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The part about McCutcheon v. FEC isn't really accurate. The only personal cap that was struck down was the aggregate contribution limit. Corporation and union contributions aren't so much capped as they are prohibited.
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May 7, 2014 06:02
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assfro posted:People who desperately want to believe that the Supreme Court is above partisan politics and is instead just being the impartial judges they swore to be (they never have been, but partisanship has become far more prevalent in the past 20 years). And yeah, probably some people who thought that the ACA stands out for its "impartiality", though gutting the commerce clause has been on the conservative bench's to-do list since the Rehnquist court, so I don't know that I would the ACA ruling up as a bastion of impartiality. How would you define an impartial ruling versus a partisan one?
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May 8, 2014 18:44
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Femur posted:I think the problem is that wages are the same, but costs keep rising. Investing looks more and more like a scam; with rolling crashes that destroy these retirement dreams. The S&P 500 is much higher than it was at the 2007 peak now. If you left money in you were fine.
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May 9, 2014 16:35
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Fried Chicken posted:A self directed IRA is heavily regulated so if you want to invest in those it would be foolish to do so with said self directed IRA. You are capped on annual contribution so you get liquidity issues, RMD issues are greater because you are dealing with a more illiquid asset, and there are a host of prohibited transactions. Real estate and stocks need to be part of your retirement portfolio, but in general it is better to make them distinct from the IRA. What? Most IRAs will let you choose individual stocks. https://www.fidelity.com/retirement-planning/learn-about-iras/ira-choosing-investments It would probably be a bad idea unless you've had one for decades or rolled over a huge 401(k), but it's possible. And of course there's always cheap index funds.
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May 9, 2014 16:58
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AstheWorldWorlds posted:Terrible advice, most people do this and it doesn't account for anything. What do you think most people do all day? 76% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. Unless you're at literal poverty level, there's someone with 20% less income living ok. Adopt their standard of living and save the rest.
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May 9, 2014 18:02
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AstheWorldWorlds posted:I'm not quite sure what you are getting at here. Could you explain? Wikipedia informs me that the 75th percentile household income in the US is 90k. So households that are at least at that income level are paycheck-to-paycheck (and I can find hilarious articles about people making far more in the same situation). Since a household making 20% less (72k) is surely not deprived, perhaps we should look at the capitalist system that needs constant growth and tells people to buy poo poo they don't need.
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May 9, 2014 19:57
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Berke Negri posted:People buying too much stuff isn't the problem with the US economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
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May 9, 2014 20:57
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Hobologist posted:Synthetic mortgage backed securities are not "stuff." They are two steps removed from being stuff. The M part of MBS didn't come out of thin air.
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May 9, 2014 21:19
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Shageletic posted:Syntethics are bets on whether actual securitized mortgages are going to do well or not (or price within a certain range or not). Its not something you want to call solid, if I were you. Yes, but that's not really relevant. Capitalism demands growth, and lowering lending standards and pushing mortgages on people was how growth was accomplished until it collapsed.
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May 9, 2014 21:59
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There's a lot of tiny island countries out there, we can't bribe them all.
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May 11, 2014 05:48
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shrike82 posted:I don't get why posters continue to argue that the democrats are equivalent to the republicans. If nothing, you can look at the supreme court to see the difference. What if I think almost every Kennedy 5-4 was good regardless of who was with him. Also Breyer was nominated by Clinton and he is awful.
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May 11, 2014 16:09
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computer parts posted:Breyer is probably the justice I have heard the least about. He dissented in Brown v. EMA (would have let California restrict video games to ~protect the children~), was in the majority in Maryland v. King (DNA testing after all arrests are legal), and dissented in Florida v. Jardines (would have let drug dogs sniff the grounds of a home without warrant or probable cause). There's a bunch of those in the same vein.
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May 11, 2014 16:56
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spoon0042 posted:It was, but then he went and actually said something pretty much the same as the fake quote. IIRC anyway, and I think that's the actual quote. Yes, he argued that AEDPA was completely constitutional, and thus there was nothing that an additional habeas court could do for Troy Davis (because AEDPA limits you to one petition and he had already lost).
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May 11, 2014 18:53
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McDowell posted:The American companies can establish Eurasian branches that are basically independent entities, and similarly Eurasian companies would have to create new American firms that license their names/IP. That's basically what they do now. Google's IP is in Bermuda, and the royalties it charges the other branches are how profits get shifted offshore.
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May 11, 2014 19:46
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I'm feeling good and plan to vote 
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May 12, 2014 14:14
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a shameful boehner posted:Are we seeing any messaging from the Democrats over the Republican obstruction to the minimum wage bill that died in the Senate? I'm sure the answer is "no, none" but I'm hoping for something. It seems like such a loving easy target that the Democrats can hammer Republicans on through 2016 while they're concerned with further cutting the social safety net. They could decide that their job is safe and pays okay? Maybe they're worried that climate change stuff will impact their middle-management job at Exxon, or they hate abortions, or they love guns, or any other issue that isn't just about economic justice.
