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Actually, Harvard has 36 times that.

Harvard, the world's wealthiest university, reported a 15.4% investment return for fiscal 2014. Those returns exceeded internal goals and boosted the endowment's assets to $36.4 billion as of June 30.

Ah, so it never applied to you. You heard their stories and assumed how horrible it must have been when the big bad wolf came for their livelihoods. I am glad they got out of running a business because it is not for the weak. If you are an SP or LLC with pass through, and you are not able to make it with a personal AGI of over $250K, something is very wrong.

Actually, it cost me $132,000 personally. I keep enough float that it's not an issue, but I'm pretty sure I could use that money better than the California government can use it.

Considering business get to deduct their expenses, it sounds like poor planning on their part, being over stretched with debt.

Uh, how in the HELL do you PLAN for a RETROACTIVE tax?!?!?

As a small business owner myself, I don't have sympathy for those that run companies on the edge because anything can happen to wipe you out. They should have gone to their bank and tapped their line of credit or gotten a bridge loan. If they are not in the financial position to have access to either of those sources of cash, they should not have gone into business.

Obviously, you don't run a cash flow business; you don't run a small car mechanic, or a hair salon, or a laundromat or a Subway or Quizno's franchise.

Tech companies offer the 401k for retirement purposes. RSUs are used as form of incentive compensation. If these people are using an RSU for retirement purposes, they need to find a competent financial adviser. If people don't understand the risks with RSUs and sign the grant agreement, they only have themselves to blame. Worst case, reject the grant.

You can't possibly retire in California on a 401K, or even a 401K + social security. If they raised the contribution caps SUBSTANTIALLY, then yes, maybe you could, but unless you are a total fiscal idiot, you have to realize that 401K + SSI is not even going to cover the property tax on a home in San Francisco.

Wow, that is some type of crazy. This is the sky is falling trope that the conservative and libertarian groups like to throw around. The wealthy have not left in droves. Elon Musk still lives in Bel Air, Tim Cook still live in Palo Alto, Larry Ellison still lives in Woodside. The people leaving the state in droves are in the bottom 50% and those hitting their retirement age, and this is due to the cost of living.

The people you are citing have more money than God. They aren't "millionaires", they're billionaires, and they can take the hit, since most of their income is sheltered anyway.

But where's Eduardo Saverin living again? Oh yeah, he gave up his US citizenship because he was (effectively) paid $67M by the state of California alone to do it (and another $30M or so by the fed).

Other people moving out of state due to taxes:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/20...
http://www.sfgate.com/business...

250 companies:
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/fin...

Small business and family consequences:
"It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Historical study for "millionaire tax" in Maryland:
"The Change Maryland study found that the tax cost Maryland $1.7 billion in lost tax revenues."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/4812044...

Actual numbers (scroll down past

It's not really that crazy when you consider their gross revenue of 10 billion, absurd profit margin (all they do I run an app, right?) and massive potential to expand into new markets.

Uber doesn't make $10 billion in revenue. You must have read a story from last year where it was projected that they may have $10 billion in revenue in 2015. No one actually knows what their revenue is but an investor stated just a few months ago that they were briefed it would be in the $2 billion range:

Part of that confidence stems from Uber’s impressive sales growth, which the company sees accelerating this year. Uber recently told some investors that it forecasts net revenue, or the amount it keeps after paying out drivers, of more than $2 billion this year, according to a person who was briefed on the matter

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/20...

And while we're doing that... how about raise the standard human IQ to something less obnoxiously pitiful. Because boy oh boy are there are a lot of morons.

We are

Look at it this way. At any given time, there are a limited number of humans who are doing something that will help the species. The rest of us, we're just the breeding stock and life support for those guys.

And while we're doing that... how about raise the standard human IQ to something less obnoxiously pitiful. Because boy oh boy are there are a lot of morons.

We are

Yeah, and check out who the good guys are now. The charade can go on indefinitely...

OK, feel free to actually pay attention to the news coming out of Syria and then do that retroactively for a few years.

If you're clueless, seriously, go research it. This is a multipolar conflict. We never ever armed or allied with Al Nusra or ISIS. ISIS came from an org that we did our best to destroy and actually the entire surge was based more or less around destroying them and coopting former insurgents. The whole country (Iraq) fought against these guys. and then we left and it all went to shit. They moved next door and were heavily infiltrated by former Batthist intelligence and military guys. It's a long story.

