Climate change: A theory about very complex system to model with the most famous proponent being a politician who stands to make a lot of money if the theory is widely accepted but whose personal behaviors (traveling by private plane, having a huge house) indicate that he's not too worried about how much impact he makes. Of course there will be some doubters

Vaccines are safe and effective: Are people questioning science or are they questioning politicians and pharmaceutical companies? Even good-hearted politicians might be tempted to tell a noble lie about this. If a vaccine isn't safe but it is effective, then the negative effects of killing a few people directly might be considered to be outweighed by the positive effects of indirectly saving even more. And of course pharmaceutical companies have profits to worry about (that they use to bribe politicians). The research funded by those companies says the vaccines are safe? There was a lot research funded by cigarette companies saying smoking was safe too.

The age of the earth and the big bang? It is one thing to know and understand the science, it is another to believe the evidence isn't outweighed by other knowledge. Do I believe dinosaurs existed? Well I believe that we find dinosaur bones in the ground that appear to be millions of years old, and that the science of evolution is sound and explains many things including much human physiology and behavior, and I certainly do make use of that knowledge for understanding animals and other humans. But if you asked me if I "believe" in evolution... well the Bible can be interpreted to say otherwise and I believe God can give us whatever evidence he wants - though I don't know if he would. So such a survey might count me as a doubter of evolution even though I understand and use the theory regularly.


I'm not saying Americans are well-educated about science. I've seen plenty of evidence that they're not. On the other hand I've dealt with a lot of foreigners and their scientific understanding seems pretty limited too. What I'm saying is that these kinds of surveys can be very misleading about people. It's sort of like that question about Obama's religion and the supposed proof that Fox viewers were ignorant because they thought he was Muslim. But those same viewers had been fed plenty of information about his church in Chicago - how could they be as ignorant as people were claiming? What the people pushing the survey were ignoring is that Fox viewers might be well aware of what Obama claimed to be but just didn't believe him because of other things he said and did - while the survey pushers were simply taking everything Obama said at face value without any skepticism.

As a man married to a woman from a foreign country, this is exactly why I have come to oppose intergender marriages.

Changing the winner-take-all voting system to a first-past-the-post system would be a huge improvement. But even better would be having the government go back to doing only those things a government should. I wouldn't mind only getting to vote 11 times in 12 years if the government were only making 11 important decisions about my life in 12 years. But when it is running nearly everything it becomes very hard to register my disapproval about anything in particular, and especially about a number of things. So I vote Republican this year - is that because I like their immigration policy, or was it their tax policy, or was it their spending promises, or was it their Supreme Court picks, or was it their freedom of religion stand, or was it in spite of some or many of those? Nobody but me knows, and I get to hear a lot of nonsense from political pundits who want to spin my vote into something I never intended.

Having a lot of political parties so I could vote for one on a particular single issue would help, but there would still be a lot of issues where I don't think my voice can be heard.

Better to leave more issues to the free market and civil society.

I think you misunderstood the 1.1. In America we get to choose 1 president for 4 years, 2 senators for 6 years each, and 1 representative for 2 years. That gives us 11 votes over 12 years. Yikes, my math was wrong and it's worse than I said. We get less than one vote per year.

I care about more than 11 issues, but I don't get to choose 11 different politicians to address them - or even 3 different politicians to address them.

I own more than 11 different electronic devices, and I can choose a different company to provide each device.

You still have the problem of who writes it. Even the judicial branch isn't free from politics. It's only in recent years that the Supreme Court has almost swung back to the center after decades of hanging out on the left. You can imagine the different questions and answers the tests would have if they were written by an precedent-focused judge like Scalia vs an original-meaning focused judge like Thomas or a whatever-I-think-is-good-policy focused judge like Breyer.

Question 1: The ACA (Obamacare) is an exercise of the federal government's constitutional power to
a. regulate interstate commerce
b. tax
c. promote the general welfare
d. none of the above

You can see how a judge could write that question and the answer would depend on which other judge is grading it. (or if House Speaker Pelosi were writing the question the answer would "ha ha ha ha ha".

I've seen a lot of suggestions about how we need quizzes or tests to make sure people are qualified to do some action in politics whether it be voting, running for office, making laws, whatever. I even made some suggestions myself when I was younger. The problem always comes down to reliably finding some neutral disinterested uncorruptible party to write the tests when few such parties exists and you can't trust the people tasked with finding them.

That does sound like something to get upset about.

But if the money is in my possession, doesn't a fair reading of the Constitution mean they have to prove it never belonged to me?

Because too many Americans want their government doing everything for them, and it nearly does. But we only get a few votes each year. This gives the politicians the opportunity to do a lot of things wrong so long as they do more things right than their opposition likely would.

Let me put it this way. I can about the national debt, generally following the Constitution, specifically allowing freedom of religion, illegal immigration, lowering spending, global warming, racism, NASA, good treatment of America's allies, treatment of America's enemies, free trade.

Every year I get just over one chance to choose Democrat or Republican on all these issues. I don't get to say "I'll have a Republican on following the Constitution, a Democrat on global warming, a Republican on illegal immigration, a Democrat on NASA..." Nor can I choose specific models "I'll have a far right republican on freedom of religion and a moderate republican on free trade..." I get to choose 1.1 person a year.


On the other hand in electronics I get to choose an Apple laptop, a Samsung handheld computer, a philips stereo, a Sony TV,... And when I choose that Sony TV I get to choose from so many models. And if I find I don't like one of these items after getting it home I can return it.


We need to have less control by the government and more control by the market because market control generally means freedom and excellent service.

Or a recognition that if the money goes in the bank your spouse will expand your expenses to match the income. The interest on the refund isn't nearly as much as I save by not letting my wife spend it for a year. It gives us a chance to buy something nice once in a while.

This is why the notion that we need more "compromise" in Washington is so overrated. The Democrats say they want higher spending and higher taxes. The Republicans say they want less spending and lower taxes.

The compromise is usually higher spending and lower taxes.

I have long thought that we should amend the Constitution to say that every bill must be read out loud in its entirety before it can be voted on, and that only members who sit quietly with no electronic equipment though the entire reading should be allowed to vote on it.

A bonus would be that every sponsor of a bill would have to approve every amendment to a bill. That way you would always have at least one person who could be held personally accountable fore the whole bill (i.e. they wouldn't be able to claim they had to vote for the bill even though it contained some provisions they didn't like since they would be able to eliminate any provision they didn't like).

Stop exploding liberal fantasies with your ridiculous facts.

Congress is more like .0001%, and yes they are as always. (Perhaps your 0.01% is accurate if you include enough government functionaries.)

I would like to know about the whole "due process of law" thing in the Constitution. I money considered property? If so, don't they have to give you due process before taking it (and generally "due process" is considered to be a trial where the burden of proof is on the government)?

Or is this one of those cases where some judges have already decided that their preferences and policies are more important than what the Constitution says?

If you can stand up, you get "on" the vehicle. Otherwise you get "in" the vehicle.