So someone gets paid and they broadcast political information from all sides of the political spectrum, but you don't have political advertising?

Sounds like a distinction without much difference. You just have the political advertising that the government or the media has decided to allow. I agree, that will certainly result in less political advertising.

You say all sides of the political spectrum, but does anyone get to decide whose side is shown how much in a particular context? Someone other than the person who wants to get their views out? It sounds like what you have is a set of elites who get to filter political information for the "proles". I wonder whose interests they serve...

Britain is a good example, then.

Does the BBC not seem to have a political opinion on anything? Never criticized for any sort of bias? How come people who work at the BBC get to give out their political opinion in Britain, but other people can't broadcast theirs?

How come Rupert Murdoch gets to put out all the print political opinions he wants in Britain? Isn't that political advertising?

It sounds to me more like you're looking at Britain and because you're ok with whose opinions get to be expressed, you're ok with blocking everyone else.

In theory, you could ban all "political advertisements". In reality, you need an enforcement mechanism, which comes with regulators, prosecutors, etc... You also get a government board or committee to setup rules defining what is allowed and what isn't under your law banning "political advertisements".

Pretty soon, that board is run by either big media companies or else entrenched political consultants, because hey, they're the ones that really care enough to really study the laws and the regulations and gosh darn it, they have all sorts of relevant experience that makes them perfect for the job, right? So the board starts defining terms like "political" and "advertisement". Is a movie about events in Benghazi political? Is it an advertisement? Perhaps that depends on who is making the movie, some right-wing group, of course it's political. Hollywood? Of course not, they're not political, right? Maybe it depends on if Hilary or Obama are mentioned by name in the movie or not? Or perhaps we can just exclude stuff like that when it's shown say, within 60 days of an election where people mentioned in the move are involved?

Not sure if you're movie is going to fall afoul of the regulations? Better to just make sure your movie gets pre-clearance from the regulators who report to the board. That way you can be sure you aren't wasting your money on that Benghazi movie the government will order you to not release, or fine you or throw you in prison for showing.

Of course, like with all other laws, there's prosecutorial discretion. I mean, we have to allow for the prosecutor to have some common sense in only going after the actual bad guys, right? Maybe if the prosecuting attorney happens to be appointed by someone who is politically friendly to you, you get a little more leeway in what kind of movies and advertisements you can put out there? Perhaps everyone knows that if old Joe wasn't the prosecutor, you couldn't put that union "Let's all work together!" ad out there because someone else might call it political, but since Joe doesn't prosecute that sort of thing, you're ok.

I mean, it's not as if your elected and bureaucratic representatives have any incentives around caring which politicians get elected, right? No incentive to ensure the system can be gamed for their benefit?

Hopefully you can begin to see why banning "political advertisements" is in effect, the same as giving whoever is in power a filter to tilt media and advertising in their direction. That's what campaign finance "reform" has always been about in Congress in this country. Gaining an advantage over your political foes, tilting the playing field and ensuring you keep power.

Fortunately, we (all forms) have a right to free speech and the current supreme court is interested in preserving it more than they're interested in letting those in power in the government restrict it.

He's an active practicing Mormon who wrote an article for a Mormon audience about how someone can't be a practicing Homosexual and dedicated to the Homosexual scene and also be dedicated to the Mormon church.

Presuming you know anything about the Mormon church, is there anything in that sentence you disagree with? His article was basically you can't serve two masters.

This is all much ado about nothing.

Yeah, somebody seems to be confusing Anarchy with Spontaneous Order..

Of course, don't worry, the Feds via the FCC and Internet sales tax enforcement, etc... are working as fast as they can to impose their "planning" on it all for us.

And the most exchange rates at MtGOX are already back up to $200 after a big rally yesterday, so it's apparently correcting just fine for anyone who is looking to sell their bitcoins worth 10x or 100x what they used to be.

So yeah, Botcoins are subject to wild swings in exchange rates.

You seem to be under the impression that Directors actually run things. At most places, they're just placeholders for the major shareholders. The Directors at Netflix don't run the company, they just vote how the hedge fund managers tell them to vote. As long as they vote how the shareholders (i.e. owners) tell them to, why would they ever lose their position?

It's the company owners making the decisions. That's why you see shareholder agreements about how many directors each major shareholder is entitled to nominate, etc... Directors are just a way of sharing the proxy power around. Sure, some companies have owners that are also directors, but in many cases nowadays, it's just a prestigious side job where you get some input to the owners, not a management position where you make your own decisions.

Now they have a better Literacy, infant mortality and healthcare than the US.

Uhh... Bullshit? It always amazes me that so many people are willing to credulousness accept "statistics" like that from total propaganda. You probably also believed that the Soviet Union was a massive economic powerhouse for it's people in the 80s, right?

Hint: People don't take leaky boats and swim across oceans to get elsewhere because where they live is just too wonderful for them to handle. Try talking to someone who's actually lived in Cuba and then escaped.