I used to say shit like that all of the time, in the early days of the Iraq War. And then I spent a few years reading news and analysis all day, and I realized that it was far more complicated than this reductionist conspiracy bullshit. There are many sides in this war, not just two. Quite a lot of the guys fighting Assad are actually moderates. These are the guys we tried to arm. Many of them were killed and coopted by ISIS and Al Nusra. If you can't wrap your head around the actual dynamic at work here, how messy of a civil war this is, then you should seriously read more about it and branch out from obvious left-wing, right-wing, and conspiracy sites.

Am I fully aware of the past crimes of the CIA? Oh, fuck yeah. Have I read Chomsky and shit? Yes. The neocons were full of it, and I was against all of these wars. We created this mess in a very large way. But is Assad a monster? Yes! If you think the opposite, you have most likely fallen for his propaganda, of which there is a lot. Is ISIS complete madness and yet half Baathist... and quite possibly possessing serious military genius? Yup! Is Al Nusra a better option? Actually yeah, but they're still fucked up. The point being, it's seriously complicated over there, and reducing this situation to the CIA making this shit up and it all being a charade for.... for what I'm not sure... but this doesn't at all fit the facts. It sure as shit fits a dumb conspiracy narrative which will conveniently ignore the facts.

Yeah, and check out who the good guys are now. The charade can go on indefinitely...

Steve Jobs's Advice for Obama: Jobs told Mr. Obama that Apple employs 700,000 factory workers in China because it can't find the 30,000 engineers in the U.S. that it needs on site at its plants. "If you could educate these engineers," he said at the dinner, "we could move more manufacturing jobs here."

April 2014 Stipple: tag people, places, and objects in an image - “We had turned on revenue, but did not scale fast enough. We were not yet profitable,” Stipple Founder and Chief Executive Ray Flemings said.

Businesses shouldn't have to scale fast to succeed. You can grow a small business into a bigger business, as long as you aren't funded by people who are expecting to make a quick buck.

Imagine you're a venture capitalist. If you invest in a start-up, and it succeeds you can double your money in 1-2 years. If the startup folds, 9 times out of 10 it can be sold off for about what you invested into it. Sure the employees aren't going to get anything for the year the wasted there, but the equipment and parts of the business is usually worth something.

So if you can almost always make money or break even by investing, waiting 2 years, then either pulling out or reaping the rewards, then you'd be stupid not to serially invest in startups and let thousands of them collapse.

I believe this is what is meant by "did not scale fast enough". That a business must turns huge profits in short time for VCs to stick around. I've been part of a few startups that have had the plug pulled on them, even though it seemed like to me there was something worth salvaging. I later learned some of the economics of VC money and how the goals of investors are sometimes in contradiction of the goals of a small owner-operator business.

Yes, but aren't the steam generators closed loop? If you keep blowing out steam, you need to replenish water. That water must be stored on board or extracted from the sea water. I doubt that it is a good idea to use sea water in the generator; higher corrosion and all that jazz. The advantage of an electric system, is no consumables wasted, save fuel for the initial generation, which you would have used anyway.

Nuclear aircraft carriers have large scale desalination (distillation, aka "flash evaporator") plants, some capable of producing 400K gallons of distilled water each day, in excess of shipboard daily water needs.

You're behind the curve on Tesla. Dual-motor AWD models were announced in October 2014 and have been shipping since January.

There are now 4 Model S available, 3 of which have a motor on both front & rear axles and can act independently. Tesla is considering a over-the-air software update to put the rear motor to sleep when cruising at constant speed and you can lose either the front or rear drive unit and keep on driving.

Perhaps Tesla will be yet another failed automaker - there have been no shortage of those in the past century. I wonder if they'll get as generous a package as Government Motors did when they needed rescuing?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Getting a free pass on $45 billion in future profits is a pretty sweet deal.

He did not do any of that. The summary is inflammatory flamebait. If you click on the link, you get a WSJ article that actually contradicts the summary (welcome to New Slashdot).

