because, as we all know, Michael Moore is always about the greater good.
Cuba has a great medical system...as long as you are one of the elites.
The United States has an even better medical system...as long as you can pay for it. And your changes of being able to pay for it in the United States are better than your chances of being one of the elite in Cuba.
Neither can they compete with shipping raw materials to the other side of the world, having foreign workers make the finished product, and then shipping the finished goods back to the US.
Sure they can.
Somehow, that makes me think that the domestic worker might be asking for a little too much.
What, exactly, is asking too much? Asking not to be exploited by employers by the ILLEGAL hiring of ILLEGAL aliens?
And yes, I think that $55 per hour in 2006 dollars is too much to ask for a unionized factory worker.
The only person that's brought up $55 per hour is you. I simply brought up the wages in 1980 vs the wages in 1995 for meat packers to demonstrate the real impact that illegal alien labor has had one a single profession. Fundamentally, I'm not a fan of unions, but they are a pretty pro-active force when it comes to things like work place safety. Again, if you are an international business major or work in that field, things like severed fingers and beating slave workers may not bother you all that much. Just the price of doing business I suppose. Sorry American worker, in order to make us competitive with Chinese slave labor, we had to make you slaves. But hey, on a different topic, have you seen my new Porsche?
And what would it cost to pack meat in China and ship to the US?
Given the perishable nature of meat, and the recent contamination issues with Chinese agricultural products, there's more than simple economics at play here at the macro scale.
What would be the cost to mechanize meat packing?
I don't know, but I do know that low labor costs have typically been a detrimental influence on industrial innovation. If mechanization is more expensive than labor, illegal or legal, labor wins out.
The world has changed significantly since 1980. US cotton (picked mechanically) is shipped abroad to foreign textile mills and then finished clothing is shipped back here. The textile industry found this to be cheaper than hiring unionized domestic workers.
That's because domestic unionized workers aren't working in sweatshops or literal slave factories, as is the case for many prison system "workers" in China. One simple fact is a blue collar worker in the United States cannot compete on a simple price basis against slave labor. The solution to this problem, at least according to the open borders advocates, is importing our own permanent underclass so we can "remain competitive". Personally, I find this unpalatable.
Legalizing the illegals isn't going to drive up wages.
Actually, it will drive down wages because the moral hazard of illegal immigration amnesty is that it dramatically increases the rate of illegal immigration as millions of other people try to collect in the windfall (as happened in 1986 and 1993). I'm not advocating legalizing the illegals, I'm advocating stopping the influx (which DOES drive down wages, especially for entry level and blue collar workers), and using deportation and attrition to drive the existing numbers down to a more manageable level.
Why would the plant prefer hiring illegals to legals? What's the difference to the plant?
Cost. In 1980 the average meat packer made $19 an hour (in 1980 dollars). By 1995 the wage had declined to $12 an hour (in 1995 dollars), largely due to a huge influx of Latinos, largely illegal, to the industry.
Legal resident aliens and American workers tend to know things about collective bargaining, safety rights, fair workplace rights, OSHA, etc. Illegals from Guatamala or Mexico, not so much. They don't unionize, they don't narc on the company to the Federal government when there are egregious safety violations, and they work for less money than a legal worker would. And right now, they can do that with impunity.
Also, if we completely 'dry up' all social programs...health care...education from the illegals, in addition to drying up the jobs, they would have no choice but to pack up and go home and try to get in the lawful way.
This is the libertarian argument, and while I agree with it implicitly, the problem is, we're never going to dry up those social programs or illegal alien access to those programs, even when there is widespread popular support. Proposition 187, the proposal to strip benefits from illegals in California passed by a comfortable margin (59%), but was overturned by a Federal judge and left to die by Gray Davis. The courts have repeatedly struck down local and state efforts at combatting the illegal problem (including cutting off social services) so the solution needs to taken at the Federal level and the biggest hammer the Federal government has is enforcement.
IANAL or an immigration agent, but the law seems to give some protection for employers who exhibit "good faith" in employing properly documented immigrants. Then, shell contracting agencies can provide illegal labor and the employer can have plausible deniability.
