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the more such organizations post crap like this, the lesser my respect for that political viewpoint becomes.

Ah. So I take it you support the Iraq war, legally enforced DRM, massive government surveillance, the war on drugs, and corporate welfare.

DONT accept them into your view.

Freedom bad, check.

the more such organizations post crap like this, the lesser my respect for that political viewpoint becomes.

Ah. So I take it you support the Iraq war, legally enforced DRM, massive government surveillance, the war on drugs, and corporate welfare.

DONT accept them into your view.

Freedom bad, check.

the more such organizations post crap like this, the lesser my respect for that political viewpoint becomes.

Ah. So I take it you support the Iraq war, legally enforced DRM, massive government surveillance, the war on drugs, and corporate welfare.

DONT accept them into your view.

Freedom bad, check.

the more such organizations post crap like this, the lesser my respect for that political viewpoint becomes.

Ah. So I take it you support the Iraq war, legally enforced DRM, massive government surveillance, the war on drugs, and corporate welfare.

DONT accept them into your view.

Freedom bad, check.

1. Fannie and Freddie did not create the sub-prime market, essentially or otherwise. The sup-prime market was already 10% of auto loans and about 15% of mortgage funds, before Fannie Mae was encouraged to expand to low income borrowers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_prime_lending
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_mae

2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control 42%, not 50%, according to the hardly-Left-wing Cato institure.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9557

3. More importantly, CRA loans only account for 23% of ALL loans, Fannie Mae or otherwise...

http://www.traigerlaw.com/publications/traiger_hinckley_llp_cra_foreclosure_study_1-7-08.pdf

...AND they are more likely to be repaid as all other subprime loans. Same report.

4. Most importantly, whether or not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac constitute a "free market" or not - the problem remains the repealling of Glass-Steagal - an economic regulation that was designed to limit exactly this sort of damage, of people taking mortages en masse, wrapping them into packages, and selling all kinds of complicated financial-investing products based on those packages.

You can think of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a house stuffed full of dollar bills, soaked in gasoline and about to be lit. That's bad enough - but there is a whole town of money-houses built around it. Glass-Steagal would have required a stone firewall around the F-Mae/F-Mac house. Without Glass-Steagal, everyone in town swoops in for the money, and when they set up a spark the everyone's money goes up in flames.

I've never known a libertarian or real conservative republican that didn't think corporate bailouts were good.

Where are you living? What you describe sounds more like a neocon to me. I don't know *any* libertarian or "real conservative" republicans that thought the corporate bailouts were anything but institutionalized doom. And I know a lot of them. Many that are working to get Eric Cantor booted from the House for supporting the bailout (and being a traitor), in spite of the fact that doing so would likely give his Democratic opponent the seat instead.

Here are a few examples:

• Virginia Liberty Defense railing against the bailout
• How about the Independent Institute?
• Or the Cato Institute
• Or the Campaign for Liberty

Maybe you think the reporters on Fox news are "real conservatives"?

I read a lot on Economics because I intend to go back to school and get a PhD so I can teach during my retirement years. Paul Krugman, recent Noble winner, wrote a book called, "The Accidental Theorist." Now Paul is surely a Democrat, critical of right-wing politics, and inclined toward a liberal government, but he still sounds like a conservative when he talks about Economics. Why? Because there exist some discovered economic principles, proven over time, that even the most liberal Economists don't dispute. The problem is, neither Congress nor the Executive Branch listens to Economists. In the past, when they listened to Milton Friedman we got taxes taken from our paychecks, and when they listened to Alan Greenspan we got pretty good money management. Score: 1 1.

(To ward off a minor distraction; it was Congress, not Alan Greenspan, who dictated the "easy money" policies for sub-standard mortgage loans which precipitated our current situation.)

This election, is probably better analyzed by Sociologists than Economists. The models of crowd behavior certainly show what's going on better than any analysis of public economic opinion. Most of the population is woefully ignorant about even the most basic Economics principles. So, by pandering to the crowd's superstitions, candidates get elected on the size of their fans, not the issues. Here is a nice little article for those with the motivation to read it:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa594.pdf

For those of you who would criticize me for being a libertarian (small "l"), you might like to look at this chart:

http://blog.createdebate.com/2008/04/07/writing-strong-arguments/

There is a link on this page to the original article by Paul Graham.

• We will never have the perfect candidate, so we all have to do some soul-searching and settle on the 'least worse' candidate according to our political & personal beliefs.
• We have to remove the social stigma of admitting one's mistakes.
  If Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain today said "I said/believed/associated with/voted [x]. I made a mistake, but I've learned since then. Here is my new viewpoint/record [y] and my reasoning is [z]," I'm sure it would have a negative impact, subjecting either to ridicule & a loss of credibility, or a political dead end had either been a lesser-known figure.
  I'm not sure who is to be blamed- the media, the American electorate, or both- but this is a major hindrance in modern American politics(/politics in general).
  Yes, now I'm pessimistic & blunt.
• One* vote in either direction in this election will not yield a difference in the final outcome.
  *(Or two, yours & mine; or a few dozen-hundred, /. readers eligible to vote

Your comments implying the driving slower may be more dangerous is laughable - like the tales told of people who got into accidents while trying to buckle their seatbelt.

As the average speed of the US driver has climbed, the death toll has risen as well - both in absolute numbers and in average deaths per mile travelled. There is no evidence that driving slower is more dangerous, notwithstanding your own personal feelings in the matter. And if somebody driving slow in front of you is enough to make you drive in a risky manner, you really shouldn't be driving, should you?

This is a commonly quoted myth. Please provide a single, CREDIBLE link to any study that indicates this. You won't find it... because every credible study that set out to prove this myth has returned the exact opposite results.

Here are the real facts, and just so you don't think I'm pulling this out of my ass, here are the links.

