deaths per terawatt, you will find nuclear power is the safest choice we have for energy right now. Go search on CO2 output per watt-hour, if you find something with a lower CO2 output then it's going to be a limited resource like hydro or an unreliable one like wind. Go search on costs, if nuclear power isn't the cheapest then it will become the cheapest once factors like a need for storage and/or backup power for unreliable energy sources like wind and solar are taken into account.
Europe is using smartphone data as a tool to help repatriate lost runaways.
Precisely. We want to see families reunited. We know that ripping children from their mothers cannot be tolerated, therefore we should do the best we can to send children back to their mothers. Or at least returned to their motherland and their extended family.
(Question: Is giving non-citizens legislative power like that insane? Asking for a friend...)
Yes, that is insane.
We are now seeing Democrats advocating for allowing people in prison to vote. I don't mean allowing people that were once in prison and now out free, I'm talking about people in prison having a polling booth available to them inside the prison walls. That's insane. I could be convinced of allowing convicted felons being allowed to vote after being released and serving out any probation. Letting people that immigrated illegally to get a vote, get a license to drive, get a job, send their kids to school, is encouraging more law breaking.