South Korea's foreign minister has said she believes President Donald Trump is largely responsible for bringing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table.
Hopefully someone in the state department will give Trump cue cards to read from so he doesn’t mess this up. Here’s a few talking points to start from:
1992: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#1) 1994: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#2) 1999: North Korea signs historic agreement to end missile tests 2000: North Korea signs historic agreement to reunify Korea! Nobel Peace Prize is awarded 2005: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula 2005: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program and "denuclearize"! (#3) 2006: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula 2006: North Korea again support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula 2007: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#4) 2007: N&S Korea sign agreement on reunification 2010: North Korea commits to ending Korean War 2010: North Korea announces commitment to "denuclearize" 2010: North Korea again announces commitment to "denuclearize" 2011: North Korea announces plan to halt nuclear and missile tests 2012: North Korea announces halt to nuclear program 2015: North Korea offers to halt nuclear tests 2016: North Korea again announces support for "denuclearization" Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions Taxation is Theft Bot
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Voter ID laws should not be controversial. A few points:
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to drive. --You must have a government-issued ID in order to fly. --You must have a government-issued ID in order to ride a train. --You must have a government-issued ID in order to enter this country and almost any other. --In many venues, you must even have a government-issued ID in order to buy alcohol, buy tobacco, and be admitted to bars and clubs. Voting is an even greater responsibility than any of those. Why, then, is it so controversial to require a government-issued ID in order for a person to vote in government elections? Voter fraud isn't a significant problem in this country, but it also isn't non-existent--and any fraud is too much fraud. Requiring voters to present a valid form of identification is one of the easiest, cheapest ways to eliminate one avenue of engaging in fraud.
Many argue that it discriminates against Hispanics and other demographics that are less likely to have government-issued ID's. In my mind, there are two responses to this.
First, all laws affect demographic groups differently. There is no such thing as a law that affects everyone in precisely the same manner. This isn't by itself a reason not to enact a law. If it were, then we could have no laws at all. (For example, even speed limit laws disproportionately impact demographics with higher rates of automobile ownership. Federal minimum wage laws disproportionately impact states with more low-wage earners. And so on.) Fundamentally, however, there's absolutely nothing standing in the way of anyone in any demographic of getting a government-issued ID. We commonly associate ID's with driver's licenses, but that's a misconception. It is definitely true that not everyone can get a driver's license, but not everyone needs one. States also issue plain ID's. That brings me to my second point: cost. If state ID's cost $15,000, then there may be validity to the discrimination argument. They don't though. In some states, ID's are completely free, and in most others, they cost no more than $10. If you're a citizen, then you can get one of these ID's at little or no cost. Thus, the only people who truly are locked out of voting by ID laws are people who are not U.S. citizens, and it's illegal for them to vote anyway. Many counter this by saying, "True, but low-income and less educated demographics frequently do not know how to get these free ID's." Come on, folks: Individual responsibility is an important value in this country. If you don't know how to do something that you need to know how to do, then you must take some initiative and figure that something out. Acquiring a state ID is simple, and figuring out how to do it doesn't even require an Internet connection.
Here's an idea though. Every election cycle, liberal and conservative activists engage in an implicit competition with each other by shoving as many voter registration forms into the hands their favored demographics. They've figured out how to quickly and simply explain to people how to register to vote and then how to actually vote--both of which are more complicated than getting a state ID. Why don't these groups simply hand out one additional form at the same time: a form explaining how to get an ID. This isn't rocket science. You don't even have to know how to sign your own name in order to get a state ID.
This brings us to the real reason many of these activist groups oppose voter ID laws: politics. Having to hand out an additional form and then have people engage in one additional step before voting would have an impact on the number of people they could smash into the polls after telling them who they should vote for. This, my friends, isn't a good reason for opposing a very basic, common-sense measure that would add just a bit more integrity to an electoral system already under assault by Russia and by dishonest allegations of "millions of fraudulent votes" by one of the very highest officials in our government. This Texas voter law actually is quite a relaxed voter law. It doesn't even require a government-issued ID at all. You can also use bank statements or even utility statements as forms of ID. You simply have to sign an affidavit explaining why you couldn't obtain an actual ID. Because it no longer requires a certain form of ID, some are opposing it on the grounds that there are consequences for lying on one's affidavit. Seriously?
