Yes, it's called eminent domain. But if the government attempts to do so you can file a lawsuit and argue that they don't have a right to purchase your property from you. These lawsuits are expensive and take a lot of time/effort, which makes building a railway impractical by this method. To "solve" this politically would require a constitutional amendment, which is obviously not going to happen for this issue.
Where I'm from, our "supreme court" can overthrow congress legislation for not following the constitution. Is this the case here AND is this the case in the US (generally speaking)?
The US Supreme Court can decide what is constitutional, and Congress can amend the constitution that is the basis for the USSC decision (with 2/3 vote).
With the current makeup of Congress, it is unlikely so the USSC holds significantly more effective power than if it had a functioning Congress.
I fully admit that I don’t have a great civics teacher, now more than 20 years ago… but I don’t think this is true? Can anyone else weigh in here?
Edit - wow this is actually true. From white house.gov:
> An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification
Kinda weird to ask, when the answer is five seconds away plugging "US constitution amendment process" into a search engine.
> wow this is actually true
Not sure why you're so surprised about it; consider that the threshold for overriding the president's veto of a regular bill passed by Congress is a two-thirds vote from both the House and Senate. It seems like the bar for amending the constitution should be higher (significantly higher) than that.
Besides that, not involving the state governments at all when amending the constitution feels like it would be a bad move, in a country founded on the idea of strong state leadership and a comparatively weak (though not as weak as some of the founders wanted) central government. Certainly our federal government is even stronger power-wise today than even the more strong-central-government proponents among the founders would have expected.
Right. But the elected officials can vote to remove members of the supreme court (or federal judges in general), though the bar for doing so is set very high. And the supreme court can't remove elected officials. So the supreme court's power over elected officials is not absolute.
The idea in US constitutional law is one of balance: we have three branches of government, and each are granted powers that can act as a check on the powers of the others. It's far from perfect in practice, but the intent is good, I think.
> Shouldn't that require a Constitutional Amendment?
No, Article III § 1 explicitly vests judicial power “in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish” [1].
> Why isn't the investigative/prosecutorial branch distinct from the executive and judicial branches though?
No, to change the separation of powers they need a constitutional amendment because that's a change to the Constitution, and amendments are the process for changing the Constitution.
To interpret what was meant by Liberty and Equality as values, as a strict constructionist.
> The Constitution literally says the Congress has the power to establish inferior courts. Congress setting what is justifiable is highly precedented.
I'm having a great deal of difficulty understanding how you got from "Congress may establish inferior courts" all the way to "Congress has the power to exclude its legislation from judicial review, including that of the Supreme Court itself, at its own prerogative". Could you explain this chain of reasoning?
> The words “separation of powers” never appear in the Constitution. It’s a phrase used to describe the system that document establishes.
Yes, no one argued otherwise. Separation of powers is indeed established by the Constitution, regardless of what specific terminology is used to explain the concept.
Can Congress grant rights? No, because persons have natural rights, inalienable rights; and such enumeration of the rights of persons occurs only in the Declaration, which - along with the Articles of Confederation - frames the intent, spirit, and letter of the Constitution ; which itself very specifically limits the powers of the government and affords a process of amendment wit quorum for changes to such limits of the government in law.
Congress may not delegate right-granting privileges because the legislature hasn't right-granting privileges itself.
The Constitution is very clear that there are to be separate branches; each with limited privileges and immunities, and none with the total immunity of a Tyrant king.
A system of courts to hear offenses per the law determined by the federal and state legislatures with a Federal Constitutional Supremacy Clause, a small federal government, a federal minarchy, and a state divorce from British case law precedent but not common law or Natural Rights.
And so the Constitution limits the powers of each branch of government, and to amend the Constitution requires an amendment.
Why shouldn't we all filibuster court nominations?
Without an independent prosecutor,
Can the - e.g. foreign-installed or otherwise fraudulent - executive obstruct DOJ investigations of themselves that conclude prior to the end of their term by terminating a nominated and confirmed director of an executive DOJ department, install justices with with his signature, and then pardon themselves and their associates?