Fact: Slower drivers are involved in accidents more often than speeders.
Fact: Speed differences are a more common cause of accidents vs high speeds.
Fact: Speeders are generally more alert and cognisant of their surroundings than slower drivers.
Fact: Raising speed limits shows a DECREASED injury and fatality rate.

There is plenty of evidence that slower drivers are FAR, FAR more dangerous than faster drivers. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the biggest one is the fact that slower drivers are a minority on the road, and thus they constitute a MAJOR road hazard. As such, they are responsible for far more carnage than the fast drivers, since they are a majority. If you aren't driving with the majority of traffic, you are wrong. This isn't an opinion, it's simply a fact. If you are a slower driver and you're impeding traffic, even if the traffic is speeding, you are wrong. More and more state laws agree with this, as they ticket slower drivers, even if they are doing the speed limit (Hi Seattle and Colorado, and some others!).

And before you say saftey features in cars have improved (airbags, anti lock brakes, etc...), I've included injuries that would result from a crash. If car safety goes up, fatalities should drop but at the same time, injuries should go up... but the stats say otherwise.

Fatality rate for 100 million miles traveled:
1995 - 1.73
2006 - 1.41

Injury rate for 100 million miles traveled:
1995 - 143
2006 - 85

This is DESPITE 37 MILLION more drivers and 26 MILLION more cars.

Yeah, it's not as though nuclear power or oil or coal companies have come to the Congress with their hands held out, is it?

What actually happens to shares that fail to deliver? Well, that question can best be answered by folks actually doing the cypherin', Perhaps there are different means that can be used. But the best explanation is the "window call flip", which basically is stock kiting. Simply put, I sell to you. In the prescribed period of time, I owe you real shares. Instead, I show you a "confirm" that I bought shares from another participant. Imagine, say, five or fifty five participants, all in a circle. As you can imagine, a tremendous number of shares can float between participants without ever landing in one spot.

Now, motivation. Why does it happen? Why aren't there "buy ins" as referenced for these Brokerage firms? The answer is rather simple. Money. The procedure stipulates that, if Broker X fails to deliver 100,000 shares in the prescribed period of time to Broker Y, "Y" can go into the market place and buy those shares, AND THEN SEND THE BILL TO X!!!!! The trader would go to the representative offer, and indicate he wants certificates. That offer would probably move away, making the trader to go to the next offer, and so on. The market for the stock, especially if it's a small issue (they usually are), would explode until the order is filled. At the same time, trading desks all over the country would be screaming "XXXX buy in coming", and the demand would sky rocket. As the reader can see, this becomes a very expensive proposition. And once 'X', sees the bill, he would most likely retaliate, and buy in "Y' on another issue.

Selling something, at least representing something as for sale, taking money for said item, and then, just pocketing the money is serious enough. But the damage done to the issuing company is at least as severe. Think of this failure as a secondary offering never approved by the company's Board of Directors, signed off on by the SEC, or benefiting the company.

Admittedly that comes from Patrick Byrne's web site.

An excerpt from here.

FTDs can be caused in several ways, but they commonly result from short sales in which the seller does not borrow or even locate the stock he sells (the infamous "naked" short sales). Regardless of how an FTD occurs, for each share not delivered the system creates a "phantom" entitlement the market treats as a real share. These "phantom shares" are supposed to be temporary in duration and few in number. Loopholes, however, are exploited on such a scale, and phantom shares are so persistent, they are corrupting the U.S. equity markets in three ways.

And from here:

The phrase "short positions at the clearing corporation" refers to "failures to deliver" (FTDS), which effectively increase the net supply of an issue in circulation and, by definition, depress price. This price depression is, of course, more significant for small and medium cap companies than for large cap companies with greater liquidity.
...

Unfortunately, the drama associated with this clash has drawn attention away from the uncomfortable fact that illegal, unsettled trades are a large and growing problem in U.S. equity markets. Those unsettled trades threaten the corporate voting system, the viability of small companies, and market integrity as a whole. Large unsettled trades persist because of loopholes in stock market institutions and apathy on the part of those charged with enforcing existing regulations.

Also a paper (PDF) from the Cato Institute.

And back to Byrne.

I personally don't think naked shorts represent the cause or even a cause of the current situation,

Sounding the Alarm on Fannie and Freddie way back to 1997 with my favorite paragraph being

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preserve their privileged status through a multi-million-dollar lobbying effort that includes massive "soft money" campaign contributions and the payment of exorbitant salaries to politically connected executives and lobbyists. The GSEs also protect their government-sponsored empire through millions of dollars of charitable donations to Washington advocacy groups.

Fast Forward to 2008

TOP 5 FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MACK CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION RECIPIENTS from 1989 to 2008:
1. Dodd, Christopher J S D-CT $133,900
2. Kerry, John S D-MA $111,000
3. Obama, Barack S D-IL $105,849
4. Clinton, Hillary S D-NY $75,550
5. Kanjorski, Paul E H D-PA $65,500

      Its pretty obvious where the blame should be directed and which party should be denied access to the white house and if you dont agree, may you get what you deserve idiots with your left wing Obama BinBiden ticket

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-293es.html
Cato Policy Analysis No. 293 December 29, 1997

The Mounting Case For Privatizing Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac
by Vern McKinley

Vern McKinley has worked as a financial analyst for various federal financial agencies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Resolution Trust Corporation. He is currently an attorney in Washington, D.C. The views presented are his own.

Executive Summary

Two of the largest government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), receive government subsidies estimated to be worth $6 billion. Of that total, an estimated $2 billion goes directly as income to shareholders and employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By design, the remainder of the subsidy largely diverts investment into the middle- and upper-income housing sector and away from capital sectors of the economy.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preserve their privileged status through a multi-million-dollar lobbying effort that includes massive "soft money" campaign contributions and the payment of exorbitant salaries to politically connected executives and lobbyists. The GSEs also protect their government-sponsored empire through millions of dollars of charitable donations to Washington advocacy groups.

