"No State shall make any Thing but Gold and Silver Coin a tender in Payment of Debts"
Yes, exactly, no State can issue currency unless its backed by Silver or Gold. The clause in no way limits the Federal Government from issuing fiat currency.
Remember your civics, state governments and the federal government are two autonomous governing bodies. The Constitution, specifically Article I Section 10, was about delineating the separation of powers between them.
I don't mean to put on my tinfoil hat, but why would the government want to censor when they can just start logging people's browsing histories at the router level.
At least right now (in theory) they have get a warrant to force an ISP to turn over it's history logs. But if they controlled the internet backbone they could just monitor and store logs of every website or IP you access.
Just imagine what power you could wield if you could threaten anyone with a public release of the list of porn sites (or other skeevy stuff) he or she has visted.
First, IAAL, take it for what it's worth. Second, by saying the following, I am in no way attempting to disparage the welfare state, or suggest that it is unconstitutional. In fact, there is plenty of case law suggesting it is. (Google "Lochner Era" and "economic substantive due process" if you want to find it.
That said, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.
The Preamble neither limits or grants any power to any branch of the Federal government. The Supreme Court has read it that way for the last hundred years. Source.
Article I Section 8 only gives the Federal government power to tax and spend for the general welfare:
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
The clause is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power. Any taxing and spending must be consistent with the rest of the Constitution. The clause does not give Congress any power to legislate any law it wants for the common welfare. Source.
Misinterpreting the efficacy of the preamble is understandable, even I had to look that up. But as for Art. I Sec. 8, if you are going to try to interpret the Constitution, at least read it! The limitations of the power are right in the text.
First off, I watched that video, and Peter Schiff's comments, while prescient, did not call "every American stock" a "speculative gamble." His comments mostly had to do with the unwinding of the credit and housing bubbles, and what little reference he did make to stocks were with respect to financial companies, and with respect to those, he was of course right.
Financial companies' balance sheets are notoriously tough to understand and far from transparent. Go look at a company AIG or Goldman Sachs's 10-Q, and then look at a company like Apple or Caterpillar's and you will see what I mean. In part it's due to the nature of the beast because financial companies often hold all sorts of securities, loans, derivatives, and other paper, and they simply cannot line item all of these in even a couple hundred pages. Additionally some of these assets do not have a liquid market to trade in (i.e., they rarely if ever change hands), and thus, their current value has be be calculated based on projections and models.
Now back to your question of a formal method for investing, there are plenty of books out there for that, and it would take more than one post to outline one. However, here are some simple guidelines for a conservative investor to follow:
1) Always invest in companies that pay dividends. There are plenty of companies out there that pay pretty sizable dividends if you look outside the tech sector. I could go on forever about this, but safe to say that dividends are not only an instant return on your investment, but also if they are reinvested they can act like compound interest. Also, make sure the company is earning enough to pay out its dividend.
2) Only invest in companies whose business you can understand. This is for piece of mind, and will allow you to better see how changes in the economic landscape will affect a given company whose stock you own.
3) Always diversify your investments. No one stock or business sector (e.g., tech, health care, oil, materials) can make up more than 20% of your portfolio. Look at the tech bubble in 2000 or the financial crisis this last year. If you were all in tech or financial (respectively) you were probably did really well during the boom but were wiped out by the bust. Diversification helps mitigate this risk. It'll keep you from maxing out your returns, but it'll also prevent you from catastrophic losses.
Fundamentally, any investment involves taking a risk. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. The key to investing is to understand the downside risk and the potential upside of your investment so that you can make an informed choice in your decision.
What's really sad is that Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang had a lot of support from employees who feared that Microsoft would can them. The threat of their revolt was in part what drove Microsoft away.
Now he's turning around and repaying them by announcing a second around of layoffs that will total about 10% of the workforce. Source. Looks like everyone got the raw deal out of this. It makes you wonder if Yang even had a plan for Yahoo post-merger.
Richard M. Nixon - Duke University School of Law (3rd in Class) - Watergate; The Imperial Presidency Bill Clinton - Yale Law School - Travelgate; The Line Item Veto Franklin Roosevelt - Columbia Law School - The New Deal (Constitutional only because of "The switch in time that saved nine" Abraham Lincoln - Admitted to Illinois Bar - Suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus on Union soil Woodrow Wilson - University of Virginia Law School - Permitted introduction of segregation of several federal departments
Being a lawyer does not guarantee that a person "understands" the Constitution any better than you or I. In fact, I think it makes things worse because lawyers are trained just to pick a conclusion and argue their way backwards to justify it. That's not how the Constitutionality of actions should be judged.
Furthermore, teaching Constitutional Law does not equate to being a scholar on it. I graduated law school from a Top 20 Law School ("the mythical elite tier") and my (very effective) constitutional law professor's specialty was law and religion, not the Constitution. Teaching Constitutional Law does not mean that you are an expert on it.
