[quote][b]Fred III[/b] - @Millionexus: The illegal immigrants don't go to the polling places, and they need have no fear of La Migra or any other law enforcement. Their names are obtained by community organizers, a mailing address is assigned, and the mail-in ballots are received at that address by party workers, filled in and mailed for the illegals, who have no idea that they are "voting." If 10,000 such mail-in votes are processed, and it is "illegal," but there is no practical consequence, it is a good party investment, no? Once in a while a few scapegoats will be sacrificed (like the four in the news today) to appease the naively conscientious public. So maybe only 9,996 of the illegal "proxy" votes are countable. That's still a win. And, as set forth in Alinsky's manual, it is all about winning, isn't it?
[/quote]

I'm sure you have proof of your assertions, and you simply failed to mention them.

[quote][b]Athens_Rottweiler[/b] - They are using the IRS tax code. If they didn't want people using tax loopholes, get rid of the loopholes. I think the whole tax code needs to be replaced with the Fair Tax. You only pay tax on goods you buy. Rich people buy a lot more things than poor people, so the rich would pay more of the taxes.
[/quote]

Fair Tax isn't fair at all. It is a regressive tax system, and rich people don't pay as much of their total income in taxes as the middle class under the Fair Tax system.

There is a reason the majority of economists are against the idea.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jan/23/adding-fairtax/

http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201104220008

http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html

There were 13 cases of voter fraud between 2000 and 2010, and in a 6 of those cases, the individual HAD AN ID.

The Koch Brothers are the ones behind the conspiracy theory with voter fraud. It simply doesn't occur often enough for it to matter. We'd spend millions on something like that to catch an average of 1 person per state every 50 years.

The GOP is going off about something that simply isn't a problem. Illegal immigrants don't vote because they are AFRAID OF THE POLLING PLACES BEING MANNED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT.

Not a difficult concept.

[quote][b]nancy30683[/b] - @mpd0.59: Thanks for the correction. Perhaps I should have said citizenship is a requirement for obtaining Social Security benefits. Or is it?
[/quote]

@nancy30683: ...What, exactly, do you think the primary function of a Social Security number is for madam? Why do you think we have those?

@Long Sufferer:

So I'll make this easy for you, but I don't have any diagrams.

Why conservatives should care about tax evasion.

The government is owed money. When that money doesn't go to the government, it means that in order for government to function, it has to raise taxes or cut spending. Well, we're sorta at a point where if we don't actually start paying our debt we're going to be in a pickle a few years from now. You can't cut your way to budget neutrality if you continually cit taxes as well, so we really need to find a way to make more money without taxing people more.

Under conservative logic (which I don't really agree with in this case; maybe in some ways) when you lower taxes, you encourage job creation. Getting most of the money the government is owed would create a situation in which we could lower taxes and all sides could agree with it. We'd stop as much of the evasion as we could, and cut taxes while making sure we're still at a budget surplus.

The problem with tax evasion, however, is a difficult one, and one we need other countries' help with, (the U.K., for example, because they have control of the Cayman Islands, which is a notorious tax haven.) We have to reduce the number of tax havens and keep our our money in the U.S.

You're starting to see the relationship here?

[quote][b]Long Sufferer[/b] - It really warms the heart to hear that world leaders are more worried about ways to squeeze money from their populations than they are about creating job growth.
[/quote]

A...a...GLOBAL approach to creating jobs?

How very unconservative of you!

And squeezing money from populations? If the U.S. got 50% of the money it is owed back from tax evasion every year, we would have a budget surplus. That's not a made up number either. We lose nearly three times the current budget deficit in tax evasion every year. This is a legitimate topic for the G-8 to talk about.

Miss Utah was a trainwreck.

[quote][b]BAMABOYBEACHNUT[/b] - I remember a whispered comment by Ohomo to a Russian big wheel[/quote]

Do you have some sort of need for the President to be homosexual? I mean, he is a good enough looking man, but if the first thing you want to insult the President with is a sexuality joke, it makes me think you're uncreative...and also possibly hoping that he is.

Your entire comment, for that matter, is like a pundit's wet dream from 3 years ago. Some idiot said it, then some idiot repeated it, and now because you watch Fox News you think it is true. Well, it isn't.

The National Enquirer once said that the President was gay and that Michelle Obama vowed to end her husband's gay lover. I'm guessing that's where you get your news from when your cable is out in Fantasyland.

@Chief SS: It disenfranchises more voters than it stops fraudulent voters, for one. Look up cases of voter fraud. (Hint: There are very, very few cases of voter fraud in this country.) We don't have illegals coming to polling places because they are too intimidated of going to a place where there are a lot of people -and- law enforcement. I don't get why people don't think of that.

Requiring people to -have- a form of identification -also- indirectly imposes a poll tax.

Laws don't work based on the majority of people (as we similarly found in the universal background checks bill failing.) People see what their representatives do, and then they like it or they don't. Until Constitutional Amendments are involved, the voters have no direct say in what a given legislature does.

