Pangloss

I was absolutely amazed at the number of these, by the way. It sure sounds like the trial lawyers and the doctors are at war in Tallahassee, doesn't it? Maybe we should send in the Seminoles to calm things down (since the Guard is off in Iraq). ;-)

This thread is probably useful to Florida residents only, but since blike asked, and I know we have a few Floridians here, I'll go ahead and post them. Apologies to anyone outside of Florida for any wasted bandwidth. ================== (By the way, one of the links Douglas posted in another thread, at the Florida Sports Fishermen Forum, has an excellent discussion area for all eight amendments, including polls. Some good discussion going on there. Link just below this paragraph.) http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/zeroforum?id=99 ================== There are EIGHT proposed amendments to the state constitution. Amendmends Sources: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/pr/pr004642.php3 http://www.iandrinstitute.org/BW%202004-0%20(List).pdf http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/rp/rp004641.pdf Amendment 1: This amendment is about parental notification of a minor who wishes to get an abortion. The Florida Supreme Court in 2003 struck down a law that provided parental notification, saying that it violated a minor's right to privacy under the state constitution. This Amendment would change the state constitution to allow parental notification. The bill also provides a "way out" for minors -- they can talk to a judge, who can give them permission based on the merits of their individual case. Simplification: Voting YES is a vote in favor of parental notification. Voting NO is a vote againt parental notification. My current inclination: Yes. I think parents should be notified about their child getting an abortion, and I'm not particularly concerned about the privacy rights of minors. They need to grow up and learn responsibility first -- THEN they get rights. And the "way out" provision seems like a reasonable compromise (parental endangerment cases, etc), and keeps an adult in the loop. So I'm in favor. Amendment 2: This amendment is about curtailing the citizenship initiative process, and was placed on the ballot by the state legislature. If passed, new initiatives would have to be proposed by Feb 1 in election years in order to get on the November ballot (currently the deadline is in early August). It also requires that the Florida Supreme Court create an "advisory opinion" about whether they believe the initiative is valid by April 1st. Otherwise citizen initiatives are allowed to continue as before. Apparently this was the only measure that emerged from all the hue and cry about this earlier in the year. Simplification: Voting YES makes it a little harder to get a citizen's initiative on the ballot. Voting NO leaves things like they are. My current inclination: No. It's already hard enough to get an initiative on the ballot, and the Supreme Court's opinion is irrelevent -- it's what the people think that counts for a ballot vote. Amendment 3: Don't be fooled by all the rhetoric on TV -- this amendment is about curtailing the amount of money a lawyer can earn from medical malpractice cases. It does NOT curtail the amount of money people can win from a lawsuit. Proponents (mainly doctors) believe it will help to lessen frivoless (how do you spell that word??) lawsuits by limiting lawyer greed. Opponents (mainly lawyers) believe it will harm citizens by making contingency cases less palatable to lawyers. Brief technical detail: "Limits contingency fees by requiring that an injured claimant who enters into a contingency fee agreement with an attorney in a claim for medical liability is entitled to no less that the first $250,000 in all damages received by the claimant and 90% of damages in excess of $250,000." Simplification: Voting YES makes it a little less profitable for lawyers to get involved in medical malpractice suits. Voting NO leaves the situation as it currently is. My inclination: Yes. But I am concerned about what would happen if you had a case that would earn, say, $40k. Who would help me? (Rosanne has pointed out to me, however, that lawyers could still charge a set fee for their services in those cases.) Amendment 4: This amendment is about slot machines in Dade and Broward counties. It's a STATE-wide vote, though, because it's an amendment to the constitution. But the result would only affect Dade and Broward. The amendment only authorizes a referendum (apparently we need a whole constitutional amendment to authorize a referendum -- go figure) about this. The slot machines would only be allowed in existing parimutuel facilities, like race tracks. Simplification: Voting YES is a vote in favor of slot machines in Dade/Broward. Voting NO is a vote against slot machines in Dade/Broward. My incilination: Yes. I couldn't care less what other people do with their money. Amendment 5: This amendment is about creating a Florida Minimum Wage of $6.15/hour. The wage would also be indexed to inflation so it would go up automatically. Simplification: Voting YES imposes (immediately) a Florida Minimum Wage of $6.15/hour. Voting NO retains the Federal minimum wage ($5.15/hour.) My inclination: No. Wages should be based on what the business can afford versus what the market can bear. Jobs are a privilege, not a right. Even worse, estimates place the cost of this thing at a whopping $443 million per year. Job losses would also result, and Florida becomes less competitive. An interesting blog article providing an opposing perspective can be found here: http://brownwatch.squarespace.com/to-the-present/2004/9/27/florida-minimum-wage-intiative-may-play-role-in-turnout-at-polls.html Amendment 6: This amendment is about repealing the 2000 amendment that we (the voters) passed requiring the development of high-speed rail in Florida. Simplification: Voting YES puts a stop to high-speed rail in Florida. Voting NO continues the push for high-speed rail in Florida. My inclination: Yes. We do not need high speed rail at taxpayer's expense in Florida. It's a huge waste of MY money ($20-25 *billion*!) for something that would have to be taxpayer-supported *indefinitely* because so few people will actively use it. This is a NEW problem, NOT a solution to an old problem. Amendment 7: This amendment was proposed by trial lawyers, and is about giving patients the right to review records of healthcare providers pertaining to adverse medical incindents, such as prior malpractice cases against the same doctor. Simplification: Voting YES allows patients to see the results of a doctor's prior litigation. Voting NO denies this. My inclination: No. I'm all in favor of the information about the doctors, but there's no guarantee of prior PATIENT privacy in this. For example, if a patient had a sexually transmitted disease and were treated improperly by a doctor, that could be revealed. The bill SAYS that privacy "should be protected", but there's no guarantee provided in the amendment. And since this bill was sponsored by trial lawyers, I think we can see where that's going. This also would trump out-of-court settlements that hide the results (denying guilt just to settle the case), and I'm not sure if that's such a good idea. I think this bill might work if it guaranteed privacy of the patient, though. Amendment 8: This strange amendment would prohibit medical doctors who have been found to have committed three or more incidents of malpractice from being licensed to practice medicine in Florida. Simplification: Voting YES prohibits doctors with three or more "incidents of malpractice" on their record from being licensed in Florida. Voting NO allows them to continue. My inclination: No. It sounds like a good idea, but what's strange about it is that I've read that MOST good doctors ALREADY have 3 or more cases of malpractice on their record. And what constitutes an "incident of malpractice"? Also this was proposed by trial lawyers. I can't figure out what their angle is, so I'm leaning against this.

