Agreed. 'Proceed with caution' is the best method for approaching technological progress. I must say though that on this one I sympathize much more with the technophobic instinct than usual, as it might not be possible to gauge just how cautious a truly cautious approach would need to be. Ecosystems (and gene sharing within them) are vastly more complicated than we can at present hope to model down to the probable impact of the introduction of a new or altered phenotype. I would say that proper caution would be to wait until computer science has yielded robust enough modeling algorithms and badassed enough machines to run them on to have a better handle upon what exactly we might be monkeying with.
Of course, human curiosity and human greed will outstrip any sense of caution quite quickly if these technologies become as prolific as Dyson predicts.
By spectacular I think you mean "The RIAA will have to start killing copyright violators indiscriminately". Otherwise, I wouldn't hold my breath. After all, we just had a Vice-president assert that his authority lies beyond the reach of law, logic, common sense, and the Constitution of the United States, and there was no call for impeachment from the masses, but rather only vaguely cranky inane ineffectual grumbling. If people aren't aroused to action by that sort of outrage, I don't think random little folk getting legally pummeled by the RIAA, for using software that most older people don't even comprehend much less use, is gonna get people rowdy.
What's the difference between 'self-righteous indignation' and simply 'righteous indignation'? After all, the only ways a person can really register their displeasure is with either action or speech, and both proceed from the self. How is a photographer supposed to be indignant about photography rules except through photography (or a boycott thereof)? Not everyone is an eloquent writer or public speaker (re:write to your congresscritter! and such sundry crappy advice), and it seems to me appropriate that a person act or withhold action through their medium of skill and choice. That a person is personally affronted by a rule that affects their preferred activity is no call to impugn the indignation as purely self-interested; that stems from a darkly cynical view of human nature that is both basically unsupportable by evidence and nihilistic in general. I hate nihilism; it's exhausting and yet isn't even an ethos.;)
NYC, being a large tourist-industrial city, *will* miss tourism dollars, esp. if other photographers/filmographers are as 'self-righteously indignant' as GP. Like many large cities with burgeoning service-oriented industry, NYC's economy relies heavily on visiting dollars.
On a different note, I am indignant (and I dislike photography passionately) because I happen to believe that the public space should be publicly accessible in all ways that preserve the public order (and a few that don't). We all walk around with two cameras (if we are lucky) every damn day, whose resolution and video-motion capabilities are truly impressive; their only fault is a bad I/O system and a universally incompatible codec. People in public should be able to share what they see in a format that is export-friendly, and I can for myself find no good argument why that should not be so.
I think you make some interesting points. However, I think that something which runs beneath your arguments is an unspoken presumption that I think is evidentially problematic: human beings are rational cost/benefit maximizers. I don't believe that people, even in regards to large or life-changing decision, tend to use exclusively or even preferentially the logical-rational mode to make decisions. Emotionality, sentimentality, schizotypy, and prejudice tend to be at least equal factors to reason in any major decision. As such, while I agree that increasing the size or ponderousness of a bureaucracy is not a solution, simply advertising options and presenting choices often is not sufficient (especially when the goal is to induce a person to act on behalf of a disabled actor over whom they hold responsibility, such as their child).
Likewise, while the decision to remain self-employed can in many cases be due to a simple preference to "not have a boss", that decision and the resultant impoverishment of health coverage has effects (economic and social) that radiate far outside of the domain of that person. Since as you say (and I agree) it is important that a society not interfere with the choice simpliciter to not have a boss which for that person seems to better approach their pursuit of fulfillment, happiness, etc., that nonetheless a society can and should act to limit the impact or frequency of those negative effects to others that result from the decision. Since the pursuit of happiness and the actions and states that a person chooses to achieve it need not be and usually are not strictly logical, any social system of support should operate in a mode that is effective even in the relative absence of rational actors.
Is every call made over state lines in pursuance of some act of commerce? If not, I don't see how Congress could claim the right to regulate every call. BTW, they are called enumerated powers; the list is exhaustive of what they can do, point being if it isn't on the list, it isn't something they can do. At least, that was the original notion...
