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A few problems with your argument..

First, BILLS WON'T GO DOWN. Sorry, but according to my own insurance company (BCBS), and the government's own projections(GAO) the bills will increase 6-8% every year. The "collapse" of healthcare in unavoidable unless the fed's nationalize it (UK), regulate it (Japan) or tax the hell out of citizens (France).

http://www.progressnownm.org/blog/2012/05/health-insurance-rate-hike-on-poor-rural-nm-go-into-effect-while-insurer-hoards-billions-in-profits.html

Secondly, the AHA does not lower the cost of providing care - it hugely increases the number of billing codes (simple laceration instead of chicken strike, check peck, accident while playing a brass instrument, etc) and creates more paperwork. It does nothing to curb the HIGHEST GROWING COST in medical care - which is administration! Highest in the world I might add.

Huge administrative costs.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-ii-indefensible-administrative-costs/

GAO reports premium increases related to ACA:
http://www.gao.gov/assets/330/322337.html

The government already knows how to run a good healthcare system - the VA. It used to be awful 30 years ago, but now it is a well run system. They also run medicare/medicaid which has always been terrible. They choose a medicare system over a VA system? That makes no sense...

If they wanted to use the interstate commerce clause, they could have easily regulated the COST of healthcare ala Japan. They can regulate the price of grain, how is that different from bandaids? Japan regulates every procedure just like a state PUC regulates the price of electricity. The PUC is politically responsible, and the state can be held responsible by the voters for high costs. Under Obamacare there is little political responsibility or accountability for healthcare cost. Only the ability to limit increases to 10%.. How is this responsible? At 10% rates can double every 10 years! Plainly, you can't vote for a cheaper rate EVER, only lower increases.

Honestly - this is political lobbying turning public insurance into a PROFIT. I predict that 15 million middle class families will DROP insurance and pay the tax, while 30 million lower-class families will gain insurance so relatively expensive - that when necessary - won't cover squat when they need it most.

Duke on the "quality" of lower-class insurance.
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2371/

It will do nothing to curb the number of bankruptcies caused by medical bills - which is the greatest cause of bankruptcy. In fact, by requiring insurance, it may cause even more bankruptcies. Following the model in Massachusetts, bankruptcies did increase, even after controlling for economic and market fluctuations.

http://healthcarecompact.org/blog/2012-04-02/lessons-massachusetts-bankruptcy

So tell me again, HOW, HOW is this going to help anybody? How is this not PROFITEERING on the public?

I've read every page of the bill, I've talked to insurance agents and doctors. I've written my congressmen. THIS IS NOT A SOCIAL GOOD. I don't care if you're liberal of conservative - unless you own a hospital, drug company, or collection agency this bill is utter profiteering.

You might want to read this GAO report:

"In our population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, we found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990."

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-646R

If you take the time to read the report all the way to the second page, you notice the study is based on illegal immigrants that had criminal record, not all illegal population.

You might want to read this GAO report:

"In our population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, we found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990."

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-646R

Unfortunately, the people who oppose this aren't concerned about facts. This is their religious cause. Ignoring facts is how they demonstrate the depth of their faith.

If they did care about the facts, they would have already done the research, already come to the one correct conclusion, and admitted that their previous position was knee-jerk, emotionally driven, and mistaken. Then they'd actually change their minds and you'd never hear the old view from them again. Maybe they'd also learn an unforgettable lesson about informing yourself prior to vehemently taking a position on something.

That's what they would do if they were concerned about facts: the easily-researched, easily-comprehended facts of the matter. Clearly, they are not concerned about facts. They do seem to care about hand-waving, turning basic law enforcement (and anything else they don't like) into a racial/ethic issue, and saving face. In the absence of facts supporting their position, using the term "racist" as a weapon is all they have.

There are issues where multiple valid positions are possible. There are topics which are opinion-based in nature. This isn't one of those. To maintain a verifiably false position in the face of multiple contradictory facts is a degree of self-deception and insanity I find difficult to comprehend. It's simply psychotic (that is, indicates no contact with reality).

They remind me of the flat-earth adherents.

You might want to read this GAO report:

"In our population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, we found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990."

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-646R

Their study only considered illegal aliens that had actually been arrested. The high number of arrests per illegal alien in their study confirms that a small number of illegal aliens are getting arrested over and over while most are not getting arrested at all.

You might want to read this GAO report:

"In our population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, we found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990."

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-646R

"Although a five-axle tractor-trailer loaded to the current 80,000 pound Federal weight limit weighs about the same as 20 automobiles, the impact of the tractor trailer is dramatically higer. Based on Association data, and confirmed by its officials, such a tractor-trailer has the same impact on an interstate highway as at least 9,600 automobiles"

So every time you go through a tollbooth, ask yourself "why isn't this truck paying 9600 times more toll than me?" The answer: you are subsidizing that truck.

