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  1. #381
    What do they plan to replace the A-10 with? It currently fills a niche as an amazing support aircraft for ground operations. I could see some of it's roles being handed over to helicopters, but they don't have the range the A-10 does.
    "Anyone who thinks controlling people is a science is dead wrong: It's an art."
    Jim Profit - the greatest tv villain you've (probably) never seen.

  2. #382
    Quote Originally Posted by Celista View Post
    I actually agree with some of your points but you'd never get conservatives to agree to put initiatives in place to control health care costs, that would smack even more strongly of socialism than Obamacare. Also economists tend to think price fixing is a bad idea, I can't tell you how many economics classes I had to sit through where the professor brought up the example of rent-controlled apartments in New York and would bitch about how that was just a terrible fucking idea. Economic theory in the courses I took (my undergraduate major was finance, but my minor was in economics) was interesting because no one really talked about the outliers, whether in regards to price fixing or economic systems or services....it was pure promotion of free-market ideology. I'm not sure if that's indicative of theory trends overall or if I just attended a university with a mindblowingly conservative economics department.

    In regards to Obamacare, at least now the poor get some health care and that will likely cut costs now due to preventative care being ridiculously cheaper than the poor going without medical coverage, having their health problems balloon up to be ridiculously expensive procedures that the poor simply cannot afford to pay and whose bills are discharged through bankruptcy.
    Well I am conservative. The thing is, most people who openly declare themselves that in the most obnoxious ways aren't really conservative in the traditional sense... their far right fundamentalists who have run wild because the Wardens of the Asylum have abandoned their posts. The exact same thing happened with post-Johnson, post Democratic National Convention of 1968, Democrats, that culminated with Walter Mondale. Republicans need to have their Walter Mondale moment. Ted Cruz, America actually needs you.

    Economists would say that, to a degree undboutedly, especially conservative ones. But this is exactly what Australia and Japan did. The first step is really psychological: making the decision, that health care is not a market where market forces have any success in controlling prices. It's very easy to compare the promise it would do that, a story which we've heard for decades, to the reality of that, in which it has never happened. And then you compare it Japan and Australia, which don't have health care problems.

    The problem with Obamacare now that it's law, is that it gets us stuck. True American healthcare reform would supercede Obamacare by making health care costs so hilariously low the problem of the poor having access to health care would be almost intrinsically resolved by it's cost. Republicans however, will spend the next 20 years fighting Obamacare because it was done DESPITE them (so stupid on Obama's part) and Democrats will spend the next 20 years defending Obamacare because it is philosophically consistent with their beliefs and one of their greatest "big" political achievements in recent history. The actual "let's start from square one" mindset required from Healthcare? Republicans aren't honest enough as human beings to treat it as the non-market it is, and Democrats won't take the political risk without another Democratic house and Democratic Senate and Democratic President, which will likely have to wait until after 2020 redistricting.

    The poor getting affordable access to healthcare in the short term, isn't worth the long term cost to the process, which means a crappy system that was falling apart, was thrown a life line. Hopefully, after the current arrangement fails and political will has re-coalesced, the US will be so Asia-looking due Security and Political issues, we'll actually look at Japan and Australia for inspiration, 20 years hence, rather than wrongly to Canada and Europe like we did. Price controls on health care supersede even the very concept of single payer health care (although they are a part of many such systems too).

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    Quote Originally Posted by supertony51 View Post
    What if you figure in electricity, maintainence, and liquid helium refills?
    http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_operating_budget_plan_for_a_research_MRI_facility

    Siemens charges around $100,000/year to provide upgrades, helium fills, fix issues etc. and for that they guarantee about 95% scanner uptime (as I recall).
    Very conservatively, an MRI after 5 years at $80 would break even. More realistically, it would still turn a profit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vvulf View Post
    What do they plan to replace the A-10 with? It currently fills a niche as an amazing support aircraft for ground operations. I could see some of it's roles being handed over to helicopters, but they don't have the range the A-10 does.
    The F-35 (which has no assembled squadrons) with Precision Guided Munitions.

    If it sounds like bullshit, that's because it is. It is also why Congress is never going to let it happen, despite the Air Force trying this stunt yet again. This is the latest request on their part, in a 20 year crusade to kill the A-10.

  3. #383
    Quote Originally Posted by Kellhound View Post
    The US Navy has lost several UAVs to unintentional "jamming" from their own air search radars. Manned aircraft can return home under heave ECM, UAVs are lost. We have not fought a technologically advanced adversary with UAVs, though the Iranians seem to have figured out how to stop one of our most advanced UAVs....
    Lets not forget, accidents happen, maned or unmanned.
    "If you want to control people, if you want to feed them a pack of lies and dominate them, keep them ignorant. For me, literacy means freedom." - LaVar Burton.

