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The pope on income re-distribution
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2014 2:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When someone buys electricity, there's a cost, just like when someone is buying gasoline. Ultimately there will be carbon taxes on all sources of energy.
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2014 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

techno900 wrote:
So how many billions must be spent to construct a system to collect mileage taxes? It would probably create hundreds/thousands of jobs that we would have to pay for via more taxes.

Toll roads? A significant number of the users in the states where I have lived don't pay when they get billed, with no system in place for collection.

Keep it simple - If electric or hybrid cars don't pay any or enough gas taxes, just take is when the car is sold as a road use tax (definitely no subsidies). Easy collection with little additional bureaucracy to manage it. The down side would be that the cost conscious driver would likely by a gas or diesel car with great mileage to avoid the point of sale road use tax on a hybrid or electric car.

Do you think any bureaucrat considered the down side of electric cars (no gas taxes) when they decided to offer subsidies to motivate buying? How can one NOT be a skeptic?

no need. The GOVt would just contract with Apple and Google to track their use using GPS, and bill them quarterly using an Apple Account. The point is because gas taxes have not moved up, while at the same time traffic has gotten unbearable. The opportunity loss is stratospheric. Infrastructure is also terrible as a result of less revenue, another massive unquantifyable detractor to the economy.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2014 3:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Now I get it..........you want the government to track our precise movements using Apple and Google GPS technology. Would the NSA be running that program?
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 9:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NEWSFLASH: they already do. Whether you like it or not, the NSA knows where you are and where you are going , at all times.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 10:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No they don't.........too much TV. If the weather was better in SF you'd be able to get out more and not be watching spy movies all day.
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 11:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr G ...I know you're just kidding on the weather thing. The weather here is ridiculous...I actually felt guilty all winter watching the brutal storms polaxing the Eastern Seaboard. I do like conspiracy theory/spy movies though. I imagine somewhere there is a tape recording of my voice, and I probably have a micro-chip in my skull.
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GURGLETROUSERS



Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Posts: 2643

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 11:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bang on Mr G.

Nobody over here knows where anybody or anything is, or so it seems, except if on the sea. Then, if you are stationary for more than a couple of minutes a lifeboat and a helicopter will most likely be scrambled your way.

Most irritating, if all I'm doing is sitting on my longboard contemplating the purpose and meaning of life - as one is prone to do!

And no, I can't find any satisfactory answer.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 10:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I like this guy more and more each month:

Quote:
Pope Francis calls death penalty 'unacceptable,' urges abolition
Laura Ieraci Catholic News Service | Mar. 20, 2015 The Francis Chronicles

VATICAN CITY Pope Francis came out squarely against the death penalty once again, calling it "unacceptable" regardless of the seriousness of the crime of the condemned.
Pope Francis met with a three-person delegation of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty on Friday and issued a letter on the occasion urging worldwide abolition.

Citing his previous messages against the death penalty, the pope called capital punishment "cruel, inhumane and degrading" and said it "does not bring justice to the victims, but only foments revenge."

Furthermore, in a modern "state of law, the death penalty represents a failure" because it obliges the state to kill in the name of justice, the pope said. Rather, it is a method frequently used by "totalitarian regimes and fanatical groups" to do away with "political dissidents, minorities" and any other person deemed a threat to their power and to their goals.

"Human justice is imperfect," he said, and the death penalty loses all legitimacy within penal systems where judicial error is possible.

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Increasingly, public opinion is against the death penalty, in view of the effective means available today to restrain a criminal without denying them the possibility to redeem themselves and of a "greater moral sensitivity regarding the value of human life," Pope Francis said.

The death penalty is an affront to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of the human person, he said. It contradicts God's plan for humankind and society and God's merciful justice, he added.


I can hear the archbishop gnashing his teeth in Northern Alabama all the way in San Francisco. You go Francis.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 1:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow! The Catholic Church is against the death penalty. Who'da thunk it!! Whatever's next? Opposition to abortion? Belief in transubstantiation? Can't wait to be astounded by the next old news flash from Berkeley.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 3:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Humility and clarity were apparently not part of mrgybe's Catholic training. Making light of what is in fact a new and more assertive position.

I must admit that I have not followed the twists and turns of doctrine, so I missed John Paul II's encyclical:

Quote:
It is clear that, for the [purposes of punishment] to be achieved,the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and [the state] ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent. —Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 56, emphasis in the original.

These words from John Paul, found also in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and echoed in various ways by modern bishops’ conferences, have left many people confused, wondering how they fit with the earlier Catholic teaching about the death penalty. St. Augustine, Pope Innocent III, St. Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman, and the Catholic tradition as a whole has accepted capital punishment. Indeed, both the Old Testament (Gn 9:6) and the New Testament (Rom 13:4) seemingly endorse the death penalty. How then are we to understand John Paul’s teaching?

Some people are tempted to think it is a simple reversal or rejection of traditional Catholic teaching. To see why this is not the case, let’s consider both the traditional and contemporary Catholic teaching in greater detail.

First, it is important to remember that traditional Catholic teaching never claimed that the state must impose the death penalty. In this, the Catholic view differs from, for example, the view of Immanuel Kant. Kant held that it was a strict duty, a duty that must be discharged, to execute those guilty of capital crimes.

By contrast, St. Thomas held that the government has the responsibility to protect the common good by means of just punishments, but he does not specify that one particular crime (e.g. murder) must always and in every case be punished in one particular way (capital punishment).

Although crime and punishment must be proportionate, they can almost never be perfectly proportionate, save perhaps in financial matters. Obviously, we could not put Timothy McVeigh to death 168 times. We cannot sexually abuse the adult child molester in his youth. Even death for death for someone who has taken a single human life is not exactly proportionate, since all the details of the original killing could never be perfectly reproduced. The truth of the biblical adage "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" rests in its affirmation of the need for retributive justice, but not for a justice understood as a geometrical correspondence. Indeed, an "eye for an eye" is best understood as a principle limiting violence, as an alternative to the more severe punishment prompted by vengeance, acting violently simply as a release of emotion. Traditional Catholic teaching does not demand the death penalty for every single case of murder.


The shift to the new position, "The death penalty is an affront to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of the human person, he said" seems to have gone over mrgybe's head in his urgent need to make a snide "gotcha."
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