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Allies today, enemies tomorrow? Things change quickly. We were fighting Germany & Japan 60 years ago.

Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan are all supposed allies, we have treaties and security counsels with them, but are they really our friends? This was 3 years ago.

The point is that it doesn't have to be that way and only a bunch of total morons (read the NSA) would push us closer to that unfortunate scenario with idiotic behaviour. Both the German and the French leadership have been pretty reluctant to raise a stink over the Snowden affair (even though they are definitely pissed off about it) partly because they are pretty eager to finalize that EU/US free trade agreement ASAP and Snowden's revelations are screwing everything up at the worst possible time. One gets the feeling they made calls to Washington a while ago and asked Obama et al. whether there were any more stink-bombs coming down the pipes and were told 'no'. They then made statements based on that assurance only to find themselves with a fresh batch of stink-bombs on their hands. I have to hand it to Snowden, If it is his intention to wreck the EU-US relationship his timing is perfect. Vlad Putin must be watching this farce unfold and laughing his ass off. The only ones gaining by this carnival of stupidity are Russia and possibly China.

Allies today, enemies tomorrow? Things change quickly. We were fighting Germany & Japan 60 years ago.

Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan are all supposed allies, we have treaties and security counsels with them, but are they really our friends? This was 3 years ago.

In 2010 we caught some Russians and deported them.

They can & do try. It's not exactly a secret that Russia has physical spies in the U.S. or China has been cyber-attacking the U.S. or 'friendly' nations like France doing corporate espionage.

Huh? Erosion of Trust? Are you familiar with the Organized Labor movement in most countries? It's fraught with conflict and violence. I will give you an example of how things go.

Let me give you a quick refresher. Jan 29, 1933 Ford employs the use of Strike Breakers. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19330130&id=z_8MAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YGkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2487,5787301

in April, 1941 more violence with Ford.. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7-RfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IgMGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4483,1409316&dq=ford+hires+strike&hl=en

PATCO workers in a sick out in 1970.. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C14FD3E5A157493C5A9178FD85F448785F9

Organized labor exists because workers aren't happy with their working conditions. Unfortunately over the last 30 years with the decline in US manufacturing and with concerted efforts by companies to keep unions out, we're seeing a reduced influence by Unions in general. With growing wage disparity however, we'll probably see a resurgence in the movement. In fact, recently we've seen it with Walmart and McDonalds workers and it's been openly encouraged by the past few administrations. More and more states are pushing for Right to Work laws, which on the surface may seem good but that also makes workers more of a commodity by driving out unions, rather than a vital part of any organization.

So, when you say erosion of trust, I'd like to know exactly what era, or company you're talking about because when you work for somebody else, you're a cog in the machine and they'll do whatever they want with you within the definition of the law. If you're in a Right to Work state, you can get fired without cause so don't expect any kind of trust to be developed there.

While I don't agree with tracking employees, I think it's a natural problem we have with privacy. Privacy in this country is eroding faster than a sand castle at high tide and unless we start pushing on our elected officials to get legislation that protects us form these kinds of things, well companies will do all kinds of things that by lack of decree, they'll be able to do and you won't be able to stop it. Even in Norway, companies are using such novel ideas like bathroom alarms limiting you to 8 minutes per day.... Think of how that works for your rights and your trust with your employer.

Doh! I should have stripped off the parameters:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/26nocera.html [In Prison for Taking a 'Liar Loan' - Joe Nocera - NY Times; may require registration, or try reaching it through a search engine.]

and there is a follow-up:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/opinion/nocera-the-mortgage-fraud-fraud.html

Doh! I should have stripped off the parameters:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/26nocera.html [In Prison for Taking a 'Liar Loan' - Joe Nocera - NY Times; may require registration, or try reaching it through a search engine.]

and there is a follow-up:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/opinion/nocera-the-mortgage-fraud-fraud.html

For instance in the mortgage fraud scandal they were allowed to settle fraudulent foreclosures for pennies on the dollar. Why are these companies never required to make the people they hurt whole again?