If someone could find a way to Constitutionally stop voting fraud (which isn't a problem now, but -could- be in the future I suppose) WITHOUT disenfranchising voters, we could have a plan, but as such, no such plan exists.

[quote][b]snarkydude[/b] - Hey, Academy Sports! How about an east side location???
[/quote]

If you look at how spread Academy Sports stores are right now, I really doubt that Athens will get a second one. The one on Atlanta Highway is already going to start losing some sales from a couple of new Academys that are somewhat nearby.

[quote][b]TeeWee[/b] - @Millionexus:
I understand, I have some property and interests in Kansas and in the Topeka area. Westboro is really more of a family. The vast number of church members are all apart of one family. Do they preach Hate? The 'Hate' word is on at least one of their signs. I'm a little torn over allowing Hate to be preached. We can't yell 'Fire' in a theatre, can we allow hate to be yelled? Then again, the media and government tees to tar TEA party people as a hate group. Times they are a changin'.
[/quote]

Hate can be preached all anyone wants. The 1st amendment keeps people safe from real government retribution. It doesn't make people immune from other people exercising their 1st amendment rights too though, including government officials. I can call the Westboro Baptist Church a bunch of bigoted useless people, and I think that's a far bigger insult than anything they say about me. So much for proportional responses.

[quote][b]Save our Republic[/b] -
Snowden accepted a and worked in a position dealing with our National Secrets. While in that position, he decided upon himself that he didn't like the US Government's use of what I can thus see as legally obtained warrants. So instead of using his chain of authority, he decided for himself to SABOTAGE our nations Intelligence abilities by notifying our nations enemies of our abilities and methods.
I am not defending the Governments position. At the moment, I am neutral until I know more.
But I know that the information was gathered legally under due process of law. When you accept a position as a laborer of our government, and you use that position to sabotage our government and provide aid to our enemies, you are a traitor.
[/quote]

All court rulings, including warrants, are public. Find me the warrant that allows for government surveillance on specific people and we'll talk. That's part of the controversy here.

There's no evidence whatsoever that any leak has actually harmed the nation's security in a definable way. All the speculation about what this could cause is hypothetical and abstract.

Also, anyone who is against universal background checks on guns, but is for surveillance is a hypocrite. Plain and simple.

I'm going to make a couple observations, one of which is shallow.

- Edward Snowden is cute.

- Really odd how the split is here in terms of opinion. You have some conservatives and liberals calling Snowden a traitor, and you have some who think he's a hero, and for once it isn't simply partisan.

There are four different groups here in terms of public opinion.

1. Those who are for surveillance because they believe it makes us safer, and are willing to lose the privacy over it. These people agreed with wiretapping both under the W. Bush administration -and- the Obama administration.

2. Those who are against surveillance because they believe it is an invasion of privacy and they don't think the potential added defense is worth it. These people were critical of both the W. Bush administration and the Obama administration.

3. Those who were for surveillance under the W. Bush administration, but are now against it because the Obama administration is doing it and they don't trust the Obama administration.

4. Those who were against surveillance under the W. Bush administration, but are now for it because they trust the Obama administration more.

Groups 1 and 2 are legitimate if you ask me. Anyone who joined groups 1 and 2 -after- the fact for non-partisan reasons are -also- legitimate.

Groups 3 and 4 are NOT legitimate. If you somehow believe that government isn't capable of doing the correct thing or incorrect thing under both parties, you're wrong, you're a sheep who believes certain pundits WAY too much, and you are more toxic for our country than any sort of leak is. Partisanship will fold this country well before any sort of security leak will, mostly because we aren't even CAPABLE of responding to a security leak when we are so foolishly divided.

People from groups 1 and 2 should ask people who suddenly agree with them from groups 3 and 4 where the hell they've been, and why they are so partisan.

[quote][b]kayron4[/b] - @Turbo: True, but my point is do teens ever take any medication's warnings or precautions into consideration?
[/quote]

Do adults? Most don't, period. There's actually an argument here where a teen would possibly be -more- intimidated to not take the pill than an adult would, simply because they might be scared about it in the first place.

[quote][b]kayron4[/b] - @Shalmaneser: No, I don't think many 15 yr olds are equipt to make choices as far as medication is concerned. One of my jobs as a parent is to decide what medication is safe for my child. Teenagers don't read package inserts, teenagers don't comprehend long term consequences, and teenagers live by "it will never happen to me"
[/quote]

If a teenager is capable of making a decision to have sex, (which, pregnancy has FAR more risks than the morning-after pill) then they are capable of making a decision to take the morning-after pill.

Obviously, if a teen has to do this, the parents failed, and we're obviously hoping that the morning-after pill is rare in its use, but if it makes abortion more rare, I'm all for it. (I'm personally pro-life, but pro-choice for everyone else.)

