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We're talking John Kerry $70M yachts and John Travolta Boeing 737's,. tho, not Netflix.

You're right, they do a masterful job of appearing to have no income, which is another reason that the income taxes aren't working, and are taxing the poor and middle class more than the rich. But with a consumption tax, the rich, even those that have no income but just sit on a very large pile, and break off a piece every year and live on that, will get to pay taxes to the US Treasury, possibly for the 1st time.

If you want to see testimony on this by economists in the House Ways and Means committee, go to:

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=252676

scroll down to the bottom, activate the link:

Click here to view archive hearing video

and advance the proceedings to 1 hr and 35 minutes. You'll see an analysis of this by people that study it, and know what they're talking about.

The Religious Right wants to rewrite history and make the US a Christian nation

Too bad you don't really seem to know what you are talking about.

November 1st of this year (2011) the House of Representatives voted on the bill "Reaffirming 'In God We Trust' as the official motto of the United States and supporting and encouraging the public display of the national motto in all public buildings, public schools, and other government institutions"

The bill passed the house with a vote of 396 to 9. So much for your trying to shoehorn this shit on the "Religious Right."

You don't need to guess and then miss the mark so badly (facts are available even if the media doesnt report it.) The reason the politicians take the religious route is because most old folks are religious, and surprise surprise old people go out and vote on election day.

Furthermore, they accuse Namecheap of playing foul because they released a statement before ever contacting godaddy directly to resolve these issues.

just like SOPA would allow them to do... domain seizure with no trial or recourse is most certainly foul.

boycott all of these companies

They moved the list...
http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_RogueWebsites.html

Supporters.pdf

I've been wondering about this for a day now. Is there another list posted by Congress listing entities against SOPA? If not, why not?

Why is the US' Congress taking a side in favour of SOPA before it's even been voted into law? Shouldn't "Congress" (the institution, apart from its members) be impartial, at least until it decides one way or another?

Stack the deck, anyone?

I need to correct myself. It was more than 4 Democrats that voted against it. It was actually 9 Democrats that voted against deregulating default swaps.

The final House roll call went 292 to 60, and breakdown by party is 133 to 51 for Republicans and 157 to 9 for Democrats. More Democrats voted for this thing than Republicans, in spite of the fact that more Republicans bothered to vote.

Yet the Democrats tell us time and again that it was the Republicans that deregulated the beast.

The really interesting part was that in June of that year, the House voted for a precursor to this bill that did not include deregulation of default swaps and that vote went 217 to 214 (Democrats went 3 to 206, overwhelmingly against the bill when it did not include default swap deregulation!)

Republican support tanked when it included deregulation of default swaps, and Democrat support grew enormously.. yet somehow the Republicans are to blame? Really?

THIS is why liberals are cultist fuckwads. They dont have a fucking clue whats going on! They think the Republicans are to blame for what the Democrats did, because thats what the Democrats told them to think.

The facts are available, assholes. You don't need to rely on what Senator Daterape told you. Stop listening to what they say and start looking at what they do. The Democrats are more responsible for the economy being in the shitter, BECAUSE THATS THE WAY THE VOTE WENT. Stop listening. Start watching.

I need to correct myself. It was more than 4 Democrats that voted against it. It was actually 9 Democrats that voted against deregulating default swaps.

The final House roll call went 292 to 60, and breakdown by party is 133 to 51 for Republicans and 157 to 9 for Democrats. More Democrats voted for this thing than Republicans, in spite of the fact that more Republicans bothered to vote.

Yet the Democrats tell us time and again that it was the Republicans that deregulated the beast.

The really interesting part was that in June of that year, the House voted for a precursor to this bill that did not include deregulation of default swaps and that vote went 217 to 214 (Democrats went 3 to 206, overwhelmingly against the bill when it did not include default swap deregulation!)

Republican support tanked when it included deregulation of default swaps, and Democrat support grew enormously.. yet somehow the Republicans are to blame? Really?

THIS is why liberals are cultist fuckwads. They dont have a fucking clue whats going on! They think the Republicans are to blame for what the Democrats did, because thats what the Democrats told them to think.

