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30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging
Cutie Pi writes "In a recent Rasmussen poll looking at the public's attitudes toward a possible revival of the fairness doctrine by the Democrats, a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates (originally intended for public airwaves) to cover the Internet as well. It is encouraging that a minority of people feel that way, but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.'"
But most republican politicians seem to like bigger government! I'm so confused...
If /. were fair and balanced would each posting as an AC be treated as +1 subscriber?????
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Aren't complete blithering idiots.
Hey, I'm just being "balanced"... if we're talking about 30% we have to talk about the other 70% too in order to be fair, right?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
s/americans/political nerds/
Can all fish swim?
30% still say Bush is doing a good job. It looks like 30% is about the baseline for the uninformed, non-critical thinkers on any topic.
Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.
31% of Americans have no idea how the Internet works.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Because with only three blogs in the blog-o-sphere, the millions of Americans these blogs serve really deserve government-mandated balance.
Oh, what's that, there's more than three? How many, then? Five?
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Conservative politicians want a smaller government. The previous Republican majority was not conservative.
Quick someone get a patent on a technology whereby an official campaigning for election creates an electronic advertisement for posting on the internet to promote them in an upcoming election.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Balanced is not equal to fair.
"Balanced" in this case means that only the democratic party and the republican party will have their voices heard.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
Holocaust denial? Must both sides be given a equal voice by mandate? How about flat-earth theory? Or moon hoax hypothesis? Or is this where the government suddenly decides what is "mainstream" and what is kooky. If they decide that, where will the boundary be for other, much more legitimate ideas that Government may not like. Will it be that they suddenly decide what the bounds of fair discourse is by controlling the parameters?
Why is it that so many people think that the government, a large force with its own agenda, will do a much better job than many individuals not geared around a singular goal/entity? The Patriot Act was not patriotic, and the Fairness doctrine will not be fair.
But most republican politicians seem to like bigger government! I'm so confused...
Don't worry, so are they! How I long for the days when the Repulicans were for a government that took less of your money, and the Democrats were for a government that took less of your freedoms. Now both are pro-censorship, and both are for more government spending, and both are for more government power to combat scary things.
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place? Can you not find a blog aready to cater to any political belief no matter how bizzare? Now I'm the one confused.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is why education is a prerequisite for democracy. Or at least for democracy to work.
Crap like this combined with the evidence from the republicans that people have finally realized they can vote themselves infinite money either has to end now (hey, lets lower taxes and not increase spending, that's a *great* idea, just like a credit card! What could possibly go wrong!), or things are going to get really bad really quick.
It's a horrible, horrible idea and would certainly end up being racist as well, but you really have to wonder if voting shouldn't be a little more... restricted. Like, requiring that you have a history of not failing personal economics in order to have any influence on national economics? Or basic understanding of science to be able to influence science policy? Maybe it's not possible to do this, but you have to wonder if anything else can work in the long run.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
That same 30% then asked...
wtf is a blog?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Oh yes - and we must leave 50% of the air time to creationists, only because they have a 'differing opinion' that (somehow) merits air time that equals that of scientists. Never mind that only a wee percentage of the public actually follow their (blithering) doctrine, nor that nothing of their 'views' is based on real observation or fact...
In short, the net will regulate itself without regulation. In fact, for the time being, it is our only chance at objectively observing what people really think.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
The internet today is an off balance representation of the population as a whole. I believe it will balance out and insane sites like huffington will lose popularity. With smaller news rooms, dominated by boomers at the TV networks and likely similar environments at papers. The internet, TV, radio (mostly opinion and no news research) and papers all have one thing in mind. Eyeball hits for selling advertising. Best way to get hits? Troll. But it is better than having the government edit "balance" the news. Maybe Google can have a project to aggregate all the news stories on a subject and strip out everything but the facts. Kind of like the online translators.
Have more in common with Republicans than they are aware of.
Republicans haven't been for smaller government since the 80s. Bush didn't start the current wave of neoconservatism.
Telling business owners they don't have the choice to allow smoking, telling consumers what video games we should be able to play, and now telling Internet users what they can and can't say.
Democrats are upset that most political talk and political blogs lean conservative. They still have the drive-by media locked up, they should be happy.
That's right - they were compassionate.
Given the multi-national congregation that is the net, I can't really see how this could be enforced anyhow. It could be easily circumvented by simply hosting your blog in Britain, or Congo, or anywhere else in the world without this rule. There's no law saying you can't blog about American politcs from abroad (and many people already do).
So are us Republicans. We vote for these guys, and then they act like Democrats.
Then we go vote for a staunch small government man like Ron Paul and find our votes (at least in New Hampshire) did not get recorded for whatever reason.
.. is not conducive to social evolution.
... in my opinion - which I would surely demand the continuing freedom to express.
We need new ideas, new ways of thinking about issues, each other, and ourselves in order to evolve as a society and as a species.
Now, for any organization that claims to be journalistic in nature *of course* balance is essential. That includes online news sites, which should not be trying to swaying opinion but rather about conveying facts in the most objective way possible in order to keep the public informed.
But bloggers are not news agencies. They are simply a measure of the attitudes and opinions of people at large, so I can think of no good reason to impose some kind of balance on that. Doing so would only stifle our evolution toward a better humanity.
Imposing balance on a blogger online is no different than imposing balance on someone standing on a soap box at the street corner. It's optional, not required.
At least that's the way I see it.
*steps off soap box*
I'm tired of being confronted with American politics on the web at all. Yeah, sure, you're pretty much the top dog in the global community, but even the non-American news sites are chattering about Obama versus McCain, when I'm really trying to just find more info on something completely unrelated to politics.
Attention, poster. Your comment does not comply with the Fairness Doctrine requirements for political content. Specifically, you have posted Unbalanced Content to a website Slashdot.org, which is hosted, at least in part, in the United States. By posting commentary with wilful negligence towards the New American Requirements for Fairness, and especially by doing so in an election year, the Presidential Organization on Informational Technology has authorized me to point out that you have placed Sourceforge, Inc, the owner of Slashdot.org, at risk of legal action.
In order to rectify the situation and restore balance to Slashdot.org's content, I have been authorized by the FCC to address this imbalance by pointing out that Democratic politicians also seem to like bigger government.
(And what are we, the voters of the United States, going to do about it in November? The same thing we do every November.)
But most republican politicians seem to like bigger government! I'm so confused...
On what grounds? If you mean in terms of defense, sure. But what about Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and simplification of the tax code? I am not arguing one way or the other, but if you eliminated Social Security and Medicare alone, you would decrease Federal spending by at least 42%!
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
I don't mean typical of Democrats or Republicans either. Typical of people that want to tell you what you think, act, feel, and say through government policy. The Fairness Doctrine was essentially bullshit from the beginning. Regardless of what the proponents of the Fairness Doctrine were trying to accomplish a half century ago, it cannot apply to the Internet.
This policy was originally meant to control content on the PUBLIC airwaves. It required broadcasters to act as "mediators" and notify all parties when an "attack" was made and offer equal time for a response. It was 100% political.
The Internet is not owned by the public. It is a privately owned infrastructure, that interestingly enough, has only a portion of it residing in the US. Any arguments that are based on the fundamental premise of a public owned medium to communicate fall flat.
"Blogging" is an incredibly vague term. It can represent entities from the average citizen with something to say, to corporate sponsored journalists. Some entities could own their own domain and pay for hosting services, while others could merely obtain free hosting through other companies. It is not possible to make the owners of the websites police all of their own content, track down any affected parties, and then donate web space and bandwidth for an opposing view. Attempting to create an infrastructure of control over the medium is laughable at best.
Government controlling content on the Internet is a slippery slope to be sure and is not even practical. In every instance the US government has attempted to exert control, the offending content has merely moved outside of the US.
This is about politically motivated people that want to control speech offensive to them and their position. Hiding their true motivations in an idealogical appeal for fair representation of all viewpoints is just covering the desire for censorship.
If there is an honest desire for fairness here, it should not be accomplished through controlling content on the Internet, but rather by the creation of public resources on the Internet. The government can have it's own resources and policies that govern those resources. Let all the political people go there and demand their 15 minutes each to slam each other.
Go by the term Classical Liberal then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
Those want a limited government (which itself is a more correct term, a smaller government is the natural effect byproduct of a limited government but a smaller government isn't always more limited - i.e. outsourcing everything)
"Conservative" means nothing anymore, it's been so diluted. The biggest "conservatives" are nothing more but against taxes (passing staggering debt onto future generations while still paying for massive entitlements/porkbarrel is not more conservative than tax and spend), embrace war against drugs/crime/poverty/nations (war is the health of the state, thus anti-conservative) and lastly, wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.
Plus the term liberal drives many of the unreasonable ones on edge. People like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh types that want to pidgeonhole everyone in their arguments.
If I remember right the fairness doctrine was the law from 1949 until sometime into Reagan's second term. Its repeal lead to the rise of talk radio and helped cable news. Probably indirectly led to the lack of regulation by the FCC of the internet.
An educated moral and armed society.
It's definitely limiting free speech and I agree. There need to be people voicing their opinions in any medium possible. The medium of choice for younger generations is the internet, so these speakers need to be there and they need to be heard; everything they have to say.
This is an idiotic desire. Anything I write on the internet can be called a "blog", and the idea that I should try to be fair toward the stupid, the evil, or even the opposing political party or football team is insipid.
Foxnews has apparently brainwashed a lot of people into thinking that "fair and balanced" is even a desireable thing. How about objectivity and truth, instead? Giving airtime to insane/wicked opposing viewpoints does no one any good. And the idea that this should be forced on individuals would only result in people not being allowed to have any actual opinion, at all.
expandfairuse.org
Or perhaps the word I am looking for is "hypocritical".
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Both are pro-censorship, but the Republicans aren't nearly as bad as the Democrats in that regard. Only Democrats would care about something like "fairness" in media, especially on the internet. With Republicans, they only want to censor when people say things that big corporations find offensive. Make a blog where you complain about politicians, and Republicans aren't going to bother you much, even if you spout ultra-liberal views. But make a conservative blog and the Democrats will complain you're not being "fair" or "balanced". (Of course, the Dems never complain about liberal bias.) OTOH, make a blog where you trash some corporations, and the Republicans will happily pass a law making it easy for the corporations to shut you down using barratry, trademark law, or some other legal crap.
The reasons for this aren't very complicated. Democrats are socialists who admire the old Soviet state; they want to create a huge government to make everyone equal (by hatchet, axe, and saw if necessary), and to take care of everyone, with themselves at the top of course. Republicans are fascists who want a few large corporations to take power, so they can claim people have freedom (even though they don't, because they're being oppressed by the corporations).
If you want freedom, the only party that's interested in that is the Libertarians. The other two want to oppress you and take your money, just in slightly different ways.
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place? Can you not find a blog aready to cater to any political belief no matter how bizzare? Now I'm the one confused
Exactly, what we need if anything is a balanced congress one that isn't made up of republicans and democrats.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It is imperative for the freedom and development of the internet that any attempts to impose the so called 'fairness doctrine' on blogs, newsgroups, forums, etc, be smacked down viciously.
Who decides what is and isn't a valid viewpoint? Do we have to give equal time to creationists whenever a scientist talks about the earth being more than a few thousand years old?
Every time some one mentions the moon landing, do we have to give time to some conspiracy theorist saying that the moon landing never happened?
Whenever we mention 9/11 do we have to give time to some nutjob who claims Bush personally engineered the whole thing?
The 'fairness doctrine' should be anathema to anyone who even pretends to support free speech, as it rests completely on the government dictating which viewpoints are and are not 'valid'. Valid opposing viewpoints have to be represented. Invalid opposing viewpoints do not.
It's tyranny and fascism, nothing less.
a) Less than 1/3 of all Americans support the censorship of political blogs.
b) 70% of Americans do not support regulation of political blogging.
Same data, different spin.
If you want balance in blogs, just read biased blogs on both sides of a particular issue. Problem solved. No need to force someone who simply wants to vent his opinions to be "balanced".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That is a poor descriptor of a fairly complicated political organization. The real reason that the Republicans haven't been 'conservative' is that the current factions in charge (the neo-cons and evangelists) decided to associate with the Republican Party for its hawkishness and its acceptance of religion in government. There still are factions that fit the normal description of 'conservative,' but they have been greatly outmaneuvered in recent years (and no, I'm not talking about Ron Paul who fits into the very small libertarian faction). The neo-cons and evangelists are probably in the minority in the Republican Party, but due to election demographics, the southern states have vastly more power than their populations would represent. Thus, they are the 'base' to which the Party panders.
If the United States didn't have jigsaw puzzle elections, more moderate voices would gain prominence and the extremists would be pushed to the outskirts. Instead we have people like Michelle Malkin and Anne Coulter that are considered legitimate voices of conservatives in the US. It makes me want to vomit.
I think that it basically boils down to, the Republicans don't care about you because you don't have enough money and the Democrats don't care about you because you don't have enough money. The Libertarians care about you, but they have such a minority you will probably not see a Libetarian president in your lifetime.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Why are so many supposedly liberal-minded people so ... illiberal? Is it because they think a fairness doctrine would only be used against Republicans?
It's like they want to attack their enemies by removing the oxygen out of the air, without considering how they themselves will breath.
