retortio

I'm sorry but I don't take your anecdotes seriously. I've seen too many legitimate uses of police force described as "police brutality" recently to take accusations of police brutality at face value. It seems that people have convinced themselves of police brutality through popular narrative and twisted anecdotes.

Removing criminal elements from communities creates safer communities, which is a prerequisite for people thriving.

This is false. Socio-economically disadvantaged areas genuinely have more crime than elsewhere. They require more policing as a result. Without more policing, the crime problems get worse not better. Your sort of thinking has been tried out with disastrous results in cities throughout the US. It is actively harming law abiding citizens living in poor communities.

Policing is not causing crime. People committing crime is causing crime.

And if they accurately predict where crime will occur, they will reduce crime in those neighborhoods. It's likely that they would be able to get good results.

That's like telling someone planning on getting their driver's license to watch The Fast and the Furious as if it has any relation to actual driving anyone encounters.

GP's really should go away. We need specialists and technicians to perform tests when necessary.

Medical training for everyone but surgeons should not take more than 5 total years including undergrad. Arbitrary number, but it should be significantly less time than it takes now.

Technicians who can be trained on specific technologies (x-ray, ultrasound, etc) should be able to handle most cases.

Medical treatment in the US today is a horribly inefficient hybrid of old and new.

In the same genre, I recommend "Countdown to Zero Day" which looks at Stuxnet and Flame and the events surrounding their creation, deployment and aftermath.

Not astroturfing. Technically underpaying is illegal but there are ways around paying an H1-B worker what a US citizen might receive. Title reduction, etc. Even if the total paid is the same, consulting companies that help sponsor workers get a huge cut of the salary so ultimately we have workers being paid less.

One thing to remember is that in many cases H1-B workers are brought over by sponsoring companies which take a huge cut (I know cases of 40% or more) out of their salaries for the service of securing them the Visa. So those salaries might appear to be a certain number but the workers themselves may actually receive significantly less while some rent seeking company stashes the differences.

I know for a fact that in my industry (not in SV) H1-B wages are lower, going off both public data and conversations I've had with H1-B coworkers, many who I consider my friends.

As a side note, I don't blame H1-B workers at all for coming here. They're generally great developers and great people.

H1-B was intended for highly skilled workers that the US had a real shortage of. But now it's just being abused to bring in captive workers that are willing to accept lower wages and worse working conditions than otherwise while crowding out US workers.

What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do.

Scaling back H1-B in this way is the common sense approach. And it benefits other countries too by reducing brain drain.

It's a win-win.

What you're referring to is the codified freedom of speech protection in the Constitution. That's not what I'm referring to.

My post is about the ideal of freedom of speech. There is a debate to be had about the level to which "platforms" should respect that ideal. My position is that relying on the good faith of platforms to moderate speech is dangerous when those platforms are as dominant as Facebook/Twitter/Google are.

So you see this is separate from Article I.

There was a time when the Left was opposed on principle to our lives being controlled by the whims of huge corporations.

Ironically when this monopolistic control extends to our speech and information, the Left has suddenly forgotten its principles. Arbitrary black box moderation is OK because "they're on OUR side".

Well, I know enough of history to know that contenting yourself with a dangerous or corruptible system because it happens to align with you at the present moment is incredibly foolish.

Some of us still believe in the principle of free speech. Its protection from governments and corporations is a solemn duty as far as I'm concerned.