Obama was a Senior Lecture at Chicago, which means he was non-tenured and an adjunct professor at best. His published legal work (or lack of it) sheds very little light on his view of the Constitution. Source. The only published work of his has been unearthed is his Note that he wrote for the Harvard Law Review. The title of that Note is "TORT LAW - PRENATAL INJURIES - SUPREME COURT OF ILLINOIS REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE CAUSE OF ACTION BROUGHT BY FETUS AGAINST ITS MOTHER FOR UNINTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF PRENATAL INJURIES." Constitutional Law it is not.
The more you look at it, the more you realize that both parties abuse the Constitution when appropriate. Hell we've ignored entire provisions of it quite blatantly for much of its existance. See U.S. Const. Art I Sec. 2 ("The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative;"). Don't think that a person knows more just because he was a Harvard Law Review Editor. For every Barack Obama it produced, there's an Alger Hiss to go along with him.
First, Alcatel Lucent is a French company, listed on a French stock exchange (it's ADRs also trades in the US) so griping about North American IP laws is not only topically irrelevant, it's geographically irrelevant as well.
Second, Alcatel has been unprofitable for two straight years. It's burned through 10% of its cash reserves in those two years, and has nearly doubled it's long term debt. I don't care what type of company you're running, unless your an American automaker, you can't keep putting up numbers like that and stay in business.
Third, As many people have already pointed out, much Bell Labs research funding was enabled by AT&T's monopolization of the American telecom market until the 1980s. AT&T's breakup created competition, and when you have competition, you trim the excess fat so you can remain profitable. In fact, it's been rather a wonder that Bell Labs fundamental research arm has survived the company's many sales and acquisitions to this point.
Yes it sucks that a brilliant part of Bell Labs is slowly going the way of the dinosaur. It was a perfect example of private enterprise utilizing its resources for the public good (ok maybe not entirely since they owned patents on the research). That said, you can't expect a company to bankrupt itself for the sake of science. There are tens of thousands of employees whose jobs depend on Alcatel turning a profit at some point in the near future. Think about them.
I was for term limits in California when they were first enacted, much for the same reasons as you. That said, they have been a plain and unmitigated disaster for this state because of the many unintended consequences they have produced.
First, there was gerrymandering. Since it was now impossible for an individual to hold a district for 20 to 30 years, the Democratically controlled legislature drew safe districts that would vote Democrat for the next 20 to 30 years. Republicans went along with this because the ones in power also got enough safe districts to hold up approval of the annual budget (which requires a 2/3 vote to pass).
Second, as a biproduct of gerrymandering, politics in the California became highly partisan. Since almost all legislative districts in California consistently vote 60/40 in favor one party, the real election became the primary. Of course, one wins the primary by appearing the fringes of his or her party. Thus, our state legislators and senators started to further toward both the left and right. Most moderates never made it to the general election.
Third, the rank partisanship, led to gridlock in the legislature, especially with the state budget. Democrats refuse to cut spending in tough times, and Republicans refuse to raise taxes, regardless of the need to do so. What should be a process of compromise, is reduced to an annual game of chicken because neither side wants to back down from their ideological rhetoric.
Fourth, these budget problems are exacerbated even further by the increased influence of lobbyist groups in the capitol. This is perhaps the most insidious consequence of term limits. Because legislators and senators are out after 6 and 8 years respectively, they often have very little time to learn the legislative process and become experts on the subjects their committees govern. Thus they have to rely on lobbyist groups for information and viewpoints. Think K Street in DC but much worse.
There are a host of other maladies that term limits have wrought on this state, like the political musical chairs our politicians play, but these four are by far the worst. Term limits is the best example of the law of unintended consequences. For every problem they solved did they created another equally bad or worse one.
Are we even talking about the same issue here? You stated originally:
I made that comment because there is no hint in your responses of addressing the obvious question of applying surveillance to the agents of a civilian government.
In this statement, were you implying that the Fourth Amendment should apply to situations where an ordinary citizen conducts surveillance of a government agent?
If so, the answer is No. What I am saying is that the Fourth Amendment only applies to actions taken by state or federal governments. It doesn't prohibit ordinary citizens not acting as an agent of the government from doing anything. Indeed with the exception of the Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents ordinary citizens from doing anything.
Like I said civilian surveillance of government agents is not a Fourth Amendment issue. Indeed it's not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, so there's no Constitutional bar to anyone doing it.
There are probably federal laws that prohibit it, but it's not a Constitutional issue, unless those laws exist and are unconstitutional. Even if there is a Constitutional issue it doesn't concern the Fourth Amendment.
And frankly, I don't see why I have to address the issue. All I am trying to do is lay out current relevant case law governing the Fourth Amendment. Your issue doesn't concern the Fourth Amendment.
Dosen't this basically mean any property thats in public is free game for whatever we feel like doing to it as long as we dont deface or destroy it?
No it means the Fourth Amendment apply and hence, that the government doesn't need a warrant to certain things to your car, like put a GPS tracker on it.
The Fourth Amendment also only applies to state and federal governments. That means it doesn't apply to your potato cooker or Hasselhoff poster scenarios. That said, there are plenty of other laws (e.g., destruction of property, trespass) that do apply.