A pox on all their houses! Any idiot that thinks either the Democrats or Republicans is going improve their way of life is deluded. Anything run by a commitee is sure to F up just about anything they set out to do. Government is a big commitee. I tend to be more Libertarian and just want to be left alone by all those busy bodies. Let them start to control speech on the Internet and were all doomed. Heck, we're probably doomed already. Yes we need them to regulate road traffic and national defense. But don't give them anymore power. Ugh!
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
That's right - they were compassionate.
Compassionate like a 20 feet anaconda trying to hug you to death.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
It would probably work by simply shutting down websites, like how the RIAA tries to do takedowns on sites that it doesn't like. Only it would have the enforcement of an actual government entity like the FEC. If you remember, back when the Fairness Doctrine was in place, there was relatively little political content. Most radio and TV shows simply couldn't afford to give some crackpot equal time, so they avoided political controversy entirely. After Fairness Doctrine was abolished, there was explosion in content.
You may disagree with the content, but that's how freedom of speech works. Also, I'm sure the incumbent politicians would like to re-enact the Fairness Doctrine, including Republicans, because there's plenty of influential conservative political pundits that don't like the Republican incumbents either. So the Fairness Doctrine would pretty much work by politicians getting the FEC to shut down all websites that they don't like.
So you could rename the Fairness Doctrine the Incumbent Political Protection Act of 20XX.
Which probably explains why I get to choose from the following "Republican" parties: Republican party, GOP party, Grand Old party and Taxcut Republican. I probably missed a few in there.
It's something which has been coming for a while, I'm more surprised that the Dems haven't fallen apart in a similar fashion in state politics.
As outlined here, "[...] you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population." The margin of error of the poll surely accounts for the relatively high crazification on this issue.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
*****begin rant******
DIDO: Dumbasses in, Dumbasses out. Anyone who suggests that the internet needs to be regulated, or even could be regulated, in the same way that way that airwaves are regulated does not really understand what the internet is. Television and radio were/are regulated using the fairness doctrine because they are public resources that are only available in limited quantity. You can only have on station broadcasting on the frequency that represents, for instance, channel 9, in any given geographical area.
The internet, on the other hand, is a scale free network (see the nice book by Albert-László Barabási on the topic), meaning that it is not limited in the same way that the airwaves are. Balancing the internet would be like balancing printed media (there are as many newspapers as printing presses) or telephone conversations. There's no need to regulate because we aren't talking about finite public resources. The whole concept is ridiculous --- so ridiculous that I can't even believe I'm writing about it to a bunch of geeks. Even semi-geeks like me *know* this about the internet.
And yet, the first twenty postings were almost entirely about how bad the fairness doctrine could be if applied to the internet on political grounds. While it is true that that this could be bad politically, the more salieent issue is that "balancing" the internet would be bad because it is a stupid, pointless, unworkable idea put forward by bureaucrats and pollsters who probably have regular difficulties checking their email and go whining to their relatives when their "internet breaks!!!!"
GACK!!!!!!
****end rant****
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place? Can you not find a blog aready to cater to any political belief no matter how bizzare? Now I'm the one confused.
One opinion I've heard, and I honestly don't know how accurate it is, is that a website that caters to a specific group (Democrat, Republican, etc.) would no longer have power to moderate opposing views, which initially might not seem bad but there's a fine line between trolling and breaking the law... someone could troll hardcore and be unstoppable under the Fairness Doctrine.
Again, that's someone elses' read, not mine... but interesting.
What exactly was small about massive defense spending, and trying to legislate morality?
31% of Americans barely able to maintain body functions necessary to live...
The previous Republican majority was not conservative.
If by "previous" you mean "previous several, and current, and probably the next several". And to avoid coming off as simple flamebait, I know that just because all republican politicians are for expanding government control, that doesn't mean all republican voters are. Just like all democratic politicians are pussies, but not all democratic voters are.
Though really, if you're identifying yourself as either, you're voluntarily lumping yourself in with one crowd or the other, so don't get angry when assumptions are made. It's your own damned fault in that case.
Blog away. There is no "fair and balanced" world. If someone feels their opinions aren't represented, shouldn't they get off their ass and represent themselves? We're all a bunch of lazy babies. We deserve this mess we call a country.
What rubbish. I'd imagine that most Democrats are socialists who look towards the Nordic welfare states.
All laws legislate morality. If you don't want government to legislate morality, there shouldn't be laws against murder, theft, rape or child molestation.
Republicans are fascists who want a few large corporations to take power, so they can claim people have freedom (even though they don't, because they're being oppressed by the corporations).
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape. With "corporate power", it's entirely voluntary to be under it. And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity. Example: The Democrats decide to ban "hate" music because it hurts people's feelings. You can go to jail and there is no escape. On the other hand, don't like the policies of the oh-so-corporate RIAA? Listen to independent music. Or create your music.
You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It's worse than that. Even if you're immortal, you'll probably never see a Libertarian president. Instead (maybe even within our lifetimes), the USA is going to cease to exist as a country, and will merge with other countries, either as a North American Union, or a singular world government. Both the Democrats and Republicans are interested in this, because it'll increase their power.
It doesn't help that some of the Libertarians are a little nutty, and take it to an extreme. Some of them seem to think we shouldn't even have government-owned roads, and that we should all pay tolls every time we turn onto a different road on the way to work. I'm all for liberty and a minimal government, but government does have a place in modern society in providing infrastructure.
I prefer to use ' over " at any given time. On paper, it even saves ink.
So limiting free speech is OK if the object of regulation somehow fits in the category of "news agency?" If I operate a blog and call it a "news" site, does that make it acceptable for the FCC ot force me to offer equal time to "both sides"? There is no such thing as absolute truth. A news article that I believe to be perfectly balanced may strike you as blatantly biased. I, for one, would rather decide for myself whether a news agency is credible instead of having some unelected bureaucrat make that call.
Balance is not essential. Would balance be essential in an article covering the Holocaust? Should the reporter put a quote from a denier in his paper just because there are two sides? Some issues are opinionated, and balance is essential, while others facts weigh in and there we have right and wrong.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
If the United States didn't have jigsaw puzzle elections, more moderate voices would gain prominence and the extremists would be pushed to the outskirts.
(I presume you're talking either about the Electoral College system or something else related to election by states rather than general popular vote.)
If the US didn't have "jigsaw puzzle elections" a corrupt political machine in a major urban area would be able to swing enough bogus votes to control the national government.
The election of the congress critters by district, senators by state, and president by state electors is one of the firewalls against tyranny.
(It's also part of the deal by which states with small populations were persuaded to federate with more crowded ones, which could totally swamp their interests if federal elections were by polling the whole mass rather than the jigsaw pieces. Change that and you might see another secessionist movement.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Hmm.... Democrats oppose balance on the Internet, where blogs lean to the left, but support it on the radio, where talk radio leans to the right.
can read and what is going to be in it, then I want the government to pay my monthly Comcast bill. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander.
Republican Politicians != Republicans. And of course Democrats want to bring back the fairness doctrine and apply it to the internet. They are unable to compete in the marketplace of ideas because their concepts and values are grossly out of the interests in mainstream America. It's not enough to have willing shills in every other form of media - fawning sychophants in TV (all major networks), newspapers (NYT, etc). They can't tolerate even the slightest opposition.
Brett
1. The one to emphatically support
2. The one to emphatically oppose
3. The one(s) to not really care about because the first two are so much fun to be gleeful/angry about
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Hear, hear. It's mind boggling that anyone could think that the first amendment shouldn't apply. I always thought the fairness doctrine was horseshit. The news always had a slant - they just had to whitewash it a bit so it wouldn't seem partisan.
It's obvious to anyone that fox is "conservative", the Huffington Post is "liberal", etc.. Is it really such a burden to expect people to use their brains?
We truly get the government we deserve if such large percentages believe that expressed opinions need to be legislated and controlled.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
is that there is no such thing as "fair". I taught it to my kids, and my parents taught it to me. Do we really have that many incompetent parents out there who have failed to teach their children some of the most basic and important facts about reality? Are there really that many people alive who not only think "fair" exists but that it should be legislated?
How in the world did these people survive the cutting of their birthday cake?
Isn't that really 52 - 63% support (or have no stance, but who believes that)?
Conservative politicians say they want smaller government, and then vote for big government surveillence. And big government defecits, because they know that smaller, less effective government is not popular with the voters.
That would lead to the greatest explosion of trolling in the history of mankind. Anonymous from *chan would flood every political blog with every shock image known. Million would see the goatse guy for the first time, and run screaming.
You know, that would be far more entertaining than any political blog - I'm all for it!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No, that's legislating ethics and enforcing the social contract. There's a difference between ethics and morality--that being that ethics is related to relationships between people or between a person and a community, while morality can be (and usually is meant as) personal and private.
I call "no true scotsman" fallacy.
The previous Republican majority called itself conservative. They were lauded by media folks who called themselves conservative.
There were no voices saying that the previous Republican majority wasn't conservative until after the government failed miserably at everything it tried to do.
CNN...Conservative..WTF are you smoking. The Clinton News Network is NOT conservative. Those on Slashdot and Digg like to complain about Fox New's conservative bias, but they ignore the blatant liberal bias of CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times, the list goes on. The liberal bias in print and the media far out weight the bias on Fox News and talk radio.
Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.
So? Opinion isn't exempt in the Fairness Doctrine. In fact most of the application of the doctrine on the airwaves has traditionally been against editorial content. The argument goes that there's only so much broadcast bandwidth out there, and so since the government licenses the airwaves, they have a responsibility to see that all viewpoints get a fair shot.
Never mind that with the huge selection of opinion avenues... radio, TV, satellite, print, the Internet... the idea of bandwidth scarcity is essentially obsolete, especially for the Internet. But that hasn't stopped the doctrine's backers from trying to bring it back from the dead anyway, and worse, they want to apply it to non-broadcast media.
The Fairness Doctrine isn't. All throughout it's history, it's been used by whoever was in power at the time to silence their enemies, or at least quiet them down some. The doctrine is nothing but government nannyism, and its death was too long in coming. For those of you that are so eager to bring it back, think long and hard about that. Sooner or later, someone you don't like is going to get elected, and use it against you.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The "Fairness Doctrine" applied to outlets that were licensed by the FCC, using "public" airwaves. The thinking was that the airwaves were a limited resource, and that limitation shouldn't be used to shut out competing voices.
The Fairness Doctrine never applied to print. There, your only restrictions were the laws against slander.
The question is, is the internet more like a news stand or broadcast? Since you don't have to have a license to run a web site, I think the press model (say what ever you like short of slander) should apply to the internet.
Yep, the part about massive defense spending is part of my point. But that's actually a Democratic thing. Remember, LBJ (who kept us in Vietnam) was a Democrat. Republicans have been anti-defense spending until recent decades.
The only reason that the fairness doctrine was needed was because media outlets were owned by a few rich and powerful people. Opposing points of view couldn't get to the public otherwise.
Literally anyone can start their own blog for free and talk about anything they want. If a blogger is saying something that you disagree with, there is no need to force him to display your opinions on his blog. Just start your own.
Technoli
It's also part of the deal by which states with small populations were persuaded to federate with more crowded ones, which could totally swamp their interests if federal elections were by polling the whole mass rather than the jigsaw pieces. Change that and you might see another secessionist movement.
I was taking you seriously until you said this...
"Oh yes, me and my small militia are going to start a war against the United States Army... And we will win our freedom back!" yeah, right...
No sig for the moment.
Republicans do it for Jeebus, Democrats do it for the Children.
Fair cutting of birthday cakes has known solutions. In the case of two people: A cuts, B chooses.
Unfortunately when scaled to larger people the cake ends up quite messy.
...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
All it takes is enough sympathetic judges, and viola, it's Constitutional... even if it isn't Constitutional.
One thing both political sides seem to increasingly agree on these days is that the judicial branch may be the weak link in the design of our Constitutional guarantee of rights. If a judge says so, it's so, even the the Constitution directly contridicts it. All you need is a majority of SCOTUS opinions, and what's done is done. Once SCOTUS rules, unlike a Congressional Bill or an Executive Order, there's no way to appeal it. It's done. Final. You'd have to get a Constitutional Amendment passed to change that ruling, and if the issue came back before SCOTUS, they could simply void the meaning and spirt of the amendment with a stroke of their pens.
Increasingly, the written opinions of the Supreme Court is our real constitution, not the 200+ year old document itself.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The whole point of a blog is to discuss issues and offer contrasting views. The only thing congress can do is break the balance that already exists. When lawmakers start to call for balance where balance already exists you have to ask yourself, "Am I getting value for the dollars I'm paying these people?"
I don't follow, how does the electoral system prevent a corrupt metropolitan government from impacting the national election? In your example, with the electoral system they just need to control enough votes to swing the states popular vote to 51%. That automatically sends 100% of the electoral votes to their candidate. That's much more influence then they would have in a national popular vote.
People always like to bring up the original intent of the system while forgetting that our current electoral system bears no resemblance to how it originally operated. These days it is nothing more than a broken popular vote where some citizens are counted more than others. That's inexcusable in a democratic nation.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I agree with you on everything but the smoking issue. Your right to smoke does not over rule my right to not breath in your smoke. And before you say "then you can leave", no, that's not the way the world works. I don't have to quit my job because you want to smoke.
