The Lessons of History

[Oldstyle]

Not. I've been against CU v. FEC since the ruling. It is wrongheaded and opens up our elections to special interest manipulations - foreign and domestic manipulations. My refrain has remained the same.

Citizen's United was a direct response to the millions of dollars that unions were pouring into elections nationwide. You had union money buying liberal politicians who then turned around and awarded those same unions sweetheart deals paid for by taxpayers. Funny how you had no problem with THAT use of of "special interest manipulation" but are aghast at the manipulations of others.

No it wasn't. Besides that I am opposed to 'bribes' of elected officials; when special interests (unions or buisness) donate to a candidate or incumbent it is an unasserted quid pro quo.

IMO every vote on any bill ought to require that the vote on every bill included how the Member voted and if the Member accepted anything from anyone effected by the bill under penalty of perjury. Even one cup of coffee. Penalty, loss of office, loss of francise and felony conviction.

So you're seriously going to sit here and say that union money DIDN'T buy the elections of liberal politicians who then turned around and rewarded those same unions with sweetheart deals? That's what this fight was ABOUT in Wisconsin. The practice had become so out of control that it was bankrupting States and local towns.

 

[Oldstyle]

No it wasn't. Besides that I am opposed to 'bribes' of elected officials; when special interests (unions or buisness) donate to a candidate or incumbent it is an unasserted quid pro quo.

IMO every vote on any bill ought to require that the vote on every bill included how the Member voted and if the Member accepted anything from anyone effected by the bill under penalty of perjury. Even one cup of coffee. Penalty, loss of office, loss of francise and felony conviction.

You want to stick a felony on someone for a cup of coffee? Really?

That's a bit of hyperbole. The fact is the policy in my agency was officers were not to accept anything from anyone, witness, suspect, victim, etc. even a cup of coffee. So it was written, so it was followed. The penalty for its violation was severe, lying about it resulted in the officers termination. Lies by LEOs are never tolerated by command.

Yet a politician can take millions from unions for their election campaigns, then turn around and vote them sweetheart deals and that is fine with you?

 

[sfcalifornia]

I'm not surprised you have trouble deciphering the difference between an apple and an aardvark.

Think about what you have applauded; frankly it's a stupid comment (I will be most happy to explain it to you Meister. As always I'm willing to help the needy).

Truth hurts?

When you want to be educated on how to live out on your own without using the government teet, hit me up, wry. It really can be life changing....but first I think you need to move from frisco. Too many nanny state nuts live around there.

Ah, so the bigot in you is asserted for all to see. Thanks for that, as well as expressing your ignorance of San Francisco and the absurd libertarian beliefs you hold.

Which government services do you live without, Meister? Piss and shit in your yard to avoid the sewer system? Ignore red lights as a government interference in your life? Who would you call if someone broke into your home, your banker? Maybe you'd simply shoot the person first, ask questions later. Who would you call if your child went missing? Who would you call if your house caught fire? Who would you call if a neighbor was having a heart attack?

When you live in a rural part of Idaho where there is no sewer and you have to shit and piss in an outhouse in your backyard, where you have no traffic lights or the nearest fire department or police department is an hour away, then Meister and his ilk have no choice but to believe anarchy is the answer to all life's issues because they essentially live like anarchists to begin with.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Citizen's United was a direct response to the millions of dollars that unions were pouring into elections nationwide. You had union money buying liberal politicians who then turned around and awarded those same unions sweetheart deals paid for by taxpayers. Funny how you had no problem with THAT use of of "special interest manipulation" but are aghast at the manipulations of others.

No it wasn't. Besides that I am opposed to 'bribes' of elected officials; when special interests (unions or buisness) donate to a candidate or incumbent it is an unasserted quid pro quo.

IMO every vote on any bill ought to require that the vote on every bill included how the Member voted and if the Member accepted anything from anyone effected by the bill under penalty of perjury. Even one cup of coffee. Penalty, loss of office, loss of francise and felony conviction.

