posted
re: seatbelts -- I would make them mandatory because it saves society money. The studies show that shared costs of deaths and injuries on the highways are higher than the costs born by the injured or the relatives of those who die.
The costs are spread out, so it's not incredibly painful until you add up all the deaths and injuries and assess the societal costs from them in aggregate.
But yes, the economics of it actually do make sense.
Now, booster seats for 8 year olds...I'm not sure about the data in favor of that. I haven't looked at it. Seems excessive on the face of it. Especially if your 8 year old is belted in appropriately and the belt is adjusted to someone of her stature. The think I worry about with smaller humans in a 3-point harness is belt positioning across the chest. If it hits them in the neck instead, that's a nasty injury waiting to happen. If the shoulder belt is put behind their back, or it doesn't hold them in properly, they could slide out of it. That does have it's own risks, especially if the rear of the front seat is hard plastic or has stuff stored in the convenient pouches back there.
Also, if the vehicle has side curtain airbags, I'd be worried about someone small enough to come out of the shoulder harness because position relative to the airbag is important.
But...realistically, as long as kids and small-stature adults are in the back seat and belted, they are getting better protection than back in the 60's and before when belts were a luxury item.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Amusingly, I'm a part of a discipline (Informatics) that works towards making such large datasets manageable .
As for another area Informatics focuses on, most of the barriers to intelligence sharing between agencies remain organizational and technological. US agencies lack clear ways to direct raw and derived inputs among the various agencies absent direct requests and certain basic pathways. Due to the volume of information involved, this direction must almost certainly occur automatically. The agencies have encountered significant barriers to implementing ICTs, I suspect due to continued attempts to apply waterfall design to a system conceived without proper interaction design consultation.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:There's a difference between decisions made by a king and parliment we can't vote for and decisions made by elected officials.
Yeah...1/2 of us are still feeling under-represented, but at least it's not 100% of us.
This is why bypassing Congress is a problem, though. It undermines the system of representation. I count on my Congressional delagation to, every once in awhile, put the smackdown on the Executive branch.
And, yes, I realize (to say again) that this case may have been one where the Executive didn't strictly HAVE to go to Congress for approval. To me, that's a mistake in our laws and while I don't strictly BLAME the Administration for using it, I do feel obligated to gripe about it -- if that's how this all plays out.
I WANT my voice heard in all areas of government, but especially in Congress where the laws are crafted. I look upon the Presidency as a temporary and limited power. Even a two-term President realistically only weilds power for about 6 years, give or take. It's tough for someone in that position to so effectively screw things up as to be unrecoverable. Some of them come close, but it's not the usual course of events.
The most important thing we have going for us in this representative democracy is our House and Senate folks who go off to Washington. I am personally happiest when they frustrate the Executive branch. Mainly because the biggest problems we seem to have today are from powers granted to the Executive. Temporary powers of war are, to me, one of the things that are just not defined well enough. I think of that as an emergency provision, like someone is actually attacking us, right NOW, and someone has to order troops out.
Anything other than that is where I want Congress to deliberate, masticate, gurgitate and regurgitate until, at glacial speed, we do nothing.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:re: seatbelts -- I would make them mandatory because it saves society money.
I'm really reluctant to use this as a justification, Bob, because the "greater good" is probably one of the biggest threats to liberty out there. In this, I agree with Dag's assessment: people shouldn't have to wear seatbelts, but insurers shouldn't have to cover the injuries of people who aren't wearing them when an accident happens.
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posted
Someone please correct me if I'm misunderstanding this.
From what I'm gathering as I've read articles on this, no actual survailance is taking place. No actual names are being connected with the phone numbers.
The government is collecting information on phone numbers in order to isolate patterns in movement for spikes in calls to certain areas from known terrorist areas or terrorist known phone numbers.
They would not, for example, be able to tell whether I'm having an affair based on these phone numbers, which information they could then use to blackmail me into reporting information on my company to the FBI.
They could, however, figure out if there was a change in calling patterns to my town that might indicate a terrorist event might happen here.
Am I wrong in this? Is there more to the program?
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Honestly, I think they're far more likely to be able to deduce that you might be having an affair than that your town is the target of a terrorist strike.
Identifying a terrorist cell might exist IN your town is another matter. But they won't have the content of the calls, so knowing where the strike MIGHT happen is outside the parameters of this particular program.
