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Comment Re:Judges, that's who! (Score 1) 299


Perhaps it has escaped your notice, but we are not talking about legislation here. We are talking about regulation given the force of law without going through the legislative process. And the justification Congress always gives for abdicating their responisibilty to enact legislation in these cases is because the matters require far more technical expertise than Congresscritters can reasonably be expected to possess. This is not an unreasonable argument.

So, they create a bureaucracy which is supposedly composed of people with the technical expertise to craft regulations that will address those technical details specifically. And further, said bureaucrats can always change those rules to prevent obsolesence rather than waiting to see how the judicial system will rewrite them later.

I'd favor keeping the bureaucrats, but requiring their proposed regulations to be subject to a straight up/down vote in Congress (no committess, no amendments - Congress admits they can't be expected to be experts in these areas) and from there presented to the President like any other proposed bill.

Comment Re:[sigh] (Score 1) 639

If you feel that CA is a clusterfuck, and you leave, then please re-examine you "pretty liberal" mindset and make sure it is not going to cause you to try and turn your new residence into the same kind of clusterfuck.

CA didn't get into its current sorry condition overnight - and I'm pretty sure the majority of Californians 20 years ago did not think they were voting for what they have now.

Comment Re:1000, exactly (Score 1) 391

1000 exactly is a perfectly valid answer - of course,- the odds against writing exactly 1000 lines of code in a day must be a million to one.

And if you've read any Terry Pratchett you know precisely what that means.

And if you wrote more than 1000 lines of code in a day then you should read the bit about not complaining about a lack of options and picked zero.

Comment Reading obituaries, maybe (Score 1) 555

Umm.. But if they read the obits, then they would know who was dead. And if they subsequently went to their polling place to vote and happened to see the name of a person whose obit they had read on the voting rolls their heads might explode.

Unless the name on the voting roll was Samuel Clemens of course.
Or maybe it would be OK if they were in Chicago.

Comment Re:Leaf = return of serfdom (Score 1) 384

First, I said "Leaf" as in Nissans new electirc car, not "Leap".
Second, please run a level 3 diagnostic on your sarcasm detectors - they appear to be malfunctioning

Re: demoting CA.

I did say "almost every" not every. Of course in this I refer to the "law" of common sense which has an ever decreasing influence upon the political class. There is no precedent and no process for the federal government to "un-annex" a state after all. But there are serious questions to be answered about how to deal with CA and the other states that are not even trying to clean up their budgetary messes.

But if a person exhibited the sort of behavior the "state" of CA is demonstrating, it is highly likely that person would be declared incompetent and possibly institutionalized (or wind up living under a freeway begging from motorists). If CA is to become a ward of the federal government because it is unable to get its fiscal house in order, why should they continue to have any say in how the federal budget is allocated?

Or look at it this way - what legal right does CA invoke to require the rest of the nation's taxpayers to pay their debts for them?

If they have such a right, what is to stop them from continuing to rack up ever higher debts?

What will happen to a taxpayer in Kansas (for example) who declines to pay taxes to make the pension fund of the CA prison guard's union whole?

Re: About the Leaf (not Leap) leading to serfdom:

No I don't think the social engineering idiots in CA are really that devious - that was mostly tongue in cheek. The only serious question is how stupid are they to still be playing susbsidy games when they are reduced to issuing IOUs to pay their current bills. They should be looking at ways to cut their outlays not find more ways to spend money they do not have.

Comment Leaf = return of serfdom (Score 1) 384

CA is too big to fail so the Feds step in?

This would in almost every legal sense demote California from State to Territory or perhaps Protectorate. As such, they would at best qualify for a single non-voting representative in Congress (No Senators at all). Also no votes in the Electoral College. As this would disenfranchise around 10% of the entire population of th ecountry, expect trouble.

If chicanery is used to preserve CA as a state expect much more widespread trouble as the folks in the rest of the country have no particular desire to pay extra taxes to fund the bloated pensions of the parasites infesting California's public servant labor unions (teachers and prison guards for example). Nor will we be thrilled at paying the additional Leaf subsidy.

So, in keeping with a rather dismal view of CA's future, I would expect that the Leaf will get every benefit the political class in CA can heap upon them while anything with an internal combustion engine will wind up being further penalized to help pay for the subsidies being given to the Leaf.

But the real reason the pols are encouraging folks to buy the Leaf is because the politcal class recognizes that folks who drive a Leaf will not be able to pack up and leave - not with a max range of 100 miles followed by a very long recharge cycle. It could take them many days to make it from the coast to the eastern border of the state - assuming they can find charging stations at all. In short, if you buy a Leaf, you have just self-defined yourself as a serf - actually a slave - as you have renounced the "Right of Departure" all serfs enjoyed.