Fraud generally requires either a pecuniary motive, or commission of the act in furtherance of some other crime. Simply putting some name that is not my own on a letter is neither of these things. I could sign my letters "Harry Potter" and the name as such wouldn't even be impersonation because the "victim" doesn't exist. Is this Mail Fraud? I don't think so...unless I was attempting to somehow profit from putting "Harry Potter" as my name.
Wouldn't it be fun to see the American people vote for the Presidential candidate from one party and the Vice Presidential candidate from a different party? Of course most people vote a party ticket so that's not likely to happen.
You know, it's funny; I have half-facetiously argued lately that a Paul/Obama or Obama/Paul ticket might be good, and I've heard others say the same with varying levels of seriousness. Who knows...?;)
As far as I know...they've been around for quite a long time & nobody's cried about it being a national ID. What's the difference between this "Real ID" & my passport...except for the cost & not coming from the majesties at homeland insecurity?
The difference is that a passport is not necessary for use in most contexts it can be used for; you only need a passport to travel abroad. The fact that it has lateral functionality is a nice bonus but is otherwise unremarkable. The difference is the necessity of possession of one of these RealID cards to do a host of things, such that you couldn't substitute a different form of identity (such as, apropos, a passport) in its place to do those things. The sheer breadth of activities for which this ID would be necessary is what gets myself and others cranky.
I guarantee there's at least one person who has knowingly chosen not to have health insurance.
Of course, you are right. At least one almost certainly exists. I figured I was communicating with an audience that could distinguish between descriptive statments meant to generalize over a class and those that are meant to apply directly to every member of that class. If it makes you feel better, I'll insert the word "nearly" before "nobody" and now there is no more ambiguity of that sort.
Second, the self-employed who do not have health insurance do choose not to have it, because, for them, it's better to be self-employed without insurance than to work for someone else and have it...
I strongly suspect that they "choose" not to have insurance because they "choose" to prioritize their shelter and food over health when making economic decisions for themselves. This "choice" is due to the inaccessibility by price of private insurance to individuals as opposed to plans bundled with corporate employment.
Lastly, children suffer the consequences of their parents decisions. That's life, and it convey any responsibility on you or me to change things for them. You can't force adults to conform to your values, not without sacrificing some pretty important values (like liberty) along the way.
That is true to a point. However, one cannot be so obtuse as to recognize that independent of their parents, children are *human beings* and as such have the right to pursue their continued right to exist, above and beyond some conception of parental sovereignty over childrens' lives. If a parent makes a decision callously indifferent to the continued survival of a child under their care, it is not a significant "infringement of liberty" to either aid the child apart from the parents' wishes or remove te child from the care of the person who gives no weight to their continued health. As you elude, these sorts of chains of logic if not mitigated by a proper respect of domain can lead to infringements of *real* parental rights, such as teaching a child whatever values they desire and correcting and punishing children within certain bounds of reason (a parent does not have the right, for example, to torture a child in order to enforce discipline). But the idea that a parent abrogates their responsibility for the basic care of their child is a "too bad, so sad, but not my problem" sort of situation is morally repugnant and unduly eliminative of a society's role in protecting its members from harm not resultant from that own members' actions.
I agree wholeheartedly that the calculus of resource distribution is hideously complicated in the case of Health Care. What especially seems to complicate the matter are two factors: one, we have a hard time coming to terms with monetizing the worth of human life (an eminently reasonable hestitation, I think), and two, sickness and health are hideously unpredictable factors where things even as simple as length of treatment cannot be determined ahead of time.
My thing is we can make even reasonable conservative assumptions about these factors and still come to a conclusion that strongly tends towards the favorability of greatly expanding care. For example, economically everyone suffers when a person is sick, and benefits when a person is well. Even a poor laborer who is sick is a huge potential economic liability for society, as his capacity to continue earning not only affects his employer (who depends on his labor) but also his family, and the likelihood that they will maintain or improve their living circumstances (which relates to the probabilities that they will engage in behaviors, like crime, that are economically net-negatives).