Ok, in a general business establishment, you may have a point. But then, what right does the government have to forbid smoking in a place that caters to smokers? Say I open a restaurant or club that caters to smokers... I hire only people that smoke themselves... the entire premise of the place is to give smokers a place to go. But under current laws, the government would still forbid smoking inside an establishment for smokers. Tell me how that's free or fair?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Wrong. This sounds like something a Randian would say.
Corporate power is backed by the government; that's why it's insidious. Without a government granting a corporate charter, and making laws favorable to large corporations (over small ones), they wouldn't have the power they do. So their backers can claim, falsely, that you have a choice. Yeah right.
Try getting electric power from a different company than your local utility. Sorry, there's no competition, as it's a monopoly. The government has granted them a monopoly, though they're regulated. In many industries, you're not allowed to create a new, competitive company, because all the technology is wrapped up in patents, so that the entrenched players can keep out the newcomers. Patents are another government-granted monopoly. Even if the government hasn't explicitly given power to large corporations, the fact that they're large gives them enormous power over any would-be competitors. It's hard to compete against a much larger company that has big economies of scale, or can afford to sell at a loss until you go under. Large companies have an inertia effect that insulates them from the negative effects of bad decisions. Just like at Microsoft: their products are shoddy crap, yet they have the industry tied up due to their size, business connections, software compatibility issues, etc. If some small company had made a disastrous product like Vista, it would have gone bankrupt. But for MS, it's no big problem. How would another company compete against a behemoth of that size? Open-source is only doing it because it's completely changing the playing field, and we all had to suffer with MS's crap for many years before distros like Ubuntu came out providing a viable alternative.
True, it's easier to compete against an evil corporation than an evil government, but it's not that much easier. At least in theory, the government is elected by the people, and is subject to the court system, elected officials, etc. Corporations are only subject to their upper management.
The Libertarians care about you...
A Libertarian cares about him/her/itself. Libertarians aren't going to be upset when something wrong is happening to me, they are going to upset because that wrong thing might happen to them.
What could be more fair than the Internet? Anyone that wants can start a blog on any subject in the world and voice any opinion they want to. What possible regulation would have any effect on that?
I don't get it... The headline is "30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging " But that is really saying "70% of Americans DO NOT Want "Balanced" Blogging" So why then does it argue about why the democrats should be interested in reviving a failed and flawed idea?
Really, I could care less about the "other side." When I listen to a radio program or watch something on TV, it is because I like it, and I am interested. The Balance should be natural, there should be an Anti-whatever the view was, if it holds merit to have the opposite view. Some views do not hold merit and cannot support an audience.
An example would be the Liberal talk show "Air America." it was full of cranks and hate, but no substance. If it had substance, it would have gained a following, advertisers, etc... and would still be going strong. It is not, point proven. Another example would be if a
talk show existed against murder, how would you justify equal time for a talk show that proposed increasing murders.
There is no "Fairness" in Life, that is why it doesn't happen. Usually the person/group wanting something to be "fair" is after they feel slighted because they are on the loosing side. (Is it "FAIR" that I don't get part of the a 300Million dollar lottery, when I paid the same amount as the winning ticket??? ) Really, there is no fairness, and those that propose it are doing so purely because they know their ideas and rhetoric to not hold up to true scrutiny of the facts.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Morality is just the frozen ethics of a long-dead half-savage civilization. Ethics is alive.
Blar.
Zoning and import/export laws legislate morality? Also, we have laws against murder, theft, rape and child molestation because one person harms another by doing any of those, not because any of them are immoral.
Or, to turn it around, are you saying that since we have laws against murder then we should also have laws against alcohol possession? Should we make lying (the outside of the courtroom kind, not perjury) illegal or make having naughty thoughts illegal? And whose morality gets legislated? People who think women appearing in public without a burqua on are immoral?
Help me out here. What do you mean? Or are you just repeating standard right-wing bullshit?
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
I don't think many democrats are even that far left, unfortunately.
Since when? Democrats are the ones who want larger and more expensive wellfare programs, more expensive, government mandated healthcare, more money to implement more environmental acts to protect more poor helpless, defenseless trees, blah blah blah. You lost me at politicians.
Windows doesn't suck.
Have gnu, will travel.
Seems to me that if I were the President and the court "required" me to do something or otherwise behave in some unconstitutional way, that it would be my sworn duty to tell 'em where to stick it.
Did Eisenhower start this court-cowering? He didn't agree that the Feds had the right to force school integration in Alabama, but sent the troops anyway because the court said so.
Of course, then there's W, who signed McCain-Feingold while announcing his belief that it was unconstitutional and would be struck down. Well then don't sign it!!
My appologies, I did not draw any distinction between a story where the facts speak for themselves and one where there could be various different interpretations. My intended emphasis was that news is news and opinion is opinion, and that news sites should be treated with the same journalistic standards that stories get when broadcast on television, whereas blogs are clearly a free speech zone where opinion is probably going to be more prevalent than cold hard facts, and should not be held to the same journalistic standards.
Hey, that does work. A speaks, and B chooses whether to listen or not. Sweet.
So Catholic priests are Democrats who say they are Republicans?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This is certainly much closer to the truth. For example, the single payer health care system lauded by Kucinich and others is based largely on the Stockholm model of health care. The constant Republican jabbering about Democrats "admiring the old Soviet state" is simply the right-wing version of Godwin.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
..."Balanced" Diets.
Anyone that advocates "fairness" in the media or the internet is simply afraid of the marketplace of ideas. They are afraid that if their knuckleheaded ideas are subjected to market forces, nobody will listen - therefore they need to be forced on everyone because that is only "fair"
I can't wait to hear Rush Limbaugh on NPR!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Ironically, those states consistently rank higher than the US in "quality of life" and in fact, are starting to rank higher than the US in "per capita income" as well as economic stability indicators, among other things.
Doh!
> With "corporate power", it's entirely voluntary to be under it.
Really? Because I thought corporate power was most often used to co-opt government power and exploit us. With sufficiently predatory lending practices and things of that nature, it becomes far less than "voluntary" too.
The problem with voting with dollars is that some people have a lot more of them than others, and it's NOT because they're the smartest and most deserving folks, either (Bush, Paris Hilton, Sonny Bono, ...).
God help you if and when they control the police. I believe that state of affairs is best known to you as the (correct) definition of "fascism."
"Conservative" means nothing anymore ... . ... "conservatives" are nothing more but against taxes ... embrace war against drugs/crime/poverty/nations ... and lastly, wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.
Not to (borrowing your term) pidgeonhole anyone or anything...
wear their religion on their sleeve yet none of it in their hearts except when convenient.
You know, that's how I feel whenever I see people with bumper stickers slathered all over their cars (who are, imho, 99% of the time liberal). Why is it so important that other people know that you're a vegan, are pro-abortion, etc, or, my personal favorite, are mad that the US was "One pretzel away from getting rid of Bush." ~shrug~
The Libertarians care about you, but they have such a minority you will probably not see a Libetarian president in your lifetime.
No, they don't care about you or anyone else; they care about abstract principles.
For example, if you can't find a job that pays well enough to feed your family, the Libertarian response is "Well, the market has spoken. You aren't needed. Sorry."
At least, that's the honest Libertarian response. Depending on who you're talking to, you might hear something else instead, like "That's impossible, the market always provides for everyone! You must not be looking hard enough!" or "Surely there are plenty of charities that can help you out!"
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
The survey question was:
Since most Americans don't read blogs, the survey question was probably interepreted as applying to sites like CNN.com, nytimes.com, and other mainstream news sites. Since most GOP think the media is liberal, most of them are probably thinking of recent incidents like the NYTimes refusing to run a McCain editorial, and the generally higher level of coverage for Obama's campaign. So fairness might be more top of mind and desirable.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
That would probably be on the grounds of looking at how the size of government changes under Republicans.
And as for "defense", that's what they call it but there is nothing defensive about most of the budget. The American people largely don't benefit from those expenditures, the defense contractors do. If we were only spending the money needed to defend ourselves, we wouldn't need to nearly outspend the rest of the world put together.
And when looking at the budget charts on the page keep in mind that much of the defense spending is not included in the budget so the gifts to Halliburton are larger then they appear.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
It's very sad that the evil corporations basically make 80% of the decisions for your oh-so-altruistic government.
> Is it really such a burden to expect people to use their brains?
Yes.
Feelings are in vogue, these days.
But if the media is so liberal, why would they have to? I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too.
And I'm not sure if you consider Fox a "major network", but I am having a hard time figuring out who the "fawning sychophants"(sic) are on that network. Any help? Besides, everybody knows that the conservatives practically OWN talk radio. Doesn't that count for something? It is a form of media.
"But this one goes to 11!"
i don't give a fuck what Americans think?
freedom of expression or creation, I'm always on the wrong side of most of you. Like your thoughts count.
As a citizen of one of said Nordic welfare states, I think most of us (including those who agree with their ideologies) consider both your major parties to be right-wing.
Accusing the Democratic party of being communist is like accusing Hugo Chavez of being a libertarian anarchist.
Wow, that's an interesting perspective you have, from some far away universe where the media are the fawning shills of the Democrats.
Here in Earth United States all the media are owned by large corporations that have a vested interest in Republicans running things.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Who Harry Reid is or how many troops we've lost in Iraq.
For that matter, 30% of Americans don't know who controls congress. 44% don't know what state Senator McCain is a Senator from.
It's depressing, and it's time to stop thinking polls should control policy. If you want to control policy, you should be able to:
(1) Elucidate the problem to someone
(2) Propose a solution which stands reasonable scrutiny, and can be defended without violating obvious tenets of logic
(3) Propose inviolable metrics which would determine the success or failure, the timeframe, and the response to success or failure
I think all these polls should ask 10 questions on the issue so we can see how educated people are before they cast their votes. Notice how we have polls showing us most Americans are grossly ignorant about basic government facts. How many could explain what a Filibuster or a cloture vote is? How many have read the Federalist Papers, or can even name all three branches of government? Let's poll on an issue like this, and then let's see which side has the larger proportion of ignorance on it.
They won't find my blogs to be balanced and fair.
Just honest opinions.
Not going to happen to my blogs. They can pound sand. Mandating balanace and fairness in opinion is nearly the height of futility. Might as well mandate intelligence and tolerance while yer at it, Bucko.
And used to know what Conservative meant, but the meaning has been distorted terribly. So much so that most of the people indulge in political discussion keep trying to call me a 'Neocon', and the Republican Party as well. They may be right about the party, though I find good reason to discredit that, but this from wikipedia:
"The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had "moved to the right".[3][4] Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the usage of neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy.[5]"
So the term 'Neocon' was first used to refer to liberals changing their policies. Kinda makes 'Neocon' another word for 'Centrist Liberal'. Or, to put it bluntly, NOT A CONSERVATIVE.
*phew*. Lemme calm down here... ok...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So you would have to have a side to balance out the other, okay.
So we have the Conservative and Liberals, ok, that is two sides, But what about the Libertarians?
OK, so who counters the Libertarians? The Socialists, what about the Anarchists, you counter those with the Nationalists?
Who gets to decide who needs to be countered and who is "neutral", what counters neutral?
Does the FCC get to decide who is Conservative and who is Liberal? Do we really want the government to control who can be a spokesperson for different groups?
Right now you have a bunch of pissed off Liberals who are pissed they can't get get entertaining hosts to spout their propaganda. The Conservatives are just happy to have some sorta outlet for their propaganda ie. non-public talk radio, web sites, etc... They don't want to give up what they have gained on the internet or on the airwaves.
As a Capitalist Libertarian I kinda agree with the former group. If conservative talk radio didn't have an audience, then why are advertisers paying good cold hard cash for time advertising on Rush'a, Hannity's and Savage's shows?
If there was a large audience for Liberal talk radio then Air America would have succeeded, but it didn't. Maybe that is because they already had Liberal radio in the form of NPR and the NPR listeners didn't want to tune out the public radio stations for the commercial Air America, then it failed.
Be is commercial or public, I don't want some stuffed shirt government bureaucrat telling me who to listen to.
Sure they can enforce the "Fairness Doctrine" but what is going to happen. Take the following scenario.
K-FCC Radio Schedule
12-3pm Rush Limbaugh
3-6pm Rhandi Rhodes
Will the core audience of Rush Limbaugh listeners listen to Rhandi Rhodes, no they won't they will just tune to another station that has a conservative host after his show is over.
To "Enforce" the "spirit" of the fairness Doctrine and make sure both get equal time will the FCC have to find a way to force the Rush Limbaugh listeners to listen to Rhandi Rhodes for the same amount of time.
Ok, so you have taken away people's rights to choose, nice to enforce "spirit of fairness' you have become totalitarian.
Same goes for the Internet. So if I post a blog saying I have Conservatives do i then have to have a section on the same page where I have to have someone post that they hate Liberals?
Where does it end? Could "clink and clack" on NPR say they don't like a certain car have to have someone one that then praises the same car they derided?
Can I make the easy jazz station play hard rock because I hate easy jazz? That is kinda what the FCC would be doing here. If they pass this I am calling all of those oldie station and demand they play new age techno, because I am too fucking lazy to turn the goddamned knob on the radio.
