GeorgiaDon

Isn't that just "texting"? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Good article. Courts can ignore/strike down a law only if it's unconstitutional. If the law is merely stupid, or badly written, or leads to absurd results, it's up to legislators to fix it. Of course these days that may be expecting a lot. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I wonder how long it will take some corporations to "discover" their religious objections to antibiotics, or chemotherapy, or trauma care, or mental health treatment, or ... Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

This should be required reading, for everyone but especially for those in a position to order troops into battle. Don DULCE ET DECORUM EST by WILFRED OWEN Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!---An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I sure wish I had the Senate's powers to decide when I'm at work. I could show up once every three days, punch in and punch out 30 seconds later, and still get paid. Yippee! Of course, my employer might not be too happy. I think there should be a time limit within which the senate has to vote on nominees, or else they are automatically confirmed. IOW, if the senate does not explicitly reject a nominee within the allowed time, they are confirmed. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I think you're overlooking the larger economic impacts of adding a very large tax to purchases that may not be "necessary for life", but are generally necessary for living/working. Remember that sales taxes will have to go up dramatically if they are to replace income taxes, and those taxes will have to be paid at the time of purchase, they can't be spread over the year, much less over the useful lifetime of the goods/services being purchased. As a simple example, consider buying a car. Unless you happen to be one of the small percentage of the population that lives in a large city with public transit that runs efficiently, dependably, and 24/7, you will probably need some sort of vehicle to get to and from work, buy groceries (ever try to carry a dozen shopping bags by hand on a subway?), etc. Cars are already an expensive item, but with a car loan you can spread that cost over many months (at the expense of paying interest of course). Now consider a 25 to 50% sales tax. That tax will have to be paid at the time of purchase. Banks use the value of the car as collateral, and so will only loan you up to the value of the car (or somewhat less), but they won't loan you enough to cover the cost of the car plus taxes. That means that to buy an inexpensive new car (say, $20,000 for ease of calculation) you'll have to have $5-10,000 just for the tax, in addition to the down payment for the car. The result is that people will just drive old junkers until they die, and sales of new cars will plummet. There just are not enough rich people with enough interest in collecting cars to replace the net buying power of the segment of the population for whom $10,000 (on top of the actual cost of the car) is a barrier that is so high they'll pay it only when they have no other choice (as in, when their old car dies and cannot be repaired for less than $10,000). What will happen to the auto industry when their market is cut by 90%? Of course, when all those jobs disappear, all those now-unemployed people will also not have any money to spend. Here in Georgia, the state recently went from charging an annual ad valorium tax when you renew your vehicle registration to a one-time tax (about 6.7%) which is paid in full at the time of purchase (new or used cars, private sale or dealer, doesn't matter). I read that that has already had an adverse effect on sales. What will be the macroeconomic impact of making every purchase much more expensive, with the increased cost payable up front? How much of an economic slowdown are you willing to impose to realize the goal of shifting the tax base of the country away from the wealthiest fraction of the population? You should also consider the cost of implementing and monitoring a national sales tax. When Canada implemented a national goods and services tax (about 12%, on top of local and provincial taxes) all the revenue collected for the first several years went just to the cost of hiring and training all the new government workers needed to monitor and enforce the tax, new computer systems, etc. Also every merchant in the country had to absorb the cost of reconfiguring their systems to collect the new tax and forward it to the federal government. The new tax was supposed to replace various hidden excise taxes, taxes levied on middlemen, etc, so the program was sold to the public on the grounds that removing the hidden taxes would lower retail prices, so the net tax burden would stay the same or even go down. In practice, retail prices did not come down nearly as much as expected, so after-tax prices were even higher than before. Big surprise . Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

As Grimmie's link shows, it did happen when Bush was in office. That being the case, I'm sure you will be able to back up your words by showing us links to posts where TK was howling about it until his "hemorrhoids exploded". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I sure learn a lot here in Speaker's Corner. Why if it wasn't for this site I would have no idea that: 1. We are at war with Mexico 2. We have Marines fighting in combat zones in Mexico When did this happen? Why hasn't this been reported in the MSM? Is the media covering for Obama again, hoping that we wouldn't find out that we've invaded Mexico? Why did we invade? What's the objective? What's the exit strategy? So many questions, so few answers. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So Chuck, do you believe that only Marines should be free to go into other countries and violate their laws with impunity, or does that "right" apply to all Americans? How would you feel about foreigners who come into the US, violate our laws, then claim immunity because they served in their country's military? Should we give a pass to all those illegal immigrants you're so concerned about, if they can prove they served in the Mexican military in the past? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Personally I think we'd be better off with the Dead running things. Well, maybe with Jerry Garcia as "honorary president", since he's really dead. Things would be a lot more mellow in Congress. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So your solution is to start wars with no intention of paying for them? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