If a smoothly functioning productive society is a healthy society, then we should err a bit on the side of improving care despite increasing costs, till at least we reach a level of strictly diminishing returns. I think a mixed system might work, but only if there were a serious (not simply nominal) attempt to provide decent subsidized medical coverage for preventative care and a decent amount of continuing or chronic care, such that those who depend upon supplementary private coverage are driven to doing so for reasons of comfort and not necessity. I don't believe that the HMO industry will want for customers in such a situation; they can still sell their Lexuses and Rolls Royces of medical coverage even if everyone is guaranteed a Toyota Corolla, and people capable of paying will undoubtedly still buy it.
I'm sorry, but does Article II come with an invisible ink title header saying "Executive Officers of the United States of America". I'm pretty sure if it wasn't in invisible ink, people would have noticed.
Look, it's not that I don't agree that the Vice-president ought to be treated as an executive officer. It's only that the document itself, the Constitution of the United States of America, does not so clearly as you insist make it so. The office's hybrid nature may in fact be (and I think it is) an artifact of a pre-Twelfth Amendment arrangement of the government, and since the passage of that amendment everyone has pretty much settled that the Vice-president simply is an executive officer.
But the Constitutional argument, which gets bogged down in the minutiae of text, is the improper playing field to oppose this ridiculous assertion by Cheney. Better is to point out that wherever the Vice-presidency lies, some set of regulations apply which, for example in this case, govern how classified documents may be managed and stored. Better is to point out that Cheney has previously asserted executive privilege, and so has squarely placed himself in the Executive. Better is to point out the utter cynicism of the move which clarifies nothing and benefits nobody except him personally. Better is to point out the history of the Vice-presidency and how regulations have been drawn up over the decades with the Vice-presidency in mind as an executive agent and officer.
To reduce this to a textual argument is exactly where Cheney wants to take the discussion, because there it is the flexibility of words that serves him, and does not serve anyone who wishes to hold him to account.
The problem is, indeed, that bad. Emergency care is like a bandaid for a bullet-wound for a very large percentage of medical conditions. Chronic and recurring conditions, from asthma to cancer, are not well managed much less treated by punctuated visits to a local emergency room. The problem is that refusing access to health insurance simply prices out a large portion of the population away from management of chronic and recurring illnesses which will, in the end if not treated, kill them much earlier than if they recieved treatment. I agree it is nice that at least we have recognized it is a bad idea to let people die of acute or accidental conditions simply because they are poor, but it is nevertheless the tip of the iceberg.
True enough, but aren't those arguments obilerated by the Twelfth and Seventeenth Amendment? The country isn't the same as it was when the Constitution was written, and truth be told, neither is the Constitution since it has been amended over time to accord with developments in the Nation at large.
IANAL, but I've had more than my share of working with lawyers in the process of amending and interpreting corporate instruments and by-laws, and I am somewhat sympathetic to the bare argument that there is room in such texts to wiggle definitions and classifications. That is why I have less of problem than most people do with the argument itself that the Vice-presidency does not rest comfortably in any branch. However, such flexibility cannot extend to the rules governing those categories! If the Vice-president is primarily an executive officer, then he must follow executive directives. If he is a legislative officer, he must follow directives governing legislative departments and agencies. If he is both, then he must follow both.
My problem with Cheney advancing this argument is that it is entirely cynical. He exerts executive privilege when it pleases him to prevent congressional requests and subpoenas from gaining traction with his office, and then denies membership in the executive when that inclusion is inconvenient for very similar reasons. I have a hard time taking any argumnt seriously, especially one that bucks the entirety of governmental history, when it is based not on principle but rather only upon the desire to leverage momentary advantage.
p.s. "Twelfth" is a awkward looking and clumsy sounding ordinal, isn't it?
I'm of the philosophy that proportionality is irrelevant when it comes to existential conditions like suffering. That is to say, roughly, a million people dying early through lack of health insurance is a 'huge swath' whether it is a million amongs three million, or a million amongst three hundred million. And seeing as how it is forty million amongst who-cares-how-large a population, that qualifies in my mind as, to put it mildly, a 'huge swath'.
And, as another poster put it sharply, nobody 'chooses' to not have health insurance. Self-employed people have a hard time getting insurance at the same rates as large employers, because large employers benefit from huge quantities of corporate welfare and preferential deals regardings scale when they deal with HMOs that somehow never trickle down to self-emloyed folk. And, just for the record, nobody willingly chooses to die early, which in the vast majority of cases is what not having health insurance practically means. BTW, most of the uninsured aren't self-employed people; most of the uninsured are children of self-employed people. And they, roughly, didn't have any choice whatsoever in their circumstances.
