2016 February
2016 February 1
U.S. Warship Enters Waters Claimed by China Without Approval
The US should not have provoked the Chinese government by sailing so close. However, the Chinese need to be held in check by some organization, and the only logical organization would be an international military organization.
2016 February 2
Guatemalan soldiers to answer civil war sexual slavery charges in historic trial
The US facilitation of these crimes by providing funding and training for effort to prevail over an exaggerated threat is just more evidence that only an international military organization would be able to best manage international disputes.
2016 February 3
Army and Marine Corps chiefs: It’s time for women to register for the draft
This is a long overdue move. Both men and women can provide useful labor, even before, when women were prevented from military fighting.
2016 February 4
Toyota kills ailing Scion brand
In order for small very small vehicles to catch on and be sustainable, the cost of fuel must rise. There is plenty of room for gasoline prices to rise just by ensuring that all costs are internalized by the oil producers.
2016 February 5
U.S. Trade Gap Expanded in December
Continually running trade deficits will come back to bite us because this is just not sustainable. The profits (the reason for production in the first place) are leaving this country consistently. In a fair world, trade deficits and surpluses for every country should average out to zero in the long run. The US has been running trade deficits consistently for over 40 years.
2016 February 6
GMOs haven’t delivered on their promises — or risks
The downside potential of irresponsible genetic engineering is more significant that the upside potential of responsible engineering. It is imperative that breeding for purposes of insect or disease resistance be surrounded with a multitude of checks and balances, and environmental review studies.
2016 February 7
New York Governor Announces Steps To Ban LGBT Conversion Therapy
Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both on a continuum. While there is likely a significant genetic component that influence this behavior, conversion therapy is likely to benefit a significant portion of people, and therefore should not be banned outright. Yes, it is reasonable to believe that conversion therapy has been applied to many people who did not benefit from it, to say the least. However, conversion therapy should not be banned as one of the tools. The solution would be a better screening of patients to see if conversion therapy may be a treatment option with any reasonable possibility of success.
2016 February 8
Pentagon Releases 200 Photos of Bush-Era Prisoner Abuse, Thousands Kept Secret
All the pictures need to be released immediately and the US must come clean with its past. The sooner the better. People responsible with inflicting this abuse should be held accountable and punished severely because the the crimes themselves, but also because of the fact that they were representing the United States during the commission of these crimes, and this should be treated as an additional offense.
2016 February 9
Mexico: Crime reporter kidnapped in Veracruz
The reward for information leading to the killers should be advertised very widely. Since a reward by itself is likely to have a muted effectiveness of drawing out informants, perhaps the reward amount should be augmented to increase the chances of success. Promises of privacy and anonymity should obviously be guaranteed to the informants, for whatever such privacy in an area riddled by corruption is worth.
2016 February 10
Paying informants enough to get them to talk would be the first step to getting the information needed to progress on this investigation. The other steps may not be much more promising. Corruption needs to be eradicated by
2016 February 11
Stocks set to plunge: Dow futures down almost 300, oil below $27
Interest rates being so low for so long indicated a fundamental weakness in the US economy. Perhaps decades of trade surpluses are catching up with us. To many products and services are produced by oversea firms meaning that too much of the all-important profit component (the whole incentive to produce) of products and services have leaving siphoned from the US. Such siphoning cannot continue indefinitely, and 40 years is pretty close to indefinitely.
Low oil prices will not help the long term health of the United States, either, because it will just make the switch over to alternative fuel just that much more difficult.
2016 February 12
NYPD tracked citizens’ cellphones 1,000 times since 2008 without warrants
This is not bad in and of itself if they had a compelling reason to do and if the vast majority of those people were involved in illegal activities. Given the history of law enforcement’s unwarranted encroachment of privacy rights, people will usually doubt that this is the case. In this case, however, it appears that a large number of cellphone tracking resulted in an arrest for probably cause. But then again, lots of people are arrested, but turn out to be innocent. Nevertheless, people who violated these civil rights to privacy (by not getting the proper warrants) should be punished, and punished severely because of the additional damage caused by giving the public another reason to not trust their law enforcement. However, the information gathered through such practices should still be used in court to convict the criminals.
2016 February 13
Russia PM warns of ‘new cold war’ amid Syria accusations
The world is slipping into a new cold war. As always, fault does not lie only with one side. The United States and the West would have slowed or even possibly reversed this trend by not expanding NATO, but instead by dissolving it. In its place, should have been a truly international military organization that is responsible for ensuring the integrity of international borders only among countries committed to the principle of allowing all distinct groups of people to have their own independent country. This might be a small number at first, but that is the only true way to build a long-term, solid foundation for an organization that would have lasting respect and effectiveness because of such fair principles.
2016 February 14
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia found dead at West Texas ranch
The Congress should be required to seat a new justice no later than 180 days from the vacating of a seat. To allow one or the other party to delay the process is just not fair.
2016 February 15
Comcast service outages sent social media ablaze with complaints from areas all across the country
When significant outages occur, perhaps these companies should voluntarily take it upon themselves to automatically give their customers a refund of 1,000% of the prorated monthly billing time that the service of interrupted.
2016 February 16
Sanders Pressed On Reparations At Forum On Black America
Bernie’s position was clearly in favor of blacks, but less clearly in favor of reparations. When the woman protester pressed Bernie to say the word “black”, she seemed hung up on a word rather than understand that the term “African-American” is synonymous with “black”.
