Domain: biggovernment.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to biggovernment.com.
Comments · 38
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Re:Die Ronald Reagan
Americans Say Reagan Is the Greatest U.S. President
How Great was Ronald Reagan? Our 40th President's Place in History
Why Was Ronald Reagan the Greatest President of the 20th Century?President Reagan will be remembered in glory long after you are in the ground.
Hate Vs Happy and Its Affect on Your Health
From the article: There is an old saying that goes. "He who can anger you conquers you." -
Re:Deficits deficits deficits
That's because for the first time since the Iraq war was started, it was put on the budget, and not in an "emergency supplement"...
Technically I don't think you can say there is a Federal budget. The US Senate hasn't passed a budget in 1,000 days.
More here.
And everyone should be clear - the spending on the wars in Iraq (the US is out on the schedule Bush set) and Afghanistan are a small percentage compared to total Federal spending. It is a fraction of Defense spending, and Defense spending is dwarfed by social welfare programs.
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Re:They're still around?
Things left behind are trash - if it was important to them to keep the items they brought to the park, they should have heeded the warnings about the coming evacuation and made plans to get their belongings out of the park. That they choose not to makes their property "abandoned" and considered litter.
"Not only that, but the cops
... are stonewalling the protesters when they ask for help. Refusing for example to assist if they get raped, assaulted, and so on."Uhm, the cops are being told the OWS protesters will handle the "rapes" internally and it is the protesters that are keeping the police out. Take a look here...
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Who's astroturfing this story?
I see plenty of comments on how reasonable or unreasonable the price is, and they are interesting. I generally agree it doesn't seem that out of whack price wise for a working application supported for some time period.
What I find more interesting is this story is being posted all over the web all of the sudden:
And of course here on
/.Hitting that range of sites (and more) with this sort of non-story story trying to push a narrative of the government is wasting your money? Someone behind the scenes is pushing this narrative, I suspect. Not news for nerds, but manufactured political outrage.
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Re:How do you get 2 politicians to agree?
I have also been to many rallies. And I have heard NO racism or hate whatsoever. Other than the invective spewed at the Tea Party people by the local leftist agitators out counter-protesting.
Oh, and the assaults and attempted assaults on Tea Party members by leftist and Union agitators.
It's not hard to find evidence of leftist hate against Tea Party people. Finding real evidence of widespread hate coming FROM the Tea Party is much harder. Which is why it had to be manufactured by leftist infiltrators.
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Re:How do you get 2 politicians to agree?
Ok, first of all, that's an email. Not a sign. Also, Marylin Davenport was roundly vilified by Tea Party members for that email, and was (if I remember correctly) asked to resign from her position. I don't know what ever came of it, but her's was a view that was NEVER mainstream among the tea party.
Also, there have been some blatantly racist signs at Tea Party rallies, but if you back the picture out a bit and get some context, you would discover that the horrible signs are being carried by people that aren't part of the Tea Party rally, and are often either fringe hanger-on groups, or left-wing infiltrators.
There is plenty of video out there of these people being shouted and chased out of the tea party rallies, while the MSM follows taking pictures only of the fringe people and ignoring the rest of the rally.
Heck, back when the rallies were in full swing there were several topics ongoing at KOS and SA about just that. Crashing the Tea Party rallies with racist signs to try and get press time.
At least among the left, it worked.
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Re:Idiot
It's not possible to find proven oil reserves, because drilling has never been allowed in certain areas.
1. A bunch of oil rigs have left the gulf due to regulatory issues with the Obama government, and a few more will likely leave if things dont improve. http://biggovernment.com/kmooney/2011/07/20/ten-oil-rigs-have-exited-the-gulf-of-mexico-since-president-obamas-moratorium-went-into-effect/
2. ANWR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy#Estimates_of_oil_reserves
3. The outer continental shelf http://www.boemre.gov/revaldiv/RedNatAssessment.htm
All places where there's oil, but no drilling is allowed.
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Re:Yes.
Yes it does. It also bothers me that common sense is so rare it's a goddamn superpower.
