<strong>The more we get out of mass produced food, the better off we'll ultimately be, especially farmers. Disincentives to technologize food production -- GMO, pesticides, hormones -- while simultaneously producing smaller but higher quality yields, (not higher aesthetic quality) would be a great benefit to consumers and producers (unless you're a huge factory farm operation)
One example we know well in Ontario revolves around milk and milk marketing. Every year, super-cows produce hundreds of thousands of liters of milk that has to be dumped to keep up prices. In the meantime we're getting some pretty strong milk for our money. Limiting the tolerances for hormones in our milk might make it more expensive in the short term, but the price of milk (and other agricultural products) is already artificially maintained. And as a real plus boys might not grow tits when they hit puberty and girls might not hit puberty at 8 instead of 13.
Wouldn't it be better to have a lower, more "natural," yield and let prices maintain themselves? Speaking of "Natural" and "Organic," you are aware that the majority of you who pay extra for products with these labels are probably NOT getting a pesticide/hormone/GMO free product? At least not in Canada, where these terms can be used to describe only a part of your food preparation.
I think our respective legislators have more to answer for than McDonald's when we speak of the quality of food.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't see how raising the cost of food is going to help the poor and working class. If the higher quality food is more expensive they will simply eat less (malnutrition) be driven more towards the even worse but still affordable alternatives. (Sunny D and some processed cheese food substitute anyone?)
There are numerous theories about why some children are starting puberty earlier. As an elementary school teacher I have researched this heavily.
Hormones are one theory but I haven't heard of boys growing "tits" from anything other than heavy steroid or pot use.
Other theories are that it has been caused by the rise in childhood obesity(food not hormones). When you have children carring around all this extra fat it has been reasoned that the body decides to start the journey to adulthood sooner since it obviously has an abundance of resources.
As for girls and puberty, a well reasoned, but unpopular view about it is that they are around so many more men who give off pheromones but are not their fathers or family. Divorce is much more common now and it is more common for young girls as a result to live with adult men who are not their fathers.
When these new men and their mothers are in the courting (or just screwing like bunnies in this day) stage of their relationship, it is said that pheromone production is especially strong to bring about stronger feelings in hopes of creating a more stable and longer lasting relationship. (Make evolutionary sense to me) It has been theorized that in the past girls weren't exposed to this because the stage of the relationship where this occured typically happened before they were born. However since it now happens again after they are born (sometimes repeatedly) they are exposed and it stimulates early puberty.
Again it isn't that it never happened in the past, we are talking about the average age lowering. So please understand that these generalities have exceptions.
I never said they didn't have a right to sue. I just know the lawsuit is frivolous and it was dismissed as such. </strong><hr></blockquote>
My point is that this is for the courts to decide. You didn't bring up the coffee incident, but a lot of people considered that frivolous as well. Turned out to be a legitimate case when all the facts were in. Same could be true for this case.
Somehow you can see the evidence before it's been presented. I can't.
It isn't the food that has changed but rather the portions. </strong><hr></blockquote>
I think you're probably wrong on this, but I'm not sure. The price of the food in going down and the sizes are going up. Some of that downward price trend is mass production, some is probably because it's less food than ever before.
It's a fact like this though that would in my opinion swing the case from frivolous to legitimate. I wouldn't judge the case until all the facts were in.
The funny thing about these so called theories is how neatly they fit in and support a program that would ease said early puberty by sticking to that good old 'Family Values' practice . . . hm?!?!?
Did these theories grow out of Science or spawn from the head of someone trying to justify some political positioning?!?!?!?!
or worse merely the Image of a political position . .
There isn't a magic bullet for this. Unless you eat less and do more, you gain weight. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Slow food movement in Italy. I don't have any links but I've been reading about it for several years. Google could probably find us all some interesting stories.
Anyway, no one is claiming there's a magic bullet. No single idea is going to work, only a whole lot of changes will. But raising the price of McDonald's isn't going to hurt anyone's health, just their wallets.
Taxing fat would probably do a lot of good. Better protein than what's in meat (especially crap like McDonald's fat food) can be found in vegetables and grains anyway. Subsidizing healthy food would lower the price and increase the availability across the board. That's a good thing.
Ultimately enough people need to want to eat better for change to be made but that doesn't negate the necessity for lawsuits.
Time to bring a lawsuit against <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/nyregion/26FEAT.html"; target="_blank">BigChew</a>. For too long these corporate fat cats have <insert communist manifesto here> and were not going to take it any more.
