Grrr.

Sure if thing A is inexpensive, then thing B which costs a fraction of that price might indeed be said to cost X times less. Implying that thing A is already less than some other option, and thing B is even MORE less.

But if thing A is very expensive (as in the example cited in TFA), thing B would be better described as being not a hundred times less ... but one hundredth the cost.

So, let's see ... the administration publishes a written interpretation of a law they don't like, and you think it's crazy to report that fact?

Obviously it's nothing new for the Obama administration to simply ignore statutory requirements (see his unilateral re-writing of features of the ACA entirely for political expediency), and this is simply another case of it. But what's interesting is that you are obviously either ignorant of their specific language in the new "interpretation" of the law in question, or you're well aware of the implications and are just doing your best to wish it away through childish ad hominem. Classic lefty sycophantism. Or, I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt, and tell you to go read their published intention to twist the law into an implementation that is 180 degrees opposite to its plain, so you can come back here and argue the details instead of stamping your feet like an eight year old girl.

Out of hundreds of such discussions that pop up on easy Google searches ...

http://www.modelaircraft.org/a...

It's not a conspiracy, coward. It's published policy. Your decision to trot out ad hominem in place of addressing the basic facts of the matter shows you know I'm right. That you're posting as a coward makes it even more clear. But keep propping up your pet administration, man. The documents they publish - you know, the ones that have been amply covered in both aviation news and general media of all sorts - make this all very clear. The agency has just been sued by multiple parties over the 'interpretation' document and policy position in question. But please, don't trouble yourself to keep up with the news - that would take the fun out of your shrill, drooling Obama fanboyism.

You actually need a citation to believe that the director of the FAA is a political appointee? You are that unaware of how federal agencies are run by the executive branch of the government? You don't need a citation, you need a remedial course in basic civics. Please return to the conversation when you understand the basic structure of the government.

Yes, and congress passed a law requiring the FAA to produce such regulations in a timely fashion due in this coming year. The administration has said they will not obey that law, and will not have such a framework in anything like the timely fashion required.

In the meantime, the administration has published an "interpretation" of the 2012 law that says they take it to mean more or less the exact opposite of its plain intent, and they are busy getting ready to fine people for doing things like participating in RC competitions (you know, like we've been having for decades) that happen to involve things like $20 cash prizes ... because that's commercial drone use! The employees of US-based companies that have for years stepped out back of their shops to test-fly a new RC airplane or multirotor will, according to the Obama administration's new interpretation, be breaking the law and subject to substantial fines for being paid to fly unmanned aerial systems. We can't have that! Quick! Shut down all of those businesses and jobs! Chase those retailers out of the country!

It's preposterous. We're not just dragging behind the rest of the world, we're actively taking steps backwards. The administration is deliberately, purposefully, putting the brakes on what would otherwise be a multi-billion dollar industry full of innovation and attractive to STEM-types in this country. The left's instinct to Nanny State their way down into every last aspect of what someone might do to conduct some business (hey, kid, quit flying your $250, 2-pound plastic quad-copter with a cheap camera over your neighbor's roof because he asked you to, and said he'd give you $25 to get pictures of his roof gutters for him - if you don't cease and desist such commercial UAV operations, that's going to be a $10,000 fine!) means they can't simply clone the sort of framework that the UK or Canada have long had in place ... no, there's got to be a way to make it all MORE miserable, MORE expensive, MORE punitive, and nearly impossible for small entrepreneurs to get into - because otherwise we might miss out on some more federal fees, and intrusive paperwork.

And as usual, the very idiots that we'd most worry about anyway, who will be getting a drone from Amazon tomorrow and flying it over a park full of kids an hour later without any understanding of safe operations or good manners, will completely ignore the FAA's rules/guidance/regs anyway. The government, which is here to help you, will only be placing the painful burden and expense on the very people who are the most responsible anyway: those with a lot to lose because they're in business to use the technology.

More Hope and Change, hard at work for our economy. Yes, Obama's man Huerta at the FAA is a political appointee and that aspect of the food chain lays the FAA's entire posture on this squarely at the door of the White House.

No. The same collectivist and PC-style urges that currently act to prevent free expression will continue to further intercede when you seek to trade with someone. Why? Because there will always be people who think it's unfair that you and someone else have found a mutually beneficial reason to interact, and they will use the force of government to take a piece of that benefit, pay career middlemen in the government to handle it, and hand some of that benefit over to other people who didn't manage to make that transaction happen for themselves. That trend has been increasing, not decreasing. Places like academia and mass media are now LESS free places, for expression, and the market is an increasingly less free place in which to transact business between any two given parties. The "in the future" you envision is a fantasy. That horse has left the barn, and the nanny staters have won.

So your constitution doesn't exactly spell out what dignity exactly is, or what "quality" actually means in constitutionally mandated "quality housing for all citizens" - but it's not an entitlement, it's actually a "right" defined in the constitution, right? You said it's a clause there. Which is it? Does the constitution get dirty in describing specific wealth transfer entitlement program details, or not?

OK, so indeed, if you pass a certain test, you have the power to make the government take something from other people, and give it to you. And your constitution guarantees that only can that happen, but it has to happen with a certain amount of style. Not enough style, and it's undignified, right? So: who decides how many square feet of entitlement home is constitutionally dignified? How does the constitution lay out the definition of dignified where the rubber meets the road and you have to decide how much of someone else's work day should be spent building a kitchen for somebody else? Specifically.

So just to be clear, you're saying that some people in your country have the right to force other people in your country give them stuff.

