Fraud can be very hard to prove. There is already a lot of small text when it comes to emissions, even when they aren't blatantly installing cheating devices.
They're still on the hook for civil penalties. It may or may not be $18B, but this wasn't about the fines, it was about the jail time. Although how they were planning to imprison German nationals is still beyond me.
Well it already got the CEO of the company to resign. I'm sure he's rich and not going to lose much, but he presumably didn't want to be forced to resign and go into retirement.
I suppose worse could have been done to him, but its hard to say that this had zero effect on upper management.
Well... if there's no crime to charge them with, they're not technically guilty of anything.
Except for being lying asshats.
Seriously though, they already admitted to what they did. They're not trying to hide it, everyone knows they're guilty of something, it's just that what they are guilty appears to be not as serious a breach of the law as people thought it would be. Sort of like finding out that if you're caught doing 100 mph in a school zone, the ticket is the same as if you'd done 5 over. Oops.
Yet in this article, I get the very feeling that what they are trying for isn't to get some weirdos visibility, they're dealing with statistics. There's nothing gloriously weird about black or latino kids as a group. They're taking a label "gifted student" and they are upset because it isn't applied to their children in more proportional numbers. It *must* be discrimination.
Of course, in the most general sense, it is discrimination, but that's because they're trying to pick out "gifted" students. The program exists because the children in it would be held back considerably by having to maintain their learning at the pace required by the "regular" kids. If you add less capable students to that mix in the interests of "opportunity" and "fairness", you are diluting the value of the program because that honors or gifted program teacher is going to end up having to slow down the class for those who are bringing down the pace which subjects can be covered.
There *are* certain behaviors and environments which do correlate well with success in a general way. That's why they are well trod paths. Yes, there are weirdos out there who can't learn that way, but how you design a curriculum or even identify such students to begin with?
The fact is, a lot of the kids in these minority groups are unable to learn because they are in situations where learning and meeting certain standards of knowledge or skill is either difficult or distasteful for them or their parents. They get upset if their child is encouraged to speak "white" English, but for some reason they don't understand why the child can't learn from the teacher who isn't speaking African American Vernacular or heavily Spanish tinged English like they do at home.
My mother used to speak Spanish until she was 7 years old. Her parents, both Latin American Spanish speakers realized that it was hurting her schooling, so they put an end to her speaking Spanish. English only. It solved the problem. Did my family feel like it lost out on some cultural heritage by doing so? I never heard any regrets from that, but I'll take that over having been born poor any day.
I just don't think situational conformity hurts you as much as you'd believe it does. If I'm driving on a street, I don't drive 100 miles per hour, but if I'm on the track, I definitely do. The reason for that is because I need to work with other people when I'm on a public street and "being my inner race car driver" isn't safe or even practical. That doesn't mean I can't find a place and a time to do that.
You can go to school, follow the rules, work to meet a standard, and still go home and be yourself. One of the worst lies we perpetuate on ourselves is that we're being "controlled" and we have to avoid conformity at all costs. Conformity, in moderation, is why we actually have a society that is cooperative and has done the things it has done. That's why engineers work to published and tested standards as well. I may be shitty at those standards or hate the crap that I hate to do to meet them, but they serve a purpose which is important.
Well, the biggest problem is, on the face of it, everyone benefits from an education customized to their strengths and interests and a public school simply can't provide that. The gifted program and the remedial programs are means by which the schools try and tailor their classes to the students, but as you can imagine, even that is still using a very broad brush.
Schools are going to break down in a manner the pretty much all of life does. You need to meet a certain standard, and if you do so, you'll succeed. If you don't, you'll have issues, regardless of race or culture, but culture can make it much more difficult.
You can't even get a small house where I live for only $133,000 and I'm no 1%'er.
One of the things that I realized when I moved here is that all real estate is priced ridiculously high in relation to the rest of the country.
However, as a professional, you're paid proportionally to that higher real estate cost, which means you have more absolute cash after home expenses than you would if you lived in a cheaper area.
And note: cars cost the same to operate no matter where you live (barring extreme environmental situations). There might be a markup at the dealership if you're dumb enough to buy one locally, but that's easily dealt with in this age of online car purchasing.
Teslas are still out of my comfort zone for buying, but they're a lot closer than they would be if I was doing the same job in East Buttfuck, Pennsylvania.
