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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:07PM
from the interesting-but-not-surprising dept.
from the interesting-but-not-surprising dept.
Three of the four major candidates for United States president have responded to America's Top 20 Presidential Science, Engineering, Technology, Health and Environmental Questions. The nonprofit advocacy group ScienceDebate.org has posted their responses online. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Jill Stein had all responded as of press time, and the group was awaiting responses from Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.
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U.S. Presidential Candidates Answer ScienceDebate 2016 Questions
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Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:17PM
1) Stein is not a major party candidate.
2) Only Hillary has a pro-science stance. Too bad she never mentions nuclear energy as a responsible source for clean energy
3) Gary Johnson could be pro-science but his lack of a response to this questionnaire doesn't let us know. Considering this is the third place I've seen the results of the questionnaire posted since last night, it does not bode well for him in the minds of the public. Some of the snarky comments wrt Johnson I've seen are that he is too spaced out on weed, or he's too busy googling for answers to the questions. So for people wondering if Johnson is the small government pro-science alternate to Hillary a la Jon Huntsman, or another climate change denier a la Ted Cruz, nobody knows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:30PM
And Trump and all his supporters think science has an unfair lib'rul bias.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:46PM
2) Only Hillary has a pro-science stance. Too bad she never mentions nuclear energy as a responsible source for clean energy
Maybe she doesn't include nuclear energy because she has some insight about the character of the people appointed to be the responsible party for nuclear energy.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:56PM
I guess this problem is just insurmountable. There's nothing that a president could possibly propose to congress to change things. There is nobody on the planet [telegraph.co.uk] that can do this right. No technology [wikipedia.org] available that would be a better design. It doesn't matter who the secretary of energy is. There is no combination of regulation and public investment [scmp.com] that could possibly make it work [fortune.com]. Oh well. We should just give up [wired.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:06PM
Thorium reactors sound great.
But we've got such little practical experience with them that promoting them as any kind of solution to the risks of modern nuke design is not good policy. Explore, experiment, totally. But we are far from them being a viable option.
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:04PM
I understand that. I guess it's a good thing that China is doing that. Americans have become cowards who jump at their own shadow while China moves the state of the art forward.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:29PM
With all due respect I think it has more to do with the protestors in the USA being seen as a great yellow journalism topic to be encouraged via propaganda then the grandstanding politicians weigh in as if they are smart enough to say anything vs in China they just shoot the protestors.
Naturally in the USA the protestors are a major PR problem, and in China they merely slightly drive ammunition sales.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:03PM
It's actually more that China doesn't give a crap about pollution or consequences for the average citizen, since all projects like this would perforce be NIMBY for the CCP. That is, they are never affected by the consequences of their actions.
BTW the CCP's vision for the future is a horribly outdated caricature of 1930's modernism. As in, discredited in every other industrialized country with the possible exception of Russia.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:26PM
While the US's CEOs' vision for the future is too rarely past the next few quarters, and hardly ever as far as 5 years.
"When will a thorium reactor turn a profit? What's the ROI, and how will it affect the stock? Not interested."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:30PM
thorium reactors can be made into bombs. It is not as safe as you think.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:16PM
You know what else can be made into bombs? Bombs.
The USA makes god knows how many of those per year and no one seems to care about that.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:00PM
Not easily. Liquid fueled thorium reactors have a very tight neutron economy. To make a bomb you'll have to shutdown a reactor, or at least spend many years making one. There are much more practical ways to make a bomb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:10PM
So can fertilizer.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:47PM
The problem is, everywhere we've looked carefully, whether the nuclear reactors are being run by a government or by a private company, unsafe procedures and shortcuts are taken. The design of the reactors could be improved, but that's not the basic problem The problem is the stuff is long-term dangerous, so it needs to be handled properly, but people aren't designed to properly evaluate long term risks. (They don't even do that well on short term risks, consider the popularity of betting on horse races or slot machines.)
With nuclear reactors, many "short cuts" will be safe 99 times out of 100, but the cost of it being unsafe is such that taking that short cut is an extremely unwise decision. However much of the cost of failure is not borne by those operating the plant, but is instead borne by the populace living around it. Or down stream from it, if it's on a river. So while it's true that even for those operating the plant the short cut is a bad decision, it's doesn't appear nearly as bad to them as it actually is.
