How does it not change anything here? Please explain. How would everyone having an id not change the conversation. After all, you claiming that there is a choice between hundreds of thousands of people not being able to vote and eliminating voter fraud (which is minimal).
That it's expensive is irrelevant.
Your saying it's a dichotomy doesn't make it so.
Everyone still won't have ID. You're assuming because it's free everyone will get it. Remove the price. Put it in their hands. People lose things and are too lazy to get one. There will inevitably be identification requirements to receive one. You're idea changes little.
And yes, that is the choice no matter how you want to frame it. Any action to filter who votes will have unintended consequences. You cannot eliminate voter fraud. The choice is always: which measures make the biggest positive impact on voter fraud vs Neenah impact on disenfranchising voters? It's a spectrum not a zero sum game
Everyone still won't have ID. You're assuming because it's free everyone will get it. Remove the price. Put it in their hands. People lose things and are too lazy to get one. There will inevitably be identification requirements to receive one. You're idea changes little.
And yes, that is the choice no matter how you want to frame it. Any action to filter who votes will have unintended consequences. You cannot eliminate voter fraud. The choice is always: which measures make the biggest positive impact on voter fraud vs Neenah impact on disenfranchising voters? It's a spectrum not a zero sum game
Yes, it's true that not everyone will have an ID, even if they are free, but most of the currently disenfranchised group of people will have one in that case, and cost and effort will no longer be an excuse for not having one. Today, those are valid reasons, which is why hundreds of thousands are not able to vote due to voter id restrictions. Reasonably, difficulty in getting to the polling stations (a real problem in some places in America) will become a bigger problem than not having an id if such a program was implemented. I don't have a problem with putting a tiny bit of responsibility on people, even if they are poor. Further, while people of all classes lose ids all the time, I doubt this will disproportionately affect the poorest as these cards would be used all the time for access to government services, bank accounts, etc (which would in turn, make it much easier for them to get another ID if they lose it).
It changes the argument from hundreds of thousands of people not being able to vote to hundreds of people who lost their ID within a couple weeks of the election not being able to vote (and procedures could be created to accommodate those with a temporary id if there is a wait time for a new one)
And yes, I agree it's a spectrum. However since it's a spectrum, it's by definition not a dichotomy (since neither of the 2 extremes must be held to), but a trade-off. Moreover, it's closer to a trichotomy than a dichotomy. You can give everyone Id's, eliminate voter fraud, and disenfranchise a few people who lose their id's, or eliminate voter fraud and disenfranchise a great many who can't afford Id's (due to cost or effort), or allow potential voter fraud and disenfranchise almost no-one in terms of voting access. Of course, you can provide Id's and eliminate voter id requirements, but that's irrelevant since the same end is achieved without Id's in that case.
Of these, I would start by providing free Id's since a great many people are disenfranchised even if they can vote since lack of government photo Id makes access to things like government programs and bank accounts much more difficult. Further, it would eliminate the political purpose of reducing the other parties voter base behind these requirements resulting in their inevitable removal over the long term if they are as worthless as people say.
I haven't done the math, but if providing photo id's allows 1-2% of this group to become productive, tax paying members of society, I'd guess that the program will pay for itself. But then, I don't buy the idea that most poor people are lazy or incapable of acting on the options they recognize as available for them in order to improve their lives.
Yes, it's true that not everyone will have an ID, even if they are free, but most of the currently disenfranchised group of people will have one in that case, and cost and effort will no longer be an excuse for not having one. Today, those are valid reasons, which is why hundreds of thousands are not able to vote due to voter id restrictions. Reasonably, difficulty in getting to the polling stations (a real problem in some places in America) will become a bigger problem than not having an id if such a program was implemented. I don't have a problem with putting a tiny bit of responsibility on people, even if they are poor. Further, while people of all classes lose ids all the time, I doubt this will disproportionately affect the poorest as these cards would be used all the time for access to government services, bank accounts, etc (which would in turn, make it much easier for them to get another ID if they lose it).
I'm at a loss as to what your argument is here. ID is helpful for other things? OK. I agree.
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It changes the argument from hundreds of thousands of people not being able to vote to hundreds of people who lost their ID within a couple weeks of the election not being able to vote (and procedures could be created to accommodate those with a temporary id if there is a wait time for a new one)
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No, you have no idea how many more people would keep their ID. Firstly, how do they recieve it? Mail? Lots will not get then as where do you mail it to? Their last known address? How many people that don't have IDs still reside at their last known address? Then you're assuming that when people get them they'll just keep them or replace them when they've lost them. Many won't. If you're allowing a separate way to vote if you've lost your ID, why wouldn't these devious double voters do that?