Because of their quasi-governmental status, there is a market perception that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities and debt carry an implicit federal guarantee against default. Hence, the GSEs expose the federal taxpayer to an ever-increasing potential contingent liability that could ultimately cost tens of billions of dollars to rectify.

To remedy the situation, those GSEs should be stripped of the privileges of government sponsorship and be converted to fully private enterprises. The only remaining questions for analysis are when and how privatization should occur.

No prob on the offtopic, I'm probably gonna get downmodded for it too... Mods on /. have been unforgiving lately. :-P

So... those financial bubbles are the result of unsustainable malinvestment caused by distorting intervention in the market's signaling systems like prices, interest rates and availability of credit.

To give the mortgage crisis as an example, both Freddie and Fannie had special ties and treatment by the government that led them to purchase very risky subprime loans that regular market-bound enterprises wouldn't touch with a 20-foot pole.

I'm reading this paper right now about some common myths about free trade and markets. Pretty interesting read it you got the time to kill.

Without a decade spent studying and practicing contract law, good luck understanding any damn contract, esp. in the US where consumer protection is minimal.
Seriously, how is the average consumer supposed to understand those documents that are /designed/ to be unreadable? Even old Perl code is more readable than those things, and if I assume that 99.999% of people can't read Perl, I don't think I'm treating them as 2 year olds.
And seriously, if you like "personal responsability" and big corporations so much, why don't you go have sex with them?

The Cato Institute is a neo-liberal/neo-conservative "think tank" and lobby group. Of course they're trying to attack Naomi Klein

And your point is? By the same token: Naomi Klein is a leftist, so of course she is trying to attack free economies. But that isn't what undermines her argument, what undermines her argument is that it is false.

Read Norberg's full report here:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9384

Well, there you go. That's an axiom on which we disagree. Libertarians are opposed to the very notion of taxes; the rest of us are not.

No, in general libertarians aren't opposed to taxes. I have no problem with property taxes, sales tax, or user fees. CATO has a policy analysis of The Economic Impact Of Replacing Federal Income Taxes With a Sales Tax. The study predicted such a shift would increase US living standards by at least 7%. Mind you, some libertarians don't like sales taxes but others do. For instance here's one person's Libertarian Taxation Theory. At the top, the most desirable tax is the user fee. From there he lists Taxes on negative externalities, Resource usage fees, Land value tax, consumption taxes, production taxes, income taxes, property taxes, and the worst, estate taxes.

Taxing also hurts the economy, because of taxes people can't spend as much, increasing consumer spending will create jobs.

No, it'll mainly just move jobs around.

Yeah, jobs were shifted around. Because big agricultural businesses like ADM and Cargill get billions of dollars in subsidies a small farmer can't compeat and so is forced to move to the city. The only ones who benefited though is ADM and Cargill.

Medicare, and divert that money into private insurance, then the people who work for Medicare (directly or as private contractors) will have to find work with private insurers instead.

First off, nobody deserves a dime of the public dole. All the government owes anyone, and everyone, is opportunity. If they a get employment with a private company good for them. And with government out of medical and health care more jobs with private insurers will be created.

Oh and while I'm at it I'll deal with health or medical insurance. I wouldn't totally get rid of a health care safety net. I'd let a free market in medical care. Let walk-in clinics to open on a street corner, or in the middle of a block of residences. Allow Physician Assistants and Nurse practitioners to practice under the supervision of a doctor. Then allow people to open and deposit money into Health Savings Accounts to pay medical costs out of pocket. For insurance itself, instead of only giving employers tax benefits for offering insurance give everyone else the same benefits if they buy insurance on their own. Say an employer gets a $3000 tax break for offering insurance, allow the employer to pay employees $3000 more without either one paying more taxes. People could then go and buy their own insurance thus creating competition. Insurance issuers will lower their prices to get as many insurance buyers as they can. To deal with those people who are denied health insurance or can't afford said insurance require health insurance policy issuers to pay into a fund that will issue them insurance. Said fund can be administered by something like Blue Cross and Blue Shield and not the government.

You're still confusing the average with the individual. Even if we assume that the economy would be "better" with no income tax -- a claim for which there's little evidence

There is no confusion. As for no evidence the economy would be better if there were no income tax, read the study I provided the link to above. There is evidence, whether you will accept it or not is another matter but the evidence does exist.

some people would you like to think the Baby Boomers retiring will destroy Social Security, but the data simply doesn't

"Look at the health insurance system in the US."

That trove of regulation, state-enforced monopolies and corporate-federal state cross-interests ? That's light-years away from true capitalism.

"What about the 6 million children who die of hunger and treatable illness worldwide each and every year?"

Everywhere except in the strongly-capitalist countries. Nice wool you have on your eyes ! Those children die not of having too much trade and too many salaried jobs thrust upon them by capitalists, but quite the opposite. They die because the people who rule them with guns and machettes will NOT let the capitalists from out of the borders deal with them.

"Or consider the billions of people who will never get a chance at a decent education. There could be Einsteins, Bachs and geniuses all over the world who will never be allowed to achieve their potential because capitalists are loathe to spend money on educating people any more than is required for them to work in their factories and offices."

Wake up and smell the coffee, it is private schools run for profit that are lifting the millions of poors in the third-world out of illiteracy and misery.

You managed to talk trash like you know something about electric generation but you failed to mention how coal is somehow subsidized. You even managed to insert Bush and McCain in there.

Tax breaks are given for coal mining. And it's not just some environmental website saying that. Even the CATO Institute, a Libertarian think tank, says coal is subsidized. Bush has proposed subsidizing clean coal as well as nuclear power. McCain has pledged to provide $2billion for clean-coal.

I'm waiting for the Obama will save us all line. I actually think it is funny how people claim the army protects this

I find it funny, actually stupid, when people "ass"ume I support Obama. In fact as of now I'm voting for the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and during the last presidential election I supported Michael Badnarik. Actually since 1988 when Ron Paul ran for president as a Libertarian Party candidate I voted for the LP candidate except in 2000. As far as I'm concerned both Democrats and Republicans are half right and half wrong. Democrats what to control businesses whereas Republicans want to control people's lives, especially Christian Conservatives. And both are parties to the War on Drugs.

