Just looked up RICO on Wikipedia and it has indeed been used in some dioceses to prosecute the Roman Catholic Church for the pedophilia and coverup that has occurred within the Church's clergy! The relevant excerpt:
"Catholic sex abuse cases[edit]
In some jurisdictions, RICO suits have been filed against Catholic dioceses, using anti-racketeering laws to prosecute the highers-up in the episcopacy for abuses committed by those under their authority[citation needed]. E.g. a Cleveland grand jury cleared two bishops of racketeering charges, finding that their mishandling of sex abuse claims did not amount to criminal racketeering[citation needed]. Notably, a similar suit was not filed against Cardinal Bernard Law, then Archbishop/Emeritus of Boston, prior to his assignment to Vatican City.[11][12] In 2016, RICO charges were considered for cover-ups in Pennsylvania.[13]"
So RICO can be used for both criminal and civil charges?
Not only that. They keep piling on new shit APIs. Half of the WebGL exploits are probably yet unveiled, there's a side channel attack using the new ambient light sensor API, but hey, my phone can get darker based on ambient light, hooray!
gjm11 says: "Is there some special bad thing that happens once 410ppm is reached, that's qualitatively different from 400ppm?"
Yes. Climate change proponents post articles such as the OP here and then cry "The sky is falling, the sky is falling and I can prove it! We're at the 410 PPM Threshold, just as we predicted!"
You're being downvoted, but dissenting opinions should be allowed, even when it comes to climate change. There is a reasonable argument to be made that climate change alarmism is not productive. I saw Bill Nye answer the question of 'what happens due to global warming,' to which he replied, 'people's qualities of life will most likely go down because people will fight over resources,' that said, right now we have a surplus of resources in a very real sense. We already basically have productive capacity to feed every person on earth, but it's politics and greed that makes people starve, not resources.
Whether the down-voters like it or not, climate change is a very real and scientifically established fact, but what that will do to people on the world is not a scientific fact. It's just what currently most people predict will happen (and disagreeing with this is feels like some kind of thought crime in the traditional sense--it's not science). The world is not going to end. Biodiversity and Biomass is decreasing. The Northwest Passage is being opened up. Iron fertilization will become a more likely policy to sequester carbon and increase biomass in the oceans. Sea levels will rise. Extreme weather patterns most likely will increase. Productive farm land may or may not increase. Russia actually may have a fair bit to gain from it. But the fact is, there is a lot we really don't know.
In the very long run our civilization will need to harvest as much energy from the sun as possible, but in the meantime we've done a pretty fantastic job of screwing up the planet, so it's a pretty good idea to stop emitting so much pollutants into our atmosphere, since we don't really know for sure, but we have a lot of reasons to think it won't be good. That's really the best argument to end climate change, but it's probably not convincing enough to change behavior in large numbers of people.
That said, the politics and bureaucracies around climate change have started to resemble the War on Poverty and War on Drugs--institutions which now exhibit bureaucratic intertia (have an inherent perverse incentive structure, and they rationally (evilly) place their own survival over that of solving the problems they're tasked with).
Speaking for the municipal aspect: the municipal voters voted for these measures and certainly voted for the mayors and city councilmen who brought these measures into place. Then the cities, under the same politicians, failed to fully fund the pensions they had set up (they are normally required to fund pensions, each year, to a significant level, but the cities postponed the funding).
Years pass and then the cities lament, crying that these pension funds are now undue "public commitments on the back of the taxpayer", such as aswanson says above. IOW cities are trying to screw retirees out of their pensions.
For example, at this very moment Houston, in the name of "Pension Reform", is trying to coax the state to pass a law that would cut the pension of widows and widowers in half!
And that's just part of the cutbacks Houston is asking.
The municipal and state governments that brought the measures into place generally operated in an ethically-compromised environment and mathematical fairy land.
The people that voted in the fundamentally-flawed plans are also the ones that are standing to benefit from them as the legislative fixes are rolling in. I sympathize that they have built plans around the expectations of the money being there, but at the same time I think it's pretty unrealistic to expect current taxpayers to pay for unrealistic and underfunded plans.
I remember, back in the 90's, going to one of those retirement planning/sales sessions, where they explained how much you would need to invest at what rates to have a good retirement. With the little I knew then about economics/investment, I knew there was no way they were going to be able to deliver the 8-12% annual return they assumed would be required to meet their projections.
So yes, I sympathise with people who allowed themselves to be lied to, i really do, because ultimately this is white collar crime we're talking about - but caveat emptor also applies.