If the plants were properly operated, and waste disposed of correctly (i.e. safely), then nuclear plants would be a good idea. As things are, however, it's usually a bad idea. (There are circumstances where they provide advantages that nothing else will match, and in some of those cases even their real costs [including appropriately discounted risks as a part of the costs] don't raise the cost to where they should not be used.)
OTOH, even under current operating conditions nuclear power is probably safer than coal.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday September 15 2016, @12:56AM
Under current operating conditions it's *certainly* safer than coal. It may even be safer than solar:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html [nextbigfuture.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:26PM
Nailed it in one.
The problem with nuclear (nook-you-lar) energy safety is not a problem with technology. It is a problem with corner cutting executive bonus maximizing MBAs or bureaucrats being in charge of a nuclear power plant.
The profit motive needs to be replaced by a safety motive. That safety motive probably exists to most levels of the power plant personnel. Except those at the very top. Safety is not a budget item on a spreadsheet that you can tweak.
The cost of an accident needs to be considered so unthinkable that it simply cannot be allowed to happen. Maybe there needs to be some kind of unthinkable personal consequences to those at the top if an accident is determined to be due to poor management.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:33PM
And, not just the nuclear industry:
my wife is an educational assistant with a public school board. On paper, a lot of the kids with special needs have one-to-one workers, but in reality don't.
There is one case she knows of where one person has 3 wheelchair bound kids on the second floor of the school.
If there is a fire, they are not supposed to use the elevator, so ONE person is in charge of getting 3 non-walking kids down the stairs and out the door.
And nothing will change unless those above are held responsible (and, of course, until something 'bad' happens...): then, maybe, something will change.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye: here's hoping it's the eye of someone in charge.
I told my wife she should start documenting EVERYTHING and COVER HER ASS.
also suggested reaching out to a news agency 'whistle blowing' person/website.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:39PM
Ya mean like requiring the MBA-types at the top of the company and their families to live right next door to the power plant? I think it may be worth trying.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:41PM
Problem is the MBA types would still take risks. It's like the scorpion on the back of a fox being transported across the river.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:34PM
For every MBA encouraging taking shortcuts, there's an engineer and\or an independent contractor signing off plans & work they know to be unsafe and a dozen workers cutting short their end-of-shift inspections to rush home.
You want safety at work places? Put a camera at every work stations and stream it to the open internet. Not to a manager's office or a select group of government safety inspectors that can be bribed. Better yet, set-up a bounty system where a citizen can send a complaint with a time stamped picture and get rewarded financially from the offending party.
Make industry go through the same 1984 style surveillance motorists went through, and I assure that just like how people used to run at red lights and then stopped because of traffic cameras, so will industry stop cutting corners and paying bribes.
You can't change human nature. You can place enough incentives, checks & balances in oppositions to corruption and let greed take it's natural course.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:18PM
I doubt the people at the lower levels want to sign off on work they know to be unsafe.
So why would that happen?
Because they are pressured or coerced into doing so. And who is pressuring the 'grunts' to sign off on unsafe work? Those up the chain of penny pinching management that's who.
If you don't sign off on this unsafe work, I'll replace you with someone who will.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday September 16 2016, @12:08AM
I doubt the people at the lower levels want to sign off on work they know to be unsafe.
They do it all the time. It's a way to look like a team player. It's a way to get off inspections and cut the shift short.
High and low, humans are stupid. Those at the top just get more chances to REALLY fuck things up.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 16 2016, @07:28PM
> It's a way to look like a team player.
That just repeats what I said about: Because they are pressured or coerced into doing so.
Although it may be their direct co-workers.
The culture needs to be that if it isn't safe, being a team player is to report it and not sign off on it. It's only the MBAs that want it to get done NOW. When the shift ends, the shift ends. Whether something you are inspecting is safe or not should not affect an inspector's shift.
Inspectors of all people would not sign off on unsafe work unless under pressure to do so.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday September 15 2016, @09:14PM
You want safety at work places? Put a camera at every work stations and stream it to the open internet. Not to a manager's office or a select group of government safety inspectors that can be bribed....You can't change human nature. You can place enough incentives, checks & balances in oppositions to corruption and let greed take it's natural course.