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May 13, 2014 00:34
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tbp posted:I think there was a large swath of people who graduated without the necessary information, largely because a bachelors for so long was enough. Every time I feel the urge to take the LSAT I just read the last few pages of the law school thread 
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May 13, 2014 16:29
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The Warszawa posted:The Court was plenty goddamn political from way before FDR. Isn't the Federalist Society really libertarian? It seems weird for Bork of all people to be associated with them.
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May 13, 2014 20:56
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SumYungGui posted:/\You stay the hell out of my head, ya hear?/\ Or that, you know, different people have different positions.
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May 14, 2014 00:24
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zoux posted:Why are gun rights such an important issue in the US? I was thinking about this the other day, but what makes people care about guns above all other political concerns. If a Republican candidate is listing his or her conservative credentials, the first thing they mention is their NRA rating. Well democrats keep trying to take them away sooo
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May 16, 2014 17:45
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Unzip and Attack posted:While this is true, it highlights the fact that we live in a country where one half of the political establishment will straight up impeach a sitting President of the other party for completely fabricated reasons and the only thing stopping them is that they don't have quite enough membership to do it. Given that after the acquittal he was cited for perjury-related contempt, the reasons weren't exactly fabricated. Shbobdb posted:They will impeach Obama over the nsa scandal if they get the majority We can only hope. Spatula City posted:Young women will turn out in droves to vote in the First Female President. 
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May 19, 2014 02:08
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Evil Fluffy posted:I'm ok with this. Also impeachment over drone strikes to kill American citizens because they're bad, really, just trust us no you can't challenge our decision to murder your son we had our own trial in secret because doing poo poo the right way is too difficult. They won't impeach him over either because even the GOP wouldn't be able to keep up that act. Now if Obama actually believed in anything he claimed during the 2008 campaign he'd pardon Manning and maybe Snowden. At that point the GOP would be falling over themselves to impeach him. What is the right way to kill an enemy combatant? Do Hellfire missiles violate a Geneva provision?
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May 19, 2014 04:40
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Miltank posted:Obama's drone campaign is not being waged against enemy combatants in any real sense of the word. The public evidence so far is that it is, and hopefully the lawsuits will bring out more information. Evil Fluffy posted:Pretty sure a guy's kid and the patrons of a cafe aren't enemy combatants so I don't think the weapon of choice matters because yes, blowing up a bunch of civilians to maybe get a target, or the target's son, violates the rules of war that the US has agreed to. Drone attacks do not have significantly higher civilian casualties. Abdulmutallab said that al-Aulaqi helped train him and was part of al-Qaeda. Holder said that he was planning other attacks, and you're dumb if you think that they're going to release exact sources from inside Yemen or wherever.
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May 19, 2014 05:47
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Miltank posted:We don't have a legitimate reason to kill people just because the US has defined them as terrorists or militants or whatever. I'm not sure what you mean by transparency. There's pretty good public evidence from Abdulmuttalab that al-Awlaki helped train him and was part of al-Qaeda. Apparently he was also involved in other plots, but it's unreasonable to ask for the exact sources from inside the Mideast, just like it would be to ask how we knew a bombing target was a Wehrmacht camp or whatever.
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May 19, 2014 20:46
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Miltank posted:Treating pakistani/yemeni herders as though they are the literal nazis is the reason the war on terror is completely hosed up. I'm making the point that it's weird to expect that the intelligence behind military actions will be fully transparent. If you have evidence that civilians are being intentionally targeted feel free to show it.
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May 19, 2014 21:10
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computer parts posted:Note that gerrymandering does nothing for Senate seats which is the more pressing concern right now. It also makes it easier for a concentrated GOTV effort to take the seat.
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May 20, 2014 18:46
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's much easier to take control over half of a few hundred people than a few thousand. The other major snag we're running into is that the government we're using now is based on one made by people that likely didn't bother to think about a planet with a population number in the billions. The population of the U.S. was less than 1% of what it is now in 1776. You can't just magically scale a government up like that and expect it to work. As the number of people represented by each representative gets larger and larger you have an increasingly separate class just by virtue of how numbers work. At this point the political class is basically completely separate from the rest of society. That's why the federal government has powers that are limited and enumerated 
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May 20, 2014 19:40
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squirrelzipper posted:Hey D&D Goons - I probably missed this and if so perhaps you'd be kind enough to link it for me, I thought it might be in this thread. It's been linked here before. The study isn't very useful without the data set behind it.
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May 22, 2014 07:41
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absolem posted:I understand that startlingly few of you know anything about economics and that you probably don't care to learn. Tell us more about the non-aggression principle.
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May 22, 2014 18:20
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VitalSigns posted:I'm still curious how Libertopia deals with racial discrimination if it's not immoral for those with the wealth and power to further enrich themselves by perpetuating institutional racism even if it's less efficient for society overall. Tell the owner of the Heart of Atlanta Motel that racism is inefficient for his business, obviously.