The WSJ story is very clear about what Paulson did: he noticed that subprime lending was out of control, and that the standard "insurance" against bad bets (CDS) was absurdly under-priced. Note: this basically means that the Big Banks (*not* Paulson) were throwing money left and right to the subprime lenders, blind to the risks.

So he bought a lot of CDS, and when the bubble crashed, he profited massively. The End.

"The article does not say that he did that. Instead, the article says that the banks bought insurance against mortgage defaults (credit default swaps), and that prices of such insurance was very low. John Paulson decided the price was too low compared to the risk, so he bought a lot of the same insurance."

No he didn't, he went to the banks and 'persuaded' them to create a unique financial instrument in which he personally was the beneficiary rather than an institution. Nothing like it had existed up to that point.

"Mr. Paulson .. outlined a sophisticated securities trade .. The bank would have to be convinced that a mere individual, as opposed to an institution, qualified to be a counterparty in such a transaction" ref

Looks like they did not get good odds. So I guess the "wisdom of crowds" correctly pegged American Pharoah's odds of winning were pretty good.

http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/b...
"Fans betting on American Pharoah to be horse racingâ(TM)s first Triple Crown winner since 1978 might see some history if he finishes first in the Belmont Stakes. But they arenâ(TM)t likely to see big profits. The coltâ(TM)s 3-5 odds mean horse players would earn 60 cents for each dollar bet, a stingy prize in the racing world."

These are all well and good valid points, but allow me to respond from the perspective of an Executive, as I'm privy to quarterly and yearly financial reviews at the company level.

Thanks for your insight.

As overworking employees tends to lead to poor morale and people leaving for greener pastures, increasing headcount means increasing COGS and OCOGS beyond what current revenues and profit margins will allow for, often the only alternative is to go to the Indian contracting houses and outsource IT personnel because middle-aged experienced native IT people are a massive cost center to the company. And that's not even taking into account the "good enough" expectations of clients who don't need perfection in their expectations of the product/service being delivered, or the banks who monitor the company's EBIDTA because they provide the operational cash flow, or the Wall Street analysts that work for momentum stock-preferring investment houses and watch expenses like a hawk, and whose recommendations or condemnations can trigger hordes of angry calls by shareholders straight to the CEO--and let me tell you, the REAL power in America is concentrated in the shareholders.

I highly doubt Disney is in a cash crunch considering their CEO receives $29 million in compensation as of 2009 with a base salary is $2 million, and as of last year, receives $45million. How many IT workers is that?

Disney’s net income rose 22% last fiscal year to $7.5 billion and revenue rose 8% to $48.8 billion, driven by the blockbuster success of “Frozen,” as well as significant growth in theme parks and consumer products, along with an end to long-running losses in the company’s interactive unit.

If Disney wants to boost profitablity, they should bring in an H1-B replacement for Robert Iger. I'm sure they could find lots of qualified candidates from India or China who have experience managing an organization the size of Disney and who would be willing to do the job for less than 46.5 million dollars per year. Replacing this one employee would have a larger savings effect than replacing the entire IT staff, while allowing the IT staff to continue innovating and making Disney run smoothly. As a gesture of corporate good will, Disney could allow Mr. Iger to continue working at a theme park as a cast member, preferrably wearing the Goofy costume.

Only if he interviews for the position and beats out the competition. Even for Mr. Iger, it's not easy being Goofy.

If Disney wants to boost profitablity, they should bring in an H1-B replacement for Robert Iger. I'm sure they could find lots of qualified candidates from India or China who have experience managing an organization the size of Disney and who would be willing to do the job for less than 46.5 million dollars per year. Replacing this one employee would have a larger savings effect than replacing the entire IT staff, while allowing the IT staff to continue innovating and making Disney run smoothly. As a gesture of corporate good will, Disney could allow Mr. Iger to continue working at a theme park as a cast member, preferrably wearing the Goofy costume.

I think that "faster" is still the wrong term...

"Cheaper" is likely what counts...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

If that Paywalls (WSJ), then this one:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20...

Amazon simply bought a robot company, they are already using thousands of these robots...

---

A 10th of the speed doesn't matter if it is 100th the price...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/am...

Now if you are tapping his phone

They are...

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes that mimic cellphone towers, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/am...

Now I know what you're going to do, you're going to try to make a distinction between "tapping" and indiscriminate capture, there really isn't one.