So you're seriously going to sit here and say that union money DIDN'T buy the elections of liberal politicians who then turned around and rewarded those same unions with sweetheart deals? That's what this fight was ABOUT in Wisconsin. The practice had become so out of control that it was bankrupting States and local towns.

I can't speak to WI but I have some experience with local government in CA which coflicts with your statement.

A number of years ago law enforcement needed to upgrade our communication systems, in particular the ability of agencies within and without the county to talk to each other during mutual response emergencies.

Funding for this critical need was delayed, for over a decade, by the private sector - including private sector unions - as they were able to convince the county pols to replace a county hospital at a cost way beyond what was needed to upgrade our system. Both were needed, but public employee unions didn't have the needed 'tools' to have a seat at the table where the decision was made. At the table the Chamber of Commerce and for profit hospitals tired of paying for indigent clients and told "sorry, the county hospital is full" when they wanted to dump the uninsured paitients. Duomp said patients on the taxpayer, of course.

Of course the GOP is focused on Public Employees now, who knows who their next target will be.

 

[Oldstyle]

No it wasn't. Besides that I am opposed to 'bribes' of elected officials; when special interests (unions or buisness) donate to a candidate or incumbent it is an unasserted quid pro quo.

IMO every vote on any bill ought to require that the vote on every bill included how the Member voted and if the Member accepted anything from anyone effected by the bill under penalty of perjury. Even one cup of coffee. Penalty, loss of office, loss of francise and felony conviction.

So you're seriously going to sit here and say that union money DIDN'T buy the elections of liberal politicians who then turned around and rewarded those same unions with sweetheart deals? That's what this fight was ABOUT in Wisconsin. The practice had become so out of control that it was bankrupting States and local towns.

I can't speak to WI but I have some experience with local government in CA which coflicts with your statement.

A number of years ago law enforcement needed to upgrade our communication systems, in particular the ability of agencies within and without the county to talk to each other during mutual response emergencies.

Funding for this critical need was delayed, for over a decade, by the private sector - including private sector unions - as they were able to convince the county pols to replace a county hospital at a cost way beyond what was needed to upgrade our system. Both were needed, but public employee unions didn't have the needed 'tools' to have a seat at the table where the decision was made. At the table the Chamber of Commerce and for profit hospitals tired of paying for indigent clients and told "sorry, the county hospital is full" when they wanted to dump the uninsured paitients. Duomp said patients on the taxpayer, of course.

Of course the GOP is focused on Public Employees now, who knows who their next target will be.

Why, pray tell, can't you speak to Wisconsin? Is it really any different than California?

The GOP is "focused" on Public Employee Unions now because sweetheart deals given those unions by the liberal politicians the unions spent millions on are making States and local governments insolvent.

I can tell you exactly what their next "target" will be. They'll be going after waste in the Federal Government and that includes redundant programs and agencies that never should have existed in the first place...ie the Department of Education.

 

[Meister]

I'm not surprised you have trouble deciphering the difference between an apple and an aardvark.

Think about what you have applauded; frankly it's a stupid comment (I will be most happy to explain it to you Meister. As always I'm willing to help the needy).

Truth hurts?

When you want to be educated on how to live out on your own without using the government teet, hit me up, wry. It really can be life changing....but first I think you need to move from frisco. Too many nanny state nuts live around there.

Ah, so the bigot in you is asserted for all to see. Thanks for that, as well as expressing your ignorance of San Francisco and the absurd libertarian beliefs you hold.

Which government services do you live without, Meister? Piss and shit in your yard to avoid the sewer system? Ignore red lights as a government interference in your life? Who would you call if someone broke into your home, your banker? Maybe you'd simply shoot the person first, ask questions later. Who would you call if your child went missing? Who would you call if your house caught fire? Who would you call if a neighbor was having a heart attack?

