Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

PatrThom

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Before @PatrThom hits me with it: EU bans almost all coal mining.
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I did consider it when I first heard about it around Christmas.
But I admit, I'm personally more excited about the public domain thing. No entity should ever be allowed to lock up/hoard a thing effectively forever without consequence any more than a sibling should be permitted to hog the use of the family game console for, say, an entire year. Let others have a turn.

--Patrick
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
I did consider it when I first heard about it around Christmas.
But I admit, I'm personally more excited about the public domain thing. No entity should ever be allowed to lock up/hoard a thing effectively forever without consequence any more than a sibling should be permitted to hog the use of the family game console for, say, an entire year. Let others have a turn.

--Patrick
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The interesting thing about that article was how little urgency there was for the usual suspects to fight for another extension.

Relevant use of sibling there, because it's the families of long-dead creators who make some of the most noise about the extensions. Families whose only remaining connection to that creator is the money going into bank accounts.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
DarkAudit said:
The interesting thing about that article was how little urgency there was for the usual suspects to fight for another extension.

Relevant use of sibling there, because it's the families of long-dead creators who make some of the most noise about the extensions. Families whose only remaining connection to that creator is the money going into bank accounts.
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Hopefully big media companies realize that:
1. The internet is a big thing now and people who make their living on the internet will make a huge stink if they try to extend copyright, and the public will agree with them.
2. They need new works to enter public domain as much as anyone. They can't keep remaking Sherlock Holmes, The Wizard of Oz, and Tarzan forever.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

figmentPez said:
Hopefully big media companies realize that:
1. The internet is a big thing now and people who make their living on the internet will make a huge stink if they try to extend copyright, and the public will agree with them.
2. They need new works to enter public domain as much as anyone. They can't keep remaking Sherlock Holmes, The Wizard of Oz, and Tarzan forever.
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Don't forget the, like, seven Robin Hood movies in development.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

Happy Democrats control the House day!

My wishlist:

1) Gimme dem tax returns.

2) Launch an investigation into literally every republican in congress as well as the party as a whole, including every judge trump has appointed. Some, I'm sure, are innocent, but I'd wager most of them aren't.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

blotsfan said:
Happy Democrats control the House day!

My wishlist:

1) Gimme dem tax returns.

2) Launch an investigation into literally every republican in congress as well as the party as a whole, including every judge trump has appointed. Some, I'm sure, are innocent, but I'd wager most of them aren't.
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Hey, it worked in Alaska. Palin quit rather than face the multitude of investigations.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

I know it has zero chance of happeninf unless democrats get total control, but I wonder/hope if the party can work on abolishing the hard cap of congressional districts set almost 90 years ago by setting the size of the house to be more in line with the population, and forcing all districts to have a reasonable similar population within a state, you could have a house closer to the will of the voters. If you make it in line with the representation given at the time of the hard-limits passing, the house would have about 1400 members total. This would also be a way to get the electoral college more in line with the popular vote, as it would be more granular (every state would get more votes, but it'd be weighted to the states with more people).

I could see resistance from house members in the sense that their individual voice would be diminished, but it would be a boon to the Democratic Party by lessening the issue of their voters being clustered in cities. Rural voters in smaller states would still get a larger say, but the degree wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

I don't see how it'd be any more gerrymanderable (?) than it is now. Especially if each district has to still be contiguous and reasonably close to the same population.
 
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GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
@Li3n said:
Did it ever?

Didn't people just sell it to China or something?
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Well, to Chinese recycling companies, yes. But then China changed their required standards for importing "foreign garbage," and now most of it has nowhere to go. A lot of the "recycling" trucks don't even bother anymore, and drive straight to the local landfill.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

GasBandit said:
Something you folks may or may not be aware of: Recycling pretty much doesn't happen any more. 91% of plastic doesn't get recycled. Even the stuff you sort separately to go to "recycling" ends up in the landfill.
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Finding that out the crap with China was depressing last year. I'm trying to buy fewer disposable plastic things, made it so we don't need some of them as much, but by nature of how stuff is packaged, having some is inevitable. If we drop it off at the local recycling center itself, we're good, but I know at work they just throw it all in the same truck.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Same here. We have different bins for different stuff, and clear instructions on what goes in which ones, but since the downstream people aren’t segregating it what we really have is just three different colors of trash cans.

—Patrick
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

blotsfan said:
I know it has zero chance of happeninf unless democrats get total control, but I wonder/hope if the party can work on abolishing the hard cap of congressional districts set almost 90 years ago by setting the size of the house to be more in line with the population, and forcing all districts to have a reasonable similar population within a state, you could have a house closer to the will of the voters. If you make it in line with the representation given at the time of the hard-limits passing, the house would have about 1400 members total. This would also be a way to get the electoral college more in line with the popular vote, as it would be more granular (every state would get more votes, but it'd be weighted to the states with more people).

I could see resistance from house members in the sense that their individual voice would be diminished, but it would be a boon to the Democratic Party by lessening the issue of their voters being clustered in cities. Rural voters in smaller states would still get a larger say, but the degree wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now.
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Well, on day 1 the House just passed a bill ending the electoral college and switching to the popular vote. It has no chance of passing (and I'm pretty sure it'd be unconstitutional regardless), but I'm glad they're in the right place.
 
Covar

Covar

So a few thoughts.

I don't like that it allows to legislate against natural persons, and feel that you don't need to separate out corporations when you could just state "legal entities which are not natural persons." I do like that it follows similar amendments in putting the actual enactment in the hands of Congress so that it can better fit the economic situations of the future, it also makes it easier to pass. I completely get why section 3 is included, but do suspect that section 3 might make it pretty toothless.
 
Eriol

Eriol

blotsfan said:
Each section has explanations, but the text is there.

https://teddeutch.house.gov/uploadedfiles/116th_democracy_for_all_summary_and_faq.pdf
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Good explanations, and I think their hearts are in the right places, but this concerns me:
including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.
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What the hell MIGHT that mean? I'm not concerned by what they intend it to mean, but by what it may mean if taken to extremes. If Google prioritizes certain search results above others for topics that have political ramifications (which to be clear, could be virtually anything), have they influenced an election? It took money to develop such a feature, thus it was spending money, thus... etc.

So it seems quite broad. Maybe that's good, or maybe that's bad. But it smells off.
 
Tiger Tsang

Tiger Tsang

I wish I could remember the specifics atm, but there was some bill the R's put forward under Obama that would have gutted Social Programs. They new it would never pass.
Dem's caught wind and started 'abstaining' or whatever, which would have allowed the bill to pass to the Senate. Once the R's realized what was happening to their little stunt, and how their names would be attached to it . . . .

I promise I'll try to dig this up tomorrow, monsters of other forms are calling me.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

So can someone more informed tell me wtf is going on in France right now? I know they always are more dramatic (probably the wrong word) about striking/protesting than over here, but it's sounding like this could actually be a major thing? Or is it just being over-sensationalized?
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

It's a pretty big thing, and has been found on for weeks, already heavily influencing some major decisions and tax reform. I don't have the time now to go into more details, though.
Very shortly and broadly, it's the "deplorables", the regular people outside of cities and without a higher education, who are the local victims of globalisation, protesting about global tendencies that marginalize and hurt them. Green taxes on fuel, less protection for laborers, etc
 
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