I think GP was reacting to the rather more ridiculous contention that American politicians by and large give more of a crap about the people they govern than politicans in other countries. That the countervailing evidence manifests as health insurance being inaccessible for a huge swath of the working population (when a good portion of the rest of the world has amply demonstrated is not a necessary situation), and the prosecution of an transpatently profiteering war that has killed tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans (which most of the rest of the world considered if not illegal than just plain stupid to get involved in), is simply a reflection of our own neuroses. Other countries screw over their people in different ways, according to different guiding ideologies.
Uh, hmm. No way does he have a leg to stand on, and it has nothing to do with the 'hybrid nature of his office'. It very well may be true that the Vice-president can in some circumstances be treated as both a legislative and executive office...but that's not the issue. The issue is that Cheney is claiming that because he is in both, he doesn't have to follow the rules of either. And that is just patently stupid. If he is in both, he has to follow the rules of both.
For the vast majority (i.e. up until four years ago) of the time this republic has existed, the Vice-president, despite his cursory senatorial duties, has always been considered a member of the Executive. More importantly, all the rules, laws, and regs are written as if that were the case. So, there is a heavy precedental weight against even the theoretical contention that the VP should be considered legislative, even if he might for the sake of argument considered to be so.
Nor, I believe, does it apply to reality. Just because a person has not been *found* guilty, it does not mean they are not *actually* guilty, as in, had undertaken the proscribed behavior at issue. If I'm not mistaken, the GGP was pointing out that in all likelihood, regardless of what was proven, many of those on the bad end of an **AA suit actually did knowingly violate copyright laws with their actions.
Hey look, I'm no Socialist. I just think that this particular piece of his analysis of Capitalism, where he points out that inequalities of power stem from control of the means of production of necessary goods, and that that power can be a huge manipulative lever over those who don't own such means, is accurate and on point. It is precisely the part of the analysis that anyone with two brain cells to rub together finds is obviously true, and also paradoxically the part that most Capitalists would like to ignore.
When Marx veers from description into prescription is when I think he goes off the rails. Marxist utopias, as it has been belabored many times and by people more economically inclined than myself, are basically impossible. I just think we shouldn't dismiss the critique so quickly just because the solution it was packaged with was faulty.
Because nature isn't a person. A person can choose to either leverage their relative advantage of possessing what someone else needs aginst that person or not, whereas "nature" simply is as it is and makes no choices as such. Exploitation proceeds from morally-tinged choices, whereas death by starvation in the wild is simply a bummer.
Jeez, I've neer done this before, but the fellow, while obliquely Godwinning I suppose, was nevertheless making an invaluable point, and does not deserve to be modded flamebait.
People, especially in nerd forums like this one, often assume that the consequences of technologies (esp. communications tech and esp. esp. Internet tech) on enforcement are inherently "pro-little guy" so to speak, when in fact a government with a barely competent staff and a mediocre resource structure can often use very simple tools to bring state power to bear upon its citizens. There have not been any new technologies that I have seen that places a person easily out of the reach of my government, much less any other; I would imagine if such technologies, methods, and/or devices existed, everybody would own one. All the "Internet will set us free" and "the Internet cannot be controlled" is empty rhetoric, as far as I can tell.
As parent pointed out in converse, a government successfully coordinated a multi-national genocide using nothing but punch-card machines. That is, new technologies coupled with the resources of a government are easily bent to police-state purposes.
Since when has this been about officials having privacy while executing public duties? That, why that is just plain stupid. Privacy as a civil right, on the other hand, is generally understood as citizens unconnected with a public apparatus having the capacity to shield their lives, either partially or completely, from probes of either public or private sources. Let us not engage in equivocation about what we are talking about, shall we?
Slashdot Mirror
If this is what it takes for them to be right, I'm fairly sure many of them would much rather be wrong.