Enforcement is especially hard when the government doesn't even try. And the government isn't trying. If you have a meatpacking plant in Iowa where 95% of the workers are illegal, it's a good bet there is collusion on the part of the managers and owners of the plant to hire illegals. Now, it may not be a slam dunk prosecution because of the use of legal fig leaf's, but the point of prosecution is two-fold: punish those who broke the law and deter those who might be breaking the law or thinking of breaking the law in the future. Having to defend yourself against a criminal prosecution is a pretty big deterrent in corporate American if Sarbanes-Oxley is any indicator.
Don't think that's going to happen. When the laws are even hinted at being enforced, the folks that hire illegals can afford to throw money at the lobbies. It's cheaper to buy laws than to pay minimum wages to a vast workforce. It's all the economics and cost of doing business.
Yes and no. The commonly held assumption is that illegals are working for below minimum wage. By and large, this isn't true. For a test of this, go down to your local day laborer gathering place and offer to pay someone $3 an hour to hang dry wall and see how many jump at the chance. It'll take closer to $10 an hour. What they are doing, however, is suppressing wages in the professions where they are present in large numbers (meat packing, construction, lots of other blue collar wages), while lowering cost to those that hire them...in effect, widening the gap between rich and poor. And it's ironic, considering that many of the amnesty and open border advocates also rail against the increasing divergence of wealth in American.
As for illegal immigration, the major problem is that citizens of our poor neighbors to the south have great incentives to come up here: gov't benefits (e.g., schooling for children) and readily available jobs. The first can be solved, by giving gov't benefits only to green card holders; the latter, not so easily.
Not true. The way to dry up the jobs for illegals is to fine and imprison the folks that hire illegals. These laws already exist on the books. All they have to do is enforce it. Enforcement was never all that strong under Clinton, but it completely disappeared under Bush.
Sure, North Korea could come up with some primitive missiles in a few years... that's why the US must deploy interceptors in Europe, instead of Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea.
Never fails, log on to Slashdot to read the ignorant talk about geopolitics.
The US already has deployed inteceptors to the Pacific. Before interceptors can go in, radar has to go in. This is what is now being talked about in Europe.
As for North Korea coming up with a missile in a few years, a few years has already come and gone. They already have the missile, as does Iran since they have bought all of the NK missile designs.
Same goes about Iran: the US has huge military presence in Turkey, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, why not use those bases?
Venezuela are controlled by oligarchs who have no love for Chavez
I'd say it's pretty hard to love Chavez if he's busy throwing your peers in prison and seizing business that you own or have a stake in. Chavez is hugely popular because he's sticking it to the rich guys and the Americans, but after a while, when this doesn't make the life of the common man any better than it was before Chavez (or actually makes it worse after private and foreign investment has dried up and gone to friendlier countries), then Chavez will just be another failed socialist dictatorial demogogue holding onto power by force and oppression.
Chavez has also been given de facto dictatorial powers, so the law is de facto and de jure, whatever Chavez says it is, so of course "it's legal". But is it right?
If Chavez was really winning the battle of ideas and making things better in his country, he wouldn't have to oppress his oponents. Right now he's a genuinely popular leader, but he's going to end up driving Venezuela into the ground.
1. While property taxes are levied on your house by local governments, state governments and the Federal government can and do seize houses to pay tax debt.
2. There is an ever increasing amount of Federal legislation and regulation dictating what you can and can't do with your property. My paying taxes comment was merely an example, not THE example. Other examples are of people that have been put in jail for putting half a ton of clean fill on their property without EPA approval because the EPA declared their property as a Federal Protected Wetland. The effective result of land use restriction is to destroy most inherent value in the private property. In some cases, because of vaguely worded law, regulatory bodies have been given enormous power to enforce their interpretation.