The Court can or will only hear matters of law. Congress can impune and impeach but they're not trained as prosecutors either; so which competent court will hear such charges? Did any escape charges for war crimes, tortre without due process, terror and fear? Whose former counsel on the court now.
What delegations of power, duties, and immunities can occur without constitutional amendment?
Who's acting president today? Where's your birth certificate? You're not even American.
What amendments could we have?
1. You cannot pardon yourself, even as President. Presidents are not granted total immunity (as was recently claimed before the court), they are granted limited Privileges and Immunities.
2. Term limits for legislators, judges, and what about distinguished public/civil servants who pick expensive fights for the rest of us to fight and pay for? You sold us to the banks. Term limits all around.
3. Your plan must specify investment success and failure criteria. (Plan: policy, legislative bill, program, schedule,)
Can Congress just delegate privileges - for example, un-equal right-granting privileges - without an Amendment, because there is to be a system of lower courts?
Additional things that the Constitution, written in the 1770s, doesn't quite get, handle, or address:
US contractors operating abroad on behalf of the US government must obey US government laws while operating abroad. This includes "torture interrogation contractors" hired by an illegally-renditioning executive.
The Federal and State governments have contracted personal defense services to a privately-owned firm. Are they best legally positioned to defend, and why are they better funded than the military?
What prevents citizens from running a debtor blackmail-able fool - who is 35 and an American citizen - for president and puppeting them remotely?
Too dangerous to gamble.
Executive security clearance polices are determined by the actual installed executive; standard procedure was: tax return, arrest record, level of foreign debt.
Would a president be immune for slaving or otherwise aggravatedly human trafficking a vengeful, resentful prisoner on release who intentionally increases expenses and cuts revenue?
Did their regional accent change after college?
Can it be proven that nobody was remoting through anybody? No, it cannot.
And what about installs ostensibly to protect children in the past being used misappropriatingly for political harassment, intimidation, and blackmail? How should the court address such a hypothetical "yesterday" capability which could be used to investigate but also to tamper with and obstruct? Why haven't such capabilities been used to defend America from all threats foreign and domestic, why are there no countermeasure programs for such for chambers of justice and lawmaking and healthcare at least.
And what about US Marshalls or other protective services with witness protection reidentification authorization saboteurially "covering" for actual Candidate-elects?
Can a president be witness protected - i.e. someone else assumes their identity and assets - one day before or one day after an election? Are Justices protected from such fraud and identity theft either?
You're not even American.
And what about when persons are assailed while reviewing private, sensitive, confidential, or classified evidence; does such assault exfiltrate evidence to otherwise not-closed-door hearings and investigations?
Which are entitled to a private hearing?
Shouldn't prosecute tortuous obstruction? Or should we weakly refuse writ; and is there thus no competent authority (if nobody prosecutes torture and other war crimes)?
Let's all pay for healthcare for one another! Let's all pay for mental healthcare in the United States. A War on Healthcare!
Are branches of government prohibited from installing into, prosecuting, or investigating other branches of government; are there any specific immunities for any officials in any branch in such regard?
Please allow me to go political for a second: both US and EU have an insane amount of politicians who support backing down on green energy and going back to coal mining, oil drilling and the like. I hope that at least the people who are intelligent enough to see the progress of green energy won't support that through their votes. We can literally have "free" energy coming from this star around us but instead of using it we're coming up with excuses that keep us from progressing.
I'm not talking about what's happening now (even though there's plenty of criticism to be said about the programs that we run). I'm talking about a new wave of politicians that's coming up in both regions, and they want this to stop.
The thing about money is that energy is a critical sector of the economy of each region, so governments push a lot of public funding towards it. That's why I'm bringing up politics here, otherwise the free market would take care of the issue as always.
If you have a better source of energy then build it. If it's better than the other ones will cease to exist. The "mental model" is entirely immaterial to the "market reality."
Only 1 coal plant in the US is economical to run, and yet an entire industry continues to desperately attempt to continue to exist through various appeals. The market is made up by human rules, they are not physical laws, nor are they a reasonable final arbiter to what is rational.
So it’s not always just simple humans, but also malevolent ones too creating the uphill climb. Such is life.
Coal was being displaced by Natural Gas well before Solar added to the fight. Is the issue that Coal didn't just stop existing one day immediately? With power plant lifetimes of 50 to 100 years why would anyone rationally expect this outcome?
This is not a change you will see in your lifetime clearly. This is clearly a change that _is_ occurring during your life time.
We agree change is occurring. Do we agree there are significant forces intentionally attempting to restrict the rate of change to be slower than it needs to be to achieve a favorable outcome for humanity?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/09/foss... ("Far-right fossil fuel allies have launched a stunning and unprecedented campaign pressuring the supreme court to shield fossil fuel companies from litigation that could cost them billions of dollars.")
“Our investigation revealed how Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the Chamber worked in concert to mislead the public, policymakers, and investors with public promises to reduce emissions and meaningfully contribute to the transition away from oil and gas, while privately seeking to lock in continued fossil fuel production for decades into the future,” wrote Whitehouse and Raskin. “The investigation also demonstrated that the fossil fuel industry continues to knowingly obfuscate the dangers of natural gas, which they have billed as a clean and green fuel. This evidence, combined with the entities’ failure to comply fully with validly issued congressional subpoenas, suggests that further investigation by the executive branch is warranted.”
“Our investigation into the fossil fuel industry calls to mind the historic congressional investigation into deceptive practices of the tobacco industry and its trade associations, which led to investigations and litigation by several state attorneys general and the Department of Justice (DOJ),” they continued. “DOJ is well situated to pursue further investigation and take any appropriate legal action, as it has in similar cases involving the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.”
Perhaps we disagree about the definition of the word "significantly"?
If you built solar and energy storage that was capable of powering an entire house for less expense than the grid can do it, people will buy that, subsidies won't matter.
There is a lot of "green washing" that intentionally ignores this outcome because what it really wants to do is capture the subsidies for itself. Which is what I was alluding to originally.
What transition plans do you recommend for coal producing counties? The issue is that these coal counties get fucked (for a lack of a better words) with coal and without coal. With coal every family suffer generational health problems. But atleast they get to eat and live. Without coal they do not have an economic system to make a living out of it. During the colonial times (here we go) the Bri'ish forced Bengal farmers [0] to cultivate indigo which caused literal famines. They could not produce food crops and colonialist didn't bother to compensate the farmer obviously. Then the farmers got "fucked" over again, when industrial revolution resulted in creation of artificial indigo and farmers struggled to make a transition to another crop. Now, your average WV native is far from a Bengal peasant but idea of policy based restrictions on making a living can be compared. My argument is that broad sweeping policies about establishing how people in particular regions make a living needs to carefully evaluated. Now, I am not for or against coal at all. Coal producing counties are always marginalized and politicians rarely care about them except for election times. For/against coal does very little in terms of coming up with a solution. If you are against coal present a solution on how these counties can transition to making a living without being relocated.
There are only 12,000 coal miners in WV. Only 45,000 in the whole US. Obviously there are a large cast of others supporting the miners directly and indirectly (e.g. truck drivers, manufacturers of mining equipment, etc).
There are 341 million other Americans that have an interest in where our energy comes from (and what goes into our atmosphere).
(I'm all for generous support for any American facing major disruption because of macroeconomic changes btw. Getting rural places a fair share of national prosperity is a national problem)
This is a great argument and perhaps the best argument to support the idea of going back to coal. I don't know how to answer this because I'm not an economist, but I'd suggest subsidizing such people from taxation until we reach a green energy goal. Sadly though, politicians don't address this at all.
> both US and EU have an insane amount of politicians who support backing down on green energy and going back to coal mining, oil drilling and the like.
What is an "insane amount?" Is there a spreadsheet or scorecard somewhere that quantifies this?
Kind of. According to polls there are 52% of Americans supporting this. In the EU we have elections this weekend so there's no reason to come up with polls, just follow the results!
If one is the threshold that we're talking about, then no one should care that there is an insane number opposed. It is a useless statement with no relevance on the world outcomes
You talk about intelligence but then act like a zealot. Don't get me wrong, I have solar panels myself in Spain, but is not Utopia.
