Sorry, but you are the party, via unsubstantiated insinuation, that Bloomberg was not fit to run because of some unsupported nefarious criminal activity. But you do robustly defends someonethat historically pays for sex, chronically practices infidelity, shorts And stuffs small business and individuals out of rendered services, lies, cheats and brags with the frequency that a regular human breaths- telling. Please wax on more and tells us more rich tales of the Rothchilds- as an adult, it’s a rare gift to hear such tall tales....
Will Trump win again???
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Agreed. Thank you for you expertise. If he did something egregious, then timing shouldn't matter if Democrats are truly concerned about the wrongdoing and not their political welfare. This is why, IMO the numbers for impeachment are 50/50. Its the appearance of trying to rush forward instead of waiting for facts that will produce a solid case. He can still be impeached and removed in his 2nd term if the facts reveal crimes.
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deleted171991
Who cares that it was a boys' club, especially 20 years ago? I actually asked that in front of my wife this morning, and told her that men DO objectify women (it's instinctual). How dumb is to judge people's past actions based on current societal norms, especially for petty "crimes"?
If 200 years from now humanity stops eating animals, should we all be considered murderers?
Anyway, when compared to Trump re: women, Bloomberg seems to be a saint.
Hey, I’m a man of color and
Hey, I‘m man of color, own a home in Manhattan (well in Harlem) and stop and frisk was absolutely offensive. That said, we are not dealing with saints or robots, so you gotta pick a person who you can digest and think about the totality of their history and strengths, and not just some surgically removed items and topics. Objectively speaking, MB has done more good than bad, and his governance style is objective, data driven and fairly in the middle of the road.
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GOP Senators Seek Quick Acquittal for Trump. The President Wants More.
Once articles of impeachment arrive in the Senate, Republicans will take control of the process for the first time. A growing number want a speedy trial without witnesses. Yet there is no consensus among Senate Republicans on how a trial should look, and the president has his own ideas.
www.wsj.com
No one is going to like MB entering the contest at this late date, especially institutional establishment. That said, with his resources, his consultants, his own data banks ability to navigate this proverbially above the fray, he has to be taken very seriously. Now, I dont presume to know the strategy, but I’m sure there is one....
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deleted171991
You're right. I missed that point. I thought it was just a "woke" thing.
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as seriously as Steyer?
The strategy has its own legal risks, specifically, Trump wants the more elongated process that entails calling many witnesses. The flip side of that is that Ds can potentially use that against him on cross, and the R counsel is not just aware of this, but very ambivalent of such a strategy. So, while many on the R make profound criticism of circumstantial accounts on the House side, the White House could have easily introduced Mulvaney, Bolton, Pompeo etc as a direct account, but strategically choose not to....
GOP Senators Seek Quick Acquittal for Trump. The President Wants More.
Once articles of impeachment arrive in the Senate, Republicans will take control of the process for the first time. A growing number want a speedy trial without witnesses. Yet there is no consensus among Senate Republicans on how a trial should look, and the president has his own ideas.
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deleted171991
Where I grew up, the police used to stop people who matched their profile of "criminal looks". I would keep my hair short, so they'd think I was military and leave me alone.
Still, I would rather have stop and frisk than crime (if there were actually a relationship between the two).
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That said, if you ever lived in Harlem during this period and were black or hispanic, it was utter BS. You could not even braid hair, play ball or cards or sit in stoops, and there were signs on every brownstone saying so....that’s an entirely race thing, you don’t see signs like that in the west village or Gramercy park or any other hood. It was all a pretense for implementing a fake probable cause to stop anyone at anytime...
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Wow, you may be on to something. We should probably just impeach all US politicians from NYC with a net worth over $500m, effective immediately...you know, just to be safe.
Nope, I can only imagining you were reading your monthly report from Conspiracy Monthly on how Jews were controlling the World Bank, IMF and Drake....
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True. Going to court is always a coin toss. You never know when some information will crop up and damage your case. Trump has good lawyers and I dont think they will allow this process to be protracted. Unless they have smoking gun evidence of all these investigations being vindictive attempts to frame him, I think they would be Ill advised to agree to a drawn out trial in the senate.