Much of what you're saying seems based on a (all to common) fundamental misunderstanding of rights and the constitution. In the US, our rights are not defined there. The constitution exists to document the ways in which the government's power (to interfere with our rights) is limited. It does also lay out a limited range of things the government must do (defense, that sort of thing) and the structure of the branches of government ... but the point of the charter isn't to set up a laundry list of our rights. It's to remind everyone that rights (say, to assemble or speak, etc) are "natural," and that given the tendency of people in power to abuse things, we have a chartering document that points out the limits on the government's power - and it expressly mentions some hot-button areas that the document's authors knew would come up. Like speech, assembly, self defense, and the like.

You don't have "more rights" because more of them are listed. Nobody has a "right" to housing in the same way they have a right to freedom of speech. You're confusing government-run entitlement programs, paid for with taxes taken from one person and given to another, with "rights." They are not the same thing. A "right to dignity" as it relates to the government should only be mentioned in the sense that such a clause would prevent the government from actively doing something that removes someone's "dignity" (an impossibly elastic word that is more or less chosen for its inability to be commonly understood or defined).

A rational, constitutional take on "dignity" (vis a vis homelessness, for example, since you mention it), would be that the government cannot stop you from being charitable and helping somebody else into a home if you see fit. The only way the government can be in the dignity-through-housing-paid-for-by-someone-else business is to reduce someone else's dignity by making them spend part of their day as a slave working to prop up the "dignity" (read as: having stuff) of another guy. When you can wave the magic "dignity" wand and use it to remove something from one person and give it to another, that cries out for a very precise definition of dignity.

How many square meters of kitchen space is required in order to be dignified? If I have to spend some of the 12+ hours I'll spend working today in order to make a deposit in someone else's dignity fund, I'm left less able to afford my own kitchen than I otherwise would be. What if I feel undignified in an 800 square foot apartment, but would feel like I would finally have my dignity in a 1000 square foot space? Should I have the right to make you, with the government ready to back me up by seizure and force and imprisonment of you if you're not cooperative, give me the difference in rent every month? Talking about such things in terms of "rights" is completely misguided.

OK, then. "You see, officer, I've been thinking of studying Gaelic, and after just a few minutes of trying to figure out how to conjugate in future imperfect, I got so frustrated that I punched a wall." [takes out pocket guide to Gaelic] "I'm guessing that dead guy over there must have gotten into a fight with someone else about pluperfect usage or perhaps gerunds, and it just went bad. That's a shame."

Even stupid criminals can learn to shoot with their off hand.

Regardless, this strikes me as a horse-has-left-the-barn issue. "No jury in the world" is going to convict Joe Felon on a murder because of detected acceleration that feels like a gun. What's a gun feel like, anyway? You're just as dead if Billy Thug puts a .22 short (essentially recoiless) into the back of your head as you are if he blasts away with a 9mm.

And here's my alibi, officer: I was at the gym and took a swing at a punching bag.

Something like this would have to be tuned to the anatomy of the wearer and the specifics of the weapon and shooting style used. And of course it doesn't even begin to address the thousands of people who are killed by recidivist gang members in beatings, stabbings, etc. Our local thugs prefer knives and machetes.

Because when someone trots out any eye-rolling reference to how many burgers, or airline seats, or theater tickets have to be sold to pay the chief executive a company's board of directors deliberately hired to do a specific job, it usually means that someone disapproves of the kind of money that changed hands to make that happen. That complaint is usually made in the context of a larger, rambling complaint about any or all of for-profit entities in the first place, or a company's liberty to hire who they want at whatever price they see fit to pay for executives, or the very existence of incorporated businesses, etc.

Complaining about how many widget sales are required to pay for a CEO or CTO or CFO has become shorthand for complaining that they exist at all, and how it would be better if the company was managed by somebody that's a peer of the entry-level employees, or maybe their immediate management. That fantasy and variations on it is pure nonsense.

The minute that someone cites the CEO's pay when complaining about the nature or price of a delivered retail product or service is the moment that you can be sure they don't know what's involved in keeping a gigantic company funded and running. That complaint needs its own equivalent of Godwin's law, because it's always apparent where the sentiment originates - and it's usually based on the premise that people who own companies (whether privately held or publicly traded and thus owned by investors) shouldn't be allowed to decide what they are willing to pay for the things they need to buy as they run their business. They pay vendors for products and supplies, they pay contractors to maintain facilities, they pay workers at every level to do a whole spectrum of things, and they seek out and hire officer-level people to deal with big-issue stuff. They choose those people from a limited range of choices, and stake enormous parts of the company's future on how those choices will turn out. And they throw money at the problem to open up more options and, with much of that pay being tied to performance, to make sure the executives have a vested interest in meeting the owners goals.

Dismissing what that costs as being too much misses the larger picture.

They pay that money to retain the services of someone that they judge will help make sure that those losses aren't ever bigger, and that they'll be reversed, at least in part due to that person's efforts - whether it's in overseeing M&A or more investment, or branding exercises, or housecleaning that can impact the long term viability of the business. It can take years to make that work. If the company's owners want to gamble the current $7m against a future they expect will turn around in the hundreds of millions, why isn't that their decision to make?

Sure they do. I do.

That's why dealing with people who use terrorist bombings and similar tactics against civilian and commercial targets in order to boost their global profile and recruit fellow idiots to their cause ARE considered a global problem, even if all they're doing is deliberately slaughtering innocent women and children at a vegetable market in Afghanistan. Because allowing people who embrace and spread that way of interacting with the world to continue unchecked just makes the problem grow. Legitimizes it, for some, as a way to communicate their twisted world view in a global media/economy era. That stuff is toxic to civilization, period. So those of us who appreciate civilization do feel assaulted when those who want to tear it down decide they can and should get away with it unmolested.