Talk about a hyperbole.
The government jobs do not need to be represented by a public union, wry.
There is no need for them in this day and age with all the protections given to the employees.

Yes...frisco is probably the most liberal city in the entire United States, wry....embrace it.

 

[Big Fitz]

Why, pray tell, can't you speak to Wisconsin? Is it really any different than California?

To the dairy farming community in WI, them's fightin words. You can end up in a silo not found till next march keep sayin stuff like that.

California's a whole lot crazier. Never forget that WI is the birthplace of the Republican Party AND home to the John Birch Society AND Joe McCarthy.

 

[bitterlyclingin]

119 per cent voter turnout didn't help the Dems. Eric Holder threw out the statue of the Blindfolded Justice at the same time Barack Obama was throwing out the bust of Winston Churchill. The current racist, lawless DOJ monitored the recall election only in so far as ensuring those busloads of illegal voters the Unions brought in from Michigan and Minnesota were able to cast their illegal ballots unmolested.
If you know someone that voted illegally, post their name, address, and place of work.
Its sort of like from "The Field Of Dreams", "If you build it they will come."

 

[Wry Catcher]

So you're seriously going to sit here and say that union money DIDN'T buy the elections of liberal politicians who then turned around and rewarded those same unions with sweetheart deals? That's what this fight was ABOUT in Wisconsin. The practice had become so out of control that it was bankrupting States and local towns.

I can't speak to WI but I have some experience with local government in CA which coflicts with your statement.

A number of years ago law enforcement needed to upgrade our communication systems, in particular the ability of agencies within and without the county to talk to each other during mutual response emergencies.

Funding for this critical need was delayed, for over a decade, by the private sector - including private sector unions - as they were able to convince the county pols to replace a county hospital at a cost way beyond what was needed to upgrade our system. Both were needed, but public employee unions didn't have the needed 'tools' to have a seat at the table where the decision was made. At the table the Chamber of Commerce and for profit hospitals tired of paying for indigent clients and told "sorry, the county hospital is full" when they wanted to dump the uninsured paitients. Duomp said patients on the taxpayer, of course.

Of course the GOP is focused on Public Employees now, who knows who their next target will be.

Why, pray tell, can't you speak to Wisconsin? Is it really any different than California?

The GOP is "focused" on Public Employee Unions now because sweetheart deals given those unions by the liberal politicians the unions spent millions on are making States and local governments insolvent.

I can tell you exactly what their next "target" will be. They'll be going after waste in the Federal Government and that includes redundant programs and agencies that never should have existed in the first place...ie the Department of Education.

Well at least we agree on somethings. The GOP's strategy for power and control is based on dividing the Americans people - something they do very well indeed.

Governance is their weak point, but since they believe the best government is the least government the bar isn't very high.

 

[Big Fitz]

48 years ago. We got it then. What the hell happened and how'd we forget that goverment isn't the solution, it's the problem.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY&feature=related]"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Wry Catcher]

Truth hurts?

When you want to be educated on how to live out on your own without using the government teet, hit me up, wry. It really can be life changing....but first I think you need to move from frisco. Too many nanny state nuts live around there.

Ah, so the bigot in you is asserted for all to see. Thanks for that, as well as expressing your ignorance of San Francisco and the absurd libertarian beliefs you hold.

Which government services do you live without, Meister? Piss and shit in your yard to avoid the sewer system? Ignore red lights as a government interference in your life? Who would you call if someone broke into your home, your banker? Maybe you'd simply shoot the person first, ask questions later. Who would you call if your child went missing? Who would you call if your house caught fire? Who would you call if a neighbor was having a heart attack?

Talk about a hyperbole.
The government jobs do not need to be represented by a public union, wry.
There is no need for them in this day and age with all the protections given to the employees.

Yes...frisco is probably the most liberal city in the entire United States, wry....embrace it.

