US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8341

On August 09 2017 23:02 ShoCkeyy wrote:
All of you keep huffing and puffing about NK, which is exactly what Trump wants, he wants war with NK... He's propping up the warmongers to do their thing too. We're perfectly safe, we've invested trillions into defense, while NK has what exactly? It's just a way to make the poor people poorer, and to send innocent lives to a war that should of never been started.

On August 09 2017 23:22 Plansix wrote:
The narrative that Trump is pushing us to war to dump money into the military industrial complex is borderline conspiracy theory stuff. And is cold comfort for our allies in the region. NK is openly threatening a military strike against Guam, that shit is serious.

On August 09 2017 23:26 ticklishmusic wrote:
As a response to Trump's dickwaving on Twitter, though (in the spirit of Zero's idea) NK's always been threatening the destruction of America though now they've possibly got the means to do some damage.

On August 09 2017 15:38 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Hey, it would take less time and be less potentially deleterious than an executive order mandating two regulations that affect at least X people or businesses must be repealed for every 1 regulation added that affects X people or businesses.

On August 09 2017 23:22 Plansix wrote:
NK is openly threatening a military strike against Guam, that shit is serious.

On August 09 2017 16:21 IgnE wrote:


do you mean the outcome is "not purely bad" for consumers or "the changes" are not purely bad? because i did just ask you explicitly for a "sufficient ground" to argue that there's some quid pro quo going on for limiting corporate liability to lawsuits by forcing arbitration and you seem to have punted again.

like if you could just say, explicitly, "this will improve access to fair arbitration for some significant number of consumers who otherwise would be prevented from attaining any cost-effective remedy," then fine, i would agree there might be some sufficient grounds "to argue the issue either way" even if it were only a neutral change to a mediocre law.

as i mentioned earlier it seems like you could write a better law that would afford more consumer protections. sophisticated corporate clients taking advantage of legal expertise will happen no matter what the law says but that doesn't mean we just throw our hands up in the air and say, "well then i guess it doesn't matter what the law says at all."

On August 09 2017 23:48 mahrgell wrote:

North Korea is threatening the destruction of the USA for about 50 years now. I'm pretty sure they threatened destroying New York and Washington quite a lot of times.
Are there some kind of rare turtles on Guam, or why is it suddenly something completely different, even though their language really hasn't changed.

Reynolds: You are probably breaking the law right now

Ignorance of the law, we are often told, is no excuse. "Every man is presumed to know the law," says a long-established legal aphorism. And if you are charged with a crime, you would be well advised to rely on some other defense than "I had no idea that was illegal."

But not everybody favors this state of affairs. While a century or two ago nearly all crime was traditional common-law crime — rape, murder, theft and other things that pretty much everyone should know are bad — nowadays we face all sorts of "regulatory crimes" in which intuitions of right and wrong play no role, but for which the penalties are high.

If you walk down the sidewalk, pick up a pretty feather, and take it home, you could be a felon — if it happens to be a bald eagle feather. Bald eagles are plentiful now, and were taken off the endangered species list years ago, but the federal law making possession of them a crime for most people is still on the books, and federal agents are even infiltrating some Native-American powwows in order to find and arrest people. (And feathers from lesser-known birds, like the red-tailed hawk are also covered). Other examples abound, from getting lost in a storm and snowmobiling on the wrong bit of federal land, to diverting storm sewer water around a building.

"Regulatory crimes" of this sort are incredibly numerous and a category that is growing quickly. They are the ones likely to trap unwary individuals into being felons without knowing it. That is why Michael Cottone, in a just-published Tennessee Law Review article, suggests that maybe the old presumption that individuals know the law is outdated, unfair and maybe even unconstitutional. "Tellingly," he writes, "no exact count of the number of federal statutes that impose criminal sanctions has ever been given, but estimates from the last 15 years range from 3,600 to approximately 4,500." Meanwhile, according to recent congressional testimony, the number of federal regulations (enacted by administrative agencies under loose authority from Congress) carrying criminal penalties may be as many as 300,000.

On August 09 2017 16:53 a_flayer wrote:
And it's fascism, because people are dying as a result of it all.

On August 09 2017 23:58 zlefin wrote:
That problem of irregular laws is as mcuh due to voters as anything else; if voters were smarter, they'd pay more attention to things like that and focus more on competence.
Basic maintenance work updating laws isn't flashy, but it's important. it doesn't get done enough, in considerable part because voters don't vote for people who focus on it.

On August 10 2017 00:02 Danglars wrote:

It's more a question of putting in power people very concerned with regulatory reform. Lawmakers themselves have perverse incentives to continue the practice: they get to claim they "did something" by empowering a federal department to protect this and that, then turn around and criticize "the bureaucracy" when the rules they write are over sweeping or don't make allowances for incidental infraction. But it all goes under the heading of low civic engagement and not a cohesive victim group to lobby for reform.

On August 09 2017 23:30 Shiragaku wrote:

North Korea's nuclear diplomacy is not an aggressive doctrine at all. This is in response to the destruction of Iraq and Libya and growing power of Iran. Iran was put on the Axis of Evil and the threat of a military strike or invasion was a realistic possibility at one point. It was not until Iran acquired nuclear weapons when the US started taking diplomacy with them much more seriously. What North Korea is doing by acquiring nukes should not be seen as irrational, it's a military junta that does not want to turn into a Qaddafi and wishes to have its political goals be considered at the table. Point I am trying to make is that North Korea is still a tiny threat to its neighbors, but now, their ability to maintain power is stronger.