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May 22, 2014 21:35
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absolem is the Civil Rights Act of 1964 immoral
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May 22, 2014 21:35
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absolem posted:The non-aggression principle and property rights, etc. can be proved a priori. [citation needed]
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May 22, 2014 22:20
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absolem posted:true, look at the pastebin I posted Hmm. quote:- Argumentation is a means of conflict resolution. It’s really only here that the question of “justification” That's amazingly dumb. "individuals ought to use violence to resolve (all) conflicts" is a wrong statement, but you can't get from there to NAP. Not all conflicts are equal to each other. It also raises the question: what if I don't argue? Does rejecting the NAP have more merit if I murder anyone who advocates it to me? quote:- Over external resources (we have already determined that exclusive use is inevitable and that violence is Again, does not follow. You haven't stated why any objective claim other than "first person to appropriate a resource" can't be justifiable. I think you've made the assumption that any claim other than one based on appropriation must be subjective, but I don't see how you've come to that conclusion.
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May 22, 2014 22:42
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absolem posted:Basically, the only reason anyone has property rights is because of this argumentation, therefore when you reject argumentation by opting for a different method of conflict resolution, you forego all the other stuff set out by argumentation, namely rights. The idea is that everyone recognizes that this is the most pleasant way to do business and the people who don't are still criminals, now they've debased themselves by committing a crime. I'm pretty sure all conflicts are equal (rape is just as bad as murder as stealing a dime). "All conflicts are equal" is not a statement you've proved. Murder deprives a person of their life. It irrevocably (for now) ends their existence. It's the most extreme form of violence there is. Stealing a dime, on the other hand, probably won't even be noticed by the person in question. It deprives them of almost nothing. Converting "violence should not be used to resolve all conflicts" into NAP is question begging unless you've shown "all conflicts are equal." quote:I think that settles it, but the idea is that only the first claim (made by mixing your labor with unowned things) is objective, because there is no way to argue that any non 1st claim is better than any other non 1st claim, its all arbitrary after the first one. But the idea of homesteading is not the only objective claim, not is homesteading always objective. I find a wild dog and domesticate it. Under your ethics, I've mixed my labor with the dog and now own. Now I let it live in my home, entering and leaving as it pleases. Someone else finds the dog, thinks it's wild, and trains it. The owner of the dog is now subjective between me and the other person. On the other hand, consider the distribution of the scarce resource coal. I might make the claim that it be distributed evenly among all people. It would certainly violate homesteading and you would disagree with it, but it's a claim that's seen objectively between everyone.
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May 22, 2014 23:13
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absolem posted:Well, for all conflicts equal, the only issue is property rights. There is one line, which delineates not violating from violating, and there is no reason one violation should be different from another. Any violation is an action outside of the NAP and thereby puts the actor outside the protection of property rights. Ok, but all conflicts are still not equal. Not violating NAP against someone advocating NAP doesn't equate to not violating NAP in all circumstances.
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May 22, 2014 23:36
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Hmm Cruz has been the quiet side recently, what's he up to? He's 100% correct.
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May 23, 2014 22:43
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mdemone posted:He's 100% wrong. There, now that we've both made assertions, since you went first I think your justification should go first. It's only proper. Restricting "spending in support of or opposition to candidates" means that I can't so much as buy a political lawn sign without Congress' permission. hth
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May 23, 2014 23:44
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mdemone posted:Even if that were an accurate reading of the bill, you need to elaborate on why that's a bad thing. Money enables speech. Saying that restricting spending doesn't restrict free speech is like saying that outlawing paying for a lawyer doesn't infringe criminal defense rights.
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May 24, 2014 02:15
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On Terra Firma posted:Yeah it's a good thing that you get a lawyer when you can't afford one. I guess the government should provide a PAC when people can't afford to buy one of those too. Ask yourself why we only have a token public financing system for President and nothing for any other elections. Hint: it would harm incumbents, precisely the opposite of what campaign finance laws do. JonathonSpectre posted:It's like you guys don't understand that a bunch of 18th-century primitives who spent their entire lives living in fear of getting an infected scratch, communicated solely through handwritten letters delivered by men on horses, and shat in buckets totally foresaw everything that has happened after their deaths and were (and are!) completely cool with the "voices" of three or four people being able to drown out the "voices" of a hundred million. And by voices I mean wealth and money because that's what speech is! The ability to pay for things! Heck, haven't you ever heard it said someone had to "sing for their supper?" You just need to do some more readin' and larnin', then you'll see! It's not that I'm "cool" with it, it's that laws that Congress has tried to pass to fix it have been awful laws. There is no good way to fix it.
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May 24, 2014 19:54
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McDowell posted:Campaigns with fixed public budgets and media access. Eliminating the tax-exemption for dubious 'social welfare' organizations. But these are constraints that neither the business or political class will entertain. Even if that were a good idea, it does nothing about any form of outside spending.
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May 24, 2014 21:24
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