SPJ you can your future lawyer pals can make billion off this for doing almost no work. You can run many major corporations out of business and but 10s of thousands of people out of work. All for your greed.
Lincoln celebrated wealth and the right to be rich. This is what he really said on the subject: "I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good."
And again you set up a straw man... Nike wants to lie so....corporations aren't legal entities that have the same rights as people.
People aren't given the legal right to lie to others, so why would a corporation? They are treated the same under the law.
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can't believe you accused me of setting up a straw man when you have so utterly and completely misrepresented my post.
Your quote says lincoln is in favour of people making money.
Could you show me where I, or the article I linked to, say anything that contradicts this?
However, is this the best quote they could come up with to support the notion that he "celebrated wealth and the right to be rich." I agree completely with the lincoln quote but I'm not celebrating those things.
So they guy used a quote that turns out to be a popular misattribution. How does that affect the incorrect statements you made in your original post? How does it affect his argument and reporting of this case?
Next you'll be attacking his grammar.
-----------
You then claim that people and corporations are treated the same under the law.
If so then you really should give Nike a call and save them some money on lawyers' fees.
After all, those holocaust revisionists and creationists don't have the right to free speech because they are liars. Or do they?
I can't believe you accused me of setting up a straw man when you have so utterly and completely misrepresented my post.
Your quote says lincoln is in favour of people making money.
Could you show me where I, or the article I linked to, say anything that contradicts this?
However, is this the best quote they could come up with to support the notion that he "celebrated wealth and the right to be rich." I agree completely with the lincoln quote but I'm not celebrating those things.
So they guy used a quote that turns out to be a popular misattribution. How does that affect the incorrect statements you made in your original post? How does it affect his argument and reporting of this case?
Next you'll be attacking his grammar.
-----------
You then claim that people and corporations are treated the same under the law.
If so then you really should give Nike a call and save them some money on lawyers' fees.
After all, those holocaust revisionists and creationists don't have the right to free speech because they are liars. Or do they?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The article link you posted said that Nike was trying to lie about their human rights record with regard to labor practices. It also mentioned, as you did a shoddy means by which corporations acquited the same legal rights as a person. As part of this historical proof it cited a quote by Abraham Lincoln where he worried about the consolidation and creation of large corporations.
That quote didn't exist, it is a misquote. The article I linked to mentioned that.
Your article also proved my assertion. It showed and cited Supreme Court cases where corporations where given the same legal rights as a person. They just claimed it was bad history that allowed this. However they obviously didn't check their facts.
Either way my assertion that a corporation has the same legal rights as a person stands.
As for your latter claims, holocaust revisionists do not have a legal interest or party they are injuring with their lies. If they did the party could sue them. Likewise creationist are not harming another party with their claims and macroevolution is proven no more than looking at the horizon and deciding the world is flat. Evolution as a theory faces plenty of challenges from biochemestry.
Your article also proved my assertion. It showed and cited Supreme Court cases where corporations where given the same legal rights as a person. They just claimed it was bad history that allowed this. However they obviously didn't check their facts.
Either way my assertion that a corporation has the same legal rights as a person stands.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Let's watch that one on the action replay:
trumpetman
Mandated and the land of the free... two great tastes that don't go great together.
bunge
The Constitution was written for individuals, not corporations. Sorry.
trumpetman
Actually if you check into it a corporation is nothing but a legal "person." If what you were saying was true we could abolish things like Playboy and Penthouse because they wouldn't be subject to free speech.
[note that here you completely bodyswerve the assertion made by bunge while still claiming he is wrong.]
stupider
corporations are only granted partial person-hood under US law, and only due to some legal chicanery.
This chicanery occured after the drafting of the constitution so the constitution did not include corporations.
This is an example of a right humans have that corporations don't (and shouldn't in my view).
[note here that I am agreeing with both of you to some extent, i.e you are mostly correct about the state of affairs now but I back up bunge's statement with some historical info and expand the discussion into related areas.]
trumpetman
And again you set up a straw man... Nike wants to lie so....corporations aren't legal entities that have the same rights as people.
People aren't given the legal right to lie to others, so why would a corporation? They are treated the same under the law.
me (now)
The point is that under current rulings nearly everything that a corporation spokesperson (and therefore the corporation itself) says is considered commercial speech. This has less 1st amendment protection than normal speech.
If you don't believe me here is an article with a pro-corporation stance commenting on the case:
Less 1st amendment protection equals partial-personhood in the eyes of the law i.e. when you say "They are treated the same under the law" you are wrong.