I don't intend to defend Knight Capital, but there is a big difference between its incompetence and negligence in this case, and the deliberate and fraudulent actions that characterized the mortgage mess. No individual in the financial industry has been held accountable for these actions, even while some of the people they exploited have been prosecuted: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/26nocera.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all [In Prison for Taking a 'Liar Loan' - Joe Nocera - NY Times; may require registration, or try reaching it through a search engine.] This, I believe, is the "most scandalous aspects of the financial mess of 2008."

Look at the bottom of the Wikipedia page.

Some as far back as 2002.

I think a bit more than a fine is due. Why isn't FINRA on these folks?!

Linking military spending to GDP is a conventional way of measuring and managing the commitment of resources, including within Europe. Unfortunately the US has to underwrite European nations that are not living up to their agreements.

Shrinking Europe Military Spending Stirs Concern - April 22, 2013

Alarmed by years of cuts to military spending, the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, issued a dire public warning to European nations, noting that together they had slashed $45 billion, or the equivalent of Germany’s entire military budget, endangering the alliance’s viability, its mission and its relationship with the United States. ...

The United States finances nearly three-quarters of NATO’s military spending, up from 63 percent in 2001. And yet among the alliance’s 28 nations, experts note, only the United States, Britain and Greece are meeting NATO’s own spending guidelines of 2 percent of gross domestic product. Even Britain and France — the two leading European nations willing to project military might — are slipping further. France says that by 2014 it may cut deeper still — to just 1.3 percent of G.D.P., down from 1.9 percent this year. By comparison, the United States spent 4.8 percent of its G.D.P. on the military in 2011.

In 2012, for the first time, military spending among Asian nations, in particular China, exceeded that of the Europeans.

“We are moving toward a Europe that is a combination of the unable and the unwilling,” said Camille Grand, a French military expert who directs the Foundation for Strategic Research. “European countries are continuing to be free riders, instead of working seriously to see how to act together.”

If the concern is the total burden on taxpayers, as your quote seems to imply, then it would be wise to look at the actual spending trends. Entitlement spending for social welfare programs far exceeds defense spending and therefore constitutes the major portion of the tax burden. The new healthcare program is going to add to that spending. Given the rapid growth of federal spending compared to median income it is little wonder that the spending per household in adjusted dollars is rapidly increasing. This isn't sustainable, especially in light of the rapidly aging generational bulge that is starting to retire now - the "baby boomers."

"Single Owner Home Office" is a ridiculously nebulous term. What if the home is jointly owned by more than one individual? What if it's in a duplex, or other multi-family home? Would that make this scenario any different? Why does it matter how many entities the home is owned by?

Or, since the expression is so ambiguously worded, is the home office what's singly owned? If so, does ownership really matter here? If there were third party investors that owned the home office, does that change anything? If you're doing your own thing, in your own home, do you print differently depending on where the capital for your home office originated?

Please join me in my quest for acronym reform. SOHO has been a reference to "South of Houston [Street]", an area of New York City, for over 50 years. Consequently, anyone trying to commandeer the term to instead mean "single office / home office" or "small office / home office" or "single owner home office" is actively trying to break the English language. English already has enough homonyms, so let's all take a stand against those who would burden us with even more ambiguity in our speech.

We look forward to you sharing your "evidence", thanks.

I tend to ignore people who can't be bothered to use google on their own, and instead ask for everything to be handed to them...

We're talking about half a century of gun control laws and increasing crime rates. There's no single link to ALL that information.