Point being... there are places where these cars are actually a lot more affordable than they might otherwise seem to be at first glance.
One of the biggest issues in education is always going to be how to characterize the educational potential for the children who go into the program. There are challenges for every gifted program:
*Are the tests written in such a way that there is a cultural bias? *Are parents able to truly critically assess their children's intelligence or learning capacity *relative to the child's peers'? *Is the program supposed to be about advanced training for children who meet certain standards, or is its supposed to be a program that is supposed to confer equal opportunity by conferring special programs on children.
Let's take Johnny. He's a smart kid, probably has the neurochemical make-up to be some sort of a genius. The problem is, he's retained less knowledge that can be used to adequately assess his raw intelligence through a common battery of questions. Why? He has no books or educational material. His parents aren't home enough to read to him or attend to his learning. They don't have money to ensure that he attends schools. How does someone test him fairly?
Let's take Suzie, she's not necessarily at the same level as Johnny, but her parents have been able to ensure that she has obtained skills and knowledge that are considered to be desirable. It is not a requirement for Suzie's parent's to be rich or white or asian, but those backgrounds make it a lot easier for Suzie to be exposed to knowledge that will be on that test because there is a higher overall income for those families. The parents have better jobs, they can spend money and time on their kids, on average. In some cases, there is also a huge cultural value placed on education.
The reality is: poor kids are not always going to fail to be seen as gifted, but there are huge challenges. Kids are tested young for their intelligence, and so parental involvement is huge at that point. It doesn't matter if I have Einstein's brain if that brain potential is underdeveloped. Brains aren't CPUs that you can hook up a hard drive to and then they produce at their capability.
In other words, if you want to run a program for children seen as gifted, you have to define what gifted *is*, and then test for that. If you're testing children who are more advanced in their skills at a certain point, the fact is, you're going to have more rich and racial privileged kids in there. And you're *not* going to be able to change that by simply being more "inclusive". You need to raise the level of skills of the less skilled kids. And the only way to do that is extra work.
On the other hand, if you want to find people who have pure, raw potential, irrespective of background, you're probably going to have to start testing brain chemistry, even looking at DNA. That may work, insofar as ensuring that there is a purely "potential" based criteria. But even then, if you want those children to actually retain skills and knowledge, you're going to need to make up for their lack of opportunity in the home for extra learning and discipline.
Uh, the fact that there is a "black vote" in the USA is not exactly a controversial position.
Yes, having a certain skin tone is meaningless if you remove the other variables.
However, having that skin tone in the context of being African-descended living in the USA has certain cultural, social, and economic implications. And the vast majority in that grouping, for whatever reason, have not and are not going to vote for present-day Republicans.
I'm not a big fan of the Democrats, but honestly you're absolutely right. I think the conservative wing of the Republican party has lost the culture wars and they are now just squawking on their way down. It's embarrassing.
And some of that BS is good riddance, although I am very concerned that the complete failure of the Republicans will mean that the tendency towards all encompassing government is now unstoppable. Entitlements and the NSA are just two different faces stamped on the same coin.
I'm not really comforted by the Democratic options either. Hillary is a corporate stooge, and Sanders is... well a stereotypical white liberal who would do a fine job running Sweden where everyone is also white and thinks the same, but I don't think his ideas scale. As for Biden, it says a lot about how bad the Democratic field is that he, of all people, could be a front runner if he stepped in.
Nevertheless, the fact is, the Democratic party has won the war until the Republicans either break up or there is an internal revolution that completely overthrows the existing status quo. The Democrats own the needed voting blocs, and as in a lopsided game of Monopoly, the Republicans don't really have many places to land that aren't already owned.
To be a factor in elections again, the R's are going to need to take a hunk off the Democrats, just like Reagan did. Not impossible, of course, if you look at the wide variety of groups the Democrats take for granted. Unions, Hispanics, Blacks, even gays could see that a Republican party that drops some dead ideas that have lost the war for them are now a party that can advocate for them more strongly than the Big Tent might.
Once the parties have figured out that Republican or Democrat ain't nothing but a name, a shift could easily happen. Probably not this election though. This one is going to the Democrats.
You're mostly right, but I don't think it is determined in the same way you're thinking.
