GasBandit
Staff member
I'd definitely support disbanding the DEA.
Except that it's literally the same thing, as the extra step is just a formality, as you still end up with 30% of what you produce while 70% goes to charity. The reason i was leaving it opened for when it's voluntary is because, even if you believe in deontology, that in no way affects reality, so if giving 70% to charity actually screws up the economy, your precious beliefs won't matter for shit.
Also, you're completely ignoring the fact that you got my initial point all wrong because you felt the need to attack communism, which was that relying on people's charity is no a realistic way to help the poor (which you agreed with btw, by saying communism can only work past a gen by using force).
Well, if you want to find out, you know what you have to do.
But, on a more serious note, putting more money into something only works when you can show it's underfunded. If you're just doing it wrong the amount of money you're using doesn't matter... see Healthcare or Education in the U.S. vs. other civilised countries.[DOUBLEPOST=1490038838,1490038723][/DOUBLEPOST]
But then who would lose a bunch of weapons they sold the cartels because the bugs they where tracking them with had shitty battery life? Or was that the ATF?
GasBandit
Staff member
... are you changing font size at random on purpose?[DOUBLEPOST=1490038913,1490038856][/DOUBLEPOST]
Yeah, that was the ATF. Better disband them, too.
In one reality, life goes on as it has before.
In another reality, @Li3n is followed around by a squad of trained assassins, weapons always trained on his person. This team has given assurances that they will never fire their weapons at him, are undetectable by anyone except their target, and are sworn to secrecy.
Both realities are the same.
The main reason they're against legalizing recreational marijuana is because it cuts into the profit margins of the Sinola Cartel. The DEA honestly does more harm than good from what I can tell. The Coast Guard and Customs are way more effective at stopping the influx of drugs into the USA.
You're putting "government" and "charity" as the same thing. They don't resemble each other even a bit, and if your charity STARTS to resemble government, it's probably a sign there's something seriously wrong!
But beyond that, after giving your money to a charity, if you don't like what they're doing with it, you can change whom you're giving it to. If you don't like what the government's doing, GOOD FUCKING LUCK. As that Princeton study from 2014 showed (reporting on it), you have no influence on what the government does, so thus there's a HUGE difference on whether you give your money to somebody you specifically support, versus giving it to "the government" as they are not a charity. A gang that asks for "Protection" money is a lot closer analogy, except they actually protect you from the other criminals (sometimes). The government as it is now (in your country and in mine) are more out to protect the major criminals financing them, like *($$*)$)#$*)$*)**)*****Error in transmission*****
So a church that insists on/forces tithes, or minimum donations, to do their charity work, with a penalty of Eternal Damnation (or at least, excommunication or shaming) for not giving (enough), does that still fall under "charity" for you? The R.C. Church forced people to give 1/10th of their income for a good long while. Many protestant beliefs still do. Muslims are obliged to give zakat, too - though they calculate it more on ownership than on earnings, it can still mount up to quite a bit.
Why would they want to support the Cartel? Or is this just a case of wanting to justify your own existence?
Starting in 2000, the DEA partnered with the Sinaloa Cartel to work against the other cartels. The Sinaloa would inform on the other Cartels, the DEA would strike, while leaving the Sinaloa unhindered - and in many cases, protected. Essentially, the DEA helped the Sinaloa Cartel take a commanding position in the Mexican drug trade. To this day, they aid the Sinaloa Cartel while pursuing the smaller players.
http://world.time.com/2014/01/14/dea-boosted-mexican-drug-cartel/
And admit a woman is his equal? Hillary lost, get over it. His huge hands would crush her and then how would she pay the huge amounts she owes NATO.
If you have freedom of religion, then that's OK. If you don't, then it isn't. It's not like we have freedom of government. "Nah, they did a shitty job last year, I'm not paying taxes." In this (and most western countries) you can leave your religion with only social, not legal consequences. Most countries that have "Islamic" in their full name, not so much freedom of Religion, so a different issue.