The facts are available, assholes. You don't need to rely on what Senator Daterape told you. Stop listening to what they say and start looking at what they do. The Democrats are more responsible for the economy being in the shitter, BECAUSE THATS THE WAY THE VOTE WENT. Stop listening. Start watching.

Lets not believe all the hype. GoDaddy has decided, for business reasons, that it is no longer publicly supporting SOPA. GoDaddy is NOT publicly saying that they are against SOPA.

From the GoDaddy Website (and with the assistance of their lawyers and public relations team):

In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.

"Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.

Doesn't sound like much of a retreat to me, especially when they say (in regards to SOPA and the DMCA, that "... and we will continue to do so in the future.".

Also, something interesting, if you look at the official list of SOPA supporters, it is filled with a lot of Christian organizations (they either have the word Christian in their name, or they are Christian conservative in their lifestyles and political beliefs), like this group:
Concerned Women for America, whose mandate is:

We are the nation's largest public policy women's organization with a rich 28-year history of helping our members across the country bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy. We help people focus on six core issues, which we have determined need Biblical principles most and where we can have the greatest impact.

Not that I am trying to Troll or make this into a religious controversy, but I do find it curious that along with the usual suspects like the big media conglomerates, that there would be so many Christian organizations interested in stopping the sale of counterfeit Rolex watches. Though I think we all know that when governments and corporations band together to promote a police state for our own protection, things aren't always as they appear.

And speaking of corporations, why am I forced to create a Google account just so that I can RTFA?!

References:
https://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_item_id=378&isc=smtwsup
http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf

LINK.
I'll do a diff in a few minutes.

New list of supporters as of 3:02PM Fri 23 Dec 2011 is here.

There been some shrinking of the "Judiciary Committee’s list of SOPA supporters", perhaps due to cold water? Compare this list (439 entries, dec 21) with the 'official' list (142 entries, dec 23).

Beyond the law firms that have complained, I can't help but note that Electronic Arts aren't in the PDF.

Also, every time some actor tweets anti-SOPA sentiment, make sure to point out to them that the Screen Actors Guild are official SOPA supporters according to the judiciary.

Anyone else take the time to see what the PDF link was - it was for the list of those who supported rouge (not rogue) websites. Now I know why Revlon is on the list - they don't want anyone else horning in on their coveted cosmetics market!

The link in question: http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf.

Executive Summary

In late October 2011, Congressman Markey sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requesting copies of all documents (including voting records, reports, emails, correspondence, memoranda, phone or meeting minutes or other materials) related to the events of Fukushima or the NRC’s response thereto prepared or obtained by any Commissioner or member of any Commissioner’s staff. While most Commissioners marked every single document – ncluding articles that appeared in the public media – to be not for public release – this narrative is an effort to provide a summary of the thousands of pages of materials that were responsive to that request. The review of these materials indicates that:

1. Four NRC Commissioners attempted to delay and otherwise impede the creation of the NRC Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima.
2. Four NRC Commissioners conspired, with each other and with senior NRC staff, to delay the release of and alter the NRC Near-Term Task Force report on Fukushima.
3. The other NRC Commissioners attempted to slow down or otherwise impede the adoption of the safety recommendations made by the NRC Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima.
4. NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko kept the other four NRC Commissioners fully informed regarding the Japanese emergency, despite claims to the contrary made by these Commissioners.
5. A review of emails and other documents indicates high levels of suspicion and hostility directed at the Chairman.
6. The consideration of the Fukushima safety upgrades is not the only safety-related issue that the other NRC Commissioners have opposed.

Yes, and there are many minor ingredients, including lead and naphthalene(pdf warning). Small concentrations times massive quantities give quite high total amounts.

"More the other way around: which ones are you talking about? Almost all serious economist are non-Malthusian,"

This is a fair question, even though you shouldn't appeal to authority. Also Malthus made some mistakes.
Personally I feel that mainstream economists don't allow themselfs a close enough connection to reality.

Here is a non-economist who had a much more believable view of the world:

http://bartlett.house.gov/uploadedfiles/DODRickover1957SpeechAcknowledgement.pdf

Also the NYT had an article about a different school of economics:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/23/23greenwire-new-school-of-thought-brings-energy-to-the-dis-63367.html?pagewanted=2

I don't even have to feel like an early adopter on this one, the seventies already saw an energy crisis and we can just look at the work of Georgescu-Roegen to find that energy is the main thing to look at.