But what use is basic logic and common sense when you have political parties campaigning on "God wants me to be prezidunt 2 git that uppity nigger outta our white house"? When you have a group of people who can get revved up into a foaming, frothing-mouthed frenzy by some boob publishing an entirely dishonest book claiming "OMG Obama was at a Black Panther rally in 2007" (the actual event was a commemoration of the 1965 voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, attended by a host of dignitaries that included both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton).
The reality is, an entire political party has decided that horrific lies and appeals to anything but sanity are their way to get elected. It's saddening and maddening at once, because there was a time I agreed with many of their positions on logical grounds - but they've become so extreme and hate-filled today that finding a sensible, sane compromise and actually fixing any problems has become impossible.
In other words... a total lack of both logic and common sense.
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Re:My kingdom for a mod point
So it is somehow not possible to create dodges and loopholes around taxes on GROSS RECEIPTS!!!1?
I suspect it is possible. Thus, your claim that switching from income taxes to taxes on gross receipts will somehow eliminate dodges and loopholes is a fiction that dwells inside your head, only.
Eliminating the dodges must be a concern of its own. The dodges won't go away as consequence of some other change, because exemptions can be created around any given tax scheme. The laws must have as a basis the principle that flat, broad based, simple tax rates are the optimum.
The only candidate that offers anything like that is Herman Cain with his '999' scheme. He offered it during the latest 'debate' and, according to Zogby, he went from obscurity to leading the pack among Republican primary voters. That should tell you where the common Republican voter is today; they believe our tax system is a scam, a playground for lawyers and special interests. They're right.
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How much is this *REALLY* going to bring in?
Given the small number of people at the $1M income level, realistically how much money is a surtax going to bring in against the staggering deficit the US has created? Is this an honest effort at increasing revenue or a political effort to point at "Those People Over There Who Aren't Paying Enough" rather than cutting programs like Federal bunny inspectors, etc?
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Unions trying to kill people, not the other way
I'm not sure why you are so gung-ho in defense of unions. Perhaps in whatever land you live in they are peaceable, but here Unions have a long history of violence and harm to others - there's the examples given here of cutting off phone lines to a police station, but also recently an electrician who runs a non-union shop in Ohio was shot.
Worse still is coming from the unions, as they know they are no longer needed but the union leaders are unwilling to let go of the cushy life style they have grown accustomed to and they don't care how many pawns on both sides they savage to stay in power.
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Re:Fortunately they are easy to identify,
And all the other times government asks for your ID as you go about your daily life must be Republican attempts to suppress the voting of Democrats, too. You're an idiot. Most of the legislations that have tried to pass voter ID rules have in fact included a free government issued ID - it's not a financial barrier to get one, the only thing it would suppress is _actual _vote _fraud. And you think that's miniscule and rarely affects anything?
1. Educate yourself on how our elections work. We do not elect by popular vote, we elect by regions. A few votes here and there, enough to sway this district and that district may be trivial in the popular vote, but swing the entire race. You can be about as certain as anything statistical that the Washington Governor's race in 2008 and Al Franken's Senate election were won with fraud. They were close enough and with enough allegations that it's virtually a guarantee.
2. It happens all the freaking time. ACORN was convicted of it in 17 states, and in fact probably stole the primary from Hillary on behalf of Obama. Funny that you should mention Ohio: while 2004 was clean (and went to Republicans, I'll point out), in 2008 the Democrat Secretary of State changed the rules to allow same day registration with no ID...and massive vote fraud took place, with homeless people bussed in from Chicago, for a Democrat victory.
No, I don't think that Republicans are honest and Democrats are not. Neither party runs a clean election - but most vote fraud happens in urban districts, because there's more room to mess with the numbers. And most urban districts are blue.
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Re:makes sense
I wonder if this trip will be paid for out of the $ 400,000,000.00 the US had given to Hamas.
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Re:Facts and References and Facts
"Medical necessity".... not what it used to be.
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Re:A year ago Gadhafi and Mubarak were our allies
Truth hurts, doesn't it Obamabots? Hey, how's that whole "closing Gitmo" thing going? Is the PATRIOT Act still in force?
How about curbing those tax cuts for the rich? Because we all know that only money-hoarding Wall Street fat cats invest in the stock market or sell their houses. Only soulless millionaires ever have any capital gains to report.
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Re:What's next?