Less 1st amendment protection equals partial-personhood in the eyes of the law i.e. when you say "They are treated the same under the law" you are wrong.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Stupider...are you intentionally trying to be this wrong? I'm not being mean I just seriously wonder about your comprehension. This was taken from the same article you just quoted.
[quote] Where do we go from here? Back to court, most likely. Nike can now appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States to get the last word on the parameters of commercial speech. If and when the case gets to Washington, how should the Supreme Court define commercial speech? Tell us what you think. <hr></blockquote>
The Constitution of the United States is decided by.... the California Supreme Court?? Try again.
In fact this lawsuit shows exactly why lawsuits should not be used to try to define and refine aspects of law which is what I was mentioning before in this thread.
[quote]There is, not coincidentally, just such a lawsuit pending. It was filed by a San Francisco resident named Marc Kasky, and it claims that Nike committed fraud when, while responding to critics, a spokesperson asserted that its overseas workers were paid adequately and its factories complied with safety standards. In response to Kasky?s suit, Nike argued that the merits of those claims should be decided by a court, not by Nike critics. The company also claimed that because its assertions were part of a broad public debate, they were not commercial speech and were protected by free speech laws.
The lawsuit has already been around the block. Since it was filed four years ago, it was tossed out of court by a San Francisco Superior Court judge, tossed out a second time by a court of appeals and finally sent back to court by the State Supreme Court. <hr></blockquote>
This if anything shows the game plan of the critics here and elsewhere concerning McDonalds. File a lawsuit, have it bounce around until it finds a friendly court with a crazy activist judge. Have the lawsuit go finally go forward and it gives some sort of crazy control over to the criticizing entity. I have claimed throughout this thread that this suit has nothing to do with money and everything to do with control.
In the context of your quoted lawsuit, Nike cannot participate in a public debate about itself, or at least it cannot do so in the People's Republic of California (nice nickname we have for my state) Welcome to the Stalinist state you are all hoping to achieve.
The funny thing about these so called theories is how neatly they fit in and support a program that would ease said early puberty by sticking to that good old 'Family Values' practice . . . hm?!?!?
Did these theories grow out of Science or spawn from the head of someone trying to justify some political positioning?!?!?!?!
or worse merely the Image of a political position . .</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't see how children being heavier or obese at an earlier age has anything to do with family values. Unless of course Nintendo, Sony, the Internet and satellite/cable tv's have something to do with family structure. I have asserted several times in this thread that the rise of this inexpensive technology in additional to likely increased television viewing has raised the levels of obesity.
When a kid has a computer with internet access, gameboy (advance), 12 inch television with cable or satellite and a PS2 in his or her roon the entity to blame for the obesity is.... McDonalds....
As for the pheromone thing, hey can't help nature. It made sound sense to me scientifically. Especially if the mother has multiple boyfriends living in the household over the years. I didn't judge it. I even said that these things have always happened, there are exceptions, this is a generalization and if anything it has just lowered the average age.
Slow food movement in Italy. I don't have any links but I've been reading about it for several years. Google could probably find us all some interesting stories.
Anyway, no one is claiming there's a magic bullet. No single idea is going to work, only a whole lot of changes will. But raising the price of McDonald's isn't going to hurt anyone's health, just their wallets.
Taxing fat would probably do a lot of good. Better protein than what's in meat (especially crap like McDonald's fat food) can be found in vegetables and grains anyway. Subsidizing healthy food would lower the price and increase the availability across the board. That's a good thing.
Ultimately enough people need to want to eat better for change to be made but that doesn't negate the necessity for lawsuits.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You assume far to much....
No what your proposal would do is start off intense lobbying for tax benefits based off what you could get a politician to believe is healthy instead of doctors. Once McDonalds had been slapped with a fat tax you think they are just going to sit there and take it? Instead they will lobby for health credits for putting an extra piece of lettuce and tomato on their sandwiches. Lawmakers from states that grow those will jump on the bandwagon because it is a win for their farm economies they can take back home. Meanwhile the floodgates will be opened... you don't have to beat your competitors, just get something in their product taxed so they are uncompetitive.
So McDonald's funds studies that get the fat substitutes like olestra and suger substitutes like aspartame declared unhealthful because they are unnatural and when fed to mice in large doses they hurt the mice somehow...etc... meanwhile they are helping American farmers sell lettuce and tomatos and heck even sugarcane while these chemical companies want to kill real food producers...American food producers. (remember those products could be completely natural but now it is what the public opinion wars can get the non-tuned-in general public to believe.. which do you think they will believe a tomato.. or olestra?)