Agreed. 'Proceed with caution' is the best method for approaching technological progress. I must say though that on this one I sympathize much more with the technophobic instinct than usual, as it might not be possible to gauge just how cautious a truly cautious approach would need to be. Ecosystems (and gene sharing within them) are vastly more complicated than we can at present hope to model down to the probable impact of the introduction of a new or altered phenotype. I would say that proper caution would be to wait until computer science has yielded robust enough modeling algorithms and badassed enough machines to run them on to have a better handle upon what exactly we might be monkeying with.
Of course, human curiosity and human greed will outstrip any sense of caution quite quickly if these technologies become as prolific as Dyson predicts.
By spectacular I think you mean "The RIAA will have to start killing copyright violators indiscriminately". Otherwise, I wouldn't hold my breath. After all, we just had a Vice-president assert that his authority lies beyond the reach of law, logic, common sense, and the Constitution of the United States, and there was no call for impeachment from the masses, but rather only vaguely cranky inane ineffectual grumbling. If people aren't aroused to action by that sort of outrage, I don't think random little folk getting legally pummeled by the RIAA, for using software that most older people don't even comprehend much less use, is gonna get people rowdy.
But I could be wrong.
What's the difference between 'self-righteous indignation' and simply 'righteous indignation'? After all, the only ways a person can really register their displeasure is with either action or speech, and both proceed from the self. How is a photographer supposed to be indignant about photography rules except through photography (or a boycott thereof)? Not everyone is an eloquent writer or public speaker (re:write to your congresscritter! and such sundry crappy advice), and it seems to me appropriate that a person act or withhold action through their medium of skill and choice. That a person is personally affronted by a rule that affects their preferred activity is no call to impugn the indignation as purely self-interested; that stems from a darkly cynical view of human nature that is both basically unsupportable by evidence and nihilistic in general. I hate nihilism; it's exhausting and yet isn't even an ethos. ;)
NYC, being a large tourist-industrial city, *will* miss tourism dollars, esp. if other photographers/filmographers are as 'self-righteously indignant' as GP. Like many large cities with burgeoning service-oriented industry, NYC's economy relies heavily on visiting dollars.
On a different note, I am indignant (and I dislike photography passionately) because I happen to believe that the public space should be publicly accessible in all ways that preserve the public order (and a few that don't). We all walk around with two cameras (if we are lucky) every damn day, whose resolution and video-motion capabilities are truly impressive; their only fault is a bad I/O system and a universally incompatible codec. People in public should be able to share what they see in a format that is export-friendly, and I can for myself find no good argument why that should not be so.
I think you make some interesting points. However, I think that something which runs beneath your arguments is an unspoken presumption that I think is evidentially problematic: human beings are rational cost/benefit maximizers. I don't believe that people, even in regards to large or life-changing decision, tend to use exclusively or even preferentially the logical-rational mode to make decisions. Emotionality, sentimentality, schizotypy, and prejudice tend to be at least equal factors to reason in any major decision. As such, while I agree that increasing the size or ponderousness of a bureaucracy is not a solution, simply advertising options and presenting choices often is not sufficient (especially when the goal is to induce a person to act on behalf of a disabled actor over whom they hold responsibility, such as their child).
Likewise, while the decision to remain self-employed can in many cases be due to a simple preference to "not have a boss", that decision and the resultant impoverishment of health coverage has effects (economic and social) that radiate far outside of the domain of that person. Since as you say (and I agree) it is important that a society not interfere with the choice simpliciter to not have a boss which for that person seems to better approach their pursuit of fulfillment, happiness, etc., that nonetheless a society can and should act to limit the impact or frequency of those negative effects to others that result from the decision. Since the pursuit of happiness and the actions and states that a person chooses to achieve it need not be and usually are not strictly logical, any social system of support should operate in a mode that is effective even in the relative absence of rational actors.
Is every call made over state lines in pursuance of some act of commerce? If not, I don't see how Congress could claim the right to regulate every call. BTW, they are called enumerated powers; the list is exhaustive of what they can do, point being if it isn't on the list, it isn't something they can do. At least, that was the original notion...
Fraud generally requires either a pecuniary motive, or commission of the act in furtherance of some other crime. Simply putting some name that is not my own on a letter is neither of these things. I could sign my letters "Harry Potter" and the name as such wouldn't even be impersonation because the "victim" doesn't exist. Is this Mail Fraud? I don't think so...unless I was attempting to somehow profit from putting "Harry Potter" as my name.