There's a few quick ones:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/2/

http://people.duke.edu/~gnsmith/articles/myths.htm (See #10)

http://www.liveandlocalenc.com/proof-gun-control-increases-crime/

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig7/lemieux1.html

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/22/do-strict-gun-laws-really-stop-gun-crime/

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#right-to-carry

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/weekinreview/29liptak.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/02/04/gun-crimes-increase-massachusetts-despite-tough-gun-laws/XjlDQLZlUDvsf3KS8PqyGK/story.html

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/06/25/stossel-argues-gun-control-increases-crime-i-was-once-clueless-senator-schumer

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/02/17/the-nation-toughest-gun-control-law-made-massachusetts-less-safe/3845k7xHzkwTrBWy4KpkEM/story.html

Yeah, but how many vans are out there running around trying to find a broadcast controlling a drone? Aren't they for the most part just trying to find signals interfering with others? You'd almost be better off with a general RF detector in the right frequency range, some binoculars, and a few warm headset-enabled friendlies mixed in with the crowd. And that's hoping he's not on a nearby hill with his own binoculars and a small parabolic antenna.

If I'm really being evil and have some remote vantage point, I just need to make sure it receives my control signals and forget about any returning status signals. THOSE are the guys to worry about -- the normal ones goofing around and cause accidental property/people damage are just annoying idiots and need to be taught to be more careful and respectful of things.

Sometimes it's self-limiting though. (Horrible accident -- "specialized in the most extreme form of flying" -- a practice just went terribly wrong. The only thing worse would have been if he'd killed more people along with himself, again not on purpose.)

That all being said, on occasion when my phone is WiFi sharing it's network access, you have to connect to broadcast access point "FBISURVELNCE0193". That's an old internet joke, but I thought it was funny enough to actually implement. I've only gotten one start out of someone -- that I've noticed, anyway. The upside here is that I think it's funny; the downside is that the FBI could get me for somehow "impersonating an official."

As a society we don't need to care what happens to some random company.

If JP Morgan collapsed tonight, we (as a society) would certainly care about what happens.
Why? Because some "random companies" are so big that their troubles would shake the (inter)national economy.

This is a great strength of the private sector, and this property is what is referenced by the phrase "the market is self-regulating".

The market is not self regulating, unless it is self regulating towards oligopolies, oligopsonies, cartels, and general shittiness.
Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation
October 23, 2008

But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief," he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

On a day that brought more bad news about rising home foreclosures and slumping employment, Mr. Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken.

I could quote the entire article, hell his entire testimony.
There was no room in his ideology for private companies to intentionally abandon risk management and externalize the risk by selling it off.
So despite his attempts to mince words, the results of his Ayn Randian ideology ended up being exactly what one would historically expect from not having meaningful regulation.

No. You're basically wrong on every point you bring up.

"Looking at what has happened in other countries, the "you're fucked" point, the point at which you can't escape the death spiral, is about 100% of GDP - when a country owes as much as it generates."

No, there is no magic debt/GDP limit: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/reinhart-and-rogoff-are-not-happy/

"That tells us we are about six to eight years from becoming Greece."

No, Greece doesn't have its own currency, so we are in no way the same as Greece: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/the-china-debt-syndrome/?_r=0

No. You're basically wrong on every point you bring up.

"Looking at what has happened in other countries, the "you're fucked" point, the point at which you can't escape the death spiral, is about 100% of GDP - when a country owes as much as it generates."

No, there is no magic debt/GDP limit: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/reinhart-and-rogoff-are-not-happy/

"That tells us we are about six to eight years from becoming Greece."

No, Greece doesn't have its own currency, so we are in no way the same as Greece: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/the-china-debt-syndrome/?_r=0

The senate eventually passed a bill, but not before the House sent nearly a dozen bills their way.

I don't get what's so nice about it, the NSA already knows who I am friends with. So no matter how we route traffic in our min-TOR, all exits identify us. The whole point of VPNs, TOR etc. is to hide within massive noise.

I want no part of "Google freedom". Their self driving cars? If these are the norm, they'll know where you are - all the time - and be queriable for your violations of speed limits and other "indiscretions".

If you trust them for VPN? How are keys generated? Who is the root of trust? This is your real question.

This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

-- Julian Assange, The Banality of 'Don't Be Evil"

I'm with Admiral Ackbar, on this one:
"IT'S A TRAP!"