There may or may not be a committee that does that, but the real fact is that certain paths are pre-determined for a candidate these days. It's not that there is a conspiracy, it's that the government has attained a weight and momentum that allowed it to become an unstoppable avalanche already, and nothing is slowing it down. Certainly not some clown elected for two four year terms.
He or she isn't going to start another war He or she isn't going to be able to do much to reform the government They might be able to get some new entitlements through, because everyone loves money for nothing, but don't expect for a second that existing ones will be reformed in any meaningful sense.
Such a person might do something, but they best gift that they're going to get is if some outside force does something to the US which coincides with their campaign promises, because they sure as hell won't be able to do anything from within.
Like Trump, Sanders really has difficult road. People might be turning out for him, but people turned out for Ron Paul too.
He's easy to like if you don't like the other options. The problem is, like Trump, he's no more a real Democrat than Trump is a real Republican. You or I may not care, but the actual party organizers DO care, and they have a lot of power in the primaries. Sanders might fare better than any Republican, but so will just about any other Democrat.
Unless they *need* Sanders to win, and they currently don't, he's not someone they need to play nice with.
Republicans aren't upset about Hillary, they love her. Which is to say they think she's a much easier mark.
However, that "easy" label is one that they are secretly sweating about because she's still likely to beat any of them in a general election just because of how bad the Republican field is and how incapable they are of nominating a real moderate. Even with the email situation and Benghazi she's still the winner at this point.
Unless they indict her or something, of course.
Trump is a clown. He won't get the nomination, but he is having an effect. Mostly a bad one for the R's because he's making them all roll around in the mud with the Tea Partiers and the anti-immigration folks instead of being able to safely ignore them like the Democrats can with the Black and wacky-left vote.
Sanders has even less of a chance than Trump because of the way the DNC and the convention is stacked against him. Most of the Democrats can be Sanders-lite and still win, and everyone knows that. The Democrats have their voting blocs so well lined up that you have Unions voting for the same candidates that want to let more low paid immigrants into the country, thus driving down wages even more. Think about that for a second.
This is the sideshow. I'm waiting to see who actually emerges as the real Republican candidate, but you can be pretty sure that Hillary will be on that ballot unless Biden decides to run. Biden's really the only person who can take away the nomination from Hillary.
Of course, Biden running could split the Obama Democrats from the Clinton Democrats. And here you thought that the Republicans were the only ones who might fall apart.
The President needs a lot of information in order to do his job. It can be difficult to tell the people who you expect to get you that information that you don't want them doing so much of that.
The good shit that the NSA has on the President is that they're the people the President needs to combat threats. The problem is that they've gone outside their mandate, but their actual function will make it difficult for any President to just walk in there with a broom and kick them all out.
So the reason NSA is calling the shots isn't their files on everyone in power, it's that they're the go-to bureaucrats that the President needs to work with to do his job. They've built up their position in the government for decades, do you think one guy is going to simply blow in there for 4-8 years and change all that without a lot of experience and an understanding of what he's really going up against?
I never doubted that Obama wanted to make changes, I just doubted that he knew what he was getting into. That's how he managed to get captured despite the hopeful rhetoric and good intentions. It isn't enough to be popular or beat some lackluster Republican candidates to face off against the bureaucracies, especially the intelligence bureaucracies.
At this point, he should feel lucky to have even managed to get Obamacare through with a Democratic majority in Congress.
As someone who was occasionally subjected to those things, I agree that they really didn't change who I am, and I was not especially happy to be dragged to them.
On the other hand, most of it was socialization which was aimed at getting me into social situations, and the reason for that was to ensure that I could interact with people who did not have the same introversion as myself. It was building skills that I wouldn't otherwise have. For some people that is fun, for others of us, it is difficult but on reflection it was necessary.
Sometimes "fun" isn't fun, but it may have a purpose otherwise.
Of course, if the goal of the parents is to actually turn the kid into an extrovert, then that's not right, but if it is to make sure that they have the ability to interact with society when they need to, then it may be necessary. Needless to say, it should be done only while recognizing how draining social interaction can be for those children.
Point taken on that, although I'd point out that in a democracy, sometimes having the best numbers also contributes substantially to you being a good president. This is because you have the popularity to get things done that need to get done in spite of opposition.