Of course your democRAT nominee is at the heart of the corruption. If this is the way the world wants their sporting events to work you are welcome to them.

From the WSJ:

After a three-week trial in New York City, Mr. Ulbricht was found guilty in February of seven criminal charges, including conspiracies to sell drugs, launder money and hack computers.

Well, well. The conservative argument is heard. Albeit, through five links to a website that is, guess what, the authors personal platform for his unique political rants. The links say one thing but the title on the web page is "Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog" Come on take credit where credit is due.

And, since this brand of conservatism is more interested in perceptions than facts., let's review some of those perceptions as they pertain to Greece's much maligned pension system . This article in the WSJ does a better job than I could; http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/....

To proclaim that it's all Greece's fault for their economic woes and deny the effects of the worldwide recession and its impacts on Greece is the view of a simple one track mind.

It's more obvious than ever who were the winners and losers during and after the recession. Which side did the banks fall on? Which side of the fence you fell on was and continues to be as easy to read as your yearly income.

As the article in the WSJ says, 15% of Greece's seniors were at risk of poverty in 2013. The figure is rising. Yet your comments impart a message that this doesn't matter The only thing that matters is cutting government spending, which I believe you think results primarily from pensions . Poverty isn't enough, the pensions are still too high. Age doesn't matter either. I think maybe we should hear your ideas about cutting a pension to someone already dwelling in poverty? Retire at 78 at 50% of the poverty level? Is that enough to satisfy the bondholders?. Have you ever given a thought to the reality of living in poverty and knowing your too old to work? Yeah, don't frazzle a hair over it. No big deal.

My question is this. When does the day of reckoning ever arrive for the bankers? The ones who continued through thick and thin to draw their bonuses. And probably deserved to shoulder much of the blame for the recession. The ones who begged for and received more money for their privileged companies and execs than Greece could ever dream of. At freaking zero interest. Now that's a deal I'm pretty sure Greece would be interested in. A zero interest loan. What's the odds. So Mr Capitalism, when and where has any country received a bundle of cash like the bankers got?

Yeah I guess you can see which side I lean to. I'm pretty fuc*ing sick of the unregulated pro-corporation welfare, while we do some sort of means testing on every dollar spent on a poor person or a broke country like Greece.

You have quotes about "Peopleâ(TM)s sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense." How about this for a quote. "How luck before the trickle down hogwash is dead and buried" A quick look at before and after tax Gini coefficient will tell you everything you need to know about current tax law. Yeah, I guess your system of disinformation is better than most. I mean, gee, here I thought we'd be anyplace but number one. It won't do you any good, but here's a link to a site that isn't your own; http://www.economist.com/blogs.... Yeah, I can punch in numbers too. Especially after I get one of the personal responsibility pitches from the right wing that insists on responsibility for everyone buy corporations and the wealth that own most of them.

For me I hope to God that Greece survives and thrives.

By the start of the crisis in 2007 Countrywide held over a 15% share of the subprime mortgage market. The thing is, they were constantly selling their loans to other people. In reality, they were probably the issuers of close to half the subprime market loans from 1994 to 2008. Countrywide was in bed with the Clinton administration http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10... http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... They were the ones who directly pushed for the expansion of the subprime loan market. Not to mention the real estate bubble while not entirely connected to the dot-com bubble was supremely inflated as it collapsed and investors scrambled for 'safe' investments.

I find it amusing that you are still capable of defending Sks after the travesty they produced. Much of the content on their blog is the same - but at least it's not masquerading as a scientific study!

Here's what IPCC reviewer Richard Tol had to say on the paper: http://richardtol.blogspot.ca/...

The IPCC report is not MY source. It's YOUR source. Indeed it should be your primary source since you align yourself with the consensus. I'm just informing you of what YOUR source says. Evidently you prefer extreme advocacy blogs like Sks. (I'm what they call a 'luke-warmer'.)

I do agree that there seems to be some ambiguity in the report. Why did they say that "It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together", but then say their "best estimate" is similar to the observed warming? "More than half" means somewhere between 50% - 100%. Why did they phrase it that way if that's not what they meant? Why didn't they say "at least 90% of the warming"?

I tend to take things at face value, so when they say "more than half of the observed increase" I'm going to assume that's what they mean, especially since it's the statement they were willing to quantify @ 95%-100% probability.

