In The News Today...

Republican Senator Thom Tillis' views on health codes requiring restaurant workers to wash their hands after using the toilet:

“I was having this discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,” Tillis said. “Let an industry or business opt out as long as they indicate through proper disclosure, through advertising, through employment, literature, whatever else. There’s this level of regulations that maybe they’re on the books, but maybe you can make a market-based decision as to whether or not they should apply to you.”

When Tillis’ interlocutor noticed a Starbucks employee coming out of the restroom and inquired whether Tillis would apply his anti-regulation stance to employee hygiene, Tillis affirmed that he would.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after they use the restroom,’” he said. “The market will take care of that.”

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The funny thing about Tillis' version of freedom & liberty is that he still favors a law requiring restaurants to post a sign disclosing that their employees might not wash their hands. In his mind one law ("wash your hands!") is tyranny, but the other law ("post a sign!") is freedom & liberty. From the libertarian perspective, aren't both of those laws tyranny?

But if those are my 2 options, I'll pick the world where hand-washing is legally mandated. When I enter a restaurant, I don't want the burden of looking around for a sign, I just want to order my food and eat. What if I forget to look for the sign? What if I remember to look for the sign, but I don't actually find it until after I finish my meal? He's operating on the assumption that market competition will bankrupt any business with the sign, but what if it's a small town with only one restaurant? Senator, make my life easier, please. And level the playing field for business so that every restaurant has the same incentive (regardless of competition) to serve safe food.

I will say this much to defend Tillis: the state can't enforce hand-washing 100% perfectly. So from that angle, maybe it's a pointless law. But I'd still rather live in a world where restaurant management faced fines for not enforcing handwashing rules.

House Passes Bill that Prohibits Expert Scientific Advice to the EPA (inhabitat.com)

snippet from opening paragraph:

Quote:

The GOP-dominated House passed a bill that effectively prevents scientists who are peer-reviewed experts in their field from providing advice — directly or indirectly — to the EPA, while at the same time allowing industry representatives with financial interests in fossil fuels to have their say.

Quote: Dalex64

House Passes Bill that Prohibits Expert Scientific Advice to the EPA (inhabitat.com)

Another snippet:

“Board members may not participate in advisory activities that directly or indirectly involve review or evaluation of their own work.”

This seems logical to me. Why would a scientist be allowed to be on a board that evaluates the work he or she did? Sounds a bit to me like letting students grade their own papers.

Quote:

Boris Nemtsov, outspoken Putin critic, shot dead in Moscow.

No one knows notin', of course.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/27/europe/russian-politician-killed/

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory." Rest in Peace L.N.

Quote: rxwine

No one knows notin', of course.

Particularly Putin who ordered a series of Moscow apartment buildings blown up as if by Checnic rebels so as to foment a war which would assure his re-election.

I sometimes agree with Hillary's liberal politics. But in terms of personal character, both Bill & Hillary are sleazier than your average politician.

Her email shenanigans are Exhibit A in why I don't trust her. Setting up a private account was obviously a security risk, but she claims (improbably) that nothing classified was sent to or from her email. I'm not buying it.

She had to have been aware that using a private email address was against the rules and it was only a matter of time before she'd get caught. But she gambled that the inevitable scandal would blow over and not permanently derail her ambitions. And she might be right.

Quote: reno

Her email shenanigans are Exhibit A in why I don't trust her. Setting up a private account was obviously a security risk, but she claims (improbably) that nothing classified was sent to or from her email. I'm not buying it.

She had to have been aware that using a private email address was against the rules and it was only a matter of time before she'd get caught. But she gambled that the inevitable scandal would blow over and not permanently derail her ambitions. And she might be right.

It is not just a matter of nothing secure being sent. Anyone who has worked in any size organization knows that emails are needed for the discovery process if there is any kind of lawsuit or investigation. Deleting them means she violated multiple retention policies and could be charged criminally.

A good part of the USA population will not even understand what having your own server means. It might indeed blow over. If it does depends on if the GOP makes a valid case out of it (they should, this is a major issue) and if we get enough citizen journalists to demand records and such.

Liberals and the Democrat Party will mostly keep backing her because they have nothing else. They thought she would coast to victory. The Obama years have seen the ranks of Democrats at the state level get plain clobbered.

As to the deleted records, the FBI could probably recover all the deleted files unless she totally filled the HD on the server and overwrote them.

Does someone think that Snowden was making it all up?

They are recording every keystroke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

It doesn't "go over the wires" without going through the switches.

http://business.time.com/2013/08/22/att-and-verizon-stay-silent-about-nsa-internet-snooping/

More Voters Think Benghazi Will Hurt Hillary

Uh oh!