There used to be this notion that a person was innocent until proven guilty. And that if found guilty they were required to pay recompense. Maybe a monetary fine, maybe prison, maybe some combination.

Today there's an ever growing percentage of the population that not just desires, but demands that Government ensure no person can be guilty. That it be a realistic impossibility that doing harm can occur. This is the path to authoritarianism and fascism. There is no realistic way for Government to control to the level you seem to desire without eventually dictating exactly how companies operate. We're progressing in that direction.

And do you think that perhaps after 40 years in Congress, and in politics in other roles before that, That Pelosi may have amassed a great deal of power? Power that she can use to coerce, cajole, manipulate and pressure others with? To include ensuring that primary candidates that oppose her at minimum weakened, and that she is voted for as Speaker? We've seen it time and time again, unless you want to convince me that the majority of Democrats really did want Joe Biden as their candidate when there were multiple people in primary contention that were far more compelling. No, and apparatus of entrenched political interest groups pressured their option onto the stage and past the primary. A person that just so happens to have the same kind of history as Pelosi, and almost assuredly the same kinds of debts owed. I don't think it's remotely unthinkable that she has done and continues to do "favors" for rich and powerful people and groups. And that those groups have a vested interest in her remaining in the seat she holds. And this is not a Pelosi-specific conversation. It's not even a Democrat/Republican conversation. This is situation normal for national level politics, particularly for those members of Congress and the House that have been in office for decades. Congress has an approval rating of 21.8%, and a disapproval rating of 68.2%. Are we to believe that with ratings like that there aren't influences in play to keep key cogs in the machine? In Principle you're right. What should be true is that the best and brightest and most honest candidates will rise to the top and the People will recognize them and place trust in them to represent the interests of the People. The reality is that with rare exception the People are only given the choices that the powerful want them to have.

Sometimes Congress not acting is exactly what the American public needs. Measuring their effectiveness on their willingness and ability to pass laws is a flawed metric.

+1 skill in unintended irony.

So if you don't conform to the appropriate language use as deemed required by left-leaning to very left political activists then censorship is justifiable but not political.
Got it.

Regarding the bolded portion : Like competition enabled through true free markets? I'm not saying we have a truly free market. But that would be the ideal for real libertarians. But hell, we don't really have real libertarians anymore either so....

In other news, /. ends tradition of summaries and posts entire encyclopedia to front page.

As a federal worker I can tell you without question that most people there have a total disconnect between their job and its source of employee salaries. In every level of government from local city govt to the feds there's a ritual every fiscal quarter to find ways to spend what's left from the last budget. Managers encourage employees to come up with ways to get it done because if they don't spend every dime they got on the last budget they can't reasonably argue for more on the next. This is totally aside from the plethora of management that get a healthy portion of their self-worth from the size of their own little fiefdom within government. The more people, servers, vehicles, buildings, land, etc under their control, the more important they are in the eyes of themselves and the other bureaucrats. The more influence they have, the more likely they are for promotion, and on and on.

I've seen people get cash awards for literally doing nothing more than holding open a door.
I've seen groups buy thousands of dollars of office supplies, from paper to staplers to toner cartridges to pens, only to lock them in cabinets no one is allowed to access for years until all the stuff they already have an excess of is expended.
I've seen groups buy thousands of dollars worth of chairs that sit in storage rooms for years unused.
I've seen groups increase the size of their cubicles, not because the employees need or even want more space, but because it allows them to keep entire suites in federal buildings all to themselves, rather than share the previously unused space with other groups.
I've seen tens of thousands of dollars spent on brand new servers that sit in boxes never opened in computer rooms for years until their manufacturers warranty expires and they are "excessed".
I've seen managers refuse to turn off racks filled to overflowing with obsolete servers powered on in datacenters because "someone might need them someday", all the while sucking power because turning them off would cause people to ask why they are there at all but leaving them on with nice bright green lights causes not a single blink of an eye. .
(I've been paged in the middle of the night for more than one of those servers because a hard drive light was amber....)
I've seen staff members flown to conferences that have nothing to do with their job only because, "well, we have travel and training money in the budget, so lets send the Windows administrators to a seminar in Taos to learn about some software we don't have and don't intend to buy".

I've seen staff giddy over the fact that they were gifted meaningless trinkets in appreciation for all their hard work, and then look at me stupefied when I said, "You know you bought that right?
I've seen software purchases in the tens of thousands of dollars to do what 4 other pieces of software we already have do in our production environment already.



And yes, I've reported these things. They are ignored.