San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city, Meister; you ought to get out a bit more often. The City and the entire Bay Area is very diverse in all aspects. That you don't know what you're talking about has been evident for some time, so I won't belabor the point.

Government jobs do need the protection of unions, one more area in which you hold strong opinions based on little or no experience. I did battle with the union which represented our rank and file officers many times; I also watched as they stood behind the officers when decision makers and elected officials put the rank and file at risk by cutting funding on issues of safety.

 

[Wry Catcher]

48 years ago. We got it then. What the hell happened and how'd we forget that goverment isn't the solution, it's the problem.

"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan - YouTube

Wrong. On so many levels wrong. The government as operated under George W. Bush was a problem; government in general is not.

 

[Meister]

Ah, so the bigot in you is asserted for all to see. Thanks for that, as well as expressing your ignorance of San Francisco and the absurd libertarian beliefs you hold.

Which government services do you live without, Meister? Piss and shit in your yard to avoid the sewer system? Ignore red lights as a government interference in your life? Who would you call if someone broke into your home, your banker? Maybe you'd simply shoot the person first, ask questions later. Who would you call if your child went missing? Who would you call if your house caught fire? Who would you call if a neighbor was having a heart attack?

Talk about a hyperbole.
The government jobs do not need to be represented by a public union, wry.
There is no need for them in this day and age with all the protections given to the employees.

Yes...frisco is probably the most liberal city in the entire United States, wry....embrace it.

San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city, Meister; you ought to get out a bit more often. The City and the entire Bay Area is very diverse in all aspects. That you don't know what you're talking about has been evident for some time, so I won't belabor the point.

Government jobs do need the protection of unions, one more area in which you hold strong opinions based on little or no experience. I did battle with the union which represented our rank and file officers many times; I also watched as they stood behind the officers when decision makers and elected officials put the rank and file at risk by cutting funding on issues of safety.

wry....trust me I do know about unions....first hand. So don't go with I don't know what I'm talking about. Just because I'm no fan of them doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.
I don't like the idea of unfunded pensions and rediculous retirement packages that are put on the backs of taxpayers. I as a union member had to kick in to my pensions and retirement packages, I get nowhere near the sweet deals that Ca. offered public unions. But, I'm happy with what I got and feel fortunate.

 

[The Rabbi]

No it wasn't. Besides that I am opposed to 'bribes' of elected officials; when special interests (unions or buisness) donate to a candidate or incumbent it is an unasserted quid pro quo.

IMO every vote on any bill ought to require that the vote on every bill included how the Member voted and if the Member accepted anything from anyone effected by the bill under penalty of perjury. Even one cup of coffee. Penalty, loss of office, loss of francise and felony conviction.

You want to stick a felony on someone for a cup of coffee? Really?

That's a bit of hyperbole. The fact is the policy in my agency was officers were not to accept anything from anyone, witness, suspect, victim, etc. even a cup of coffee. So it was written, so it was followed. The penalty for its violation was severe, lying about it resulted in the officers termination. Lies by LEOs are never tolerated by command.

So it wasn't hyperbole.

But hey, your department will forever be represented by Det. Harry Callahan. And I'll bet he had no use for unions of any kind.

 

[Big Fitz]

48 years ago. We got it then. What the hell happened and how'd we forget that goverment isn't the solution, it's the problem.

"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan - YouTube

Wrong. On so many levels wrong. The government as operated under George W. Bush was a problem; government in general is not.

Yeah, that's it. Did you even WATCH the speech and listen to the examples of government failure in 1964? Doubt it. If you had, maybe you'd have had something more intelligible to say.

 

[westwall]

Government employees who belong to unions are taxpayers too, genius

BWA-HA-HA!



No...no way...

No way anyone is actually this stupid.

Can't be.


Hey, since government employees are taxpayers, let's pay them a million bucks a year! It's coming out of their own pockets, RIGHT?!?!

Yeah, it's funny how they "understand" economics.