That doesn't mean someone like Trump will make good use of that sort of popularity, but it does mean that you could put a genius in the Presidency, but if he's unpopular, he'll find he can't get anything done and be remembered as mediocre at best. That's because leaders need to be perceived as having leadership and legitimacy, and numbers are the most clear way of making that case.
It is more important to me that the money is consistently budgeted from year to year and kept on track than for any "date" to be set for the end of the program.
If you spend $1 billion (or its inflationary equivalent) on this program per year, we will get to Mars and colonize it. What we should not be saying is that, "if we can't do it in 50 years, it isn't worth budgeting for".
Going to space regularly is going to cost a colossal amount of money, but it need not all be spent in the next ten years. I would earnestly like to see a Mars landing in my lifetime, but I'd be more pleased to see that getting off Earth is a moderately funded, but permanent project of the human race, rather than something we argue about every couple of years.
Sure, but honestly, how much value is actually being lost in this manner? Are you wasting the time of engineers or physicists? No. This is what they do. They're not going to turn into people who grow crops for a living or medical doctors.
Most of these engineers and scientists *want* to work on this stuff. Some could go either way, I'm sure, but I'd say that most of them would be proud to say they work on the space program. They don't want to work on cars. They don't care about high speed internet. They figure that people have that in hand already. They also help those other engineers by pushing the boundaries. You want better internet to rural areas? Why don't you ask the guys who try and get the networking set up to Mars how to make it happen? Sure, there is some apples and oranges, but there are a lot of practical considerations that go into edge case thinking.
The actual materials spent on Mars would be negligible. Sure, you need high technology to build the ships to make the trips, but one person in the US probably goes through more alloys and scrap metal in their lives than would be sent in such an expedition.
I've said it before. This isn't a zero sum game. You aren't killing a hundred thousand starving children in war torn Africa by having a space program. What is killing those kids is corrupt government and war. Not you. And half the money you spend on charity for those kids goes to the militias that are carrying out the attacks because the aid gets intercepted. Spend more money on them, and you may well feed more kids, but you're also feeding more militias and corrupt dictators.
If you set up conditions where starving people can grow their own crops they *will* be able to feed themselves. What they cannot do is operate a space program. We need to understand that we need to give back, but also understand that we'll never be able to give back enough in the ways that will end war and suffering. What we can do that no one else can, is see to the survival of our species and to push humanity forward because we have the resources, the knowledge, and the capability to do it.
It is our duty to use our privilege to move humanity forward. Otherwise we have suffered and caused suffering for no purpose but to disassemble it so that we can return to the morass of trying to end what is never going to end, pointless suffering.
The private sector is quite capable of investing things that do not show immediate profit.
Case in point: All tech start ups.
And in that case, they're quite capable of investing in things that never show a profit.
The reason that the private sector does not engage in human launches and human landings and such is that it does not have a path to profit where the risk is worth it yet for companies that new. They need to build up their capabilities and income before accepting those sorts of risks.
The difference between government and private business isn't simply profit, but the "path to profitability" and what risks can be sustained against investment.
Taxes we know we'll probably never get back what we put into it. We accept that, but also expect that money to be used for "important things". Businesses have investors, and the investors will accept risk, but controlled risk, because the investors are relying on their investment to make money back for them. That makes them slower to do revolutionary things, but they do find the way to take the revolution into a sustainable process.
If you mean putting humans on Mars isn't needed for mapping or geology missions, you're right. But exploration isn't just bringing back the facts of remote places for scientists to go over. Exploration is also humans going to places and being there and seeing it for themselves because, if we're serious about the survival of the species in the very long term, that is exactly what we will have to be able to do.
"I would like to see alcohol and tobacco taxed at a rate where they are health neutral."
Then all you get is a black market. You can only tax those things to just before the point where it becomes worth it for organized crime to get involved. That will never get you to the point where they are health neutral.
If you really want this all to break even, the best thing you can do is deny certain benefits to people who engage in high risk activities. Of course no one will do that. And I am not even suggesting that we do. Health care is a black hole. You will never get back your investment. You either do it out of charity, or you don't do it at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Fraud can be very hard to prove. There is already a lot of small text when it comes to emissions, even when they aren't blatantly installing cheating devices.
They're still on the hook for civil penalties. It may or may not be $18B, but this wasn't about the fines, it was about the jail time. Although how they were planning to imprison German nationals is still beyond me.