Solar panels use a lot of space that could be used for other things like growing food. They make the earth extremely hot as they absorb so much heat from the sun. The political zealots talk about climate change but avoid to talk about that.
It is not excuses, there is very intelligent people working on those problems. Natural gas makes a lot of sense combined with solar and wind because solar only works when the sun is above and wind when the wind blows. You need something for winter and nights. Energy storage is very expensive, and also require lots of energy and raw materials for manufacturing.
For wind mills to make sense you need wind. Lots of countries do not have wind, and also produce heat an noise and kill birds.
In Spain, when the price of the panels and inverters go down, if you have users nearby, it makes sense. In Germany, with half the insolation, it does not.
There is no "free" anything. Everything has its ups and downs.
We need less politicians, lawyers without knowledge of science and engineering.
> They make the earth extremely hot as they absorb so much heat from the sun
What are you smoking? The sun is not sending more light to the places with solar panels. It just absorbs light that is already hitting earth. If anything it makes earth cooler as it absorbs light that would otherwise just hit the ground and make ground hotter.
If the solar panel reflects less sunlight than what would otherwise be there (which seems likely to me) then grandparent is (technically) correct. The energy the panel absorbs eventually turns into heat (although before it becomes heat, it might in the form of electricity be transmitted far away) just like the sunlight energy that a rock absorbs also turns into heat.
The correct response to grandparent is that the magnitude of the increase in heat is small enough to be safely ignored.
Essentially all of it turns into heat except the part that is (immediately) reflected back into space -- and solar panels are darker than most of the (non-grassy or only sparsely grassy, and the grass is golden, not dark green or on the roof of a building) sites where solar panels are typically sited, which means they reflect less back into space. Ergo, erecting a solar panel adds heat (but again it is negligible compared to the reduction in co2 emissions).
At least in the US, the arguments against solar and wind are usually not out of concern for land area needed for food growth. The opponents tend to use unsubstantiated FUD.
Trump is anti green energy. What good is a damn dictator if they can’t do infrastructure and energy well, atleast modi is killing that part of his mandate.
Why does your software keep failing during development? Don't you have the knowledge to make it work?
It's the old, non-iterative everything-up-front method to rocket development that's weird. At least as a developer it seems obvious that a more hardware-rich approach with a high iteration rate will lead to a better outcome in the end, _especially_ when you're trying to push hard on the technological boundaries.
That's part of the innovation; don't just build a single reaaally expensive ship that has to be perfect. Instead, build a _ship factory_ and crank them out (relatively) cheaply and fast.
It is a SpaceX approach. The brain is given for you so you don't strain your limbs unnecessarily, and the limbs are given for you so you don't strain your brain unnecessarily. So try it, see how it works (or rather doesn't work), decide on how to apply your brains for the next iteration.
And maybe it is a PR strategy: it is fun to watch, the public really see the progress, so it is good for stocks.
But in any case, these all Starships are prototypes, they are meant to fail.
> Don't they already have the knowledge and tech to achieve this?
One could say they don't have all the knowledge, and they lacks some tech. Second stage got clogged thrusters and couldn't orient itself. I believe, that it was ice: there was something white on the video. Compressed gases tend to cool to really low temperatures when they evaporate. Maybe the was water in them, or they themselves started to crystallize.
The booster run into troubles with liquid oxigen filters. I cannot say what happened, but some engines didn't restart. It is much better then with the first test when engines didn't start at T-0:00, but still is not good enough.
Now the second stage will run probably into issues with its heat shield. If it will be able to orient itself properly, unlike the last time.
Go to the Wikipedia pages of these events and click on "Talk" at the top or see the history of those pages. The amount of people fighting over this information war is mindblowing.
If anything, this makes me question the accuracy of historical events that happened before humanity had access to such tools.
My understanding is, historians know that the source material is 90% bullshit (texts written to appease an ego of some lord, chronicles of war against "subhuman" enemies, religious scriptures), they just know how to find the remaining 10%.
Perhaps, but you've also resisted rewriting the entire application just to take advantage of the newest GUI frameworks. There's a lot to be said about an application that gets things done, and quickly, regardless of whether it was the initial intention or not. Congrats on the release!
