It's a good thing I'm white, because I did get caught illegally growing "drugs" at 18, was offered "drug diversion" which was 4 hours watching film strips about drugs and 6 months of lax probation, then my record was expunged with no felony....not even a fine, just $200 for the program fees.

I seriously doubt I would have gotten the same treatment if I wasn't a white college student at the time.

Because of that special treatment, I managed to keep my charge a secret from even my mother until this Xmas when I finally told her.... 30 years after the fact. I know others who went to prison for longer than my probation over a joint....in another state.

Please let this be the new norm every time senator dumbfuck speaks, he should never leave another speech dry, and please wear studded leather next time so the dumbass muscleheads have a harder time trying to choke you out or break your neck...or bring a few yourself.

So glad to know he's been released without charges and is supported by a strong majority of his countrymen (apparently up to and including the PM,) and has well over $20000 donated to defend him through go fund me and other pages supporters set up for possible legal fees.
*quality act that should be repeated....and blamed on the "victim" every time.

Oh, and @ChaosEngine....I think you're thinking of fournier gangrene.

Another reason? Icelandair offers dirt-cheap fares to Europe from the US, provided you're willing to transfer planes in Iceland. They allow you to stay in Iceland for a week or so and then continue on to your destination without charging you any additional fees.

BlockBuster's late fees and rewind fees did not help build brand loyalty.

I'm always unsure why people seem to have a problem with this. I suspect it's tort-reform-propaganda at work.

The amount of civil cases filed, aka access to the court system by the general public, should be considered an integral part of a healthy democracy.

"How often plaintiffs sue will also turn on the predictability
of the courts. Recall the standard model of litigation and settlement.

Litigation is more expensive than settlement, so disputants do best if they settle their quarrels out of court, all else equal. Suppose they know what a court will do. If so, they can settle their dispute by that expected litigated outcome and pocket the fees they would otherwise have paid their lawyers. The point is simple: if they know what a judge will do, they have no reason to ask him. Under this model, disputants primarily litigate rather than settle only when they each hold optimistic estimates of their prospects in court."

"Coffee spills, Pokemon class actions, tobacc o settlements. American courts have made a name for themselves as a wild lo ttery and a money machine for a lucky few lawyers. At least in part, however, the reput ation is unfounded. Ameri can courts seem to handle routine contract and to rt disputes as well as th eir peers in other wealthy democracies.

More generally, Americans do not file an unusually high numb er of law suits. They do not employ large numbers of judges or lawyers. They do not pay more than people in comparable countries to enforce contracts. And they do not pay unusually high prices for insurance against routine torts. "

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Ramseyer_681.pdf

[author flagged as a spammer - redacted]

It doesn't take a miracle. Someone willing to sacrifice their life to remove Trump from the equation would do it. I'll even donate to their defense fund...which is a much more honest promise than Trump's promise to pay the legal fees for anyone assaulting a protester.

When your product will be shipped to customers over seas and pass thru a half a dozen distributors who all tac on their fee you end up spending good money on inferior metal tubing with shoddy welds and a half decent paint job.

Fees are a big deal. This video helps explain why.

https://videosift.com/video/Frontline-Retirement-Gamble-Mutual-Fund-Fees

I disagree. Pinpointing the problem isn't very hard if you have some idea of where to look.

As someone who was 'coming of age' in my profession when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its successor the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I can provide some insight into how these policies have been enacted and how both have been detrimental to the public education system as a whole. The former is a GWBush policy, and the latter is an Obama policy meant to mend the original law, so both liberals and conservatives are to blame to some degree, but both are based on the same philosophy of education and teacher-accountability.

There are some other mitigating factors and outside influences at work that should be noted: gun violence, the rise & ubiquity of the internet, and universal cell phone availability, all mostly concentrated in the past 10 years that play a large role. Cell phones, for example, are probably the worst thing to happen to education ever. They distract, they assist in cheating, they perpetuate arguments which can lead to physical altercations, and parents themselves advocate for their use "what if there's an emergency?!?!"

The idea of "teacher accountability" is the biggest culprit though.

