No, but commercial aircraft in high traffic areas tend to have TCAS and similar to alert them to traffic, and if on a proper clearance won't run into anyone anyway.

Like I said, they are humans in the cockpit, and their failure to be perfect at see-and-avoid doesn't mean ATC is the only person keeping them apart.

No, he was wrong. The pilots are also there to keep planes from running into each other. If you are going to discount their presence because they are imperfect at it and think only ATC has that job, then you better discount ATC as well because they are not perfect, either.

Bullshit.

Not even barring inclement weather. The navigation aids were not impacted by this, only center. Departure and approach were still functional, too. Get an IFR clearance and fly it. You don't have to talk to a center to do that.

Believe it or not, there are other people who stop planes from running into "each other". They're called "pilots". Actual human beings who control the airplanes and where they go.

Of course they aren't perfect at keeping airplanes from running into each other. They're humans. (And computers aren't perfect at it either.) Just like the ATC humans aren't perfect at keeping minimum separation.

Huh? What "poor of a practice"? Evacuating a building that is on fire? My God! How stupid can that be? Leave them in the building and let them burn, just as long as no flights are delayed.

You mean a "system" where people work in buildings where there could be a fire? I think I can answer this one: ALL of them.

Buildings are rarely evacuated because of lighting. The centers are usually operated at reduced lighting levels anyway. They are also not usually evacuated because of lightning, and while a lightning strike can take out commercial power, the backups will come online quickly.

Can "natural events" take out a radio transmitter? Of course. That's why there are backups for those, too.

Now, what happens when a nutter cuts the cable going out of the building, or sets it afire? Yeah, it has a serious impact.

This isn't a glaring example of government mismanagement. Dial it back a few notches, ok?

I think you're referring to the Communications Act of 1934 and amendments thereto. Can't tell. If not, citation required.

The Communications Act has never said that you can "do what you will" with things you record off the air. It allows personal use of a lot of things you can record, but not commercial use. You cannot record a TV show at your house and then distribute it commercially, for example.

More recent amendments have changed the environment considerably, especially in the area of telecommunications (listening to cellular phone calls, for example) and other non-broadcast transmissions.

That's why I said "many" and not "most", or "all". Saving water is nice, except that for many people it simply goes back into the local water table and their well just sucks it back up to be reused.

No, we don't. We can allow people to use what they want to pay for.

I'm sorry, what? Soft drinks are not a "shared resource", they are a commercially made product, and if a store runs out they order more. Any argument that you shouldn't be able to buy a 32 oz soft drink because it is abusing a shared resource is just nuts.

Ahhh, so you think that every person who drinks a 32 oz soft drink has to go to the hospital to, umm, what, pee? Sorry. That's also nuts.

I think you're referring to guns here, but I can't tell for sure. You flamed me for what you thought was an overstatement about how many times a low-flow toilet needed to be flushed and now you drop this gem about the "only reason for existing" for guns.

I hate to burst your bubble, but clay targets have never been alive so "usually-living" doesn't apply, and by the time a paper target is tacked up to something it is long-dead wood. I supposed you are opposed to bow and arrow enthusiasts because the paper targets (and bales of hay) they use were "usually-living"?

I'm sorry, did you read me saying that anywhere?

A civilized society doesn't need these rules, and we got along for a very long time without them. Trying to claim that you can't have a civilized society without them is, well, you used the word "sneakily" when you misinterpreted what I wrote. I'd call what you're doing less than sneaky, and pretty disingenuous.

Right. You are SO seriously screwed over because I own a 15 round magazine, or because I drink a 32 oz diet soft drink every so often, or because my cell phone doesn't have a GPS in it. Yeah. It is such an inconvenience to you that I have some freedom to make my own choices about what I do.

Did you not even bother to read the summary? Putting compostable items in the trash can result in a fine. Or don't you know that an apple core is compostable?

No, I don't get the country I deserve, because "people like you" (as you so civilly put it) think they're being so inconvenienced by other people having the ability to choose how they run their own lives. How did you put it? "seriously screwing everyone over through their sheer selfishness". Right. It absolutely ruins your life because I have an incandescent bulb where you think I ought to have an environmentally destructive CFL.

Guess what? I bought into the CFL nonsense and now I have a couple of places in my house that I have to predict when I'll need light because the damn CFL lighting takes several minutes to warm up and start emitting enough light. And I've got to worry about where I dispose of the dead ones (that didn't last as long as the last incandescent I had in that location) because they contain deadly chemicals. You can thank me for being "people like me" when you're ready.

I bet you're just life is just shit because I actually do own a 15 round magazine for an AR-15. I bought it just to piss people like you off. You didn't even know until now, so you can thank me for identifying the cause of your bitter, chronic malaise.

I don't think you "see it" at all. I think you believe you know how other people ought to run their lives and you "see" how to do that, because you are so much smarter than everyone else. And you certainly don't see that someone else who has come to a different conclusion about government regulation of simple things could still have considered the effects on everyone else but come to a different conclusion. You probably don't even see that they might have considered that those things you denounce as "selfish" impediments you your wonderful life don't really make much difference to you in the first place. Or have you seen a doctor about my over-sized rifle magazine?