We educate individual investors to believe that they should achieve similar yields in their 401k accounts, why is only "white collar crime" when you need to fulfill the promise?
Guaranteed 8% rate of return, let alone %12, violates historical data/mathematics. Anyone other than Renaissance Technologies advertising as much needs to be sued.
That implies a 2.4 percent rate of real growth in a hyperinflationary era, so assume a 4.4 real rate of return in normal circumstances. That is the number we should be basing projections on, as it correlates more closely to real dollars in the retirement age years. 8-12 percent estimates are bs, and red herrings because they don't relate real returns.
No, but it generally makes sense to talk about expected investment return over the rate of inflation. Hence, the raw number is meaningless - a 12% return rate in an environment with inflation of 9% is almost as reasonable as a 3% return rate in an environment with inflation of 0%.
That's one of several things to bear in mind - but it's not a straightforward one - the various causes of high inflation tend to mitigate against matching investment rates.
Leaving that aside - even at the time it seemed ridiculous - so learning 20 years later that the "professionals" involved have essentially bet everybody's future, on projecting those kinds of returns for 40 years...
... because we all understand I hope. When this thing blows up - its not going to be pretty.
A pension plan is a contract between the municipality and its employees. Like most contracts, you either hold to it or you can be sued, at the least. Expecting to be able to weasel out of paying years later, after employees have retired is certainly a violation of civil law, if not criminal.
The retired employees completed their part of the contract and payment is due in full. They gave up higher levels of income to work at jobs where the pension is guaranteed (cities pay less than private firms, on average). To change the rules once employees have retired and without compensation will result in lawsuits and criminal prosecution, as it should.
WkndTriathlete says: "...it's pretty unrealistic to expect current taxpayers to pay for unrealistic and underfunded plans."
Sorry, that's what taxes are for. And what’s the problem with paying taxes anyway? To live in a city you pay city rates. Paying taxes on a well-managed city budget is one of the best ways to maintain and ensure that your property values increase. But for God’s sake, pay attention to politics and hold leaders accountable!
If you don’t want to pay taxes, then become a “Mountain Man” and move to Montana. Live on a mountaintop w/o roads, sewer, water, hospitals, stores, and cellphones. Or maybe you want your city to go the way of Detroit? You can
– kill your property values,
– call 911 and get nothing, not even a dial tone,
– Burn your own trash,
– Run your own septic system,
– Run your own electric generator,
– Buy a satellite cellphone (no other option – no other service available),
– Drive to another city once a month to stock up on flour, sugar, beans and batteries.
This is a shame. Next the FBI will be bringing charges based upon the use of crystal balls, hair samples, spirit photography, and talking goats. All scientifically validated by the NBS and DOD undoubtedly.
Or heavy metal posters... This is just the national version of what happened in Texas with regard to Todd Willingham. The forensic review committee was disband for fear that they would publicly validate what was becoming clearer by the day. Basically, that Texas likely executed an innocent man based on gut instinct forensic evidence, and the well known fact that people into heavy metal were satanists that kill their children.
Of course SOP for a Republican in Texas in this situation is kill the messenger and deny the message.
> During the penalty phase of the trial, a prosecutor said that Willingham's tattoo of a skull and serpent fit the profile of a sociopath. Two medical experts confirmed the theory. A psychologist was asked to interpret Willingham's Iron Maiden poster, and said that a picture of a fist punching through a skull signified violence and death. He added that Willingham's Led Zeppelin poster of a fallen angel was "many times" an indicator of "cultive-type" activities
Reading through it, the entire law enforcement power structure seems to have formed an opinion that this was criminally negligent parenting and that they were going to find a way to throw the book at the guy no matter what.
They noticed that he saved his own neck, rather than sacrifice everything, and did not risk his own life for his 3 children (infants/toddler). Thus, they fed him to the lions. It wasn't enough for him to have suffered burns. Their opinion clearly was that if those children were dead, then he can get it too.
After that, the rest was the machine operating as usual.
They didn't convict him of a crime as per what happened. They convicted him of the crime on the books that had the punishment that fit the situation and their collective opinion of it.
They wanted him dead, not because of heavy metal, or any other reason on display at the dog and pony show, theater trial. They wanted him dead because they felt that it was unreasonable that 3 children (who probably weren't old enough to walk and talk too well) could not be rescued in time, by the only person taking care of them at the moment. Part of the expectation there, is that he should have been steps away, and within arms reach of them.
They threw due process in the trash because they just didn't like what happened.