"The Enemy" are the terrorists. Not the brave soldiers who fight them and return to the US dead and disfigured. You ought to think long and hard about what you've just written and be ashamed of yourself. The enemy is the socialist administration in Washington. Hey Ron, here's another Democrat you might wish to piss on: There's this interesting tidbit about his military service: Of course, Ron, I am certain you will be able to impress us with your own tales of courage and sacrifice that prove that you are a much more impressive patriot than any democrat could ever be. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So you're saying all those veterans should just go and buy insurance on the private market? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Just by way of comparison: "The average Georgia Cattlemen's Association member owns 123 head of cattle and owns or leases an average of 447 acres of land." (source) So that's 3-4 acres to graze one cow, as opposed to more than 100. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I can't link to an "official source", but my anecdotal observation is that there seems to be a lot of fallow pasturage here in Georgia. This is potentially quite rich grazing land. More about this below. Unquestionably that is true. Proximity to markets is an advantage, but that also means developers come looking for land. When I was looking to buy property, I found that anything west of town (between my town and Atlanta) was selling for $12,000-20,000/acre, because even 60 miles is considered within commuting distance of Atlanta. Developers can put in a subdivision, put 4-5 houses on an acre of land, and charge $200,000-400,000/house, so $20,000 an acre is a rounding error to them. To a farmer, though, that can add up to enough money to retire on. Also in some cases cities expand their boundaries, and land that was once rural (and taxed as such) now find themselves inside city limits, subject to much higher property taxes. In some questionable cases this tactic is used to strong-arm farmers into selling land to developers. By the way, I ended up buying east of town and paid about $4,000/acre. Larger parcels go for less, if I was looking for ~100 acres or more I could have had it for around $2,500/acre. Because the land is so unsuitable for grazing you need 100X the land to support a viable operation, and it would be unfeasible to have to buy that much land. Around here, there is no government land to lease and farmers have to buy their land (or lease it from another farmer). You can certainly run a viable ranching operation on 150-200 acres, but the setup costs (land, equipment, buildings, infrastructure, and stock) can easily run several hundred thousand to a million dollars. Most farms (that I know of) are family operations where the land has been in the family for generations, or maybe one of the children will buy land close by and use the family equipment for a few years until they can afford their own. So around here there is plenty of land, but the startup costs are a barrier. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I don't believe a single one of those laws were changed because of "conservatives". Indeed, change was strongly resisted by the conservatives of the day. Indeed, I get a sense that "conservative" may not be the best label for your political leanings. You seem to have somewhat of a libertarian slant. Libertarians might be characterized as really believing in small government, unlike conservatives who say they believe in small government but really want big government that forces everybody else to live according to their religious and social doctrines. Libertarians run a fair gamut, for sure, and at the extreme may be close to anarchists, but most are quite reasonable folks. We have several of the species who populate Speaker's Corner, and can generally be counted on to offer some interesting discussion. Personally, I am much more sympathetic to the libertarian perspective than I am to conservatives. At least libertarians don't try to pass laws to tell me what to believe. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Is this you, by any chance? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