Even better are all the white folks I've met in America who were born in Africa (South Africa, mostly).

They tend to be confused why certain people look at them oddly when they claim the title of African-American, even though it much more applies to them than to someone who happens to have dark skin and has no known relations in Africa...

So yeah, Steve Nash is technically the only "African-American" currently playing for the Lakers, using the "American" part loosely...

U.S. Banks typically use RSA ids for business accounts, but not personal accounts. I have three U.S. bank issued RSA fobs hanging from my keychain right now and a fourth at home.

The reason is that for personal accounts, the customer isn't very liable for fraud performed with their login, so they don't care enough to be inconvenienced.

For most business accounts, the business is liable for and fraud performed with their login, so enough of them demand better login security from the banks that they provide it as the default service.

Now, the dumbest thing U.S. banks do that I wish I could opt out of is the whole "security question" charade that basically inconveniences me while at the same time making my account _less_ secure. Now THAT'S annoying...

Funny.

Too bad the story is that all this happened two years ago... I guess that's what passes for news around here. He's been swear-free for a long time...

No, if you can't afford to pay someone on retainer, then you sell part of your contract rights to someone else who can enforce them.

It's not like a similar system didn't keep the peace and work fine in Iceland for hundreds of years until the Catholic church moved in, took over and started creating taxes based on property locations, after which the old system started fading away.

Maybe this is too obvious for you... but we're talking about a voluntary contract. If you don't have a mutually agreed enforcement provision, then you don't have a contract and you can both go your separate ways.

No one is forcing you to make the contract. It's called freedom.... you agree to what you agree to and don't agree to what you don't.

You add an enforcement mechanism to the contract. Something along the lines of, if you don't do your part, my criminal insurance firm Sharper Security get to come collect and your buddies at Gila River agree to let them collect.

Then, as long as Sharper Security and Gila River value their reputation for honoring contracts more than their desire for going to war against each other, our contract is enforced, even though we don't have a central authority to enforce it.

If you make a public bet with a buddy at work, why would you enter that contract if there isn't anyone who would ever enforce it? At least in part, it's because if one of you welshes, no one will want to deal with you in a similar manner in the future.

Why don't you advocate removing those public fund subsidies, then, as opposed to trying to get those workers fired from what may be the only job they're able to get?

It boggles my mind that people's solution to their perception that workers are underpaid is to make it so that the company that pays them either has to pay them less or fire some of them in order to stay afloat.

Anyway, let's try some basic economics. For the sake of argument, let's say Walmart were to triple the pay of every non-management worker position and also pay for 100% of their health care and other similar benefits. Let's say they went even farther and decided employees got a food allowance that they could use in the grocery department to totally feed their immediate family.

I assume that would satisfy you in terms of pay levels?

Now let's look at the economic effect of those policies on the actual current employees of Walmart. Within a year, virtually none of them would be working for Walmart and virtually none of them would be getting any of those pay increases and benefits.

  How is that possible? A better question would be, why is that a certainty?

Let's explore two paths:
1. Perhaps despite more than tripling their labor costs Walmart makes enough money that they can cutout all but one penny of profit and still be competitive with other stores, including new competitors that would spring up if they raised their prices. I'm guessing this would be your position, although it's pretty unlikely. But if they did, then what would happen is that all the current workers would be replaced by people who are better qualified and have more experience, but that are currently working jobs that pay just a little more than current Walmart jobs. So all the current Walmart employees get laid off or fired when their manager realizes that for what you've required him to pay workers, he can get a much better class of worker. People more responsible, who always show up on time, who pick up tasks quickly, who don't have to be micromanaged, who used to work at more demanding jobs, but are now attracted by the higher pay and awesome benefits Walmart is offering. Teenagers, senior citizens and the just-off-welfare need no longer apply to work at Walmart. They're only hiring people who are worth employing at the higher wages and benefits and that doesn't include any of the "current" Walmart workforce.
2. Walmart can't compete anymore because you just more than tripled their labor costs. They go out of business. All their employees no longer have a job. All their customers (including the laid off workers) now have to pay more for the basic products they buy every week. In the short term, some businesses that charge a little more (and generally pay their employees LESS than Walmart does, because they have lower profit margins) get more customers and hire a few more workers. Then "Walmart 2.0" following the same model as the old one gets established and drives things back to the current economic equilibrium.

Either way you slice it, the people you are supposedly advocating for lose in the short and in the long term. It's like advocating closing down factories in other countries because they're "sweat shops" that happen to be the best place to work in their area, where people in the area are practically willing to kill to get a job there, because it's so much better than anywhere else they could work. You're not exactly doing those people a favor with your advocating.

Won't someone think of the children of these poor workers you want to put out of work? Isn't the unemployment rate high enough already? Or is it more important to pretend like you care?