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And yes, I agree it's a spectrum. However since it's a spectrum, it's by definition not a dichotomy (since neither of the 2 extremes must be held to), but a trade-off. Moreover, it's closer to a trichotomy than a dichotomy. You can give everyone Id's, eliminate voter fraud, and disenfranchise a few people who lose their id's, or eliminate voter fraud and disenfranchise a great many who can't afford Id's (due to cost or effort), or allow potential voter fraud and disenfranchise almost no-one in terms of voting access. Of course, you can provide Id's and eliminate voter id requirements, but that's irrelevant since the same end is achieved without Id's in that case.
The decision to enact or not enact voter id laws is a dichotomy. What's the third option? The impact is on a spectrum.
Even if you're down to hundreds (which would still be in the hundred thousands in Canada, but I'll accept your numbers) is still vastly higher than the number of fraudulent votes. So it's still an awful idea. The most common voter fraud (double voting at multiple stations) wouldn't even be solved by your elaborate mail order id proposition.
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Of these, I would start by providing free Id's since a great many people are disenfranchised even if they can vote since lack of government photo Id makes access to things like government programs and bank accounts much more difficult. Further, it would eliminate the political purpose of reducing the other parties voter base behind these requirements resulting in their inevitable removal over the long term if they are as worthless as people say.
I haven't done the math, but if providing photo id's allows 1-2% of this group to become productive, tax paying members of society, I'd guess that the program will pay for itself. But then, I don't buy the idea that most poor people are lazy or incapable of acting on the options they recognize as available for them in order to improve their lives.
Nobody said that most poor people are lazy. Most lazy people are poor though, no? Are you suggesting that we tell them if they don't stop being lazy we take away their right to vote?
Here's some reading on the giant voter fraud problem:
I'm at a loss as to what your argument is here. ID is helpful for other things? OK. I agree.
No, you have no idea how many more people would keep their ID. Firstly, how do they recieve it? Mail? Lots will not get then as where do you mail it to? Their last known address? How many people that don't have IDs still reside at their last known address? Then you're assuming that when people get them they'll just keep them or replace them when they've lost them. Many won't. If you're allowing a separate way to vote if you've lost your ID, why wouldn't these devious double voters do that?
I already responded to this in a different post. Getting an ID to people is not a problem in Canada. You can send the ID's to general delivery at a nearby post office, to city offices, police stations, social services locations, and many other places.
Why would they not replace them when they lost them? They are useful after all.
I'm proposing that, in the event the photo IDs cannot be made on location (likely), they would issue a paper temporary ID, like when you get a drivers license.
When you present such a paper instead of your actual photo ID, you can fill out a form and vote.
This is the way it already works here. It's a pain, but generally workable.
Also, I'll grant you that double voters are very small, probably nearly nonexistent. In general though, voter Id laws, at least the American ones, are justified as making sure only citizens can vote, not as a crusade against double voters.
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The decision to enact or not enact voter id laws is a dichotomy. What's the third option? The impact is on a spectrum.
Even if you're down to hundreds (which would still be in the hundred thousands in Canada, but I'll accept your numbers) is still vastly higher than the number of fraudulent votes. So it's still an awful idea. The most common voter fraud (double voting at multiple stations) wouldn't even be solved by your elaborate mail order id proposition.
You are correct that the decision to enact voter id is a dichotomy. However, you presented the impact as a dichotomy, not the decision. Because there are multiple related decision beyond implementing voter id laws, the impact can vary from massive, as it is today, to relatively minor, as it could be.
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Nobody said that most poor people are lazy. Most lazy people are poor though, no? Are you suggesting that we tell them if they don't stop being lazy we take away their right to vote?
Someone did just a few pages back in this thread.
However, the idea that people won't bother getting one or signing up for social security services because it requires too much effort implies they are lazy.
Before you try to solve a problem you need a problem to exist.
Without ID has voter fraud due to misrepresentation been an issue? If the answer is no statisticly significant cases exist then the discussion should end. There is no problem to fix. Everything else is irrelevant.
Parents do not have "rights". The rights of the child are paramount, and everything has to be viewed through that lens. Parents have obligations.
When we talk about custody and access, "rights" are viewed from the context of what is best for the child. It is the right of the child to have a relationship with each parent consistent with their best interests.