There are lots of government-administered things that are in part paid for by user fees. Almost exactly half of the annual budget of the Food and Drug Administration is covered by fees pharmaceutical companies pay to get their products examined and approved for use in human patients. Is it a bad thing that companies that seek to profit from selling pharmaceuticals must pay a portion of the cost of the oversight to make sure (to the extent possible) that those products are safe and effective? Of course the alternatives are that the whole bill is borne by the taxpayer, or we have no safety oversight at all. We also pay user fees, in the form of taxes on aviation fuel, to support the FAA and ATC. Personally, I think user fees are entirely reasonable. The TSA is obligated, by law, to avoid discriminating against any particular class of people. In this case the result is that, when people are selected at random for additional scrutiny, some of those people will be very low-risk subjects. What's your alternative? You would have to change the law to allow profiling, and that changed law would apply to all security/law enforcement types. "Driving while black" (and its various permutations, such as "walking while brown") would again become sufficient reason for up-close and personal attention from Deputy Bubba. Yosemite is a national park. The whole point of such a park is to preserve things in a natural state, so the all of us can experience a bit of what this country used to be like before people altered everything. A kid would never be prosecuted for picking up a pine cone or catching a butterfly, but they would be told to put it back. On the other hand, without such rules there would be no protection against people harvesting all manner of resources from the park, from sacks full of pine cones for Christmas ornaments to butterflies by the thousands to sell to collectors, on up to logging trees, digging up minerals, or hunting. It's hard to me to visualize what a "park" would mean if anybody could take whatever they wanted and cart it home or off to their store to sell. The IRS was examining applications for 501(c)(3) status from a very large number of groups, over 90% of them "conservative"/Tea Party affiliated. 501(c)(3) organizations must, by law, be organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.[reference here]. A different classification, without tax exempt status, applies to political lobbying groups. It is the job of the IRS to examine applications for 501(c)(3) status, to ensure any groups applying for tax-exempt status actually qualify. Tea party groups in particular have a history of attempting to mischaracterize "lobbying" activities as "educational". Again, what is your alternative? Should every group that chooses to call itself a 501(c)(3) automatically be given tax-exempt status without any examination to make sure they actually qualify for that status as Congress defined it? Or should no-body be given 501(c)(3) status, even if their activities are completely apolitical, such as running homeless shelters? Citizens are acquiring military weapons to use against Federal law enforcement. Many people here in Speaker's Corner have argued that the primary role of the 2nd amendment is to allow citizens the option of armed resistance against the government. When welfare ranchers choose to steal land they never paid for, then threaten to shoot anyone who shows up to enforce the law, I'd say the law has an obligation to protect itself. You linked to a blog written by someone who is as ignorant of actual history as you appear to be. If you think about it for a second, perhaps it will occur to you just why the federal government owns relatively little land in the original colonies, which existed as fairly independent entities before there was a US Federal Government, compared to territories the Federal Government bought from Mexico and Russia. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Do you have specific examples of "agencies running rampant"? You mention "turtles" vs ranchers, but in that case the BLM is following the Endangered Species Act. They did not just "suddenly" decide to get rid of cattle ranching, they were instructed by Congress to include endangered species in the mix of things they need to balance as they manage public lands. Also you have spoken several times of "returning" BLM land to the States. "Returning" suggests that land was taken from the state in the first place. In fact, much Western land, including all of present-day Utah, Nevada, and California, most of Arizona, and about half of New Mexico was purchased from Mexico by the Federal Government in the Mexican Cession of 1848. It was never State land, and it cannot be "returned" to the States. Perhaps control of some or all of it could be given to the States, though that land was originally purchased using taxes collected from citizens of the Eastern States so the land could be used to benefit the whole country. Do you have any real issues with Federal agencies, apart from not being allowed to base jump in most National Parks? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Interesting study just published in Nature, which is one of the two or three top journals in all of science (really rigorous peer review and all that). Grain crops grown under field conditions but with CO2 added to simulate levels expected by mid century have a marked decrease in iron and zinc levels, and also protein content in some species. People could compensate by eating more, but at the expense of taking in even more carbohydrate than they currently do, and we all know how that's working out. Take-home message for those who argue increased CO2 means increased crop productivity, those crops can be expected to have serious deficiencies in certain essential nutrients. The article is here (need a subscription unfortunately). Here's the journal reference and abstract: Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition. Nature (2014) doi:10.1038/nature13179 Samuel S. Myers, Antonella Zanobetti et al "Dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a substantial global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies1, causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually2, 3. Most of these people depend on C3 grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. Here we report that C3 grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration predicted for the middle of this century. C3 crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C4 crops seem to be less affected. Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for decreased sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentration could partly address these new challenges to global health." Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

My grandson is pretty severely autistic. In terms of reading, writing, etc he is still far behind his age group. I seriously doubt that we'll have much luck teaching gun safety to a kid who still poops in a diaper at almost 5 years old. However he does like to climb, pull open drawers and dump out the contents, etc. I would like to have the security of having a firearm reasonably handy for home defense, yet not have to worry he'll find it resulting in a tragedy. But you tell me that's a stupid fucking idea. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Where is the bubble for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? Right there, beside the bubble of pee. Seriously, what is your point? That something that is a relatively minor component of the atmosphere can't have an effect? You know better than that. Would you willingly breath air with 1% carbon monoxide? How about 1% mustard gas? It's only 1% after all, how can 1% of anything have an effect. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

What is your evidence for this? It seems to me this sort of statement is based on ignorance of how small the atmosphere really is. Here's an interesting graphic for you, the little pink sphere superimposed on the Earth on the right is the volume that would be occupied by the entire atmosphere if it was all at 1 atmosphere (i.e. sea level) pressure. The even smaller blue ball on the left is all the water, salt and fresh, in the world. It's interesting that people who would never dream of drinking a glass of water from a swimming pool if they knew one person had peed in there, have no problem dumping all kinds of crap into the air they breath and depend on to maintain a liveable environment. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Yes, that was kind of the point. It seems to me some people who decline to condemn, or even support the "death threat" strategy are the same ones who trot out the "why won't muslims denounce terrorism" argument. The rest of your post I think is very reasonable. For the record, I do not agree with mandating that all guns be "smart guns". I just want that option to be available. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Did they also threaten to kill you, your dog, and burn down your place of business? I understand that's acceptable business practice these days, just so long as you don't actually do it. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)