The tech to do so is already out there. SASOL which is a south african petroleum products company, has gas to liquids plants that can produce gasoline and diesel products from methane. All you need to do is feed the methane from landfills and sewage plants to these gas to liquids plants, and you have gasoline equivalents from human excrement. The key to this technology is finding a cheap plentiful source of gas and high gasoline and diesel prices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/business/energy-environment/sasol-plans-first-gas-to-liquids-plant-in-us.html

The last given to the Senate by the House (linky), before the shutdown, was: Pay for everything, including Obamacare, delay individual mandate for 1 year (Pres. Obama delayed the Corporate Mandate for 1 year, why not people too? People before Corporations right?) and cancel subsidies for lawmakers (Senators and Representatives) to pay for their personal health insurance (they make avg $174,000/year, people in the private sector making 1/3 that won't get subsidies...) and it was rejected.

To me that deal seems rather reasonable, especally with the hardships seen trying to get health insurance through the exchange website.

Here is a nice back and forth with a what compromises were offered and refused.

The last given to the Senate by the House (linky), before the shutdown, was: Pay for everything, including Obamacare, delay individual mandate for 1 year (Pres. Obama delayed the Corporate Mandate for 1 year, why not people too? People before Corporations right?) and cancel subsidies for lawmakers (Senators and Representatives) to pay for their personal health insurance (they make avg $174,000/year, people in the private sector making 1/3 that won't get subsidies...) and it was rejected.

To me that deal seems rather reasonable, especally with the hardships seen trying to get health insurance through the exchange website.

Here is a nice back and forth with a what compromises were offered and refused.

Nigerians are paying a higher price. I guess you think Nigeria's politicians also meddle in the Middle East?

Also Thailand. They had 173 terrorist incidents in 2011. Their government must meddle in the Middle East a lot.

That must be it.

It is idiotic to make statements without backing them up with citations. I provided a link, which is based off a wikileaks cable release. Here's another article for you.

"Mr. Marion, who was appointed to head the French secret service in 1981 by President François Mitterrand, acknowledged that France spied on American companies, including IBM, Texas Instruments and Corning, that were involved in competition with French state-owned enterprises. "

I am aware that you posted a link - the quote I pasted was from your posted link and I give that company CEO's statement as much validity as anything that any CEO says. None at all because they say whatever they have to say to achieve some business goal - and it can have nothing to do with reality.

I never said that France doesn't spy. I said that it's stupid to claim that they do more industrial espionage than China.

Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/nyregion/15dog.html?_r=0

I recalled this too and had to find the article :)

It is idiotic to make statements without backing them up with citations. I provided a link, which is based off a wikileaks cable release. Here's another article for you.

"Mr. Marion, who was appointed to head the French secret service in 1981 by President François Mitterrand, acknowledged that France spied on American companies, including IBM, Texas Instruments and Corning, that were involved in competition with French state-owned enterprises. "

Equifax Workforce Solutions, in St. Louis.

http://nytimes.com/2013/07/17/us/politics/credit-reporting-agency-hired-to-verify-incomes-for-insurance-subsidies.html

Yet another revelation from Snowden that reveals Top Secret American foreign intelligence activities that have no relation to the rights of Americans.

When will people come to understand that his goal was not simply protecting the rights of Americans? Isn't it clear from who his Russian spokesman was?

Maybe they just wanted to know how many French cars would burn this year, set ablaze by.....guess who?

More than 40,000 vehicles are burned each year in France...

Google is fucking gay.

http://www.smartearningmethods.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/larry-page-and-sergey-brin-300x259.jpg
http://business.vnmic.com/uploads/news/2011_08/internet-larry-page-sergey-brin.jpg
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/your-money/01benefits.html?_r=0

For that reason, I try to avoid their products whenever possible.

Here's one example of catastrophic. Here are some more.

Management is the reason why healthcare.gov has been such as disaster. Open source or not, it wouldn't have mattered. They didn't even get to start coding until this spring, because the government was so slow in issuing specifications for the site. Then as if the tight deadlines were not enough, Administrators kept issuing changes to the site up until last few weeks of September (despite an October 1st launch date). It wasn't little a change here or there either.