 

[westwall]

No it wasn't. Besides that I am opposed to 'bribes' of elected officials; when special interests (unions or buisness) donate to a candidate or incumbent it is an unasserted quid pro quo.

IMO every vote on any bill ought to require that the vote on every bill included how the Member voted and if the Member accepted anything from anyone effected by the bill under penalty of perjury. Even one cup of coffee. Penalty, loss of office, loss of francise and felony conviction.

You want to stick a felony on someone for a cup of coffee? Really?

That's a bit of hyperbole. The fact is the policy in my agency was officers were not to accept anything from anyone, witness, suspect, victim, etc. even a cup of coffee. So it was written, so it was followed. The penalty for its violation was severe, lying about it resulted in the officers termination. Lies by LEOs are never tolerated by command.

Oh, I dodn't know about that. I can recall hearing on my scanner, several times, LEO's asking for help with some "creative report writing" (their words) so i think so long as they weren't caught it was very much tolerated.

 

[westwall]

48 years ago. We got it then. What the hell happened and how'd we forget that goverment isn't the solution, it's the problem.

"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan - YouTube

Wrong. On so many levels wrong. The government as operated under George W. Bush was a problem; government in general is not.

Really? You should read some history then bucko. This is merely the most recent example of unethical behavior on the part of government, we can also go into the governments testing of airborne pathogens in your own Bay Area and the deaths that resulted from them, or the Tuskeegee experiments on the blacks and those deaths, or a whole host of others.

You have blinders on buckwheat.




The EPA’s Unethical PM2.5 Air Pollution Experiments

Posted on June 4, 2012by Anthony Watts



Environmental Protection Agency Seal (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

By John Dale Dunn MD JD (via email)

United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson testified before Congress in September of 2011 that small-particle (2.5 microns or less) air pollution is lethal. “Particulate matter causes premature death. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”

At the hearing, Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) asked, “How would you compare [the benefits of reducing airborne PM2.5] to the fight against cancer?” Ms. Jackson replied, “Yeah, I was briefed not long ago. If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels, it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country.” Cancer kills a half-million Americans a year — 25 percent of all deaths in the U.S. annually.

That same month, September 2011, Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), a journal sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, reported an experiment that exposed a 58-year-old lady to high levels of small particles in a chamber. After 49 minutes in the chamber, the lady, who was obese with hypertension and a family history of heart disease, who also had premature atrial heartbeats on her pre-experiment electrocardiogram, developed a rapid heart beat irregularity called atrial fibrillation/flutter, which can be life threatening. She was taken out of the chamber, and she recovered, but she was hospitalized for a day. Weeks later, an abnormal electrical heart circuit was fixed by cardiologists, as reported in EHP.

It is illegal, unethical, and immoral to expose experimental subjects to harmful or lethal toxins. The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, 3rd Ed. (2011), published by the Federal Judicial Center, on page 555 declares that exposing human subjects to toxic substances is “proscribed” by law and cites case law. The editor of EHP refused a request to withdraw the paper and conduct an investigation.



The EPA’s internal policy guidance on experimental protocols prohibits, under what is called the “Common Rule,” experiments that expose human subjects to lethal or toxic substances. Milloy referenced the “Common Rule” that governs EPA policy on research conduct in human experimentation in his letter to the inspector general of the EPA requesting an investigation of the matter.

A full report on the research study shows that 41 other people were exposed to what the EPA says are harmful or lethal levels of small particles, with some enduring up to 10 times the EPA’s declared safe level of 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The EPA human experiments described were conducted from January 2010 to June 2011, according to the information obtained by JunkScience.com on a Freedom of Information Act request, and ended three months before Ms. Jackson’s congressional testimony, but she still asserted dramatic claims of PM2.5′s lethality — thousands of deaths at stake and hundreds of billions in economic consequences from the deaths and disabilities caused by small particles.