Remember, the Fourth Amendment doesn't per se prevent the government from doing anything. It just requires that they show probable cause and get a warrant, or have an exceedingly good justification for not getting a warrant before they do stuff covered by the Fourth Amendment (searches and seizures).
To paraphrase an earlier poster, there is every expectation of privacy if turning the tables -- surveilling the police in the same fashion -- would land a citizen in jail (whereas other types of surveillance, like passively photographing cops on the street, should be OK).
Well, as I have stated before, the Fourth Amendment only applies to the State and Federal Governments. You as an individual are not constitutionally required get a warrant to stick a GPS tracker on a cop car. As far as the Constitution is concerned, you can track all the cop cars you want.
That said, I'm sure there are probably many local laws that prevent you from doing this. I don't know if there and have not researched the subject, but that is the only way it could be illegal for you to stick a tracker on a cop car.
It's also worth noting that the federal and state governments can pass legislation require a warrant in situations where the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply. They have done this with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which governs phone wiretaps and auditory electronic surveillance. If it's a big concern, to you, maybe you should start lobbying for similar legislation to be passed for tracking devices.
But for you and the other professionals in the wider legal field, thinking reciprocally is no longer even a part of your relationship with the general public. You think and behave like class warriors, not civilians.
Say what? I have no idea of what you just said. Are you hinting at some sort of new Marxian dialectic or something?
The Supreme Court currently uses a two part test to judge reasonable expecations of privacy.
First, the defendant must have had an actual expectation of privacy. This makes sense because if the defendant in fact had not expectation that his actions were private, then he assumed the risk that they were not in fact private. However, most defendant's claim an expectation of privacy, and it's really hard to disprove their claims, so this part of the test is almost always met.
Second, the defendant's expectation of privacy must be one that society is willing to recognize as reasonable. This is known as the "objective" prong and it is here where all of the wrangling occurs.
If you want the straight answer, something is "objectively reasonable" when 5 or more Supreme Court Justices agree it is. If you want the nuanced answer, there are several theories on how the reasonableness standard changes or doesn't change. Originalist Justices (Scalia and Thomas mostly) want the expectations to be those that existed at the time of the adoption of the Fourth Amendment. Other Justices (hard to pin down now since the court has changed, but definitely Kennedy IIRC) are of the opinion that societal changes can shift privacy expectations, either increasing or, more likely, decreasing them. Some Justices appear to just want to draw a line in the sand and stick to it (Ginsburg, and Breyer come to mind).
Ultimately to me, the issue seems to be whether the court will use the language in Knotts (Discussed in my original post) as a method to boot strap itself out of the logical hole it has dug. That hole is that its current interpretation of the Fourth Amendment allows for Big Brother type surveillance outside of one's home, which is protected from electronic surveillance as per Kyllo v. United States.
Fair enough, but read United States v. Knotts. It uses the exact same quotation in the exact same way, and is also the on-point Supreme Court case legalizing the warrantless use of tracking devices.
No my brief dealt with the use of cell phone triangulation techniques to track individuals, and it was for the defendant in that case. That issue took 40 pages to discuss, so I am not going to regurgitate it here.
Also, please refrain from ad hominem attacks or implications. It detracts from your argument.
One has a lesser expectation of privacy in a motor vehicle because its function is transportation and it seldom serves as one's residence or as the repository of personal effects. A car has little capacity for escaping public scrutiny. It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view. Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590 (1974)
If a police officer is patrolling in a marked police car, do they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" or would it be ok to tag that police car with a GPS tracker and display the location real time in a Google Maps mashup? Is there some other law that would prevent this apart from the constitution?
If the above is ok, what about if the police office is parked behind some bushes/a billboard in a "Dukes of Hazard" style speed trap. Does that officer have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
What about if said officer is patrolling in an unmarked car (but one which was ID'd as a police car earlier), do they now have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
Well the Fourth Amendment only applies to the actions of the States and the Federal Government (i.e., federal and local governments plus their agents), so all of these questions are irrelevant.
The whole point of the Fourth Amendment is to govern when the government needs a warrant to search or seize something. If it's just an individual citizen acting in this manner, there is no Fourth Amendment issue.
I'm not going to speculate on your other questions because they are a little more complicated and frankly I don't have the time to analyze them.
Then it becomes a matter of whether the Open Field's Doctrine applies. The basic jist of it is that private land is not subject to Fourth Amendment if it is outside of the curtiglage, i.e., the "intimate" area surrounding one's home. You can read the article for a better explanation.
FYI, this is what makes the Fourth Amendment such a complicated area of jurisprudence. You have multiple doctrines, and analysis going on and you have to figure out which one takes precedence.
It's not my assertion, read United States v. Knotts. The Supreme Court specifically distinguishes traveling in public from wiretapping a public phone. Plus, there's a lot of federal wiretapping law unrelated to the Fourth Amendment, so wiretapping phones is more complicated, with more issues.
As for the evolution of technology and reasonable expecations of privacy, read Kyllo v. United States.
Alright, having just written a legal brief on the subject, I'll explain the legal rationale behind these rulings so that we can actually have an intelligent debate on this subject.
The Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, only applies when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the item or information searched or seized.
Here, the information about the person's location is what is being "seized." Thus, the way the debate is framed centers around the question: Does a person have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location?
Now, the law is pretty clear in some respects. For example, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home. Thus, the Fourth Amendment applies, and police need a warrant to track your movements in your home.
On the other hand, you have no expectation of privacy when you travel out in public. This is rather obvious because when you travel in public, everyone around you can see you and knows where you are. Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply, and it has been long established law that police can conduct surveillance on anyone in a public area without a warrant. (Note: This is the same basic rationale by which placing cameras on street corners does not violate the Fourth Amendment.)
The Supreme Court has further extended this rationale to apply to electronic tracking devices (e.g., GPS, Triangulation Beacons) used for tracking people in public. The rationale is that as long as the subject is in public, he has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his location.
Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply and you have no constitutional protection against police attaching a GPS device to your car. Police can track your car with a GPS locator, provided they break no laws with respect to installing the locator (A non-constitutional issue).
That said, the Supreme Court has left the door open to regulating this type of behavior by police. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Knotts left open the possibility of using "different constitutional principles" to regulate police use of tracking devices if "dragnet type law enforcement practices" developed. Dragnet in this context refers to systematic and coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
Thus, presumably one could argue that if the police started using GPS devices in our cell phones to track everyone in a systematic manner, another constitutional principle, like for example the right of privacy, could be applied to find a constitutional ground to prevent it. Whether the Supreme Court chooses to use the dicta in Knotts is of course up to it.
I wouldn't personally invest in a company that was that precariously positioned... I'm not entirely sure which it is, but surely a properly priced company isn't in such a precarious position where one individual getting hit by a bus would crush it the way that the NY Times is suggesting.
There are plenty of company's where the CEO's management warrants a premium P/E multiple. If Warren Buffet were to die tomorrow, Berkshire Hathaway's stock would suffer. If Bill Gates had died during the mid 90s, you can bet Microsoft's stock would have cratered. John Chambers (Cisco), Satoru Iwata (Nintendo), Laksmi Mittal (ArcelorMittal), Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.), these are just a few instances where the CEO is basically the franchise. If you want an example of what a bad CEO can do look at Carli Fiorina (HP), Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide), Jimmy Cayne (Bear Stearns), or Hector Ruiz (AMD).
A CEO (and management in general) is an asset to a company just like a manufacturing plant, cash, or inventory. However, unlike the aforementioned, the value of a company's management cannot be accurately reflected on a Balance Sheet. Instead a CEO's or management's (in)effectiveness if often reflected in the stock price, specifically the premium or discount to which the stock trades compared to its competitors.
For example, Apple's Forward P/E is currently 30 while Microsoft and Dell are trading at about 18 and 19 respectively. A good portion of that premium is due to the fact that Steve Balmer and Michael Dell are failing at leading their respective companies, while Steve Jobs has done a bang up job at spearheading Apple's product development.
Now, if you don't want to invest in companies that depend on a key man or group, that's you're prerogative. No risk, no reward. But there are people that do (and from the list above you can see it does pay off), and to them knowing Steve Job's health is an important concern.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I would go a step further. People really need to consider what they are getting into when they have children and I have a strong suspicion that most parents fail to do this. If you're struggling to maintain your lifestyle with children, chances are you probably couldn't afford that lifestyle with with a comfortable margin before children.
When you raise children you have the financial obligation to support them, the societal obligation to properly socialize them, and the personal obligation to nurture them and reach their full potential.
If you cannot fulfill all three of these obligations you should not be raising or having any children. If having additional children would call into question your ability to to carry out these obligations for your current offspring, then you should not have more kids!
Whether it be among my personal friends, acquaintances, or through the news, I am utterly dismayed at the lack of forethought people seem to show when having children. Some people want to have a child merely because it would be self fulfilling or "neat." Some people want to have children because their parents or some other family member is pushing them. Some people want to have kids because, well you're supposed to have kids. These reasons by themselves are all frankly, absurd and abhorrent.
No one should choose to have and raise a child for purely personal reasons. Raising a child is a selfless act. When you have a child you owe a fiduciary duty to it to look out for its best interests and put them above your own. If you do any less, you are not giving the child the proper upbringing it deserves. You should be prepaired for the physical, mental, financial, and emotional stress (and it is stress) of raising a child before you even think of having a child. You should especially be prepared for the financial burden, as it can compound the other three. If you are not capable of doing this, then by all means you should not be having kids.
Again, think before you breed. That's if for my rand.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; [emphasis added]
This clause is commonly referred to as the Tax and Spend Clause and has been commonly read to give Congress the power to tax and spend for the general welfare, not to regulate for the general welfare. Thus, if Congress wanted to tax pollution for the general welfare, it could. This specific clause does not give Congress the power to regulate pollution for the general welfare. Congress has no general police power.
If you want to know more about the history and interpretation of the clause, there is some excellent reading here.
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Here, you go buddy: Farmers & Merchants Bank v. Federal Res. Bank, 262 U.S. 649 (1923).