The bottom line is that prices are the way they are based on a history that stretches far beyond your age.

And how do you know how old I am? You can read minds? I doubt it as you "ass"umed I supported Obama.

Nothing unfair is going on here.

It is unfair when you have to compeat with an industry that receives government subsidies but you don't, or receive more than you do. I won't go over the rest because you're so good at reading minds to think I don't support a free market.

Falcon

Okay, I've heard of an income tax that's the same percentage for all income levels instead of being progressive as being called a "fair tax".

Second, I was aware of the history of the name changes and the case, I was making a joke when I said "whatever it's called this week."

I wasn't aware of any name change but while checking the name I did come across the case, or a related one, as being called after Gonzalez.

Third, it's not me that argues the commerce clauses gives them that ability, it was the majority of SCOTUS that did

You also said it was idiot to disagree with the ruling, yet 3 of the Justices did disagree.

I happen to agree that the commerce clause *ought* to be interpreted broadly.

Reading papers left by some of the Founding Fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson and James Madison come to mind, the Constitution is to be taken quite narrowly in meaning, both were for limited government but a broad interpretation gives government any power it wants. And Madison was a principle writer of the Constitution. I happen to agree with them, as I say above it not interpreting it narrowly gives the government any power it wants. So, what powers the Constitution does not explicitly give the federal government it does not have to power to do. That's why a way to amend the Constitution was written into it.

Falcon

While it's true that the wealth gap is widening, the sentiment that the US has lost it's manufacturing base is a badly perpetuated myth. By dollar value, the US still produces more goods than any other country in the world. It's true that as a percentage of GDP, manufacturing has shrunk and has taken a back seat to the services sector, but in no way does that mean we've lost our "manufacturing base." It may be easy to think that we've fallen behind since the percentage of people in the US employed in manufacturing is diminutive compared to our competitors, but we've more than made up for it with our productivity growth through the use of automation, for example. If you're interested, see http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/economy-in-brief/page3.html and http://www.cato.org/research/articles/reynolds-030831.html

No, but we could at least throw SOME money at it. How much is being spent doing serious federally-funded medical research to cure, say, paraplegia/quadroplegia? Well, I don't know if there's even a program. There is natural progress in surgery but hardly a concerted effort. And no private companies are willing to spend money on medical cures for people who could never afford to pay a proportionate cost for the treatment.

The ADA, on the other hand, is estimated to cost $10-20 billionn for retrofitting public buildings and infrastructure alone.

Source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-158.html

(mind you I do not agree with CATO. They simply have the numbers on their site)

Imagine what we could achieve with a tenth of that money "thrown" at a concerted effort to develop techniques and technology to heal spinal damage.

We can't solve everything overnight, sure, and money isn't pixie dust that just magics these probelms away - but we could at least make some organised effort.

I am not suggesting we make the disabled sit around not being able to get into buildings, of course. We should find a balance, though, between trying to work around their disabilities while accepting they are disabled as some kind of "act of god", and putting some serious effort into trying to fix the problem at its root.

You say we can't leave the disabled waiting outside buildings they're unable to roll into. But how many would rather just get up and walk up the stairs?

Let's see the data. The fact that revenues come in more or less than estimated is more of a reflection on the CBO's ability to estimate GDP growth accurately.

Just look at the Kennedy tax cuts, the 1920s tax cuts, and the changes in US capital gains tax structure in 1997 and the Reagan cuts in 1981. Here is a break down on the Bush tax cuts from a biased site.

Again, let's see the data. Specifically, what are the time horizons, and how are you separating out potentially confounding variables?

I'm not going to compile a bunch of information that you can gain for yourself by simple watching history unfold. Here is a summery from congressional observations.

The Reagan tax cuts, like similar measures enacted in the 1920s and 1960s, showed that reducing excessive tax rates stimulates growth, reduces tax avoidance, and can increase the amount and share of tax payments generated by the rich. High top tax rates can induce counterproductive behavior and suppress revenues, factors that are usually missed or understated in government static revenue analysis. Furthermore, the key assumption of static revenue analysis that economic growth is not affected by tax changes is di sproved by the experience of previous tax reduction programs. There is little reason to expect static revenue analysis to evaluate the economic or distributional effects of current tax reform proposals much better than it evaluated the Reagan tax program 15 years ago.

The theory behind the "lower taxes increases growth" idea is quite sound. The question of by how much, and whether that amount offsets the lower tax rate is a different one. I'm simply saying that there's absolutely no reason to believe that the Laffer curve isn't riddled with local maxima and minima or that it's even a smooth and continuous function. The idea that we should use an idealized parabolic function to approximate a function whose nature we don't (and likely can't) know is crazy, and making policy based on it is even crazier.

This I can agree with. I don't see it as an absolute truth because it fails to adjust one the fly. However, the principles are sound- when people have more of their own money, they spend more of it which causes activity that increases growth. Try paying people half as much and see how much less they spend. It is sound in principle.

I've never seen a serious economist suggesting something like that.

You haven't seen economist claiming there is a shortage in IT and programing qualified students when arguing for "more programs to fix that from the government and Visas for foreigners" while at the same time, experienced people are losing their jobs left anfd right?

Perhaps my point wasn't clear. I see an almost universal disdain for economics as a "soft" discipline with no real truths in these sorts of armchair policy debates, usually from the same people who suddenly think that it's a 100% certainty that our economy is described perfectly by a neat, parabolic Laffer curve and that we're on the downward sloping side of it. The reality is that there's no justification for that claim to be found in the data. It's that sort of reasoning that leads to abominations like this one [typepad.com].

The laffer curve is more of a moving target then a precise measurement system. You have to "reload" the values for every movement being made which makes using a curve from 1960 impossible in 1981 or even the present. There is a point where you maximize growth and revenue at the same time but it changes with other conditions. That makes it both hard an soft.

