StrangeSox

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Mar 18, 2014 -> 06:04 AM) He's good friends with Carl Sagan's widow, and they've been working for quite a while to do this. He said he wanted to do something worthwhile with some of his disposable income. In case anyone doesn't get the reference, Carl Sagan wrote and starred in the original Cosmos back in the 1980's. Per the wiki, it's the most widely watched PBS show ever produced. Sort of surprised that ss2k5 had never heard of it before.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 11:55 AM) There are many studies which show the adverse effects of marijuana. They are much worse the tobacco for cardiovascular risks. You can pretty much guarantee a heart attack if you smoke it regularly. I posted some articles in another thread. One of the paradoxical effects is the TCH and the anti-inflammatory capabilities. It is prescribed for some inflammatory conditions such as glaucoma for this reason. The other side is that any other injury will take much longer to heal or won't heal due to the inflammatory process not occurring. So in the short term and long term it will have an impact on your health, which in turn may have an effect on the long term health care of the state. Rock pointed out that in Colorado they're seeing a majority of the sales in edible THC. Is the comparison with tobacco done on a equivalent-amount-smoked basis or a comparison of how much tobacco someone actually uses versus how much pot someone actually uses? People might smoke a pack of cigarettes a day or every couple of days, but they're not going to go through 20 joints that fast. edit: I can't imagine that the long-term health effects of THC, especially if its ingested instead of smoked, are anywhere near as bad as the long-term health effects of alcohol.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 11:26 AM) I guess that's why I'll likely never run for any office. I would puke just thinking about putting a D or R next to my name. Check you local offices/positions. Many of them can be non-partisan races.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 11:21 AM) You'll never get a vote without a massive PR campaign to get your name out there. People vote party when they don't know names. This was, honestly, part of the problem in getting any information about my local races. I had four or five different candidates for mayor (our old mayor was retiring), it was a non-partisan election and the most information I could find about any of them was that they had all served on city council in the past and all wanted to make the city great!! Awesome, I have no reason to vote for or against any of you. Partisan judge elections seem wrong as hell though.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 11:16 AM) If I were running for local office, unless the locale is overwhelmingly partisan and I am running for that particular party, I would never put my party on my literature. Just my name and my platform and let those speak for themselves. I'd also hesitate to put my name alongside candidates for other offices. Just because we're in the same party doesn't mean those other candidates aren't corrupt assholes. It really depends where you're running. None of my local races in April 2013 were partisan, but the office that my FIL ran for (not in my area) pretty much always is. One of the benefits, aside from the immediate party brand recognition, is campaign infrastructure. My FIL going on his own would have had little money and maybe a dozen volunteers between family and friends for campaigning. By running as part of the local Democratic Party, eight or so different candidates can coordinate together, pooling resources. We were helping my FIL, but those same fliers had other candidates as well. Those candidates' volunteers in turn helped my FIL. Most of the people running are people my FIL had known or worked with for years if not decades. He also knew that his co-candidates would be more likely to work with him some a few major projects he hoped to accomplish than the tea party-ish opposition.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 10:59 AM) I'll keep that in mind for my election push in 2017 My father-in-law is in local politics. Every weekend for about six weeks before the election, a couple dozen of us canvased local neighborhoods handing out "vote democrat" door hangers with a list of the local party's candidates. Of course at this level, there's not a bunch of polling, strategists, etc. so who knows how effective this actually was.

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 10:51 AM) I mean, local politics has so few voters vote. That's the issue. It's not that people are stupid, it's that the people who are voting "know" the candidate and that he's a good guy/girl and will rep their interests. So everyone likes their rep, hates the whole. I really wanted to vote in last April's local elections. Unfortunately, I could find almost no information at all about any of the local candidates beyond a bunch of empty slogans. Hell, if any of them had even bothered to hand out fliers and go door-to-door, they could have gotten my vote.