Of course there are consequences for lying--again, common sense. Why wouldn't there be? What would be the point of having people sign a document at all if there were no consequences of lying on the document? That would simply waste taxpayer money to print the affidavits in the first place.
Any system in which anyone can walk in off the street to take part in the most critical function of our system on the basis of nothing more than his own word is a system that can never be of complete integrity. Much as we may hate to admit it, some people's word is worth less than a little. Our system should be as watertight as possible, and that starts with a very basic, cheap (even free) requirement already in force for so much else in our society: showing a form of ID. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions Taxation is Theft Bot
As I write this fat check to Uncle Sam, I've always wondered... What if elections were held immediately after we paid our tax bill every year?
What if taxes weren't withheld from everyone's paychecks every year and they had to come up with thousands each April? What if my tax bill was itemized every year? Rapper Cardi B famously noted that when she gives millions to private charities, she gets emails showing the schools she's helping to build and the kids she's assisting, why doesn't Uncle Sam? What if your tax bills were itemized? Of the XXX you owe: $251 goes to Egypt for foreign aid $14 goes for treadmills for shrimp $149 goes to govermental printing costs that could be avoided by changing font $110 goes to Air Force One for unofficial vacations $.48 on an unused monkey house $29 fraudulent tax reimbursements to prisoners $410 on 'improper payments' or fraudulent payments due to lack of financial controls $1.89 on a 3-week long FAA party $42 NSA and other gov't use of World of Warcraft as collections platform $4 U.S. Census commercial that appeared during the Super Bowl $.22 On a laundry-folding robot $17 On a study about baby names (and "The astounding conclusion: Popular names are popular with parents.") Do you think people would be more active in holding politicians/bureaucracy accountable?Who cares more about your money? You or the Government? Of course it's you. Looking at the list above, would you better invest that money in your life or are you glad it went to countries where they openly burn our flag? 50 Examples of Government Waste The six categories of wasteful and unnecessary spending are:
See also, 13 Silliest Uses of Taxpayer Money
Since you made it this far down the post, I'll let you in on a little secret. This 4th of July, we're going live with a new website www.Liberty.wiki. We're building out the infrastructure at the moment and learning wiki markup from scratch! Please bookmark it and, once up and running, contribute of your own free will, with an article or two on something that you're an expert at! Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions Taxation is Theft Bot
The question Ted Cruz just asked Mark Zuckerberg is the one question I want to know the answer to....
Does Zuckerberg know, or care about, the political leanings "of the 15-20,000 Facebook employees dedicated to content review"? Because the thing is, that skew matters. I have no doubt that Zuckerberg and Facebook don't ask people what their political views are in the hiring process. That's not normally how hiring works. When I applied to work at the CATO Institute i had zero questions about my political leanings. Zero. But that's not necessary for bias to emerge.
What actually happens is that people self-select into particular industries and companies for a host of reasons, the corporate values and tone of the working environment weeds out a lot, hiring managers tend to hire people generally like themselves so even if they don't ask any particular questions, they're looking for people they can work with so obviously finding points of agreement around interests and values help people get jobs in the first place.
And Facebook is located in the Bay Area in California, which has its own skew. The problem, though, is that if 18,000 of their 20,000 content reviewers all lean a certain way, then the content they flag and the content they review will too. And that means they're putting more scrutiny on (in this case) conservatives, libertarians, or just non-leftist types, and flagging more right-leaning posts as inappropriate, banning more of those pages.
I see this already in terms of the fact checking system Facebook has implemented.
And the irony of this is that if Facebook does more of the same, the result will be even MORE polarization, which is the very thing they claim they want to prevent. I'm fine with Mark Zuckerberg ONLY hiring militant leftists, if that's what he wants to do. I just want there to be transparency. Don't said that you're unbiased, if you're not. Be clear that Facebook is what it is- a great platform that has a bias and if you don't align with that bias, you can get kicked from the platform with no recourse. Zuckerberg said that he believed for the first 10-12 years of running Facebook that their role as a company was to build tools for people to use to connect with each other. Now he believes the company should have a new mission: To police the user-base and make sure those tools are being used "for good". Little does he know, he's headed down an authoritarian path. Did he not take Dystopian Lit at Harvard? What are your thoughts on how this can turn? Are you already off Facebook completely? Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions Taxation is Theft Bot |
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