To put it a little more fluently, it is like your monthly

I'm not sure about the people here, but I, for one, would rather lose a little bit of privacy than risk losing the people I care about.

You probably misunderstand the magnitude of the threat. That's not so surprising, because there's very little rational discussion of the risks involved. The short story is that the odds of someone you care about dying as a result of a terrorist attack here in the US are quite slim (e.g., even in 2001 there were something like 40,000 fatalities from traffic accidents and a little more than 3000 from terrorism in the US). For the long story you could, for example, look at this paper from the Cato Institute (normally not a fan, but this paper looks decent).

In America we like to call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave. The thing to understand is that these two qualities are not independent. Freedom means the existence of frightening possibilities (crime, terrorism, etc.), and so it takes some measure of courage to stand up for freedom and not opt for the comfort and simplicity of a big brother government. But anyway, I can't improve on the words of founding father Patrick Henry who said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Two quotes I've posted already on this topic, excerpted from https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-270.html:

One:
Bill Ruder, an assistant secretary of commerce under President Kennedy, noted, "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters in the hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."

Two:
In a confidential report to the DNC, Martin Firestone, a Washington attorney and former FCC staffer, explained,

"The right-wingers operate on a strictly cash basis and it is for this reason that they are carried by so many small stations. Were our efforts to be continued on a year-round basis, we would find that many of these stations would consider the broadcasts of these programs bothersome and burdensome (especially if they are ultimately required to give us free time) and would start dropping the programs from their broadcast schedule."

Me again:
The way it worked was if anyone offered a political editorial on the airwaves, the opposition got free time to state their case. So if you had, say, Rush Limbaugh on your station, you would have to eat the cost of airing three hours of anti-Rush.

Quote One:
Bill Ruder, an assistant secretary of commerce under President Kennedy, noted, "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters in the hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."

Quote Two:
In a confidential report to the DNC, Martin Firestone, a Washington attorney and former FCC staffer, explained,

"The right-wingers operate on a strictly cash basis and it is for this reason that they are carried by so many small stations. Were our efforts to be continued on a year-round basis, we would find that many of these stations would consider the broadcasts of these programs bothersome and burdensome (especially if they are ultimately required to give us free time) and would start dropping the programs from their broadcast schedule."

https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-270.html

Cited.

They generally seem to not like it. But ten to one if someone consistently delivered this kind of retribution against privacy-violating politicians, they'd find themselves in jail, because that's one of those things they'll make sure is written into the law: they can do it, but you can't. Since we're all "working together to end terrorism" now, anybody actively opposing such good-willed spying will be classified as a terrorist and silenced in one way or another.

By Odin's beard, I sure am cynical today.

Most of the 1421 theory revolves around a map that seems to detail North America in some fashion.

Most of the global warming theory revolves around computer models that seem to detail future events in some fashion. As it turns out, those models are proven wrong through simple observation over and over and over again. Until somebody can find more proof to back up the global warming claim, it is an undecidable as to its veracity.

0:-)

government regulation

Amusingly enough, Cato says you're wrong.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3792

Furthermore, the point of scheduled maintenance is that you know in advance when you should be checking that all your valves should work, and you should have this planned out years in advance, if not the expected lifetime of the refinery.

Why? Because inflation is keyed to minimum wage.

Some opponents of the minimum wage argue that it aggravates inflation by pushing up the costs of individual businesses. [4] Those businesses, unwilling or unable to absorb such costs, pass them on to consumers in the form of higher prices. In this view, any artificial increase in labor costs can produce so-called cost-push inflation.

There are several problems with the notion of cost-push inflation. The primary error in this analysis is that it confuses a shift in the structure of relative prices with a general rise in the level of prices. If the labor costs of businesses are increased and they succeed in passing on the costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, they will have managed to change the structure of relative prices at the expense of businesses that are unable to raise their prices because of more-intense competition. This is quite distinct from a general increase in the level of prices, which would be possible only if the real supply of money was increased.

Many firms, however, may be unable to pass on their increased costs to consumers. It is consumers who ultimately determine the price of any good on the market, and they may decide that a business's product is not worth a higher price. Producers cannot force consumers to buy what they produce, and businesses cannot always arbitrarily increase the prices of their products simply because the government has arbitrarily increased their costs.

This fact has important implications. If a business cannot simply pass along its new labor costs, it must somehow absorb them--by eliminating workers rendered unproductive by the new minimum wage, by replacing labor with more-productive machines, or by cutting back production. Those jobs not eliminated will be more demanding, as employers will use fewer people to produce the same amount of work.

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From his republican values Washington derived his abhorrence of kingship, even for himself. The writer Garry Wills called him "a virtuoso of resignations." He gave up power not once but twice - at the end of the revolutionary war, when he resigned his military commission and returned to Mount Vernon, and again at the end of his second term as president, when he refused entreaties to seek a third term. In doing so, he set a standard for American presidents that lasted until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose taste for power was stronger than the 150 years of precedent set by Washington.

Give the last word to Washington's great adversary, King George III. The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning independence. West replied, "They say he will return to his farm."

"If he does that," the incredulous monarch said, "he will be the greatest man in the world."

Seems mostly aimed at what is discussed in the Fake Trade (http://www.channel4.com/video/the-fake-trade/index.html)

I think we can agree people manufacturing fake heart medicine is a bad thing; and that may have been the selling point.

However, "SEC. 511. LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT GRANTS." does the following:

"(a) Authorization- Section 2 of the Computer Crime Enforcement Act (42 U.S.C. 3713) is amended-- (1) in subsection (b), by inserting after `computer crime' each place it appears the following: `, including infringement of copyrighted works over the Internet';

I sure hope there aren't any congressmen who are violating the terms of CC or GPL. And can you imagine their outrage when their child downloads some songs and they have to forfeit that fancy new laptop? I mean, if enacted this will apply to congressmen, senators, even presidents, right?