Short of punching someone in the nose it's damn near impossible to get fired from federal public service. Managers have to fully document every failure, document every attempt at modifying the behavior, and prove that by the end of a full one year period the employee refuses to adjust. Aside from proving that being really difficult, all the employee has to do is say, "I'm struggling, and I need help.", for which the manager is required to send them to training, counseling or whatever else seems appropriate, and the one year idiocy clock resets. All this while the federal worker's union crawls up the manager's ass with a flaming torch and pitchfork.

And all THAT assumes that the manager even tries to correct the behavior, which is my experience is somewhat uncommon. Instead they give the employee passing job evaluations that happen every quarter. To do otherwise would ensure that no other federal manager (who has access to every applicants federal work history records) will hire an employee with a documented history of being a waste of air, and so the current manager will never get rid of the dead weight. These fuckups don't leave federal service. They just get shuffled from one seat to another, usually getting a higher pay grade with each jump.

Does any of this sounds like it's done in the interest of tax payers?

If you haven't worked in government service and consciously chosen to observe and try to recognize the idiocy you really haven't the foggiest notion of how completely skewed the reality there is. Conversely I've worked for 3 different fortune 50 corporations. You pull these stunts there and you get fired, because companies that do it go bankrupt.

They can (and do) produce overly complex, marginally operable, and bloated frankensteins with unnecessary out-of-scope bells and whistles that are entirely outside what is necessary to complete the originally intended goal of the mission. They do so to pad political allies' pockets and to placate idiot Congressman with pet projects and asinine desires who would otherwise refuse to pass funding for the endeavor.

You, as the consumer, end up paying for Mercedes sports cars when in fact what was really needed was a solid reliable pickup truck at half the cost. Again, you as the consumer weren't given a say so, but you sure as hell paid the price.

The insinuation in your post is that the private sector screws consumers wherever possible. If that's true then why is Walmart one of the most successful retailers in the world? It's not because they produce high quality items at a low cost. It's because most consumers make the conscious choice to buy a cheap plastic piece of shit now for nearly nothing with the intention of replacing it later when it fails. That's a driving force in the market, and while it's possible to create much higher quality goods, it's a provable truth that only a fraction of the population is willing to pay what it's worth to manufacture. The alternative is to attempt to pass good intentioned but short sighted laws the force an arbitrary standard that jacks the costs of items beyond the reach of a substantial portion of the populace, who will invariably bitch and likely picket for more laws that essentially tell manufacturers to take a loss on selling the item because somehow toaster ovens are a "right". At least when the private sector is appropriately engaged in public jobs a failure of the project because of provable cut corners or negligence can result in non-payment to the vendor. But when NASA blows up a$125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because people didnt convert from feet to meters, you pay regardless.

Thats certainly the case with the Federal Govt. They don't care about prices. There's no profit motive for them, so they don't "lose" anything for bloated budgets. And after all, it's not their money....

And how does that make him different than any other politician? If your answer is that you like the news sources that condemn everything he does then, kettle meets pot.

No, I'm actually quite vocal about the things I think the Trump administration are doing wrong. I HATE their position on Imminent Domain. I'm not at all comfortable with tweeting from the hip in the middle of the night. I don't like the fact that they just say they are going to do "great" things but don't seem to have an actual plan at all.

See this is the difference between me and many. I call bullshit and hypocrisy where I see it, not just where it suits my political position. And in this particular case this is an obvious hack job story meant entirely to damage the President.

That's why I said "or whatever he is". I don't know what the truth is, so I qualified that statement. Pull your glasses out of Hillary's panties. I'm not a Trump fan. I didnt vote for him, and I think his administration has fucked up repeatedly because they, and he specifically are rookies at politics. But that doesnt mean I won't call out irrational and hyperbolic bullshit when I see it.

I see. So...

Obama = Good. Therefore missteps = poor judgement, but nothing to pursue.
Conversely,
Trump = Bad. Therefore missteps = "evidence" of criminal intent that require impeachment proceedings.

Yeah, perfectly balanced.

Manufactured?

Like the admitted Fast and Furious initiative?
Like the admitted IRS Targeting?
Like the admitted and provable lie that Benghazi was because of a video?
Like the admitted falsehood that "the cops acted stupidly"?
Like the admitted inappropriate conversation of the former President and husband of a subject of FBI investigation having a private meeting with the head of the FBI in a private jet hours before the FBI decides that despite significant findings of negligence that the investigation is not even being handed over to prosecutors?

Sorry, but the "manufactured" scandals all bore fruit. There was just a total lack of will by the press to report it let alone pursue it and instead used every opportunity to excuse it simply because it ran counter to their own political interests. The lack of public pressure that resulted allowed Democrats to quietly move along with little consequence. And apparently you bought into their bullshit hook, line and sinker.