According to Alan Dershowitz, "Blood Libel" has a broader meaning - and an appropriate one, in this particular case. From http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/01/12/exclusive-alan-dershowitz-defends-sarah-palins-use-of-term-blood-libel/
:The term "blood libel" has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.
Others (http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2011/01/whats-problem-with-sarah-palin-using.html) say similar things:
When it comes to Governor Palin's use of the term blood libel, it was totally justified. The progressive media created a lie about Palin causing the death of a child, Christina Taylor Greene. Their charge was blood libel just the same way as the media spreading the al Durah myth, or the way the media spread bogus charges of Israeli massacres during the recent war with Hamas in Gaza (or in the case of Reuters falsified pictures).
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Re:sad
Perhaps if you could give us a list of all that "violence coming from the left" in the US that is somehow being cleverly concealed by all the media of the world (must be some kind of a leftist conspiracy involving all those pinko-commie corporate CEOs!) it would help your points to attain some modicum of credibility.
Ever heard of Allee Bautsch, the woman savagely beaten for attending a Republican fundraiser? Ever heard of Kenneth Gladney, a young black Tea Party activist who was punched and kicked and racially insulted by SEIU members for passing out gadsden flags. Or perhaps you don't include union thugs in your cappuccino sipping leftists. Btw, have you heard of an incident at Rand Paul's event where a leftist protester was briefly held down for about one second by a Tea Party member who placed his foot on her shoulder. I'm sure you have, because it was all over headline news, while the other two incidents were never mentioned at all on MSNBC, and barely so on CNN.
On the other hand gun-totting rednecks on a rampage seem like near daily occurrence.
Ok, since they are such adaily occurrence, can you provide some example of this "rampage". Or perhaps, the rampage is all in your, easily frightened, brain. -
Re:Do you really have to ask "why?"
Not sure about Twitter but Google's ties to the Obama administration are well documented:
and
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Re:Slippery Slope continues.
Why hasn't Google been taken offline?
Because they pay taxes^H^H^H^H^Hbribes in the USA.
:PFTFY.
Additionally:
FTC Drops Investigation of Google Less Than a Week After Company Exec Hosts Obama Fundraiser
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Just address the threat: Bad people with plans.
The word ‘profiling’ is a political invention by people who don’t want to do security,” he said. “To us, it doesn’t matter if he’s black, white, young or old. It’s just his behavior. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I’m doing this?”
From Why They Don't Need to 'Touch Your Junk' At Israeli Airports.
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Re:Eheh
Google is betting on its own corruption and greed canceling out Microsoft's.
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Speaking of bias
Speaking of bias, what about the FTC ending their privacy probe into Google just days after Google execs hosted an Obama fundraiser, which also happened on the same day that it was reported that Google dodges enough taxes to only pay a 2.4% corporate income tax, the lowest of its technology peers? I guess Google wants to pretend only Microsoft gets preferential treatment.
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Re:Bias?
So, what you're saying is that NPR can create Post Hoc "standards" for firing someone.
What standard did Juan Williams violate when giving a PERSONALIZED account of an event?
Meanwhile, I wonder if you'd support reporters creating news stories
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Re:Nothing odd about it
When people troll on about "Faux News" and Murdock I simply point to the problems with other "news" organizations that don't report certain news stories because it doesn't fit the narrative of the left.
This is true to an extent, but the popular left-wing media outlets generally don't LIE about what's going on. They have a liberal bias, but while they may try to lead their audience in a particular direction, they don't deliberately try to deceive their audience. I've seen several examples of Fox News doing just that.
Obama on taxes
Nuclear proliferation treaty
Video footage of protest
Ground Zero mosque fundingThen of course there's this:
Funding the GOPAnd then there are other Republicans lying, not necessarily through Fox News:
Alan Grayson lying about his opponent (more)
Jan Brewer lying about decapitated bodies
Andrew Breitbart quotes Shirley Sharrod out of contextPlease, show me where Democrats are lying this blatantly. Am I just not aware of it because I only get my news from liberal biased sources? If that's the case, then show me.