I suspect, however, that if they decided there was a terrorist cell in a specific spot, they could tap into their conversations (legally or not) and try to unscramble the coded messages that the folks might be using.
Of course, if you talk dirty to your terrorist lover, they might think you're speaking in code and come after you anyway.
"Spank Me!" is well known code for "will you make me an omelet?" afterall. And we all know you can't do that without breaking a few "eggs."
quote:In this, I agree with Dag's assessment: people shouldn't have to wear seatbelts, but insurers shouldn't have to cover the injuries of people who aren't wearing them when an accident happens.
To be clear, I said that was the only way I'd support such an idea. I'm not sure that even with that limitation I would oppose seat belt requirements.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Tom, saving your insurance company money wouldn't put a dent into the societal costs. There's a slight decrease in premiums for "everyone" if they avoid paying your surviving relatives, but there'd be all sorts of complications to this.
What if, for example, you are part of an estranged couople and you've got a court-ordered insurance policy to take care of your children in the event of your death. If you drive unbelted, the insurance company might get to take a walk on that, but then your spouse might sue. And suppose you were driving around with your child unbelted cuz it was your day for visitation and you just don't care about belts. Now, your child is injured. Does YOUR insurance get to take a walk on that too? Leaving your estranged spouse responsible financially for your bull-headedness? Or would she be able to sue the insurance company and spread your costs back onto the rest of us anyway?
Maybe the court would mandate that you pay a higher premium and be insured against your own lack of precautions, for your children's sake. But that would probably be part of a divorce decree, not a preliminary "estrangement" agreement.
That is but one scenario. There are many that need to be thought through before we just let insurers bail out.
We do that in cases of DUI in some states already, though, so I suspect that such rules are coming for other risky behavior as well.
But even with that...there's still all the other costs that society bears.
I know this sounds like a "for the good of society" argument, but realistically, it's more a recouping the costs of your failure to protect yourself adequately.
It's only partially an insurance thing.
Insurance doesn't cover all the costs that go into a "societal cost" equation -- not by a long shot.
There's losses in productivity. The cost of managing the incident. All sorts of things that insurance doesn't cover.
We never get those back. They're admittedly nebulous -- some cost items more than others -- but that doesn't mean they aren't real, just hard to pin down precisely.
The current estimates for the cost of each roadway fatality range from $1 million to $4 million. That's a huge range. The "experts" are tending toward the higher figures because they can better document some of the cost elements that we used to only estimate.
Anyway, it's an interesting problem.
People with a more libertarian bent do try very hard to poo-poo this kind of calculation because the numbers look very bad for a laissez-faire approach.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
docmagik, I'm not sure if you're referring to my post, but I was just quoting the figure that others have thrown out as justification for this database -- if by trawling through these phone records we could've saved 3,000 lives, etc..
quote:The intelligence activities I have authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat. The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda terrorists and its affiliates who want to harm the American people.
posted
Like I said, this is carefully worded to avoid talking about the topic of the hour. Notice how he said "we're not trolling through the personal lives of millions of Americans" immediate after talking about NOT listening to domestic phone calls without court approval.
Sorry, I think he's holding the deniability card to play later if this heats up too much.
Things he left out:
1) Didn't really address the accessing of phone records directly. He linked it to the already 'dealt with' issue of court approval for domestic calls.
2) Calls that are only 1/2 domestic -- didn't really talk about that. Which is partly the source ofthe problem with not obtaining court approval. Everyone knows to get a tap on a purely domestic call, you need a court order. But we've all been talking about this supposed "gray area" where a call goes to a foreign receiver, or comes from a foreign source. Can they intercept and listen without a warrant? Isn't that what the hubbub was about?
posted
I just posted it for those, like me, who hate paraphrases and don't like listening to stuff they can read.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
My post was just a quick way to say that the domestic surveilance issue is just as complicated as the seatbelt issue, and that if you are simply citing "calculation of numbers" as a reason to be for a policy that Libertarians and Civil Liberties types would dislike, the same could be said of this program.
Not saying it has to be. That would require knowing the specifics of the program, which seems to be hard to pin down, both due to speculation and some bizzare idea that seems to have surfaced in this thread that the morality of the issue exists independently of, and somehow above, the specifics of it.