The people who want the "Fairness Doctrine" need to realize that it is against the the whole idea of freedom of speech.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Wrong. This sounds like something a Randian would say.
Sheesh, any time the concept of business is defended, I must be a "Randian". Sorry to disappoint you, but I believe Libertarians (and "Objectivists"_ are simplistic and deluded.
Try getting electric power from a different company than your local utility. Sorry, there's no competition, as it's a monopoly.
First of all, electric power is a *government* monopoly. Second of all, I can generate my own power anytime I want. Ever heard of private generators? Solar? The reason power is a monopoly is because of the wiring issue.
In many industries, you're not allowed to create a new, competitive company, because all the technology is wrapped up in patents, so that the entrenched players can keep out the newcomers. Patents are another government-granted monopoly.
Oh, please. Name the industry that is so dominated by patents that newcomers can't enter it. In any case, the whole point of patents is to protect the individual inventor. Don't like corporations dominating an industry? Try a world without patents.
It's hard to compete against a much larger company that has big economies of scale, or can afford to sell at a loss until you go under.
Exactly! You understand, yet don't like patents? That's just bizarre. Anytime a small inventor invents something, the big companies would simply out-manufacture them instantly and put them out of business.
How would another company compete against a behemoth[Microsoft] of that size?
Incredibly easily, actually. The problem is that no one has had the balls to produce a redesigned, absolutely, positively, 100%-compatible Windows clone. And don't give me the old wrong answer about "Microsoft will just change Windows to make it incompatible." That's always been crap. Sure, Microsoft can break their own products, but they can't break everyone else's products, and you can also keep an antitrust war chest to sue Microsoft if they tried to make Office incompatible.
The first company that produces a *good* Windows clone will make billions. They'll instantly get 20-30% marketshare.
At least in theory, the government is elected by the people, and is subject to the court system, elected officials, etc. Corporations are only subject to their upper management.
The "people" is not just you, it's also everyone else. Even if the government listened to "the people", that doesn't mean you agree with whatever the whims of "the people" happen to be. With a corporate world you don't need to beg politicians to do whatever you want. And also notice that corporations are OWNED by "the people" -- which you also can own -- and that's a hell of a lot more direct power.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
If there's a singular world government, 150 million Republicans and a 150 million Democrats are going to find their power reduced significantly by the 300 million+ Social Democrat-esque types in Europe and the 1 billion Communists in China. So, no, it's not going to increase their power one whit - hence why none of them are particularly fond of paying the US' UN dues.
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place?
Imagine your current cable (or satellite, there's choice you know!) system. A handful of channels - or, in this case, sites - that are heavily regulated.
Regulated by the FCC, the LEAs, and TOSs and EULAs and AUPs.
The FCC will handle political speech. The LEAs will handle any criminal activity.* The TOSs, EULAs, and AUPs will make sure nothing "objectionable" is allowed on the network.
Don't want to shock you, but that is the sort of system that is coming. It is only a matter of time.
Sure, the Internet as we know it will still be around, but: you'll have to pay extra for it, it'll be slower than molasses (compared to "Net2" or whatever they choose to call it), and it'll be about as secure as a sexy, young white girl walking alone in a ghetto... at night... with no cops around.
The future is a nightmare and there really isn't much we can do. I have no hope.
Sorry if this has bummed anyone out. :)
* I'm sure, in order to use the system, you'll have to waive your Constitutional rights. Warrants won't be needed by LE to get your info.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Hey, I'm a right wing lunatic but the truth on this matter is pretty clear.
If we really read our history, it was those same conservative Democrats that jumped ship and joined the Republican Party when Nixon embarked on his "Southern Strategy". The party of Law and Order in the north might have meant dealing with crime to northern Republicans, but down south, it meant, dealing with n---.
This is my sig.
The Libertarians care about you, but they have such a minority you will probably not see a Libertarian president in your lifetime.
Unfortunately, I think that's more like, "The Libertarians care about freedoms, but in doing so will give freer reign (and therefore more power) to corporations who don't care about you because you don't have enough money."
Since you brought up the subject of rubbish... most Democrats are corporate tools, just like the Republicans. They are loathe to advance any agenda which might hurt their masters' profits. The only progress we've ever won in the US was not because of Democrats in office, but because of independent mass movements that forced the government (regardless of which corporate party was in power) to submit to our demands. Let's not forget that for most of its existence the Democrats were the party of slavery and Jim Crow. It wasn't until the 60's and the power of millions of organized people refusing to submit to segregation that the Democrats shifted on this issue. Then they co-opted and de-mobilized the social movements in the 70's—leading to the sorry state we're in today where people think the only choice we have is between two corporate parties, neither of which serve the public interest.
As for the original post, I think the vast majority of Slashdot readers will agree that trying to censor the Internet is an exercise in futility. The "fairness doctrine" makes more sense for more restricted and monopolized media like television—which are dominated by corporations and typically only present views that acceptable to their owners. The media deregulation of the 90's (thanks Clinton!) accelerated the consolidation of the mainstream media and the explosion of right-wing BS-based punditry that is so prominent on TV and radio.
At the start of Vietnam both parties had hawk and dove factions. Nixon was originally elected on his claim to have a secret plan to end the war!
During the LBJ administration the Hawk faction in the Democrats lost influence and they were routed almost entirely during Nixon. But there is an additional layer of complexity there as Nixon's big idea was detente with Russia and re-opening relations with China.
The big change came during the Carter administration with the invasion of Afghanistan. Both parties turned considerably more hawkish. Carter began the weapons build-up but as a tactical reaction to the Soviets. For Reagan the increase in military spending was strategic and ideological.
During the Bush administration the foreign policy has been directed by the neo-imperialist wing of the Republican party. They like wars, the more the better. Their war in Iraq has been a fiasco, which is why they want a new one in Iran, or Georgia.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
With sufficiently predatory lending practices and things of that nature, it becomes far less than "voluntary" too.
Good example! "Predatory"? Who held a gun to the head of these idiots who got loans they couldn't afford? As I said, being exploited by a corporation is entirely *voluntary*.
On the other hand, try opting out of various laws that you don't like. I'm sure I don't need to make a list of various laws that are stupid, yet you have no choice to suffer them.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I'm a personal fan of all the Gore bumper stickers still out there. Never forgive never forget, I guess
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
States need to start handing out their electoral votes based on results from the individual representative districts, with the statewide winner getting both 'senate' votes. The "winner takes all" rule is so bizarre, and causes certain states (those with a moderate to high amount of electoral votes and razor-thin state-wide margins) to become more important than other states. I live in California, and Republican presidential candidates don't even bother coming here, and Democratic candidates use us as an ATM machine. They both know that all 55 electoral votes are going Democratic. Those people voting Republican in northern districts aren't being represented in the electoral college vote.
Of course, the second people started talking about using this district-based system, the Democrats started whining, because they knew this would cost them around 20-25 electoral votes that they currently don't have to work for.
Don't forget the music. It's information, after all, and it wants to be free!
But hitting back at your main point, I think the greater problem isn't that we forget that there are more than two opinions but rather that we keep overlooking the fact that there is only one reality. If two people make two mutually exclusive claims, at least one of them must be wrong. Rather than (or at the very least, in addition to) rushing to find a third incompatible claim, and then a fourth, we should probably spend a little time figuring out which of claims already on the table are bunk and then removing them from the table (by flagging them as contrafactual, and giving proof, not by censoring them).
--MarkusQ
>But if the media is so liberal, why would they have to?
>I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too.
>And I'm not sure if you consider Fox a "major network",
>but I am having a hard time figuring out who the "fawning
>sychophants"(sic) are on that network. Any help? Besides,
>everybody knows that the conservatives practically OWN
>talk radio. Doesn't that count for something?
>It is a form of media.
Of course, your examples are the very reason that the Democrat party wants the fairness doctrine back. They can brook no opposition, and if they can shut down Rush Limbaugh/Hannity, Fox News, and (now if it applies to the internet) Drudge, they will have accomplished their goal.
This is as blatant a suppression of free speech as McCain-Feingold.
Brett
Or, you disagree with the policies of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. They send men to shoot you.
You're a fool if you think corporations can't hurt you without your consent.
Because the 28 percent deadenders that still like the GOP are neither Fair nor Balanced.
Heck, beyond being incompetent, and running up $50,000 in debt for every single American citizen - including babies - this whole Left-Right debate is totally unworkable.
We need what most civilized countries have, a media that reports three to five sides of the debate, and makes it obvious the deadender Red Bushies represent a minority of deluded individuals who hate the Middle Class.
But, that's my humble opinion.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Wait... So everyone in China is a communist? Does that mean that back when we had a republican president and a mostly republican congress that the US was republican?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Don't forget that you have no Constitutional right to vote in a Presidential election. Each state legislature decides how electors are to be chosen. What we have, of course, is a system where every legislature has chosen to let the people decide by popular vote (thus your 51% winner takes all). Your legislature could change its mind tomorrow and you wouldn't be going to the polls to vote for President.
Did you also know that originally U. S. Senators were chosen by state legislatures? We need to repeal that stupid 17th Amendment so that states can have some representation in Washington again. Right now they have none.
While we're at it, why do you so strongly oppose somebody winning with 50% + 1? That's the only *democratic* part of our republic.
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape.
Sure you can: vote. Or move.
The trouble with putting all the power in corporate hands is that corporations only do what's profitable, and they're only accountable to their shareholders. The corporate decision making process would mean no phone service in rural areas (because they can't charge rural customers enough to pay for running the lines), and people would die on the street in front of the hospital if they couldn't pay for an ER visit.
Government intervention, on the other hand, allows We The People to step in and say "I want to live in a country where everyone has access to telecommunications and emergency care, whether it's profitable or not." And as we can see, it worked. Obviously it still has to be paid for, but without government intervention, it wouldn't have happened at all, and most people would consider that a bad thing.
And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity.
That's a sad joke. Unless you're Bill Gates or a fictional Ayn Rand character, you can't start your own car manufacturer, phone company, or even your own school just because you don't like the options you have available. All you can really do is choose from the companies that already exist -- unless you happen to feel strongly enough about local long distance rates that you're willing to drop your existing career and devote the rest of your life to building a competitor; even then, you can only really hope to compete in one field, and you'll probably fail anyway (like most new businesses).
On the other hand, voting gives nearly everyone a say in the government's operation. It's not a huge say, but it's something, and you can increase it simply by talking to other people and convincing them to vote the same way. Folks like Markos Moulitsas and Rush Limbaugh have had far more impact on the country through political discourse than they ever would have if they'd put that effort into starting a business.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
If you want freedom, to oppress and screw over others, the only party that's interested in that is the Libertarians. The other two want to oppress you and take your money, the Libertarians want to make sure that the government is weak enough that its can't stop them from screwing you over.
No nasty FDA to get in the way or medical research. Hazardous drugs on the market? no problem competition will take care of things. There will quickly be another better drug out on the market. Hopefully this one wont kill as many people.
I wonder what would happen if a state decided to secede without military force. If South Carolina seceded again, but instead of putting up a military, they just stopped paying the feds and accepting help and whatever else they'd have to do, then when the US military came in to stop them, they all just sat down and let the military walk by. If the military were to start shooting people who weren't defending themselves, I'm pretty sure that would be a disaster of epic proportions. In that situation, what could the US do to stop a seceding state? I would guess nothing. Maybe they could try to start a rebellion in the state to get the locals wanting to rejoin the rest, but that's about all.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying the above is a good idea, just wondering.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Fascism is when government controls corporations.
Corporatism is when corporations controls government.
The terms business and corporation are not the same either and there is an important distinction you are forgetting.
A corporation is "legal protection" granted by the government to a business. A corporation creates a fictional person existing in the legal world that represents a something that actually exists, that is a business. Government grants this protection to business men so they can operate with immunity. Does this seam fair? You can't create a fictional person and operate with immunity can you? Laws allowing incorporation are a bad thing and a affront to the free market. In the free market, a *true* free market, there are no special protections awarded to people.
There is nothing wrong with business by itself, the problem is with combining business and government via Fascism or Corporatism.
And yes, as your clearly point out.. some people have more money than others. This unfairness is the problem that motivated Marx to create communism.. clearly one of the most self destructive, intellectually slothful, and even hateful (from the point of freedom) systems of government ever designed by man. Marx was a genus, but he failed to realize something simple.. that people only want to better themselves not each other, it is our nature.. and that nature can not be changed without extreme force. So.. if Marx couldn't solve the problem of a free world being an unfair world.. can you? Perhaps this is why people say life as a whole is unfair.
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
--Milton Friedman
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
What I think will always be slanted. What I say in my blog and in my circles is always going to be slanted with my thoughts. FREE SPEECH is not supposed to be regulated.
David Vasta iSeries(AS/400) Admin & Junkie
For example, if you can't find a job that pays well enough to feed your family, the Libertarian response is "Well, the market has spoken. You aren't needed. Sorry."
Whereas a democrat would say, "Stab Bill Gates, take his money and live in his house instead." Republicans would just slaughter your children and bathe in their blood because they are pure evil.