3. Your tax explanation is amusing. How would you feel if I took $10 from you, punched you in the gut, bought a bunch of candy you don't want or need, gave you a little bit of it, kept some myself, and gave the rest to my friends? And then expected you to be grateful to me for the services I provided you and others for the "common good"? That, fundamentally, is what a lot of the taxation we suffer through today is. Take welfare. We spend more on welfare administration than we actually pay out to people. Welfare isn't a program to help poor people, it's a program to increase the size of the Federal bureaucracy that siphons off the majority of the money for itself and pays out a pittance to the poor and the fraudulent. More and more, the only thing that government is servicing, at the local, state, and Federal level, is itself, or those special interests large enough to get noticed. Government isn't the cure, it's the disease.
The "common good" was supposed to be the increased property taxes the owners of the "improved" property
would have to pay.
(disclaimer - Kelo was a total misuse of Eminent Domain, IANAL but I know that)
Common good, as it formerly used to be used, meant it was to be used by the public at large. Specifically...roads, railroads, and canals. It was expanded later on to included "blighted areas", and now, since it's been upheld by the SCOTUS (with all the liberals voting for, and all the conservatives voting against, and the swing votes going to the fors), it's basically been expanded to be anything the government wants, the government gets. Which goes back to my point. You don't own your land, you're merely renting it. And the government can come in and take it away for reasons as capricious as giving it to a private developer or because you have 3 hemp plants growing wild on your land that you didn't even know about.
Exactly!! Because not following the law is proof that.. wait, what?!?
I take it you've never heard of the "glancing geese test" either, by which if there is a puddle of water on your property big enough for a goose flying by to see from the air, boom, EPA comes in and says you have a Federally protected wetland. Suddenly, if you are a farmer, you can't plow that section of the property, you can't fill it in, or otherwise modify it without permission from the EPA.
Or better yet, you're Kelo in Connecticut and the city decides they are going to seize your land using Eminent Domain at way below market value and turn around and sell it to a private developer who will then stand to profit handsomly from ill gotten gains they didn't have to pay a market rate for. I guess the "common good" here was for the shareholders of the development corporation, huh?
Hell, you can't even grow wheat for your own private use on your land now without the government stepping in and fining you.
So I repeat:
- if your property is subject, at any point in time to capricious seizure by the authorities...then you don't own it.
- if you have to pay rent on a property (ie property taxes) to remain on that property...then you don't own it.
- if you are prohibited from doing pretty mundane things on your property like cutting down trees, filling in a ditch, or growing wheat or peanuts by regulatory agencies...then you don't own it.
And it's not simply a matter of "not paying your taxes". Plenty of people move outside of the city, only to have the city swallow them up via incorporation and demand that they start paying their city taxes for city services (which usually don't even reach them), or else...
That's because there is no such thing as private property in the United States. You are just renting it from the government. Doubt me? Try not paying your taxes and see what happens.
Actually, the US government is split, with the Democrats firmly in control of Congress. Additionally, Bush isn't all that right wing (illegal alien amnesty, massive increase in social spending via medicaid/medicare drug program, etc) unless you are coming from the European left-wing slant of "anyone who disagrees with me is a right wing fascist". Sorta like how Pim Fortuyn was considered far right wing even though he was a homosexual libertarian who's only right wing stance was stopping the immigration of minorities who weren't assimilating into Dutch liberal culture.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the news is a business and stories that are sexy, simple, and scandalous get more playtime than ones that are complicated, boring, or confusing. This isn't a right wing or a left wing issue. What makes it a left-wing or right-wing issue is when an organization posts "The top 25 censored news stories of 2007" when they really mean "The 25 most censtored 'progressive' left wing news stories of 2007".
I didn't realize that doing so would affect the individual validity/irrelevance of all the other selected stories I keep forgetting that the presence of quantitative "balance" is the best indicator of truth.
Individually, it doesn't, but collectively it's pretty clear that the list is ONLY the undercovered stories from a hard core left-wing perspective. Individually, the stories may or may not be true, but really, it doesn't matter...the objective here is clearly NOT to highlight censored stories, just stories that the left-wing wishes were more widely known.
The problem with your pet little theory is that engineers aren't stupid. Engineer might be cool but it's also hard and demanding. The same mental acuity which translates into a $80,000 a year job in a declining job market like computer engineering can be transfered to say, pre-med or pre-law where it's more difficult to outsource. The only "incentives" we need is for American businesses to continue to hire American employees. Whats the point of government giving incentives to American students for jobs that aren't going to be there when they graduate?