Meanwhile the FDA is sitting there remembering a time when some people ate food based off of health instead of what they could afford based off of who won the lobby wars for that year.
If you don't think this will happen, just look at the current tax structure. I'm sure you believe (and likely rightly so in some instances) that the big corporations have gotten all the breaks and put the screws to the smaller companies.
What makes you think they wouldn't do it again only now when the do it, the small company has to fight not only the big company, but the whole U.S. government as well thanks to lobbying and law changes based off of which party is in office.
Although a corporation is not a "citizen" under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a corporation may exercise some of the constitutional protections granted to natural persons:
Right to Due Process and Equal Protection: Corporations enjoy the right to equal protection and due process of law under the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and under similar provisions of the California Constitution.
Freedom of Speech: Absent some narrowly drawn restrictions serving compelling state interests, corporations have the right to express themselves on matters of public importance whether or not those issues "materially affect" corporate business.
Right to Counsel: While a corporation cannot be imprisoned, a criminal action can result in fines and other penalties that could harm shareholders, officers, and other persons. Thus, a corporate criminal defendant has a Sixth Amendment to a Right to Counsel. But note, because a corporation faces no risk of incarceration, it has no right to appointed counsel if it cannot afford to retain private counsel
No Privilege Against Self-Incrimination: Corporations have no privilege against self-incrimination (e.g. to prevent disclosure of incriminating corporate records).
------------
I'm no expert on American law so help me out here.
No Privilege Against Self-Incrimination = can't plead the 5th = the 5th amendment to the Constitution.
Sounds like fun doesn't it? </strong><hr></blockquote>
LOL! And you say I assume too much? That was quite an assumptive paragraph to support your case.
My thinking is just that unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol) are taxed higher than healthy things (food, clothes) already. Adding a breakdown of the food pyramid into this paradigm is just a natural progression of what's already happened with different products. Ultimately it will help consumers, especially the poor, get healthier foods.
If twinkies were suddenly $4 and an apple $.03, people might start to change their eating habits out of necessity. As taxes on cigarettes go up, so do gum sales. A pack of gum is cheaper.
LOL! And you say I assume too much? That was quite an assumptive paragraph to support your case.
My thinking is just that unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol) are taxed higher than healthy things (food, clothes) already. Adding a breakdown of the food pyramid into this paradigm is just a natural progression of what's already happened with different products. Ultimately it will help consumers, especially the poor, get healthier foods.
If twinkies were suddenly $4 and an apple $.03, people might start to change their eating habits out of necessity. As taxes on cigarettes go up, so do gum sales. A pack of gum is cheaper.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It was... excuse my early morning rant.
The point was that cigarettes are taxed but there are not exclusions within that catagory. They are just universally taxed for being cigarettes. If they were taxed by say their nicotine or tar content then it would get quite interesting. Likewise there are not "healthy" and "unhealthy" cigarettes.
My contention is that there would be intense lobbying about what the words healthy and unhealthy mean. You didn't propose a universal junk food tax, instead you proposed to tax food by a specific aspect....fat. While it is an assumption, I don't consider it much of a stretch to believe that others would start requesting taxes based off of sugar content, percent of the product that is natural versus chemical, etc.
As for the clothes part... how are clothes healthy or unhealthy? I am a little lost on that one.
As for the clothes part... how are clothes healthy or unhealthy? I am a little lost on that one.
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's easy. Higher tax on "plus" sizes lower tax on small sizes. If you?re fat you have to pay more. Work out clothes have no tax. There's no end to the inane taxes you can make up when you're trying to solve all of society?s problems through taxation.
Here's a better one. Any clothes that feature elastic waist bands would have a higher tax. After all they allow people to eat more without feeling it in the belt. There will also be a high tax on moo moo style clothes for women. Same reason.
I don't think either of your slippery slope arguments are the least bit realistic. Taxing food based on the sugar content? Damn that unhealthy fruit! Taxing clothes based on plus sizes? I can see a constitutional crisis here.
Comments
<strong>The more we get out of mass produced food, the better off we'll ultimately be, especially farmers. Disincentives to technologize food production -- GMO, pesticides, hormones -- while simultaneously producing smaller but higher quality yields, (not higher aesthetic quality) would be a great benefit to consumers and producers (unless you're a huge factory farm operation)
One example we know well in Ontario revolves around milk and milk marketing. Every year, super-cows produce hundreds of thousands of liters of milk that has to be dumped to keep up prices. In the meantime we're getting some pretty strong milk for our money. Limiting the tolerances for hormones in our milk might make it more expensive in the short term, but the price of milk (and other agricultural products) is already artificially maintained. And as a real plus boys might not grow tits when they hit puberty and girls might not hit puberty at 8 instead of 13.
