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Comment Re: Wasn't an offensive joke (Score 1) 161

And you would be wrong. Most states have mental health statutes which authorize physicians and psychiatrists and sometimes other authorities like the police to place individuals determined to be gravely mentally ill--to the point where they are a danger to themselves or others--on a 72 hour hold. The purpose of the hold is twofold: for observation and treatment and to get the courts involved in case a where longer detention is merited. It's also just 72 hours long to be relatively unburdensome to liberty at large, and to minimize abuse of authority.

Being placed on a 72 hour hold does put you on a list and often does make it difficult on those who want to maintain 2A rights and are in the need of acute mental health care--particularly combat veterans.

Comment Re: Trump has expanded the high skill work visa (Score 1) 235

Sorry I think I meant to click reply on some ridiculous post by rsilvergun and you got caught in the crossfire. At any rate, I'm not sure this is a problem with or a feature of capitalism, which as an economic theory embraces competition as a means to provide the best goods and services at the best price. I see the situation an inverse of co--a fascistic (for lack of a better term) syndicate/oligopoly due to the corporate/government dynamic we enjoy.

Comment Re: Trump has expanded the high skill work visas (Score 1) 235

You could make the same argument: "that's why Nike uses child labor and in third world countries" because they can't find an American willing to work for unsustainable, veritable slave labor wages in a miserable sweatshop. Well, no shit, Sherlock.

No. The real problem is your framing of the situation is at odds with reality. The reality is that American citizens could be employed to do all of these things (as they have been in the past) and and in reasonable working conditions at living wages, but that idea is at odds with the idea of multi-billionaire individuals, and trillion dollar companies who collect disproportionately to their risks and efforts.

If you have a problem with the Bezoses and the Musks of the world, I agree with you: that class of wealth should be basically unobtainable; it's only through exploitation that it's possible in the first place.

Comment Re: The economy is struggling (Score 1) 241

A recent visit to my local county head office is enough to tell me the government is drastically over staffed, with rare exception. In researching some real estate issues, after doing everything I could via the internet and being bounced around on the phone with zero success, I had to take a trip down to the county office--a modest size county, far from the biggest in my state. I witnessed dozens of workers idling away doing nothing productive, even visibly playing on their phones while directing visitors from one office to the next, and even from one building to the next, giving conflicting instructions and taking no accountability to the obvious dysfunction.

Given stories I've heard from friends and family who worked in the government, I can extrapolate the average federal government department is vastly less accountable and infinitely more wasteful. Undoubtedly many thousands of times over, just due to being that much less visible.

Comment Re: There's nothing audacious about it (Score 1) 122

Liberals / leftists really aren't the ones who want open borders; at least even if those interests do coincide with other interests, their option really does not matter much:
It has long been and continues to be big corporate interests, and billionaire / globalist class who actually own those corporations who want and benefit from open borders more so than anyone else.
Nobody remembers that in the 80s and 90s, and even into the early 2000s it was the democrats beating the anti-immigration drums, as it was the labor unions who correctly surmised that illegal immigration artificially suppresses wages, and the democrats often go where the labor unions lead them. During those times the democrats blamed the Koch brothers and the rest of their sort who had influence in the Republican Party for keeping the borders open.
The reality is they both were responsible, just for different reasons.
Now that the demographic shift caused by those policies is hitting stride (2nd and 3rd generation immigrants from those times are becoming voters), and they align overwhelmingly with the democrat party, that party now wants unlimited immigration. It just so happens they are now on the side of the oligarchs on this one issue; they want to suppress wages across the board and bringing in more laborers does just that.
And people are SHOCKED the labor unions and laborers in general (even Latinos whose families came in in the 60s and prior) are moving away from the democrat party, and cozying up to the republican party. I am not. It is entirely predictable.

Comment Re: If you're not familiar... (Score 1) 337

Kind of the same story for my HS science / maths teacher. We were all shooting the breeze one day after a test, talking about our futures and pay and stuff; and one of the other kids mentioned that he'd in no way want to be a teacher as they were chronically underpaid. Teach perked up and joined the conversation, as a 20 year veteran he was making 70k and had a solid two months a year off, a good pension and benefits. He was not in a place as expensive as SF.
Now he did say the first few years of his career were lean, but the key was continuing education and getting various certifications and the corresponding pay bumps which came along with it. He took several vacations a year, had a boat and an RV and a nice house and just finished sending his last kid to college. He told us himself that the idea teachers were poorly paid was a myth and explained he wouldn't have done anything different for a career. Kind of changed our minds about things. This was in 1999.

Comment Re: I'm never interested. (Score 1) 123

It's not that you're interested in the ad.
It's that you're statistically interested in the media. Suppose there's a spot in a video which a lot of people re-watch. That's where they're going to shove the most annoying stupid ad possible, and some people will probably click it out of anger and frustration. Winning!

Comment Re: 86 (Score 1, Troll) 91

It's a 1920s gangster culture meme. When the mob boss said to 86 someone it meant to take them 8 miles out of town and put them 6 feet under, handy that it also rhymes with nix which was also used in the same context. At some point the military started to use it in their lingo in the general sense of to get rid of something, restaurants and bars started to use it to mean to eject a patron or refuse service.

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