According to the congressional testimony of Lisa Jackson, these experiments risked the lives of these 42 people. So what could have possessed these EPA researchers to do the experiments? The authors reveal the reason in their case report on the lady:


Although epidemiologic data strongly support a relationship between exposure to air pollutants and cardiovascular disease, this methodology does not permit a description of the clinical presentation in an individual case. To our knowledge, this is the first case report of cardiovascular disease after exposure to elevated concentrations of any air pollutant.

The people at the EPA claim that they must control air pollution to prevent the deaths of thousands. Then they expose human subjects to high levels of air pollution. Is it possible that they are lying, or unethical, or both?

In the experimental protocol, seven subjects were exposed to levels 10 times greater than the 24-hour safe limit for small particles, and all of the other 40 subjects were exposed to more than the 35 micrograms per cubic meter that the EPA says is the 24-hour safety limit. The researchers failed to report that none of the other subjects had any adverse effects, which is unscientific, since researchers are obligated to report results both for and against their hypothesis.

The only way out for the EPA in this episode is to acknowledge the reality that ambient levels or even higher levels of PM2.5 are not toxic or lethal, based on their own research, and to admit that their claims of thousands of lives lost from small particles is nonsense. Or they can stay with their assertions about small particle toxicity and face charges of criminal and civil neglect.

The individuals who were the subjects of this experiment certainly might be concerned if the EPA claim of small particle toxicity and lethality is true. There is good reason to believe that the EPA itself doesn’t believe the claims. However, based on congressional testimony by EPA officials, any death now or later of the subjects of this experiment from heart and lung disease or cancer would be under the cloud of concern about the EPA claims that small particles kill. What were the EPA officials and researchers thinking?

John Dale Dunn MD JD
Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review
Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency
Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center
Fort Hood, Texas


The EPA’s Unethical PM2.5 Air Pollution Experiments | Watts Up With That?

 

[Big Fitz]

Government employees who belong to unions are taxpayers too, genius

BWA-HA-HA!



No...no way...

No way anyone is actually this stupid.

Can't be.


Hey, since government employees are taxpayers, let's pay them a million bucks a year! It's coming out of their own pockets, RIGHT?!?!

Yeah, it's funny how they "understand" economics.

Why isn't there a separate line and tax table then for government employees if they're so 'self funding'?

 

[Wry Catcher]

Talk about a hyperbole.
The government jobs do not need to be represented by a public union, wry.
There is no need for them in this day and age with all the protections given to the employees.

Yes...frisco is probably the most liberal city in the entire United States, wry....embrace it.

San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city, Meister; you ought to get out a bit more often. The City and the entire Bay Area is very diverse in all aspects. That you don't know what you're talking about has been evident for some time, so I won't belabor the point.

Government jobs do need the protection of unions, one more area in which you hold strong opinions based on little or no experience. I did battle with the union which represented our rank and file officers many times; I also watched as they stood behind the officers when decision makers and elected officials put the rank and file at risk by cutting funding on issues of safety.

wry....trust me I do know about unions....first hand. So don't go with I don't know what I'm talking about. Just because I'm no fan of them doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.
I don't like the idea of unfunded pensions and rediculous retirement packages that are put on the backs of taxpayers. I as a union member had to kick in to my pensions and retirement packages, I get nowhere near the sweet deals that Ca. offered public unions. But, I'm happy with what I got and feel fortunate.

The last year of my active service I paid $1,700.00 a month toward my retirement. Suggesting, if that's what you have done, that public employees in CA don't pay toward their retirement is not true.

Since I'm not sure if you were actually saying we get a free ride in CA I'll be clear: I paid every month into my retirement fund. Not $1,700.00/Mo for 32 years of course, for as my income rose via COLAs and I advanced from Deputy to Supervisor to Management my contribution rose along with my salary.

One other thing. The retirement association was solvent (in fact had earnings beyond what was necessary over the years and gave the county a portion of these earning in lean years to prevent layoffs) until Wall Street F'd up.