"No State shall make any Thing but Gold and Silver Coin a tender in Payment of Debts"
Yes, exactly, no State can issue currency unless its backed by Silver or Gold. The clause in no way limits the Federal Government from issuing fiat currency.
Remember your civics, state governments and the federal government are two autonomous governing bodies. The Constitution, specifically Article I Section 10, was about delineating the separation of powers between them.
I don't mean to put on my tinfoil hat, but why would the government want to censor when they can just start logging people's browsing histories at the router level.
At least right now (in theory) they have get a warrant to force an ISP to turn over it's history logs. But if they controlled the internet backbone they could just monitor and store logs of every website or IP you access.
Just imagine what power you could wield if you could threaten anyone with a public release of the list of porn sites (or other skeevy stuff) he or she has visted.
First, IAAL, take it for what it's worth. Second, by saying the following, I am in no way attempting to disparage the welfare state, or suggest that it is unconstitutional. In fact, there is plenty of case law suggesting it is. (Google "Lochner Era" and "economic substantive due process" if you want to find it.
That said, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.
The Preamble neither limits or grants any power to any branch of the Federal government. The Supreme Court has read it that way for the last hundred years. Source.
Article I Section 8 only gives the Federal government power to tax and spend for the general welfare:
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
The clause is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power. Any taxing and spending must be consistent with the rest of the Constitution. The clause does not give Congress any power to legislate any law it wants for the common welfare. Source.
Misinterpreting the efficacy of the preamble is understandable, even I had to look that up. But as for Art. I Sec. 8, if you are going to try to interpret the Constitution, at least read it! The limitations of the power are right in the text.
First off, I watched that video, and Peter Schiff's comments, while prescient, did not call "every American stock" a "speculative gamble." His comments mostly had to do with the unwinding of the credit and housing bubbles, and what little reference he did make to stocks were with respect to financial companies, and with respect to those, he was of course right.
Financial companies' balance sheets are notoriously tough to understand and far from transparent. Go look at a company AIG or Goldman Sachs's 10-Q, and then look at a company like Apple or Caterpillar's and you will see what I mean. In part it's due to the nature of the beast because financial companies often hold all sorts of securities, loans, derivatives, and other paper, and they simply cannot line item all of these in even a couple hundred pages. Additionally some of these assets do not have a liquid market to trade in (i.e., they rarely if ever change hands), and thus, their current value has be be calculated based on projections and models.
Now back to your question of a formal method for investing, there are plenty of books out there for that, and it would take more than one post to outline one. However, here are some simple guidelines for a conservative investor to follow:
1) Always invest in companies that pay dividends. There are plenty of companies out there that pay pretty sizable dividends if you look outside the tech sector. I could go on forever about this, but safe to say that dividends are not only an instant return on your investment, but also if they are reinvested they can act like compound interest. Also, make sure the company is earning enough to pay out its dividend.
2) Only invest in companies whose business you can understand. This is for piece of mind, and will allow you to better see how changes in the economic landscape will affect a given company whose stock you own.
3) Always diversify your investments. No one stock or business sector (e.g., tech, health care, oil, materials) can make up more than 20% of your portfolio. Look at the tech bubble in 2000 or the financial crisis this last year. If you were all in tech or financial (respectively) you were probably did really well during the boom but were wiped out by the bust. Diversification helps mitigate this risk. It'll keep you from maxing out your returns, but it'll also prevent you from catastrophic losses.
Fundamentally, any investment involves taking a risk. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. The key to investing is to understand the downside risk and the potential upside of your investment so that you can make an informed choice in your decision.
What's really sad is that Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang had a lot of support from employees who feared that Microsoft would can them. The threat of their revolt was in part what drove Microsoft away.
Now he's turning around and repaying them by announcing a second around of layoffs that will total about 10% of the workforce. Source. Looks like everyone got the raw deal out of this. It makes you wonder if Yang even had a plan for Yahoo post-merger.
Richard M. Nixon - Duke University School of Law (3rd in Class) - Watergate; The Imperial Presidency
Bill Clinton - Yale Law School - Travelgate; The Line Item Veto
Franklin Roosevelt - Columbia Law School - The New Deal (Constitutional only because of "The switch in time that saved nine"
Abraham Lincoln - Admitted to Illinois Bar - Suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus on Union soil
Woodrow Wilson - University of Virginia Law School - Permitted introduction of segregation of several federal departments
Being a lawyer does not guarantee that a person "understands" the Constitution any better than you or I. In fact, I think it makes things worse because lawyers are trained just to pick a conclusion and argue their way backwards to justify it. That's not how the Constitutionality of actions should be judged.
Furthermore, teaching Constitutional Law does not equate to being a scholar on it.
I graduated law school from a Top 20 Law School ("the mythical elite tier") and my (very effective) constitutional law professor's specialty was law and religion, not the Constitution. Teaching Constitutional Law does not mean that you are an expert on it.