Yeah that sounds more to me like more an issue of "separation of Church and State."
--Patrick
No... not at random!
Look, if you keep adding more conditions to it, when i was talking a hypothetical to make a point about certain principles we're going to get nowhere.
At this point i guess i should just bring up examples of charities that misused fund, or worse, and then we can scream at each other like idiots...
But i'd rather do that on reddit, with idiots that think the election polls actually said Hillary had a 98% change of winning because someone passed them at math when they shouldn't have...
So how about addressing the actual point of how there any difference between keeping 30% or receiving it back (fast enough that you don't lack the ability to buy anything)? And lets assume we're voluntarily giving it to a charity. (though i am kind of forgetting that the point of it was...)
And you're still ignoring my initial point (which was that charities clearly won't be able to replace government run social programs, because if they could we'd never need the government in the 1st place, and we could have classless, stateless communism long ago), which is kind of annoying.
Yeah, no difference, except that one where the target lives in fear... which would be equivalent to coercion vs it being voluntary, which kind of ruins the analogy.
And i'm going to assume that, by including that part, you admit to yourself that the realities would be functionally identical otherwise...
...
But i'd like to pont out that i'm not arguing how you do something doesn't matter, but just the results, because in 99% of instances, how you do something influences the outcome...
[DOUBLEPOST=1490114472][/DOUBLEPOST]
The issue is that, if you don't pay taxes, there's no way to insure you also don't get to use any of the things those taxes pay for.
I guess you could try to live "off the grid" in ways that don't break the law, and don't require using anything more then dirt roads...
Now you're supposed to be able to punish "the government" (well, the people running it) by voting... the fact that you can't is a problem with the voting system in place (and the effect of propaganda on voters), not with the idea of government.
I guess you could be an anarchist... but that has about as much chances of working as communism.
The analogy worked precisely as intended, from the looks of it.
The difference (as I said above) is that you can influence and change which charities you support, whereas with government your influence is limited (to zero, practically speaking). As for it all being taken away by force (100% tax as you said) and then what you "need" determined by some bureaucrat, and hoping that's enough... I need to actually enumerate the problem with that versus determining yourself what you actually need?
My view on government is pretty clear: it should be there only for what is barely needed and not for "what can your government do for you today?" Keeping down government power means that it can't screw you over as badly, or at least it can screw over a lot fewer people badly. This is why Gas was sounding the alarm on overreach of Executive Orders literally years ago. For every exercise of power that you agree with think of how that power can be used in a similar way in a way you do not agree with. That's the danger that small-government folks point out, but is often ignored in favor of "something's wrong, the government has the money and must do something!" No matter how many times government intervention is a disaster, people will still see it as the "first option" for dealing with it.
I'm monologueing (any better ideas on spelling on that word? I'm stumped) at this point, so @Li3n if you really think I'm ignoring you, please point out more specifically how. I'm trying to address your points as you bring them up, but it's not always the most clear to me, despite (often because of) the font weirdness.
I had to look this up to see if there was actually more than Iran.
So there's 4 others, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I know nothing about The Gambia or Mauritania - although I'd guess that the Cunard Lines named a cruise liner after that last one. And I'd guess that The Gambia is in Africa.
The difference is one of psychology. In one case, you are paid your wages, and then you pay the government. Your work is the source of your livelihood, as well as he source of government funding. In the other, the government is paid your wages, and then the government pays you what's left. The government then becomes the source of your livelihood. Even if the numbers are functionally identical, the psychological difference cannot be ignored.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
House Intel chairman: Trump's personal communications may have been collected (CNN)
Apparently some of his communication (or those of his underlings) was actually tapped? We'll see how much this blows up (or not), especially depending on who's narrative you want on this.
Apparently some of his communication (or those of his underlings) was actually tapped? We'll see how much this blows up (or not), especially depending on who's narrative you want on this.