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deleted171991
Why Trump’s path to reelection is totally plausible
As impulsive and erratic as the president may be, his campaign is relying on the same advantages that helped reelect George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Hmmmn, here a bit of advice never take advice from some novice, sans a law degree, who is barred from the financial services industry....aka Tyler Durden.
Author=Alan Dershowitz, you know, famed Harvard Law Professor
Supreme Court ruling pulls rug out from under article of impeachment
And Tyler Durden is a pseudonym and not a real person:
Tyler Durden - Business Insider
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I don't know about that. He's not really a moderate. He's the absolute epitome of "I know what's best for everyone" ... everything from soda taxes to protect the stupid helpless ignorant people from their own gluttonous ruin, to gun confiscation to protect the stupid helpless ignorant people from their own violent ruin. The man is libertarian antimatter with open contempt for little people who think differently than he does.
If he believes anything, it's in the power and prerogative of government to shape people and culture by force.
I don't think he can win, but he did practically invent "data driven" business so I remain wary of his candidacy.
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deleted480308
He’s not even a little bit interested in personal freedom. A guy who wants cops to enforce the size of soda you drink should not be given power
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Are you ... uh ... perhaps referring to Michael Cohen or Rudy Guiliani here?
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deleted171991
I disagree. We have such a humongous epidemic of obesity, and sodas are a big component of that. Anything that decreases their consumption saves lives. It's like ads for cigarettes. It's one of the few situations where governmental intervention should be welcome (and we have tons to do).
Free market self-regulation is a nice theory, it just doesn't work for everything, since most markets are not free, and most people are not intelligent.
I don't understand Bloomberg. His policies always seemed like radical left proposals (taxing soda, stop and frisk, etc), but I thought he would be different because he's a super successful capitalist who should be more of a libertarian.
The more I learn about him, the more he seems like an "evil genius" who has a plan for your life and will work towards accomplishing that whether you want that or not.
The guy gives me the creeps.
The more I learn about him, the more he seems like an "evil genius" who has a plan for your life and will work towards accomplishing that whether you want that or not.
The guy gives me the creeps.
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deleted171991
I agree with the emphasized part. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for most things and most people. Also, in today's corporate capitalism, the government is the counterbalance which defends the "little people".
There is also one big problem with your line of thinking: many people, when left alone, do dumb sh-t, then expect the government to bail them out. It's easier and cheaper to prevent than to treat. Sometimes freedom vs nanny-state is a fine line to walk.
I don't want a nanny state either, but it's not about you and me, it's about Joe Sixpack. I believe in Reagan's most terrifying words.
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deleted171991
That doesn't work in a democracy. It's the known weak spot. Once people start voting themselves entitlements, they keep asking for more and more, until the system collapses.
Why do you think somebody like Trump got elected, if not for sheer populism? We have the highest deficits ever, and nobody seems to care. As I said, most people are not bright, and politicians (and other predators) exploit that.
Hence it's cheaper to prevent than to treat.
It's a genius move to outspend the Democrat candidates because they'll have no reasonable platform unless it includes massive tax hikes which nobody except socialists and rich Democrats support.
Warren will go nowhere because she promises the world but has no fiscal perspective to pay for it.
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The interesting thing about high fructose corn syrup is that for a long while the public was told, convincingly, that sugar was OK and the real threat to their health was fat. Especially cholesterol. There was a veritable War On Eggs that started 40+ years ago.
Even planet Poghril couldn't escape the scourge of cholesterol, as recorded in this 1979 documentary:
If Bloomberg had been a billionaire in the 70s, maybe eggs would have carried a hefty sin tax.
Anyway, I'm philosophically opposed to sin taxes in general, though it's undeniable that tobacco taxes have reduced smoking and its associated health problems. The fact that there's a silver lining to the black cloud doesn't mean the cloud isn't black.
Why stop with tobacco and sugar taxes? Why not tax other risky, self-destructive behavior?
How about a TBI tax on the NFL? Should probably actually tax college, high school, and peewee football too, to discourage harmful participation at the youngest age possible. I mean, the football industry is targeting children.
A risk tax on motorcycles? We could give a partial tax break to individuals who sign an organ donor card prior to the filing deadline.