Ummm, maybe he was talking about slashdot. You know that American website you are on right now where we all linked to the article from?
That might've been the case, but I suspect the likely answer is he had a reflexive pavlonian response and just assumed that the article and the publisher were American and posted his quick, not-so-witty retort.
While I think you were unfairly modded down as flamebait, I don't think you have to worry about things being "too hot" for crop farming. Heat doesn't really cause crop failures with the main cereal crops. Disease, pests, too little rain, or too much rain at the wrong time cause crop failures.
Hotter global temperatures might mean more rainfall for some currently very arid regions (American southwest or the Sahara, for example) which in turn would open up new areas to agricultural exploitation.
I never ceased to be amazed at the sheer number of "Global Warming's a Myth / Good for Us" stories in American Newspapers and on American websites.
And I never ceased to be amazed at the sheer number of idiots on the "Global Warming is going to kill us all" side. Case in point: this article isn't from an American Newspaper or an American website. It's from Der Spiegel. Name sounds kinda funny for American English doesn't it, like, maybe, because it isn't? As in, it's a German magazine. The article in question is about a German researcher.
A few thoughts:
Please spare us. Based on your opening comments, your thoughts aren't worth a lick of spit.
In the language of the day, well regulated = well trained. Militia = every free citizen.
Only in the 20th century have people tried to argue that "well regulated" = regulated by the government to the point of prohibition, and "militia" to mean the "National Guard" (which didn't exist until the 20th century...those crafty Framers sure were ahead of their time in being able to predict the National Guard, weren't they?).
In other words, the "right of the people" mentioned in the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment, and 10th Amendments all refer to individuals and individual rights, not some collective body controlled by the government.
The primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment isn't and never was defense of the "big" state, it's defense of self, both against criminals AND THE STATE.
The system we have right now isn't that bad. My personal opinion is that we could probably do away with a lot of the loopholes that make getting guns so easy for people who shouldn't have them.
What loopholes are you talking about? Are you talking about the so-called "gun-show" loophole, which doesn't even exist? Do you even realize that a bare fraction of all firearms used in the commission of crime are sold at gunshows? Most are acquired illegally? I bought a gun at a gunshow two weekends ago. Guess what, I had to undergo a NICS background check...and I live in Texas. There is no loophole. It's a myth and a distortion by the gun-grabbers.
But the NRA and other gun nuts are too afraid of rational laws.
Well there goes your credibility as some sort of moderate who can "see both sides". If one side of the gun control debate has a problem with formulating rational arguments, it's the gun grabbers.
Lets see, if I wholeheartedly support the 1st Amendment, then I'm a patriotic civil libertarian. But if I support the 2nd Amendment equally as well, I must be some foaming at the mouth "gun nut". So, what problem do you have with some common sense restrictions on free speech? Get my drift? What part of "the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR arms will not be infringed" do you not understand? Do you not understand that this isn't a slippery slope, it's a freaking cliff, and that if you can wave a magic wand and ignore parts of the Constitution that are explicitly enumerated, a lot of your other cherished rights which aren't explicitly enumerated will be much easier to get rid of.
Your right to peacefully assemble and petition the government, your right to privacy, your right to be secure in your person and home, and your right to your guns, how exactly are you going to get your rights back?
I'm sorry, but making it more difficult to legally get a gun when you are confirmed to be insane shouldn't be something that people are against. Can they get a gun illegally? Sure, but that doesn't mean we should remove all gun laws.
Under Federal law, Cho should've been barred from being able to purchase a weapon. The State of Virginia did not supply the Federal government with the appropriate information. This wasn't a problem with laws or absence thereof, it was common bureaucratic bungling. I'm more concerned with the administrative fiat at Virginia Tech that made sure all of Cho's victims were disarmed and defenseless.
Slashdot Mirror
because, as we all know, Michael Moore is always about the greater good.
Cuba has a great medical system...as long as you are one of the elites.
The United States has an even better medical system...as long as you can pay for it. And your changes of being able to pay for it in the United States are better than your chances of being one of the elite in Cuba.