Wouldn't it be fun to see the American people vote for the Presidential candidate from one party and the Vice Presidential candidate from a different party? Of course most people vote a party ticket so that's not likely to happen.
You know, it's funny; I have half-facetiously argued lately that a Paul/Obama or Obama/Paul ticket might be good, and I've heard others say the same with varying levels of seriousness. Who knows...? ;)
As far as I know...they've been around for quite a long time & nobody's cried about it being a national ID. What's the difference between this "Real ID" & my passport...except for the cost & not coming from the majesties at homeland insecurity?
The difference is that a passport is not necessary for use in most contexts it can be used for; you only need a passport to travel abroad. The fact that it has lateral functionality is a nice bonus but is otherwise unremarkable. The difference is the necessity of possession of one of these RealID cards to do a host of things, such that you couldn't substitute a different form of identity (such as, apropos, a passport) in its place to do those things. The sheer breadth of activities for which this ID would be necessary is what gets myself and others cranky.
Thanks. That is what I was missing.
I'm sorry, but this bit of the synopsis confused me:
If passed, the bill would have effectively turned the Real ID system into a National ID card.
I was under the impression that the Real ID system all by itself was intended as a de facto national ID card. What am I missing?
Weaving through the nitpicks... :)
I guarantee there's at least one person who has knowingly chosen not to have health insurance.
Of course, you are right. At least one almost certainly exists. I figured I was communicating with an audience that could distinguish between descriptive statments meant to generalize over a class and those that are meant to apply directly to every member of that class. If it makes you feel better, I'll insert the word "nearly" before "nobody" and now there is no more ambiguity of that sort.
Second, the self-employed who do not have health insurance do choose not to have it, because, for them, it's better to be self-employed without insurance than to work for someone else and have it...
I strongly suspect that they "choose" not to have insurance because they "choose" to prioritize their shelter and food over health when making economic decisions for themselves. This "choice" is due to the inaccessibility by price of private insurance to individuals as opposed to plans bundled with corporate employment.
Lastly, children suffer the consequences of their parents decisions. That's life, and it convey any responsibility on you or me to change things for them. You can't force adults to conform to your values, not without sacrificing some pretty important values (like liberty) along the way.
That is true to a point. However, one cannot be so obtuse as to recognize that independent of their parents, children are *human beings* and as such have the right to pursue their continued right to exist, above and beyond some conception of parental sovereignty over childrens' lives. If a parent makes a decision callously indifferent to the continued survival of a child under their care, it is not a significant "infringement of liberty" to either aid the child apart from the parents' wishes or remove te child from the care of the person who gives no weight to their continued health. As you elude, these sorts of chains of logic if not mitigated by a proper respect of domain can lead to infringements of *real* parental rights, such as teaching a child whatever values they desire and correcting and punishing children within certain bounds of reason (a parent does not have the right, for example, to torture a child in order to enforce discipline). But the idea that a parent abrogates their responsibility for the basic care of their child is a "too bad, so sad, but not my problem" sort of situation is morally repugnant and unduly eliminative of a society's role in protecting its members from harm not resultant from that own members' actions.
I agree wholeheartedly that the calculus of resource distribution is hideously complicated in the case of Health Care. What especially seems to complicate the matter are two factors: one, we have a hard time coming to terms with monetizing the worth of human life (an eminently reasonable hestitation, I think), and two, sickness and health are hideously unpredictable factors where things even as simple as length of treatment cannot be determined ahead of time.
My thing is we can make even reasonable conservative assumptions about these factors and still come to a conclusion that strongly tends towards the favorability of greatly expanding care. For example, economically everyone suffers when a person is sick, and benefits when a person is well. Even a poor laborer who is sick is a huge potential economic liability for society, as his capacity to continue earning not only affects his employer (who depends on his labor) but also his family, and the likelihood that they will maintain or improve their living circumstances (which relates to the probabilities that they will engage in behaviors, like crime, that are economically net-negatives).