To sum it up, the UN report is mainly based on demographics and assumptions about fertility and other parameters. If the guys above are any good you should see a stronger decline following energy availability.

Lets talk American labor. The auto companies said, all over the news programs when they were going bankrupt a few years ago, that their labor rate is $78 / hr. That's because of all the benefits and the retirees' expenses. And here:

http://www.mt-online.com/component/content/article/40-january2009/85-uptime-lessons-from-auto-manufacturing.html?directory=90

we learn that it takes 30 - 33 labor hours for the big 3 here to build a car. That's about $2500 in labor.

The Fair Tax people, long before this article came out, have calcualted that, on average, about 22% of the price of all American goods is composed of income tax expenses incurred by American companies manufacturing things here. That's corporate income tax, employees' individual income tax that makes their labor more expensive, that also includes the payroll tax that the employees pay at 15.3% for medicare and social security that again, makes their labor more expensive, the embedded income taxes in all their raw materials and machine tools and everything else they buy, and so forth.

Imagine now a $40K SUV. It is reasonable to expect that the embedded income tax expense is around $8800. Compare that with the $2500 that goes into the labor of building the $40K SUV. An SUV would get dramatically cheaper with income tax gone as opposed to making slaves of all the workforce and shafting the retirees of all their pay.

As for the manufacturing coming back, a survey commissioned by Bill Archer, former house ways and means chair, asked 500 foreign CEO's what their reaction would be if the USA passed the Fair Tax. 400 of them said they would build their next factory in the USA. The other 100 said they would move their company HQ to the USA.

http://www.examiner.com/finance-examiner-in-national/survey-shows-that-companies-would-create-jobs-us-if-fair-tax-was-instituted?render=print

As for the Factcheck people, imagine how long they took to consider this question, and then note the testimony of 2 PHD economists familiar with the Fair Tax before the house ways and means committee earlier this year:

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=252676

If you scroll down to the bottom, bring up the video, and jump to the 1 hr and 36 minute mark, you find that these economists, under oath and threat of perjury, have testified that everyone's lifetime tax outlook goes down EXCEPT the very rich, who will pay more than they have been paying, because the Fair Tax hits them harder because of all their spending outstripping what their current tax burden is, which is greatly avoided through loopholes that they're very good at exploiting.

These PHD's have spent quite a lot of effort modeling the Fair Tax, and I am much more likely to take what they say about the Fair Tax bringing back prosperity rather than a website like FactCheck who, again, likely considered this for a couple days to a week.

And although the economists didn't say explicitly, imagine how many rich just don't have income taxes because they don't work. They sit around and break off a piece of cash from a very large pile of it that belongs to them and live on that each year, as well as the taxes on capital gains which is necessarily much lower than the income tax rates, or you'll kill invenstment if you try to raise them.

And that's the point - the income taxes are and have been killing the US industry for 50 years, ever since the US lost its consumer electronics to Japan starting in the 60's, and are losing the intellectual employment to places like India even today. When it _all_ goes overseas, we'll have just the thing that absolutely MUST be

You are missing the fact that the well-to-do's spending on their toys far outstrips what they've been paying in income taxes, and especially since they are so masterful at hiding their income from the taxes. You also have to study the Fair Tax to know that no poor person pays a penny of Fair Tax. Also good to know is the fact the the income taxes are highly regressive, starting with 15.3% of the 1st dollar that the poor person makes, in the form of the payroll taxes (social security and medicare) and are further compounded by the hidden income tax in the price of all American-manufactured goods, which amounts to, on average, about 22% of the selling price of those goods. Add everything together, and the poor are being crushed by up to 37% taxes on their income right now. The Fair Tax would reduce that to zero via the mechanism of a prebate, which is essentially the gov't giving every social-security-number-carrying American enough money each month to pay the Fair Tax on income up to the poverty level. So, if you are making the poverty level, you pay no tax. If you are making less than the poverty level, you get a bit of a subsidy. If you are making millions, you're going to be sending millions to Washington when you buy your next $70 million dollar yacht.

