Employees should not depend on the government for their ability to walk away from a job. They should depend on real assets that help them live more self sufficiently outside of their employment. This should include family, friend and other forms of community ties.
They would not really depend on "the government" as UBI would be codified in law and universally available, so government could not take UBI away from an individual or a group.
Also, we already depend on "the government" to make available (or protect) some pretty important stuff we depend on: rule of law, public safety, healthcare (in most developed countries), etc..
I think the point of H1B being tied to an employer is that a H1B entry needs to be temporary and not long term immigration. If you don't like your employer, or your employer is shafting you, then return back to your country and look for another job. If it happens to be another job in US with H1B visa, good for you. Start another temporary stint.
> I think the point of H1B being tied to an employer is that a H1B entry needs to be temporary and not long term immigration.
If it needs to be temporary response to a shortage, it should be tied to a job category in which the shortage is certified to exist, not an employer. There should be no special restriction within the category within which the shortage is certified to exist, so long as it exists, since employer restrictions within that category will obviously exacerbate a real shortage, though they benefit the particular employer.
But H-1B doesn't exist to deal with real shortages, it exists to leverage the pretext of contrived shortages to mitigate wage pressure in highly skilled industries via captive labor.
I have been following Precious Plastic and Dave for a few years now and I think this is a true honest attempt.
What are your thoughts on micro plastic pollution and it's harmful effects? I have seen a few videos showing people sawing and planing plastic which generates lots of fine particles. Is this going to cause more micro plastics pollution? Is handling these stuff in a home / diy environment harmful to humans?
That's a good question. Sadly there's definitely microplastics involved. Research into microplastic effects is still in very early stages. When you're creating any sort of dust (wood, metal, plastic, etch) particles around humans it's a good idea to have a dust mask at minimum.
My understanding is that most of the microplastic concerns at the moment are about how they're reaching our water sources and oceans. The amount being produced just by washing clothes is relatively scary.
I have heard the term secret court, for the first time only with reference the the USA. With secret courts, secret indictment, your statement of 'He isn't going to be charged with treason' only looks like a trap being laid.
> There are no secret courts that can issue indictments
You are 100% correct. The US government now thinks it's a court all unto itself and is now above the law.
It's got to the point where it doesn't even try to hide these indiscretions.
Rendition of prisoners to foreign countries by US personnel is now OK as long as no US personnel are involved in the subsequent torture.
It’s a well known fact the US government does not participate in torture, they don’t condone torture and as a government they do everything in their power to stop it. But rendition is OK. Out of sight, out of mind.
So that does not mean they can't assist in the process of rendition.
Also water boarding is not considered a form of torture by the US government. We the government consider it a form of intelligence gathering.
Unlawful detention? There is no such thing. We can hold any one for any length of time as long as it is in the national interest.
Is this the new US democracy?
The big disappointment for me is Obama.
I actually thought he was different, but I now know that was just foolish of me.
In many ways he is turning out to be much worse than the alternative :(
> Unlawful detention? There is no such thing. We can hold any one for any length of time as long as it is in the national interest.
It appears that you are referring to the people
the US is holding in Gitmo.
Uh, an issue here is the "lawful" part: A claim
is that the whole Gitmo thing is part of the
US military fighting a war. The Gitmo
people are prisoners of war or some such.
So, they are not to be handled in the US
legal system. So, for how they are being
handled, "lawful" in the US legal system
makes little or no sense.
For "torture", the US military claims
not to use torture. Okay. Maybe
water boarding is torture, but apparently
it does no physical harm and, so, maybe
is not really torture.
In broad terms, many well informed people,
e.g., D. D. Eisenhower, understood very
well that the US military in times of
war does things on battlefields that
would be totally unacceptable against US
citizens
inside the US.
E.g., Ike was
very reluctant to send the Army to
Little Rock. So, one broad lesson is
that (1) the US legal system and law
enforcement inside the US are one thing
and (2) what the US military does
outside the US to enemies of the US
is a very different thing. In particular,
Gitmo is just not like a US prison or
a county jail. Asking if Gitmo is
"lawful" is like asking about the
wings on hogs.
I don't say this because I like Obama
or liked W or Cheney.
For W and Cheney, they got
us into foreign wars that were good
candidates for "absurd foreign adventures"
and didn't get us out. There's "Occupy
a country, pull down a statue, now what?
Do you know what I mean?"
or some such from just retired
Marine four star General J. "Mad Dog"
Mattis.
For Obama, my first time really torqued
off was his early 2008 interview with the
SF Chronicle (off and on on YouTube --
once when on I typed in a full transcript
which I still have) where he said that he
wanted to use carbon cap and trade to
ratchet up the charges on coal fired
electric generating plants to "bankrupt"
the plants. From some DoE reports, at the
time that was 49% of our electric power and
about 23% of all our energy. Outrageous.
He'd need a crash program in nuke construction
to make up the difference. He also said
that of course "electric rates would
skyrocket".
So, what was he doing? Best I can tell,
he was waving a smell of raw
meat to get some greenies up on their hind legs. And he
was building a consensus to throw money
at green projects, please some
greenies in business, and get back some
campaign donations. For shutting down
coal plants, likely the EPA has been
slowly shutting down some of the older
plants the owners didn't want to
upgrade to cleaner burning. There I
would be more concerned about NOx
emissions, that cause acid rain, than
CO2 (that plants like!).
So, my reading is that mostly he has just
played politics with the greenies: Give
them a little smell of what they want,
throw some money their way, pretend to
be doing what they want, and otherwise
do essentially nothing.
E.g., in Mideast Arab Spring politics,
he doesn't want to appear to be on
the side of either secular dictators
or the radical Islamists. So, in
Libya he did something but apparently
mostly (set aside Bengazhi) not enough
really to entangle the US. Apparently
in Syria he trained a few rebels
to use some Russian missiles -- again,
appearing to fight the dictator but
not getting the US entangled. Now the
US DoD has given him a list of options
for more in Syria; my guess is that
he will take none of the options
but continue to find ways to
posture. For actually influencing
the outcome in Syria, I suspect he
will do nothing. Of course, I
don't see a good outcome in Syria --
it looks like either Al Qaeda or
back to Assad as the Mediterranean
branch of Iran.
Maybe in Egypt he did or enabled something
productive: Uh, it appears that from
the deal between Sadat and Begin
at Camp David, the US heavily
funds the Egyptian military.
Sooooo, net, the Egyptian military
is nearly a branch of the US DoD!
Sooooo, the US essentially has
a big veto and say-so in Egypt.
So, after a year of Morsi and his
true believers messing up the economy,
there was enough discontent in the
streets to let the military
dump Morsi and set up an interim
techocrat government and then
hold elections. If this works
out, good. If Obama played a
significant role, also good.
My explanation for
nearly everything Obama does is
he just wants to play politics or
be a political leader. So, pick some
issues, appear to be for some and against
others. For each side, make some statements
and maybe some weak actions and otherwise
do next to nothing.
When would he actually do something? Maybe
when about 70% of the voters really wanted
it. Otherwise he will just say things and
do little things that make his base
feel good.
My take is that basically he is indifferent
and cynical about government and, instead,
is willing just to play feel good politics.
E.g., "bankrupt" the coal plants is just
feel good nonsense to please some greenies
and not something he's actually going to do.
So, as an engineer, to me one place he
fails is (1) see a serious US problem,
(2) analyze the problem, (3) find a good
direction, (4) explain the problem and
direction to the American people and
build a consensus to solve the problem,
(5) move on with a solution. Instead
he just plays politics until some other
forces get maybe 70% approval for some
action and then steps in front of the
crowd as the leader.
In part playing such politics can
generate political capital that
can be used for something definite.
It seems to me that such leadership
looks weak to the voters and, as
a result by now, is costing him
political capital.
One place where maybe 70% of the people
will get torqued at him is the
Trayvon Martin matter: So, again, Obama
hasn't done much, and since it really
isn't necessarily a Federal issue he
didn't have much to do. But he has
said some things that appear to please
his base. And his buddy the AG
has said some more such things. Apparently
so far their actions have amounted to
next to nothing except one might
guess that some of the rioting that
has happened since the jury decision
was stimulated or encouraged by some of what
Obama and his AG did say. Sure, that
can mean that some dumb people rioted
for no good reason so blame the dumb people; still, the statements
were not good.
One danger of Obama is that many problems
in the US are permitted just to fester,
e.g., the economy, energy planning,
immigration, health care reform,
etc. instead of receive
serious attention. A second danger is
that if there were a serious problem,
would he be a good and serious leader?
One piece of good news is that Obama
seems to be going along with the plan
to put the DHS in the old DC
Saint Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital.
Sounds fully appropriate to me.
Hope that the TSA is one of the
first inmates. Sad part is that
they want to spend $4.5 billion
moving in.
Also apparently constitutional
scholar Obama failed to notice
how the NSA tracked mud over the
Fourth Amendment and, again,
let that problem just fester
until the sh!t hit the fan.
> The Gitmo people are prisoners of war or some such. So, they are not to be handled in the US legal system. So, for how they are being handled, "lawful" in the US legal system makes little or no sense.
Prisoners of war have legal rights too, under treaties to which the US is signatory. The Gitmo prisoners are not receiving those rights either. They're in a legal no-man's-land.
Okay, there are some treaties. But what
is the 'recourse'? Likely not the US
legal system. Likely not any legal
system.
The Gitmo situation is a mess, not the least
because apparently it's costing the US
$1+ million a year per prisoner. But while
a mess, I object to calling it a legal
mess. Laws, courts, justice, etc. just
have next to nothing to do with it.
Maybe there are a lot of lawyers and they want
to see every problem, e.g., the Gitmo problem,
as a legal problem. Sorry, lawyers, it's
not a legal problem; instead, it's something
else, a problem of a different kind.
In part Gitmo is an example to Jihaders:
Either we will kill you, and if they are
physically close maybe your family, or
we will ship you to Gitmo, and we will
let you decide which is worse.
Some of the Gitmo Jihaders believe that
it is just their natural, Allah-given
right and mission to fight the US
or go on a hunger strike. I'd say, that
120 days of hunger strike would be about
right.
Jose Padilla was never held in Guantanamo. He was held in a military brig in South Carolina, longer than he should have because of litigation surrounding the authority of the Bush administration to hold him without charges. The Bush administration did charge him, likely because they lost Hamdi v. Rumsfeld which rejected their attempts to detain a different U.S. citizen.
The only American citizen targeted in a drone strike was Al Awlaki. The others were killed because they happened to be traveling with Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan or Yemen who were targeted. We can argue about the legality of targeting Al Awlaki, someone who was actively waging war against the U.S. and tried to evade capture for a decade, but it's ridiculous to bring up the other three. Hundreds of U.S. citizens were killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fact that U.S. citizens may be killed collaterally in a military strike with legitimate targets has never been construed to be a violation of due process.
Snowden is a completely different situation. He's not waging war against the U.S. and leaking classified information is a criminal charge, not an act of war.
Halliburton, the US energy services giant, has admitted destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst such disaster in American history.
A Justice Department statement released late on Thursday said the company had agreed to plead guilty to criminal conduct that occurred when it was carrying out its own post-accident investigation.
Is any one going to pay for the fact that they broke the law, screwed up in the lives of so many people in Florida, stuffed up the environment for years to come all for the sake of a dollar?
No. The Justice Department is going to do nothing more than slap them on the wrist.
You make it sound like Halliburton just wrote a check to the DOJ to make the problem go away. Big companies don't need to write checks--they have hostages.
Put yourself in a DOJ prosecutor's shoes. You've got evidence of illegal conduct. You can't pin it on anyone specific, but you know the company overall engaged in the conduct. What do you do?
Do you randomly prosecute the CEO, simply by virtue of his position, for activity you can't directly pin on him? If you do this, watch every multi-national rush to re-incorporate in Switzerland.
Do you shut down the company, in the process putting tens of thousands of innocent people out of work in the midst of a shitty economy, punishing shareholders who had nothing to do with the illegal activity, and destroying a local economy?[1] All for what? To prove a point?
No, you don't do any of these things. You do exactly what the DOJ did in this case: force them to make a $55 million "donation" to the National Wildlife Fund, pay a token $200k fine, and let them go on with a stern warning. That's just the nature of law enforcement in a globalized economy, where multi-national corporations can "vote with their pocketbooks" and have countries compete to see who can be the most lax about law enforcement.
[1] E.g. consider the criminal indictment and subsequent dissolution of Arthur Andersen, and its impact on Chicago. While most of the personnel moved to other accounting firms in the city, losing the global headquarters of a $10 billion/year giant in the industry was not a good thing for the local economy.
You make good points, but I think you overlook the fact that when you're in a climate where anything goes -- a climate that has come to be that way precisely because of a series of complex precedents where it had been unclear where the blame fell and so the real villains often went unpunished, a lack of drastic, disruptive action is probably ultimately much more disastrous than what slaps on the wrist of varying intensities will get you.
This whole thing to me is pretty reminiscent of Wall Street problems. I'm sure there will always be a number of economists who'll defend the situation there, who'll pedantically frame the issues in detailed legal, economic orientations but overlook the more damaging, permanent problems people at large face. Without drastic actions (e.g., handing Jamie Dimon a lengthy prison sentence; fining Halliburton something that'll seriously debilitate (but not bankrupt) their operations, an amount that will make it absolutely clear to management, shareholders and everyone else that strategies of 'play dirty, make big profit, pay relatively small fine' are completely unacceptable), I don't think we're likely to see any meaningfully positive change.
As a society we seem to just accept (and overlook) a high entropy in incarcerations of black teens caught with weed with shaky evidence. Much like how folks are okay with that, I'm pretty much okay if we start seeing a more rash justice come down upon CEOs and upper management, I'm okay seeing shareholders suffer a little, I'm okay with seeing fines in upwards of billions figure, I'm okay with the threat of nationalization looming over companies at detection of naughty behavior. And I don't think this is sloppy anarchist thinking, this is action apparently needed for a larger utilitarian interest (which in my view is generally a reasonable goal).
Okay, that sounded a little extreme, but tell me, how else can we tell them we're not putting up with bullshit anymore? How things are currently going is obviously not working very well.
> Do you randomly prosecute the CEO, simply by virtue of his position, for activity you can't directly pin on him? If you do this, watch every multi-national rush to re-incorporate in Switzerland.
Great. Another one will pop up in its place, who we should reward if they uphold higher ethical standards by doing business with them.
> As a society we seem to just accept (and overlook) a high entropy in incarcerations of black teens caught with weed with shaky evidence.
By and large, black teens aren't incarcerated on "shakey evidence." That's the great thing about crimes that affect poor people: they're really easy to prove. The difference between an aggressive deal/outright fraud/honest mistake is difficult to prove. Who knew what? When? What were they thinking? Possession of an uncontrolled substance? Felon in possession of a firearm? Robbery? That stuff is easy to prove.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's okay that we imprison so many low-income minorities. But I don't think its the result of "high-entropy" prosecutions based on "shakey evidence." It's the result of astronomical sentences and three-strikes rules for relatively minor crimes (drugs, theft, gang activity) that are very common among low income populations.
> Great. Another one will pop up in its place,
Because we're doing such a great job keeping businesses in America as it is? All that will happen is that the capital will slowly migrate elsewhere.
> But tell me, how else can we tell them we're not putting up with bullshit anymore?
The fact of the matter is that we don't have any choice. My mentor in law school once pointed out to me that in Illinois politics, large companies don't have to make campaign donations to exercise their political clout. All they do is call up a state legislator and say: "I create 300 jobs in your district; this is how high you're going to jump." And the legislators ask: "how high?"
And the people absolutely will not do anything about it, because far and away their #1 political concern is getting a job or keeping their job. And no government official is going to be stupid enough to do something like punish a corporation overly harshly because a simple ad along the lines of "so and so cost such and such county in Illinois 300 jobs!" is a nuclear weapon in the current economy.
>My mentor in law school once pointed out to me that in Illinois politics, large companies don't have to make campaign donations to exercise their political clout.
And I was thinking that in US companies can't make campaign donations at all, but what do I know...
First, he would have been released from detention earlier if the Supreme Court hadn't dismissed his first case for an error in his habeas petition.
Second, Bush was not "judge, jury, and executioner." Bush persued a policy on his interpretation of the law. The Supreme Court smacked him down. He backed off that policy. Padilla got a civil trial. It took time because litigation is slow and always has been. But that's an example of the system working, not an example of it descending into dictatorship.
The problem I see is, all this are asked to be kept secret. How much money the Government gives the Telcos, ISPs and websites like Google, Facebook etc. for monitoring people and how much these people charge etc. are being kept secret.
You create a ghost. Create fear of the ghost. Tell people that only you can protect them from the ghost. But you don't tell them how they plan to protect them from the ghost, nor are you willing to disclose how much you spend to protect people from this ghost.
Yes. I think, the whole dialogue on terrorism should move away from the abstract concept called 'terrorism'. Any disgruntled group which sees itself as the underdog against a very powerful entity will resort to terrorism. You cannot wipe out terrorism from the face of the earth, like you cannot wipe out car accidents. The governments the world over are asking for enormous powers, selling us the dream that there will not be one innocent life lost because of another terrorist attack. They are dumbing down the actual issues behind these problems.
People should realize that only bringing focus to the real issues and not blanket regulations and restrictions on freedom is going to have some real effect.
Why don't governments create the new laws or policies time bound and specific to particular issues. If they see Al Queda activity in US, make it public. Release information on the organizations. People behind these organizations, the people helping to fund these organizations. Create embargoes on countries and organizations funding these organizations. And do them more effective and open manner than how it is done now.
Fill the media with real issues and educate people who sympathize with terrorist organizations. Give a platform for these people to redress their grievances. Create more opportunities for leaders of supposedly 'terrorist' organizations and to have more debate and dialogue with others.
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