I've been through these checkpoints in New Mexico and Texas many times but I was never curious about their history until I read the "flushing the entire constitution down the toilet these days" comment. Got me to wondering how long the checkpoints have been around and who got them started. Best I can tell, they started in the early 90's (1993 is the earliest mention I can find).

Interesting GAO report on the Border Patrol from 2005, if anyone is interested:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05435.pdf

So the checkpoints are nothing new but certainly they were expanded and additionally empowered after 9/11 to (on paper anyway) act as a deterrent to terrorism. My only addition to the "flushing" comment is that it is nothing recent -- it started long ago. The Man just uses every excuse to flush more of our rights farther down the pipe. Galling.

Except that the GP is right and US citizens hold more of the debt. http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/longterm/debt/ownership.html. China is the largest foreign holder of US debt, but they don't hold more than domestic holders.

Besides, it was, apparently, an easy patch.

Sadly, the Scud got through because the Patriot installation at the target hadn't been patched.

Bam! Scuttlebutt at the time was that the system used FORTRAN and int math and had a rounding error that caused it to get progressively worse over time. Other scuttlebutt was that the scuds were so badly designed that most of the time they were fired they wouldn't have hit anything anyway. So there's a two-fer, one on either side!

Um ok, so Scott Adams is proposing the U.S. Government Accountability Office?

http://www.gao.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Office

Furthermore, we already have government run healthcare: the VA and Medicare--for vets and old people. Not only are these services popular, their more efficiently run than private insurance companies, with less administrative costs. Which lead to the absurd statement: "get your government hands off my medicare."

Excuse me when I say that I think you've been brain-washed by Fox News.

This report specifically talks about how INEFFICIENT Medicare is and makes recommendations to change that.

This USA Today article complains that Medicare funds the vast majority of residency training in the USA. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a substantial amount of money that is not going to treatment as you said.

This report says fraud is costing in the billions. And this article says that fraud is a growing problem in Medicare costing $60 billion per year and says that fewer than 5%... that's 5% of claims are audited.

According to this Congressional Research Service report Medicare's budget is $420 billion for 2009. If $60 billion is just fraud, that means nearly 15% of Medicare's budget is NOT going to treatment not including all the rest of Medicare's expenses (funding residency, other misc overhead).

Sorry, but to say that Medicare is efficient is just plain wrong.

Furthermore, we already have government run healthcare: the VA and Medicare--for vets and old people. Not only are these services popular, their more efficiently run than private insurance companies, with less administrative costs. Which lead to the absurd statement: "get your government hands off my medicare."

Excuse me when I say that I think you've been brain-washed by Fox News.

This report specifically talks about how INEFFICIENT Medicare is and makes recommendations to change that.

This USA Today article complains that Medicare funds the vast majority of residency training in the USA. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a substantial amount of money that is not going to treatment as you said.

This report says fraud is costing in the billions. And this article says that fraud is a growing problem in Medicare costing $60 billion per year and says that fewer than 5%... that's 5% of claims are audited.

According to this Congressional Research Service report Medicare's budget is $420 billion for 2009. If $60 billion is just fraud, that means nearly 15% of Medicare's budget is NOT going to treatment not including all the rest of Medicare's expenses (funding residency, other misc overhead).

Sorry, but to say that Medicare is efficient is just plain wrong.

The Government Accountability Office knew about this over three years ago and released this study:

Effective Tax Rates Are Correlated with Where Income Is Reported
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08950.pdf

Comparison of the Reported Tax Liabilities of Foreign- and U.S.-Controlled Corporations, 1998-2005
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08957.pdf

And a CNN Money article from around then:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/12/news/economy/corporate_taxes/

The Government Accountability Office knew about this over three years ago and released this study:

Effective Tax Rates Are Correlated with Where Income Is Reported
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08950.pdf

Comparison of the Reported Tax Liabilities of Foreign- and U.S.-Controlled Corporations, 1998-2005
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08957.pdf

And a CNN Money article from around then:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/12/news/economy/corporate_taxes/

This is the GAO report that jrifkin mentioned. It's right there on page 131 like he said (report page 131, not pdf page 131).

http://www.gao.gov/search?q=GAO-11-696

The thing to note is, most of the $16 trillion you say was "given" to the banks was really "loaned" to the banks. My point being a loan is better than straigt-up giving away the money, even if it is a risky loan that is clearly controversial.

By means of comparison... jrfikin mentioned that the government could have used that $16 trillion to give every man, woman, and child a $50,000. Again, since the money was lent, not given, that is also a bad idea.

DevLeopard and Davide Marney have made the comments I agree with most in this /. discussion -- do not rely on credit/leverage as it will only put you at risk for trouble. The government sets a bad example in this case but at least it has a reliable income, whereas an individual or corporation can lose their income over night as we have seen occur to our family, friends, businesses, and banks over the past decade.