Then you get complaints and voter outrage about government regulations hurting business...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 16 2016, @08:36AM
You are today's winner of the Internet for posting the correct answer to one of the world's great problems. I'd give you a donut but I don't have any.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by fadrian on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:03PM
As for your point (2), the entire answer to question 11 in TFA is about nuclear energy and where it fits into an overall energy strategy. I assume the remainder of your points are as well informed.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:43PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:25PM
So she does mention it; she just doesn't pledge the exact platform you wanted.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:12PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:20PM
Yeah, but if you read Clinton's response carefully she's at no point promising to make the construction of new nuclear capacity part of her renewable energy plan.
What part of "...increase investment in the research, development and deployment of advanced nuclear power." is hard to follow?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:11PM
What part of "...increase investment in the research, development and deployment of advanced nuclear power." is hard to follow?
I imagine it is the part where it is Hillary Clinton saying it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:24PM
It's standard fare for an election campaign; give vague statements that hopefully don't get anyone (and especially the NIMBYs and special interest groups) up in arms, but have enough wiggle room that people will read into it what they want to hear while allowing you to deliver much less - or nothing - and still claim to have ticked the box. The stuff that leaves almost no room for doubt; that's what they actually hope to do, everything else is a "nice to have" at best, or just a grab for votes.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:41PM
Lame. Just lame. You point out a very specific point that she didn't say anything about it, to which you are proven absolutely incorrect. Now you're just embarrassing yourself trying to weasel out of being wrong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dogeball on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:15PM
Regarding point 1, USA needs to break out of its two-party duopoly, which permits the Republicans and Democrats to collude on a wide range of issues while offering only an illusion of choice; "what flavour would you like your military-industrial complex? Religious or Corporate?".
So even though it is true that Stein is polling at 3%, dismissing her isn't warranted for two reasons:
1) Having stable 3rd party candidates is healthy and should be encouraged, and it is only through media exposure that their support can grow
2) The green party are considered by many to have cost Al Gore the presidency. A minor party needs to be taken seriously when they have enough support to swing elections.
I consider it unfortunate that many American's response to 2000 was to shy away from voting 3rd party, rather than recognise that they had seized a portion of power away from the main parties by letting it be known that their votes could not be taken for granted. It is vital to democracy that minority views are heard and acted upon by government, else you end up with a cycle of increasing tyranny and lawlessness.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:23PM
Allow a very different [wikipedia.org] third party to demonstrate how to replace an establishment party:
Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the briefly popular Know Nothing Party. The main cause was opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas. The Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. The first public meeting of the general "anti-Nebraska" movement where the name "Republican" was suggested for a new anti-slavery party was held on March 20, 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. The name was partly chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party.
The first official party convention was held on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan. By 1858, the Republicans dominated nearly all Northern states.The Republican Party first came to power in the elections of 1860 when it won control of both houses of Congress and its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was elected president.
Of course, that's only half the story. One of the establishment parties [wikipedia.org] was crumbling.
After 1850, the Whigs were unable to deal with the slavery issue. Their southern leaders nearly all owned slaves. The northeastern Whigs, led by Daniel Webster, represented businessmen who loved national unity and a national market but cared little about slavery one way or another....
The election of 1852 marked the beginning of the end for the Whigs.... The Whig Party's 1852 convention in New York City saw the historic meeting between Alvan E. Bovay and The New York Tribune's Horace Greeley, a meeting that led to correspondence between the men as the early Republican Party meetings in 1854 began to take place.
Attempting to repeat their earlier successes, the Whigs nominated popular General Winfield Scott, who lost decisively to the Democrats' Franklin Pierce. The Democrats won the election by a large margin: Pierce won 27 of the 31 states, including Scott's home state of New Jersey. Whig Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming, "We are slain. The party is dead—dead—dead!" Increasingly, politicians realized that the party was a loser.
In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs joined the Know-Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called "corrupt" Irish and German immigrants.... [Breaking up long paragraph.]
