Absolutely. Given the history of the Southwest, it's astonishing to me that water recycling & conservation isn't mandatory & widespread.

Likely because of agricultural demands. A lot of CA's water, in the hundreds of billions of gallons, leaves the state in the form of produce.

They're building a new $billion desalinisation plant near San Diego that should be operational by this fall. If the warming trend continues, this may be the 1st of many for CA & TX.

*That* Republican party is NOT *this* Republican party, they merely claim lineage but were hijacked by the Southern Democrats thanks to Nixon.

Only because of a passerby with a cellphone camera.
If he'd only *seen* the altercation but not recorded it, Officer Scott would still be walking around free.

As well as anti-reality.

"Stover worries that shifting responsibility for solutions to climate change from governments to individuals creates an 'every-man-for-himself' culture that actually works against energy solutions and does little to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions."

Right - because central planning is a much better idea <eye roll>.

The bottom line is that when I reduce my carbon footprint I save money, at least in the long run. I've invested hundreds of dollars in the last year in getting LED lights throughout the house. I'll make that money back within 5 years - I can already see the difference on my light bills. Next year I'm hoping to start my solar farm on my very large southern-facing roof. I'll likely have negative light bills when I'm done and it'll pay for itself within 3 or 4 years (yes, that's less than average and there's a reason for that having to do with my air conditioning and the solar panels taking heat off the house).

So, yeah, we need the grid upgraded. But at this stage we need a lot of people trying a lot of different things so that we can find out what works and what's economical. Ultimately, if it doesn't save me money it ain't gonna happen.

It's so funny to see stuff like this written so seriously by someone who doesn't understand basic economics.

Here's something to chew on: why does this "problem" only apply to taxis? Why don't we have a medallion system for grocery stores?

Be careful, your brain might catch fire thinking this hard....

So is claiming that limiting the number of taxis through a medallion system is for the benefit of consumers.

I don't think you know what "hyperbole" is.

His blood wasn't really an alcoholic drink, but at .20% a person is stone drunk. There's video of him standing around talking closely with other officers who would later claim that a) they didn't smell alcohol and b) he didn't act drunk. Neither claim is remotely credible.

In Ferguson we see that blacks have "contraband" in their vehicles at a lower rate than whites, yet black cars still get searched more. I agree that blacks commit crimes at a higher rate than whites, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that they tend to be lower income than whites. They're also scrutinized more as you can see in Ferguson. Note also in Ferguson we find that blacks are more likely to be ticketed when pulled over, etc.

The bottom line is that blacks who commit the same crimes are more likely to be convicted and get harsher punishment.

Note that doesn't invalidate what you say. The answer is far more complex than a simple fix.

Police are safer than they've ever been. The job isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs. Yes, there are people who shoot at an officer who pulls them over. There are also people who shoot at the guy working the 2AM shift in Mapco. But I don't walk into Mapco at 2AM and have the guy pull a gun on me "just in case".

Right. In other words, a big part of the problem is cultural, both within law enforcement and from without. I know cops, too, and they're always talking in hushed tones about how it's just becoming so much more dangerous. A big part of why is that they don't feel they have as much support from the community as they used to. And a big part of that is a) municipalities using cops for revenue enhancement (see Ferguson) and b) cameras are now exposing just how much corruption there is in law enforcement and the justice system as a whole. See recent videos of a judge asking a prosecutor if she's going to charge a police officer with perjury after he obviously committed perjury as a good example.

Research shows that most raids on "drug houses" either turn up "no weapons" or a handgun. There's very little violent resistance.

Let me give you an example of why you're wrong. And I could come up with a hundred (literally) but I just need one. Take the David Bisard case in Indianapolis. You can look it up in Google, but short version: Bisard got stone drunk before work one day, jumped in his squad car, someone mentioned that they were doing a simple drug arrest on the radio, Bisard said he'd be right there, they said they didn't need him, he came up to a stop light where a bunch of cars and a couple of motorcycles were stopped, he hit the motorcycles going on top of one (killing the rider) and seriously injuring two other people. At that point he jumped out of his car and began screaming at the dead/dying guy under his car telling him that he should have got out of the way.