You are free to assume they mean something other than what they say.

Speaking of their "best estimate", lets take a look at how their many "estimates" are holding up against observation:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp...

The 'blog' post I referred you to was actually an article from the Wall St Journal reposted on the author's personal site (the first part of IPCC report was released btw). I couldn't find the original article at first but here it is. Here's a video with the author, based on IPCC scenarios: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

As to your comment about "single data points", you wanted sources so I provided some as examples. And now I am criticized for that too? Really? There is more if a person would care to look, but it is clear you are unaware of what your own "side" even says, apparently preferring extreme advocacy sites like Sks to the IPCC, so I doubt you are willing to listen to differing views anyway.

I am going to hammer this final point: most of the predicted warming is due to climate sensitivity estimates, and NOT due to the warming radiated directly by CO2. These estimates are unproven, vary widely and are highly uncertain. The IPCC claims that climate sensitivity produces up to an additional 3.5 degrees of warming per additional degree of warming from CO2. I find that absurd. And if climate sensitivity is indeed lower as is suggested by recent research, then there is no global warming catastrophe.

Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.

From what I've heard about medicine in Canada from locals, this is laughably untrue. Only someone who has never had more than a minor boo-boo could claim the service is the same.

You are completely wrong.

I've talked to doctors and patients who have experienced both the Canadian and US systems, and I've read the literature comparing outcomes for different procedures in the two systems. http://www.openmedicine.ca/art... I read Canadian medical studies every week or two.

If I had a heart attack in front of the University of Toronto medical school, I would be confident that my survival and other outcomes would be just as good as they would be in front of the New York University medical center in New York. At one time, the breast cancer outcomes were slightly better in the US than in Canada, because the US was aggressively diagnosing and treating (sometimes overdiagnosing and overtreating) breast cancer, but by now the Canadians have adopted everything useful that the US was doing. OTOH, the Canadian outcomes for childhood leukemia were slightly better. The Canadian outcomes for diabetes were much better, with better control, fewer amputations, etc.

Gordon Guyatt, a professor at McMaster University, basically invented evidence-based medicine, which is the practice of making medical decisions based on the statistically valid scientific evidence, rather than prescribing drugs because the drug companies are giving you a free trip to Hawaii if you meet their quota.

It is true that American doctors are more aggressive about treatment, and will give you a quick appointment if they have slots available and you have good insurance. OTOH American doctors are more likely to treat patients unnecessarily. An American pulmonologist is more likely to see a spot on your x-ray and give you a lung biopsy. Lung biopsies have a fatality rate of about 1/1,000, and most of them are unnecessary. But in Canada, when you have a life-threatening condition and need a CAT scan immediately, they put you on top of the list and give you a CAT scan the same day.

OTOH if you don't have health insurance in the US, your access to health care in many states is nonexistent, and hospitals in Texas for example will kick cancer patients out in the street if they can't pay. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... There were several studies published in American medical journals in which researchers called doctors' offices, described the symptoms of a life-threatening condition, told them that they were on Medicare or Medicaid, and asked for an appointment. Depending on the studies, about half the doctors refused Medicare and three-quarters refused Medicaid.

The evidence is overwhelming that Canadian health care equals the US system in quality and service, and costs about half as much. Of course if you decide things on the basis of ideology http://www.newyorker.com/news/... rather than evidence you may not be convinced.

You raise a great point.
(btw the min wage is just over $17AUD/hr, so I was wrong at $20)

I found this WSJ article that adjusts for cost of living. Interesting to see where the USA is.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/au...

And they make the vast majority of the income and should pay the majority source of the income tax.

They already do:

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers -- those Americans with adjusted gross incomes of more than $365,000 in 2005 -- paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.

How much more would you like them to pay?

I was right. You were wrong. How do you answer Krugman's question: "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"

No, you are mistaken. Neither side knew, no one knew until US boots were on the ground. The truth is that Saddam wanted doubt, it was a defense against Iran. Being accidentally correct is not evidence that Krugman or anyone else knew for sure. As for Miller, its not simply her opinion. Various bipartisan investigations back her account.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

"There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war."

"My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it."