Here are some links an asset forfeiture:

http://www.cjcj.org/pdf/civil_asset.pdf (PDF version)
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:57xthSv8mJoJ:www.cjcj.org/pdf/civil_asset.pdf+%22asset+forfeiture+law%22+%22supreme+court%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us (HTML version)
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-rp061197.html
http://law.gsu.edu/library/index/bibliographies/view?id=64
http://www.aclu.org/crimjustice/searchseizure/10303leg19990802.html
http://www.fear.org/hadaway.html

Also, aside from writing your congressperson and senator, stop supporting the RIAA/MPAA and the like. Stop enabling these people by refusing to watch, listen, pay or even discuss any of their products.

You ALSO have to keep in mind that American oil companies have to compete with other oil companies on the world market. Unfortunately, for the American oil companies, the vast majority of the other world oil companies are nationalized and have a lock on most of their oil. The market is so restricted that a mere 7% of the total world oil production is available on the open market to compete for.

Total world production of crude oil (including lease condensate, but excluding natural gas plant liquids) in 2006 was 73.54 [million barrels per day] (preliminary). The US imports roughly 10.1 million barrels per day of crude oil.

That's right, SEVEN PERCENT. ALL the rest of it is locked up by nationalized oil companies and totalitarian governments. So the US can't even TOUCH 93% of the world's oil supply. It's just not available to buy!

So how are we buying it then? Maybe you meant extraction rights, in which case your desire to compel access to the resource rights of sovereign nations bears little difference to that of the hip-hop street thug cliché.

Now compound that with the fact that America has to import over 80% of her oil

Closer to 60%

to supply daily whims, wants and waste

Fixed that for you.

and every day the weak dollar and increased market pressure from China and other countries drives the cost for crude higher and our ability to buy lower and lower.

Well maybe we should have kept our manufacturing infrastructure at home then, no?

Oh yeah, and add to all that the fact that the vast majority of American oil reserves are locked up in areas where drilling is BANNED (ANWR, both East and West coasts, the west coast of Florida, and the High Plains fields.), AND the fact that we haven't built a new refinery in America in nearly 30 years (if not longer)

There's still plenty of headroom on refinery capacity. You do raise an interesting question, though: if people in Florida are willing to pay extra for their gasoline to forgo the environmental degradation, risk of catastrophe, and (the only one you're likely to understand) decline in property values, well, isn't that a rational economic choice?

and you will BEGIN to get a picture of the real reasons why gas costs are currently so high, and why they are historically so volatile.

Historically volatile? Except for a period around 1980, gasoline prices have remained relatively stable. Given a good such as gasoline with low demand elasticity (we can call this a "lifestyle choice" if you like), volatility in price is mainly due to either speculation or tight supply. I imagine the powers that be are hoping that talking up the former will draw attention away from the latter.

I should highlight the difference between reserves and flows. ANWR at its peak (about 15-20 years in the future) would contribute about 10% at best of today's daily consumption of crude oil. But hey, you just go ahead and keep blaming those Eeeevil Big Oil Execs and their OBSCENE 4% profits! Ignorance like yours must be fucking bliss. Over the last 12 months, BP plc boasted a 20.4% gross profit margin. ExxonMobil's gross profit margin was 40.1%. It's worth noting that ExxonMobil is chiefly a refiner and does little R&D relative to producers like Shell.

With all due respect, if you're actually interested in arguing a position, you may wish to refer to primary or at least reputable sources of information and get your facts straight rather than taking as gos

supermarkets in poor areas usually charge more than in rich areas because people in rich areas have more options.

And in a free market someone can step into the void and offer food for less in the poor area.

Also for the same reason, supermarkets in poor areas charge more at the register than the marked price more frequently.

Which I believe is illegal, by law an item has to be sold for the price on the label or in an ad, unless there is a sign by the items saying the advertized price is wrong.

Some types of goods are not voluntary purchases. Food, for instance. You can't go without it, so you have to buy it at whatever price it is available.

Sure it's a voluntary exchange, you may not like it but it is voluntary, no one's standing there with a gun pointed at your head saying you have to buy the food. You can also grow your own food. As I'm on disability and don't work I live on a small fixed income. Because of this I am a member of both Costco and Sam's Club, where I can buy in bulk at low prices. Though in the case of Sam's, it's not allowed to sale the same item as Walmart does at a lower cost. Also I garden even though I live in a city. I spent a few hours in my garden today, where I'm growing acorn squash, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, peppers, tomatillos, and tomatos. The end of summer and beginning of fall most of what I harvest I will be preserving. Most of it I will can or pickle. And for "desert" I'll have blueberries, rhubarb, and strawberries. For those who don't have the space for a garden, and all it takes to grow some things is a window, community gardens and city farms are growing. That's where many Cubans get their food.

As LouAnne Johnson (Michelle Pfeiffer) says in one of my favorite movies, "Dangerous Minds", "There are no victims in this classroom."

an unregulated free market supports and encourages tyranny, and takes away freedoms

How so?

What I specifically dispute is the idea that all trade is inherently fair.

Here I agree, it most definitely isn't fair that the US government gives billions of taxpayer dollars to hugh agricultural corporations so they can export and sell corn in Mexico and Central America cheaper than farmers there pay to grow corn. That however isn't free trade, under free trade there wouldn't be the billions of dollars in subsidies yearly. Just this year congress passed a $290 billion farm bill. Bush vetoed it, one of the very few things he did I agree with, but the House of Representatives overrode the veto. And more than likely Archer Daniels Midland, who the Libertarian CATO Institute ("Free Minds and Free Markets") wrote about in the study "Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare" will get billions of those dollars.

It is a fact that Reagan led the country to the largest growth of the US government in history. That is indisputable, and I'd be happy to give you a link to the budget numbers, but it's entirely pointless. You'll just claim that whatever link I give you is some dumb commie without even bothering to read it and we'll be back to square one.