Tinkle, Tinkle little Czar
Putin put you where you are.[DOUBLEPOST=1490219243,1490219005][/DOUBLEPOST]
Putin put you where you are.[DOUBLEPOST=1490219243,1490219005][/DOUBLEPOST]
I don't have a link, heard it on the radio this afternoon, but one of the head intel guys basically testified it was caught coincidentally. Which mostly likely means, with all the foreign contacts with Putypoot and other Russian types that a lot of his underlings had they were under surveillance, and I think Twitler has shown himself too not be able to keep his mouth or twittering thumbs quiet.
Now there's a Goodwin!
@drifter, while your analysis seems correct about courts, we also need to remember that FISA is the same court that rubber-stamps the "we can collect all metadata everywhere in the USA" requests. So just because that court authorizes it doesn't mean anything about probable cause or not.
And as for Nunes' testimony, from the couple of articles I read about it (I only linked the CNN one), he seemed to be agreeing with what you said, that the identities were masked, but easy to deduce, and the "easy deduction" was spread around without court intervention. I'll admit I'm not 100% clear on this, probably because he wasn't 100% clear either.
And as for Nunes' testimony, from the couple of articles I read about it (I only linked the CNN one), he seemed to be agreeing with what you said, that the identities were masked, but easy to deduce, and the "easy deduction" was spread around without court intervention. I'll admit I'm not 100% clear on this, probably because he wasn't 100% clear either.
Necronic
Staff member
This was a fairly clever play by Nunes. The details of this situation already don't look like they really support Trumps assertion if you look even remotely closely at it. But because the story is *slightly* complicated it's really easy to spin it for the dumb dumbs however you want and this gives Trump the cover he needs in the friendly press like Brietbart.
Seems to have duped a lot of people.
Fairly slick play for a junior. He's been pretty deep butt buddies with Trump already and this only further cements his value to the executive.
Necronic
Staff member
So it looks like after all his big talk Trump failed to bring the ACA repeal/replace plan through the house and had to postpone the vote. Got to be honest after all the bullshit we've been dealing with I feel like this is really one of the biggest blows to him.
Generally speaking a first term president with a friendly congress should be able to get all of his stuff he brings out in his first year passed. It's just sort of a rule of thumb.
Bitch couldn't even get the one thing republicans have been promising to do for the last 7 years passed. Politically this is really embarrassing, especially with his whole "dealmaker" bullshit being thrown around left and right. This is a *rookie* mistake.
Generally speaking a first term president with a friendly congress should be able to get all of his stuff he brings out in his first year passed. It's just sort of a rule of thumb.
Bitch couldn't even get the one thing republicans have been promising to do for the last 7 years passed. Politically this is really embarrassing, especially with his whole "dealmaker" bullshit being thrown around left and right. This is a *rookie* mistake.
My comment in the other thread got buried in the other discussion, but some Republicans are finally catching on that their constituents would lose out big time. And that was before the midnight amendment that essentially eliminated health insurance altogether. I mean virtually EVERYTHING was exempted from coverage.
My understanding of the AHCA is that it's not the repeal that many were selling, but more of a "tweaking" of the existing stuff. Basically, there's a reason for everybody to vote against it as a broken promise, no matter what side of things you're on. Too "democrat" for conservatives, and too "republican" for liberals. Yes I deliberately used different labels on both sides of that.
My personal, not-in-your-country analysis of it is that it seems to be: "Don't require anything of anybody (no requirements of what is in plans... at all) and hope the free market 'just works' to lower premiums. Oh and dump a bunch of money in block-grants on the states and claim that Medicare/Medicaid are taken care of."
Or is that missing something critical?
My personal, not-in-your-country analysis of it is that it seems to be: "Don't require anything of anybody (no requirements of what is in plans... at all) and hope the free market 'just works' to lower premiums. Oh and dump a bunch of money in block-grants on the states and claim that Medicare/Medicaid are taken care of."
Or is that missing something critical?
What free market. Before and with the ACA people have about as much choice as a picking an internet provider.
I don't want people mis-construing what I wrote as belief that I actually think that it will work or that it is what's advertised, only that it's what they CLAIM they're doing.