Perhaps. That's not the issue at hand. I'll try to put it in the ubiquitous ACT or SAT analogy:

True or false: glass : aluminum recycling :: food scraps : trash

You've happily chosen to compare glass to trash, which isn't the proper ordering of the problem. The question is, is putting glass in aluminum recycling container similar to putting food scraps in the trash, and would laws treating both in a similar way be reasonable?

Were the question on the table whether laws covering the placement of glass in the trash justifiable on the similarity to putting food scraps in the trash, you'd have a point.

That's not what federal law mandates. It doesn't say "thou shall not be wasteful", it says "thou may use only X gallons per flush". The result is, in many cases, people have to flush twice to get one dump handled properly. Sometimes three or four times. What is being wasted? Water, which goes either to the septic tank and back into the local water table, or to the waste processing plant to be recycled back into the global water cycle.

Who said it was? The problem is the LIMIT, not the listing.

When they came for the soft drinks, I didn't say anything because I didn't drink soft drinks. When they came for the twinkies ...

Why yes, because the only use for guns are to go on killing sprees.

Government mandates for "good things" to "protect us from ourselves".

The moment you call 911 the GPS turns on. AND they track the cell tower.

Your problem appears to be that you equate "civilized society" with "government rules". It is possible to have the former without a ridiculous amount of the latter.

If the government can fine you because you threw an apple core in the trash, yes, there is micromanagement.

Not that similar. It is pretty clear that "glass" is not "aluminum", and "glass" has never been "aluminum", so putting glass into someone else's container that says "aluminum only" could reasonably be a crime.

But food scraps and other bio-waste certainly are trash, so putting "trash" into your own "trash" container should not be a crime.

In the general sense, this kind of regulation is nanny-state micromangement.

You win the pedant of the day award. Ok, here's a better way of putting it. Why should I pay taxes on money that I'm not getting to put in savings or exchange for goods or services that I get to keep and/or use? Most people would call that money which is not taken from them by the government what they get to keep, but I guess you're not one of them.

There is a natural time frame for talking about "keep", and that's a tax year. I have lots of money that I've kept a lot longer than a tax year, so yes, money is for "keeping", even if eventually I'll either spend it or it is inherited by my progeny.

No, I'm paying the tax, and that's part of the certification. How can you say I'm not paying tax when I have to sign a form that says I have?

Yes, we do, and at least one of them is implemented using the tax system. You want to make people pay a highly regressive tax and not have some kind of credit for them? You're going to have so many poor people and their advocates on your ass that you'll never get your new tax system passed.

Perhaps that's why one of the new tax systems I've seen proposed has a pre-loaded "credit" built in. That means a check mailed to every taxpayer to cover predicted tax payments for someone of a given base income level. I don't recall if this was the "fair tax" or some other variant.

What the proponent couldn't understand was two things. First, this turned the federal tax system into a blatant version of welfare instead of the implicit welfare it now has built in. Second, he simply could not understand how this system would not eliminate the IRS as he claimed. It would change the jobs of the driods therein from collecting money from people to both collecting money from retailers AND managing the largest welfare system in the world. He thought we'd save a lot of money by eliminating a large government agency; the truth is the agency would grow and morph. It would change from an agency everyone loves to hate into another agency handling entitlements and it would never go away.

The best way to rob a bank is to get nebulous regulations regarding "community investment" enacted, and then threaten to take the bank to court unless they donate money to your cause. Like Jessie Jackson and many other "community activists" did. Banks knew it was cheaper to donate to ACORN than to face even specious litigation that would take years to handle.

The correct book would be The Best Way to Make A Bank Fail, and that is to force it to make "community reinvestment" loans to people who cannot pay them back, based on ridiculously weak lending criteria, and then NOT bail them out when your policies have caused the problem.

If this guy is a professional economist and cannot see that simple result, then don't loan him money. Read "Architects of Ruin" and spend a bit more time looking into the causes than just sitting through a Ted talk. As "litigation director" Black was probably one of the people pushing banks into making more bad loans through enforcement of the CRA, so he would be part of the problem to start with. Those who created and furthered those kinds of laws have never admitted fault, with the classic example of Barney Frank claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Max were just fine and no new regulation was needed even as Rome burned.

Ummm, because that means I'm still paying taxes on the money? Why would I want to pay taxes on money I'm not getting to keep?

Because the people who have gotten used to the credits won't like it (many of them pay a zero effective rate anyway, and you can't go lower than that), and those who like to social engineer using the tax codes won't like it, either.

Nope. And I doubt I'm different than a lot of people. Charities will dry up because there is no incentive to give anymore.

What do you mean the government gives me back $200? The government isn't giving me anything. It's MY MONEY to start with. A pox on you people who think the government owns all the money and only through largesse does it let us working folk have any of it.

You can say whatever you want but I know better, and you're being very generous with my money. I will donate 0. I won't need to, because there will be no late payment penalties for failing to file estimated tax on income I didn't know I was getting until the end of the year.

I've done the numbers and the "fair tax" is not, and it will cost me a bundle of money in taxes. Do you really imagine that there will not be an industry continuing to deal with the tax laws that pop up as a result of the next round of social engineering, and those that continue to exist because the social engineers won't want to let go of a large part of the economy? Believing that all tax matters will just go away, and the idea that the IRS will go away with it, is simply too naive. The concept of the "tax credit" under any tax system (fair or otherwise) mandates a federal office to deal with it.