But I also don't see how keeping who I'm calling over a public phone company's lines private is more a Constitutional Right than having my bags and person searched by the Federal Government simply because I'm boarding an airplane or entering a Federal Building.
Time it was everybody in town could hear a phone call simply by picking up the phone. That was just how phones worked.
I'm not saying I advocate the program. I don't know the specifics of it well enough yet. If it's as I desribed above, I'm okay with it. If it's more, I might not be.
But do still think the cell phone ringtone is cute.
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Wow. I think that post was pretty incoherent.
::Scratches Head::
Let me see if I can say what I'm trying to say:
I've got no problem with data collection. Albertsons using a card to track my purchases is no different from the days when your corner grocer knew what you bought because you had to buy it from him. Or like your favorite neighborhood restaurant bringing you your coffee the way you like it before you ask. It's simply part of how business works.
Similarly, I've got no problem with the goverment doing or sponsoring studies that would gather similar information for the purposes of regulating trade policies, especially if names weren't attached. If they can use data to provide for the common defense, that's probably a better use of their resources than figuring out which type of produce to subsidize.
So if this is strictly a data game, I'm fine with it.
(Which makes for a question. What if the data were changed to make it usable for the program, but unlinkable to individuals. For example, if area codes and prefixes were left intact, but the last four digits were altered in a way that would leave the numbers coded? And if specific numbers could only be decoded with a warrant? Would that be more acceptable?)
On the other hand, the specifics of my privacy--what's in my bag, what's on the phone call, what's in my pockets--that's something I don't feel the government has any business knowing.
(I'm actually opposed to Federal Air Marshals and Federal bag screeners, and feel the "invisible hand" of capitalism could actually do a better job of securing airplanes than the federal goverment could. Individual airlines have every right to earch your bag before you take it on one of their planes).
It just seems to me that the arguement against the program is kind of circular.
1. There isn't much the government can get from this. The quantity of information is just so vast that it's doubtful they'll even be able to get the information they want.
2. Therefore, the only way to make this information useful is to use it to do things that are abusive.
3. Therefore, this constitues an abuse of power.
However, nothing has actually suggested that this information has been used to enact any abuses, or that any of the times they've taken further action have happened without proper approvals.
Which leaves us with number 1, which everybody seems to agree on, which is simply that there's not that much information they can get from this.
Everything else just breaks down along party lines.
Pro-Bushites: Therefore it's terrific, and we should continue funding it! It will probably bear fruit before the year's out! Anti-Bushites: Therefore the real motive is hidden somewhere, because this is not nefarious enough! Terrorists: Therefore we should race to change phone companies to Qwest!
Specifics, of course, are incidental.
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I don't think it has been used for any abuses, but I can easily imagine numerous possible abuses that would be nigh undetectable.
For instance, access to this information would make discovering embarrassing associations trivial.
Regarding airline security, reliance on Adam Smith's invisible hand would make airlines less secure, and I'm absolutely certain Adam Smith would agree (after being familiarized with airlines ).
Companies manage risk by spending on risk prevention until the marginal cost equals the marginal benefit. As has become abundantly clear with oil tankers, that point is often well below what is considered societally acceptable where there are substantial externalities.
For instance, the emotional impact on the nation of a terrorist hijacking/attack is vastly larger than the net cost, even including massive damages to the families of the passengers (and that's not terribly likely assuming the security was fairly stringent, just not stringent enough), to the airline. Thus the number of acceptable hijackings airlines will budget for will be significantly higher than the number we are willing to spend to achieve as a conglomerate.
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quote:While there seems to you to be a gray area, for the people involved in the actual activity there is not. What can and can not be done is spelled out quite clearly, and would almost definately have to go through Justice at some point.
am4: Is this a statement of fact or are you just assuming that it'd have to go through Justice "at some point." And, frankly, going through the DOJ is not the same as independent oversight, in my book. Unless you mean that it has to go through an independent judicial review at some point. In which case, I think the facts appear to be otherwise.
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posted
Re: the numbers game -- I hesitated just a bit to post the bit about the mandatory seatbelt law justification for the simple reason that it does come down to the cost of a human life, and the cost of the programs designed to save those other costs.
I've never been "comfortable" with such equations.