"The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress. Over the previous 15 years, noted Stuart Cohen, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, none of the congressional committees routinely briefed on Iraqi WMD assessments expressed concern about bias or error."

"Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, ... told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”"

"Years would pass before U.S. soldiers found remnants of some 5,000 inoperable chemical munitions made before the first Gulf War that Saddam claimed to have destroyed. Not until 2014 would the U.S. learn that some of Iraq’s degraded sarin nerve agent was purer than Americans had expected and was sickening Iraqi and American soldiers who had stumbled upon it."

"A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted."

Bush made up some evidence

No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

Here's how Paul Krugman described it (more convincingly, to me).

From Judith Miller's article again:

"OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me. None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it. The 2005 commission led by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb and conservative Republican Judge Laurence Silberman called the estimates “dead wrong,” blaming what it called a “major” failure on the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good informationserious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions.” A year earlier, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence denounced such failures as the product of “group think,” rooted in a fear of underestimating grave threats to national security in the wake of 9/11."

But everyone in the intelligence sector did know they didn't have WMDs. This was known, hence all the anger when the "intel" was trotted about - people knew it was nonsense. There was no "accidentally correct", just people who knew their stuff and who screamed the claims were bullshit.

Nope. You are mistaken. A New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

"There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war."

"My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it."

"The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress. Over the previous 15 years, noted Stuart Cohen, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, none of the congressional committees routinely briefed on Iraqi WMD assessments expressed concern about bias or error."

"Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, ... told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”"

"Years would pass before U.S. soldiers found remnants of some 5,000 inoperable chemical munitions made before the first Gulf War that Saddam claimed to have destroyed. Not until 2014 would the U.S. learn that some of Iraq’s degraded sarin nerve agent was purer than Americans had expected and was sickening Iraqi and American soldiers who had stumbled upon it."

"A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted."

Bush made up some evidence

No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

Here's how Paul Krugman described it (more convincingly, to me). GWB wasn't mislead by the CIA. Cheney had convinced him to drive Saddam Hussein out of office before he heard any of the CIA assessments.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...
Blinkers and Lies
Paul Krugman
May 16, 2015

"The invasion wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. We were lied into war."

(First, war in Iraq was not a good faith mistake. Bush and Cheney decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to go after a secular regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. They deliberately mislead the public, making a fake case about WMD.

Second, it was obvious at the time that the case for war was fake, and that post-war Iraq would be a failure.

The question for war supporters is, "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"

Third, people who knew it was fake supported the war to establish their centrist credentials.)

Bush made up some evidence

No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

"There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war."

"My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it."

"The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress. Over the previous 15 years, noted Stuart Cohen, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, none of the congressional committees routinely briefed on Iraqi WMD assessments expressed concern about bias or error."

"Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, ... told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”"

"Years would pass before U.S. soldiers found remnants of some 5,000 inoperable chemical munitions made before the first Gulf War that Saddam claimed to have destroyed. Not until 2014 would the U.S. learn that some of Iraq’s degraded sarin nerve agent was purer than Americans had expected and was sickening Iraqi and American soldiers who had stumbled upon it."

"A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted."

Disclaimer, I live in NC and generally support municipal broadband projects when communities are underserved. I'm a big fan of the Wilson fiber service.

First, there is no concept of a citizen of a city or municipality. People are citizens of a state. Cities, counties, municipalities are all creatures of a state, and thus are under the control of state government, not local or federal government. There's no hypocrisy because the general argument in favor of states rights is not about ultimately devolving power to the smallest possible unit of control, but about maintaining state legal authority from being assumed by the federal government.

The main argument against municipal broadband projects is that they frequently fail and leave the municipality saddled with debt. This becomes the responsibility of the state government. Thus, state governments have the power to regulate what projects municipalities embark on, because the state government is the ultimate guarantor.

The secondary argument against municipal broadband is that municipal projects are typically able to entirely bypass permitting and other planning approval stages (costly stages and costly permits; let's not forget the requisite greasing of the political wheels). They are frequently given rights of way and access that private companies do not have authorization to use. There is a good chance that a municipal broadband network would discourage other companies from making a significant investment facing this kind of unbalanced competition. If the project then goes on to be a significant money loser, the municipality is even worse off than when it began.