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Re:Internet Stupidity Test
Okay, I understand your points, and a couple could be worth engaging in the interest of expanding common ground, but... well I applaud the bigger intention of Sherrod's speech, taking that at face value. But that said, seriously dude... you're obviously judging Breitbart on received wisdom, preconceived notions, or a very cursory firsthand examination plus some combination of the other two. The 'racist tea partier' meme might have currency with the willfully ignorant, but it comes off as really lazy -- or disingenuous -- to anyone who knows Breitabart's work for themselves. You don't accurately articulate a single real position of his, yet you manage to ascribe false motives and positions to him nonetheless. I expected better from a 4-digit
/.er, really.When was the last time the Tea Party chastised anyone for racism?
Well, just about every shred of "evidence" I've seen of Tea Party Racism(tm) has consisted of infiltrators who were being denounced verbally (and sometimes with signage) -- as they were attempting to infiltrate and discredit the movement. The movement is about limited government, fiscal responsibility and lower taxation. Those in it have no use for anyone who would attempt to hijack that agenda towards racist ends. I've seen no evidence of them being tolerant of such things, nor that such things even happen more than extremely rarely. If you have evidence to the contrary, Breitbart is offering a $100k bounty for proof. As for the Sherrod video, again, the `you're-racist-if-you-criticize-the-actions-of-a-minorty-individual-or-group` meme is getting boring beyond belief.
In contrast to the knee-jerk accusations of racism against tea partiers, there actually is plenty of evidence for widespread, openly racist attitudes within liberal organizations. While the Black Panthers take the cake lately, the NAACP is no angel & has quite a double standard when it comes to racist statements by those in their own ranks. So tell me, if you expect chastisements in response to zero-evidence (and sometimes demonstrably false) accusations of racism by the tea party, where are the corresponding chastisements for demonstrably accurate accusations of blatant racism by those on the left? For that matter, how much time does the left spend chastising Rev Wright or Louis Farrakhan?
Breitbart takes a color-blind, no-gloves approach towards hypocrisy and towards government-expanding ideals. As certain of their racism as you are, you should collect the $100k bounty offered to anyone who can find video evidence of the alleged racial epithets at the March 20th tea party event.
[...] the racist liar Breitbart, who is pushing the poisonous myth that all minorities will seek revenge against whites if they achieve positions of power [...]
Dude, that's just insane. Breitbart is pushing no such idea, and the racist label is just not going to stick. Maybe you should read one of the 24 or so black authors on BigGovernment.com who have written about race-relations subjects & condemn the NAACP position towards the tea party. Really, in the long term, the "call them racists" strategy is going to erode the left's own credibility. Calling an action racist is one thing. Falsely smearing a person or movement as racist is what leftists seem to go to lately when they have nothing... it's the new Godwin's Law (or Feldman's Law, as some call it).
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Re:Internet Stupidity Test
Okay, I understand your points, and a couple could be worth engaging in the interest of expanding common ground, but... well I applaud the bigger intention of Sherrod's speech, taking that at face value. But that said, seriously dude... you're obviously judging Breitbart on received wisdom, preconceived notions, or a very cursory firsthand examination plus some combination of the other two. The 'racist tea partier' meme might have currency with the willfully ignorant, but it comes off as really lazy -- or disingenuous -- to anyone who knows Breitabart's work for themselves. You don't accurately articulate a single real position of his, yet you manage to ascribe false motives and positions to him nonetheless. I expected better from a 4-digit
/.er, really.When was the last time the Tea Party chastised anyone for racism?
Well, just about every shred of "evidence" I've seen of Tea Party Racism(tm) has consisted of infiltrators who were being denounced verbally (and sometimes with signage) -- as they were attempting to infiltrate and discredit the movement. The movement is about limited government, fiscal responsibility and lower taxation. Those in it have no use for anyone who would attempt to hijack that agenda towards racist ends. I've seen no evidence of them being tolerant of such things, nor that such things even happen more than extremely rarely. If you have evidence to the contrary, Breitbart is offering a $100k bounty for proof. As for the Sherrod video, again, the `you're-racist-if-you-criticize-the-actions-of-a-minorty-individual-or-group` meme is getting boring beyond belief.