The article unfortunately does not address the question of whether current mathematical analysis is an appropriate framework for a description of space/time. We are, in the end, dealing with elements "smaller than" (if that's the right phrase!) the Planck length. Of course, you can choose to ignore that and use what's already been provided, but to do so is "whistling past the graveyard". This has ramifications for all of string theory, quantum gravity et al.
Yep, I think something like this is the correct response, though I would prefer to see vegetables that have super-desirable test profiles that trick the body into thinking its getting the high calorie foods it's evolved to crave rather than drugs that alter the humans to want to eat less in general.
Humans are driven by biology, and psychology is only a thin abstraction on top of that. The amount of self-discipline any single individual can deploy is very limited. If that discipline threshold gets used up on other things, it's not going to be available for food and diet.
Consider on top of this that most of us have been socialized and trained for decades to prefer unhealthy options, and the already-steep incline of resisting the body's physically preferred options becomes treacherous.
Most fat people aren't fat becomes they're snarfing down platters that are meant to feed six in every sitting. They're fat because the foods they eat provide low nutrition and high calories, and candy bars aren't the only food with such a profile. Most packaged foods that you can buy at a regular, non-niche grocer are that way, even the ones that are touted as healthy. Food companies do this because they know people like foods with more calories more than they like foods with fewer calories, and they want you to buy their foods more often.
Technology got us into this mess by creating an easily-accessible supply of hyper-caloric foods, an amount of plenty that our bodies, built for scarcity, are not at all equipped to handle. Technology should be employed to fix it. Whether it's human-side or food-side, something needs to be developed that can blackhole the excess calories with no noticeable impact on the eating experience, either in taste or chemical reward.
The other alternative is to revert to a food supply where artificial contrivances such as candy and foods injected with sugars and other unnatural taste-improving formulations are very rare. This is not possible while we live in a society of abundance. It will only be possible if there is famine, hardship, war, etc. So it's not a good option.
"Just try harder" is never going to be a real answer to this problem, and the stats clearly bear that out. People hate being fat. They spend billions of dollars every year desperately trying to find someone who can fix it for them. We should try to address that in a reasonable way.
This requires that you actually want to lose weight and do something about it.
Obese people often have a low socio-economic status [1]. If you are marginalized, eating may be an outlet for frustration. You won't buy special stuff to lose weight.
Everyone here was surprised when Trump got elected (except Peter Thiel). "Nerd nation" [2] is a huge bubble -- the majority of our society is different. The won't buy any drugs or apps.
Totally incorrect. People spend billions of dollars every year trying not to be fat anymore. [0] I also contend that while more liberal places often have less obesity, it's not like the problem is non-existent there; they still have ~20-25% obesity, which is 1 in 4, which is A LOT of obese people everywhere. Don't pat yourself on the back too hard there.
It's not that obese people don't care or don't know, or that they enjoy living an unhealthy lifestyle. There's a lot of complex factors that are involved, but the basic factor is this: humans are evolved to strongly prefer high calorie foods, and we've made high-calorie foods available in unprecedented quantities while also requiring less physical energy expenditure than ever before. Our bodies don't know how to deal with that.
It's been thoroughly proven over the last 30 years that self-control can't be relied upon to prevent this. When you throw someone into a situation where all of their biological functions are pushing them toward acquiring a biological reward that is so abundant they have to actively avoid it, the options are very limited. That person is going to have a lot of difficulty refraining from acquiring the reward. That's true for everyone, and the issue is generally only avoided if your body has never learned the reward in the first place or if you've trained your body to forget the reward (and in both of these situations, as soon as your body learns to desire that reward, you're back at risk).
We need a solution that a) constrains the supply of hyper-caloric foods, which is not practical, because again, if it's available, good luck keeping it out of peoples' hands; or b) modifies either the foods or the consumers of said food so that the excessive calories are neutralized and the same neurological rewards are obtained.
"Catholic sex abuse cases[edit]
In some jurisdictions, RICO suits have been filed against Catholic dioceses, using anti-racketeering laws to prosecute the highers-up in the episcopacy for abuses committed by those under their authority[citation needed]. E.g. a Cleveland grand jury cleared two bishops of racketeering charges, finding that their mishandling of sex abuse claims did not amount to criminal racketeering[citation needed]. Notably, a similar suit was not filed against Cardinal Bernard Law, then Archbishop/Emeritus of Boston, prior to his assignment to Vatican City.[11][12] In 2016, RICO charges were considered for cover-ups in Pennsylvania.[13]"
So RICO can be used for both criminal and civil charges?