Comment Re:This is good. (Score 1) 490

Back in th e90's Japan developed a process to extract uranium from seawater at a cost of around $90 a pound. The market price for uranium at that time was around $40-$50 a pound.

Fuel costs are a minor component of the total cost per kwh from a nuke plant.

Even if uranium from seawater costs twice as much as uranium from a hole in the ground, it could still be used without requiring either massive subsidies or massive rate hikes as happens if a coal or gas fired plant finds its fuel costs doubled.

Comment Re:No problem, long as they charge at night (Score 1) 438

Using the tax code to influence behavior is evil. Allow taxes only for revenue generation and you prune back government corruption considerably. When you allow the tax code to be used for "social engineering" (as it is in the US), you have to consider just who the "engineers" are.

Comment Re:"cyber 9/11" (Score 4, Insightful) 433

No, it means that the response of the govenrment to a "cyber 9/11" will have about the same effect as their response to 9/11. Except that they are trying to be proactive and have their response sytem set up in advance.

Remember that the response of the government to 9/11 was to sieze control of airport security and turn it over to the Theatrical Society of America. To help prevent potential hijackings the government could have required flight deck personnel to be armed - instead they prohibited it. They could have tried educating people to respond differently in a hijacking situation - instead they made regulations about the size of a plastic baggie that could be used to hold small bottles of liquids. It also gave us the USA PATRIOT Act which has been 100% effective in stopping terrorist attacks using IEDs made with home-made methamphetamines.

Kind of like sending oil sucking barges back to the dock due to a potential lack of lifejackets and fire extinguishers. Or deciding that sand berms already under construction should be stopped until a "decider" could "decide" on a better place for them.

So, in short, the government will "protect" us from a cyber 9/11 by doing more damage than the attackers could ever dream of. Except this time, they will do it first and then the "cyber terrorists" will find some other way to cause damage. But we will never find out about it becasue the kill switch will stop us. It sure sounds like the "kill switch" will become the single point of failure.

Comment better car analogy (Score 1) 691

Your car (lets call it a Toyota for fun) mysteriously accelerates causing you to crash into someone. The government says no new cars may be manufactured until the problem is fixed. Should Toyota have to pick up the payroll for Ford, GM, Volkswagen, SAAB, Honda, and Hyundai until the government lifts their moratorium? How about the employees of the subcontractors like Owens-Corning or Firestone?How about the employees of the car dealers? The repair shops? The auto insurance companies?

Comment Re:Interpret it correctly (Score 1) 676


Note the wording here refers very specifically to a State - and not a Nation. Given that the Constitution defines and limits the powers of Federal Government, one should not get so hung up on the militia part that one ignores the State and People.

If Arizona had a well regulated militia, it would be free to use that militia to secure its southern border until relieved by Federal troops, and we would not be having this argument over their SB1070. The failure to use Federal troops for this purpose is what you get from a deliberate decision to treat border security as a law-enforcement issue rather than a national security issue. A distinction which is only applied to our land borders - the Coast Guard is a military organization and seems to somehow operate in spite of Posse Comiatus (sp).

Comment Re:Don't forget... (Score 1) 394

"these people seem to be a bunch of morons.."
Interesting phrasing there. Why do they "seem to be" as opposed to "are"?

Personally, I find that morons, idiots, and imbeciles are not restricted to any particluar political persuasion, rather they become affiliated with a political movement from exposure to a persuasive person with a desire to convince them. Given that morons, idiots, and imbeciles by definition are not very bright, they may not need much convincing.

"who want lower taxes and lower spending"
That is not quite an accurate statement of the Tea Party goals. But from it,I assume that you are in favor of higher taxes and higher spending. If so, do you have an example of a country that has higher taxes and spending that you would consider a good role model? I'm not going to suggest that you move there, just fix that country in your mind and ask yourself what would be necessary to do the same sort of thing in the US.
Does your model country have better social services?
If so, what are the requirements for receiving them?
Does your model country spend a significantly lower percentage of their GDP on their military?
If so, are they dependent upon another nation for any portion of their own defense?
Does your model country have a democratically elected government?
If so, how many political parties and how do candidates get on the ballot?

And one other question:
Assuming no changes to your model country, would you want to live there?
If not, why do you want to change the US to be more like that country?
If so, why change the US - shouldn't there be room for diversity among nations?.

And no, the Tea Party is not the same as the GOP. What the Tea party is, is a "good government" movement. Whether it will last long enough to be effective in attaining its goals is yet to be determined.

May all your PUSHes be POPped.