[quote][b]Save our Republic[/b] - Meh.... It's a State matter anyway!
Let the States regulate it as they see fit!
[/quote]

The 'States rights' argument only works if state laws can't be easily circumvented, and in this case they definitely can be. We can claim that states have the right to create laws about this, but when the next state over has a different law, it really doesn't work.

[quote][b]TeeWee[/b] - @Arnold Friend:
Years ago when I was a young accident investigator, I was called to the scene of a minor Personal Injury collision. The head of the local KKK kicked as a car being driven by a black person drove by, His boot got caught in the car's rear bumper. His ankle received a very bad sprain and he had a little road rash from being dragged a few feet. The Grand Klegal or whatever was transported to the local hospital and ended up in the OR. The Doctor at the OR that day was a black man. The KKK guy was very subdued and it wasn't until he was wheeled down to X-Ray that I told the Doc. who his patient was. He smiled and gave the guy the best treatment possible. We both thought karma had a lot to do with the situation the KKK guy found himself in.
[/quote]

Yup. The ACLU has the Hippocratic Oath part down too. That's a great analogy.

[quote][b]TeeWee[/b] - @mpd0.59:
I understand the mission of the ACLU. I know they defended the Klan, I also believe they offered assistance to Limbaugh but I can't remember the issue. Their history does show them taking on more of what could be considered "liberal" causes but they do on occasions come to the aid of more universal issues. Let's wish them well in this case.
[/quote]

The ACLU is liberal with a lower-case L, and honestly it is easy to get behind them. When government at any level for whatever reason, violates the 1st and 4th amendments, you have the ACLU, and the ACLU defends everyone.

That includes the Westboro Baptist Church. Now, I'm an openly gay man, but when I agree with the ACLU defending the Westboro Baptist Church's right to protest homosexuality, you know that the ACLU has it right. The law has to work for everyone, not just the people we agree with.

[quote][b]mpd0.59[/b] - Great idea, but Republicans won't like it because it would likely increase overall voter turnout and be more reflective of the will of the people.
[/quote]

I don't know if I'd be so partisan about it, but you're right. Early voting does tend to provide a more accurate representation of the will of the people.

It does tend to favor Democrats too, by all accounts.

I think it was less of an offer and more of a suggestion, honestly, just based on what I heard about the meeting.

[quote][b]Kerishina[/b] -
Exactly.
@Millionexus: This 'political mumbo jumbo' is the Constitution.
The political mumbo jumbo is how long this insanity plea will be allowed to stand. If he's institutionalized and rehabilitated, then realized back into the public 20 years from now, just has not be served.
Or worse... with all of the loop holes in the justice system, this man could go free on an technicality.
I'm well aware that our constitution protects those innocent until proven guilty, but there is no innocence in this man.
[/quote]

You'd have to get a jury of his peers to believe that, and they won't. The insanity plea is typically a really bad defense, just based on numbers. It hardly ever works.

Don't confuse innocent until proven guilty with guilty to the public eye. Yeah, I think he's guilty and he's not insane, but he deserves the same substantive due process that I do.

[quote][b]GroversMill[/b] - "He said personal research has shown communities having success on cutting down on the use of the bags, typically seen at grocers after checkout, with the surcharge."
My personal research has shown that A-C's decline into a more-or-less forgettable episode of Portlandia is nearly complete. [/quote]

Then run and change it? Seriously. More voices = more representation.

[quote][b]GroversMill[/b] - So...A-C has all its other problems sufficiently addressed so that the only thing left to worry about is...business' use of plastic, recyclable bags?
Sure it does. [/quote]

Really poor argument.

The idea that the government can't multitask is pretty ill-conceived by any stretch of the imagination. The same government that represents you also represents me, and I go to the occasional council meeting just to make sure. I think it is important, but you don't. If you have a problem, perhaps you should come to more of these meetings.

[quote][b]Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass[/b] -
OK, Haven't got a white bag in years - I don't buy enough at the C-store to need one, and bring my own most other places.
Do you have any statistics on bag re-use in ACC? I know at least one store I shop at rewards me for not using a new bag. I see plenty of folks bringing bags into all kinds of stores. In fact, Big Dog pulls dozens of tires out of the river each year - maybe we need to ban new tires, too?
Maybe we could take some of that 60 cents a month people pay for trash education each month, and deliver reusable bags to ACC citizens. In a year, every citizen could have all the bags they need. Wouldn't take any extra tax, and you could have Suki Janssen give random rewards out of Jim Corley's slush fund when she sees shoppers use one. That would encourage use of the bags.
I'm kidding, but not really. Plenty of ways to get people to use bags without adding another tax or fee or punishment....
[/quote]

Aldi charges customers for bags. That's one example I know of.

As for statistics, I don't think any sort of statistics like that exist for Athens-Clarke County specifically. I know Kroger and Publix keep track of how many bags they use vs. how many products they sell, but that's on a corporate level I believe. They've been training baggers for years to organize bags in a way where they are stable yet they still have a lot of items per bag.