I can see why you troll like that, it's kind of fun to push another ideology to the extreme and then say that it's immoral. The real philosophy of libertarians is that nobody should be forced to do something, like give up their money to help others. Virtue shouldn't be forced. Almost anyone can get a job, even if it's just working at wal mart. Almost everyone has friends that can help them out or family that can give them a place to stay. A typical response would be that you can't live off of wal mart's pay, to which I reply that you should make do with the smaller paycheck, get another job or get skills that pay more.
The point of the matter is that most libertarians I know are very kind people who give a lot to charity, they just believe in freedom of choice. If you honestly couldn't find a job that could feed your family, then they would try to give you a leg up to get that job, they just wouldn't believe that the government should force them to give it to you.
The reason you can't get electric power from different companies than your local utility is because, in order for another company to provide power to your house, they'd have to run a wire to your house or lease the line going to your house from whomever the rightful owner of that line is. For various practical reasons (i.e. limited amount of property available for easements for power lines, the desire to not have our neighborhoods look like this, etc.), it was decided that it would be much better to tolerate well regulated monopolies that provided basic services (water, power, etc.) instead of letting anybody and everybody run water lines under everybody's property, run electrical lines all over the place, and so on. It's not a perfect system, but it beats the heck out of the alternatives.
As for the rest of your points, yes, government-backed corporate power is insidious. However, there's a big difference between "government recognized entity" and "government recognized entity that can do things like take tax money from private citizens and get them redistributed to corporate entities under ridiculous premises like, say, turning food into fuel" - it's the latter sort of thing that people get upset about. That said, competing against corporations is fairly easy - take your example of Ubuntu. With Ubuntu, Canonical was able to repackage something that was swimming around (Linux) into something a little more desirable to the masses (Ubuntu) and sell support for it. Microsoft cannot shut down Canonical, as much as they might want to, nor can Microsoft legally prevent OEMs from pre-installing Ubuntu if they feel there's a market for it (Dell, among others). Microsoft cannot prevent you from acquiring Ubuntu using any method you choose to acquire it.
Competing against government, on the other hand, is a little more difficult - take drugs, for example. The government has decided to ban drugs. If you choose to "compete" against this ban and provide the market what it desires, you run the risk of jail time, no-knock raids by SWAT teams, and the confiscation of all of your private property. Using Ubuntu, conversely, does not run the risk that Microsoft will put you in jail, throw a paramilitary at you, nor seize all of your assets.
Most importantly, corporations are not just subject to upper management - they're also subject to their customers. IBM's market share used to be near 100%. It's not anymore. Microsoft's market share used to be nearly 100% - it's not anymore, and it's decreasing by the day. GM's market share in cars was nearly 60% after World War 2 - now they're near the verge of bankruptcy because they failed to take into account the needs of the markets they sold in. Meanwhile, governments don't always gain their power by the consent of the governed - sometimes it just takes some well applied firepower and the fear of the governed.
Yes. (I kid.)
It is possible to have a billion Communists and have only some of them be Chinese. I'm just saying.
Ugh... never mind. I did throw in that "in China", didn't I? Oops. Of course, there is the question of how many people in China are allowed to be anything other than Communists, but that can be saved for another time.
They'd drag the tax evaders into court and expel the state's congressmen, most likely. I doubt there'd be bloodshed.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Well, /. may not be balanced in this sense, but it definitely doesn't force you to stick with the base rules they provide.
You can alter your user preferences to give ACs an extra point to counteract the default 0 score. In fact, the options allow you to tweak post scoring into any formula you like. I could give flaimbaits +6 if I wanted to, superseding any other mod possible. It even goes as deep to allow me to assign a lesser value to those who have been members considered new to a threshold I determine. It's extremely fair.
And herein is a great little tool we can use to discuss the larger problem - the concepts of Fair and Balanced. For the sake of argument, let's use the current /. post scoring model as a base example of "balanced" , the preferences as "fair" and slashdot as "duh gubernment".
Well, many people would disagree that it is balanced. From their perspective, posts of a certain type shouldn't be given as harsh a penalty for their moderation as they do. For example, many may feel that trolls are ok, but flaimbait isn't. Now, that would be honkey-dory if we had a baseline absolute for what was flaimbait and what was a troll, but we don't. The population at large has varying "personal" definitions for those terms that they apply in a singular form, but that we discuss in an aggregate. If looked at from 10,000 feet you could probably come up with a functional distinction between the two. Unfortunately, we don't mod from 10,000 feet - we mod from ground zero and the perspective doesn't allow us to use the same definition. In order to overcome this problem, /. chose to allow us to implement our own scoring systems on an individual basis. Sounds great right? Liberty FTW!
Well, it's not so great. That's not entirely true, it's not so great for everyone. Wha...? Huh...?
Now we have discrepancies on how certain items are valued. From one perspective, the 10,000 ft. slashdot moderation trends have been changed to a value system reflecting a single perspective against the whole. Joe Shmoe can now see all trolls on equal footing as insightfuls and Nancy Neutral can value everything at Zero. This seems to morph the community's modding trends as a whole to reflect the trend of the individual, but it doesn't. It merely alters the presentation. Amy Applerulz still mods everything having to do with Apple as +1 Insightful and Manny McMicrosoft still gets pissed off that the post was modded this way and chooses to use the all powerful overated mod. The individuals respond to the content of the post, but their custom rulesets can only engage the framework of presentation. They both have exercised their liberty by changing the rules of scoring, but it doesn't work how they want it too. Manny wants more Pro Microsoft, and Amy wants the opposite.
So now we have two problems. A framework that distorts (changes) the community values for generalized categories to reflect the individual to that same individual and an individual who exercised their liberties (by altering the scoring system) and still feels that the system isn't "balanced". Here is where people start to use the term "fair", and it causes the most problems.
Amy Applerulez doesn't think being modded as overrated is "fair" and Manny McMicrosoft doesn't think anyone who votes insightful like a Pavlovian dog should be allowed to mod at all. So now they choose to become foes and ignore the shit outta each other. They aren't censoring the other person from speaking, no harm no foul - they just refuse to hear anything that the other has to say because they think that the other is an idiot. Great! Liberty FTW again!
Not really.
Now that Manny and Amy have fully exercised their liberties, in a non infringing manner to boot, they get their information in a "fair" and "balanced" manner from their singular ground zero perspective. Yet, if looked at from 10,000 feet these two have their heads in the fucking sand. There is no such thing as balance when these two individuals
And rightfully so. There have been recent attempts here in California to make our electoral votes be distributed proportionally instead of all or nothing. Naturally this was proposed by the Republicans since they would then get 20 or 25 electoral votes they currently have no chance at. Obviously this would unfairly handicap the Democrats since they would still get 0% of the electoral votes from big Republican states like Texas.
On the other hand, I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system, and no surprise the Democrats in California's legislature sponsored the bill which has been passed by both houses. All we need is for Schwarzenegger to sign it.
BTW, it certainly is funny that people are for the electoral system saying without it small states would be ignored. I don't follow how small states being ignored is worse then our current system where big states like Californa, NY, and Texas get ignored. Isn't more people being ignored worse then less people being ignored? Small states shouldn't be ignored, but the attention they get should be proportional to their population.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Or, you disagree with the policies of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. They send men to shoot you. [...] You're a fool if you think corporations can't hurt you without your consent.
Sheesh, that's called "organized crime". If you think Microsoft sends the black helicopters out to kill people, then I can't help you.
On the other hand, we know that government can and does put people in jail for trivial reasons. See: That guy in Austria who was put in jail for thinking the wrong thoughts about the Holocaust.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The Libertarians care about you
Oh please. The libertarians don't care about you because if you don't have the means to take care of yourself, tough shit, get out of the pool.
Get one of the Abe Lincoln impersonators from Illinois, have his name legally changed to Abraham Lincoln, and get him to run for President.
Most importantly, corporations are not just subject to upper management - they're also subject to their customers. IBM's market share used to be near 100%. It's not anymore. Microsoft's market share used to be nearly 100% - it's not anymore, and it's decreasing by the day. GM's market share in cars was nearly 60% after World War 2 - now they're near the verge of bankruptcy because they failed to take into account the needs of the markets they sold in.
I addressed this in my prior post. The problem is that, due to inertia, it can take a very, very long time for the cumulative effects of bad decisions to finally catch up with companies this large. Remember, Tucker tried to compete against the big auto companies back in the 50s and was run out of business by them. GM has been screwing up for most of my lifetime, and only now are they on the verge of bankruptcy. MS might be falling now, but I had to suffer with Windows 9x for years, and I still have to suffer with XP (obviously not as bad as 9x, but they're now trying to push the abomination that is Vista on us) because a lot of software is only written for Windows, an effect of their inertia. The only reason that Ubuntu is doing well is because thousands of programmers decided to give away their work for free; this doesn't happen in many industries.
Don't forget, many things people do in Linux are technically illegal in the USA, since the multimedia codecs are patent-protected, and normally downloaded from an offshore server.
It's not trivial to compete against entrenched players like this.
Using Ubuntu, conversely, does not run the risk that Microsoft will put you in jail, throw a paramilitary at you, nor seize all of your assets.
Actually, in an extreme scenario, MS could convince lawmakers to authorize the police to have no-knock raids for Linux users, to check if their codecs are all properly licensed. Remember, in all other countries, software patents aren't legal.
I said the US was a democratic nation, and as a representative democracy that's what it is.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
When tax money funds my server and connection, I'll let people who disagree with me guest-post in my Slashdot trolling.
Until then, fuck those guys.
What utter marxist horseshit.
'Open source' didn't change a goddamn thing -- or did you think that IBM and their army of clones were the only ones manufacturing PCs with a platform alternative to Microsoft's lackluster software? That Apple did not succeed against Microsoft-Intel is less a testament to any monopoly power on the part of the latter and more a testament to the fact that Apple has always positioned its products towards elitists who think they're getting a quality product and are willing to pay a premium for it.
Now as for corporations -- 'upper management'? Who the fuck do you think appoints the board of directors? In the end it's the major shareholders who pull the strings in any corporation. If corporations do bad things it is precisely because shareholders are still permitted to profit from the negligence, malfeasance, and otherwise criminal activity on the part of their agents -- that being the board of directors and their subordinates. That liability shield is a legal artifact which you may deride as being an example of corporate influence upon the state, but ultimately that influence would not be exercisable if the constitution had been written properly in the first place that such influence could not be exercised, and were the people properly empowered to resist such nonsense.
At the end of the day, corporations aren't the bad guys -- they're the symptoms of a much larger sickness stemming from the ultimate vacuity of our founding documents.
Now take your commie pinko bullshit elsewhere.
What about something like Texas? The bigger urban areas are actually relatively liberal (Austin, etc...), and those votes are pretty much nullified by the rest of Texas.
Exactly - organized crime (ie corporations) would take over if the feds withdrew. Thank you for agreeing with me.
Two competing perspectives that Americans consider to be "balanced" would not necessarily be considered balanced elsewhere in the world. From my perspective, both of your main political parties regularly voice opinions that can be characterized as right wing.
If the public has a negative opinion of the Fairness Doctrine, politicians could stick it inside Net Neutrality legislation and pick up more votes.
Net Neutrality may encompass Fairness Doctrine in 2010
You're right and wrong... It was Bush... Senior.
The Fairness Doctrine cannot be applied to Internet blogs because it violates the basic tests that the Supreme Court has come up with for regulating speech:
* TV and radio can be regulated because they are "pervasive" (the signal comes into your house whether you want it or not) and "scarce" (there is only so much useful spectrum in any given area, so only so many voices can be heard.) Internet blogs are not pervasive (you have to seek them out) and they certainly aren't scarce (anyone who wants to can build a blog using free tools.)
* Commercial speech can be regulated. Not applicable here.
* Dangerous/inciting/traitorous speech ("fire in a crowded theater", "clear and present danger") can be regulated. Not applicable here.
* Obscenity. Not applicable here.
Note that, unlike the Internet taxation issue, this is a basic Constitutional problem. Unless one of the rules above is violated, the Supreme Court will knock down any attempt to regulate speech on the Internet. So I don't think this much matters. Even if this were a majority of people rather than just 30%, they're not going to get any kind of law passed to regulate Internet blog speech.
They add nothing. They are the Internet equivalent of belligerent drunks shouting in a bar. What they do is not news, it's just endless editorializing.
I piss off bigots.
Republicans haven't been for smaller government since the 80s.
Republicans haven't wanted smaller government since at least Nixon. Heck even Republican President Eisenhower, who talked about the Military-industrial Complex, made government bigger. Before him, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt expanded government.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Actually, he's repeating standard left-wing bullshit.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Exactly - organized crime (ie corporations) would take over if the feds withdrew. Thank you for agreeing with me.
Congratulations on winning a debate that we weren't even having. Who talked about the feds "withdrawing"? Of course government is necessary to step in and maintain law and order, and other protections of civil rights. That doesn't mean that I don't prefer, all things being equal, to voluntarily dealing with a corporation than involuntarily dealing with the government.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
"You know, that's how I feel whenever I see people with bumper stickers slathered all over their cars (who are, imho, 99% of the time liberal). "
The people who completely cover their car with bumper stickers are liberal, I'll give you that. But they are rare compared to the 89749374390 people with the calvin character praying in front of the cross or jesus fish or some other religious icon on their car.