I don't know anybody who goes to McDonald's and orders "Freedom Fries". And if they did, they'd get nothing but funny looks and presumptions of obsession with politics and ideology. Being looked down upon by a minimum-wage order-taker is not on anyone's list of priorities that *I* know. I do know maybe two or three people who have "Boycott France" bumper stickers, but it's merely a political statement, not a modus operandi. They still go to Blockbuster's every Friday night, even after I point out that it's owned (or was) by a French company. (I just love to point out hypocrisy to people, but I've run into a brick wall in this case, because they just shrug and admit it's just a statement.) There are always nitwits in every society who jump on bandwagons and respond to demogoguery and childish behavior. Your own country is hardly immune to such behavior. So I'd watch where you cast those stones. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3750690.stm

Reports or our anti-gallic sentiments are somewhat exaggerated, IMO.

What economics issue?

Hehe. Anybody who thinks George W. Bush is stupid, or a poor debater, or whatever, should ask Ann Richards what she thinks.

In my opinion, this is the sort of thing that you really need to embrace, understand, and control, because if you don't, it will creep up on you anyway and end up being controlled by people with no accountability (like insurance companies with vast private databases of information about your spending habits and heredity). People are generally unaware of how much their privacy has already been invaded. ID cards are no substitute for a rigorous debate on privacy issues, but people need to understand that there's a potential here for much greater trouble if we don't start undersanding, embracing and controlling.