The problem I have with making an analogy between the situation with occupant protection and the situation with fighting terrorism by having millions of call lists is as follows:
1) Personal freedom "advocates" usually talk about the only person being hurt being the individual. That's not true. I deliberately chose a scenario that would have a lot of legal and financial burdens and cost "society" at large a great deal of time, money, and, of course, anguish. It's also not all that uncommon or unbelievable (except the part about Tom & Christy being estranged, of course)
2) We know something that works with respect to traffic safety. I can guarantee you a certain number of lives saved for a given percentage of seatbelt usage increase. The "gains" for the trolling through phone numbers system seems pretty nebulous to me.
3) If we are going to talk numbers, just in a dollars spent per life saved kind of way, then this society is blowing its wad on a lot of unproven, and probably useless stuff right now. This call list thing seems to me to be sort of middle-of-the-pack in terms of dubious utility. It probably doesn't cost as much as some things, and it's probably got a non-zero probability of success.
Here's my question: If we are going to spend money to save lives, where should we do it?
If we have limited resources, does that change the answer any?
I do understand the psychological value of "security from external threats." But there are other ways to combat fear. I accuse this administration of playing on peoples fears rather than working to put those fears in perspective. It won them an election, IMO. It also got them their war. And a lot of provisions in the Patriot Act that appear execreble to me. And countless other things that make me cringe and make me angry and make me want to vote Libertarian!
But I defy anyone to convince me that our government (not just Fed, but state and local too) is making us "more secure feeling." They have botched a major attempt at showing how they can deal with domestic disasters -- mobilizing to a standstill in the gulf after Katrina. They have failed to reign in budget earmarks -- in fact setting records in the latest Transportation bill (and thus spending money foolishly when we should be husbanding resources against the day of our next attack or disaster).
Honestly, I don't see how anyone can have faith in government's ability to solve most problems.
And, when there are things they can solve -- like the traffic fatality problem -- they have so tarnished their credibility and their authority as to render themselves impotent.
But I digress.
The only parallel I can draw between belts and terrorism is that we'd save a lot more lives for a lot fewer dollars just by convincing people to buckle up. Mandatory belt laws have been shown to cause a reasonably sized uptick in the percentage of people buckling up. Unless we find other ways to more cooperatively and gently convince the last 5-10% of folks to go ahead and wear their seatbelts, I reluctantly conclude that mandatory belt laws are effective and practical, and end up saving much more than they cost us.
Counter-terrorism efforts benefits seem pale by comparison. They cost a lot, and can't be shown to have had any effect on safety, or even people's perception of safety.
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posted
I'd be interested in seeing where you draw that line, Tom, taking into account the many, many restrictions on liberty we make now to save lives.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Perhaps they all are currently, but they certainly haven't all always been, as is abundantly documented in numerous historical accounts, and there's no guarantee they all will be in the future.
Since this database includes no identifying information other than the phone number, those performing searches and analyses on this database have no way of knowing (absent being told ) how any particular search will be used. All it takes is one politically motivated person with the authority to instigate a search and sufficiently low moral scruples, and the database has been abused. One. Since nobody in any branch but the executive, and not even most of them, get more than the vaguest details about the use of the database, catching that person is extraordinarily difficult.
Heck, even if the abuse is detected, the intelligence agencies may be extremely reluctant to do much about it, since revealing the details of the abuse would likely reveal techniques they use to mine the database.
This database is political persecution waiting to happen.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
airmanfour, I think you are remarkably idealistic. fugu isn't necessarily talking about a politician. He's talking about maybe someone high up in the CIA, who has an axe to grind somewhere, and tells a counterpart in the NSA that he's having trouble with a case and it sure would be nice to know what numbers have been called from this particular number here. He's got the approriate level of clearance, and he's helped the NSA guy out before, so the NSA guy hands it off to his technicians and asks them to run a report with all the calls to and from that number for the last six months. Nobody has to go into the building, or into the room where the stuff happens. They just have to be at the right level to request a search, and a little unscrupulous. And they'll always think that they have the best of reasons, and that the ends justify the means.