In contrast to the knee-jerk accusations of racism against tea partiers, there actually is plenty of evidence for widespread, openly racist attitudes within liberal organizations. While the Black Panthers take the cake lately, the NAACP is no angel & has quite a double standard when it comes to racist statements by those in their own ranks. So tell me, if you expect chastisements in response to zero-evidence (and sometimes demonstrably false) accusations of racism by the tea party, where are the corresponding chastisements for demonstrably accurate accusations of blatant racism by those on the left? For that matter, how much time does the left spend chastising Rev Wright or Louis Farrakhan?
Breitbart takes a color-blind, no-gloves approach towards hypocrisy and towards government-expanding ideals. As certain of their racism as you are, you should collect the $100k bounty offered to anyone who can find video evidence of the alleged racial epithets at the March 20th tea party event.
[...] the racist liar Breitbart, who is pushing the poisonous myth that all minorities will seek revenge against whites if they achieve positions of power [...]
Dude, that's just insane. Breitbart is pushing no such idea, and the racist label is just not going to stick. Maybe you should read one of the 24 or so black authors on BigGovernment.com who have written about race-relations subjects & condemn the NAACP position towards the tea party. Really, in the long term, the "call them racists" strategy is going to erode the left's own credibility. Calling an action racist is one thing. Falsely smearing a person or movement as racist is what leftists seem to go to lately when they have nothing... it's the new Godwin's Law (or Feldman's Law, as some call it).
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Growth-Maximizing Level of Government
Similarly, the "Rahn Curve" proposes that economic growth peaks with public budgets of 20% of GDP or lower (we don't know how low because we don't have data on sub-20% governments to draw inferences from).
I wish there was a text summary of this, but in 6:43... The Rahn Curve and the Growth-Maximizing Level of Government.
There's some related (probably polarizing) discussion at http://biggovernment.com/dmitchell/2010/06/29/the-rahn-curve-shows-government-is-far-too-big/.
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Re:It's different when it's someone else!
Under Reagan's facile gaze, the economy was sent into the worst* recession in our lifetime.
You must be pretty young, or your school books got it wrong.
The "worst recession in our lifetimes" was pale in comparison to the current economic woes, and the 21% inflation and long lines at the gas pump were on Carter's watch, not Reagan's. That's why Carter didn't win a second term. When ACORN picketed banks in Chicago they were ignored, but when they terrorized bank employees at their homes they forced the beginnings of the NIJA house loans (No Income, Job or Assets -- the SUPPRESSED SNL comedy sketch got it right! http://www.savethisnation.org/apps/videos/videos/show/2394707-mortgage-crisis-skit-pulled-from-snl). They took their campaign to Washington and were successful in getting the Democrats to pass the Community Reinvestment Act, which was ineffective in promoting NIJA loans nationwide UNTIL Clinton signed an Executive Order requiring all banks that do business with the Federal Government to have a certain percentage of NIJA loans. That started the beginning of the housing bubble which was inflated with flatulance of worthless paper. With the full faith and credit of the US government now behind the NIJA loans the greedy Wall Street fatcats saw a GOLDEN opportunity. While Congress and SEC turned their backs and closed their eyes, ears and oversight, the worthless NIJA subprime mortgages were repackaged with good paper and sold to everyone, especially our friends overseas. In 2004 and 2006 CSPAN filmed Congressional hearings about the housing bubble. You can watch and see for yourself who ridiculed those who were concerned and who was responsible for blocking any and all attempts to reign in the situation before it got out of hand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
Among other tactics even the race card was played as a device to stop the inquiry.Since the collapse Barney Frank and other culpable Congressmen went on a campaign to spin the facts:
http://biggovernment.com/mrichmond/2010/05/07/barney-frank-video-tip-toeing-through-the-tulips-while-the-housing-bubble-burst/The losses in the housing bubble has paled in comparison to the subsequent unsupervised, unmonitored and unaccounted giveaway of TRILLIONS of dollars to fatcats who had already made Billions using the Subprime Mortgages to plunder the uninformed, and to political opportunists on the Left. To a casual observer such wholesale plundering of the US Treasury seems like an organized campaign to totally collapse the American economy and force the country into 2nd or 3rd world status, while holding up Socialism as the "savior". Many communities can no longer support their own infrastructure. After a severe and long winter streets and bridges are in terrible shape and homes and apartments need repairs. Pot hole damages to automobiles is much higher than normal. Add to those stress the affects of a much larger than normal number of citizens being unemployed and, considering that only minimum wage jobs are available, unemployable, the economic woes will only increase. So will the political unrest.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats have done their very best to destroy the Constitution, even before the RICO Act, continuing with the PATRIOT Act, and HUNDREDS of dictatorial "Executive Orders", neither party can claim clean hands in all the problems that led to the current situation. Their whole job seems to one of taking bribes (a.k.a. "campaign contributions") so they can be reelected in perpetuity, thus they are on a 24/7/365 campaign mode, with marginal time taken out to actually do that for which they were elected. It seems the only time they come back to Washington is to vot
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Re:Stimulus?