By the way, if you don't think the US would draw more fire on the International front if it proposed intervention in Sudan, think again: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/international/africa/18sudan.html That article (in the New York Times) says that Libya, Sudan (of course), Egypt, Nigeria and Chad are all opposed to any such intervention in this "purely African question". Of course, they said nothing about the CURRENT UN peacekeeping efforts in "purely African questions", like Liberia and Ethiopia. Gee, I wonder why.

Thanks!! I'll check them out. BTW I just did a write-up of all eight of the amendments to the state constitution that are on the ballot in November (for my friends). If you're interested I'll be happy to PM you a copy. Some of the stuff on there is pretty startling (a state-wide minimum wage hike, for example).

Sure, there are stories in the news every few weeks about what Internet content is or will be allowed within China. There was just a story in the news a month ago about Google giving in to Chinese demands of censorship with regard to searches originating from within the mainland. Here's a good (and fairly objective) opinion piece by Chris Nolan at eWeek about it, including links to related news stories. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1675961,00.asp

I haven't been able to *find* any, sadly.

To be blunt.... so what? I'm not sure how the church's challenges are my problem. Bush is already catering to a small segment of the population -- evangelicals.

True. I hope I haven't turned this into an anti-budullewraagh thing, which was not my intent at all. Nothing but respect here.

Oh, regarding this point from Douglas: It's a valid point in a way, and I would even add that it's not very likely that we'll learn anything between now and November 2nd that will be terribly revealing about either candidate. I guess for me it's a matter of principle. I don't have to decide until Nov 2, so I'm not going to. Also (in spite of my posts here which would indicate otherwise) most of my attention lately has gone into Florida issues, like the state Senate race and Amendment 3. The prez race has become a bit of a back-burner issue for me at the moment.

Thanks for the kind words. The hard part for me is avoiding the trap of total negativity and pessimism. I'm actually a very optimistic person by nature (hence the name). I respect both Douglas and budellewraagh's posts quite a bit (in spite of bud's post about soldiers in another thread, which I still think he didn't mean quite the way it sounded). They're not total partisans and they're both pretty smart guys. Sometimes we get so focused on specific subjects that we forget that there's a larger context, and someone who seems to be a partisan on one subject may turn out not to be one when other subjects come up. (I didn't really say that very well but I think y'all know what I mean.) I make this mistake all the time myself.

That's all well and good, Say, certainly the JCS don't sit down and go over everything with all of us. But I still have a problem with this statement: It requires a defense as to the claim that they are filled with propaganda. It also suggests that soldiers are not capable of making up their own minds. I'll be happy to keep an open mind about the former. The latter is indefensible.

I expect them to be honest. Period.

I'm sorry but I refuse to believe that John Kerry, a member of the senate for 20 years, thought that the budget surplus actually reached $5.6 billion. Nor do I believe that it was a mere slip of the tongue. You, of course, can believe as you like. But the documentation I provided above does NOT support the notion that Kerry just made a mistake. Just the opposite, in fact.

I believe I qualified that statement. I guess you missed this, so allow me to repeat myself:

I have a problem with that statement. Do you need me to elaborate what it is, or would you like to amend it a bit on your first? I think perhaps you didn't quite mean that as it sounded.

(Yeah, I'm finally off the whole "how do you KNOW he was ACTUALLY lying" bandwagon. Yay me.)