One of the last big overhauls was making it so people had to register before they could browse the plans. This was apparently becasue they wanted people to see what the price would be with the subsidy. The idea being that for many people the price before the credit would scare them away from buying in.

There is also more info on this at the new york times

The Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction only where Congress allows it. If Congress excepted the FISA court from Supreme Court jurisdiction, that's the end of it.

Roberts's Picks Reshaping Secret Surveillance Court
Chief Justice Roberts is personally responsible for picking 10 of the 11 sitting FISA judges.
To be clear: the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court nominates all the FISA judges, the President signs off.

I understand what you're saying, but what kind of ass backwards policy would it be
to have the Chief Justice of the United States pick judges for a court that he has no jurisdiction over?

But lets just invent enemies that are going to invade tomorrow if we don't keep killing Arabs.

Your wish/prediction has been granted/realised, Africans are the new Arabs.

Well, according to that wikipedia page, that weapons system was in service since 1980. The missiles I'm talking about are these ones and are much more modern. I have read that Russia got significantly further ahead than the US in the area of anti-ship missiles and as such, the US defences against them have never been tested for real.

So a post saying CIA wanted 9/11 to happen so it's budget would be increased gets modded "Interesting". You mods really need to hang out more on conspiracy nut message boards, you'll find a lot more "interesting" stuff there.

There's nothing nutty about it - it's a proven fact that the government had good, solid intel that a group of mostly Saudi men were planning on hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. It's also a proven fact that our government did nothing to stop them, and that the budgets and powers of various TLAs see explosive growth (no pun intended) when shit like that is allowed to happen. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to want to believe, the people who run these agencies are not inept, incompetent fools who can't tell their asses from their heads; guys like Patraeus and Clapper got to where they are by being very, very good at what they do.

What I find nutty is how so many people deny the truth, even when it has been covered, extensively, by multiple media outlets.

I guess some folks will believe anything... so long as it's a government agent giving the narrative.

But it probably doesn't matter much in the long term since much of the West is heading towards a demographic death spiral. The future belongs to those who show up.

Oh no, another doomsayer lamenting the imminent extinction of white folk via not having enough babies. What a terrible loss, that will be.

Of course, this is only if you believe that white folk are inherently more special than people of other colors.

Oh we know they have at least some of the documents, they can read US and UK TOP SECRET documents in the newspapers just like anybody else. They can then use those for their intelligence analysis, or to fill in missing pieces. Before they would have had to get an infiltrator to obtain them, now they can just go to the Guardian. And that's assuming that they haven't managed to obtain either voluntary or clandestine copies of documents from the Guardian or other papers with the documents. Do you recall that Mr. Greenwald's lover was carrying electronic copies of many documents with him, as well as a scribbled note with the password? Funny how we never seem to get releases of Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Iranian, North Korean or other documents.

Bin Laden wants the West to turn to Islam. He failed. But it probably doesn't matter much in the long term since much of the West is heading towards a demographic death spiral. The future belongs to those who show up.

From this.

At the F.D.A., about 45 percent of the agency’s staff members are furloughed. “F.D.A. is doing what it can under this difficult situation to protect public health,” said Steven Immergut, the agency’s assistant commissioner for media affairs.

Which shows that the 60% number is flat out wrong, I'm still digging for the reports from day 2 which said the FDA inspectors would not be interrupted, but even according to the story on the 10th I linked above, meat plant inspection was never interrupted.

Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods, say accountants at those companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?_r=0

Apple literally invented the technique. Others followed to compete.

Personally, I support any and all means of tax avoidance, so I don't count it against them. But I love bursting Apple Fanboys bubbles.

Oddly enough, that usually involves saying Apple didn't invent something.

Don't quit your day job just yet.

And you should come up with a new panacea. Both Vitamin D and Vitamin C have both been deprecated.