Wouldn't it be better to have a lower, more "natural," yield and let prices maintain themselves? Speaking of "Natural" and "Organic," you are aware that the majority of you who pay extra for products with these labels are probably NOT getting a pesticide/hormone/GMO free product? At least not in Canada, where these terms can be used to describe only a part of your food preparation.
I think our respective legislators have more to answer for than McDonald's when we speak of the quality of food.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't see how raising the cost of food is going to help the poor and working class. If the higher quality food is more expensive they will simply eat less (malnutrition) be driven more towards the even worse but still affordable alternatives. (Sunny D and some processed cheese food substitute anyone?)
There are numerous theories about why some children are starting puberty earlier. As an elementary school teacher I have researched this heavily.
Hormones are one theory but I haven't heard of boys growing "tits" from anything other than heavy steroid or pot use.
Other theories are that it has been caused by the rise in childhood obesity(food not hormones). When you have children carring around all this extra fat it has been reasoned that the body decides to start the journey to adulthood sooner since it obviously has an abundance of resources.
As for girls and puberty, a well reasoned, but unpopular view about it is that they are around so many more men who give off pheromones but are not their fathers or family. Divorce is much more common now and it is more common for young girls as a result to live with adult men who are not their fathers.
When these new men and their mothers are in the courting (or just screwing like bunnies in this day) stage of their relationship, it is said that pheromone production is especially strong to bring about stronger feelings in hopes of creating a more stable and longer lasting relationship. (Make evolutionary sense to me) It has been theorized that in the past girls weren't exposed to this because the stage of the relationship where this occured typically happened before they were born. However since it now happens again after they are born (sometimes repeatedly) they are exposed and it stimulates early puberty.
Again it isn't that it never happened in the past, we are talking about the average age lowering. So please understand that these generalities have exceptions.
Nick
<strong>
I never said they didn't have a right to sue. I just know the lawsuit is frivolous and it was dismissed as such. </strong><hr></blockquote>
My point is that this is for the courts to decide. You didn't bring up the coffee incident, but a lot of people considered that frivolous as well. Turned out to be a legitimate case when all the facts were in. Same could be true for this case.
Somehow you can see the evidence before it's been presented. I can't.
<strong>
It isn't the food that has changed but rather the portions. </strong><hr></blockquote>
I think you're probably wrong on this, but I'm not sure. The price of the food in going down and the sizes are going up. Some of that downward price trend is mass production, some is probably because it's less food than ever before.
It's a fact like this though that would in my opinion swing the case from frivolous to legitimate. I wouldn't judge the case until all the facts were in.
<strong>
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
The funny thing about these so called theories is how neatly they fit in and support a program that would ease said early puberty by sticking to that good old 'Family Values' practice . . . hm?!?!?
Did these theories grow out of Science or spawn from the head of someone trying to justify some political positioning?!?!?!?!
or worse merely the Image of a political position . .
<strong>
There isn't a magic bullet for this. Unless you eat less and do more, you gain weight. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Slow food movement in Italy. I don't have any links but I've been reading about it for several years. Google could probably find us all some interesting stories.
Anyway, no one is claiming there's a magic bullet. No single idea is going to work, only a whole lot of changes will. But raising the price of McDonald's isn't going to hurt anyone's health, just their wallets.
Taxing fat would probably do a lot of good. Better protein than what's in meat (especially crap like McDonald's fat food) can be found in vegetables and grains anyway. Subsidizing healthy food would lower the price and increase the availability across the board. That's a good thing.
Ultimately enough people need to want to eat better for change to be made but that doesn't negate the necessity for lawsuits.
SPJ you can your future lawyer pals can make billion off this for doing almost no work. You can run many major corporations out of business and but 10s of thousands of people out of work. All for your greed.
<strong>
Perhaps you need to check your sources a little better.
<a href="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/bb20020710.shtml"; target="_blank">Lincoln Quote</a>
I think this sums it up best.
Lincoln celebrated wealth and the right to be rich. This is what he really said on the subject: "I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good."
And again you set up a straw man... Nike wants to lie so....corporations aren't legal entities that have the same rights as people.
People aren't given the legal right to lie to others, so why would a corporation? They are treated the same under the law.
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can't believe you accused me of setting up a straw man when you have so utterly and completely misrepresented my post.
Your quote says lincoln is in favour of people making money.