Seems particularly appropriate. Too bad I couldn't use a loophole to get me a VW for free that actually works as advertised.
Well it already got the CEO of the company to resign. I'm sure he's rich and not going to lose much, but he presumably didn't want to be forced to resign and go into retirement.
I suppose worse could have been done to him, but its hard to say that this had zero effect on upper management.
Well... if there's no crime to charge them with, they're not technically guilty of anything.
Except for being lying asshats.
Seriously though, they already admitted to what they did. They're not trying to hide it, everyone knows they're guilty of something, it's just that what they are guilty appears to be not as serious a breach of the law as people thought it would be. Sort of like finding out that if you're caught doing 100 mph in a school zone, the ticket is the same as if you'd done 5 over. Oops.
Yet in this article, I get the very feeling that what they are trying for isn't to get some weirdos visibility, they're dealing with statistics. There's nothing gloriously weird about black or latino kids as a group. They're taking a label "gifted student" and they are upset because it isn't applied to their children in more proportional numbers. It *must* be discrimination.
Of course, in the most general sense, it is discrimination, but that's because they're trying to pick out "gifted" students. The program exists because the children in it would be held back considerably by having to maintain their learning at the pace required by the "regular" kids. If you add less capable students to that mix in the interests of "opportunity" and "fairness", you are diluting the value of the program because that honors or gifted program teacher is going to end up having to slow down the class for those who are bringing down the pace which subjects can be covered.
There *are* certain behaviors and environments which do correlate well with success in a general way. That's why they are well trod paths. Yes, there are weirdos out there who can't learn that way, but how you design a curriculum or even identify such students to begin with?
The fact is, a lot of the kids in these minority groups are unable to learn because they are in situations where learning and meeting certain standards of knowledge or skill is either difficult or distasteful for them or their parents. They get upset if their child is encouraged to speak "white" English, but for some reason they don't understand why the child can't learn from the teacher who isn't speaking African American Vernacular or heavily Spanish tinged English like they do at home.
My mother used to speak Spanish until she was 7 years old. Her parents, both Latin American Spanish speakers realized that it was hurting her schooling, so they put an end to her speaking Spanish. English only. It solved the problem. Did my family feel like it lost out on some cultural heritage by doing so? I never heard any regrets from that, but I'll take that over having been born poor any day.
I just don't think situational conformity hurts you as much as you'd believe it does. If I'm driving on a street, I don't drive 100 miles per hour, but if I'm on the track, I definitely do. The reason for that is because I need to work with other people when I'm on a public street and "being my inner race car driver" isn't safe or even practical. That doesn't mean I can't find a place and a time to do that.
You can go to school, follow the rules, work to meet a standard, and still go home and be yourself. One of the worst lies we perpetuate on ourselves is that we're being "controlled" and we have to avoid conformity at all costs. Conformity, in moderation, is why we actually have a society that is cooperative and has done the things it has done. That's why engineers work to published and tested standards as well. I may be shitty at those standards or hate the crap that I hate to do to meet them, but they serve a purpose which is important.
Well, the biggest problem is, on the face of it, everyone benefits from an education customized to their strengths and interests and a public school simply can't provide that. The gifted program and the remedial programs are means by which the schools try and tailor their classes to the students, but as you can imagine, even that is still using a very broad brush.
Schools are going to break down in a manner the pretty much all of life does. You need to meet a certain standard, and if you do so, you'll succeed. If you don't, you'll have issues, regardless of race or culture, but culture can make it much more difficult.
The first car. Ugly as fuck.
The second car... not too shabby, but you had better not own it anywhere where hail falls... ever.
You can't even get a small house where I live for only $133,000 and I'm no 1%'er.
One of the things that I realized when I moved here is that all real estate is priced ridiculously high in relation to the rest of the country.
However, as a professional, you're paid proportionally to that higher real estate cost, which means you have more absolute cash after home expenses than you would if you lived in a cheaper area.
And note: cars cost the same to operate no matter where you live (barring extreme environmental situations). There might be a markup at the dealership if you're dumb enough to buy one locally, but that's easily dealt with in this age of online car purchasing.
Teslas are still out of my comfort zone for buying, but they're a lot closer than they would be if I was doing the same job in East Buttfuck, Pennsylvania.
