Sorry folks, I occasionally have to work. My elitist, evil, corporate ass-kissing, tyrant-in-training railings against the communist incursion (and Zyp's view comes damn close to actually being communism, not just the usual right-wing knee-jerk reaction to call all liberal policy communist) will continue when time allows. Now, some gas pumped into the fire to keep you guys going:
Minority can afford FASTER & BETTER treatments, read the entire post before claiming i lack any sort of an education.
Is Bill Gates' doctor better than the one I visited last week? Probably. Would he need to sit and wait 20 minutes for the doctor to see him like I did? Probably not. Would he get an xray for an injured finger faster than I did? Not likely. While the super rich may be able to get slightly better care than me, it is highly unlikely the standard of care I would get under a Canadian-style system than is available to me now, and I hardly qualify as rich. Hell, if I had dependants I'd be under the poverty line - but high quality care is still available to me. About the only thing the rich can get that the poor can't is cosmetic work.
From my perspective, brains drain caused more damages in Canada than in the US though since, after all, the US recruits our or any other countries' newly trained Doctors by offering them **MUCH** higher salaries and work conditions. For profits, i must add.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If your country is too stupid to realize what is happening and take corrective action (say, by actually paying your doctors what they are worth), you deserve it.
What's California (and any other states) cumulative
debt? I'm not talking
state Law, i'm talking Expenses that keep being higher than Revenues.
All states and most municipalities have capital project debt, which is most of what California has. That is entirely different from operating budget debt. California is an anomaly due to a few unfortunate constitutional issues, such as an inherent inability to raise taxes when necessary. Couple that with a tax base consisting mostly of a housing market that evaporated and they are having some severe short term problems - but without the long term debt accumulation that the federal government has achieved. Taken as a separate entity, California would be in a better debt position than most countries - and far better than the US.
No, i'm saying that the ISPs ***allow*** Piracy to take place...
I'm still calling shenanigans at this, unless you can propose a mechanism the ISPs can use to curb piracy that does not involve somehow inspecting every byte that goes through their servers. Until you can come up with that, your point is invalid.
You seriously believe such a person would bother downloading 24 songs online illegally or rather would have simply sent one of his lemo drivers to pick up the bunch of CDs (possibly two or more copies, just in case) at the local music store or something?
Every time a celebrity gets caught shoplifting, driving drunk, or evading taxes, it shows how wrong this view is. The rich just have more money, they are not fundamentally more honest or rational than anyone else. There is little difference between someone making $50,000 and $50,000,000 if they both think they won't get caught for what they are doing.
It's theft of information that the person uses in their business, and thus that his or her livelihood comes from. If I made a downloadable flash game for 5 bucks, and people pirated it, I'd sure as hell be pissed. There goes the time that I spent coding for nothing. Same principal.
Most people would see that as stealing, but as soon as you say the thing you are stealing belongs to a cortoration instead of a person, they get this insane view that the corporation is a faceless machine out to take their money. Guess what? I own stock in at least a few of the compaines the RIAA represents; depending on how your pension is set up, you might too - all through the magic of mutual funds. While a single song pirated may not cost enough to make a difference, if you take millions of dollars out those companies' sales you are diminishing the value of my (and probably your) retirement investments. Now I realize saying that made a few people want to pirate more just to stick it to me personally, realize they may be hurting their own investments as well. Piracy would be a lot easier to combat if we could legitimately make commercials that said"My name is Jim, and I lost my job to piracy."
They are beginning to realize how their methods CREATED poverty of the masses
Is that a quote from Engle, Marx, or Lenin? I'm pretty sure one of them said it, I just don't remember which.
I'm willing to say pshychoak's 8th amendment argument is at least worth considering, although how the law has not been challenged on those grounds before now remains a mystery (unless it has and failed, I don't know offhand and can't look it up now). Now the question is, if she is stupid enough to not take the settlement she's being offered (which is somewhere in the $9000 range, apparently), will her lawyers appeal on those grounds?
Punative damages are an accepted part of civil law and have been for decades.
So has the tax code. Just because it's a tradition at this point doesn't make it right, or legal.
What part of the tax code are you referring to in particular? Because the income tax was allowed by the 16th Amendment. Whether a progressive tax is constitutional is another matter - but that isn't challenged because the poor are the ones who would get the shaft if it was not.
This case would never have been brought against a person with the resources to put up a proper defense.
More properly, this case never would have went to trial against someone with the wits to listen to a competent lawyer. From the evidence available publicly, they had her dead to rights - no plausable defense could have prevented some sort of penalty. All she could do was mitigate the damage.