The ship called the US (or Global) Economy is in danger of sinking, and instead of figuring out how to patch the hull or securing the life rafts, everybody is busy blaming the engineers for poor construction, questioning the navigator's abilities, and claiming the passengers are too fat. The more practical and rational approach is if we all banded together to get the ship sailing again, crew and passenger alike.

This continuing argument about Saturday delivery is first, highly flawed, and second, not going to save any reasonable amount of money. The Postal Regulatory Commission says it will take 3 years to implement and only save about 1.7 billion a year starting in the fourth year. And even the GAO states that "it would also reduce service; put mail volumes and revenues at risk; eliminate jobs; and, by itself, be insufficient to solve USPS's financial challenges".

So while the PO loses its one attractive monopoly, it also fails to meet its financial obligations. The whole Saturday argument is just a scapegoat for Donahue to push along - then send the next PM over to beg for something else next year.

IMHO all of these products, including motors for hybrid vehicles, are too important to allow China to trivial blackmail the rest of the world at their pleasure. All that is needed is the US government to guarantee purchase at some set price and dozens of new mines would open overnight in the US.

Opening new mines or even just re-opening the old mine in Mountain Pass, CA, can't happen "overnight." It will take at least seven years to open a new mine (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10617r.pdf).

As a matter of fact that's just about correct, if I understand it right. I know you're trying to be snarky, but I think in approximation and analogy that's how it works. The issue isn't directly how much US owes compared with its wealth (it would never be the absolute value of the debt, anyway), but whether creditors are willing to keep lending, which of course depends on other interrelated things like the growth of the US economy, the money supply, the rate of inflation, interest rates, and how the play of all of these factors and others in the economies of other countries in the world effect their credit-worthiness relative to the US. If lenders start to decide they don't trust the US to hold their money, more than they do any other country, that's when the American national debt becomes a huge problem for everyone. And I think it's true that one of the reasons this could happen is if people start to see the risk of American default because of the overwhelming size of the debt relative to the US economy.

You're absolutely right I should support all this with evidence, and I'm astonished that it seems to be really hard to find reliable explanations of the dynamics of government debt online. Maybe I'm using the wrong keywords. However, the US Government Accountability Office has a pretty good explanation of the reasons why creditors generally buy US debt. It doesn't say exactly what I'm saying, but gives a more detailed explanation of the way US debt works.

I'm not an economist, of course, so possibly talking out of the wrong end.

The work was all/will all be done by corporate entities through contracts assigned. The GAO issued a report indicating that they have an unfunded gap in providing for evaluation of monies spent. see: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-371T. The very idea of providing services to rural areas (c.f. roads, electricity, gas/electric, mail) has nothing whatever to do with efficiency. If efficiency were a goal the government would have to mandate that all of you live in the city. This type of redistribution of wealth from urban to rural areas is what allows myopic ideas about taxation to thrive in the very areas that benefit the most: rural areas. If you want to hate the government for wasting your tax dollars then you should also want to communicate your distaste to your elected representatives. The problem is that said elected representatives aren't elected by you, but rather by the interest groups (see the private contractors being hired) who can afford to lobby for riders on legislation.

In fact the (highway) road damage of one 18-wheeler is equivalent to at least 9600 cars:

http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf

Since there are approximately 2 million heavy trucks in the US although not 18 wheelers all of them I would expect them to dominate the road wear (if we assumed unrealistically that they were all 18 wheelers the road wear would correspond to approximately 20 billion cars).

http://www.bts.gov/publications/transportation_statistics_annual_report/2005/html/chapter_02/highway_trucks_by_weight.html

Let me start by saying, flat out, that I'm not trying to troll or start a war here, but what exactly would you have them cut?

Let's start with what the internal government (GAO) report on waste advised:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11318sp.pdf

If even the government knows it needs to cut or consolidate these programs, the politics shouldn't be hard to overcome. They may not have a $100B impact, but it will be significant. Its just really hard to justify new taxes when there are 15 agencies involved in food safety, 100 programs addressing surface transportation, over 20 federal programs addressing homelessness, 82 programs for teacher improvement, etc. The duplication and waste makes me not trust the government with any more of my money.

FOIA? Try Google next time. It's not a secret or anything.

You can make a simpler presentation of this concept by simply calling it a 10-fold expansion of the 1991 Border Patrol ($300 million budget for 3,000 agents: http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat6/147284.pdf) to 30,000 and $3 billion.

Part of the problem with this idea - which is generally feasible and affordable - is the ambivalence about locking down the border by people who actually live there. The "patrol" the entire border idea requires building a patrol road and infrastructure where there along the entire border much of which is currently wilderness. The border ended up where it is partly because of the nearly impassable terrain much of it runs through. Through many areas it will be impossible to patrol directly on the border and an interception line will have to be drawn in the interior where some-to-many U.S. citizens will need to traverse the line daily. The line will have to run through the property of numerous people, who generally will not like the idea.

The high-tech invisible border idea was an effort to do a technological end run around these problems.