All of these statements from George Bush in the last debate were lies: Resource: http://www.factcheck.org/article281.html - Bush said most of his tax cuts went to "low- and middle-income Americans" when independent calculations show most went to the richest 10 percent. (See the web site above for more detail, but basically 53% of the tax cut went to the richest 10% of citizens. Only 13.7% of the cut went to the bottom 60%.) - Bush stumbled when he denied making some remarks about Osama bin Laden that Kerry had accurately paraphrased. Bush accused Kerry of "one of those exaggerations." In fact, Bush said almost exactly what Kerry quoted him as saying. It was in a news conference at the White House on March 13, 2002. - It's not true, as Bush claimed, that "we took the right action" in blocking "contaminated" influenza vaccine from entering the US. Actually, it was the British and not the US that blocked shipment. In fact, the Bush administration seems to have been caught by surprise when Chiron Corp. notified the US Center for Disease Control Oct. 5 that the company wouldn't be shipping the vaccine due to the British action. The US Food and Drug Administration didn't begin an investigation until five days later, according to an FDA news release. - Bush said that in Iraq "We'll have 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year," which is wrong. Actually, the security forces being trained are a "mixed bag" of soldiers, border guards and even three-week "shake and bake" police officers, according to House testimony by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. - Bush claimed fear of lawsuits drives doctors to "the defensive practice of medicine that costs the federal government some $28 billion a year and costs our society between $60 billion and $100 billion a year," which is contrary to nearly all academic studies of the matter. - Bush again said Kerry "voted to increase taxes 98 times." But that total includes up to 16 votes on a single tax bill, and 43 votes on budget measures that set targets but don't actually legislate tax increases. (On a positive note, Bush was essentially correct in saying that the top 20% pay most of the taxes, about 63.7%. He actually said 80%, which is wrong, but I wanted to give one "positive" in Bush's favor since I gave one for Kerry, and this is close enough. The FactCheck article listed something else but I didn't think it was as interesting.)

All of these statements from John Kerry in the last debate were lies: Resource: http://www.factcheck.org/article281.html - Twice claimed (in the last debate) 1.6 million jobs have been lost under Bush, which is 1 million too high. - "The jobs the president is creating pay $9,000 less than the jobs that we're losing," a fanciful figure based on industry averages that don't actually compare wages of jobs lost to those of newer jobs. - "I have a plan to cover all Americans" for health care. Actually, his plan wouldn't cover all Americans. It would increase the percentage who have coverage from 84% currently to an estimated 92% to 95%. But several million would still be left uninsured. - Kerry claimed the Bush administration had cut Pell Grants for low-income students to attend college. Bush said Pell Grants have been increased by a million students. Bush was correct. - Kerry claimed that "500,000 kids lost after-school programs," which isn't the case. A cut was proposed but Congress rejected it. - Kerry wrongly claimed Bush "hasn't met with the Black Congressional Caucus." (Paraphrasing: He's met with them twice.) - Bush "has taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see." In fact the surplus never exceeded $256 million, and it was gone a month before Bush was elected. (On a positive note, Kerry seems to have stopped repeating that $200 billion cost-of-Iraq figure.)

Well I don't agree that the Chinese are more free than Americans. Just try and have more than two babies, for example. That problem has been somewhat overblown in the west -- for most Chinese it's not a problem, and they agree with it being best for the country. But it's still a restriction on freedom. They don't have a free press, their Internet is censored, and they stomped on the SARS epidemic faster than you can say "Chernobyl-like cover-up". It's easy to say that the US is just as bad, holding up examples like Jose Padilla and pretend that's the same thing as China's famous due process limitations. But that's clearly just not a fair or even valid comparison. My point in this thread has been that just because they have a government that's repressive in many ways doesn't mean it's not successful. They're not as repressive as some societies have been, certainly, but I wouldn't want to live there. That doesn't mean the Chinese people themselves are unhappy. I guess that's up to them to decide. It's also important to keep in perspective that even though they have 300 million citizens in their middle class, enjoying a decent standard of living, good pay, a car, etc, they still have roughly a BILLION citizens who do not. What's a little intimidating about this whole picture is the idea of a Chinese superpower with 1.3 *billion* middle-class citizens.

ROFL! Interesting thread; you all seem to have really covered it pretty thoroughly. I think it's easy to write off the issue of opposing animal testing as being supported only by a few crackpots in the extreme, but there are legitimate questions that come up that never really get very well answered, even by the smartest people on the planet. To me it's a great example of how we sometimes improve ourselves merely by *asking* the questions, even if the answers we get aren't very satisfying. One thing I wonder about is what might change in the human-animal-Earth dynamic if and when we ever manage to elevate another species to sentience. If you've read David Brin's books you'll know what I'm talking about here (he envisioned a galactic society in which species acquire freedom when they have elevated ANOTHER species to sentience, and the society has rules against taking advantage of "pre-sentient" species). If chimps and dolphins ever do become intelligent, what will they think of the way we treated them before they were smart enough to understand it?