I'm completely shocked that when given additional opportunity, you still won't back up your claims.

The bizarre thing is that you're accusing me of "singling out one particular issue based purely on the person implementing it," when you have literally no example of me ever doing that, ever, least of all in this discussion, where if anything I was taking Gruber's side.

Not in any way, no, I did not.

You're a liar.

I agree. I am nearly completely transparent and obvious and clear. I lack pretense or disguise.

No. It's true that the framers and most people who understand politics want the people to be ignorant about most issues in government, because otherwise, the people would be spending too much time watching government and not enough time enjoying life and being productive. Everyone should want to be ignorant about most things, especially most things government does. Otherwise you'll be miserable.

But it's not true that they want people to be ignorant, but with a delusion of lack of ignorance. You're just making things up.

There's no objective reason why it's a bad thing.

I'm a dope because you ... agreed with me? You think that little of yourself?

You're a liar.

Well, yes, people who believe what they are told -- and then profess to know those things -- without investigating it, are stupid.

Gruber was mostly right, although the word "stupid" is probably not what he meant. But the fact is that whoever believed it wasn't a tax, it wouldn't raise rates, it wouldn't force you to change plans and possibly doctors, etc., was ignorant. Not stupid, necessarily, but ignorant. That said, someone who is ignorant and thinks that he actually knows these things is kinda stupid. So all the news folks, for example, who said that what Republicans said about the ACA were lies ... they were stupid.

The fact is that almost everything the GOP said about the ACA was true. Federal funding of abortions, subsidies for illegals, massive government control defined at a later date by an administrator and not Congress, death panels, increased taxes and premiums, decreased choice ... all of it was and is true.

I'd expect an article talking about criminally prosecuting Gruber would at least make reference to some violation of the criminal code. I see no crime. Neither the author nor his interviewee mention any crime. He makes vague references to "Deceit. Fraud. Premeditated felonious theft.," but he simply gave his opinions; he didn't implement anything. The theft was by the government, not him. The fraud was perhaps aided by him, but no court has ever found that government fraud of this type is prosecutable, so prosecuting a private citizen for aiding the government in something that can't be prosecuted makes no sense.

NeXT didn't close up shop, they were bought by Apple. Then they replaced several of Apple's top execs (including the CEO) with their own and used NeXTSTEP as the foundation for the new MacOS. In essence, NeXT bought Apple for minus 400 million Dollars.

You are painting with broad strokes. By the same measure one could argue that guns have pretty much one use: Accelerating bullets. The kinds of targets the bullets can be accelerated towards are varied, one of which is murder victims. There is considerable societal interest in regulating guns' use in bullet acceleration leading to the production of murder victims.

You conflated all chemical reactions with bomb making, which does not make much sense, just like my conflation of all gun use with murder doesn't.

Also, by your logic, hydrocarbon fuels should be severely restricted because they can be used to make ANFO. Also vegetable oil because you can use that for ANFO, too. Or you leave the ammonium nitrate away and just build a fuel-air bomb. Society has interest in regulating the production of those, too. And let's not forget that electricity can be used to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can also be used as an explosive. Access to electricity should be regulated as well.

Or we agree that just because something can potentially be used for actions that are against the interests of society we can't assume that this is a particularly common use.

No, only lawmakers. A chemist would just look at what you're trying to do, say "yup, he's probably not going to kill himself" and move on. Chemists can be unnervingly casual around fairly dangerous chemicals because they can gauge the actual danger involved.

Of course when the chemist does become nervous, so should you.

I authored the previous comment; I didn't realize that I was logged out when I did, so it showed up as AC. But it's me.

1. I'm too busy to sit around thinking up additional words to throw in so I can score "mod" points

2. The people I like on Slashdot are too busy to read a bunch of additional words I only threw in so I can score "mod" points

3. It's not in my nature to waste words, or to waste time

Actually this particular councilman represents an extremely high-rent district--Manhattan's upper east side. I doubt there are many wealthier neighborhoods in the world. He's not doing this to 'score points', he's doing it to do the right thing.

Well said