Point being... there are places where these cars are actually a lot more affordable than they might otherwise seem to be at first glance.
One of the biggest issues in education is always going to be how to characterize the educational potential for the children who go into the program. There are challenges for every gifted program:
*Are the tests written in such a way that there is a cultural bias?
*Are parents able to truly critically assess their children's intelligence or learning capacity *relative to the child's peers'?
*Is the program supposed to be about advanced training for children who meet certain standards, or is its supposed to be a program that is supposed to confer equal opportunity by conferring special programs on children.
Let's take Johnny. He's a smart kid, probably has the neurochemical make-up to be some sort of a genius. The problem is, he's retained less knowledge that can be used to adequately assess his raw intelligence through a common battery of questions. Why? He has no books or educational material. His parents aren't home enough to read to him or attend to his learning. They don't have money to ensure that he attends schools. How does someone test him fairly?
Let's take Suzie, she's not necessarily at the same level as Johnny, but her parents have been able to ensure that she has obtained skills and knowledge that are considered to be desirable. It is not a requirement for Suzie's parent's to be rich or white or asian, but those backgrounds make it a lot easier for Suzie to be exposed to knowledge that will be on that test because there is a higher overall income for those families. The parents have better jobs, they can spend money and time on their kids, on average. In some cases, there is also a huge cultural value placed on education.
The reality is: poor kids are not always going to fail to be seen as gifted, but there are huge challenges. Kids are tested young for their intelligence, and so parental involvement is huge at that point. It doesn't matter if I have Einstein's brain if that brain potential is underdeveloped. Brains aren't CPUs that you can hook up a hard drive to and then they produce at their capability.
In other words, if you want to run a program for children seen as gifted, you have to define what gifted *is*, and then test for that. If you're testing children who are more advanced in their skills at a certain point, the fact is, you're going to have more rich and racial privileged kids in there. And you're *not* going to be able to change that by simply being more "inclusive". You need to raise the level of skills of the less skilled kids. And the only way to do that is extra work.
On the other hand, if you want to find people who have pure, raw potential, irrespective of background, you're probably going to have to start testing brain chemistry, even looking at DNA. That may work, insofar as ensuring that there is a purely "potential" based criteria. But even then, if you want those children to actually retain skills and knowledge, you're going to need to make up for their lack of opportunity in the home for extra learning and discipline.
Uh, the fact that there is a "black vote" in the USA is not exactly a controversial position.
Yes, having a certain skin tone is meaningless if you remove the other variables.
However, having that skin tone in the context of being African-descended living in the USA has certain cultural, social, and economic implications. And the vast majority in that grouping, for whatever reason, have not and are not going to vote for present-day Republicans.
I'm not a big fan of the Democrats, but honestly you're absolutely right. I think the conservative wing of the Republican party has lost the culture wars and they are now just squawking on their way down. It's embarrassing.
And some of that BS is good riddance, although I am very concerned that the complete failure of the Republicans will mean that the tendency towards all encompassing government is now unstoppable. Entitlements and the NSA are just two different faces stamped on the same coin.
I'm not really comforted by the Democratic options either. Hillary is a corporate stooge, and Sanders is... well a stereotypical white liberal who would do a fine job running Sweden where everyone is also white and thinks the same, but I don't think his ideas scale. As for Biden, it says a lot about how bad the Democratic field is that he, of all people, could be a front runner if he stepped in.
Nevertheless, the fact is, the Democratic party has won the war until the Republicans either break up or there is an internal revolution that completely overthrows the existing status quo. The Democrats own the needed voting blocs, and as in a lopsided game of Monopoly, the Republicans don't really have many places to land that aren't already owned.
To be a factor in elections again, the R's are going to need to take a hunk off the Democrats, just like Reagan did. Not impossible, of course, if you look at the wide variety of groups the Democrats take for granted. Unions, Hispanics, Blacks, even gays could see that a Republican party that drops some dead ideas that have lost the war for them are now a party that can advocate for them more strongly than the Big Tent might.
Once the parties have figured out that Republican or Democrat ain't nothing but a name, a shift could easily happen. Probably not this election though. This one is going to the Democrats.
You're mostly right, but I don't think it is determined in the same way you're thinking.