Yep, the part about massive defense spending is part of my point. But that's actually a Democratic thing. Remember, LBJ (who kept us in Vietnam) was a Democrat. Republicans have been anti-defense spending until recent decades.
Except it was Republican President Eisenhower who sent troops into Viet Nam, and in a bid to defeat democracy.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Bush didn't start the current wave of neoconservatism.
That honor probably should go to Wilson.
What?
Go by the term Classical Liberal then
Ah, another one who knows what Liberal used to mean, and still means in some places.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A libertarian would say, "That's unfortunate, but we should not resort to force in an attempt to solve this problem."
Why is it so important that other people know that you're a vegan, are pro-abortion
I haven't kept track, counted, but I'm pretty sure I've seen just about as many pro-life bumper stickers as I have pro-choice stickers. I got a few bumper stickers myself, but I've never stuck them on a bumper.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If your understanding of the political system is so shallow that you are confused by the word "conservative", then I suggest writing in "Spongebob" on your ballot for every public office.
How would a "balanced internet" work in the first place?
Simple! You'd write something wrong, and then you'd be fined or go to jail. What is "wrong" would change depending on who was in power.
I for one welcome our... No, wait. I don't welcome them at all. In fact, they can go to hell.
What rubbish. I'd imagine that most Democrats are socialists who look towards the Nordic welfare states.
That is until they are reminded of all that blonde hair and blue eyes will get them in trouble with their own philosophy of political correctness.
Government grants this protection to business men so they can operate with immunity. Does this seam fair?
It is absolutely more fair than the alternative. Let's say you're the CEO of Ford, and someone has an accident and dies in one of your cars. Should the CEO be brought up on charges of Involuntary Manslaughter? On every single accident? Basically, every company CEO would be *personally* responsible for everything that ever happened in the company, whether they personally designed anything or not. Does that seem fair? You might be thinking, "Good! Then they'll be extra careful!" Except that it's literally impossible for anyone to be perfectly in charge of everything.
So make those directly in charge responsible? So, basically, you're saying that any engineer that works on a car is at risk of going to jail for any defect? Or any programmer that works on medical equipment? How would do it?
In the world you want, nothing risky would ever get created. Certainly no one is going to try creating a new drug -- you'd have to be insane, if the risk was murder charges. And look at the false charges from the silicone breast implants -- that was totally fraudulent. In your world, the designers and/or CEO all would've gone to jail.
There is a reason corporations exist. It's because society couldn't function without them.
In the free market, a *true* free market, there are no special protections awarded to people.
In a "true" free market, society falls apart.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
"A Recent Poll discovered that 70% of Americans are against government interference in Blogging"
I don't follow, how does the electoral system prevent a corrupt metropolitan government from impacting the national election?
It doesn't prevent them from having an impact. (Or even prevent a corrupt metropolis from swinging a presidential election: Nixon lost to Kennedy by losing Illinois and he lost that by less than one vote per precinct in Mayor Daley's Cook County. And the next time he ran the governor of Illinois was alleged to have kept Chicago in check by threatening to delay the outstate count until after Cook County had reported and fake as many Republican votes as the Chicago machine faked Democrat votes.)
What it does is LIMIT the impact.
With the Electoral College the most they can swing is their own state's electors (which in turn are limited by the population figures from the last census).
With direct popular vote they can come up with a bunch of fake voters and a bogus landslide margin which can easily swamp the REAL margin from several larger-but-honest cities - or the total margin in an election that is at all close.
Remember the Bush/Gore vote recounting in Florida? Imagine if the election was by popular vote, the margin was a couple thousand votes, and you had to recount the WHOLE COUNTRY. B-(
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
are mad that the US was "One pretzel away from getting rid of Bush."
I dunno, you'd think they'd find one pretzel away from a President Cheney kinda scarey.
-- Alastair
They were when they were elected. The certainly were talking to my still-conservative friends according to those same friends then, but now many of those friends say they are not conservative.
Conservatives often take the word conservative to mean policies they like and outcomes they like. THEY define the term liberal as policies and outcomes they don't like.
What many conservatives want in practice is spending in the government that doesn't effect them to be cut, and taxes for themselves lowered regardless of the consequences. In this way Bush is very conservative.
The Fairness Doctrine isn't. All throughout it's history, it's been used by whoever was in power at the time to silence their enemies
You know, I've read up on the history, and I think that it's barely defensible that it's *ever* been used in that manner. Even the cases the Supreme Court issued rulings on that stated its use might be "chilling speech" or "inescapably dampens" debate seem pretty borderline to me. And the only evidence that it's ever been used as part of a coordinated campaign is under Kennedy -- and further, it's not clear that particular campaign wasn't in the spirit of TFD by actually getting some further diversity of opinion into broadcast media. TFD doesn't silence a viewpoint or, contrary to popular misconception, even require *equal* time. It just says you have to give *some* time to alternative opinion.
And it isn't, as you say, as if TFD is nothing but a stick to silence someone. Nor, if you get down to it, is it by any stretch of the imagination the only tool or the most effective tool to silence a viewpoint on broadcast media. *Ownership* is by far the most effective tool, and it's precisely to counter that TFD ever existed. That or anti-consolidation policies are the only potential counterweights. Guess what else has also been eroded since the phasing out of TFD? It'd be nice if among the "huge selection of opinion avenues" you mentioned there was real diversity, but it's a lot like Wendell Berry says in one of his essays on the modern economy: "amid an astonishing variety of products, one is denied certain significant choices."
Now, I agree when it comes to the Internet there's no need for a fairness doctrine. There's an exceptional variety of viewpoints and facts represented on the net, there isn't bandwidth scarcity or real economic barriers to "broadcast" like there is with TV and radio. See a viewpoint you don't like? It's the first medium in which it's truly incredibly easy to counter speech with more speech.
But broadcast media? Far from there yet, even with the "diversity" of programming. It may not be that the last conception of TFD was the best one, but it's far from unreasonable to suggest that with a scarce and inarguably *public* resource like spectrum, we have a right as a society to ask that it be used in a way that goes beyond the preferences and profit of those it's leased to.
Tweet, tweet.
And yet it is the Right that is always trying to pass legislation on what is taught and what people should and should not watch/wear/see/etc.
The system was not designed to favor a party but to balance the power of the majority against the minority, the large state against the small state.
The reality is we are NOT a democracy as many seem to want to state. We are a representative republic. Things like the electoral college were put in place to reduce the chance of mob rule. The Senate was originally not directly elected for the same reason (states could choose the method including appointment) The 3 branches were also put in place to limit power (currently the balance has swung to the court system).
Notice none of that was partisan in any way as the balances were meant to be. Go on blaming one party or the other rather than focusing on enforcing the system that helps keep us free and we all lose.
Ah! I understand, now. On my left, I find... bullshit. On my right, I find... more bullshit! Is it any wonder I don't vote? My choices are between bullshit and bullshit. Well, shit!
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
If the US didn't have "jigsaw puzzle elections" a corrupt political machine in a major urban area would be able to swing enough bogus votes to control the national government.
Do you by any chance mean LA and Frisco...that already control all of California and wield way too much power in Washington by using the Electoral college and the gerrymandering of districts to keep the 40% Republican "minority's" votes (millions of them...btw) counting as "0"?
Then why is it considered by many for sex between two men to be immoral? The ancient Greeks had no problem with it. It used to be unethical to practice usury, now thats the standard.
I don't think it is as cut and dry as that. I think morals do happen to deal with the individual and its based on emotions. While people may speak of the concept of the "moral majority" they never say anything like the "ethical majority".
Actually, its funny that when I see a group of people talking about their morals, they seem to be like a mob of individuals all speaking their singular, personal beliefs. They just happen to be congruent with each other.
When people talk of ethics, they seem to speak as an individual communicating the the agreed terms of a larger community.
People don't seem to make ethics a personal deal, it's like they view it as a rule over many, but people see their morals as very individual and unique things.
It's not enough to have willing shills in every other form of media - fawning sychophants in TV (all major networks), newspapers (NYT, etc).
Yeap Disney (ABC), Viacom (CBS), and NBC's owners General Electric and Vivendi along with Fox are all sycophants.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Well, in his defense he was making it bigger to build all them damn fancy roads.
Wrong. True Conservative Republicans want/demand small Gov. Don't confuse the Bush Administration and Post 9/11 as normal Republican beliefs....
-------- Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. --Ozzy
George Carlin...is that you?
Much as we see "neoconservatives" people who despite touting the conservative label are all about big government, there seems to be "neoliberals". Basically their idea is "You have the freedom of speech to say something that I agree with." If you say things they don't like, they want to silence you. The funny thing is they'll do this while claiming to be supporting free speech. See the problem is you are "bigoted" or "close minded" and thus what you want to say shouldn't be said.
IMO, Instant Runoff Voting is the way to go. Everyone gets to set a score to each candidate (aka, they pick their first second etc choices) and in the end it all gets added up and whoever has the highest overall score wins.
Shouting in a bar can actually get you somewhere, just ask Hitler.
I like Spongebob as a person/thing/whatever, but I do not agree with his politics.
No argument there. One vote per person can't accurately capture the intend of the voters in an election with more than two candidates. Getting rid of the electoral system is only the first step in repairing our system.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Definitely not or we'd have healthcare, better schools, and no more occupying force in Iraq. They clearly don't care about these things
No, government can be shaped by the people to reflect their needs and values, corporations cannot.
In other words, they're the only political organization who disagree with the "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" rhetoric coming from the Demopublicans.
Worrying about your neighbor's freedom because you think your freedoms are next up on the chopping block is a feature, not a bug. It beats the hell out of infringing on your neighbors freedoms because you're scared you might enjoy your neighbor's vices too. (Which is basically the Republicans' policy on homosexuality, pot, and worshipping anything other than Fundie Jesus, and the Democrats' policy on everything involving meat-eating, gas-guzzling, and target-shooting.)
Damn that Niemoller guy, so selfish, always whining about how "when they came for me, there was nobody left to speak out."
Given the track records of the Nanny State Parties, I'd like to see selfishness given a try. As it stands, the only selfish people getting their lusts satiated are the ones on the Hill.
I see plenty of "W '04" stickers in my neighborhood. Using your car to proclaim your political beliefs knows no partisan boundaries.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Ha Ha.... /* is an indication of what's wrong...
/* readers is VERBOTEN!
If the heavy handed liberal bias of
Then I say - shut 'em down.
Any post that doesn't reflect the nutty left wing kook base of
ROFLOL.....
Well, in his defense he was making it bigger to build all them damn fancy roads.
Ike also strengthened the military. He started the Viet Nam War, er started the US envolvement in it when the Viet Namese and France had already made an agreement to end fighting in Viet Nam.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You know, plenty of other rag-tag militia have had considerable success against modern armies in the past couple of decades, what makes you think that American revolutionaries would be any different?
After five years being mired in Iraq you'd think people would realize that having a huge quantity of fancy tanks and airplanes doesn't let you just start up and say "hey, we win" when you're fighting an entire population.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I miss the man already.
I hope the land around you yields, a crop like all the other fields, and then your waiting might make sense...
Fighting in Georgia would be the first legitimate war we've gotten into since 1812. I seriously doubt that it'd work out, and right now we can't do it anyway. But at least it would be the right thing to do.
Then again, I also don't care of those "break away" provinces break away -- let them for all I care. I also support Chechnya, the Basques and a slew of other things. Freedom good, Empire dickish.
Half the population has below average intelligence.
If you can point out one of the flaws in that statement, then I suspect you are not in the bottom half. :)
Naturally this was proposed by the Republicans since they would then get 20 or 25 electoral votes they currently have no chance at. Obviously this would unfairly handicap the Democrats since they would still get 0% of the electoral votes from big Republican states like Texas.
And I could give a damn what it does or doesn't do for the Democrats. I just want our votes to represent (as accurately as possible within the electoral system) the will of the people. How quickly Democrats forget that California wasn't always a 'sure thing'. Maybe in a few years (or decades?), Democrats will be wishing they had been if favor of this.
Based upon that Wiki definition the average Democrat is more of a Socialist than a Traditional Liberal. How many Democrats do you see these days trying to LIMIT government? Most democrats these days want more government.
Keep supporting those Democrats Slashdotters!
Sooner or later they will be so powerful they WILL be telling you what you can do with your internet.
Why is it so important that other people know that you're a vegan, are pro-abortion, etc, or, my personal favorite, are mad that the US was "One pretzel away from getting rid of Bush."
It took me a while to understand what you were saying but I think you're saying that being vegan is inconsistent with allowing abortion or wanting Bush to die. That is, you assume that people are vegan because they care deeply about "life" but that if they cared about "life" they would be opposed to abortion and Bush dying.
The thing is, it's not about "life" - it's about feelings: opposition to causing suffering (including emotional distress) and opposition to preventing good feelings.
Basically, it's not about the quantity of life, it's about the quality of life.
Well, the President appoints those judges. And I think that Congress can impeach Supreme Court judges (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong), although it's rarely if ever done.
I can see why you troll like that, it's kind of fun to push another ideology to the extreme and then say that it's immoral. The real philosophy of libertarians is that nobody should be forced to do something, like give up their money to help others.