If a smoothly functioning productive society is a healthy society, then we should err a bit on the side of improving care despite increasing costs, till at least we reach a level of strictly diminishing returns. I think a mixed system might work, but only if there were a serious (not simply nominal) attempt to provide decent subsidized medical coverage for preventative care and a decent amount of continuing or chronic care, such that those who depend upon supplementary private coverage are driven to doing so for reasons of comfort and not necessity. I don't believe that the HMO industry will want for customers in such a situation; they can still sell their Lexuses and Rolls Royces of medical coverage even if everyone is guaranteed a Toyota Corolla, and people capable of paying will undoubtedly still buy it.
I'm sorry, but does Article II come with an invisible ink title header saying "Executive Officers of the United States of America". I'm pretty sure if it wasn't in invisible ink, people would have noticed.
Look, it's not that I don't agree that the Vice-president ought to be treated as an executive officer. It's only that the document itself, the Constitution of the United States of America, does not so clearly as you insist make it so. The office's hybrid nature may in fact be (and I think it is) an artifact of a pre-Twelfth Amendment arrangement of the government, and since the passage of that amendment everyone has pretty much settled that the Vice-president simply is an executive officer.
But the Constitutional argument, which gets bogged down in the minutiae of text, is the improper playing field to oppose this ridiculous assertion by Cheney. Better is to point out that wherever the Vice-presidency lies, some set of regulations apply which, for example in this case, govern how classified documents may be managed and stored. Better is to point out that Cheney has previously asserted executive privilege, and so has squarely placed himself in the Executive. Better is to point out the utter cynicism of the move which clarifies nothing and benefits nobody except him personally. Better is to point out the history of the Vice-presidency and how regulations have been drawn up over the decades with the Vice-presidency in mind as an executive agent and officer.
To reduce this to a textual argument is exactly where Cheney wants to take the discussion, because there it is the flexibility of words that serves him, and does not serve anyone who wishes to hold him to account.
The problem is, indeed, that bad. Emergency care is like a bandaid for a bullet-wound for a very large percentage of medical conditions. Chronic and recurring conditions, from asthma to cancer, are not well managed much less treated by punctuated visits to a local emergency room. The problem is that refusing access to health insurance simply prices out a large portion of the population away from management of chronic and recurring illnesses which will, in the end if not treated, kill them much earlier than if they recieved treatment. I agree it is nice that at least we have recognized it is a bad idea to let people die of acute or accidental conditions simply because they are poor, but it is nevertheless the tip of the iceberg.
True enough, but aren't those arguments obilerated by the Twelfth and Seventeenth Amendment? The country isn't the same as it was when the Constitution was written, and truth be told, neither is the Constitution since it has been amended over time to accord with developments in the Nation at large.
IANAL, but I've had more than my share of working with lawyers in the process of amending and interpreting corporate instruments and by-laws, and I am somewhat sympathetic to the bare argument that there is room in such texts to wiggle definitions and classifications. That is why I have less of problem than most people do with the argument itself that the Vice-presidency does not rest comfortably in any branch. However, such flexibility cannot extend to the rules governing those categories! If the Vice-president is primarily an executive officer, then he must follow executive directives. If he is a legislative officer, he must follow directives governing legislative departments and agencies. If he is both, then he must follow both.
My problem with Cheney advancing this argument is that it is entirely cynical. He exerts executive privilege when it pleases him to prevent congressional requests and subpoenas from gaining traction with his office, and then denies membership in the executive when that inclusion is inconvenient for very similar reasons. I have a hard time taking any argumnt seriously, especially one that bucks the entirety of governmental history, when it is based not on principle but rather only upon the desire to leverage momentary advantage.
p.s. "Twelfth" is a awkward looking and clumsy sounding ordinal, isn't it?
I'm of the philosophy that proportionality is irrelevant when it comes to existential conditions like suffering. That is to say, roughly, a million people dying early through lack of health insurance is a 'huge swath' whether it is a million amongs three million, or a million amongst three hundred million. And seeing as how it is forty million amongst who-cares-how-large a population, that qualifies in my mind as, to put it mildly, a 'huge swath'.