.. always bends to business or advertisers.

That's the general rule, but the exceptions are even more interesting. (And the exceptions are the ones that I read.)

Before Rupert Murdoch took it over, the Wall Street Journal was my choice for the best source of general news in the English language. The paper was very profitable and had a wide advertising base, so it wasn't dependent on any single advertiser. They were owned by a family, the Bancrofts, that were quite liberal, hired good journalists to run the paper, and left them alone, except when they had to stand behind them. The conservative editorial page gave them cover for a news department that was actually one of the most liberal in the country. I was struck by their no-sacred-cows coverage of the pharmaceutical industry, automobile safety, mining, and the Reagan-era welfare reforms. They had long, ongoing coverage of people with life-threatening diseases who couldn't afford to get treated in the health care system. One of their reporters in New York profiled a young woman who worked in a news stand near her house, who was blind in one eye, and going blind in the other eye, because she couldn't afford to pay her bills at New York Eye and Ear medical center, and couldn't afford the relatively cheap drugs for glaucoma.

The best account of the Wall Street Journal, I think, was in a couple of articles written by A. Kent Macdougal (in More and in the Monthly Review) after he retired to teach journalism. He said that in all his career, he never heard of pressure from an advertiser or a political favorite of the management or publisher. He was a socialist, and he could write whatever he wanted as long as he followed the formula of balanced, objective journalism with every statement backed up by facts.

Macdougal said that the Journal earned its credibility in the 1950s when they got photos of the next year's GM model cars, which were a big marketing secret. GM said that if the Journal published them, they would cancel all their advertising. The Journal published them, GM cancelled their ads, and when GM finally came back begging to let them advertise again, the Journal took a long time deciding whether to take them.

Now that Murdoch took over, he started using his pressure not on behalf of his advertisers, but on behalf of his political ideology http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/media/14carr.html I guess he thinks he's Citizen Kane.

I think the formula for good news is a lot of money (from whatever source), and good journalists who know how to report, edit and manage news. Ralph Ingersol paid for PM and The Compass. George Seldes used to publish his newsletter In Fact, which published news that nobody else would (and had a network of reporters around the world who sent them stories they couldn't publish in their own newspapers), like racism in the South. In Fact was a model for American newsletters and dissident newspapers that followed, including I.F. Stone's Weekly. Seldes didn't know this until much later, but his main financial backer was a Communist who was getting money to pay for the newsletter from the Soviet Union. Dostoyevsky said, "We all came out from under Gogol's overcoat." Well, we all came out from under Seldes' In Fact.

So that's what it takes -- good journalists, and money with no strings attached, wherever you can get it. Let's see if Omidyar and Greenwald can do it.

And unlike China, India is a heterogeneous society due to Caste system. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/india-is-losing-the-race/

At least they aren't quartering soldiers in your home, although the fawning over people in uniform that goes on in america means you'd probably just open your doors anyway.

I essentially have, as one of my college roommates was a member of the national guard and had served in Iraq. I have plenty of veteran (and active duty) friends and acquaintances that I would gladly let stay in my house, because they are good people. The whole quartering troops thing was because the people saw the troops as adversaries. Today, it is our government that seems to be our adversary. Our military (the actual guys behind the guns) are the only ones who seem to actually care about the country.

Yeah, that's why they shoot the bad guys, and don't shoot up US Elementary schools. Oh wait

with no lessons learned

As our Federal Santa Clause ruins the currency we'll look to our states. There are already signs of this happening.

The world won't end. The sun will come up and people will have to eat. The question is what happens; will we submit to some tyrant making promises? Or do we embrace reality, finally, and re-learn how to support ourselves?

BTW, the checks will always cash; they'll print whatever they must to insure that. As you say, it won't be worth anything.

Ultimately I think we'll learn what other nations have learned; Big national governments can get out of hand.

Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods, say accountants at those companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?_r=0

Apple literally invented the technique. Others followed to compete.