Anecdotally, I've caught people cheating on papers. A girl in my honors English class basically plagiarised her entire final paper that we worked on for close to a month. The zero tanked her grade, which was already floundering, and the parent wanted to meet. I'd rather not go into detail to protect both the girl and my own anonymity, but suffice to say, all of the blame for this was aimed directly at me. How? Well I (apparently) "should have caught this sooner and intervened." Now, the final in that class is 8 pages long, I have ~125 students all working on it at the same time. but my ability to check something like that and my workload are beside the point. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO COPY PASTED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AND DOCTORED IT UP SO IT COULD SQUEAK BY THE PLAGIARISM DETECTOR (shows she knew what she was doing, IMHO). Yet, I'm still the one being told that I was responsible for what happened.

Teacher-accountability SOUNDS like the right thing to do, but consider the following analogies

--Students are earning poor grades, therefore teachers should be demoted; put on probationary programs; lose some of their salaries; and if they do not improve their test scores, grades, and attendance; be terminated from their positions.

as to

--Impoverished people have poor oral hygiene/health, therefore their dentists should be forced to take pay cuts from insurance companies. If the patients continue to develop cavities and the like, the dentist should be forced to go for further training, and possibly lose his practice.

I have no control over attendance.
I have no control over their home life.
I have no control over children coming to school with holes in their shoes, having not eaten breakfast.

@Mordhaus the part about money grubbing could not be further from the truth.

I'll be brief b/c I know this is already too long for this forum, but Houton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Etc. Book Company is facing a shortfall of sales in light of the digital age. It may be difficult to blame one entity, but that's a good place to start. They don't sell as many books, but guess who produces and distributes the standardized tests and practice materials? Those same companies who used to sell textbooks by the boatload.

When a student does poorly, they have to retest in order to recieve a diploma. $$$ if they fail again, they retest again and again there is a charge for taking the test and accompanying pretest materials. Each of which has its own fees that go straight to the former textbook companies. See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

In short, there is an incentive for these companies to lobby for an environment where tests are taken and retaken as much as possible. Each time a student has to retest that's more $ in their pocket.

How can they create an enviorment that faccilitates more testing? Put all the blame on the educators rather than the students.

That sounds a little tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory-ish, but the lobbying they do is very real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.
9af18f0d2064

That, combined with exceptions for charter/private schools where students have the option to opt-out of said testing is skewing the numbers in favor of all of these for-profit companies: http://sanchezcharter.org/state-testing-parent-opt-out/ << one example (you can't opt-out in a public school, at least in my state)

@bobknight33 idk if i'd call business-minded for-profit policies "liberal"

I really don't understand this new fad...it's just like the one of posting videos of still images. The only potential explanation I've come up with is a conspiracy by the wireless providers to ramp up their overage fees.

Not possible here in California. I've tried.
They insist you put it through the full registration process with all associated fees, waiting period during which you turn it in to a gun store, and your id attached in case it's stolen or has been used in crimes. It's surprising that that's not the norm everywhere, but I'm pretty sure Florida doesn't do any of that.
If you could get that info and found out your new gun is stolen during a murder, what then? Ditch it (destroying evidence in a murder and becoming a co conspirator), turn it in (losing your money and becoming a murder suspect), sell it (selling stolen property and hiding evidence in a murder), or what? There's no good option if you bought a gun with a body on it, especially when you can't say where you got it.

If you see nothing wrong with repeatedly crossing state lines to avoid your own state laws, you can't ever complain that it's too easy for criminals to get guns, especially where it's difficult for law abiding citizens, because this is how most of them get illegal unregistered guns.
There's nothing stopping convicted murderers, rapists, and kidnappers from easily building an unregistered arsenal when this is allowed, so absolutely zero possibility of keeping guns away from the clearly criminally insane....that's what you want? It's what you advocate.

Not being able to check the background status of a potential buyer obviously makes background checks largely ineffective. Stupid? Yes. Insane? No.

The obvious solution is to require local gun shops to facilitate all sales. They will run the background check and take a small fee for this work. They can also hold guns and ammunition in escrow to protect both parties in a transaction.

But the next question is, will this stop criminal or crazy people from getting a gun?...

It wasn't banned. It was restricted. You could still own one today if you were willing to pay the fees/taxes outlined in the NFA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act) and pass the other requirements.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by Mordhaus.