Historians estimate that, in the South in 1856, former Whig Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters when he ran as the American Party candidate. He won only 13% of the northern vote, though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column.... After 1856 virtually no Whig organization remained at the regional level. Twenty-six states sent 150 delegates to the last national convention in September 1856. The convention met for only two days and on the second day (and only ballot) quickly nominated Fillmore for president, who had already been nominated for president by the Know Nothing party.... Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the Opposition Party for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LaminatorX on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:46PM
The rise of the original Republicans isn't really comparable to what we have today though. The key thing that allowed Lincoln to triumph in 1860 was that not only had the Whigs ceased to exist and been replaced by the Republicans and the Constitutional Unionists, but the Democratic Party was also fractured, held two conventions, and fielded two rival claimants as the Democratic Party nominee. It was a four-way race with no unified establishment party on the field.
No current political movement or issue is capable of fracturing one of the current parties to that extreme extent, let alone both of them at once. A split in the Republican party between the Trump-ists & the Koch-Brothers-and-Bible-Thumpers coalition might happen, you can see that in the in-fighting between the House Freedom Caucus and Speaker Ryan.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:03PM
No current political movement or issue is capable of fracturing one of the current parties
Let me start by reminding everyone that, this election cycle, The Big 2 have offered us the most-disliked candidates in USA history.
...and some good news: The Green Party has qualified for the ballot in 44 states (plus DC) and there are 3 more states that will count your write-in vote for Dr. Stein.
Graphic here [jill2016.com]
I recommend View + No Style (Blinking text)
If you want to hear Jill speaking, Eric Mann interviewed her this month.
The interview is from 3:30 - 38:00 (64 percent of the download) [kpfk.org]
From 38:00 - 46:30 is Eric commenting (80 percent)
46:30 - 50:00 KPFK stuff & L.A. Stuff
50:00 - 54:00 is about NYPD & NYC's pseudo-Progressive mayor
54:00 - 55:00 Nina Simone sings
.
For many decades, most USAians have gotten their "information" via TeeVee.
As long as access to privately-owned media remains expensive, there is minimal chance for a non-Red and non-Blue candidate to get his message out that way.
We should mention that, before Reagan, TV and radio stations were considered to be held by private parties "in the public interest" and they were required to present programming which was balanced and served to inform The People by airing differing views.
You won't hear that on Lamestream Media these days.
Amusingly, there's a "public" radio station in SoCal that has a program they call Left, Right, & Center. [archive.li][1]
I tried to listen to it and what I heard was Clearly-Right, Very-Right, and Extremely-Right.
Ralph Nader notes that 2 Reactionaries have gotten more air time than a whole slew of thinkers whose ideas you *should* be hearing. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]
[1] The S/N comments engine still NEEDLESSLY fucks with punctuation in URLs.
.
What is needed to straighten out the USA is a constitutional amendment.
Some folks advocate for one that says "Money is not speech and corporations are not people".
I recently heard Ralph Nader (who has run numerous times as a 3rd-party candidate) specify a better amendment:
All public elections will be publicly financed.
Playing field leveled.
.
Additionally, Thomas Jefferson advocated a constitutional convention once a generation to review|upgrade|replace that document.
Getting rid of vestiges of 18th Century Plutocracy such as the Electoral College seems apt.
A ranked voting ballot and uniform voting|registration[2] laws across all the states also seem like great ideas.
Making Election Day a national holiday seems intelligent.
A bunch of other countries have a bunch of great ideas.
USA needs to pay attention.
[2] Even better: No registration at all; you're automatically registered on your 18th birthday.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:01AM
No current political movement or issue is capable of fracturing one of the current parties to that extreme extent, let alone both of them at once.
Right now maybe. But both parties are fracturing.
A split in the Republican party between the Trump-ists & the Koch-Brothers-and-Bible-Thumpers coalition might happen
I'd say the most significant split is between those members with political or economic power ("establishment") and their marginalized followers. Same goes for the Democrat party side.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:40PM
Most voters can only think in the short-term, so all they seem to be willing to do is vote for 'the lesser of two evils'. But decades and centuries of a corrupt duopoly will do far more harm than several 'greater evils' getting into power, and that is why most of our effort must be focused on changing our voting system, and the best way to do this appears to be to terrify the two parties by using the perception of the spoiler effect as a weapon. Unless someone thinks that mindlessly voting for the 'lesser evil' in every election will somehow be more likely to motivate The One Party into giving up its monopoly on power, but I would be very interested in how that would happen.