Examples of municipal projects that have failed or otherwise had explosive debt:

Provo, UT (saved by Google)
Lafayette, LA http://www.rstreet.org/2014/05/30/muni-broadband-the-gift-that-keeps-on-taking/
Davidson, NC and Mooresville, NC http://www.lakenormancitizen.com/news/news/item/6426-reinventing-mi-connection-an-inside-look.html
Utah UTOPIA alliance http://www.wsj.com/articles/municipal-broadband-is-no-utopia-1403220660

Just a reasonable demand for proof of insurance.

The customer — and the companies like Mr. Burro's, who act as middle-men — can (and do) impose just such a requirement themselves, carefully balancing the risks against insurance costs. There is simply no need for the government to insert its unwieldy self in these transactions. Nor in most others, I might add. As with Uber, the phenomenon of "Internet-in-every-pocket" makes information immediately available to everyone with a pocket — and government regulators are quickly becoming obsolete. They know it, and they fight it with various demagoguery — like what you are presenting.

Since Burro claims they already have the insurance, this is not an onerous demand in the least.

Do you like visiting DMV — such as to have your license renewed? Every single interaction with government is onerous and the vast majority should not be necessary.

This is a very different situation from Uber, since there are no "medallions" or other market limiting restrictions

The underlying very principle — that engaging in a trade requires a government permission (license) — ought to be beaten out of the Statists. With a lead pipe, if need be... We've been humouring them — such as by accepting "non-onerous" requirements — for too long, and it is way out of hand already.

right now most of us are going to have many careers in our lifetime.

The idea that people are going to have many careers, and that people are changing jobs more frequently than in the past appears to be an urban myth that is not supported by actual data.

job stability hasn't changed all that much in the U.S. since the late 1990s ... the typical American worker's tenure with his or her current employer was 3.8 years in 1996, 3.5 years in 2000 and 4.1 years in 2008, the latest available data.

Only because our President threatened to go back and add conditions regarding bonuses and other regulatory measures in exchange for letting the banks hold on to the TARP money. Shortly after that all these troubled companies had plenty of cash to pay back the gov't with.

No - most did not want to accept tarp money but the Obama administration made them so they then tried to get rid of those loans as quickly as possible
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

For anyone who cares about those less well off, the World is not a comfortable place. America is a good place to be poor, compared to most of the world.

Compared to Africa, America is a good place to be poor.

Compared to the rest of the developed world, like Germany, France, and certainly Scandinavia, America is not a good place to be poor.

In America, people with cancer can be kicked out of a hospital and left to die because they can't pay the bill. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... That doesn't happen in France or other developed countries.

Darn. I didn't factor for race.

And economic status. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

I admit it, America is a great place if you have a family income of at least $100,000 a year (and don't care about the people who are worse off).

Dude, we are the only first-world country with a third world healthcare system. Wake up

Anybody who thinks that our healthcare system is third world has obviously never been to the third world. I have been to several third world countries and I can tell you that our system is hundreds of times more functional then theirs.

If you think that, you have obviously never been to low-income places in the US like the South Bronx or rural Louisiana or Mississippi, where the infant mortality rates and life expectancy are lower than Cuba.

In the US, you can have cancer and be kicked out of a hospital because you can't afford to pay for the treatment. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

So the question is: Is it legal for MetroPCS to hand over the data, presumably in violation of their privacy policy and CPNI laws? Or did they do it because they were threatened and intimidated?

There was a court order, but it was created without showing probable cause. This is allowed by Section 2703 of the Stored Communications Act. What's really stupid is that it looks like the police had probable cause, but they didn't bother to use it and get a real warrant.

You mean like ObamaCare?

At 248 days on-line, the Boeing Dreamliner has a similar problem.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fa...

Not a problem I want to have at 40,000 feet (about 12 km).

You know what motivates scientists? Science. And to a lesser extent, their ego.

It's amazing how all of these pure Beings of Science can exist without any sources of funding, or motivation deriving thereof...

Oh wait.

Science if hard work for little pay

Little > 0

$500k is also > 0

I'll let you have the last response. Just thought someone should, in the name of scientific accuracy, throw actual truth into the froth.

Oh, one last truth...

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that the phrase "liberal media" was a conservative talking point

Only 7% of reporters are Republicans.

I would say to draw your own conclusions from that glaring fact but you already have, and you got them wrong.