We are not functionally bankrupt. The United States of America is point blank in fact bankrupt. If you believe the GOA numbers you really need to look at the actual balance sheets for the country. Congress has been playing games for years mislabeling liabilities so they don't show up in the grand total reports. They have effectively been lying to the country. We are so totally in debt we are completely screwed if there aren't some major serious changes right away.

We are actually $202 Trillion in debt, not $14 Trillion as the GOA would have you believe. The US nation GDP is only $14 Trillion currently. So even if you believe the GAO we are 100% in debt. If you look at the actual numbers we are 1450% in debt. So anyway you slice it we are in big freaking trouble, and must have some very serious, hard changes to how much we spend. Spending has got to come down by a huge percentage. We spend more than the government gets in revenue every year. The rough amount we over spend every year is $800 Billion a year and growing. This is a GOA number so it is probably in fact higher. This can not be allowed to continue or you can kiss our economy goodbye and just get ready for the same riots and problems as Europe. This could, and probably would, give us a depression that would make the "Great Depression" look like a tiny dip in the economy that didn't last very long. There is no guarantee this won't happen anyway.

Check out this article if you need a citation source.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html

If we don't change something by 2019 then we are looking at 92 cents of every dollar revenue received by the government will be spent on entitlement programs and interest on the debt. By 2020 100% of every dollar of revenue received by the government will be spent on entitlements and interest on the debt. So you can see, there is a major problem here that must be addressed.

Check out these articles if you need citation sources.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-silent-entitlements-monster-social-security-medicare-and-interest-on-the-debt-will-gobble-up-every-single-tax-dollar-by-2020
http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy2009/09frusg.pdf

None of this even addresses the huge problem of the Baby Boomers, who begin retiring next year (Jan 1, 2011) and there is no money to support them all. An average of 10,000 Baby Boomers will retire every day for the next 19 years. We may not even make it 2019 to even have to worry about the other problems. The pressure the Baby Boomers are going to put on entitlement programs is going to be massive. If they insist on all the benefits they have been promised over the years it will crush the American economy. There is no possible way for the government to be able to afford all of that.

I would guess that hard core budget cuts of about 25%-40% across the board is about the only way we might, and that's a big might, climb our way out of this mess. Squabbling about Democrats or Republicans, and who sucks more, will do zero to solve these problems. If America doesn't come together to make major changes, we will all go down together. I suspect once we fail that it will be a domino/ripple effect and you will see every other economy in the world fail. The EU is already teetering on the edge of the collapse, with the entire EU being brought down by the countries that have already failed, with more failures expected. The German court votes after the new year if it is against their Constitution to bailout other countries. If they decide that it is, the EU will be in for some major trouble and it will get

The bankers financing the production and marketing of "The Dark Knight Rises" expect a solid return from their $250-$500 million dollar investment.

So did the bankers who financed Ishtar and Knight and Day, both of which were almost certainly pitched as the best movie ever...guaranteed blockbusters with top box office stars.

Nobody has a "right" to make money. Like every investment, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

They get "Tangled."

Which was likely pitched pretty much the same as something like The Last Airbender: guaranteed box office from kids who watch Disney/Nickelodeon/whatever. Remember that every movie is supposed to be either the next Harry Potter (big budget franchise that might hit the top 10 all time) or My Big Fat Greek Wedding (small budget movie that takes the world by storm).

All that said, when X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked to the Internet before it was released to the theaters, the movie still made money, despite being not very good. There is a great deal of evidence (both anecdotal and serious studies, like the GAO) that show that unauthorized copying has almost no effect on product sales.

That graph shows the US as having a 40% corporate tax rate.

This tells the reader that the graph is meaningless because no corporation actually pays their statutory rate (That'd wipe out the entire tax accounting profession!). The US tax code relatively speaking, is jam-packed with tax breaks. A lot of companies do business in the US because the actual tax they pay is not that scary.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08950.pdf

The GAO estimates average corporate income tax to be ~25%.

Corporations know what their effective tax rate is (because they have to pay it!). Part of the due diligence in setting up a corporation in the US is tax planning to determine what the actual tax impact will be. Any corporation large enough to have an accountant (i.e just about any corporation larger than one-person) is taking advantages of these tax breaks. Perhaps not all, depending on the experience of their accountant(s), but they will have no problem identifying the majority of their tax savings.

So if someone tells you that the US has high corporate tax and says that it's at 40%, they are either unaware of the effective tax rate, or they are deliberately trying to spin the issue with misleading information.

IAAA (I am an accountant).

Here's an illegal checkpoint based on that law. here (warning: pdf) is a whole slew of them. This article tells of one specific victim. So does this one. Here's a dragnet for you folks in the UK. This case is the one where they stretched it to include all mail sent anywhere in America. But wait! There's more!

linky
linky
linky

While not specific to the case of searches inside borders based on these laws you may find this link enlightening, it's what our congresscritters are reading about these things.