Heh. You do realize that you've simply restated my point, right? Sure, you used gentler words to do it, but that "real philosophy" boils down to exactly what I said earlier.
"Nobody should be forced to ... give up their money to help others" implies that when no one wants to help you out of the kindness of their hearts (as is often the case), you're just screwed.
Almost anyone can get a job, even if it's just working at wal mart.
Many, many people who have jobs still don't make enough to really support themselves and their families. They're one illness or injury away from bankruptcy and destitution.
Your response to that is "you should make do with the smaller paycheck, get another job or get skills that pay more." In other words, it's just what I said: "make do with the smaller paycheck" is another way to say "sucks to be you", and getting those extra skills is often impossible when you still need to work full-time to support your family.
The point of the matter is that most libertarians I know are very kind people who give a lot to charity, they just believe in freedom of choice. If you honestly couldn't find a job that could feed your family, then they would try to give you a leg up to get that job, they just wouldn't believe that the government should force them to give it to you.
But obviously they can't help everyone themselves, so what happens next?
Libertarians would have us believe that when charity fails, it's better to let those unfortunate people starve than to require the richest among us to give up a tiny fraction of their wealth to help them. They believe that their "freedom of choice" (i.e. the freedom not to pay taxes) is more important than whether or not someone else can put food on the table or send his kids to school.
That's one reason why they don't win elections: because most people just don't share those priorities.
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Fascism is when government controls corporations.
Corporatism is when corporations controls government.
That's a nice sound bite. Here's another one for ya:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- a Fascist.
Corporatism is actually a scenario where the state acts as a mediator between labour and capital. There are different flavours.
In Fascist Italy the state was the dominant player, as the representative bodies (e.g. trade organisations, unions) were institutionalised and so under control. Thus the Fascists' idea of the national will could be carried out.
There is also a kind that's popular amongst some European states recently, whereby responses to economic issues are based on negotiations between the representative bodies. For example, in Italy during the 90s, pay negotiations were often done between the unions, employers' representatives and the government, largely to avoid strikes.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
Unfortunately, they don't offer any solutions of their own. They want to eliminate the system that addresses the problem, without putting anything else in its place. That makes the problem worse, not better.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
(who are, imho, 99% of the time liberal)
Back it up. If you give statistics, I want references. If you wish to avoid scrutiny, use the weak vague language made for such bullshitting occasions.
"..you're a vegan, are pro-abortion, etc.."
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who are "pro-abortion." Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter is a far cry from jumping for joy each time a poor girl in a terrible situation walks into a clinic.
I guess you don't give a damn about reading my full reply either.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The only States that could have a reasonable chance to secede would be a coalition with Montana, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. These States have enough nuclear weapons (ICBMS, SLBMS, and aircraft nuclear bombs) to deter any counterattack. Washington and Montana are the most important because Washington has the entire Pacific SSBN fleet, and Montana has an insane amount of ICBMs. These States are also in a position that would make it nearly impossible to blockade them. So a secession could work, it would just have to be timed and executed in an extremely precise manner (especially during the seizing of the nuclear weapons stage).
Perhaps the optimal situation would be if Canada supported the secession. Once the nuclear weapons are under control the war would stop since neither side would attack the other with nuclear weapons in such close proximity.
By jigsaw puzzle elections, I can only assume he's talking about Gerrymandering
> You know, that's how I feel whenever I see people with bumper stickers slathered all over their cars (who are, imho, 99% of the time liberal).
Depends on your state. I still see Bush/Cheney '04 (and '00) bumper stickers down here.
The only truly 'liberal' one I see spells out "coexist" with the holy symbols of a bunch of different religions, and I think that the only reason I see so much of it is that I see the same car all the time, though I have no idea whose it is.
What this means in practice is that you have freedom of speech, as long as you agree with whoever is currently in power. (Both parties agree that it's only fair when it agrees with their current platforms.)
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
No, government can be shaped by the people to reflect their needs and values, corporations cannot.
Which has a more direct effect:
A single vote among two candidates that represent a broad spectrum of issues (some I agree with, some I don't)... OR
Choosing DSL because my Cable Internet is too expensive, AND choosing the iPhone because I like the browser better instead of Nokia, AND driving a Honda instead of an American car brand because of better quality, AND going to the gas station across the street from the other one because it's 10 cents cheaper, AND... a thousand other daily decisions that DIRECTLY influence the behavior of various corporations because of the power of my money spending decisions.
Why people feel this powerlessness with the eeeevil corporations is beyond me. You have ultimate power, because you have what they desperately want: money.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The Libertarians care about you
Actually they don't care about anyone, which is fine. Libertarians believe in just enough government to keep law and order and strong contract law. Beyond that what you do with your life is your business. Both parties could stand to learn a bit from a Libertarian.
I think that it basically boils down to, the Republicans don't care about you because you don't have enough money and the Democrats don't care about you because you don't have enough money. The Libertarians care about you, but they think its wrong to help you.
Fixed that for you.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
but the Republicans aren't nearly as bad as the Democrats in that regard
Really? I don't see Democrats wanting to censor porn or fine a broadcaster for a "wardrobe malfunction".
If you want freedom, the only party that's interested in that is the Libertarians. The other two want to oppress you and take your money, just in slightly different ways.
Unfortunately this is all too true.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Why should they be forced to? Someone who makes the right choices in life (get an education, not get pregnant at 15, etc...) and becomes successful should now be forced to support those who made the poor choices? One of the reasons we're in this credit/housing mess right now is that we aren't letting people take the punishment for their poor choices. It's easy to take extreme risks when you think the government will always come to bail you out. Keep in mind I'm pointing at everyone from the greedy hedge fund guys on wall street to the hair dresser who buys an overpriced house 'because real estate goes up 20%/year.'
The richest among us give tons to charity and to taxes. The richest among us also spend A LOT of money (which actually provides...JOBS). As far as the sob story for the poor..save it. There are more opportunities for the poor than ever before yet many remain perpetually poor. People are simple creatures and will tend to gravitate towards what's the most beneficial to them. When you give more money for putting out more kids, give them subsidized housing, free food, and other freebies you're not teaching them to get a job.
It's sad that we've basically turned into a 'take care of me' society. Personal responsibility is a thing of the past. It's always someone else's fault. If people took more responsibility for themselves and not worry so much about everyone else the entire country would be a better place.
Fighting in Georgia would be the first legitimate war we've gotten into since 1812.
I don't know about Georgia being a legitimate war for the US, unless you mean someone invades Atlanta and we defend it.
Unless some massive political manipulation went on behind the scenes, it seems like the Georgians attacked their "breakaway region" of South Ossetia, because Ossetia is pro-Moscow. They killed a fair number of people, though according to South Ossetian doctors interviewed today on NPR, the Russian claim of thousands of dead South Ossetian civilians isn't true at all, the reality being hundreds of mostly wounded Ossetian militia and Russian peacekeepers.
Georgia's action was pretty bad. They started this conflict, and I can't imagine they didn't expect Russia to react. Why did they do it? Did Russian spies instigate it to give Russia an excuse? I doubt it. I'm also guessing Americans didn't prompt it, or at least didn't want the Georgians to do anything at that time, since America seems to have been caught off guard. Of course, that could be an act, but I digress.
Then Russia overreacts, or crosses the line, or whatever you want to call it, and not only do they go occupy the pro-Moscow region, but they verifiably do kill a lot of civilians. Then they agree to a cease fire demanding that they withdraw to Ossetia and immediately follow up by deploying throughout Georgia, and they bring along Ossetians who are drunk with power and alcohol as they follow behind the Russian military forces burning towns, killing people, and generally showing themselves to be sick assholes. Until then I'd say the Ossetians had whatever moral high ground could be had in this situation, since they started it all off by being attacked by surprise, but you don't win a lot of sympathy by massacring your neighbors.
Now America has the choice of fighting in Georgia. It won't do it because it knows it would be terrible for the economy and probably require pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention possibly prompting World War III. But even if there were no repercussions outside of Georgia, I disagree with you about this being a "legitimate" war for America. Georgia is an American ally and America has been rather public in urging Georgia to do things to spite Russia. Then Georgia attacked part of its own territory filled with people who want to be part of Russia, who are ethnically linked to the Ossetians across the border in Russia, and they did so probably because they thought they could pull a fast one while Russia was looking elsewhere. Russia certainly earns a ton of evil points, maybe as many as the U.S. did in invading Iraq, for its response. Then Russia earns a lot more evil points for their occupation. Yeah, America has been in Iraq for a lot of years now, which is very bad, but its managed to mostly, not entirely, but mostly be focused on rebuilding and improving local security. Also, despite a lot of expectations around the country and the world, America hasn't stolen Iraqi oil. Most economic trickery pulled off by the Bush administration in Iraq has been stealing money from American taxpayers and giving it to the companies run by or formerly run by Bush's cabinet and friends, while Iraq has been raking in oil money. I'm surprised that Bush has managed to resist the proverbial cookie jar that's right there protected by his own military.
So America has evil points for Iraq, Russia has, let's say, a comparable amount of evil accumulated in a very short period in Georgia, and they got those points by escalating a conflict with a vastly asymmetric response. Any American involvement in a Georgian war would necessarily be a further unjustifiable escalation, and I don't think America can handle being any more evil right now.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
You're right. Intelligent Design should be taught in Philosophy class, not Science class. However, it should still be taught.
All of this is correct, assuming "hawk" means "openly imperially aggressive" rather than simply "imperially aggressive". Carter, for instance, wasn't really a "hawk" by the standards usually applied, but was imperially aggressive as you point out.
One might say that, as far as politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties are concerned, "dove" means "duplicitous" and "hawk" means "the enemy we know".
I think a small state militia and guerilla forces would stand up well. In a civil war type scenario people generally don't want to fight each other.
Ugh... never mind. I did throw in that "in China", didn't I? Oops. Of course, there is the question of how many people in China are allowed to be anything other than Communists, but that can be saved for another time.
Ask a friend who actually was raised in China and never left how good a job their president is doing. The confused stare will give you a lot more things to wonder about when it comes to Chinese politics.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Insofar as the election was "stolen" (not given) and significant (as in, the parties were substantially different), it's a crime that shouldn't be forgiven or forgotten.
I'm not upset about Bush stealing the election from Gore because they're both slime. But that's me. I can see how people who have interests in line with Gore would be a lot more upset than I am, and if they're consistent, they won't forgive or forget.
I call BS.
Quite correctly you have pointed out that people can wind up screwed and unable to dig themselves out of. (Like by spawning crotch fruit they cannot yet afford.) It's true that it sucks to be them. There ain't a damn thing anybody can do about it BUT them. Money sure won't help. They've typically already demonstrated their incompetence at prioritizing they're spending (e.g. money not spent on rubbers but spent on pampers).
Libertarians understand we live in a mixed system. We'd just like to bring thoughts about things like 'freedom' back into the picture.
Nobody in the USA starves that is not mentally ill or refusing food for medical reasons. We spend billions every year on free obesity related health care for the poor.
In the end it is about where you set the safety net. Too high and you get generational welfare, too low and people will starve. We've got it just about right (after welfare reform under Clinton and the R congress).
The last thing we need is any more programs for the poor. Sucks to be them. But unless we want more of them we better not subsidize it any more.
The purpose in their lives is to serve as a bad example to others. Don't do what they did.
Sucks to be them...the alternative is 'What you did was just fine, keep it up. Make sure your kids don't go to school ether. Knocked up again, great, hopefully this one will be an athlete.'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What exactly was small about massive defense spending, and trying to legislate morality?
Supposedly not raising our taxes to do it.
The Fairness Doctrine was a United States FCC regulation requiring broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner deemed by the FCC to be honest, equitable, and balanced.
The "Fairness Doctrine" applied to outlets that were licensed by the FCC, using "public" airwaves. The thinking was that the airwaves were a limited resource, and that limitation shouldn't be used to shut out competing voices.
This may have been true WHEN there were limited airwaves available (AM). With FM, Satellite radio and FM Digital Radio, there are even more frequencies available for anyone to start broadcasting on. There are airwaves available for both sides to have shows on. What "good" is the Fairness Doctrine going to provide at this point when the spectrum bandwidth is available?
Ok. What is your opinion of Air America Radio? They had advertisers and listeners. Unfortunately, there were some very bad business decisions made early on that caused them to burn through money very quickly - including trying to buy airtime on too many stations too soon as opposed to building up the fan base and income more incrementally. They might still be on the air if that had not happened. Would it be useful to have Janeane Garofalo share air-time with Sean Hannity if that isn't what the listeners want to hear? (though... it would make for a very interesting and funny show (once only)).I do know that the alternate viewpoints don't have to be 1-on-1 or even specifically related to politics. Many people are reading it that way though.
Why couldn't a good Democrat talk-show host start a show at a single radio station and (if enough people agree and listen) work towards getting syndication? If the credentials are good and the audience exists, it is feasible.
--------
Sorry for posting as AC, but I modded earlier in this (very lengthy) topic.
Guerilla warfare works all over the world, why wouldn't it work in the US?
It's inconceivable that such a pacifist movement could ever be organized in the context we're talking about. Even Gandhi's movement existed in a context of violent resistance.