Edit: I did not make clear I'm only talking about born children (MikeF's comment about a father waiting to have rights after birth)
That's simply inaccurate. Financial support and visitation are rights of the child, but most of what has typically fallen under the ambit of guardianship terms are about parents' rights - the right to make decisions about a child's health care decisions, religious upbringing, residency, travel, who they associate with, rights to access information, etc, etc, etc.
The interests of the child are paramount, but they're not the only parties with rights.
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That's simply inaccurate. Financial support and visitation are rights of the child, but most of what has typically fallen under the ambit of guardianship terms are about parents' rights - the right to make decisions about a child's health care decisions, religious upbringing, residency, travel, who they associate with, rights to access information, etc, etc, etc.
The interests of the child are paramount, but they're not the only parties with rights.
I do take your point. We can call these items of parental authority "rights", or use a softer term like "responsibilities". I'm talking from the perspective of a Family Court application, where it is better to frame everything in terms of what is best for the child, rather than "these are my rights - I want this or deserve that". The child centered approach will impress the court.
Absolutely terrible segment that basically misleads his audience non-stop for 20 minutes... the occasional time this happens just makes me think the whole enterprise is of dubious if not negative value.
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Absolutely terrible segment that basically misleads his audience non-stop for 20 minutes... the occasional time this happens just makes me think the whole enterprise is of dubious if not negative value.
Can you be more specific? Whats misleading about it?
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I generally like all the Daily Show guys, but it is interesting how they're kind of held up as the "bull**** busters" of America when they have their own biases and at times misinformation.
Not speaking to this specifically as I haven't watched it yet, but the past few posts reminded me of it.
What kind of got to me was when Jon Stewart finished his show off with a big speech about how there's so much bull**** out there and that he wants the young crowd to be aware of it and see through it.
Yet, I immeditaly remembered that he put together a huge segment on Alberta's TAR SANDS and did a Leo DiCaprio style beat down of our industry right after all the big Oil guys in the States started pushing hard to destroy Canada's Oil industry for protectionist reasons.
It was like he just listended to Obama talk about keystone and Alberta and went "yep, Obama's my guy, of course he's right!" and did a hit piece. Wasn't a fan of that. Stewart's a smart enough guy that he either saw the protectionist aspect and didn't care do to bias or just didn't look into it enough.
Can you be more specific? Whats misleading about it?
I'm not going to go through the entire thing, but the simplest example was how shocked and aghast he was about the bill he showed being passed, as though it was somehow hugely problematic to define the purchaser of a debt as a "creditor". They are a ####ing creditor. The legal definition of creditor includes them. The audience is mostly ignorant, so all he has to do is put on a shocked, panicked expression and a large chunk of them will think "this must be the worst thing in the world!"
But maybe the most egregious bit was comparing debt collection from an estate as tantamount to operating a bestiality side-business at a petting zoo. People die with debt. They owe the money. All of those debts need to be paid first - they're at the front of the line. The creditor can't just ####ing say "aw, I feel terrible the person died, I guess I'll just write this off". Can you imagine what interest rates would be like if you didn't have departments of debt collection agencies or agencies themselves getting their money out of peoples' estates? No lender would take on that risk. And it's not like an estate is going to automatically make sure that creditor interests are protected; an executor is often under huge pressure from a number of sources other than creditors. Creditors can't trust that everything's just going to go fine, that's insane.
Basically the entire undertone of the thing is that buying debt is somehow an inherently slimy thing to do. There's an awful lot of deficient debt in the US, but the vast majority of it is not because of sob stories like the one he put at the front to pull at everyone's heartstrings, about the $80k hospital bill (which is the result of problems with the US health care system, not the concept of debt itself). And the bit about how debt buying companies will sue debtors and assume they won't show up to court and they'll get a default judgment... show up to ####ing court, you morons! You're being sued! Don't just ignore it! This is not rocket science!
Not worth any more time, but suffice it to say, that was a bunch of bull####, and it makes me wonder what other reports of his I've watched where he's misled me about topics on which I'm wholly ignorant and can't see through said bull#### (as opposed to being barely informed enough to tell I'm being bs'd, as I am here).
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Hell, even Bill Maher sheepishly admitted it was all protectionist after months of beating the "we need to kill keystone for environmental reasons" drum.
I'm not going to go through the entire thing, but the simplest example was how shocked and aghast he was about the bill he showed being passed, as though it was somehow hugely problematic to define the purchaser of a debt as a "creditor". They are a ####ing creditor. The legal definition of creditor includes them. The audience is mostly ignorant, so all he has to do is put on a shocked, panicked expression and a large chunk of them will think "this must be the worst thing in the world!"