Warrentless stops and searches inside our borders are being done and it needs to stop.

Most experts observed that it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts.

Generally, the illicit nature of counterfeiting and piracy makes estimating the economic impact of IP infringements extremely difficult, so assumptions must be used to offset the lack of data.

...how did it go? Something about "making an ass of you and me"...

Researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever.

Is this going to be another example of government spending hundreds of Hundreds Millions of Taxpayer Dollars developing a drug only to give it away exclusively to a pharmaceutical business who can then make billions of dollars on the drug if there's an outbreak? That is exactly what the National Cancer Institute or NCI, part of the US federal government's National Institutes of Health did. The NCI spent more than $484 Million [pdf] developing and testing Taxol as a breast cancer drug. The NCI then gave Bristol-Myers Squibb, BMS, exclusive rights to its use. What did BMS pay for those rights? BMS paid $35 Million in royalty payments through 2002. BMS had those exclusive rights for more than 10 years. Guess how much BMS sold Taxol for... In 2000 BMS sold $1.6 Billion, earning between $4 and $5 Million a day.

Falcon

The ATF conducted about 1,800 successful traces last year of crime guns recovered in Mexico. Ninety to 95 percent of those led to American gun dealers according to Javier Ortiz. In October 2003, ATF traced seven assault weapons belonging to a murdered associate of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to Simon's Trading Post(ph) in Pasadena, Texas. The dealer, Simon Garza, pled guilty last year to selling weapons to prohibited individuals. His punishment? Five years probation, a $100 fine and he lost his license to sell firearms. That was one of the few traces that led to a conviction. Fewer than half of all traces are successful and only a fraction of those lead to the most recent purchaser

In the Firearms Trafficking Report the American Government Accountability Office stated that

While it is impossible to know how many firearms are illegally smuggled into Mexico in a given year, about 87% of the firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced in the last five years originated in the U.S., according to data from Dept. of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. According to U.S. and Mexican officials, these firearms have been increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years

Fox challenged the selection bias of the numbers, finding that "83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S." I should probably have done a little more digging for a better source than Fox but if you're interested some google mining should uncover something more reliable.

"There is nearly a 400 Billion dollar tax preparation industry." Really? Where is this number from? The GAO estimated in 2005 that total compliance cost was $107 billion (using the lowest available estimates). http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-878 That number includes corporations' internal costs for their tax departments.

How can we judge the success of these programs, when much of it will never be known by the general public?

I thought the effectiveness of intelligence and homeland security spending were periodically reported on and covered by the GAO? Then you'd get congressional hearings on bad years and large contracts like the FBI's Virtual Case File System (complete failure)?

Seems to be a lot of hype. Yeah, we know the contractors soak up a lot of your tax dollars. Yeah, I know you can use black and white footage to make it look evil and interview your own reporters to sell newspapers and ads. You might be correct saying that there has been too much spending since 9/11 on this stuff but how does revealing contracts and small businesses associated with the government help this situation?

Also, I'd like to point out that this appears to be a three part story running Mon-Tues-Wed with a PBS Frontline one hour special on it. Evidently, PBS and the WP think the little stuff you know about national security is going to aid you in your decision to determine whether or not your tax dollars are being appropriately spent. Good luck.

We did?

I've a pro-fission guy, and pro-atomic weapons, but even I realize that Plutonium was a fraking mess at best.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/science/earth/11plutonium.html?src=mv

Triple the amount of waste in the soil than was projected at Hanford, in a couple hundred years it'll be in the Columbia River.

And we produced more than twice the amount of Plutonium we needed

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/gao/rced97098.htm

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06352.pdf

It cost 10 billion dollars to clean up Rocky Flats, a "clean" site compared to Hanford.

It's going to cost the UK a total of 146 billion dollars to clean their Plutonium site up.

So why in 40+ years didn't we figure this out if we were so damned good at it?

I don't know about the UK. My comment was US specific. I was under the impression that this thread was discussing the general case, not specifically the UK.

Some quick googling gave me, from the GAO: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02239.pdf

The Social Security Act as amended contains many provisions designed to help child support agencies collect support when noncustodial parents or their income and assets are hard to find, including two which relate to driver’s licenses. The act mandates that states enact and implement laws requiring the recording of social security numbers (SSN) of any applicants for a driver’s license on the application. State CSE programs rely on SSNs to locate the addresses, income, and assets of noncustodial parents. Motor vehicle agencies (MVA) can be a valuable source of SSNs that CSE programs have difficulty obtaining elsewhere. The act also requires that states have laws requiring procedures to suspend, withhold, or restrict the driver’s licenses of noncustodial parents who are delinquent in their child support payments.

The United States Post Office is self-sufficient

The National Association of Letter Carriers union wouldn't be biased, would they?