As for the middle class taxes rising, my own taxes would fall about $2K, and at somewhat less than $100K income, I'm square in the middle of the middle class. The testimony of 2 Fair Tax experts before the house ways and means committee earlier this year stated the fact of the rich's spending outstripping the middle class's tax burden. It;s here:

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=252676

And if you go down to the bottom of that page, you can call up the video of the whole testimony and get those statements in real-time, on video. Unfortunately, I think that comes at about 1 hr and 36 minutes into the testimony, if I remember right.

Call or contact your Senator!

Senate Contacts

Call or contact your Representative!
House Contacts

Get involved another way?
EFF is a good way

Yes, a petition to the White House is totally the way to get a constitutional amendment passed... Not! Petitions are great, but it's much more useful to send them to someone who can actually do something about them.

Thanks for writing this message and providing links. Is this being discussed in the House? To contact the House, find your representative at http://house.gov/#feature2 click on your state and will get list of names and districts. For California, http://house.gov/representatives/#state_ca which has names, phone numbers, and links to specific representatives i.e. http://pelosi.house.gov/

Thanks for writing this message and providing links. Is this being discussed in the House? To contact the House, find your representative at http://house.gov/#feature2 click on your state and will get list of names and districts. For California, http://house.gov/representatives/#state_ca which has names, phone numbers, and links to specific representatives i.e. http://pelosi.house.gov/

Thanks for writing this message and providing links. Is this being discussed in the House? To contact the House, find your representative at http://house.gov/#feature2 click on your state and will get list of names and districts. For California, http://house.gov/representatives/#state_ca which has names, phone numbers, and links to specific representatives i.e. http://pelosi.house.gov/

Thanks, Ill take a look at this. I might be misreading, but the abstract seems to clarify all the other factors that negated any impact on unemployment: "The reasons for this include: an impact on hours rather than workers; employer wage setting and labour market frictions; offsets via the tax credit system; incomplete compliance; improvements in productivity; an increase in the relative price of minimum wage-produced consumer services; and a reduction in the relative profits of firms employing low paid workers." "tax credits", "incomplete compliance", and "impact on hours" jump out here. So unless the rest of the text somehow contravenes these factors it doesn't look especially convincing. I know a couple small business owners who either started paying workers under the table or simply got rid of benefits as a direct result of minimum wage increases. That's anecdotal, I know. I haven't seen any studies on workers going off the books in these circumstances, probably pretty difficult to get good information in that situation. Meanwhile, I'll offer up the work of Walter Williams on the effect of minimum wage laws on black unemployment in the United States, see his book "Race and Economics", as well as the following from http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/against/against.htm Card, David and Alan B. Krueger, "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry In New Jersey and Pennsylvania." American Economic Review. September 1994: pp. 772-793. Brandon, Peter, Jobs Taken by Mothers Moving from Welfare to Work and the Effects of Minimum Wages on this Transition. Employment Policies Institute: Washington, DC, 1995. Neumark, David and William Wascher, The Effects of Minimum Wages on Teenage Employment and Enrollment: Evidence from Matched CPS Surveys. National Bureau for Economic Research: Cambridge, MA, 1995.

For an example: http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/against/against.htm There are competing studies of course, studies of society being what they are. But to use an extreme example, why not raise the minimum wage to $25/hr? I don't think anyone seriously proposes that, the effects on employment would seem pretty severe at that level.

It has attracted the interest of a member of Congress. Markey, Barton Ask U.S. Wireless Companies to Explain How They Track Their Customers. This is in the wake of Malte Spitz where we were able to see his movements over a 6 month period. link.

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Section 1001 defines a "digital audio recording medium" to be:

any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device.

In more common language, this refers to audio/music CD-R discs, which are made to work in digital audio recorders (it also covers cassette tapes, FWIW). These discs are different from the more common data CD-Rs, in that they contain special digital markings (standard data CD-Rs won't work in digital audio recorders). In addition, by law a royalty has been paid on this blank media. These royalty payments are in turn distributed to copyright holders (see Section 1006 of the law cited above). They usually cost slightly more than data CD-R discs, but they can be found for less than $0.25 each.

The law which allows this was enacted at the urging of the RIAA, so thanks go to them for all the CDs I got for a quarter instead of $15.