Neither can they compete with shipping raw materials to the other side of the world, having foreign workers make the finished product, and then shipping the finished goods back to the US.
Sure they can.
Somehow, that makes me think that the domestic worker might be asking for a little too much.
What, exactly, is asking too much? Asking not to be exploited by employers by the ILLEGAL hiring of ILLEGAL aliens? And yes, I think that $55 per hour in 2006 dollars is too much to ask for a unionized factory worker.
The only person that's brought up $55 per hour is you. I simply brought up the wages in 1980 vs the wages in 1995 for meat packers to demonstrate the real impact that illegal alien labor has had one a single profession. Fundamentally, I'm not a fan of unions, but they are a pretty pro-active force when it comes to things like work place safety. Again, if you are an international business major or work in that field, things like severed fingers and beating slave workers may not bother you all that much. Just the price of doing business I suppose. Sorry American worker, in order to make us competitive with Chinese slave labor, we had to make you slaves. But hey, on a different topic, have you seen my new Porsche?
And what would it cost to pack meat in China and ship to the US?
Given the perishable nature of meat, and the recent contamination issues with Chinese agricultural products, there's more than simple economics at play here at the macro scale.
What would be the cost to mechanize meat packing?
I don't know, but I do know that low labor costs have typically been a detrimental influence on industrial innovation. If mechanization is more expensive than labor, illegal or legal, labor wins out.
The world has changed significantly since 1980. US cotton (picked mechanically) is shipped abroad to foreign textile mills and then finished clothing is shipped back here. The textile industry found this to be cheaper than hiring unionized domestic workers.
That's because domestic unionized workers aren't working in sweatshops or literal slave factories, as is the case for many prison system "workers" in China. One simple fact is a blue collar worker in the United States cannot compete on a simple price basis against slave labor. The solution to this problem, at least according to the open borders advocates, is importing our own permanent underclass so we can "remain competitive". Personally, I find this unpalatable.
Legalizing the illegals isn't going to drive up wages.
Actually, it will drive down wages because the moral hazard of illegal immigration amnesty is that it dramatically increases the rate of illegal immigration as millions of other people try to collect in the windfall (as happened in 1986 and 1993). I'm not advocating legalizing the illegals, I'm advocating stopping the influx (which DOES drive down wages, especially for entry level and blue collar workers), and using deportation and attrition to drive the existing numbers down to a more manageable level.
Why would the plant prefer hiring illegals to legals? What's the difference to the plant?
Cost. In 1980 the average meat packer made $19 an hour (in 1980 dollars). By 1995 the wage had declined to $12 an hour (in 1995 dollars), largely due to a huge influx of Latinos, largely illegal, to the industry. Legal resident aliens and American workers tend to know things about collective bargaining, safety rights, fair workplace rights, OSHA, etc. Illegals from Guatamala or Mexico, not so much. They don't unionize, they don't narc on the company to the Federal government when there are egregious safety violations, and they work for less money than a legal worker would. And right now, they can do that with impunity.
Also, if we completely 'dry up' all social programs...health care...education from the illegals, in addition to drying up the jobs, they would have no choice but to pack up and go home and try to get in the lawful way.
This is the libertarian argument, and while I agree with it implicitly, the problem is, we're never going to dry up those social programs or illegal alien access to those programs, even when there is widespread popular support. Proposition 187, the proposal to strip benefits from illegals in California passed by a comfortable margin (59%), but was overturned by a Federal judge and left to die by Gray Davis. The courts have repeatedly struck down local and state efforts at combatting the illegal problem (including cutting off social services) so the solution needs to taken at the Federal level and the biggest hammer the Federal government has is enforcement.
IANAL or an immigration agent, but the law seems to give some protection for employers who exhibit "good faith" in employing properly documented immigrants. Then, shell contracting agencies can provide illegal labor and the employer can have plausible deniability.