Obama was a Senior Lecture at Chicago, which means he was non-tenured and an adjunct professor at best. His published legal work (or lack of it) sheds very little light on his view of the Constitution. Source. The only published work of his has been unearthed is his Note that he wrote for the Harvard Law Review. The title of that Note is "TORT LAW - PRENATAL INJURIES - SUPREME COURT OF ILLINOIS REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE CAUSE OF ACTION BROUGHT BY FETUS AGAINST ITS MOTHER FOR UNINTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF PRENATAL INJURIES." Constitutional Law it is not.
The more you look at it, the more you realize that both parties abuse the Constitution when appropriate. Hell we've ignored entire provisions of it quite blatantly for much of its existance. See U.S. Const. Art I Sec. 2 ("The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative;"). Don't think that a person knows more just because he was a Harvard Law Review Editor. For every Barack Obama it produced, there's an Alger Hiss to go along with him.
First, Alcatel Lucent is a French company, listed on a French stock exchange (it's ADRs also trades in the US) so griping about North American IP laws is not only topically irrelevant, it's geographically irrelevant as well.
Second, Alcatel has been unprofitable for two straight years. It's burned through 10% of its cash reserves in those two years, and has nearly doubled it's long term debt. I don't care what type of company you're running, unless your an American automaker, you can't keep putting up numbers like that and stay in business.
Third, As many people have already pointed out, much Bell Labs research funding was enabled by AT&T's monopolization of the American telecom market until the 1980s. AT&T's breakup created competition, and when you have competition, you trim the excess fat so you can remain profitable. In fact, it's been rather a wonder that Bell Labs fundamental research arm has survived the company's many sales and acquisitions to this point.
Yes it sucks that a brilliant part of Bell Labs is slowly going the way of the dinosaur. It was a perfect example of private enterprise utilizing its resources for the public good (ok maybe not entirely since they owned patents on the research). That said, you can't expect a company to bankrupt itself for the sake of science. There are tens of thousands of employees whose jobs depend on Alcatel turning a profit at some point in the near future. Think about them.
We need term limits in Congress.
I was for term limits in California when they were first enacted, much for the same reasons as you. That said, they have been a plain and unmitigated disaster for this state because of the many unintended consequences they have produced.
First, there was gerrymandering. Since it was now impossible for an individual to hold a district for 20 to 30 years, the Democratically controlled legislature drew safe districts that would vote Democrat for the next 20 to 30 years. Republicans went along with this because the ones in power also got enough safe districts to hold up approval of the annual budget (which requires a 2/3 vote to pass).
Second, as a biproduct of gerrymandering, politics in the California became highly partisan. Since almost all legislative districts in California consistently vote 60/40 in favor one party, the real election became the primary. Of course, one wins the primary by appearing the fringes of his or her party. Thus, our state legislators and senators started to further toward both the left and right. Most moderates never made it to the general election.
Third, the rank partisanship, led to gridlock in the legislature, especially with the state budget. Democrats refuse to cut spending in tough times, and Republicans refuse to raise taxes, regardless of the need to do so. What should be a process of compromise, is reduced to an annual game of chicken because neither side wants to back down from their ideological rhetoric.
Fourth, these budget problems are exacerbated even further by the increased influence of lobbyist groups in the capitol. This is perhaps the most insidious consequence of term limits. Because legislators and senators are out after 6 and 8 years respectively, they often have very little time to learn the legislative process and become experts on the subjects their committees govern. Thus they have to rely on lobbyist groups for information and viewpoints. Think K Street in DC but much worse.
There are a host of other maladies that term limits have wrought on this state, like the political musical chairs our politicians play, but these four are by far the worst. Term limits is the best example of the law of unintended consequences. For every problem they solved did they created another equally bad or worse one.
Are we even talking about the same issue here? You stated originally:
I made that comment because there is no hint in your responses of addressing the obvious question of applying surveillance to the agents of a civilian government.
In this statement, were you implying that the Fourth Amendment should apply to situations where an ordinary citizen conducts surveillance of a government agent?
If so, the answer is No. What I am saying is that the Fourth Amendment only applies to actions taken by state or federal governments. It doesn't prohibit ordinary citizens not acting as an agent of the government from doing anything. Indeed with the exception of the Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents ordinary citizens from doing anything.
Thanks, that's a really interesting read.
Like I said civilian surveillance of government agents is not a Fourth Amendment issue. Indeed it's not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, so there's no Constitutional bar to anyone doing it.
There are probably federal laws that prohibit it, but it's not a Constitutional issue, unless those laws exist and are unconstitutional. Even if there is a Constitutional issue it doesn't concern the Fourth Amendment.
And frankly, I don't see why I have to address the issue. All I am trying to do is lay out current relevant case law governing the Fourth Amendment. Your issue doesn't concern the Fourth Amendment.
Dosen't this basically mean any property thats in public is free game for whatever we feel like doing to it as long as we dont deface or destroy it?
No it means the Fourth Amendment apply and hence, that the government doesn't need a warrant to certain things to your car, like put a GPS tracker on it.
The Fourth Amendment also only applies to state and federal governments. That means it doesn't apply to your potato cooker or Hasselhoff poster scenarios. That said, there are plenty of other laws (e.g., destruction of property, trespass) that do apply.