But terrified and irrational people (most voters) will probably not do this in the foreseeable future, as they are too focused on what is happening directly in front of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:23PM
if you think hillary stayed up all night with her "summertime pneumonia" writing those responses you are delusional. i doubt that any of them wrote their responses. that might also explain johnson's lack of a response. maybe he has less staff for this purpose.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:46PM
1. Hillary: Give me nukes, give me nukes, give me nukes 'til I puke! (apologies to the memory of Gilda Radner)
2. The Donald: Stop plate tectonics!
3. Jill: Save the whales!
4. Gary: ????
5. Profit!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:29PM
1. Hillary: Give me nukes, give me nukes, give me nukes 'til I puke! (apologies to the memory of Gilda Radner)
Please do give me more of the safest, C02-free energy on the planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:14PM
Jill: Make sure EVERYBODY has a job and is contributing to the economy (The Multiplier Effect).
When businesses aren't hiring, build|expand public infrastructure[1].
Make sure that everything you do WRT job creation is GREEN.
[1] With interest rates at historic lows, USA should have been doing this since The Bush-Obama Depression started.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:29PM
Parent has no sense of humor
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:34PM
When I see that idiotic "-- OriginalOwner" link at the bottom of the post, I know that I can trust the comment to be avidly socialist and entirely humorless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @11:18PM
When I see that idiotic "-- OriginalOwner" link at the bottom of the post, I know that I can trust the comment to be avidly socialist and entirely humorless.
I'm perfectly fine with the former, but the latter is just so wrong. Sigh.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:02PM
1) Stein is currently polling at about 4%. That doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that's about 10 million people. She's the 4th most popular presidential candidate right now, so give her some respect.
2) Both Clinton and Stein are obviously pro-science.
3) I agree Johnson needs to do better as a candidate. He really missed an opportunity with "What is Aleppo?".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @08:42PM
3) I agree Johnson needs to do better as a candidate. He really missed an opportunity with "What is Aleppo?".
He could've at least gave some vague politician answer instead of outright demonstrating his ignorance. Or he could have handled the aftermath by saying that what happens in some third world shithole is less important than the violence and issues back home, indicating that he's opposed to preemptive warfare.
But he, like you said, wasted the opportunity. It's frustrating that Johnson seems to squishy and bumbling in an election year where he could probably get a significant amount of votes by third party standards if he wasn't handling everything so ineptly. It's almost like he doesn't think about anything or do any preparation whatsoever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:22PM
There are 43 million USAians with student debt (over $1 trillion in total).
Dr. Stein advocates zeroing-out that and adopting the Scandinavian model.
If all those folks would simply vote in their own self-interest, they'd vote for Jill.
Instant plurality?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:56PM
One of the basic facts about US politics is that most people do not vote for their own self-interest. Fredrich Engels (y'know, Karl Marx's homie) observed over a century ago that all the US needed to do to turn itself into a socialist nation was for the working classes to realize they were the majority and vote for their self-interest. So you can be darned sure that those with power have done everything they can to prevent that outcome.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:48AM
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury."
--atrrib. Tytler et al.
http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html [lorencollins.net]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @10:49PM
I would be in favor of free higher education on the condition that we require the colleges and universities that qualify to have extremely high standards; nothing like what we have now where just about any know-nothing loser who has just enough motivation to get through a few years of schooling can get a degree. The gap between the top schools and the mediocre and worst schools should not be so tremendously large.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @01:35AM
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:30PM
Her response to question 11:
Meeting the climate challenge is too important to limit the tools available in this fight. Nuclear power – which accounts for more than 60 percent of our zero carbon power generation today – is one of those tools. I will work to ensure that the climate benefits of our existing nuclear power plants that are safe to operate are appropriately valued and increase investment in the research, development and deployment of advanced nuclear power. At the same time, we must continue to invest in the security of our nuclear materials at home, and improve coordination between federal, state, and local authorities. We must also seek to reduce the amount of nuclear material worldwide – working with other countries so minimize the use of weapons-grade material for civil nuclear programs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:40PM
> 2) Only Hillary has a pro-science stance. Too bad she never mentions nuclear energy as a responsible source for clean energy
Did we read the same article? Question 11 is on nuclear power. You might try re-reading the first two sentences of her answer.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:56PM
The major candidates are
1) Trump
2) Clinton
Then a distant third would be some safe senator from one of the parties - chosen if the two major candidates drop out of the race/die/are assassinated.