bascule

Well, let me put it in perspective: the candidate advocating major reform of our current marijuana laws who received the most votes in the primaries was: Ron Paul! Hardly a liberal... And there you go, this isn't a "liberal" issue at all. Many Democrats, even "far left" ones, still support the status quo for drug policy. How many libertarians do you see advocating the status quo for America's drug policy? Can you find one Libertarian political party or think tank that doesn't have a major reform of drug laws as a plank in their platform? Really Pangloss, stop being so partisan! This isn't a left/right issue, it's a libertarian/totalitarian issue Well, bottom line, any taxes bring revenue which decreases the deficit. I'm not saying we shouldn't cut spending, and indeed these measures would cut spending as well. Imagine how much the burden on INS and the DEA would be lightened if we had a sane guest worker program for immigrants which was actually preferable to illegally crossing the border, and if there were little need for marijuana enforcement at the federal level. In addition, a guest worker program would collect some sort of tax (probably payroll tax) for immigrants, so there's additional revenue.

I believe the word you were looking for was "libertarian". Note that the Cato Institute is in support of all these measures, and they're anything but liberals.

If he were using a typical cell provider and a regular handset, probably. Many handsets now embed GPS, so if you were to hack their phone tracking their location becomes trivial, not to mention a multitude of approaches you could use setting up your own GSM station or using radio direction finding. That's why I'm suggesting the President be hooked up with the latest military hardware for securely and discretely sending e-mail, all of which can communicate with government-provided handset which uses spread spectrum satellite communications with the latest cryptography and so forth, and all his e-mail going through White House servers that log all messages per the appropriate regulations. I don't see a technological reason why the president should be denied e-mail.

Sorry, I don't know about Hamiltonians and stuff

In the book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market talks about the three underground economies in the United States: marijuana, foreign labor, and pornography. Do you think that proper regulation and taxation of these markets could make a big impact in reducing our national deficit? I do...

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that 20 years ago that after a government bailout the S&L crisis was averted. I'm sure Ron Paul et al. would just argue that the crisis wasn't averted but postponed...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/11/17/obama.blackberry.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories This doesn't really make sense to me. They're concerned about the president's security and trackability when using a wireless communication device. Haven't all those untold trillions of DoD dollars produced a solution to this problem? I can see why the government would be paranoid about the president using a Blackberry, but seriously, isn't there some crazy satellite-based e-mail system that the US could equip the president with? As for tracking all the president's e-mail, just have that crazy device talk to Whitehouse e-mail servers which are compliant with government regulations. I'm surprised this is an issue and think if a President wants to take advantage of these tools he damn well ought to be able to.

I think it'd be fine so long as the government got equity in the companies they bail out, and it weren't just forking over cash into a black hole. Government buying up the means of production: now that's socialism!

Why is this in Computer Science

That would seem to be the opposite view from Greenspan's postmortem on the mortgage crisis. What I'd really like to know is: why should we listen to Ron Paul on the economy? He has no formal education in the matter and for all intents and purposes no practical experience in the matter either. Seems like he just likes to write and speak about the Austrian School with zero credentials whatsoever. He blames the financial crisis on overregulation. Is he insane?

Fine, perhaps you'd care to explain to me how Ron Paul would get us out of a financial crisis without causing a depression

You seem to be missing the metalinguistic abstraction that's going on here. An algorithm which theoretically solves the halting problem won't infinitely recurse when fed itself as its own input. In the above example you are feeding the algorithm its own implementation as both the algorithm and the argument. In Lisp terms you'd be feeding the algorithm its own S-expression for itself. However, it's an S-expression. It needn't be evaluated. This is the "code is data" idea from Lisp, that programs themselves can be represented as S-expressions. You seem to be assuming that the algorithm will get caught in a loop of infinitely recursing as it evaluates itself, however it won't ever evaluate itself as it should only analyze the S-expressions, not actually evaluate them. In the above example, your program should halt and return that its own code will halt when fed itself, as any algorithm which theoretically solves the halting problem should always halt.

Let's just not go down that road... I doubt we'll reach any agreement I'm not, nor am I talking specifically about the bailout. Ron Paul wants to abolish the Federal Reserve in the middle of a financial crisis, and cease regulation of the economy as a whole. I think that would cause a depression.