Your congressman/senators are your lawmakers (unless they have been bought). Write to them and tell them not to vote for it. People always overstate the power of the executive branch and seem to try to understate the power of congress. https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Too late, they're already bought. The technical term for this is 'campaign contributions'.

Even better. Somebody with more resources and experience than I should try to croudsource a bill to update the DCMA and Regan era internet regulations.

Until you can field a wad of cash greater than the *IAAs can, you can do all the crowdsourcing you want, it won't mean a thing. As has been noted several times over the last several years, 'If voting ever really changed anything, they'd make it illegal'.

The more paranoid among us of course will theorise that attempts like this are a way for the *IAAs are doing this to scrape every possible dime from the consumer to prevent any attempt by the public to outbuy their influence.

The superintendent of one of the largest and best school systems said that the one thing that he thinks is the most valuable is parental involvement as he told 60 Minutes.

“[W]here parents are involved, students do well. Where they're not, achievement suffers.

The school system is the Department of Defense system for children of military personnel. At first glance, it should be one of the poorest performing schools. Nearly half are minority. 64% of the children qualify for free or reduced lunch. The children move repeatedly as their parents are transferred.

However in benchmarks, the school system is one of the best in the nation. The scores on national tests are one of the highest with almost no discernible gap between minority and white students. 97% of students graduate with the majority attending higher education.

The system has major advantages over other schools. They spend more per child than the average. The vast majority of the teachers have Masters degrees or better but that might be a chicken and egg effect in that they can recruit better teachers because the school is better.

Because it is of military children, the superintendent has advantages other superintendents don't. Discipline is not a problem as it is in ingrained into their students from their parents. Parental involvement is much easier as the superintendent knows how to contact parents directly and if they are not responsive, he can contact their CO to hold the parents accountable.

What are you talking about? The entire US code is available for download here. The entire CFR (federal regulations) is available for download here.

.... when opening up an account on line or when you want to perform some commercial transaction. This will flood the phone lines of the House of Representatives offices with tons of bullshit calls. Then they will see for themselves how many robo-calls are spammed and how the average consumer has no recourse to stop the madness. Once they feel our pain, they will stop and re-consider these types of bills that make my information to easy to abuse.

And just for further kicks use the phone numbers of other key offices in our government. I wouldn't go out and individually target a senator, congressman, or representative at their homes, because I'm not trying to be vindictive against their own personal privacy, but their offices are fair game.

Here is their website list of phone numbers.

http://www.house.gov/representatives/

and

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

There is no honesty in politics, but can't they be stopped from false advertising? When they name something "Jobs Act" it doesn't mean there will be jobs, but if you are against the act on actual details of the bill, then you'll be labeled as if you are "against jobs".

Same with the Patriot Act - do you think it's easy to be in opposition to a bill named "Patriot Act"? What are you, a terrorist?

"America Invents Act" will only succeed in innovative litigation procedures.

There are 152 PAGES in that bill. (PDF warning)

How about doing something useful to get America 'inventing' again?

How about abolishing the patent system? How about reducing regulations and all other government nonsense and stop standing in the way of inventions and innovations and stop allowing the huge companies from crashing competition with their patents?

Of-course you don't have to stop, but all the inventions and innovations will take place somewhere else, not in America.

The correct way to read names of government bills is to reverse the literal meaning of the names.

This bill can be named: "America Inventing Prevention Act" or "Inventing Anywhere But America Act".

It would be easy to vote against those names.

Get them to give bills numbers and not names and then everybody would have to know the details of what's inside. Stop the false advertising, companies get sued for it, why not governments?

This bill is dead on arrival

What bill?

The Al Jezeera "news" article is about what Obama is expected to announce today:

Barack Obama, the US president, is expected to seek a new minimum tax rate for the wealthy to ensure they pay at least the same percentage as middle-income taxpayers. ... A White House official, who declined to be named because the plan has not been officially announced, said the new rate is part of Obama's proposal for long-term deficit reduction that he will announce on Monday.

The AP article is about the American Jobs Act proposal that President Obama sent to Congress on September 12, 2011:

It would let Bush-era tax cuts for upper income earners expire, limit deductions for wealthier filers and close loopholes and end some corporate tax breaks.

I recognized one of the loopholes (the classification of investment management compensation as capital gains) as an issue complained about here on Slashdot.