But maybe the most egregious bit was comparing debt collection from an estate as tantamount to operating a bestiality side-business at a petting zoo. People die with debt. They owe the money. All of those debts need to be paid first - they're at the front of the line. The creditor can't just ####ing say "aw, I feel terrible the person died, I guess I'll just write this off". Can you imagine what interest rates would be like if you didn't have departments of debt collection agencies or agencies themselves getting their money out of peoples' estates? No lender would take on that risk. And it's not like an estate is going to automatically make sure that creditor interests are protected; an executor is often under huge pressure from a number of sources other than creditors. Creditors can't trust that everything's just going to go fine, that's insane.
Basically the entire undertone of the thing is that buying debt is somehow an inherently slimy thing to do. There's an awful lot of deficient debt in the US, but the vast majority of it is not because of sob stories like the one he put at the front to pull at everyone's heartstrings, about the $80k hospital bill (which is the result of problems with the US health care system, not the concept of debt itself). And the bit about how debt buying companies will sue debtors and assume they won't show up to court and they'll get a default judgment... show up to ####ing court, you morons! You're being sued! Don't just ignore it! This is not rocket science!
Not worth any more time, but suffice it to say, that was a bunch of bull####, and it makes me wonder what other reports of his I've watched where he's misled me about topics on which I'm wholly ignorant and can't see through said bull#### (as opposed to being barely informed enough to tell I'm being bs'd, as I am here).
I definitely agree with you on your points here about the estates and things like that. The part that was egregious though is companies calling peoples employers and things like that. Or the messages he played where they were saying they were going to eat the guys dog. I don't know where the line is, but that is quite clearly over it!
If anything what it made me think is that it would be a great business to get into. I mean sure, you're not going to collect the whole thing, but lets say you sink that $60k into the debt he bought and collect 10% of it. That's $1.5mm. Some of that money is legitimately owed as well. So even if you do only get 10% of the outstanding amount, its a pretty good return on your money!
I'm not going to go through the entire thing, but the simplest example was how shocked and aghast he was about the bill he showed being passed, as though it was somehow hugely problematic to define the purchaser of a debt as a "creditor". They are a ####ing creditor. The legal definition of creditor includes them. The audience is mostly ignorant, so all he has to do is put on a shocked, panicked expression and a large chunk of them will think "this must be the worst thing in the world!"
But maybe the most egregious bit was comparing debt collection from an estate as tantamount to operating a bestiality side-business at a petting zoo. People die with debt. They owe the money. All of those debts need to be paid first - they're at the front of the line. The creditor can't just ####ing say "aw, I feel terrible the person died, I guess I'll just write this off". Can you imagine what interest rates would be like if you didn't have departments of debt collection agencies or agencies themselves getting their money out of peoples' estates? No lender would take on that risk. And it's not like an estate is going to automatically make sure that creditor interests are protected; an executor is often under huge pressure from a number of sources other than creditors. Creditors can't trust that everything's just going to go fine, that's insane.
Basically the entire undertone of the thing is that buying debt is somehow an inherently slimy thing to do. There's an awful lot of deficient debt in the US, but the vast majority of it is not because of sob stories like the one he put at the front to pull at everyone's heartstrings, about the $80k hospital bill (which is the result of problems with the US health care system, not the concept of debt itself). And the bit about how debt buying companies will sue debtors and assume they won't show up to court and they'll get a default judgment... show up to ####ing court, you morons! You're being sued! Don't just ignore it! This is not rocket science!
Not worth any more time, but suffice it to say, that was a bunch of bull####, and it makes me wonder what other reports of his I've watched where he's misled me about topics on which I'm wholly ignorant and can't see through said bull#### (as opposed to being barely informed enough to tell I'm being bs'd, as I am here).
Your response reads like someone who only watched two short clips from within that segment and didn't understand those particular clips within the larger context of the segment.
Of course his show uses arguments in the strongest way possible to show how debt buyers are scum. And if he presents 10 reasons, and 1 or 2 miss the mark, who cares? It doesn't make the other 8 or 9 irrelevant or somehow false. Nor should it affect his credibility in any way. Moreover, if those 1 or 2 arguments that are weaker are taken in the larger context then it should be easy to see how they fit into his overall argument.
Your counter arguments themselves are even weak. Honestly your only answer to that entire segment about the court judgements and garnishing of wages and thousands of cases reviewed in seconds is "well the system is flawed but go along with it?"