Like fugu said, similar things have happened before. There are plenty of dishonest people at all levels of government and bueracracy, because there are plenty of dishonest people in every role, every where in the world. I believe that if this database stays in place it will, at some time or another, be abused. I would say the chances of that are as near to 100% as it is possible to be. Abused how badly? Don't know. But in the mean time, how much good is it going to do? I don't know that, either. I have a hard time seeing how it could do enough good to justify the expense, much less the risk of abuse.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Anyone who doesn't think this is very scary is ignorant of history. Powers like these have always been used against political opponents (anyone who's not for us is for terrorism), and people who bring up unpleasant truths that need to be addressed (we all must hang together and not criticize the leaders or the terrorists will win), any injustices, any wrongs done by leaders. They always have been. Are George W. Bush and his administration more vituous than any other government in history? So far, the record doesn't look that way.
It amazes me that some people can still support him.
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posted
Off the top of my head, Aldrich Ames was a successful spy in the CIA for 10 years. Robert Hanssen was a spy in the FBI for 15 years. I don't have a specific example for the NSA, but forgive me for thinking that it's not quite as simple as you think it is, airmanfour, just because people are checking to make sure nothing suspicious goes down.
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posted
We have numerous records of using our intelligence agents to spy on people considered politically dangerous, such as that subversive Martin Luther King, Jr. Why is this much easier abuse so difficult?
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quote:Anyone who doesn't think this is very scary is ignorant of history.
It can't be that they have a considered conclusion drawn from that history that's different from yours. They must be ignorant.
It might not "amaze [you] that some people can still support him" if you would spend less time calling people ignorant because they disagree with your conclusions.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I feel bad for all the people that have to make speeches and be interviewed about this type of thing, talking around how they know what they know. It's difficult, and people end up thinking you're a little dumb. Oh well.
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posted
Dagonee, then demonstrate your knowledge of history that leads you to a different conclusion. Describe 10 times in history that such powers have been used only for good.
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quote:Describe 10 times in history that such powers have been used only for good.
is not necessary to not think this program "very scary." For instance, one could think that even when used for bad, the good done outweighs that bad. One could think that the potential for abuse isn't any worse than that which already exists at the DMV, IRS, Social Security Administration, and the NCIC, all of which fulfill administrative requests for information not requiring court orders or judicial oversight. One could think that the loss of secrecy of the mere knowledge of who calls whom isn't something to be scared of.
One could even think that the program is a bad one but not be "very scared" by it because they believe that the political check (and the commercial check in this particular situation) will end it before it can be abused enough to be "very scared."
Why don't you bother to state your case before calling people ignorant. You've asserted that "[p]owers like these have always been used against political opponents." You haven't demonstrated it, yet you decide those who disagree are ignorant. In response, you challenge someone else to disprove what you haven't bothered to prove. And the formulation of that challenge attempts to curtail numerous points of possible refutation of your original assertion.
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I don't think you're dumb, and I don't think you're ignorant. I think you're a person of integrity who's involved enough in the system to know how it is supposed to work, and who believes that it does work the way it's supposed to. You have no reason to try to corrupt the system, so you look at it and see all the safeguards.
But the safeguards aren't there for people of integrity. They wouldn't need to be. The safeguards are there for the people who look at the system and see the loopholes. There is no such thing as a perfect system. And to look at it and say it's impossible? What's the phrase you used before you deleted your posts in this thread? That's just silly.
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posted
Dagonee, it's so weird. Every time we discuss something that we disagree about, I'm left with the feeling that you care nothing about what's actually right or wrong about the issue, you just want to win the argument. What good does it do you to win all the arguments you ever have? I can see that it's a good trait for a lawyer to have, perhaps, but it doesn't improve discourse. It doesn't serve to help build a common understanding of the truth. All it does is tear down stuff.
You don't address the substance of what people are saying. You don't try to understand what they mean and why they say the things they say, and address that. You just argue for the sake of arguing, it seems like.
If there's a reason why someone who understands how such powers have been used again and again against political enemies in history, and to oppress the populations they are supposedly keeping safe, and they still feel it's not scary, then why? Can you seriously think this is at all comparable to the DMV? It's much more like the Stasi, isn't it?
