Masterfully crafted after being purchased by lobbyists for the companies. The financial return of lobbying is massive -- more than making cool products people love.
We find firms lobbying for this provision have a return in excess of $220 for every $1 spent on lobbying, or 22,000%.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...
That said, I think the nature of the parties in this instance is clouding
I have a "debt" in collections right now. Comcast claims I owe $95 to them. Last winter I moved to a place where I could not only get other service, Comcast doesn't even serve (thankfully). So I told Comcast I'd be terminating my service effective Jan 15. Comcast had my credit card to auto-bill for it's "service".
Then in March I started getting collection calls from companies Comcast hired to get this from me. Nobody will prove to me that I actually owe this money. And what's odd is the amount: $95 when my monthly bill for internet-only service was about $60 or $70. I just got another call yesterday on it.
I could easily pay it and never even feel the hit. But fuck that! Comcast sucks beyond the ability of science to measure and I'm so sick of being taken by them, they're going to have to take me into small claims court and get a court order for this sum.
And yeah, I get that this will harm my sterling credit rating, but what a great means of extortion. Bill people small amounts under the threat of losing their good credit rating and even when people don't actually owe the money, they'll pay up to save their rating.
How lame -- your thoughtful post with an understanding of the history gets modded troll. All of the "Dem Ruskies Arr Evul" posts get modded up.
The media is doing such a great job inciting people, I'm sure we'll get another useless war in a dispute that isn't about us soon.
Oh, and for all of you all upset about the plane: USS Vincennes. We have our sins and getting up on that high pedestal looks really stupid when we do it. We should leave the condemnations of Russia to countries who haven't done the exact same thing.
The US and Russia are equals. I bet you never heard of the USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 665. It's cool, I'm sure you'll figure out a way to lie to yourself or rationalize that shootdown based on trivial differences in order to maintain the lie you tell yourself that the US is not also a terrorist organization.
Not to mention too dumb to know what an Airbus looks like
Not even extreme sports. Football, skiing, golf, jogging -- they all have dangers and people have suffered from accidents or repetitive stress injuries. Of course, sitting at home safe in your Lazyboy has its own health risks. Or driving -- that is probably one of the most dangerous things we do.
All of these people saying "I shouldn't have to pay for
(*) This could be Ins. Co. v. Individual Person (consider the individual a potential self-insurer)
This is a great debate between Glenn Greenwald and GWB's drug czar and in it, reference to Portugal and studies related to that are made. From there, you can do your own searching:
Companies should not be permitted to profit from the sale of addictive substances for recreational purposes.
Is coffee recreational or a building block of life? Either way, why do you hate coffee so much?
Hmmm. Have you checked for system updates on your humor chip? Show me one cowboy who hollers "bing!"
States with greater privacy protections written into their constitutions outlaw DUI checkpoints. Those more closely aligned with the Feds' "guilty until proven innocent" mentality, use DUI checkpoints.
By accepting the propriety of a search without any articulable suspicion that you may be engaged in illegal activity, DUI checkpoint states, and the people who support such laws, are steepening the slope we're on as we glide toward police state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Once loaded, do a text search for "ten states" to get the list of those on a higher moral level with regard to this issue.
If you aren't a member of the government, the same or less will get you a decade or more. What I meant without being clear enough, was that the special treatment is shocking given the special access government officials have. If the government cared about people's privacy, those in a position of trust who fail to safeguard that privacy would be subject to the same or more punishment as any random person who did the same thing.
Actually he _was_ convicted of misusing the DB (max sentence 12 months). He's been in jail for more than 18 months so at this point, he has served more than enough to satisfy the highest possible sentence.
As a side note, the most disturbing part of this case to me, was Valle's illegal use of the DB to find out information about people for purely personal reasons. I'm sort of shocked that such a crime carries a max 12 month sentence. What that says to me is that law enforcement agencies and the governments that set them up, don't really care how their own misuse government power. Nor does the media for the most part as demonstrated by the thousands of words spent on the prurient charms of this case, but in any article, there is at most a single sentence about the DB issue.
Here's an example:
Tabloid same as NY Times, you'll have to search the page for "database" to find that single sentence.:
Does a "dumb phone" exist? Wouldn't it be more accurate to call them weak computing devices with few _user_ accessible features?
the only person who would see it immediately would be perhaps NSA employees entering and egressing
You seem to have forgotten that as modern Americans we have:
1) Cameras.
2) The ability to transmit photos worldwide.
3) Access to the work of reporters who can add textual context to those photos.
Even if the protest was seen by 50k people, what actually matters, is if it gets play on the internet, news papers, and/or television.
When is that brain cancer you have finally going to impede your ability to type? Not soon enough.
You are one of the people who comes to mind when I think of this quote: "I've never killed a man, but I've read many an obituary with great satisfaction."
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel
