bmelton

93 ms·

871.
by bmelton 10y ago
Which may result in a disenfranchisement of the poor. A friend of mine (who is brilliant, but also an asshole) once shared with me a part of his philosophy on life. This occurred as we were staying in adjacent hotel rooms. There was an af
872.
by bmelton 10y ago
> A Tesla Taxi is more like a motel room with hourly rates. So, more like AirBNB than a leased rental agreement?
873.
by bmelton 10y ago
I wasn't suggesting that the beneficiaries would be named plaintiffs, but that in order for the state to sue a red-light runner for running a red light, the state has to be a plaintiff, and if they cannot prove any injury from someone
874.
by bmelton 10y ago
No, injuries do not have to occur for you to get a ticket. Injuries do have to occur for one to have standing in a civil suit. If it is a criminal act, then you have the right to presumption of innocence, to confront your accusers, an
875.
by bmelton 10y ago
Probably, but not everyone considers those things to be rights. Meanwhile, I tossed voting out because while it is patently a right, it is expressly not protected by that document. Edit: I often forget that most people don't know th
876.
by bmelton 10y ago
That depends on whether or not you consider those things to be rights, and whether or not you consider taxes to be infringements. Taxes on voting have been considered to be prima fascia discriminatory, despite having been largely categoriz
877.
by bmelton 10y ago
> "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly" This is an approach that I like for most bad laws (though noting that its attribution to Lincoln is questionable). That said, this isn't a case of the l
878.
by bmelton 10y ago
> I may be wrong, but my understanding was that religious institutions benefiting from tax-free status in the US could not engage in "politics" that way. I believe you to be wrong. The protections they receive on the free exer
879.
by bmelton 10y ago
> For example, if you get hurt by a red light runner, you should get paid by all the accident free red light tickets. This is referenced in the article, but if there is an accident-free red light running incident, then there are no plain
880.
by bmelton 10y ago
There are some jobs where the job is purely titular, and for those jobs, I would say that the people who work them are respected simply on their title, or perhaps jealousy of their do-nothing workload. The only real example that springs t
881.
by bmelton 10y ago
Recounting my experiences from the biggest customer (the federal government), everything costs a million plus because you have to have so many bodies to support it. Aside from the obviously unnecessary committee meetings in which a panel o
882.
by bmelton 10y ago
It depends on the type and scope of the contract. Federal Acquisition Regulations do a fair job at keeping oversight and "fairness" (depending on a lot of factors), but at a minimum, you'd have: * A large body of workers and
883.
by bmelton 10y ago
I don't think it's at all inevitable, nor do I disbelieve that political polarization is new. That said, tribal clustering is as old as time. Without getting into the whys and wherefores, my main concern is that as we eliminate s
884.
by bmelton 10y ago
> Pretty much everyone has both tendencies, which are inherently in tension. This is cognitive dissonance. People don't like experiencing this, so they end up choosing to believe both in tribal politics and that their tribe is the r
885.
by bmelton 10y ago
Not that I intend the conversation to devolved into "but the Democrats did..." and vice versa, but the only thing unique for Garland is the delay at that exact position. Priscilla Owen was denied a vote for an entire presidential
886.
by bmelton 10y ago
Sounds about right to me.
887.
by bmelton 10y ago
This sounds more like a spin-off of the old investment adage: "Buy stock in the products you actually use." If you spin that argument slightly as a proxy purchase, it makes sense that VCs would be investing in the products that th
888.
by bmelton 10y ago
Is it safe to assume then that you have no specific complaint with any of his books other than that they were written by D'Souza?
889.
by bmelton 10y ago
He went to jail; it's true. That doesn't make his writing any more or less good. If you have a critique of his writings or books, it would be better to lead off with that than to make ad hominem attacks. Oscar Wilde, Cervantes,
890.
by bmelton 10y ago
On what grounds do you find a refusal to consent to an executive's appointment to be unconstitutional? As someone who's been studying the constitution for five years, it seems eminently constitutional to me as well as every lawye
891.
by bmelton 10y ago
Sales figures out how to pitch the fire as a feature.
892.
by bmelton 10y ago
Thinking it through, I think a happy middle ground would be to have a 'this is political' button that, after a certain threshold, would flag the post as 'political', and would only be visible to those who have 'show
893.
by bmelton 10y ago
How do you discuss in "good faith" ideas like white nationalism? You discuss it the same way you discuss any other idea in good faith: by evaluating the content on its message, not on the presuppositions you might have for its mes
894.
by bmelton 10y ago
> Talk is cheap and political discussion is especially cheap. How do you propose to lead constructive discussions around these matters I don't know about 'actionable items', but political conversation isn't any differ
895.
by bmelton 10y ago
I'll try to put this as straightforwardly as possible, but it's a meandering topic at best. The gist of what I'm referring to is found here[1], so you should probably stop and read that first. Past that, the relevant things
896.
by bmelton 10y ago
This is some relevant reading from a credible authority: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... The short version is that the federal government has the power to pass laws, but under
897.
by bmelton 10y ago
Pithy. The obvious rebuttal being that "laws" allow for the military draft, which is also slavery, or jury duty, which is an admittedly much milder form of the same thing, or the internment of the Japanese, or the infinite detenti
898.
by bmelton 10y ago
Is there nuance that can be added? Sure. Pretending one thing is the same as the other is not, in my opinion, a nuance that furthers the discussion. It's really, really hard to equivocate the 13th amendment to, say, the EPA rules ove
899.
by bmelton 10y ago
Not trying to get involved in the debate around net neutrality, but you'd have to have criteria around what is success and what is failure. Depending on how you measure it, there are very few government programs that couldn't be
900.
by bmelton 10y ago
To be fair, it wouldn't be the first time somebody took an existing function on a page and repurposed it to do something other than its original name.

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