Note that the numbers they give for the self-sufficiency claim is the total revenue and expenses from 1972 through 2007. So yeah, they approximately break even if you total everything over the past thirty-five years. But this doesn't really tell us anything about how the system has been operating recently, and how the system is likely to operate in the future.

For comparison, here (PDF) is the USPS's financial statement for 2009. Note that in the last quarter, they lost about $2.4 billion on $16 billion in revenue. Over three quarters, they lost about $4.6 billion on about $52 billion in revenue.

Any private company that posted such huge losses would try to restructure, renegotiate contracts, lay off workers, etc. to stop the money from hemorrhaging. But if you think GM had problems negotiating with the UAW, you should know that the federal union contracts are even more worker-friendly. So yes, of course the NALC wants you to believe the USPS is healthy. But the Government Accountability Office disagrees--they consider it "high-risk".

In case you think I'm just spouting conservative/libertarian propaganda, here's an article from that bastion of right-wing thought, the New York Times.

I may be comparing apples to oranges, but...

The IRS costs apx $12 billion, has 1142 "Forms and Instructions" (most seem to be forms). The law is reported to be 3,387 pages itself accompanied by 13,458 pages of regulation spread across twenty volumes.(http://www.trygve.com/taxcode.html)

And that's just the federal tax code. We also must worry about individual state and local tax codes, many of which are nearly as bizarre and convoluted as the federal ones. Definitions frequently differ between the IRS and state agencies.

From wikipedia (yes I know): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_preparation It points to this document as source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-878 (click on Full Report)

It's good to see the Department of Labor putting some teeth into labor law again. During the Bush years, too many regulatory agencies were out to lunch.

Really? Is that what the blogosphere told you? Here are the actual numbers, from a GAO presentation to Congress. As you can see on page 8, the number of Fair Labor Standards Act enforcement actions dropped precipitously from 33,000 in 2001 to 35,000 in 2003. Oh wait, that's an increase. The number did decline slowly over the next four years to 29,500 in 2007. But "out to lunch"? Hardly.

http://gao.gov/

Do you own research, start there. What he said is true and common knowledge to anyone who follows economics at all, that's why he doesn't need to provide any links to you. The US government right now, all agencies, is acting as a giant ponzi scheme. They are broke, and are desperately trying to get funding by rebuying exported dollars and issuing more promises to pay more in the future against them, and are running a scam where they buy more of their own debt to keep the numbers up. Go look it up. Taking money from one pocket and sticking it another is not how you pay your debts. Also take any of those topics and fine tune google searches, add "fraud" to all queries.

  There isn't anything about the federal government that is sustainable for much longer, the debt is tremendous. Heck, just look at mandated pensions for governmental workers, or estimated costs for retired veterans and medical care.

I am not the GP, but you are asking him to do your homework.

Add to your list business expenses, property taxes, sales taxes, municipal bonds, home improvements, child care, and political contributions.

The tax code is 3,800 or so pages. The tax regulations written by the IRS is over 13,000 pages. That's nearly 17,000 pages. taxcode info

Compliance with the code and regulations cost around $340,000,000,000 a year (that's 340 billion, with a 'b', dollars). Hundreds of billions doesn't get collected because compliance is too low (below 70%, apparently, according to the GAO).

The instructions for that 1040 EZ you mention are over 40 pages long.

The poor pay proportionally 12 times as much of their income on compliance, making this a very regressive system.

The Ways and Means Committee, which has the most to do with the tax code, gets over $55 million a year in campaign contributions -- more than any other committee. You don't suppose that's for special tax breaks, do you?

The tax compliance industry employs about 3.8 million full-time equivalents, or hours that normally translate to that amount. All of us who know CPAs know that from January 1st to April 15th is double or double and a half hours for accountants, not to mention all those paid paraprofessional "tax preparers" that are seasonal. Tax compliance is one of the largest industries in the nation, larger than the federal government itself or the education industry.

Would a flat tax with one single sizable standard deduction to offset the proportion for the poorer among us really be that bad? Could an extra $340 billion in the economy being spent on actually boosting bottom lines hurt?

War in Iraq or return to the moon? You had the choice and you chose poorly. Don't pretend that this is just the new guy's problem or that spending money on health care is the issue. If America is broke (and it is, as well as being broken) you have to be more circumspect about where you spend your limited funds. Constellation failed on the last guy's watch because the vision for creating it and the funds for building it were limited from the outset. See here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09844.pdf

The USPS almost always posts a net loss due to them not being allowed to make a profit, and it the past few years declining revenue due to the internet. As I said before, those losses are not made up by tax payer dollars.

Single question - Who does make up the losses for the USPS?

Here are some additional facts for you: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-261 - "U.S. Postal Service: The Service's Strategy for Realigning Its Mail Processing Infrastructure Lacks Clarity, Criteria, and Accountability"
To quote: "the strategy lacks sufficient transparency and accountability, excludes stakeholder input, and lacks performance measures for results."
To me that equals FAIL!

