But, this decision didn't take those powers from Congress. It took those powers from federal agencies. Congress empowers the agencies, yes. But, Congress also deferred any technical decisioning to the agencies. Those agencies are filled with actual experts who are fully committed to their field. Now, the court just said that those experts aren't the right place to enforce anything but judges are.
Today it is. While not the existential threat to the US that communism/China are or perceived to be, Japan was very much a threat to the US in the 80s/90s. All kinds of concerns not just about the car market but manufacturing in general, how much real estate Japan owned, how much treasuries Japan owned, etc,
I know a few people who lost their collective minds when a Japanese guy bought Pebble Beach. Turned out to be a terrible move on his part.
Japan was very much a threat to the US back then. Maybe more perceived than reality but a lot of the same rhetoric/narrative you see today about China, was Japan vs the US back then.
So, KPI wise you can make an argument that it is effective. I may not agree with that argument in that we (USA) spend a lot of money and impose a lot of restrictions on the general population to get there.
Crime has always been a "the sky is falling" kind of a thing even if it's literally one crime. We are more safe than we were in 2001 by any objective measure, whether or not that is "safe enough" is going to be different for everyone...
Off the top of my head....
-How was the labor sourced for those services?
-Child Labor, illegal immigrant labor?
-What are the working conditions for the labor?, is it sweatshop
-what inputs go into the goods/services?
-what do they do with their waste?
-where do the inputs come from? My country, another country, my town, a town in my state...
you may think the government plays a role to enforce some of these, and they do to a point...
You can go on in your own head about all the things behind that simple exchange of money for something. If it's a perfectly competitive market sure, that may work but there aren't many if any markets in the US that are that level of competitive.
A personal anecdote for you. My uncle owns an auto parts re-manufacturer, so they rebuild car parts and sell them. I worked there a lot growing up. The normal input is buying "cores" from service stations....your starter motor isn't working and you get a new one, that old one is sold to someone like my uncle who refurbs it.
Often we had people come by with very clearly stolen parts....should we have just exchanged money for those? This ranged from a tweaker who would show up with one part, to full scale organized theft rings with pallets of parts...
So, do we buy those since the price is much, much better? There is a an ethical decision there...
I'm curious, do you personally buy any goods or services? It seems like the logical conclusion to this kind of thinking is to just not ever purchase or use anything.
I'm curious, do you personally make any decisions? It seems like the logical conclusion to this kind of thinking is to just not ever consider or decide upon anything.
I do make decisions and often times people many degrees removed get hurt or exploited as a result of it.
I choose not to focus on that though, whereas the person I replied to apparently does. I was curious how such a person manages to live a just life in the modern world.
You can look at it like this... They jury was concerned about the speech by the think tank. They don't want anyone else to have to suffer through it. The plaintiff though didn't have actual monetary damages from it, but you and me might have.
The jury is signaling, stronly, that this type of speech isn't allowed and should be punished. The fact that it happened to someone who wasn't monetarily harmed much by it isn't relevant but let's put a high bar out there to deter anyone else from this type of speech towards people who could be damaged.
The way the laws work it is really the only thing they could do if they believed the defendant's speech is harmful.
I know that's what the jury thought they were doing, but that isn't actually constitutional in the US. Juries are not empowered to decide whether speech isn't allowed and should be punished, they're empowered to decide whether speech is defamation and how much harm was done by said defamation.
Here, they found there was ~no harm done. That means that, constitutionally, they are unable to levy a substantial fine.
So, I think you are correct. The jury messed up, wasn't explained to properly, etc. There are thresholds on how much punitive damages can be awarded and they are some multiple of the other damages...this one is more than that.
The reasons were...."....after finding that the pair made their statements with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm.”
So, the jury found that they made statements that were willfully intended to harm someone - they were deliberate to inflict harm. They found that the actual harm wasn't much in monetary terms but decided to levy a large punitive award to signal to others not to do this and punish the two that did.
That makes sense. You have to prove actual damages, either the plaintff didn't try to or were unsuccessful...so $1 and then a larger amount to punish the behavior and deter others from doing it.
And it's not like it hasnt been known for a long time how dangerous silica can be. I worked in a chemical manufacturing plant as an engineering intern in the 80s, at a plant that made marine coatings. One of the products contained silica as an ingredient. The precautions that went into the production of that product were crazy, workers entering the area had to wear what amounted to space suits with full respirators. I vividly recall putting these suits on any time we had to do any work in that production area.
I am curious what you think could happen. I did a lot of looking after all the allegations and all the lawsuits. It is remarkably secure today, all the lawsuis that have been filed, etc. and nothing was found.
Where do you think the vulnerabilities are that can be exploited?
This is why I imagine it was so weird to be Brad Raffensperger during / immediately after the 2020 election. He ran for GA Sec of State on a platform of election security. He took actions he felt were in pursuit of that goal. He was proud of what he had done and the security of Georgia's elections. He supported Trump in the 2020 election. I am not in agreement with some of his approaches but by all accounts he was passionate about his role and generally did his job of making elections happen.
Then his preferred candidate loses. The loser tosses accusations at Raffensperger and friends ranging from incompetence to outright malice. The loser claims the systems Raffensperger has been knee deep in the previous two years are insecure, suspect, compromised. The loser puts personal pressure on Raffensperger to "find" votes.
That had to be one hell of a "what did I do to deserve this?" feeling throughout that time frame.
Nothing was found by courts. Or governments. Or the media. Or anyone, really.
Put up proof that something was off or STFU.
I said the same thing to myself and many others when there were a few cries of voter fraud after the 2016 election. Those cries died down within a month or so of the election because the loser wasn't actively amplifying that position.
Doesn't it bother you even a little bit that all of the so called "investigators" are in the same boat?
I don't have proof, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to speak.
As a general rule of thumb; whenever you get terribly upset that someone else has a different opinion, it's time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
I don't see a conspiracy spanning every level of government and the media, I guess? It seems like something close to that would be required for so many people from so many different political backgrounds to look and find nothing.
Or maybe you're defining "not objective" as "doesn't produce the result I wanted"...
At some point that just devolves into one person pointing at a dog and saying "that's a dog" and the other saying "nu'uh it's a cat". Cat guy isn't doing anything illegal but they're still making a claim without evidence and refusing to let go of the claim in the face of contrary evidence.
I'm genuinely worried about my country's ability to recover from what the Big Lie is doing to it, so I do care about the topic, and I do try to argue for sanity and truth where I can.
There is a lot of things wrong with this but I have said that in order to get your tax refund you have to show proof you registered to vote. I'd like to say proof that you voted but that may be a step too far...
Agree, it should be easier not harder to register and to vote
Did you happen to know that not everyone is required to file a federal income tax statement?
The IRS does not require you to pay income tax, or file taxes, unless you make over $19,400 (as of 2022)
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p501
It's really difficult to tell what percentage of people that applies to, but just for one example I got from Google, The Tax Policy Center estimates that 70 Million Americans do not need to pay income tax.
I am only half serious about that....should have pointed that out. Interesting links though. Correct that not everyone with income is required to file, though they should. I did not know the income level was that high though, would have guessed half that.
Just a guess but I think that overlap is probably pretty large. I would think the majority of people who don't owe taxes are due to lower incomes who would not be required to file and that is offset with deductions....purely a guess though.
Not sure if you’re being facetious, but some of us have too much of our pay deducted from payroll throughout the year compared to our tax burden, so the IRS returns the extra money to us.
