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Comment: Re:Isn't this what Libertarians WANT? (Score 1) 627

> Because there are laws against marrying your sister

Why? Why not make it illegal to reproduce with you sister instead? I agree that it's repugnant, but if they're sterile it doesn't hurt anyone but them.

> laws against concealing blood borne illnesses, etc.

Oh, you mean "fraud"?

> Unless you *like* having more people with recessive genes.

I'm not even going to respond to the strawman argument.

Comment: Reducing cash reserves now would be damaging. (Score 4, Insightful) 570

by lwsimon (#39164129) Attached to: Apple Has Too Much Money

They should not, under any circumstance, reduce cash reserves at this point. Re-establishing a dividend might make sense, but not an excessive one, and not as a means of managing capital.

Do you know why it took a year for competitors to bring out a real iPad competitor? It wasn't because Apple had much better tech, or because the others didn't have the prototypes - it was because no one could order parts. Before Apple launched the iPad, they bought up so much of the manufacturing capacity for key components - screens, especially - there was no way that Samsung could contract enough suppliers to bring a competitor to market.

Doing this takes a lot of capital. If they're talking about reducing operating capital, that tells me they don't have a "Next Big Thing" that they're planning on launching like they did the iPhone and iPad. That means drastically lower long-term growth.

Comment: Re:Trains? (Score 1) 461

by lwsimon (#39106349) Attached to: Nuclear Truckers Haul Warheads Across US

Freight by train is pretty much left to huge quantities of stuff that is being moved to a single location - coal, for example. Cars for another.

Pretty much everything else goes by truck today with huge volumes of trucks operating on the highways.

As an analyst for a trucking company, I can tell you that's just not true. We're sending an increasing percentage of our trailers over the rail. They're loaded via crane onto flatcars, and taken off the same way on the other end. I don't know that I'm at liberty to say exactly what percentage of our traffic goes rail, but suffice it to say that if we have the choice between sending a trailer over the interstate highways, or sending it over rail - we choose rail, every time.

Comment: Re:How else they gonna do it? (Score 1) 461

by lwsimon (#39106291) Attached to: Nuclear Truckers Haul Warheads Across US

I work for one of the largest less-than-truckload carriers in the country, and we also have a division that deals with stuff like this. While I've not been privy to exactly what some of our trucks carry, I do know that we haul an awful lot between government facilities, and that our security guys are almost all ex-military and have their CDLs.

To be perfectly honest, I am far more interested in who's poking their hands into the shrink-wrapped pallets of iPad2s than I am about government stuff. They provide their own security for the important stuff :)

Comment: Re:Only some (Score 1) 170

by lwsimon (#39038447) Attached to: Congress Warns NASA About Shortchanging SLS/Orion For Commercial Crew


The Republicans that go after pork as a primary means of staying in office get up and yell about their pork. That's the space program, farm subsidies, and defense mostly.

The Republicans that want smaller government stand up and yell about additional entitlement programs.

Note that the first group stays sitting quietly while second group yells, and vice versa. There is no lack of consistency, you're simply lumping in multiple groups' pet interests and saying that is representative of half of America.

I'm a geek - I love space, and technology. I almost always vote Republican. I am also an Anarcho-Capitalist, though, and I am therefore intellectually honest enough to see that government funding the space program is immoral. I still find it hard to be as upset about money going to NASA as I do about money going to supply free cellular phones to people without jobs.

Comment: Re:Just keep calm... (Score 1) 1059

by lwsimon (#38626298) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way To Deal With Roving TSA Teams?

You seem to have a slightly warped view of the power of the Presidency.

He would have to use his veto power to kill the budget in order to kill the TSA. The War of Drugs is a legislative issue, so all he could do there is refuse to enforce those laws while in office. It would also be within his power to pardon all non-violent drug offenders in federal prison (but not state prisons). He couldn't disband the TSA, but he could require them to weave baskets or something all day instead of enforcing the law.

Paul has been a constitutionalist first and a libertarian second. I don't believe he would break treaty obligations, although I'm sure he would work to lessen them while in office. He would certainly pull all of our troops home (except if bound by treaty, see above). He certainly wouldn't start a war of aggression, although I believe he would decisively defeat any state enemy that attacked us during his term.

There are a LOT of things a "rogue President" could do. I'm a gun nut, so the first thing that springs to mind is the FOPA '86, which banned new-manufactured machineguns, and the GOA '68, which allows the Attorney General to authorize an Amnesty, which could allow individuals to manufacture and register machineguns, suppressors, short-barrelled rifles and shotguns, etc. There's not reason that Amnesty couldn't last all 4 years.

Finally, let's not forget that for the past 40 or so years, the federal government has primarily exercised control via regulation, not law. Think of all of the controversial rulings that you've lived through, whether they be from the EPA, BATFE, FTC, etc. All of that could be repealed in a heartbeat, as ultimately, the President acts over those agencies in the same way a CEO acts over a corporation.

Weekends were made for programming. - Karl Lehenbauer