The Whitehouse.gov site has no new announcements, statements, or releases about changes or addenda to the American Jobs Act posted today. However, it does have a statement and report from the Office of Management and Budget about the American Jobs Act. But no proposals of new tax brackets.

There have been a number of proposals regarding the taxing of incomes over $1 million as Ezra Klein has noted. But none from President Obama. (Regarding new marginal tax rates, I find House Representative Jan Schakowsky's proposal the most straight forward and reasonable, assuming that the government favors increasing taxes on incomes over $1 million.)

So what are we discussing? I suspect the conversation has merged the separate issues and stories into an incomprehensible clusterfuck to the disservice of everyone engaged.

Republicans [...] NCLB and such

That's strange, I remember NCLB receiving extreme bipartisan support. Before you bring your stupid partisan politics into a conversation, make sure you know what the hell you're talking about.

(Disclaimer: I don't affiliate with "either" party, and despise our bipartisan system and people blaming "Republicans" or "Democrats" when really they're all to blame.)

Again, I just posted on this in the previous story.

HONESTY IN NAMING. Give that bill's number, make them read it. Of-course this will do nothing for Obama's reelection, but this "America Invents Act" will do nothing for inventions in America.

There are 152 PAGES in that bill. (PDF warning)

152 pages. You'd think to have America "inventing" you wouldn't need that. What you'd need is to stop punishing people for investments with inflation, taxes, regulations and insane spending, like that on wars. How about ABOLISHING the patent system altogether and abolishing all patents and refunding those that are pending by the way? Having a freer society, so that people could ACTUALLY INVENT AND INNOVATE without FEAR of being SUED?

You think they'll stop wars in that bill? You think they'll stop inflation and encourage underconsumption, savings and investments?

Please. It's about dates of filing, it's about law suits. It's about more government protections given to large corporations. It's about lawyers.

The only 'innovation' that will be promoted by this bill will be lawyer innovation, innovative ways to file MORE LAWSUITS.

That's all this is going to do - more lawsuits and actually less innovation and fewer inventions, as always the exact opposite of what the bill is named.

Here are reasons as to why it makes NO SENSE to hire American workers.

Full Congressional meeting.

2006 speech predicting the incoming problems.

discussion on the job destruction act

Text submitted to Congressional committee before the meeting.

USSR's GDP was impossible to calculate it was using slave labor, which is what you do when you pay with fake money.

USA today is not different - currency is printed, not generated via investment and savings by deferring consumption. Anything that Fed buys in fiat they print is stolen, because the federal reserve not is not backed by anything, so the 'note', as an IOU, a promise to give something real for the dollars is an empty promise. They'll give you nothing for it, which means that it's counterfeit and anything bought for that currency printed by the Fed is stolen - be it assets or labor.

By the way, Schiff just testified in front of Congressional Jobs Committee.

video (his participation starts at minute 31 and goes on till the end). Here are cuts to his stuff only

  and here is his presentation given to the committee as pdf (but the video is very interesting in itself, it goes much beyond his text presentation). My journal entry on it from some time ago

This is the guy who understood the crisis and explained it much before it struck and understands the next one.

PDF

Government Oversight Committee

Obama's Jobs Destruction Act

In his speech Obama didn't say "stimulus" once. He wants to stay away from that word, last stimulus was a failure and unpopular.

Of-course deficits that finance the stimulus destroy more jobs than the tax cuts create.

None of it is paid for, cuts from future increases is not paying for anything, but there is net increase in deficit (and it's underestimated) 450 Billion USD year 2011.

Debt ceiling now will have to be raised again obviously next year, because this is 450Billion that are not accounted for in the last debt ceiling increase.

Tax credit for hiring people who are unemployed for more than 6 months. So now employers will have incentive NOT to hire anybody who hasn't been unemployed for 6 months :)

More unemployment!

7.25 - is minimum wage. 4000USD is given as tax credit, and you have to keep the person for 6 months minimum.
So hiring somebody at 7.25USD/hour and given 4000USD credit reduces minimum wage to 3.40USD/hour.

Minimum wage will be reduced, and so there WILL be more employment, but some people will be FIRED to give more space for new minimum wage hires because of the tax credit.