Maybe the Government Accounting Office has the same twisted conservative narrative that I do...

They have legions of lawyers working on compliance and lobbyists in DC working to ensure that the regulations protect their existing business while shutting out competitors.

I kind of agree with you. However, if you can provide names and conclusive proof and evidence of this, I urge you to submit a complaint to the FTC with said details falling under the Sherman Antitrust Act. They actually do take that stuff very seriously.

Here's a good example I know from first hand experience. The FTC won't do shit.

Baron Services, Inc., of Huntsville, Alabama filed a formal protest with the GAO after they lost a bid, knowing it would seriously harm their competition. See http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/402109.htm

They knew they had little chance of success, but they know by filing protests against awards to small, innovative competitors, they have a chance of killing off the small company due to the induced long delays in distribution of contract funds. Based on comments from our contract administrator, this is standard practice, with well over 90% of protests being dismissed.

Here's why it works. Right after we are awarded the contract, we ordered $100+k of parts so we can meet the contract deadlines. Then, Barron steps in and files a complaint. At this point all contact with PNNL and all money stops. We still have to pay for parts we ordered. Try to get a small business loan these days. Banks tell us; "If you deposit that amount of the money in our bank, we'll lend it back to you". Really. Thanks for all the help with the US economy, Wall Street. Fascist Bastards. I'll never forget.

Large corporations work hard to create Fascist states. In the US, they seem to be succeeding, especially in light of the recent SCOTUS decision. Some of us actually had hope things would change. Silly us, the GOP won't stand for that and the Dems have clearly demonstrated they can't pick their nose without gaining "bipartisan support".

I'm not questioning the amount of money you have quoted here, as the number feels correct too. It just seems like NASA is incredibly wasteful of the money they have, and that it practically is the very definition of how to spend money in the most foolhardy method possible.

Ack, this is really embarrassing on my part, but it looks like the "$4.5 billion a year" figure is inaccurate. I had it from this source, which was one of the first items to pop up in my Google search: "In the years after the Shuttle retires, the annual operation costs of the ISS will be $4.5 billion per year.1"

The footnote says that the figure came from one of these two GAO sources:

* NASA: Challenges in Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station

* Space Station: Actions Under Way to Manage Cost, but Significant Challenges Remain

However, after reading your comment I've searched through the text of both GAO sources and I can't find anything to support the first source's claim. I did find the following through from the first GAO report: "NASA estimates that assembly and operating costs of the ISS will be between $2.1 billion to $2.4 billion annually for FY2009-FY2012. The ISS as of February 19, 2008, is approximately 65 percent complete."

I ended up looking through the final report of the White House/NASA Augustine Commission (published late 2009) and found this in section 6.4.2:

The choice of ending U.S. participation in the ISS in 2015 really provides only one benefit, that of freeing up the roughly $2.5 to $3 billion per year needed to
run the ISS, which can then be invested in the more rapid development of the exploration systems. The Committee's Integrated Option analyses show that if coupled to the choice of commercial crew launch system to low-Earth orbit and the Ares V Lite heavy lift choice, this expenditure on the ISS would delay the exploration of the Moon until the mid-2020s, only a few years after the most aggressive, unconstrained profile would accomplish it.

In any case, $2.5-$3 billion a year is still a huge chunk of change. I totally agree with your original sentiment.

I'm not questioning the amount of money you have quoted here, as the number feels correct too. It just seems like NASA is incredibly wasteful of the money they have, and that it practically is the very definition of how to spend money in the most foolhardy method possible.

Ack, this is really embarrassing on my part, but it looks like the "$4.5 billion a year" figure is inaccurate. I had it from this source, which was one of the first items to pop up in my Google search: "In the years after the Shuttle retires, the annual operation costs of the ISS will be $4.5 billion per year.1"

The footnote says that the figure came from one of these two GAO sources:

* NASA: Challenges in Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station

* Space Station: Actions Under Way to Manage Cost, but Significant Challenges Remain

However, after reading your comment I've searched through the text of both GAO sources and I can't find anything to support the first source's claim. I did find the following through from the first GAO report: "NASA estimates that assembly and operating costs of the ISS will be between $2.1 billion to $2.4 billion annually for FY2009-FY2012. The ISS as of February 19, 2008, is approximately 65 percent complete."

I ended up looking through the final report of the White House/NASA Augustine Commission (published late 2009) and found this in section 6.4.2:

The choice of ending U.S. participation in the ISS in 2015 really provides only one benefit, that of freeing up the roughly $2.5 to $3 billion per year needed to
run the ISS, which can then be invested in the more rapid development of the exploration systems. The Committee's Integrated Option analyses show that if coupled to the choice of commercial crew launch system to low-Earth orbit and the Ares V Lite heavy lift choice, this expenditure on the ISS would delay the exploration of the Moon until the mid-2020s, only a few years after the most aggressive, unconstrained profile would accomplish it.