There may or may not be a committee that does that, but the real fact is that certain paths are pre-determined for a candidate these days. It's not that there is a conspiracy, it's that the government has attained a weight and momentum that allowed it to become an unstoppable avalanche already, and nothing is slowing it down. Certainly not some clown elected for two four year terms.
He or she isn't going to start another war
He or she isn't going to be able to do much to reform the government
They might be able to get some new entitlements through, because everyone loves money for nothing, but don't expect for a second that existing ones will be reformed in any meaningful sense.
Such a person might do something, but they best gift that they're going to get is if some outside force does something to the US which coincides with their campaign promises, because they sure as hell won't be able to do anything from within.
Like Trump, Sanders really has difficult road. People might be turning out for him, but people turned out for Ron Paul too.
He's easy to like if you don't like the other options. The problem is, like Trump, he's no more a real Democrat than Trump is a real Republican. You or I may not care, but the actual party organizers DO care, and they have a lot of power in the primaries. Sanders might fare better than any Republican, but so will just about any other Democrat.
Unless they *need* Sanders to win, and they currently don't, he's not someone they need to play nice with.
Republicans aren't upset about Hillary, they love her. Which is to say they think she's a much easier mark.
However, that "easy" label is one that they are secretly sweating about because she's still likely to beat any of them in a general election just because of how bad the Republican field is and how incapable they are of nominating a real moderate. Even with the email situation and Benghazi she's still the winner at this point.
Unless they indict her or something, of course.
Trump is a clown. He won't get the nomination, but he is having an effect. Mostly a bad one for the R's because he's making them all roll around in the mud with the Tea Partiers and the anti-immigration folks instead of being able to safely ignore them like the Democrats can with the Black and wacky-left vote.
Sanders has even less of a chance than Trump because of the way the DNC and the convention is stacked against him. Most of the Democrats can be Sanders-lite and still win, and everyone knows that. The Democrats have their voting blocs so well lined up that you have Unions voting for the same candidates that want to let more low paid immigrants into the country, thus driving down wages even more. Think about that for a second.
This is the sideshow. I'm waiting to see who actually emerges as the real Republican candidate, but you can be pretty sure that Hillary will be on that ballot unless Biden decides to run. Biden's really the only person who can take away the nomination from Hillary.
Of course, Biden running could split the Obama Democrats from the Clinton Democrats. And here you thought that the Republicans were the only ones who might fall apart.
The President needs a lot of information in order to do his job. It can be difficult to tell the people who you expect to get you that information that you don't want them doing so much of that.
The good shit that the NSA has on the President is that they're the people the President needs to combat threats. The problem is that they've gone outside their mandate, but their actual function will make it difficult for any President to just walk in there with a broom and kick them all out.
So the reason NSA is calling the shots isn't their files on everyone in power, it's that they're the go-to bureaucrats that the President needs to work with to do his job. They've built up their position in the government for decades, do you think one guy is going to simply blow in there for 4-8 years and change all that without a lot of experience and an understanding of what he's really going up against?
I never doubted that Obama wanted to make changes, I just doubted that he knew what he was getting into. That's how he managed to get captured despite the hopeful rhetoric and good intentions. It isn't enough to be popular or beat some lackluster Republican candidates to face off against the bureaucracies, especially the intelligence bureaucracies.
At this point, he should feel lucky to have even managed to get Obamacare through with a Democratic majority in Congress.
As someone who was occasionally subjected to those things, I agree that they really didn't change who I am, and I was not especially happy to be dragged to them.
On the other hand, most of it was socialization which was aimed at getting me into social situations, and the reason for that was to ensure that I could interact with people who did not have the same introversion as myself. It was building skills that I wouldn't otherwise have. For some people that is fun, for others of us, it is difficult but on reflection it was necessary.
Sometimes "fun" isn't fun, but it may have a purpose otherwise.
Of course, if the goal of the parents is to actually turn the kid into an extrovert, then that's not right, but if it is to make sure that they have the ability to interact with society when they need to, then it may be necessary. Needless to say, it should be done only while recognizing how draining social interaction can be for those children.
Point taken on that, although I'd point out that in a democracy, sometimes having the best numbers also contributes substantially to you being a good president. This is because you have the popularity to get things done that need to get done in spite of opposition.