In all, 19 police officers of all ranks showed up at the scene. None of them had any idea (this is sarcasm) that he had been drinking. Finally, 3 hours after the accident and after they had stopped for snacks another officer took him for a blood draw at a clinic.

According to state law at the time the blood draw wasn't legally valid because none of the officers thought he was drunk and so, for it to be valid, it would have had to be done at the hospital where the people are "certified". In case you're wondering, his BAC was .20% 3 hours later. Yes: .20. His blood was an alcoholic drink.

Had any of the officers stepped up and said "yeah, I suspected he had been drinking" the blood draw would have been legal. They didn't search his car, his duffle bag, etc.

The prosecutor knew his job. He ran right to court and claimed he couldn't use the blood draw so there was just no way to make this a drunk driving incident. The people of the city had had enough bullshit by this point that in an election months later they put in a new prosecutor who made it plain that Bisard was going down if he got elected. He won handily and fought like hell to get the blood draw accepted in court.

Meanwhile, someone at the police department (they have no idea who (again, sarcasm)) took the blood samples in the evidence room out of the cooler. Bisard's lawyer would later claim that the evidence had been ruined and just couldn't be used because of that. His lawyer, by the way, paid for by the Fraternal Order of Police.

Bisard's world came crashing down during his trial when he wrecked his father-in-law's truck while stone drunk. He begged the officer to just take him home, but the officer was an honest man (note it's taken me this long in the story to get to an honest police officer - we've had 19 other officers and a prosecutor so far) who took him in. At that point the FOP could no longer hold the ruse that Bisard was being set up and they quit paying for his lawyer. Someone paid for a lawyer, though, as he never lost legal representation.

It's really easy to say there are a few bad apples. I hear that all the time. But let me tell you something - the guy who covers for the bad apple is worse than the bad apple. The original prosecutor, the 19 guys who never thought to see if Bisard was drunk - treating it as an "accident" instead of a "crime scene", the people who tried to destroy evidence - all of them are bad apples. Everybody in that department covered up for Bisard - after he killed a person and permanently injured two others.

If you think that's rare, look up Stephanie Lazarus - she's an LAPD cop who murdered someone in cold blood and got away with it for 20+ years. The only people harassed were those who investigated her.

I could go on and on. Thank God we have more cameras now.

Yeah, we know that no particular cop is a racist (I hear this all the time from apologists) but the numbers tell a different story. Blacks are more likely to be pulled over, more likely to be searched, more likely to be harassed, etc. Something's not right.

"But on August 11, 2011, however, BART took an unprecedented step. Under orders from BART police, the system shut down underground wireless service for three hours. The interruption covered stations in downtown San Francisco. In a statement, administrators clearly identified “organizers planning to disrupt BART service . . . us[ing] mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police” as the rationale behind the move."

https://www.aclu.org/blog/tech...

It has nothing to do with "bombs". We had to get the patriot act in order to fight terrorists.

"Of the 22,741 warrants issued since 2003, 21,838 (96%) were issued under the heading of "Narcotics."

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

How many times are we going to fall for this trick?

I'm not sure if much of the rest of the world is significantly better - there are some very corrupt systems out there and some truly batshit politicians in a lot of countries.

If America were to draw up districts in a neutral fashion, put some curbs on the revolving door between industry and Congress, overturned Citizens' United and made donor transparency a requirement, that would address most of my objections.

?? Someone didn't understand what I wrote.
Very few people commute beyond the range of a typical EV daily and you'd still have 2 (or more) VEHICLES just not all ICEs.
It's the trip to the cottage, out of town to see the relatives, or the long drive that's the challenge.

So for people who live in any number of 1/2 modern cities, all you need is ready access to an electrical outlet.

And they get a pretty nice modern fully equipped factory with lots of room to expand as part of the deal