2016 February 17
Ash Carter: Russians’ strategy in Syria will “come back and get them”
Let Russia take over some of the trouble-spots in the world. Let them suffer some of the ‘blow-back’. The US could use a break. The best alternative would be to have an international military organization so that either nobody would be significantly upset or you’re going to upset everyone more or less, on average, equally.-
2016 February 18
Donald Trump Said He Favored Iraq Invasion in 2002 Interview
Trump should probably be fined because he cannot provide evidence of his having opposed the war before hand.
2016 February 19
Donald Trump Says He’ll Release Tax Returns ‘at Some Point’
It should be a requirement for transparency purposes, for all political candidates to release their tax returns. It is essential for the public to be fully informed about fundamental aspects of a candidate’s character, and tax returns get very close to some core truths.
2016 February 20
Ocean’s plastics offer a floating fortress to a mess of microbes
Industry whose product release plastics into the free environment through their normal usage, should be very heavily taxed to make such products much more expensive to discourage such use. Also, wastewater treatment facilities should be required to filter out such plastics from the water released back into the environment. The penalty for littering should naturally be high and enforced. Accidental sea accidents releasing pollution should also be treated as littering events. This will encourage greater care/insurance during transportation.
2016 February 21
Bill Gates sides with feds in iPhone hack battle
Ideally, the government should be able to access whatever information it legally is allowed to in order to help ensure civil order and justice. The problem arises because of the lack of trust of the government (run by people just like everyone else) to just do the necessary legal tasks and not go overboard. Public trust must be regained by the population. But the government must show that it is worthy of that trust. Part of doing so involves the government being much more transparent of its scope of activities as well as the institution of severe punishments for individuals within the government doing thing that, if revealed, would break the public’s trust.
2016 February 22
Judge Won’t Let Kesha Escape Dr. Luke Contract
The judge appears to have done the right thing because the charges of violence referred to actions taken a decade ago, and the alleged perpetrator agreed to “allow her to record without his involvement”, whatever that means.
What should be allowed to occur (and I don’t see any information that this is prevented from occurring) is that Kesha should be allowed to press charges against her perpetrator and have this go to court, if necessary. But this should be a separate case. If it turns out that $60 million dollars or more are owed to Kesha because of this crime, then Sony may agree to allow the contract to terminate, because the value of the contract would be equal to or greater than the penalty. But this crime is not worth anywhere near that amount, so the contract should still be enforced.
2016 February 23
China To Shut Down Hundreds Of Coal Mines In 2016
If China were to make sure that coal producers are required to put the land back in a ‘natural’ state when they are done with mining activities, then the price of coal would be so much higher, that alternative fuels would naturally be much more attractive.
2016 February 24
Obama gives Congress Guantanamo closure plan
This prison has become a symbol of American over-reach. By detaining prisoners indefinitely without proper charges, and by doing so in a military prison away from independent review, is just asking for criticism from the rest of the world. We need to treat everyone justly.
2016 February 25
Pentagon Contractors in Iraq Increases Eightfold over Last Year
There is nothing inherently wrong with using contractors, but quality control needs to be sufficient. Any deficiencies with the quality and cost-effectiveness of the service must be dealt with immediately. Any human rights violations must be dealt with extra severely because of these contractors acting as an extension of the US government, this representing the US in those areas that they operate.
2016 February 26
Book reveals “shocking” sexual harassment in social media lives of teens
Perhaps one way to reduce the speed at which young people are ‘growing up’ and doing mischievous things would be to lengthen both the length of the school day and the school year, eliminate some of the useless subjects that students are expected to learn and require graduation with the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree for everyone by age 20.
2016 February 27
Davutoğlu orders halt to construction of Artvin copper mine until conclusion of legal process
The chances that this mine would have been sought after and approved could have been reduced by adhering to certain fundamental rules of governance and market regulations. For example, by merely making the disposal of trash more expensive, recycling rates would go up. Instituting a virgin resource extraction tax would also naturally make the virgin extraction of ore less attractive. Requiring mining companies to operate in ways that leave the the environment in practically the same condition that they left it (or compensating significantly for when it is not) would also make the cost of the virgin material more expensive.
2016 February 28
Iran election: Reformists win all 30 Tehran seats
The US and the West needs to treat Iran (and all other nations) with respect by not meddling in their internal affairs. If the West were to not have intervened in the 1950s to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadegh, it is likely that the Iranian government would have been more friendly to the West throughout the rest of the 20th century and beyond. Of course, we can’t replay history while changing just one variable in the past and compare it to how things actually turned out, but the general principle in operation here is that the less you meddle in other people’s affairs, without authorization, the fewer enemies you will have. Any ‘meddling’ that needs to be done should only be done by an international military organization.
2016 February 29
Donald Trump Refuses to Condemn KKK, Disavow David Duke Endorsement
Instead of political soundbites, journalists should review the record and ask candidates meaningful questions that are based on the historical record of the candidate. Asking to ‘disavow’ David Duke and the KKK seems like a roundabout way of asking the question. Duke and the KKK are clearly racist, so it wouldn’t be reasonable for Trump to express support for them. However, if ‘disavow’ means that Trump should not ask for their votes, I think that would be an excessive expectation. Clearly, no candidate would want to say that they wouldn’t want the vote of any group of people regardless of their beliefs. Getting a group’s the vote and agreeing with their beliefs are two totally different things. Voters need to get their information more directly from written statements of the candidates.