Yeah--a link would be nice. Of course if the link goes to a site "if*ckinghateregan.com/our-made-up-data/reganbudget.html" I'll be a bit suspicious. The fact that you had to predicate the handing-out of the link with a statement like that means it's probably some lib conspiracy site.

I double-checked the numbers, and I have to admit I'm wrong. It's actually Nixon that presided over the largest increase in entitlement spending--then FDR. (reference)

I won't say it's the only one, but a big reason the US exports so much food is because agricultural businesses receive billions of dollars in subsidies, which causes havoc with the economies of Third World Nations. For instance, corn is native to Mexico however because US companies get billions of US taxpayer dollars businesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill are able to export corn to Mexico and sell it there for less than Mexican farmers spend on growing corn. This is neither fair nor free trade.

There are documented instances of SWAT teams killing innocent people:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/index.php

The question becomes, how many are acceptable? I'm one of the crazies who doesn't think it is acceptable for the police to kill innocent people, ever.

So if we wanted to power say, California, which as of 2006 has 36,457,549 [census.gov] people we would need something around (36,457,549/4=28044 so 28044*4=) 112,177 wind turbines. That is stupid ridiculous!

Yea it's stupid to decentralize power generation when you can concentrate all that power into a few hands instead. Fact is is a farmer can have wind turbines on the farm while still growing food, and they will supplement farmers' income. Wind farms can also be located offshore. Then there's solar and geothermal. Tidal power can even be used.

Wind power 'feels good' but when you start running the numbers it gets dumb real quick.

In what way? If wind were given the same subsidies as nuclear power the math would change. As it is now nuclear power is a form of corporate welfare.

Yea politics matters more than science.

I don't know about this treaty. But it does appear to be a pretty flimsy argument.

Yea a lot of treaties the US signed were flimsy as the US broke them.

If Yucca is used then I think vitrification should also be used. Another possible storage may be Sub-Seabed Disposal in Stable Clay Formations. I admit something needs to be done, the waste that's already been generated needs to be safely stored, but what I think needs to be done is to close operating nuclear power plants and use alternative renewable energy sources such as geothermal, solar, and wind. If there's going to be subsidies then these should be the ones subsidized.

Huh? That's a 1986-style Greenpeace mantra. Nuclear power is not polluting unless someone very, very seriously screws up.

It most certainly is polluting. I suggest you check into the pollution caused by uranium mining. And a lot of the mining is done on Native lands, who are left to clean it up or live with it. Some Navajo have to live with physical ailments caused by the mining on their land.

It's like saying that airplanes kill civilians and destroy buildings.

You're right, it's people who kill other people and destroy buildings, and in the case of uranium it's those who demand uranium which results in the mining of it.

Tell you what, if you support nuclear power how about supporting a free market in it? Let's see how fast companies will want to build nuclear power plants when they have to buy insurance on their own, The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act shields plants from liability. So let's see if LLoyds of London would insure them, as in a free market there would be no shield. No less than the libertarian free market CATO Institute says of nuclear power "the costs of nuclear power are shared by the public but the profits are enjoyed privately." It goes on about how an investment banking and financial services firm concluded that if 3 subsidies came to an end the nuclear power industry would ground to a halt, one of them being Price Anderson.

Now I hope you're not going to say how CATO is a Greenpeace like environmental organization.

Your contentions/troll is that "Ayn Rand hasn't gotten anything right with her objectivism theories...". That is quite the load of bullshit. Objectivism is a philosophy, not a theory or theories. She'll be remembered as being right long after you are dead and forgotten.

You ask, foolishly, "Since I was opposing both Bush Jr and Sr, does it mean I'm right on everything else as well? Idiot." NOWHERE do I make any such assertion. Rather, it is you who must, line by line, prove that Miss Rand was wrong in all of her Objectivist philosophy. That is your position and until you fulfill it, you are limp-dick motherfucking liar.

Donating money is normally just a waste of your own money; little of it gets to other countries, and even less of it does any good. Giving money is a largely irrational response to poverty, and makes little difference.

I agree, I'd rather teach a person to fish than give them one.

The correct answer is to make it easier for them to sell their products to us, or make it easier for them to immigrate over to the West.

While making it easier to sale products will help it'd help more if the US, EU, Japan, and other developed nations didn't give farmers and big agribusinesses hugh farm subsidies. In 2004 the US gave $47 billion in subsidies. But the EU and Japan gave even more, $133 and $49 billion respectively. In the US Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, are poster children for corporate welfare. ADM is a great example of a corporate welfare queen. These subsidies allow these businesses to export food to sell in the Third World cheaper than Third World farmers can grow food.

There aren't a lot of resources in many places in the Third World, and it seems pretty pointless to try and continue the settlements.

Actually there's plenty of resources in the Third World. Some, not all but some, of the problems the Third World has is from the Washington Consensus and Neoliberal policies. Other problems stem from natural resources. The abundance of a natural resource can and frequently does lead to conflicts and fighting. Coltan, used in cellphones, for instance. Rebel groups there fight to control the mining of coltan along with copper, diamonds, gold, and other natural resources. In the Niger Delta of Nigeria rebels are fighting over a share of money from oil. The Bushmen of Africa is another good example. In Botswana they are being forced off their ancestral lands so mining companies can mine for diamonds.

Heck some US based multinational corporations are being sued, under the Alien Tort Claim Act of 1789, in US courts for supporting those who violate human rights. Coca Cola is being sued for supporting paramilitary units in Colombia while Unocal was being sued for supporting "human rights abuses committed by Burmese soldiers" in Burma.

Furthermore, the value of "a dollar a day" depends entirely on how inflated their economy is compared to ours and thus their cost-of-living. This "dollar a day" statistic is just a comparison of costs of living and inflation. It's no measure of poverty.