Remember, the Fourth Amendment doesn't per se prevent the government from doing anything. It just requires that they show probable cause and get a warrant, or have an exceedingly good justification for not getting a warrant before they do stuff covered by the Fourth Amendment (searches and seizures).
To paraphrase an earlier poster, there is every expectation of privacy if turning the tables -- surveilling the police in the same fashion -- would land a citizen in jail (whereas other types of surveillance, like passively photographing cops on the street, should be OK).
Well, as I have stated before, the Fourth Amendment only applies to the State and Federal Governments. You as an individual are not constitutionally required get a warrant to stick a GPS tracker on a cop car. As far as the Constitution is concerned, you can track all the cop cars you want.
That said, I'm sure there are probably many local laws that prevent you from doing this. I don't know if there and have not researched the subject, but that is the only way it could be illegal for you to stick a tracker on a cop car.
It's also worth noting that the federal and state governments can pass legislation require a warrant in situations where the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply. They have done this with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which governs phone wiretaps and auditory electronic surveillance. If it's a big concern, to you, maybe you should start lobbying for similar legislation to be passed for tracking devices.
But for you and the other professionals in the wider legal field, thinking reciprocally is no longer even a part of your relationship with the general public. You think and behave like class warriors, not civilians.
Say what? I have no idea of what you just said. Are you hinting at some sort of new Marxian dialectic or something?
The Supreme Court currently uses a two part test to judge reasonable expecations of privacy.
First, the defendant must have had an actual expectation of privacy. This makes sense because if the defendant in fact had not expectation that his actions were private, then he assumed the risk that they were not in fact private. However, most defendant's claim an expectation of privacy, and it's really hard to disprove their claims, so this part of the test is almost always met.
Second, the defendant's expectation of privacy must be one that society is willing to recognize as reasonable. This is known as the "objective" prong and it is here where all of the wrangling occurs.
If you want the straight answer, something is "objectively reasonable" when 5 or more Supreme Court Justices agree it is. If you want the nuanced answer, there are several theories on how the reasonableness standard changes or doesn't change. Originalist Justices (Scalia and Thomas mostly) want the expectations to be those that existed at the time of the adoption of the Fourth Amendment. Other Justices (hard to pin down now since the court has changed, but definitely Kennedy IIRC) are of the opinion that societal changes can shift privacy expectations, either increasing or, more likely, decreasing them. Some Justices appear to just want to draw a line in the sand and stick to it (Ginsburg, and Breyer come to mind).
Ultimately to me, the issue seems to be whether the court will use the language in Knotts (Discussed in my original post) as a method to boot strap itself out of the logical hole it has dug. That hole is that its current interpretation of the Fourth Amendment allows for Big Brother type surveillance outside of one's home, which is protected from electronic surveillance as per Kyllo v. United States.
Fair enough, but read United States v. Knotts. It uses the exact same quotation in the exact same way, and is also the on-point Supreme Court case legalizing the warrantless use of tracking devices.
No my brief dealt with the use of cell phone triangulation techniques to track individuals, and it was for the defendant in that case. That issue took 40 pages to discuss, so I am not going to regurgitate it here.
Also, please refrain from ad hominem attacks or implications. It detracts from your argument.
Suffice it to say, read United States v. Knotts. The law is very clear on tracking devices.
One has a lesser expectation of privacy in a motor vehicle because its function is transportation and it seldom serves as one's residence or as the repository of personal effects. A car has little capacity for escaping public scrutiny. It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view. Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590 (1974)
If a police officer is patrolling in a marked police car, do they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" or would it be ok to tag that police car with a GPS tracker and display the location real time in a Google Maps mashup? Is there some other law that would prevent this apart from the constitution?
If the above is ok, what about if the police office is parked behind some bushes/a billboard in a "Dukes of Hazard" style speed trap. Does that officer have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
What about if said officer is patrolling in an unmarked car (but one which was ID'd as a police car earlier), do they now have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
Well the Fourth Amendment only applies to the actions of the States and the Federal Government (i.e., federal and local governments plus their agents), so all of these questions are irrelevant.
The whole point of the Fourth Amendment is to govern when the government needs a warrant to search or seize something. If it's just an individual citizen acting in this manner, there is no Fourth Amendment issue.
I'm not going to speculate on your other questions because they are a little more complicated and frankly I don't have the time to analyze them.
Then it becomes a matter of whether the Open Field's Doctrine applies. The basic jist of it is that private land is not subject to Fourth Amendment if it is outside of the curtiglage, i.e., the "intimate" area surrounding one's home. You can read the article for a better explanation.
FYI, this is what makes the Fourth Amendment such a complicated area of jurisprudence. You have multiple doctrines, and analysis going on and you have to figure out which one takes precedence.
It's not my assertion, read United States v. Knotts. The Supreme Court specifically distinguishes traveling in public from wiretapping a public phone. Plus, there's a lot of federal wiretapping law unrelated to the Fourth Amendment, so wiretapping phones is more complicated, with more issues.
As for the evolution of technology and reasonable expecations of privacy, read Kyllo v. United States.