Rauner has mentioned wanting to move all public pensions to 401k's. Unions aren't exactly popular these days, and they aren't all that politically powerful any more. His campaign website policies seem fairly generic and also not really achievable with a Democratically controlled state congress. No specifics on what that comprehensive overhaul would actually be RTW is anti-union Not sure how tort reform would help jobs? No idea what this even refers to. It's not actually saying anything. edit: apparently he's proposed reducing Illinois' minimum wage. To put this into perspective, Rauner made about $25000/hour last year. Again sort of empty and meaningless. Like most "waste, fraud, abuse" slogans. This would be his 401k proposal Not sure about the first two, but one or both might be the temporary tax increase that is scheduled to expire in the near future. Seems reasonable on its face, but it could have crippling effects if a national housing bubble ever burst and caused property values to plummet. Same as under his jobs section. Well, current pay isn't exactly the same thing as future pensions. And would this mean public employees would never get a bigger raise than current inflation? [related: I wonder if Rauner would support a similar pegging of the minimum wage to inflation!] This can be abused, as can the multiple-pension set up some of them get. This is the 401k thing again. I'm completely, 100% opposed, but a lot of people aren't. Term limits are silly and don't accomplish anything useful, but they can be politically popular. Just another way of "right-to-work," which still requires unions to represent every employee in a shop/office but lets employees free-ride without joining the union and paying dues. Essentially cripples unions. Meaningless/dumb slogan. Vouchers/charter schools drain resources from public schools to private corporations. They also have no better success than public schools on average, and they are often plagued with scandals, grift, cherry-picking students, etc. The tenure system is already under reform, and nobody is given a lifetime guarantee even with tenure. Merit pay is a terrible idea because "merit" is equal to "how well students perform on the latest standardized test," which creates all sorts of issues. Teaching becomes focused even more on the testing, there are cheating scandals, and then there's no actual good linking of how effective a teacher is with how well their students might do on a standardized test. That doesn't mean the current system that relies somewhat strongly on seniority is the best or only method, but these "merit"-based methods have a track record of failure. Agreed 100% with that. A few years ago, my wife's school district got a new superintendent. His first move was to hire several new administrative advisers. They all make considerable salary and don't seem to have done much of anything yet. Administrative bloat is hurting our college/university system badly as well. Really you can see this in a whole lot of sectors, not just education.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 10:31 AM) Who were making demands for more pay/benefits during the recession when everyone else was struggling. He jumped on the tea party/anti-public employment movement and got elected with it. He sure did, and he was open and transparent about it (unlike the Michigan governor who denied that he'd even consider RTW and then signed it into law). Nationally, that's what Walker is most known for, and conservatives love it.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 10:29 AM) If that is all he's done he's hasn't accomplished anything worth praising. Does he think he's going to save his state money by busting up the unions? That's what he's gotten attention for nationally and what sparked the failed recall. I honestly haven't paid attention to other policies he might have put in place.

He smashed public unions and teachers unions in particular. edit: crosspost, response to pettie about Walker, not edgar

State-level offices don't always follow Presidential voting patterns. New Jersey went to Obama easily, but elected Christie. Obama won Wisconsin, but Walker beat his recall. Democrats don't stand a chance of winning Montana etc. for the Presidency, but those sorts of states routinely elect Democratic senators and governors. Like bmags mentioned earlier, even Illinois has a Republican senator.

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 10:14 AM) Or they will just run a term, and jump to a local consulting gig selling their "influence" for millions (see Rahm's lucrative post congressional bank gig) That's the other side of it.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 10:09 AM) I feel like consumption taxes are the best way to go. I'm no economist or tax guru but I feel like the income tax is just plan wrong on so many levels. People need their money and the government is consistently triple or even in some cases quadruple taxing the people. 1) Income 2) Food & Sales Tax 3) Utility taxes 4) Property Taxes So the government is consistently dipping into the pot with very few results to show for it. They just can't resist those ooey gooey cookies. Consumption taxes are highly regressive.

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 10:10 AM) What would this do? Right, Rauner is a multi-billionaire. He's not running for governor for the paycheck. Many politicians are already wealthy when they run for office, and lowering the salary just ensures that you're going to keep attracting the already wealthy.

QUOTE (Jake @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 09:47 AM) I like how if it "works" by reducing the breaking of the law, then we can no longer afford to have it/nobody wants to have it because it wasn't the purpose of its implementation. The commercialization of public life for you Is it actually reducing speeding or were the projections bulls*** to begin with?

Have I just not really noticed in past years, or are the Bears busier than usual this year?

FWIW the speed cameras have generated significantly less revenue than originally projected. I'm guessing the camera system vendor gave them a nice, fat number that justified the cost of the fancy new camera system.

IIRC some of the budget gap was closed with the temporary income tax increase (which is set to expire this year IIRC). Plus, they passed that big pension reform bill last year, but that's in the courts and could be declared unconstitutional. I didn't really pay attention to to Republican primary (other than getting spammed by IEA flyers), but one thing I did hear reported several times was that Rauner hasn't really presented any sort of plan or policy at this point other than some platitudes.

Your property taxes aren't set by the state. The governor has zero to do with that. Durbin will crush Oberweis, but the race for governor will probably be pretty close. Quinn has been very mediocre and Rauner doesn't seem to want to carry the social conservative baggage with him that could hurt him in some of the suburban areas.

...why?

Wow, didn't expect that one.

I meant more if they were specifically trying to analyze satellite images from when the plane disappeared.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 14, 2014 -> 03:32 PM) Actually the real trick would be that there should be software to look for these type of things pretty quickly if you're looking in the right area, it would just take processing power. We use software to look for color changes in land/ocean all the time. That's probably why private satellite companies out of China kept spotting things like "white objects" that turned out to be boats & such. Now that I write that, it makes me wonder whether the satellites that are going over just aren't calibrated to the type of things that might be seen. I do know that the ISS was supposed to make a pass over the LKP today and take images specifically to help the hunt. How well do those work for images taken at 1 or 2 AM? Or are they using infrared or something else that doesn't depend on visible light? You'd also have to deal with whatever cloud cover was in the area that could obscure the plane.

From this French aviation site, plotting the course of the plane based on the latest info