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posted
Several people have critized Dagonee's posting style lately. I agree that he is often a difficult person to argue against. I don't think it's that he cares more about winning arguments than discussing issues. I think it's that he cares very much about the terms of the discussion being fair. It's unfair to expect him to do more research than you're willing to do yourself. It's unfair to ask him to address a topic in depth when you're posting one or two lines. And it's unfair to make statements of fact that are really your opinion. (Tatiana, I'm not saying you've done all of these things, just that they've all been done to Dag in the past few days.) And when people do this to Dag, he does't play along. He calls them on it. And then he gets accused of just being legalistic, or just caring about arguing or winning.
I find Dag very frustrating to argue with, but when I do so I usually dig deeper for facts and references than I would otherwise, and end up thinking my opinions through more than I had before. And I think the crap he's been getting lately is unfair.
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posted
I still don't agree with you. Insofar as you've told us what your opinions or lack thereof are, anyway.
But you've spoiled us by being willing to whip out long, insightful, knowledgable posts on almost any subject at the drop of a hat. So of course we demand that you talk about what we want you to. And I know I'd get pissed off if that was expected of me all the time.
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quote:Insofar as you've told us what your opinions or lack thereof are, anyway.
I still haven't decided if I'm a little annoyed with it or really pissed off about it. I do know I'm not very scared, in no small part because I know our system can stop it if we as a people decide it should be stopped.
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posted
My concern is that we as a people don't seem to care about very much these days. I think it's wrong, but I also don't think it's a huge deal for most people. But it feels to me that the people in power, of either party, will keep pushing until they are stopped. I'd rather it was here.
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posted
ElJay, I deleted my posts because it occured to me that I really shouldn't participate in this discussion. Mostly because of everything you just brought up.
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posted
I wonder if it's already having a chilling effect on discourse, that people are not saying what they think because they'd rather not be put on that list.
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quote:in no small part because I know our system can stop it if we as a people decide it should be stopped
That's probably a huge chunk of our disagreement. I don't believe that the government reflects the people, or that "the people" are capable of acting in a sane, sensible, and beneficial way in the political sphere. (Heck, I'm not even sure that there exists a "people" capable of steering the country, in the sense that we generally use the term.) I think the federal government has gotten its fingers into too many pies, and so we've created a class of Mandarin bureaucrats -- and subcategories of lawyers, marketers, enforcers, etc. -- to prop up a myth that continues to be perpetuated by a lazy, sensationalistic media. And the problem is that there's simply SO MUCH wrong that any one reasonable person, even if he dedicated his life to fixing these issues, would burn out after the second or third one made it out of committee -- by which time even more wrongs would have been installed semi-permanently while his attention was focused elsewhere. We need literally hundreds of thousands of people who either know how the system works or who are willing to ignore the system altogether. I'm betting that the second option is far more viable, but is rather more drastic.
My fear is that being reasonable and sensible and legal about all these things will only permit Unmakers -- to use a convenient if not entirely accurate term -- to consistently outpace the reformers.
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posted
My fear is that not being reasonable and sensible and legal about all these things will aid the Unmakers both in the accomplishment of their task and in the lulling of most of the people to sleep about it.
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No worries, airmanfour. And I agree that it can't be fun to be in a discussion where you know relevant stuff and can't talk about it. Yuck.
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quote:My fear is that not being reasonable and sensible and legal about all these things will aid the Unmakers both in the accomplishment of their task and in the lulling of most of the people to sleep about it.
That's only a likelihood if the Unmakers are themselves bound by principled law. I see no reason to believe that to be the case. A greater threat is posed to society by law misapplied than chaos rampant, not least because the former weakens respect for principles in general.
I think people confuse a desire to find a middle ground with being "reasonable," and somehow equate being reasonable with being logical or rational and, above all, polite and silent. And the government -- and the mandarins in charge of that government -- can use that tendency, which is perfectly innocent on its face, against us. Because they can make bad law far, far faster than we can fix bad law.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, re: personal freedoms, I happen to agree with you in the main. The problem I have is that when it comes down to specifics, the choices other people make regarding seatbelt usage DO affect me and everyone else. So, how much of the damage that the non-wearers cause should be passed off to society at large is another aspect of this that shouldn't be ignored.
If it was ONLY a question of personal liberty, then it'd be a no-brainer for me. But because there really ARE societal costs, and we can identify them, I think they deserve consideration and framing the debate as you have done is okay, but...
instead of:
quote:"If we're going to spend money and sacrifice liberties to save lives, where should we do it?"
how about adding this:
quote:AND...If we are going to spend money PRESERVING personal liberties, can we make is so that personal responsibility is not amortized over the whole population, but rather is appropriately proportioned to those who make unsafe life choices?"