Okay, then what? How do you pull the economy out of a depression? The New Deal worked pretty well... but that also involved printing more money. Perhaps we should just all live in poverty until the economy "naturally" comes out of the depression.

The only "solution" I've heard for the financial crisis out of Ron Paul is to let the whole financial sector collapse. Another depression is the solution? But more than that, it's this kind of rhetoric: Juxtapose that with this quote from Alex Jones: Note any similarities? I never said that all Ron Paul supporters are Alex Jones nutjobs, but I think a striking majority of them are. Ron Paul's hands-off approach appeals to anarchists.

Okay, I f-ed up the phraseology of the question originally, so YT deleted the thread and gave me a do-over. DO-OVER! I'm going to try to put the poll in the proper context this time. Here goes: So, Wall Street fat cats lining their pockets with precious government monies. Two trillion in loans going to who knows where. It's CRAZY! What do you think?

...which, as I understand it, went to individual Chinese citizens, not banks.

Yes, I'm saying clear the whole thing out and start over. Mea culpa... I asked the wrong question. I didn't put it in the proper context.

Well, as a utilitarian, I don't have a unilateral opinion on the issue of whether murder is wrong. For example, if it came down to killing one person who doesn't want to die versus everyone else on earth dying, I would happily murder that person to save everyone else on earth. I would need to make a utilitarian calculation based on the context to determine if a given act is morally justifiable. Deciding what is wrong is only arbitrary if you don't have a methodological value system. How can I "prove" a particular value system is correct? That's not really possible. However, my value system is, as best I can make it, internally self-consistent and based on the best evidence I have available. It's as close to scientific as a system of moral values can be.

Hey mods, can you hook me up with a re-poll with the above question?

Perhaps I should've phrased the poll as: Do you think the bailout was worth the $700,000,000,000.00?

The bailout was intended to unthaw the credit freeze and get financial institutions to start lending money again. Instead, credit seems to remain frozen, and despite assurances that the money would not be used to line executives pockets, that seems to be exactly what happened: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24012700/the_new_trough/3 Worse, the Fed has lent out almost $2 trillion in loans which don't require Congressional approval, and won't even name the recipients: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aatlky_cH.tY&refer=worldwide My overall impression of the bailout(s) at this point is not very positive, and I do not think they have done much to remedy the financial crisis. What do you think?

Lesbian couples can make babies via artificial insemination. But it's not like the purpose of marriage is to be a baby factory. There's plenty of unwanted babies to go around. Being raised by loving, non-abusive parents is also important. I'd argue you're better off being formula-fed than being raised in a series of foster homes, or worse, by abusive parents. That's not to say that gay parents won't be abusive, but rather that there are a lot of non-abusive gay couples who could certainly use tax breaks that come from being a married couple raising children. Also, there are plenty of heterosexual couples / single mothers who don't breast feed their children. *facepalm* whatever... Why should the laws be different? I have a utilitarian value system, from which the wrongness of murder follows pretty clearly. I hope you're playing devil's advocate here, but if not, your value system is different than mine, and all I can argue is that my value system finds your value system to be depraved. Is the purpose of marriage to be a baby factory? Should we disqualify sterile heterosexual couples from getting married? How about couples who adopt as opposed to conceiving on their own? Or how about couples who simply don't want children?

He's certainly preaching to the Alex Jones crowd with statements like that. I've always been curious about the relationship between those anarchists / conspiracy theorists and Ron Paul, especially considering Alex Jones has been one of Ron Paul's most vocal advocates. I've also been curious of how much Ron Paul is aware of them. It would seem that Alex Jones made a better pick of Ron Paul than I ever realized, or Ron Paul became aware of these people effectively being his "base" and is now speaking directly to them. Probably the former. Every time I've seen Ron Paul confronted about his relationship to those people he's always plead ignorance. But he's happy to take their money...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15530.html I've seen quite a bit of bluster lately about potential "midnight regulations" Bush might pass not being easily reversible. However, it appears Clinton-era regulations prevent that from being the case. The Bush Administration planned on finalizing all regulations by November 1st, however they did not take into account the Congressional Review Act of 1996, which states that any regulation finalized within 60 days of congressional adjournment is considered to have been legally finalized on Jan. 15, 2009. This affects all legislation finalized by October 3rd. The review is filibuster-proof, so a simple party line vote is all that's needed to overturn them.