The government spending billions on roads and bridges would be great.
Why is the government in a better position to do this spending, than a private concern? All our roads now are government-owned, are you seriously claiming, they are a stunning success? Are the Congressmen better prepared to oversee the roads, than the CEO and the board of a road-management company — which has to compete with others for riders — would be? (Don't even start with "natural monopolies" — there are, at least, 3 different roads to drive between New York and Boston right now; there is no reason, why they can't all be sold-off to three different highest bidders.)
Oh, yes, I hear, I hear. The evil capitalists will put profits over people. Right... We can't stand other getting rich, can we? But the current situation is even worse — our highways suck, because the interests of the (unionized) workers are put in front of those of the riding public... And when the union bosses help the politicians get elected, well, that what it takes to keep the country "progressive", does not it?
The government spending billions to lay out a high speed
I grew up in a country, where telecommunications (and everything else) was the government's responsibility. A wait time for a regular land-line telephone (in the 1980ies) was over 10 years... I kid you not...
But, hey, let's ignore the 80 years of central-planning's failure and try again, right? A monopoly controlling everyone's Internet access sounds awful even to you, I'm sure, but, because it is a Government monopoly, it would be staffed by the selfless, benevolent people, who will put their interests last... Sure... Under the wise guidelines set by Congress, they would never attempt to ban any kind traffic, will allow all kinds of information through, never spy on the users, and, if we don't like any aspect of the service, we can just wait 2 years to vote them out. Picking up the phone and calling a competitor is so bourgeois...
The government giving a bunch of tax breaks to people who already have a lot of money
People, who don't have a lot of money, do not pay taxes at all. 47% of Americans don't pay Federal income tax, for example, while the top 1% pays over 40% of the total. If you are going to cut taxes at all, you are bound to benefit "the wealthy"...
Hell, I'd rather we pay down the debt before we give people making over a quarter of a million dollars more tax breaks, they've got money to burn.
The truth comes out... You want to use my taxes to pay for the debts you incurred (or are about to) by spending on all of the above-listed "feel-good" projects for the "poor masses" — the rich pay for themselves, don't they?.. Fairness be damned — whoever has "money to burn" (and you will be deciding, how much money is "enough"), will be forced at gun-point (via the IRS, that is) to pay up. No longer are you content with humbly asking for money to help "the unfortunate" — you are now demanding it, or else...
You aren't, per chance, posting from Athens, are you? Don't you still have a few offices to burn?
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Re:Stimulus?
The government spending billions on roads and bridges would be great.
Why is the government in a better position to do this spending, than a private concern? All our roads now are government-owned, are you seriously claiming, they are a stunning success? Are the Congressmen better prepared to oversee the roads, than the CEO and the board of a road-management company — which has to compete with others for riders — would be? (Don't even start with "natural monopolies" — there are, at least, 3 different roads to drive between New York and Boston right now; there is no reason, why they can't all be sold-off to three different highest bidders.)
Oh, yes, I hear, I hear. The evil capitalists will put profits over people. Right... We can't stand other getting rich, can we? But the current situation is even worse — our highways suck, because the interests of the (unionized) workers are put in front of those of the riding public... And when the union bosses help the politicians get elected, well, that what it takes to keep the country "progressive", does not it?
The government spending billions to lay out a high speed
I grew up in a country, where telecommunications (and everything else) was the government's responsibility. A wait time for a regular land-line telephone (in the 1980ies) was over 10 years... I kid you not...