A tornado tax on mobile homes? Those things are tornado magnets, why do we let people live in them?
Is there a role for government to shape or steer society with directed taxes or tax relief? Maybe. I could argue that energy independence is a national security issue, and driving investment toward domestic sources and away from foreign sources could be a compelling reason to have a government thumb on the scale. Individually self-destructive activities though? What if the activities aren't exactly destructive, but just tend to sorta vaguely diminish an individual's likelihood of reaching his full potential? And why stop there? The government could get involved with mandating, er I mean encouraging with tax relief or penalty, all sorts of behaviors and non-behaviors to improve people's health, for their own good.
Next thing you know, we're up at 5 AM doing calisthenics in formation in the park, led by the local citizen who has the highest social credit score. Because exercise is good for us and the government wants us to be fit, to keep health care costs down.
No thanks. Let the slugs have their 100 oz Big Gulps of Jolt Cola, let people smoke tobacco (or marijuana, or crystal meth), it's folly to think we can truly protect people from themselves without harming people who don't need or want protection.
The dirty secret of freedom is you're on your own, free to mess up your life and squander your potential. There's no sin tax that's really compatible with individual freedom and autonomy.
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There's a word in that second chart that caught my eye ...
"Should Trump allow his aides to testify in a Senate trial?"
When Republicans are running the show in the Senate, setting the rules and procedures for questioning and cross-examining, maybe they will. This circus isn't even half over yet ...
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I can't disagree here and I think pretty much all personal activities should be legal as long as that thing only affects you and not other people. The question is, where does this fit in with EMTALA and gen surg waking me at 3am cause they have to do an I&D on some indigent methhead's arm? Uninsured diabetic 2ppd smoker who now needs a CABG? The moral crux of the matter is that if we want to live in a society where we don't let people die in a gutter when we have the means to help, does this also give society the right to dictate (or at least heavily tax) activities deemed detrimental by the best available science?
Public policy is made all the time via the conscription of the existing parties in power; that either widen or narrow our lives, depending where you sit on the issue. Why do we then have laws that prohibit the purchase of cigarettes and other tobacco products for those under 18? Why do we have bike lanes? Why do we require seat belts or a limitation of using your cell phone in a car or in plane? Why did we open up marijuana?
Well, obviously for numerous reasons, but they ultimately come down to does data and best practice evidence support the notion of the benefit of an individual and societal benefit from such activities or in the converse, does it present some great societal harm that we should mitigate?
As to soda drinks, a great displacement of resources are involved and that comes from both societal resources and/or large health organizations. ere are the facts: The cost of all types of diagnosed diabetes in the United States is $327 billion in 2017, according to the American Diabetes Association. This includes both direct ($237 billion) and indirect ($90 billion) costs. The economic costs of diabetes increased by 26 percent in the last five years.Oct 25, 2018.
Well, obviously for numerous reasons, but they ultimately come down to does data and best practice evidence support the notion of the benefit of an individual and societal benefit from such activities or in the converse, does it present some great societal harm that we should mitigate?
As to soda drinks, a great displacement of resources are involved and that comes from both societal resources and/or large health organizations. ere are the facts: The cost of all types of diagnosed diabetes in the United States is $327 billion in 2017, according to the American Diabetes Association. This includes both direct ($237 billion) and indirect ($90 billion) costs. The economic costs of diabetes increased by 26 percent in the last five years.Oct 25, 2018.
You need to get your facts straight, like many of the issues you frequently comment on, you are incorrect and not based in any fact....the author in question, pseudonym or not, is a real person - Daniel Ivandjiiski....see:Daniel Ivandjiiski - Wikipedia
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You mean like the War On Drugs?
In a word, no, it's not right to do it. (Is it "legally" right, yeah probably - anything can be legal in any society if you get enough gullible people to go along with making it legal. Is it ethically right - no.)