And, as another poster put it sharply, nobody 'chooses' to not have health insurance. Self-employed people have a hard time getting insurance at the same rates as large employers, because large employers benefit from huge quantities of corporate welfare and preferential deals regardings scale when they deal with HMOs that somehow never trickle down to self-emloyed folk. And, just for the record, nobody willingly chooses to die early, which in the vast majority of cases is what not having health insurance practically means. BTW, most of the uninsured aren't self-employed people; most of the uninsured are children of self-employed people. And they, roughly, didn't have any choice whatsoever in their circumstances.
I think GP was reacting to the rather more ridiculous contention that American politicians by and large give more of a crap about the people they govern than politicans in other countries. That the countervailing evidence manifests as health insurance being inaccessible for a huge swath of the working population (when a good portion of the rest of the world has amply demonstrated is not a necessary situation), and the prosecution of an transpatently profiteering war that has killed tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans (which most of the rest of the world considered if not illegal than just plain stupid to get involved in), is simply a reflection of our own neuroses. Other countries screw over their people in different ways, according to different guiding ideologies.
Uh, hmm. No way does he have a leg to stand on, and it has nothing to do with the 'hybrid nature of his office'. It very well may be true that the Vice-president can in some circumstances be treated as both a legislative and executive office...but that's not the issue. The issue is that Cheney is claiming that because he is in both, he doesn't have to follow the rules of either. And that is just patently stupid. If he is in both, he has to follow the rules of both.
For the vast majority (i.e. up until four years ago) of the time this republic has existed, the Vice-president, despite his cursory senatorial duties, has always been considered a member of the Executive. More importantly, all the rules, laws, and regs are written as if that were the case. So, there is a heavy precedental weight against even the theoretical contention that the VP should be considered legislative, even if he might for the sake of argument considered to be so.
Nor, I believe, does it apply to reality. Just because a person has not been *found* guilty, it does not mean they are not *actually* guilty, as in, had undertaken the proscribed behavior at issue. If I'm not mistaken, the GGP was pointing out that in all likelihood, regardless of what was proven, many of those on the bad end of an **AA suit actually did knowingly violate copyright laws with their actions.
Hey look, I'm no Socialist. I just think that this particular piece of his analysis of Capitalism, where he points out that inequalities of power stem from control of the means of production of necessary goods, and that that power can be a huge manipulative lever over those who don't own such means, is accurate and on point. It is precisely the part of the analysis that anyone with two brain cells to rub together finds is obviously true, and also paradoxically the part that most Capitalists would like to ignore.
When Marx veers from description into prescription is when I think he goes off the rails. Marxist utopias, as it has been belabored many times and by people more economically inclined than myself, are basically impossible. I just think we shouldn't dismiss the critique so quickly just because the solution it was packaged with was faulty.
Because nature isn't a person. A person can choose to either leverage their relative advantage of possessing what someone else needs aginst that person or not, whereas "nature" simply is as it is and makes no choices as such. Exploitation proceeds from morally-tinged choices, whereas death by starvation in the wild is simply a bummer.
And how is voluntarily selling ones labor to a factory owner "exploitation"?
Selling one's labor is about as voluntary as eating and finding shelter. Sure, you can choose not to do it, but then you die.
Jeez, I've neer done this before, but the fellow, while obliquely Godwinning I suppose, was nevertheless making an invaluable point, and does not deserve to be modded flamebait.
People, especially in nerd forums like this one, often assume that the consequences of technologies (esp. communications tech and esp. esp. Internet tech) on enforcement are inherently "pro-little guy" so to speak, when in fact a government with a barely competent staff and a mediocre resource structure can often use very simple tools to bring state power to bear upon its citizens. There have not been any new technologies that I have seen that places a person easily out of the reach of my government, much less any other; I would imagine if such technologies, methods, and/or devices existed, everybody would own one. All the "Internet will set us free" and "the Internet cannot be controlled" is empty rhetoric, as far as I can tell.
As parent pointed out in converse, a government successfully coordinated a multi-national genocide using nothing but punch-card machines. That is, new technologies coupled with the resources of a government are easily bent to police-state purposes.
Since when has this been about officials having privacy while executing public duties? That, why that is just plain stupid. Privacy as a civil right, on the other hand, is generally understood as citizens unconnected with a public apparatus having the capacity to shield their lives, either partially or completely, from probes of either public or private sources. Let us not engage in equivocation about what we are talking about, shall we?