I think it would be perfectly reasonable to:
1) Charge you more money for insurance if you were to state your desire to not wear a seatbelt.
and/or
2) Put limits to the kind of post-crash care you would receive, and insurance payouts you could claim were you found to not be wearing your seatbelt.
Unfortunately, most people can't afford that kind of insurance coverage, even if it were offered. So...there's a measure of coercion in the "choice" anyway.
Oh well...
At any rate, nobody's found a way to structure insurance coverage to give money to "society at large" when a person dies in a car crash (each person would have to be insured for upwards of $4 million in the case of accidental death). So, no matter what we do, the societal costs will continue to be a burden on the rest of us when people die in crashes.
I would much prefer a program where people become convinced of the efficacy of seatbelts and act accordingly. Unfortunately, we have data showing that voluntary compliance programs aren't as effective as ones involving enforceable laws, and we have data showing the the costs ARE born by the entire group of us, even though the person is the one incurring the "risk."
That all leaves aside the rights of those too young to choose who may bear both the physical risks and financial burdens passed on by their unbelted parents.
I do think that there's a lot more to this issue than personal freedom.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I've been thinking about this a lot this past weekend (dangerous for everyone involved), and I think I know what is pestering me about this policy, and about much of what has come out of this administration from day one.
President Bush asks, in his best home-style fatherly advice, for us to trust him. He has given his word that everything is not only legal, but ethical and with my best welfare at heart.
Yet most of what he has done shows a patter of lack of trust, on his part, toward me.
WMD, I am told, were not the reason for going to war, so thier lack is nothing to worry about. They were only brought up in order to trick me into backing the war. The real reasons that the war was/is neccesary are so complex that the president could not trust me to know them.
The Vice President's Energy Panel, a collection of Energy Experts that helped draft the administration's energy panel, were experts in the field, but I can not be trusted to know whom they are less I quelch free and open discussions within the administration.
The President did not authorize leaks to the media, he declassified information and used back-door ways of getting it to the press, because I could not be trusted to know the truth directly from the President.
Where ever I look at the presidential policies I see where I am being spared the whole truth, mainly because it is believed that I can not be trusted with it.
And if you don't trust me, I can not trust you.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
There's a bit of interesting history behind some of this stuff.
quote:The online sources to whom I usually turn for defenses of the indefensible have either been silent on the matter, or they've voiced a mix of cautious skepticism and concern. Something tells me that if this story turns out to have real substance and legs, at least a few of the staunch defenders of the NSA's domestic surveillance program will choose to sit out this particular fight.
Next is a post that gives some historical context for current controversy, as well as an indication of what a possible congressional showdown over it might look like:
quote:The Coming Showdown Over Executive Privilege
None too pleased about AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth doing the National Security Agency's (NSA) bidding, Arlen Specter says he's going to haul the three telecom companies before the Judiciary Committee for some pointed questions. Deja vu; in 1976, the now-deceased Rep. Bella Abzug did the same thing with three telegraph companies for their similar handmaiden-to-NSA roles. Looking back to those events, we can't help but wonder if there's more history that will repeat itself--will the Bush Administration try, as the Ford Administration did, to extend executive privilege to private industry.
The article goes on to reference some of the early and vehement support of the notion that executive privilege extends to private industry by two Ford administration officials named Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom were involved in the 1976 telegraph controversy. I've read at least one theory that former NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden's nomination to head the CIA was intended specifically to provoke a showdown over the NSA's surveillance activities, so we may yet see the fireworks that Vest predicts.
Emphasis mine. Interesting. Even though I'm not American, I'll be following the development of this story with some interest.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
That's very, very interesting, twinky. Thanks for posting that.
In what may be related news (related to the general topic, not to twinky's post in particular), This article claims that the government is tracking the phone numbers reporters call in an attempt to determine confidential sources.
posted
So far BellSouth and Verizon have both denied giving any phone records to the NSA. I think it's worth noting that Verizon initially would neither confirm nor deny it, but after a $50 billion class-action suit was filed they're denying it.
Apparently the class-action suit is only for Verizon landline customers though, so no $1000 for me.
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