That doesn't mean someone like Trump will make good use of that sort of popularity, but it does mean that you could put a genius in the Presidency, but if he's unpopular, he'll find he can't get anything done and be remembered as mediocre at best. That's because leaders need to be perceived as having leadership and legitimacy, and numbers are the most clear way of making that case.
They're certainly working at it. However, they're not going to the Moon, let alone Mars.
I think working at commercial spaceflight is not only positive, but necessary for the future, but what they're doing barely qualifies as spaceflight.
I sincerely hope you are joking.
It is more important to me that the money is consistently budgeted from year to year and kept on track than for any "date" to be set for the end of the program.
If you spend $1 billion (or its inflationary equivalent) on this program per year, we will get to Mars and colonize it. What we should not be saying is that, "if we can't do it in 50 years, it isn't worth budgeting for".
Going to space regularly is going to cost a colossal amount of money, but it need not all be spent in the next ten years. I would earnestly like to see a Mars landing in my lifetime, but I'd be more pleased to see that getting off Earth is a moderately funded, but permanent project of the human race, rather than something we argue about every couple of years.
Sure, but honestly, how much value is actually being lost in this manner? Are you wasting the time of engineers or physicists? No. This is what they do. They're not going to turn into people who grow crops for a living or medical doctors.
Most of these engineers and scientists *want* to work on this stuff. Some could go either way, I'm sure, but I'd say that most of them would be proud to say they work on the space program. They don't want to work on cars. They don't care about high speed internet. They figure that people have that in hand already. They also help those other engineers by pushing the boundaries. You want better internet to rural areas? Why don't you ask the guys who try and get the networking set up to Mars how to make it happen? Sure, there is some apples and oranges, but there are a lot of practical considerations that go into edge case thinking.
The actual materials spent on Mars would be negligible. Sure, you need high technology to build the ships to make the trips, but one person in the US probably goes through more alloys and scrap metal in their lives than would be sent in such an expedition.
I've said it before. This isn't a zero sum game. You aren't killing a hundred thousand starving children in war torn Africa by having a space program. What is killing those kids is corrupt government and war. Not you. And half the money you spend on charity for those kids goes to the militias that are carrying out the attacks because the aid gets intercepted. Spend more money on them, and you may well feed more kids, but you're also feeding more militias and corrupt dictators.
If you set up conditions where starving people can grow their own crops they *will* be able to feed themselves. What they cannot do is operate a space program. We need to understand that we need to give back, but also understand that we'll never be able to give back enough in the ways that will end war and suffering. What we can do that no one else can, is see to the survival of our species and to push humanity forward because we have the resources, the knowledge, and the capability to do it.
It is our duty to use our privilege to move humanity forward. Otherwise we have suffered and caused suffering for no purpose but to disassemble it so that we can return to the morass of trying to end what is never going to end, pointless suffering.
The private sector is quite capable of investing things that do not show immediate profit.
Case in point: All tech start ups.
And in that case, they're quite capable of investing in things that never show a profit.
The reason that the private sector does not engage in human launches and human landings and such is that it does not have a path to profit where the risk is worth it yet for companies that new. They need to build up their capabilities and income before accepting those sorts of risks.
The difference between government and private business isn't simply profit, but the "path to profitability" and what risks can be sustained against investment.
Taxes we know we'll probably never get back what we put into it. We accept that, but also expect that money to be used for "important things". Businesses have investors, and the investors will accept risk, but controlled risk, because the investors are relying on their investment to make money back for them. That makes them slower to do revolutionary things, but they do find the way to take the revolution into a sustainable process.
If you mean putting humans on Mars isn't needed for mapping or geology missions, you're right. But exploration isn't just bringing back the facts of remote places for scientists to go over. Exploration is also humans going to places and being there and seeing it for themselves because, if we're serious about the survival of the species in the very long term, that is exactly what we will have to be able to do.
"I would like to see alcohol and tobacco taxed at a rate where they are health neutral."
Then all you get is a black market. You can only tax those things to just before the point where it becomes worth it for organized crime to get involved. That will never get you to the point where they are health neutral.
If you really want this all to break even, the best thing you can do is deny certain benefits to people who engage in high risk activities. Of course no one will do that. And I am not even suggesting that we do. Health care is a black hole. You will never get back your investment. You either do it out of charity, or you don't do it at all.