  4. #384
    Quote Originally Posted by Ausr View Post
    Believe FDR had a plan for another set of Bill of Rights which included affordable or free healthcare but he unfortunately died before he could propose it.
    That would have been a nice, but ultimately hollow gesture. Saying "every American has a right to affordable healthcare" doesn't actually do anything. Society has to make a decision about what Health Care is. There is actually a slight analog of this in Broadbant internet access. Right now it's a market, and the FCC is contorting itself trying to keep Net Neutrality alive because they're desperately trying to do what everyone knows they will have to do eventually, which is declare Internet an essential utility, which will allow them to enforce Net Neutrality by nature of what society decided a "utility" is .

  5. #385
    The way to do this would let these people slowly retire, and then just don't recruit as many. This would then effectively not down our economy.

  6. #386
    Quote Originally Posted by Ausr View Post
    No, it's not unconstitutional. Unless you wish to show us where it was proven so. But, you won't because you can't.
    Article 1 section 8. There's no clause in the enumeration about healthcare. And just because a the supreme court says it's constitutional doesn't mean it is.

    "You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." -Thomas Jefferson.

  7. #387
    Moderator Crissi's Avatar
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    The US SC is certainly more valid than the opinion of a person on the internet. Just because you say it is not constitutional, doesn't mean it is. I may dislike some of their rulings, but until they rule otherwise, it is Constitutional Law because they were granted those powers by the very document they interpret.

  8. #388
    Quote Originally Posted by Nostop it View Post
    And just because a the supreme court says it's constitutional doesn't mean it is.
    Well, that's incorrect.

  9. #389
    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Well, that's incorrect.

    hmm... Wells or Thomas Jefferson...hmm...

  10. #390
    Quote Originally Posted by Nostop it View Post
    [blah blah ]-Thomas Jefferson.
    And that was probably before Marbury v. Madison. Woops. Damn judges always being activists and shit taking our nation downhill (since 1803)!!!!!

    Let's all ride the Gish gallop.

  11. #391
    Quote Originally Posted by belfpala View Post
    And that was probably before Marbury v. Madison. Woops. Damn LIBRUHL judges always being activists and shit (since 1803)!!!!!
    Fixed. Or something.
    Quote Originally Posted by xanzul View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by obdigore View Post
    So if the states get together and work with the Legislative Branch to write an amendment to the federal constitution, you think the Judiciary (SCOTUS) could strike it down for being 'unconstitutional'?
    Uh...yes. Absolutely.

  12. #392
    Quote Originally Posted by Nostop it View Post
    hmm... Wells or Thomas Jefferson...hmm...
    Thomas Jefferson has been dead for well over a hundred years. He's not terribly aware of what is going on.

    Plus I could cite Hamilton.

  13. #393
    Moderator Crissi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by belfpala View Post
    And that was probably before Marbury v. Madison. Woops. Damn judges always being activists and shit (since 1803)!!!!!
    The Sc has LAWAYS been progressive dontcha know? They've NEVER ruled in favor of states rights and stuff!

  14. #394
    Banned Kellhound's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tastyfish View Post
    Lets not forget, accidents happen, maned or unmanned.
    UAVs have a MUCH higher accident rate than manned fighters.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nostop it View Post
    Article 1 section 8. There's no clause in the enumeration about healthcare. And just because a the supreme court says it's constitutional doesn't mean it is.

    "You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." -Thomas Jefferson.
    Actually, the SCOTUS is the ONLY body that can rule something Constitutional. Sorry.

  15. #395
    There's no way for the Supreme Court to do its job without interpreting the Constitution.

  16. #396
    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Thomas Jefferson has been dead for well over a hundred years. He's not terribly aware of what is going on.

    Plus I could cite Hamilton.
    I could cite Hamilton as well.
    "That the several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by compact, under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.."

  17. #397
    Moderator Crissi's Avatar
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    Except interpretation of the Constitution is a delegated power of the SC, so until they re rule it unconstitutional, it is constitutional because the original ruling said so.

  18. #398
    Actually, the SCOTUS is the ONLY body that can rule something Constitutional. Sorry.
    Technically lower courts and even juries can make decisions like that. They just don't have the same impact.

  19. #399
    Aaaaand.... the part that says, "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court" means their power to decide cases is not delegated? Well then.

    Edit: If you care to do some historical reading, the judicial branch has shown more restraint with its power than either of the other branches. Cool stuff, really.

    Let's all ride the Gish gallop.

  20. #400
    The Lightbringer Payday's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nostop it View Post
    I could cite Hamilton as well.
    Are we beholden to the Constitution or to the writings of the writers of the Constitution? Misquotes abound.

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