As an aside, there'd be fewer indigent methheads needing I&Ds at 3 AM if meth was legal and even a fraction of the money wasted on the War On Drugs went to education/rehab/prevention and other social services. If a drug user wasn't a criminal and channeled into a prison system designed to cement him into poverty, joblessness, hopelessness, and despair. Imagine what we could do if the DEA and ATF were closed down and everyone there had to go get a useful job. OK, I guess wages for unskilled labor might dip a little as all of the suddenly unemployed DEA and ATF agents snapped up positions at coffee shops and car washes, but most of them could probably eventually be rehabilitated into useful lines of work.
It's perfectly reasonable for a civilization to decide it wants to collectively bear the cost of public health care system. It can also decide where it wants to limit that care. This doesn't have to be oppressive to individuals, so long as no one's labor is being conscripted and anyone can spend more of their own money for boutique/concierge/faster elective care.
Most of my objections to nationalized healthcare in the USA are because the ACA and other proposed plans actually do things like
- conscript skilled labor at forced sub-market wages
- not even attempt to address limits, particularly limits to heroic end-of-life care ("eeek! death panels!")
- not even attempt to reduce parasitic administrative costs
- explode premiums costs
- divert physician-led care to a pool of allegedly-good-enough midlevels in the name of cutting costs
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We’re already 100% on the same page as far as the futility of the WoD and legalization of drugs or cigarettes or soda or whatever. However, barring a universal healthcare system that may or may not happen in some distant future, the few ways that I can think of to deal with the cost are
1. Simply deny care to the uninsured methhead or CAD’er who can’t pay
2. Offset some of the cost through taxes on said products. I.e., cigarette taxes go to cancer treatment/research and smoking prevention/cessation programs etc
3. Continue the current mishmash of a system where some combination of federal and state taxes offset the cost of charity/Medicaid care.
Assuming we as a society think 1. is an immoral idea, in any of the other scenarios somebody is paying for somebody else’s poor life decisions. Doesn’t it strike you (as a libertarian) that a direct tax that affects the people actually choosing to make poor life decisions ascribes more individual responsibility to them, as opposed to unfairly distributing their responsibility to everyone else?
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This is a statement of fact. That it's a true statement doesn't mean that this state of affairs always leads to morally, ethically, or Constitutionally correct actions, or that such conscription is OK just because a temporary majority felt like it was a good idea.
Because they're children, and they don't have rights, and they're dumb and inexperienced by definition, and we get to make decisions for them.
Same reasons we have roads for cars. It's one of the few uncontroversial and explicitly obvious roles of government.
Because of meddling nannies. Don't get me wrong, I always wear one, and I think people who don't are stupid. But they can choose to take that stupid risk and it doesn't harm me.
Because doing so puts other human beings at significant risk, at a time when you're voluntarily sharing a publicly funded resource with them. Again - a core role of government, build and maintain transportation infrastructure.
When was the last time you were on a plane?
For a while it was believed electronic devices might interfere with the plane's function. (And because, I think, a cell phone at low altitude with line-of-sight to many many many cell towers is/was an issue that the telcos wanted to avoid.) These days you can use a phone on a plane.Because the War On Drugs is evil and wrong and harmful, and people are finally getting fed up with the lies and losses and destruction it has caused. At least that's one bit of nannystate BS that's moving in the right direction.
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deleted171991
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
As I said, I am not a big fan of governmental interventions either. I am also not an anarchist. I find the middle way is, many times, golden.
For example, we should have mandatory insurance at market value for houses in flood, tornado, earthquake etc. zones. Because if we don't, the idiots will keep building houses there and then ask for relief funds when their houses are destroyed. But we should not subsidize those insurance premiums, and let the market decide.
Hmmm, where do you live and where did you live basic civics—as to this misplaced notion that children don’t have basic and constitutionally based legal rights:This is a statement of fact. That it's a true statement doesn't mean that this state of affairs always leads to morally, ethically, or Constitutionally correct actions, or that such conscription is OK just because a temporary majority felt like it was a good idea.
Because they're children, and they don't have rights, and they're dumb and inexperienced by definition, and we get to make decisions for them.
Same reasons we have roads for cars. It's one of the few uncontroversial and explicitly obvious roles of government.
Because of meddling nannies. Don't get me wrong, I always wear one, and I think people who don't are stupid. But they can choose to take that stupid risk and it doesn't harm me.