Heck poverty, as used to the west, needs to be redefined. A farmer in Africa can grow enough food to barter or trade with others to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads yet they can still be said to be living in poverty. Sure, they may not have enough money to take a vacation for 4 weeks a year but they make enough to live on. And by opening up international trade and cutting subsidies they could make enough to afford to go to Disney.

Falcon

Donating money is normally just a waste of your own money; little of it gets to other countries, and even less of it does any good. Giving money is a largely irrational response to poverty, and makes little difference.

I agree, I'd rather teach a person to fish than give them one.

The correct answer is to make it easier for them to sell their products to us, or make it easier for them to immigrate over to the West.

While making it easier to sale products will help it'd help more if the US, EU, Japan, and other developed nations didn't give farmers and big agribusinesses hugh farm subsidies. In 2004 the US gave $47 billion in subsidies. But the EU and Japan gave even more, $133 and $49 billion respectively. In the US Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, are poster children for corporate welfare. ADM is a great example of a corporate welfare queen. These subsidies allow these businesses to export food to sell in the Third World cheaper than Third World farmers can grow food.

There aren't a lot of resources in many places in the Third World, and it seems pretty pointless to try and continue the settlements.

Actually there's plenty of resources in the Third World. Some, not all but some, of the problems the Third World has is from the Washington Consensus and Neoliberal policies. Other problems stem from natural resources. The abundance of a natural resource can and frequently does lead to conflicts and fighting. Coltan, used in cellphones, for instance. Rebel groups there fight to control the mining of coltan along with copper, diamonds, gold, and other natural resources. In the Niger Delta of Nigeria rebels are fighting over a share of money from oil. The Bushmen of Africa is another good example. In Botswana they are being forced off their ancestral lands so mining companies can mine for diamonds.

Heck some US based multinational corporations are being sued, under the Alien Tort Claim Act of 1789, in US courts for supporting those who violate human rights. Coca Cola is being sued for supporting paramilitary units in Colombia while Unocal was being sued for supporting "human rights abuses committed by Burmese soldiers" in Burma.

Furthermore, the value of "a dollar a day" depends entirely on how inflated their economy is compared to ours and thus their cost-of-living. This "dollar a day" statistic is just a comparison of costs of living and inflation. It's no measure of poverty.

Heck poverty, as used to the west, needs to be redefined. A farmer in Africa can grow enough food to barter or trade with others to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads yet they can still be said to be living in poverty. Sure, they may not have enough money to take a vacation for 4 weeks a year but they make enough to live on. And by opening up international trade and cutting subsidies they could make enough to afford to go to Disney.

Falcon

We're still working on the food

The only reason the Third World is short of food is because of the West or Developed Nations. The Third World has to capability to grow enough of their own food, with plenty left for export. However 2 beliefs and policies of the west has harmed this. First is the belief that most people should live in cities. This belief led to policies to encourage rural people to move to cities while large farms grow food. However people who grew up on small farms and knew how to farm were able to grow more food than the large farms could. The second policy is that of giving large western agribusinesses massive subsidies. Because of the billions of US taxpayer dollars businesses like Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, and Cargill get they are able to buy, ship, and sale corn to Mexico, where corn originated, for less than it costs Mexican farmers to grow corn.

And speaking of ADM, it is the queen of Corporate Welfare, and Cargill is the US's second largest privately held corporation.

Here's what one power co says in their pole attachment FAQs: " If you are working on a State or County Highway, you must obtain a highway work permit from that agency. You should also check national, state, county and local municipal codes."

So it would appear the government can stop you from cutting a deal with the utility pole owners. As for laws prohibiting cable company competition, the Cato Institute disagrees with you: "Consequently, most municipalities intervene in the market and do not permit two cable companies to compete directly for subscribers.

Research, it's a wonderful thing!

First of all, you can make as good an argument that telecoms aren't natural monopolies (bonus non-wikipedia article). Also, I don't see how you can go from "monopolies are to be regulated" to "telecoms should be government owned". But anyway...

Here's my practical example with a state owned telecom. We've had a government owned telecom here in the Czech Republic up until late 2005, IIRC. It was known as the "yellow pigs" (for the color of their logo, nothing racist, ok ;) ). It sucked balls. Huge, hairy, sweaty donkey balls. How about ~$100 a month for as many hours of dialup? Or not even offering DSL while it was already available everywhere else? All while the mostly unregulated cable companies were offering reasonably priced and fast connections. When DSL was finaly made available, it was, of course, half the speed of cable at twice the price, not to mention an unkown portion of my income.

Things have improved very slowly, but they're actually competitive now that the whole operation is owned by Telefonica o2. The dominant cable comapny is offering 6M/512K for around 30 bucks, and O2 has a similar offer. 8M is available too, although it's obviously more expensive.

This is an issue that both liberals and conservatives should be united on.

Exactly. As a conservative/libertarian (not to be confused with the current White House occupants), I despise DRM because it's an assault on real property rights. It means that I own my computer only in the sense that I paid for it. The Cato Institute has an excellent analysis here.

And people didn't like it when President Lincoln had an income tax of up to 5%. They accepted it only because the Civil War had to be paid for.

Yup. It was sold as a purely temporary thing.

That's part of the problem with government, government rarely ever does something temporarily. Take farm subsidies, they are only supposed to be used when farmers are having a tough tyme. However year after year agricultural businesses get billions of dollars in subsidies. And a lot of that money farmers don't see. For instance Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) receives billions as does Cargill.

The WHO doesn't even rank countries based on the quality of health care. Did it ever occur to you that things like infant mortality are counted using wildly different measures? In many countries they consider certain births DOA because it would be too expensive and unlikely to save a child they just mark it off as dead before birth. In the U.S. they spend lots more money on the small chance that it could survive and many times it still doesn't and ends up bringing up the child mortality rate. Not only that the WHO isn't really even measuring health care at all. Rich people are more likely to spend a lot more money on the off chance that they could save a baby than poor people. Imagine that.

Here is a paper about just some of the many problems with the WHO rankings: http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp101.pdf