In any case, $2.5-$3 billion a year is still a huge chunk of change. I totally agree with your original sentiment.

If you think the US government is spending too much, borrowing too much
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Balance sheets don't lie, the gov is broke, to the tune of 11 trillion + dollars. gao.gov for the documentation. I'll save you the trouble. Here's a direct link to the report. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1088.pdf. go to page 11. This is the governments own report ; )
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  or that the health care plan is a Really Bad Idea...
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which one? I haven't seen one that was finished. The last one was thrown out before anyone had a chance to read it now the democrats are writing a new one in secret. If it's so great why won't they let us see it or let the republicans have any input?

Larger question... why don't they model it after one of the ones that have been proven and actually work (like Denmark or France), rather than reinventing the wheel and filling it up with pork and other entitlements? It indicates a scary amount of hubris for our legislative branch to believe that they can do better than something that has been in development and refined, not to mention successfully implemented, since the 40's. The French have implemented it, had it nearly fail then fixed it and found the right balance.

We should take advantage of what they've done and learned, to get it right the first time. Instead we will do it wrong, and it will go broke, leaving many people without benefits, in other words, we'll end up being worse off than we are now.
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Well, we have freedom of speech and you're allowed to say that. I suppose you're also allowed to say the president is a secret Muslim.
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It's well documented that he's a Christian.

There is NO reason to be dropping notes off in people's mailboxes at 3am.

I already outlined a scenario in which someone might without having any evil intent.

And I already showed that it not only is criminal trespass, not just here, but probably where you live as well. Try that on a dark night in much of the USA and see how quickly you get your head blown off.

If that person doesn't have a dog, the neighbours across the street, or next door, do. Plus, you're trespassing, same as the local public security guy can't go into the driveway after dark to check for up-to-date car registrations or other issues

It's certainly not trespassing. What's the mailbox there for if no one is permitted to access it? The whole point is that it's an invitation to receive messages.

if you're in the US, federal regulations state that >only the post office can put stuff in the mailbox .

So no, you can't stick your hypothetical letter in the mailbox at 3am, 3 pm, noon, or any other time.

It's pretty bad when foreigners know more about your laws than you do. Then again, it must be that "good ole 'merikun edjumacaishun".

You state we spend money "proving" global warming. Let's assume you're right - how much is that exactly?

According to the GAO, it's probably around 6 billion a year. Which is about two weeks in Iraq.

Not sure that... we are doing anything never seen in the history of this planet.

Yes, we are burning hundreds of millions of years worth of old biomass in less than 150. We're also destroying every old growth forest on the planet. I'm fairly sure these are new events. And even a closed system will have periods of self-regulation that could be very inhospitable to our way of life.

Virgin is doing more with space technology than NASA is. And making money at it.

Virgin is not making money. Virgin has not been to the moon. Virgin hasn't ever placed a satellite. Virgin has never even orbited the earth as the space shuttle has. Virgin has never docked with a space station, or built one. It's performing sub-orbital flights - whoopdedoo!

All government funded research does is take money away from people who want to spend it in some other manner and apply it towards projects that may not have any realizable benefit that's being run by people who are better at pitching funding proposals than delivering results.

If this is true, why are all technologically advanced civilizations run by a strong state government? And I guess rocket technology, information technology, satellites, and every other major advance of the 20th century funded directly by government research have netted us very little.

Here's food for thought. Polywell fusion has amazing potential as a viable energy source. Government funding consists of $500,000 from the US Navy and run by a private company. The researchers are not Government employees. With some Venture Capital they could be running this project with billions of capital investments

I thought you just said government funding was the problem? Would polywell reactors had a chance at private capital investment in the 1980s, so it could develop to the point where it may be viable? Or are you just unable to form a coherent argument if you're allowed to write more than a few sentences?

I agree that there need to be more reasonable restrictions for research and development, but that's more of a function of bad governance than private initiative. All of the programs in Australia and South Korea are sponsored by their federal governments.

We don't do commercial R&D because we can't afford it. All our money is going to Federal programs.

Commercial R&D is just like commerce itself. Incredibly short sighted and hamstrung by the requirement of quick return on investment. That's why pure R&D does not exist in the commercial realm, especially since the closure of Bell Labs. Modern corporations are so greedy, they are only allowed by their shareholders to perform product development. Anything that has a good chance of losing money - like pure research and development - is never even put on the table.

Actually plants WOULD care: it would completely RUIN the pollination process. Having simply said that, I expect you can reason the rest out? This is yet another example of someone not thinking a process completely through, rather only as far as required to preserve their desired perception/worldview. Don't do that, it doesn't really help the problem-solving much.

Do you have empirical evidence to back up your rather BOLD statement and your ad-hominem? It seems that farmers have been leasing out their land to wind farm operators for quite a while, and I can't find any sources stating that they have experienced detrimental effects on crops.