Alright, having just written a legal brief on the subject, I'll explain the legal rationale behind these rulings so that we can actually have an intelligent debate on this subject.
The Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, only applies when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the item or information searched or seized.
Here, the information about the person's location is what is being "seized." Thus, the way the debate is framed centers around the question: Does a person have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location?
Now, the law is pretty clear in some respects. For example, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home. Thus, the Fourth Amendment applies, and police need a warrant to track your movements in your home.
On the other hand, you have no expectation of privacy when you travel out in public. This is rather obvious because when you travel in public, everyone around you can see you and knows where you are. Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply, and it has been long established law that police can conduct surveillance on anyone in a public area without a warrant. (Note: This is the same basic rationale by which placing cameras on street corners does not violate the Fourth Amendment.)
The Supreme Court has further extended this rationale to apply to electronic tracking devices (e.g., GPS, Triangulation Beacons) used for tracking people in public. The rationale is that as long as the subject is in public, he has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his location.
Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply and you have no constitutional protection against police attaching a GPS device to your car. Police can track your car with a GPS locator, provided they break no laws with respect to installing the locator (A non-constitutional issue).
That said, the Supreme Court has left the door open to regulating this type of behavior by police. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Knotts left open the possibility of using "different constitutional principles" to regulate police use of tracking devices if "dragnet type law enforcement practices" developed. Dragnet in this context refers to systematic and coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
Thus, presumably one could argue that if the police started using GPS devices in our cell phones to track everyone in a systematic manner, another constitutional principle, like for example the right of privacy, could be applied to find a constitutional ground to prevent it. Whether the Supreme Court chooses to use the dicta in Knotts is of course up to it.
Anyway, that's it, have fun debating.
I wouldn't personally invest in a company that was that precariously positioned... I'm not entirely sure which it is, but surely a properly priced company isn't in such a precarious position where one individual getting hit by a bus would crush it the way that the NY Times is suggesting.
There are plenty of company's where the CEO's management warrants a premium P/E multiple. If Warren Buffet were to die tomorrow, Berkshire Hathaway's stock would suffer. If Bill Gates had died during the mid 90s, you can bet Microsoft's stock would have cratered. John Chambers (Cisco), Satoru Iwata (Nintendo), Laksmi Mittal (ArcelorMittal), Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.), these are just a few instances where the CEO is basically the franchise. If you want an example of what a bad CEO can do look at Carli Fiorina (HP), Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide), Jimmy Cayne (Bear Stearns), or Hector Ruiz (AMD).
A CEO (and management in general) is an asset to a company just like a manufacturing plant, cash, or inventory. However, unlike the aforementioned, the value of a company's management cannot be accurately reflected on a Balance Sheet. Instead a CEO's or management's (in)effectiveness if often reflected in the stock price, specifically the premium or discount to which the stock trades compared to its competitors.
For example, Apple's Forward P/E is currently 30 while Microsoft and Dell are trading at about 18 and 19 respectively. A good portion of that premium is due to the fact that Steve Balmer and Michael Dell are failing at leading their respective companies, while Steve Jobs has done a bang up job at spearheading Apple's product development.
Now, if you don't want to invest in companies that depend on a key man or group, that's you're prerogative. No risk, no reward. But there are people that do (and from the list above you can see it does pay off), and to them knowing Steve Job's health is an important concern.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I would go a step further. People really need to consider what they are getting into when they have children and I have a strong suspicion that most parents fail to do this. If you're struggling to maintain your lifestyle with children, chances are you probably couldn't afford that lifestyle with with a comfortable margin before children.
When you raise children you have the financial obligation to support them, the societal obligation to properly socialize them, and the personal obligation to nurture them and reach their full potential.
If you cannot fulfill all three of these obligations you should not be raising or having any children. If having additional children would call into question your ability to to carry out these obligations for your current offspring, then you should not have more kids!
Whether it be among my personal friends, acquaintances, or through the news, I am utterly dismayed at the lack of forethought people seem to show when having children. Some people want to have a child merely because it would be self fulfilling or "neat." Some people want to have children because their parents or some other family member is pushing them. Some people want to have kids because, well you're supposed to have kids. These reasons by themselves are all frankly, absurd and abhorrent.
No one should choose to have and raise a child for purely personal reasons. Raising a child is a selfless act. When you have a child you owe a fiduciary duty to it to look out for its best interests and put them above your own. If you do any less, you are not giving the child the proper upbringing it deserves. You should be prepaired for the physical, mental, financial, and emotional stress (and it is stress) of raising a child before you even think of having a child. You should especially be prepared for the financial burden, as it can compound the other three. If you are not capable of doing this, then by all means you should not be having kids.
Again, think before you breed. That's if for my rand.
This clause is commonly referred to as the Tax and Spend Clause and has been commonly read to give Congress the power to tax and spend for the general welfare, not to regulate for the general welfare. Thus, if Congress wanted to tax pollution for the general welfare, it could. This specific clause does not give Congress the power to regulate pollution for the general welfare. Congress has no general police power.
If you want to know more about the history and interpretation of the clause, there is some excellent reading here.