Could you show me where I, or the article I linked to, say anything that contradicts this?
However, is this the best quote they could come up with to support the notion that he "celebrated wealth and the right to be rich." I agree completely with the lincoln quote but I'm not celebrating those things.
So they guy used a quote that turns out to be a popular misattribution. How does that affect the incorrect statements you made in your original post? How does it affect his argument and reporting of this case?
Next you'll be attacking his grammar.
-----------
You then claim that people and corporations are treated the same under the law.
If so then you really should give Nike a call and save them some money on lawyers' fees.
After all, those holocaust revisionists and creationists don't have the right to free speech because they are liars. Or do they?
<strong>
I can't believe you accused me of setting up a straw man when you have so utterly and completely misrepresented my post.
Your quote says lincoln is in favour of people making money.
Could you show me where I, or the article I linked to, say anything that contradicts this?
However, is this the best quote they could come up with to support the notion that he "celebrated wealth and the right to be rich." I agree completely with the lincoln quote but I'm not celebrating those things.
So they guy used a quote that turns out to be a popular misattribution. How does that affect the incorrect statements you made in your original post? How does it affect his argument and reporting of this case?
Next you'll be attacking his grammar.
-----------
You then claim that people and corporations are treated the same under the law.
If so then you really should give Nike a call and save them some money on lawyers' fees.
After all, those holocaust revisionists and creationists don't have the right to free speech because they are liars. Or do they?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The article link you posted said that Nike was trying to lie about their human rights record with regard to labor practices. It also mentioned, as you did a shoddy means by which corporations acquited the same legal rights as a person. As part of this historical proof it cited a quote by Abraham Lincoln where he worried about the consolidation and creation of large corporations.
That quote didn't exist, it is a misquote. The article I linked to mentioned that.
Your article also proved my assertion. It showed and cited Supreme Court cases where corporations where given the same legal rights as a person. They just claimed it was bad history that allowed this. However they obviously didn't check their facts.
Either way my assertion that a corporation has the same legal rights as a person stands.
As for your latter claims, holocaust revisionists do not have a legal interest or party they are injuring with their lies. If they did the party could sue them. Likewise creationist are not harming another party with their claims and macroevolution is proven no more than looking at the horizon and deciding the world is flat. Evolution as a theory faces plenty of challenges from biochemestry.
Nick
[ 01-27-2003: Message edited by: trumptman ]</p>
<strong>I think we should take children away from obese parents.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is just off the top of my head, so I could be wrong, but I believe that overweight people are prevented from adopting in the UK.
<strong>
Your article also proved my assertion. It showed and cited Supreme Court cases where corporations where given the same legal rights as a person. They just claimed it was bad history that allowed this. However they obviously didn't check their facts.
Either way my assertion that a corporation has the same legal rights as a person stands.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Let's watch that one on the action replay:
trumpetman
Mandated and the land of the free... two great tastes that don't go great together.
bunge
The Constitution was written for individuals, not corporations. Sorry.
trumpetman
Actually if you check into it a corporation is nothing but a legal "person." If what you were saying was true we could abolish things like Playboy and Penthouse because they wouldn't be subject to free speech.
[note that here you completely bodyswerve the assertion made by bunge while still claiming he is wrong.]
stupider
corporations are only granted partial person-hood under US law, and only due to some legal chicanery.
This chicanery occured after the drafting of the constitution so the constitution did not include corporations.
This is an example of a right humans have that corporations don't (and shouldn't in my view).
[note here that I am agreeing with both of you to some extent, i.e you are mostly correct about the state of affairs now but I back up bunge's statement with some historical info and expand the discussion into related areas.]
trumpetman
And again you set up a straw man... Nike wants to lie so....corporations aren't legal entities that have the same rights as people.
People aren't given the legal right to lie to others, so why would a corporation? They are treated the same under the law.
me (now)
The point is that under current rulings nearly everything that a corporation spokesperson (and therefore the corporation itself) says is considered commercial speech. This has less 1st amendment protection than normal speech.
If you don't believe me here is an article with a pro-corporation stance commenting on the case:
<a href="http://www.darwinmag.com/connect/opinion/column.html?ArticleID=366&action=print"; target="_blank">http://www.darwinmag.com/connect/opinion/column.html?ArticleID=366&action=print</a>;
Less 1st amendment protection equals partial-personhood in the eyes of the law i.e. when you say "They are treated the same under the law" you are wrong.