Bill will make it illegal to discriminate against long term unemployed. So what will happen is that people who are long term unemployed will NOT be interviewed. Who wants to have a lawsuit on their hands?

If anybody is unemployed for 4-5 months, now there is a reason not to hire them right away, to interview them and to keep them on UI for another 1-2 months and then to get the tax credit once they are at 6 months unemployment time.

Of-course fire anybody after 6 months, get new hires. It's all going to be minimum wage jobs, nobody who is hiring people at good salaries will care about 4000USD tax credit.

The 1 year cut in SS payroll tax will make SS that much more broke (it's broke now, but it can be made worse.)

To pretend that there is SS "trust fund", gov't will borrow money, put it into "trust fund", borrow from "trust fund" and spend it on stimulus. Many lies all around.

If you hire a returning veteran, the tax credit is 5600USD. Applied to minimum wage, it makes minimum wage 1.87USD/hour. This creates huge government incentive to have very high turnover.

Payroll taxes will be lost on existing jobs, ha ha. They'll have to print more money.

For returning veterans with injuries (wounded warrior), you get 9600USD tax credit. For a minimum wage job this makes the pay a NEGATIVE ONE :) -1.98USD/hour.

Hire as many wounded warriors as possible immediately and just pay them, but the employer gets 1.98/hour for every new hire. Hire all of them and have the Fed monetize the debt that will be created paying these tax credits.

How do you like them apples?

PDF

Government Oversight Committee

Obama's Jobs Destruction Act

In his speech Obama didn't say "stimulus" once. He wants to stay away from that word, last stimulus was a failure and unpopular.

Of-course deficits that finance the stimulus destroy more jobs than the tax cuts create.

None of it is paid for, cuts from future increases is not paying for anything, but there is net increase in deficit (and it's underestimated) 450 Billion USD year 2011.

Debt ceiling now will have to be raised again obviously next year, because this is 450Billion that are not accounted for in the last debt ceiling increase.

Tax credit for hiring people who are unemployed for more than 6 months. So now employers will have incentive NOT to hire anybody who hasn't been unemployed for 6 months :)

More unemployment!

7.25 - is minimum wage. 4000USD is given as tax credit, and you have to keep the person for 6 months minimum.
So hiring somebody at 7.25USD/hour and given 4000USD credit reduces minimum wage to 3.40USD/hour.

Minimum wage will be reduced, and so there WILL be more employment, but some people will be FIRED to give more space for new minimum wage hires because of the tax credit.

Bill will make it illegal to discriminate against long term unemployed. So what will happen is that people who are long term unemployed will NOT be interviewed. Who wants to have a lawsuit on their hands?

If anybody is unemployed for 4-5 months, now there is a reason not to hire them right away, to interview them and to keep them on UI for another 1-2 months and then to get the tax credit once they are at 6 months unemployment time.

Of-course fire anybody after 6 months, get new hires. It's all going to be minimum wage jobs, nobody who is hiring people at good salaries will care about 4000USD tax credit.

The 1 year cut in SS payroll tax will make SS that much more broke (it's broke now, but it can be made worse.)

To pretend that there is SS "trust fund", gov't will borrow money, put it into "trust fund", borrow from "trust fund" and spend it on stimulus. Many lies all around.

If you hire a returning veteran, the tax credit is 5600USD. Applied to minimum wage, it makes minimum wage 1.87USD/hour. This creates huge government incentive to have very high turnover.

Payroll taxes will be lost on existing jobs, ha ha. They'll have to print more money.

For returning veterans with injuries (wounded warrior), you get 9600USD tax credit. For a minimum wage job this makes the pay a NEGATIVE ONE :) -1.98USD/hour.

Hire as many wounded warriors as possible immediately and just pay them, but the employer gets 1.98/hour for every new hire. Hire all of them and have the Fed monetize the debt that will be created paying these tax credits.

How do you like them apples?

Well, it's on the east coast, so there a are a few possible culprits who come to mind who might do just that.

" There is no "chain of evidence" proving that you did, indeed, made the invention as far back as you claim you did."

clearly you aren't an inventor, some I wish you would STFU.

There is always a chain of evidence, a stronger one for smarter inventors, but it's always there.

"As far as I know, first to invent only goes back one year. That it the most you can back-date an invention. The load on the patent office will not change significantly."