Because doing so puts other human beings at significant risk, at a time when you're voluntarily sharing a publicly funded resource with them. Again - a core role of government, build and maintain transportation infrastructure.
When was the last time you were on a plane?
Because the War On Drugs is evil and wrong and harmful, and people are finally getting fed up with the lies and losses and destruction it has caused. At least that's one bit of nannystate BS that's moving in the right direction.
Minors also have rights under the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, they have the right to equal protection, which means that every child is entitled to the same treatment at the hands of authority regardless of race, gender, disability, or religion. Children are also entitled to due process, which includes notice and a hearing, before any of their basic rights are taken away by the government.
Children with disabilities also have rights under the federal Disabilities Education Act. The Disabilities Education Act provides children in need of special education with special accommodations to ensure they receive the same education as their peers.
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deleted480308
1 is the actual answer
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Yes, for 14 year olds who just finished atlas shrugged for the first time
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deleted171991
While I completely understand why this would be the most just answer, history shows it doesn't work, especially in a free, democratic, and civilized society.
Good government, like good anything (e.g. anesthesia care), foresees and prevents the problems. Do you like leaving the garbage to rot on the street, like a true libertarian (i.e. not my garbage), or do you like when it's collected in a timely fashion? And don't you love when we have public bins at regular intervals, and even plastic bags for pet feces, anything to incentivize the citizen to do the right thing? That's a governmental intervention. Not all of them are bad.
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That's a fair question. Directed taxes have a place.
A gasoline tax that pays for roads is quite reasonable. Your consumption of that item is very directly proportional to your use of the resource it funds. (Well, strictly speaking, commercial trucking gets a giant discount there.)
The big problem with sin taxes is that the link between "quantity of substance used" and "societal cost" isn't as direct as the tax proponents would have us believe. It's complicated.
While we physicians get a skewed view of the worst disease tobacco can cause, the truth is that the vast majority of smokers simply live normal lives characterized by an occasional URI or bit of bronchitis, and die without soaking up massive amounts of healthcare resources. Do they "deserve" the pre-emptive sin tax bill for services they never needed?
Smokers on the whole are sicker people than nonsmokers, but they also die a lot sooner. They cost a little more while they're alive, but they don't cost anything at all when they're dead. One of the beneficial-to-society things about being dead is that dead people don't get Social Security checks or soak up other (non-healthcare) government services and resources.
So, if the objective is to make the people who use the service pay more, maybe the correct tax would actually be one on tofu, gym memberships, and vehicles with the best crash ratings.
I'm being a little facetious here of course, but I hope you see my point. These lines of behavioral cause and financial effect used to justify sin taxes are not clear, and not even intuitive.
If fairness is the chief concern, the answer to your question could reasonably be either 1 or 3. Option 1 is fair (maybe - some people really do start life behind the 8 ball, even in the land of opportunity) but there's some inherent coldness and cruelty to a civilization that won't do anything to care for its sick and weak. Option 3 is also fair - everybody pays, and everybody benefits, if not from a direct return to their own healthcare expense, but from the pleasure of living in a civilization where sick homeless old people don't just die outside or alone. (I favor option 3.)
Option 2 is just too muddy, too vulnerable to manipulation, too vulnerable to abuse, and I admit I simply don't like it for the subjective reason of not wanting the government to be telling free people what to do, on the basis of a nebulous kinda sorta greater good, however well intended.
Like you, I am not an anarchist. Nobody really likes anarchists, but being a (small) minority party of individual liberty lovers, Libertarians are generally more accepting of harmlessly quirky and weird people, so they tend to gravitate toward the Libertarian party and we're not very good at showing them the way out.
I like civilization. I accept taxes as the cost of living in one. So do most libertarians. I want to live in a civilization where old and sick people don't die homeless in the gutter, even if their condition is largely self-inflicted. I'm reluctant to cast stones at anyone who does dumb self destructive things. The reasons why are too variable, and the truth is all of us do dumb things sometimes. I'm willing to pay something for their comfort and dignity.
I think trying to bill them directly in advance via sin taxes, as if society was trying to do separate checks for a 73 person dinner party, eleven years in advance when the restaurant hasn't even been chosen yet, is not the best approach.
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