<strong>
Let's watch that one on the action replay:
If you don't believe me here is an article with a pro-corporation stance commenting on the case:
<a href="http://www.darwinmag.com/connect/opinion/column.html?ArticleID=366&action=print"; target="_blank">http://www.darwinmag.com/connect/opinion/column.html?ArticleID=366&action=print</a>;
Less 1st amendment protection equals partial-personhood in the eyes of the law i.e. when you say "They are treated the same under the law" you are wrong.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Stupider...are you intentionally trying to be this wrong? I'm not being mean I just seriously wonder about your comprehension. This was taken from the same article you just quoted.
[quote] Where do we go from here? Back to court, most likely. Nike can now appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States to get the last word on the parameters of commercial speech. If and when the case gets to Washington, how should the Supreme Court define commercial speech? Tell us what you think. <hr></blockquote>
The Constitution of the United States is decided by.... the California Supreme Court?? Try again.
In fact this lawsuit shows exactly why lawsuits should not be used to try to define and refine aspects of law which is what I was mentioning before in this thread.
[quote]There is, not coincidentally, just such a lawsuit pending. It was filed by a San Francisco resident named Marc Kasky, and it claims that Nike committed fraud when, while responding to critics, a spokesperson asserted that its overseas workers were paid adequately and its factories complied with safety standards. In response to Kasky?s suit, Nike argued that the merits of those claims should be decided by a court, not by Nike critics. The company also claimed that because its assertions were part of a broad public debate, they were not commercial speech and were protected by free speech laws.
The lawsuit has already been around the block. Since it was filed four years ago, it was tossed out of court by a San Francisco Superior Court judge, tossed out a second time by a court of appeals and finally sent back to court by the State Supreme Court. <hr></blockquote>
This if anything shows the game plan of the critics here and elsewhere concerning McDonalds. File a lawsuit, have it bounce around until it finds a friendly court with a crazy activist judge. Have the lawsuit go finally go forward and it gives some sort of crazy control over to the criticizing entity. I have claimed throughout this thread that this suit has nothing to do with money and everything to do with control.
In the context of your quoted lawsuit, Nike cannot participate in a public debate about itself, or at least it cannot do so in the People's Republic of California (nice nickname we have for my state) Welcome to the Stalinist state you are all hoping to achieve.
Nick
[ 01-27-2003: Message edited by: trumptman ]</p>
<strong>
The funny thing about these so called theories is how neatly they fit in and support a program that would ease said early puberty by sticking to that good old 'Family Values' practice . . . hm?!?!?
Did these theories grow out of Science or spawn from the head of someone trying to justify some political positioning?!?!?!?!
or worse merely the Image of a political position . .</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't see how children being heavier or obese at an earlier age has anything to do with family values. Unless of course Nintendo, Sony, the Internet and satellite/cable tv's have something to do with family structure. I have asserted several times in this thread that the rise of this inexpensive technology in additional to likely increased television viewing has raised the levels of obesity.
When a kid has a computer with internet access, gameboy (advance), 12 inch television with cable or satellite and a PS2 in his or her roon the entity to blame for the obesity is.... McDonalds....
As for the pheromone thing, hey can't help nature. It made sound sense to me scientifically. Especially if the mother has multiple boyfriends living in the household over the years. I didn't judge it. I even said that these things have always happened, there are exceptions, this is a generalization and if anything it has just lowered the average age.
Feeling a little touchy are we?
Nick
<strong>
Slow food movement in Italy. I don't have any links but I've been reading about it for several years. Google could probably find us all some interesting stories.
Anyway, no one is claiming there's a magic bullet. No single idea is going to work, only a whole lot of changes will. But raising the price of McDonald's isn't going to hurt anyone's health, just their wallets.
Taxing fat would probably do a lot of good. Better protein than what's in meat (especially crap like McDonald's fat food) can be found in vegetables and grains anyway. Subsidizing healthy food would lower the price and increase the availability across the board. That's a good thing.
Ultimately enough people need to want to eat better for change to be made but that doesn't negate the necessity for lawsuits.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You assume far to much....
No what your proposal would do is start off intense lobbying for tax benefits based off what you could get a politician to believe is healthy instead of doctors. Once McDonalds had been slapped with a fat tax you think they are just going to sit there and take it? Instead they will lobby for health credits for putting an extra piece of lettuce and tomato on their sandwiches. Lawmakers from states that grow those will jump on the bandwagon because it is a win for their farm economies they can take back home. Meanwhile the floodgates will be opened... you don't have to beat your competitors, just get something in their product taxed so they are uncompetitive.