Enforcement is especially hard when the government doesn't even try. And the government isn't trying. If you have a meatpacking plant in Iowa where 95% of the workers are illegal, it's a good bet there is collusion on the part of the managers and owners of the plant to hire illegals. Now, it may not be a slam dunk prosecution because of the use of legal fig leaf's, but the point of prosecution is two-fold: punish those who broke the law and deter those who might be breaking the law or thinking of breaking the law in the future. Having to defend yourself against a criminal prosecution is a pretty big deterrent in corporate American if Sarbanes-Oxley is any indicator.
Don't think that's going to happen. When the laws are even hinted at being enforced, the folks that hire illegals can afford to throw money at the lobbies. It's cheaper to buy laws than to pay minimum wages to a vast workforce. It's all the economics and cost of doing business.
Yes and no. The commonly held assumption is that illegals are working for below minimum wage. By and large, this isn't true. For a test of this, go down to your local day laborer gathering place and offer to pay someone $3 an hour to hang dry wall and see how many jump at the chance. It'll take closer to $10 an hour. What they are doing, however, is suppressing wages in the professions where they are present in large numbers (meat packing, construction, lots of other blue collar wages), while lowering cost to those that hire them...in effect, widening the gap between rich and poor. And it's ironic, considering that many of the amnesty and open border advocates also rail against the increasing divergence of wealth in American.
As for illegal immigration, the major problem is that citizens of our poor neighbors to the south have great incentives to come up here: gov't benefits (e.g., schooling for children) and readily available jobs. The first can be solved, by giving gov't benefits only to green card holders; the latter, not so easily.
Not true. The way to dry up the jobs for illegals is to fine and imprison the folks that hire illegals. These laws already exist on the books. All they have to do is enforce it. Enforcement was never all that strong under Clinton, but it completely disappeared under Bush.
Here's the law:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/osc/ref/8usc1324a.htm
Sure, North Korea could come up with some primitive missiles in a few years... that's why the US must deploy interceptors in Europe, instead of Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea.
Never fails, log on to Slashdot to read the ignorant talk about geopolitics.
The US already has deployed inteceptors to the Pacific. Before interceptors can go in, radar has to go in. This is what is now being talked about in Europe.
As for North Korea coming up with a missile in a few years, a few years has already come and gone. They already have the missile, as does Iran since they have bought all of the NK missile designs.
Same goes about Iran: the US has huge military presence in Turkey, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, why not use those bases?
I dunno, maybe because a missile from Iran wouldn't fly over those countries??? Great Circle from Tehran to NYC
Venezuela are controlled by oligarchs who have no love for Chavez
I'd say it's pretty hard to love Chavez if he's busy throwing your peers in prison and seizing business that you own or have a stake in. Chavez is hugely popular because he's sticking it to the rich guys and the Americans, but after a while, when this doesn't make the life of the common man any better than it was before Chavez (or actually makes it worse after private and foreign investment has dried up and gone to friendlier countries), then Chavez will just be another failed socialist dictatorial demogogue holding onto power by force and oppression.
Chavez has also been given de facto dictatorial powers, so the law is de facto and de jure, whatever Chavez says it is, so of course "it's legal". But is it right?
If Chavez was really winning the battle of ideas and making things better in his country, he wouldn't have to oppress his oponents. Right now he's a genuinely popular leader, but he's going to end up driving Venezuela into the ground.
Some problems with your statements.
1. While property taxes are levied on your house by local governments, state governments and the Federal government can and do seize houses to pay tax debt.
2. There is an ever increasing amount of Federal legislation and regulation dictating what you can and can't do with your property. My paying taxes comment was merely an example, not THE example. Other examples are of people that have been put in jail for putting half a ton of clean fill on their property without EPA approval because the EPA declared their property as a Federal Protected Wetland. The effective result of land use restriction is to destroy most inherent value in the private property. In some cases, because of vaguely worded law, regulatory bodies have been given enormous power to enforce their interpretation.
3. Your tax explanation is amusing. How would you feel if I took $10 from you, punched you in the gut, bought a bunch of candy you don't want or need, gave you a little bit of it, kept some myself, and gave the rest to my friends? And then expected you to be grateful to me for the services I provided you and others for the "common good"? That, fundamentally, is what a lot of the taxation we suffer through today is. Take welfare. We spend more on welfare administration than we actually pay out to people. Welfare isn't a program to help poor people, it's a program to increase the size of the Federal bureaucracy that siphons off the majority of the money for itself and pays out a pittance to the poor and the fraudulent. More and more, the only thing that government is servicing, at the local, state, and Federal level, is itself, or those special interests large enough to get noticed. Government isn't the cure, it's the disease.