It's called discovery! And it's required under the law. You can't hide evidence or its provenance from the defense!!!

In theory that is true.

In practice, many people cannot afford an extensive legal fight and settle quickly. Those who do actually go through the courts --- only about 3% in the federal system --- often learn during discovery that the initial reports came by anonymous sources.

Anonymous sources are tricky. A single anonymous source is not considered reliable enough to issue a warrant, but is reliable enough to investigate. Two different anonymous sources can be enough to meet probable cause (People v. Coulombe (2001)).

So as has been documented several times, one government agency, such as the NSA, will observe some illegal behavior but they are not allowed to prosecute. If the information is traced back to them during discovery then the unlawful search or unusable information would be dropped, so they give an anonymous tip to local law enforcement, reporting all the details they are able. Local law enforcement gets the anonymous tip, investigates, finds exactly what the tip said was there, and arrests them all. When questioned about their sources, law enforcement can pull out the records of an anonymous tip, mention that the reporter refused to give their name and that is why they investigated.

It isn't always that the source itself is unlawful. There are many types of lawful recordings and intercepts but during the course of the investigation they hear about other items. Due to the scope of their work they may be legally forbidden from following those other leads.

The term is "parallel construction". Usually the local police either are unaware that the report came from another agency or unlawful search, or they suspect it did but keep their mouths shut. With a successful parallel construction there is no evidence to be uncovered during discovery. The person making the report is careful to leave no evidence connecting their report (which would taint the entire case) that the local officers could discover.

Several cases have been several cases recently where officers were caught attempting to use parallel construction (and failing at it) when data came from these devices.

A lot of people claim the soft sciences are not 'really science' due to the intangibility of their results - and this plays directly into that bias.

However, it's very much not just the softer sciences that have this issue. There's a growing realization that it's pervasive across many hard science disciplines:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... : 64% of pharma trials couldn't be reproduced.

http://retractionwatch.com/201... - half of researchers couldn't reproduce published findings.

We're inundated with data that, due to the specificity of the field or detail of the results, has to come from 'experts' and doesn't lend itself to a sort of common-sense vetting that we can use to filter bullshit in the usual course of our lives. Whether it's from ignorance of statistical methods, poor experimental technique, motivated mendacity (for whatever reason), or simply experimental results that represent only an unusual end of a bell-curve, there are many, many reasons that scientific data has to be taken with a serious grain of salt. It can't be assumed to be conclusive until we've reproduced it in whatever context we're trying to apply it.

With the exception of climate science. It's settled and you're a heretic if you suggest any uncertainty exists in any part of that field...

A lot of people claim the soft sciences are not 'really science' due to the intangibility of their results - and this plays directly into that bias.

However, it's very much not just the softer sciences that have this issue. There's a growing realization that it's pervasive across many hard science disciplines:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... : 64% of pharma trials couldn't be reproduced.

http://retractionwatch.com/201... - half of researchers couldn't reproduce published findings.

We're inundated with data that, due to the specificity of the field or detail of the results, has to come from 'experts' and doesn't lend itself to a sort of common-sense vetting that we can use to filter bullshit in the usual course of our lives. Whether it's from ignorance of statistical methods, poor experimental technique, motivated mendacity (for whatever reason), or simply experimental results that represent only an unusual end of a bell-curve, there are many, many reasons that scientific data has to be taken with a serious grain of salt. It can't be assumed to be conclusive until we've reproduced it in whatever context we're trying to apply it.

Why? China is about to crash and burn! http://blogs.wsj.com/chinareal...

Is the world safer?

Yes. The revelations, and public reactions to them (the real public reaction as expressed in the marketplace, not whatever jaw-flapping occurs in response to some inane telemarkepollster call) have led to security improvements. The fact that it has also led to the entertaining spectacle of useless bureaucrats running around pissing and moaning and whining and generally making fools of themselves in public is just a bonus.

Period

Hacking is relatively benign compared to the damage a prosecutor with an agenda can do. The latest round of these travesties is now going on in Wisconsin http://www.wsj.com/articles/ri... , It seems we get these popping up about once a year lately and it's been accelerating.

Nice way to use a real issue to push you political agenda. Wall Street Journal, the new Fox News for the criminally insane.