So McDonald's funds studies that get the fat substitutes like olestra and suger substitutes like aspartame declared unhealthful because they are unnatural and when fed to mice in large doses they hurt the mice somehow...etc... meanwhile they are helping American farmers sell lettuce and tomatos and heck even sugarcane while these chemical companies want to kill real food producers...American food producers. (remember those products could be completely natural but now it is what the public opinion wars can get the non-tuned-in general public to believe.. which do you think they will believe a tomato.. or olestra?)
Meanwhile the FDA is sitting there remembering a time when some people ate food based off of health instead of what they could afford based off of who won the lobby wars for that year.
If you don't think this will happen, just look at the current tax structure. I'm sure you believe (and likely rightly so in some instances) that the big corporations have gotten all the breaks and put the screws to the smaller companies.
What makes you think they wouldn't do it again only now when the do it, the small company has to fight not only the big company, but the whole U.S. government as well thanks to lobbying and law changes based off of which party is in office.
Sounds like fun doesn't it?
Nick
Constitutional Protections for Corporations
Although a corporation is not a "citizen" under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a corporation may exercise some of the constitutional protections granted to natural persons:
Right to Due Process and Equal Protection: Corporations enjoy the right to equal protection and due process of law under the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and under similar provisions of the California Constitution.
Freedom of Speech: Absent some narrowly drawn restrictions serving compelling state interests, corporations have the right to express themselves on matters of public importance whether or not those issues "materially affect" corporate business.
Right to Counsel: While a corporation cannot be imprisoned, a criminal action can result in fines and other penalties that could harm shareholders, officers, and other persons. Thus, a corporate criminal defendant has a Sixth Amendment to a Right to Counsel. But note, because a corporation faces no risk of incarceration, it has no right to appointed counsel if it cannot afford to retain private counsel
No Privilege Against Self-Incrimination: Corporations have no privilege against self-incrimination (e.g. to prevent disclosure of incriminating corporate records).
------------
I'm no expert on American law so help me out here.
No Privilege Against Self-Incrimination = can't plead the 5th = the 5th amendment to the Constitution.
Correct?
<strong>
I'm no expert on American law so help me out here.
No Privilege Against Self-Incrimination = can't plead the 5th = the 5th amendment to the Constitution.
Correct?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Correct.
The U.S. Constitution was written for individuals, not corporations.
<strong>
You assume far to much....
...
Sounds like fun doesn't it? </strong><hr></blockquote>
LOL! And you say I assume too much? That was quite an assumptive paragraph to support your case.
My thinking is just that unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol) are taxed higher than healthy things (food, clothes) already. Adding a breakdown of the food pyramid into this paradigm is just a natural progression of what's already happened with different products. Ultimately it will help consumers, especially the poor, get healthier foods.
If twinkies were suddenly $4 and an apple $.03, people might start to change their eating habits out of necessity. As taxes on cigarettes go up, so do gum sales. A pack of gum is cheaper.
<strong>
LOL! And you say I assume too much? That was quite an assumptive paragraph to support your case.
My thinking is just that unhealthy things (cigarettes, alcohol) are taxed higher than healthy things (food, clothes) already. Adding a breakdown of the food pyramid into this paradigm is just a natural progression of what's already happened with different products. Ultimately it will help consumers, especially the poor, get healthier foods.
If twinkies were suddenly $4 and an apple $.03, people might start to change their eating habits out of necessity. As taxes on cigarettes go up, so do gum sales. A pack of gum is cheaper.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It was... excuse my early morning rant.
The point was that cigarettes are taxed but there are not exclusions within that catagory. They are just universally taxed for being cigarettes. If they were taxed by say their nicotine or tar content then it would get quite interesting. Likewise there are not "healthy" and "unhealthy" cigarettes.
My contention is that there would be intense lobbying about what the words healthy and unhealthy mean. You didn't propose a universal junk food tax, instead you proposed to tax food by a specific aspect....fat. While it is an assumption, I don't consider it much of a stretch to believe that others would start requesting taxes based off of sugar content, percent of the product that is natural versus chemical, etc.
As for the clothes part... how are clothes healthy or unhealthy? I am a little lost on that one.
Nick
<strong>
As for the clothes part... how are clothes healthy or unhealthy? I am a little lost on that one.
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's easy. Higher tax on "plus" sizes lower tax on small sizes. If you?re fat you have to pay more. Work out clothes have no tax. There's no end to the inane taxes you can make up when you're trying to solve all of society?s problems through taxation.
[ 01-27-2003: Message edited by: Scott ]</p>
Oh and those beet hats. Total ban on those.
Get real, guys.