The "common good" was supposed to be the increased property taxes the owners of the "improved" property would have to pay.
(disclaimer - Kelo was a total misuse of Eminent Domain, IANAL but I know that)
Common good, as it formerly used to be used, meant it was to be used by the public at large. Specifically...roads, railroads, and canals. It was expanded later on to included "blighted areas", and now, since it's been upheld by the SCOTUS (with all the liberals voting for, and all the conservatives voting against, and the swing votes going to the fors), it's basically been expanded to be anything the government wants, the government gets. Which goes back to my point. You don't own your land, you're merely renting it. And the government can come in and take it away for reasons as capricious as giving it to a private developer or because you have 3 hemp plants growing wild on your land that you didn't even know about.
Exactly!! Because not following the law is proof that.. wait, what?!?
I take it you've never heard of the "glancing geese test" either, by which if there is a puddle of water on your property big enough for a goose flying by to see from the air, boom, EPA comes in and says you have a Federally protected wetland. Suddenly, if you are a farmer, you can't plow that section of the property, you can't fill it in, or otherwise modify it without permission from the EPA.
Or better yet, you're Kelo in Connecticut and the city decides they are going to seize your land using Eminent Domain at way below market value and turn around and sell it to a private developer who will then stand to profit handsomly from ill gotten gains they didn't have to pay a market rate for. I guess the "common good" here was for the shareholders of the development corporation, huh?
Hell, you can't even grow wheat for your own private use on your land now without the government stepping in and fining you.
So I repeat: - if your property is subject, at any point in time to capricious seizure by the authorities...then you don't own it.
- if you have to pay rent on a property (ie property taxes) to remain on that property...then you don't own it.
- if you are prohibited from doing pretty mundane things on your property like cutting down trees, filling in a ditch, or growing wheat or peanuts by regulatory agencies...then you don't own it.
And it's not simply a matter of "not paying your taxes". Plenty of people move outside of the city, only to have the city swallow them up via incorporation and demand that they start paying their city taxes for city services (which usually don't even reach them), or else...
That's because there is no such thing as private property in the United States. You are just renting it from the government. Doubt me? Try not paying your taxes and see what happens.
Well, US government is right-wing
Actually, the US government is split, with the Democrats firmly in control of Congress. Additionally, Bush isn't all that right wing (illegal alien amnesty, massive increase in social spending via medicaid/medicare drug program, etc) unless you are coming from the European left-wing slant of "anyone who disagrees with me is a right wing fascist". Sorta like how Pim Fortuyn was considered far right wing even though he was a homosexual libertarian who's only right wing stance was stopping the immigration of minorities who weren't assimilating into Dutch liberal culture.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the news is a business and stories that are sexy, simple, and scandalous get more playtime than ones that are complicated, boring, or confusing. This isn't a right wing or a left wing issue. What makes it a left-wing or right-wing issue is when an organization posts "The top 25 censored news stories of 2007" when they really mean "The 25 most censtored 'progressive' left wing news stories of 2007".
I didn't realize that doing so would affect the individual validity/irrelevance of all the other selected stories I keep forgetting that the presence of quantitative "balance" is the best indicator of truth.
Individually, it doesn't, but collectively it's pretty clear that the list is ONLY the undercovered stories from a hard core left-wing perspective. Individually, the stories may or may not be true, but really, it doesn't matter...the objective here is clearly NOT to highlight censored stories, just stories that the left-wing wishes were more widely known.
Ah, then they must be full of shit.
Pretty much. They would be less full of shit if they bothered to post a token non-left wing censored story.
when Republicans are in power, there MAY be tax increases.
when Democrats are in power, there WILL be tax increases.
Hillary Clinton: "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." (actual quote).