Personally, I support any and all means of tax avoidance, so I don't count it against them. But I love bursting Apple Fanboys bubbles.

Also funny your claim that "Apple was a pioneer" suddenly proves they invented it. Next you'll claim they have a patent on it. And then that this proves that somebody else did it first. And then your head will explode.

Why does Apple get to lobby the government or expect the support of the government when they won't pay for it?

Apple certainly pays for it. Apple is one of the top corporate income taxpayers in the country, if not the largest. Apple paid $6Billon in US taxes in 2012, which is "1 out of every 40 dollars of corporate taxes the US collected that year."

Even if the Irish tax law changes, it will not increase the US tax revenue it collects from Apple. The US does not collect tax revenue from overseas corporate profits unless it is brought into the US. At that time, if and when it comes, the US will tax it, and Apple will pay this second tax on the money (the first tax has been paid in the country in which the profits originate).

Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods, say accountants at those companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?_r=0

Apple literally invented the technique.
Others followed to compete.

Personally, I support any and all means of tax avoidance, so I don't count it against them. But I love bursting Apple Fanboys bubbles.

It goes beyond that. Some complaints are legitimate, but things like this are just gaming the system:

Finally, multinationals that invert have an easier time achieving “earnings stripping,” a tax maneuver in which an American subsidiary is loaded up with debt to offset domestic earnings, lowering the effective tax rate paid on sales in the United States.

Most people do not know any of the details of these kinds of operations and so we all must just trust our benevolent job creators. As long as Obama has GE sitting at the table when he calls businesses in to talk about tax reform it'll never go anywhere significantly better for us the little men.

If the offsets don't do what they advertise, it isn't Al Gore's fault that they don't.

When it is his company he's buying them from, it is.

Generation Investment Management is a multi-national (offices in New York and London) investment strategy company. In other words, they exist to make a profit off of investing in ... whatever they can make a profit from investing in.

The "About Us" page claims there are 55 people who "represent[s] 16 countries and speaks 21 languages." The only financial disclosure I can find at that site lists "Investment Management" remuneration at a total of GPB19,742,000. That's US$31,567,458, or an average of US$574,000 per "investment manager".

Now, how much does Mr. Gore pay in "carbon offsets"? I can't find a number, but this NY Times article says that a competing company (TerraPass) would charge about $1300 for a house such as Gore's.

$1300 spent for at least a $574,000 income? (And as Chairman, you can't expect Mr. Gore to make less than the average for his employees, can you?)

This article defending Gore reports Gore's office saying:

Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family's carbon footprint -- a concept the right-wing fails to understand.

No, I think even right-wingers can understand what's going on.

Because those services use SUCH huge amounts of FEDERAL tax dollars. Of course how could we be so blind.

Go read a graph:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fivethirtyeight-gov1/16fivethirtyeight-gov1-blog480.jpg

Most of that money goes to entitlement programs, military contractors, and the NSA (if the $1 trillion budget is a real thing then they cost more than police, fire, etc)
You'll notice "infrastructure and services" is combined into one to encompass everything you said. So yeah, the spending breakdown is why I think more taxes are a bad idea. The vast majority goes to entitlment programs I don't support, military spending I don't support, and an agency that spies on me for a living.

Bezos is synonymous with bad patents in my mind... all because of his one-click patent which makes a mockery of the entire patent system and undermines any validity his other patents might have.

One-click is actually a great counterexample of your point - despite private bounties being placed on prior art, an EFF campaign seeking prior art, and four years of reexamination that confirmed patentability, people still bring it up as if it were a "mockery of the entire patent system". Clearly ,that's not because the patent is invalid or obvious, since despite all of those efforts, no one has ever been able to show that - rather, it's because of the millions of dollars that have been spending in a propaganda campaign to convince software developers not to patent their inventions. Accordingly, discussions of the one-click patent can be a great indicator of people who have been misled by that propaganda - frequently, without ever actually having read the claims of the patent at all (after all, it's not, by any means, a patent on "clicking once").