But, hey, let's ignore the 80 years of central-planning's failure and try again, right? A monopoly controlling everyone's Internet access sounds awful even to you, I'm sure, but, because it is a Government monopoly, it would be staffed by the selfless, benevolent people, who will put their interests last... Sure... Under the wise guidelines set by Congress, they would never attempt to ban any kind traffic, will allow all kinds of information through, never spy on the users, and, if we don't like any aspect of the service, we can just wait 2 years to vote them out. Picking up the phone and calling a competitor is so bourgeois...
The government giving a bunch of tax breaks to people who already have a lot of money
People, who don't have a lot of money, do not pay taxes at all. 47% of Americans don't pay Federal income tax, for example, while the top 1% pays over 40% of the total. If you are going to cut taxes at all, you are bound to benefit "the wealthy"...
Hell, I'd rather we pay down the debt before we give people making over a quarter of a million dollars more tax breaks, they've got money to burn.
The truth comes out... You want to use my taxes to pay for the debts you incurred (or are about to) by spending on all of the above-listed "feel-good" projects for the "poor masses" — the rich pay for themselves, don't they?.. Fairness be damned — whoever has "money to burn" (and you will be deciding, how much money is "enough"), will be forced at gun-point (via the IRS, that is) to pay up. No longer are you content with humbly asking for money to help "the unfortunate" — you are now demanding it, or else...
You aren't, per chance, posting from Athens, are you? Don't you still have a few offices to burn?
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Re:Big Deal
Government equipment, not passenger equipment:
http://biggovernment.com/tshepherd/2010/02/24/dept-of-homeland-security-loses-over-1000-computers-in-one-year/ -
Re:Toyotaphobia getting out of hand
Obama motors trying to cut competition via witch hunt
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Government Motors' final solution
It's all about the union-backed government lapdogs licking the union boss' boots. Eliminate the Competition
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Re:mnb Re:Seriously?
This is what it is to be white in America.
Unless of course you are Michael Yon ( http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/05/exclusive-interview-military-blogger-michael-yon-detained-by-tsa-in-seattle-airport/ ). While I have not yet seen this confirmed in another source, it is consistent with other stories I have seen of the TSA harassing its critics (or even those who do not voluntarily give them information they request that has nothing to do with airline security).
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Re:It never fails.
Why is it I can always guess the political party whenever a politician gets caught doing something sexually depraved?
Hate to say
... but there's depravity on both sides of the isle. -
Re:What?
For some reason I don't think going, "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you" instead of refuting the points they bring up is going to engender somebody to change their viewpoint, rather the opposite. If somebody is already believing there is a cover-up this is about the only thing you could do, besides admit it, that reinforces that idea.
Yes, please tell scientists to stop doing that.
They need to answer questions and not send in armed UN goons to harass journalists when asked questions they want to avoid.
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Re:Or parents...
We can put Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings on the job, he should have great insight from handing out fisting kits to 14year olds , and tackling the important issues like weather minors should spit or swallow! or parents could do something radical like be a parent and monitor what their kids do.
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There are working alternatives already
Question: would Wired and the Huffington Post have broken the Watergate scandal?
Big Government broke the ACORN scandal, and the stuff around the NEA pushing a government message through art funding. That's at roughly the same level in that it's national news that had an impact on congress (they voted to shut of funding for ACORN).
Newspapers have failed to adapt, but they do have a number of useful features which IMHO the web has so far failed to replicate, such as strong editorial structures, proper investigative journalism (not just "in today's blog blog, we blog about a blog about something which someone wrong somewhere else"), accountability
Newspapers are an absolute joke for accountability. At best you may get a retraction so small and buried no-one will ever see it. At worst they simply ignore the fact they incorrectly reported on something and carry on as if what they said was the truth.
The blog standard is far superior, where usually the incorrect section is stricken through (but left readable) with a statement right below saying what they got wrong. The key is that the correction is attached to the original media, far stronger a correction.
And there are real investigative journalists today. Look at people like Micheal Totten and Micheal Yon for excellent independent and pragmatic war coverage of all the major theaters. We'll see more of that as newspapers continue to falter, and more people look for oversight of the government.