The problem with your pet little theory is that engineers aren't stupid. Engineer might be cool but it's also hard and demanding. The same mental acuity which translates into a $80,000 a year job in a declining job market like computer engineering can be transfered to say, pre-med or pre-law where it's more difficult to outsource. The only "incentives" we need is for American businesses to continue to hire American employees. Whats the point of government giving incentives to American students for jobs that aren't going to be there when they graduate?
Ummm, maybe he was talking about slashdot. You know that American website you are on right now where we all linked to the article from?
That might've been the case, but I suspect the likely answer is he had a reflexive pavlonian response and just assumed that the article and the publisher were American and posted his quick, not-so-witty retort.
While I think you were unfairly modded down as flamebait, I don't think you have to worry about things being "too hot" for crop farming. Heat doesn't really cause crop failures with the main cereal crops. Disease, pests, too little rain, or too much rain at the wrong time cause crop failures.
Hotter global temperatures might mean more rainfall for some currently very arid regions (American southwest or the Sahara, for example) which in turn would open up new areas to agricultural exploitation.
I never ceased to be amazed at the sheer number of "Global Warming's a Myth / Good for Us" stories in American Newspapers and on American websites.
And I never ceased to be amazed at the sheer number of idiots on the "Global Warming is going to kill us all" side. Case in point: this article isn't from an American Newspaper or an American website. It's from Der Spiegel. Name sounds kinda funny for American English doesn't it, like, maybe, because it isn't? As in, it's a German magazine. The article in question is about a German researcher.
A few thoughts:
Please spare us. Based on your opening comments, your thoughts aren't worth a lick of spit.
In the language of the day, well regulated = well trained. Militia = every free citizen.
Only in the 20th century have people tried to argue that "well regulated" = regulated by the government to the point of prohibition, and "militia" to mean the "National Guard" (which didn't exist until the 20th century...those crafty Framers sure were ahead of their time in being able to predict the National Guard, weren't they?).
In other words, the "right of the people" mentioned in the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment, and 10th Amendments all refer to individuals and individual rights, not some collective body controlled by the government. The primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment isn't and never was defense of the "big" state, it's defense of self, both against criminals AND THE STATE.
The system we have right now isn't that bad. My personal opinion is that we could probably do away with a lot of the loopholes that make getting guns so easy for people who shouldn't have them.
What loopholes are you talking about? Are you talking about the so-called "gun-show" loophole, which doesn't even exist? Do you even realize that a bare fraction of all firearms used in the commission of crime are sold at gunshows? Most are acquired illegally? I bought a gun at a gunshow two weekends ago. Guess what, I had to undergo a NICS background check...and I live in Texas. There is no loophole. It's a myth and a distortion by the gun-grabbers.
But the NRA and other gun nuts are too afraid of rational laws.
Well there goes your credibility as some sort of moderate who can "see both sides". If one side of the gun control debate has a problem with formulating rational arguments, it's the gun grabbers.
Lets see, if I wholeheartedly support the 1st Amendment, then I'm a patriotic civil libertarian. But if I support the 2nd Amendment equally as well, I must be some foaming at the mouth "gun nut". So, what problem do you have with some common sense restrictions on free speech? Get my drift? What part of "the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR arms will not be infringed" do you not understand? Do you not understand that this isn't a slippery slope, it's a freaking cliff, and that if you can wave a magic wand and ignore parts of the Constitution that are explicitly enumerated, a lot of your other cherished rights which aren't explicitly enumerated will be much easier to get rid of.
Your right to peacefully assemble and petition the government, your right to privacy, your right to be secure in your person and home, and your right to your guns, how exactly are you going to get your rights back?
I'm sorry, but making it more difficult to legally get a gun when you are confirmed to be insane shouldn't be something that people are against. Can they get a gun illegally? Sure, but that doesn't mean we should remove all gun laws.
Under Federal law, Cho should've been barred from being able to purchase a weapon. The State of Virginia did not supply the Federal government with the appropriate information. This wasn't a problem with laws or absence thereof, it was common bureaucratic bungling. I'm more concerned with the administrative fiat at Virginia Tech that made sure all of Cho's victims were disarmed and defenseless.