—A disclosure made 1 year or less before the effective filing date of a claimed invention shall not be prior art to the claimed invention under subsectio(a)(1) if— ‘‘(A) the disclosure was made by the inventor or joint inventor or by another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor; or
‘‘(B) the subject matter disclosed had, before such disclosure, been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a joint inventor or another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor.

http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Patent%20Reform%20PDFS/112hr1249eh.pdf

I suggest you note 'coinventer'. In the context of the bill that also means ‘joint research agreement’

So a VC could literally steal your invention.

Plus, make a radical change in the current eco system poses a lot of other risks.

"And in fact, the historical record shows that higher taxation in the USA has generally lead to prosperity." [Citation Needed]

http://www.house.gov/jec/growth/longterm/longterm.htm

• In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

I don't want that mama stickin' it in, or anywhere near, the camera, if I can possibly help it.

They're pretty close to raw numbers, and I try not to take things out of context, those numbers are straight from the horses mouth and also extrapolated from 3rd party analysis:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget
http://budget.house.gov/fy2012budget/
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget12/index.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/budget_2012.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget

If you find any one sided political lies or gross and blatant misrepresentations, I will gladly adjust accordingly.

Heh...no. The Dems don't go hacking systems...they just submit fraudulent voters...

In Texas.
In Colorado.

It's not only in Chicago where the dead (and apparently the illegal...) vote early and often.

Let me get this straight. We actually need yet another party claiming to be the center?

Last time I looked, the Democrats are simply recyclying Republican policy from the past. If it actually became a viable leftist party that would actually make politcs possible again.

I wish they'd recycle one of those budgets. The Democrat controlled Senate hasn't passed a budget in 800 days, which includes over a year in which they controlled the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Okay, granted, Obama did pass a budget that was voted down 99-0, but seriously, how can they bitch about the country being on the brink of default when they don't have an actual budget?

Compromise, to recall the grade-school concept, is when two parties make two separate propositions and then resolve their differences to find a course of action somewhere between. When one side won't propose anything, they're being uncompromising.

(If you want to play, any mention of a Democratic budget must contain a link to the actual text, and a link to a CBO analysis of it. For example, here's the Ryan budget, and the CBO's analysis.)

I have no argument with that, it was more about an optimum, which is argued in the style of a laffer curve argument by Richard Armey that it's 11.42 of GDP, a misremembering on my part. I'm not really arguing what it is, but where it would be best. I'm sure it's possible to reduce tax to that level.

http://www.house.gov/jec/growth/govtsize/govtsize.htm

They've been talking about it for the last couple years... I haven't seen much press on it lately, but a bill was introduced to reduce delivery to 5 days.

‘(h) Nothing in this title or any other provision of law shall be considered to prevent the Postal Service from taking whatever actions may be necessary to provide for 5-day delivery of mail and a commensurate adjustment in rural delivery of mail, subject to the requirements of section 3661.’.

Excerpt from the bill (Title I, Subtitle B, section 111(h))
Read this as "allows USPS to move to 5-day delivery" not "mandates USPS to move to 5-day delivery"

- Washington Post article
- from the horse's mouth
- the bill....112th Congress H.R. 2309 (Postal Reform Act of 2011) sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa [R-CA]
- Press release on Rep. Issa's page with a decent summary

Now's the time to put your money where your mouth is Slashdotters. Time and again we bemoan on this site that our politicians (in the U.S.) piss our tax dollars away on pork-ridden bills and unnecessary defense spending at the expense of science. Now is the time to let Congress know just how important we nerds find science like the JWST to be. There are at least two open letters to Congress written by folks on the internet. They can be found here and here.

You can find your Congress-critter's mailing and contact information here and here.

It won't take you more than 10 minutes to print on of those letters, fold it up, stamp it, and mail it to your representative or senator. We 'dotters bring down entire websites when we care enough about an issue to RTFA. Now is the time to bring Congress's mailroom to a standstill by declaring, in one unified voice, "You won't ransack our science research anymore!"

If we can afford two wars in the Middle East, Medicaire, Medicaide, and tax cuts for the rich assholes who are driving this country into the ground, then we can afford to build this telescope, not just for America, but for the continued progress and exploration of humanity in general.