Are you suggesting farm subsidies for Kansas and Nebraska are the price New Yorkers and Californians must pay to avoid tyranny? Sounds like Danegeld to me. I think I'd rather place my trust in rule of law by one-man one-vote majority with guarantees for the civil liberties of individuals such as found in the Bill of Rights rather than have a system where the populous states are forced to pay off tiny minorities who have been granted a disproportionate influence because they happen to live in, say, Rhode Island. What you call a firewall against tyranny is itself just a different kind of tyrannic minority rule based on arbitrary geographic boundaries decided on by drunk surveyors.
FreeSpeech.org
Society is a myth, its a fiction. You can refer to it, but its a fabrication created in your mind not dissimilar to how a child would believe in Santa Clause. People are individuals not groups.
It is absolutely more fair than the alternative. Let's say you're the CEO of Ford, and someone has an accident and dies in one of your cars. Should the CEO be brought up on charges of Involuntary Manslaughter? On every single accident? Basically, every company CEO would be *personally* responsible for everything that ever happened in the company, whether they personally designed anything or not. Does that seem fair? You might be thinking, "Good! Then they'll be extra careful!" Except that it's literally impossible for anyone to be perfectly in charge of everything.
Is the CEO liable? Was there a decision made by someone at Ford that lead to the cause of the accident? These are the questions that need to be asked in order to answer. People should be liable for their actions that harm or defraud people. I believe it is perfectly fine to sell someone an unsafe product so long as the buyer understands the risks. Practically, every product sold has a certain level of risk if used in a particular manner. If a buyer accurately understands the risks but decides to uses a product in a unsafe manner then he absolves the manufacturer of any liability. If the CEO or someone else at Ford lied to people or knew about, yet ignored important safety information then yes, that person *not* his "fictional corporation" should be liable.
There is a reason corporations exist. It's because society couldn't function without them.
Society does not exist but people can function just fine without corporations AKA "make believe buisness people".
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
The Neo-cons and the Far-left are controlled by the same force.
By this force:
http://catholicvoice.co.uk/khazar.htm
I hope you understand, in the U.S. Senate, 13 Democrats, 1 Independent and 1 republican belong to this bastard race.
And they claim their entire population is only 1.3% of the U.S. population.
yeah, 1.3% my arse. 13% more like it.
Face it. We have a Zionist-occupied Government here. We all pay average of $60 per year per person going to support an illegitimate nation called Israel.
They would be completely impotent in a one-person-one-vote system in the US.
In fact, the voters almost totally disagree with the positions of their representatives. It makes one wonder why the parties continue to have so much inertia.
150 tanks and not one single cell phone recorded video.
Georgia went thru SO to close the tunnel. Clearly did not make it. Reports from local hospitals said about 250 injuries treated on the opening day of the war in SO. Typically injuries far outnumber deaths.
This does not square with 1600^H^H^H^H1200 dead and no video and no Red Cross allowed.
But to there credit they did agree to a ceasefire when Obama asked for one.
Do you know that the Jews are controlling our government right?
Call me cynical, but isn't that what is happening right now? I think there is plentiful evidence that both major parties are corrupt. And recent presidential elections seem to be decided by wedge issues and bogus votes.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Fixed that for you.
RINO
Someone who makes the right choices in life (get an education, not get pregnant at 15, etc...) and becomes successful should now be forced to support those who made the poor choices?
You seem to have fallen into the libertarian fallacy of assuming that if something bad happens to you, it's because you made the wrong choices; therefore, if you're clever enough, you'll never be the victim of misfortune. (The unspoken subtext is "if you're not clever enough to make all the right choices, who cares if you starve anyway?")
That's a nice fantasy, but it's not how the world works. Often, disaster strikes -- whether it's a natural disaster, an injury/illness, massive layoffs because of some change in the market, or anything else -- and there's nothing you could've reasonably done to avoid it. What then? (Hope you have rich friends who can support you, I guess.)
There are more opportunities for the poor than ever before yet many remain perpetually poor.
Again, you're blaming people for circumstances which are often beyond their control. If you've never been poor and don't know anyone who is, it can be hard to understand the difficulty of getting out of that situation, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
When you give more money for putting out more kids, give them subsidized housing, free food, and other freebies you're not teaching them to get a job.
When you kick them out on the street, you're not teaching them to get a job either; you're just punishing them for not having one already (or not having a good enough one), and possibly ruining their chances of getting one in the future. You aren't increasing the number or quality of available jobs, nor are you giving them the skills, experience, or connections they'll need to get a better job than they already have.
People don't stay poor because they like being poor, or because welfare pays better than working (which, considering how meager welfare benefits are, would indicate a serious problem in the job market). Until you get past those mistaken assumptions, you'll never understand the problem or be able to come up with a solution.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
(who are, imho,...)
Back it up....
Are you saying:
1. It really must not be his opinion, or
2. He's not humble, or
3. He is standing to closely behind you.
let's not confuse economic conservatives and social conservatives. "neocon" basically means social conservative
ROFL...it's called greed on both sides of the equation. People took loans they couldn't afford because they wanted to be part of the bubble that went 20%/year. I've never understood 'predatory' lending laws. Every loan has to clearly state the terms and both people must sign the contract of their own free will.
I dunno, you'd think they'd find one pretzel away from a President Cheney kinda scarey.
That was my first thought as well :)
You clearly know nothing of the history of the Vietnam War. During the Eisenhower administration, there were a handful of CIA propagandists serving the Diem regime, that's it. Kennedy, who basically bought into the Cold War policy of Eisenhower, drew the line against Communism in Vietnam since the Bay of Pigs was a colossal failure, as was the Berlin Wall and Cuba. In 1960, Kennedy sent the first 1500 troops into Vietnam, and it is accepted by most historians that the US involvement in actual combat was from 1963-1975. If you think the '54 election Diem canceled (not Eisenhower) resembled democracy, you are a living a fantasy. Ho Chi Mihn had a peasant revolt on his hands, and was becoming increasingly unpopular. You wanted to slime Republicans but just made yourself look ignorant instead. Use facts next time. Oh, and here's another fact: it was a Republican president who finally withdrew all American troops from Vietnam.
Sigs cause cancer.
Many, many people who have jobs still don't make enough to really support themselves and their families. They're one illness or injury away from bankruptcy and destitution.
Have you even been in such a situation? I have and am there now. I became a Libertarian when I heard about Ron Paul's run as president in 1988 on the Libertarian Party ticket. I researched the LP and became a libertarian, notice the small "l" I'm not registered as a Libertarian but as party unaffiliated. In 1996 after being lain off at my job, but attending college, and not having any medical or health insurance I was in an accident that caused a permanent disability. My medical bills came to more than $120,000, so I got the medical treatment I needed though I couldn't afford it. More than 10 years later I am still on disability. Yet I'm still a libertarian.
"Nobody should be forced to ... give up their money to help others" implies that when no one wants to help you out of the kindness of their hearts (as is often the case), you're just screwed.
Not being forced means just that, not being forced which is what the government is doing when they take the money you work to earn as tax. And just because you don't want government to take your money does not mean you're cold hearted. In college I helped handicapped students and though I majored in Computer Engineering I took American Sign Language, ASL, so I could communicate with hearing impaired students. At the tyme of my accident I was working on my third gallon of donating blood, I had already donated 16 tymes. Instead of having government take your money you may want to donate it yourself, to a cause you believe in or to a charity that is effective. Or you may want to invest some for your retirement. Starting when 18 years old if you invest $2000 a year for 7 years at 10% per annum, until you're 25 when you retire at 65 you'll have more than $870,000 invested, compounded interest does amazing things if given the chance. Do you think Social Security will pay you that much?
Libertarians would have us believe that when charity fails, it's better to let those unfortunate people starve
Now you're lying, lying, lying, lying.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Practically, every product sold has a certain level of risk if used in a particular manner. If a buyer accurately understands the risks but decides to uses a product in a unsafe manner then he absolves the manufacturer of any liability. If the CEO or someone else at Ford lied to people or knew about, yet ignored important safety information then yes, that person *not* his "fictional corporation" should be liable.
Read what you wrote! We have *exactly* the world you want! Individuals can and are liable when they "lie or know about important safety information." And what you call the "manufacturer" -- that you say should be protected from liability if consumers understand the risk -- is simply a collective entity with liability rules. And just for fun, in the case of disputes, we'll allow the consumer to sue the entity so as to determine whether it's the "manufacturer" or the management at fault. Congratulations, you have invented the corporation. :D
Society is a myth, its a fiction. You can refer to it, but its a fabrication created in your mind not dissimilar to how a child would believe in Santa Clause. People are individuals not groups.
You misunderstand what society is. You seem to think that society is a collective group of individuals, but it's not. Society is the *rules*, the *structure*, by which the individuals function together. Society is as real as the written law books, and as real as social ostracization if certain unwritten rules are broken.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I don't disagree with you at all. Using your car to proclaim your political beliefs doesn't know any partisan boundaries.
HOWEVER, I've actually kept track at times, and I think my estimate of 99% liberal is not that off (at least in some of the places I've lined in the past 5 years--Chicago (duh), VA/DC (duh), North Carolina (not exactly "blue state")). Not at all arguing that nobody conservative puts on bumperstickers (my favorite example "Hippie Peace -- More dangerous that nuclear war") but that they do so in much, much smaller number than liberals. Furthermore I can't remember the last time I saw a car with:
a) multiple conservative bumper stickers (there's one with multiple liberal bumper stickers parked across te street from me right now!)
b) anti-liberal politican bumper sticker (on the contrary, I see many that specifically target bush, or cheney, etc)
Also, I've noticed, purely anecdotal imho, but anybody with multiple bumper stickers (even if they're non-partisan stickers) seems much more likely to be a bad driver :-P
the govermentis our new mother regards, mike
You know have noticed the internet acronym "IMHO" in my post. Not exactly a common internet acronym i guess, though you see it fairly often on slashdot etc. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/imho (in short, in my humble opinion). Emphasis on the opinion. I'd be fascinated by any statistics, but I don't have any. I'll google around a little bit, but it's hard to track this kind of thing.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine works for the Democratic Party in NC, and a number of years ago they briefly stopped selling bumper stickers, only to face a lot of popular discontent from people who were big fans of the bumper stickers (and reversed their decision). ~shrug~
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who are "pro-abortion." Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter is a far cry from jumping for joy each time a poor girl in a terrible situation walks into a clinic.
That's true to a degree, but ultimately, whether you consider yourself "pro-choice," "pro-life," whatever, you're arguing over one action--aborting a fetus. And those on one side want that to be legal, and the other want it to be illegal. The rest is just semantics.
"Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter" seems to me a bit disingenuous. I don't see many (and I'll bow to your preferences and use the term "pro-choice") pro-choice people arguing against the government's vital role in funding Planned Parenthood for instance. If you're really taking a libertarian view, one should probably argue against planned parenthood's dependent relationship. Not trying to put words in your mouth here, maybe you're consistent in your position, but most people I've met haven't made that argument.
The Dems were never very organized to start with. Will Rogers has a quote about that.
The problem is that, while quite a lot of Dems and a Repubs are really in their party for a single issue, the Republicans' single issues conflict with each other, and the Democrats' do not. You can't be a theocrat and a libertarian at the same time, or in favor of small government and unending war, or anti-immigration and pro-big-business...
And those are just examples where the wheels have recently come off. There are actually a few more that should hit soon. For example, the small government people and the unending war people have a near trifecta incompatibility with the right-wing environmentalists, who are rapidly showing up from the religious right (Apparently, some of them have noticed humans are supposed to be the stewards of the earth.) All three of them disagree with the other two.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'm partial to Habermas' concept of the public sphere. We must form and reform institutions to be more democratic. Presidents aren't the things we decide in elections and voting isn't the only way to participate in a democracy. FWIW, I think our democracy is badly broken by only having two options who are no different. Vote Nader!
Bad things happen to good people. People pick themselves up with the resources they have and get moving again. At this point I have enough friends that I could find a job if needed and could help them if needed. None of us are 'rich.' I'm not sure why I should expect the government to help me if something bad happens to me, even if it was out of my control.
I've been there. Growing up we qualified for food stamps and the like, but my parents refused to take them. Instead my dad worked his full time job and then had endless side jobs selling anything he could (firewood in the winter, oysters in season, shrimp, etc...). I often had to help in order to get all the work done. We didn't have central heat or air. It sucks big time waking up and filling a kerosene heater in the freezing cold, but I've done that too. All all this was before I was 14. My parents taught me 3 things growing up. Work hard, get an education, and don't get a girl pregnant (my mom was pretty creative at this lol). So don't tell me I don't know poor or know how to get out of it.
At some point you have to get off your ass and do it yourself. I've written software for call centers. Basically entry level places for people who only went to HS. What's funny is that there is a lot of advancement opportunity and the ability to make good money, but that requires people to actually show up. Once there they can't start fights with one another over 'my babys daddy is her babys daddy.' As a society how do we fix that? It's definitely not a money issue.
I would argue if people don't like being poor they would be more proactive about getting out of it. The first thing they could do is stop popping out kids they can't afford.
I have many Eastern European friends, including Georgians, so it could just be my absorbed prejudices however, I do think Russia has gone beyond the pale on this.
Read what you wrote! We have *exactly* the world you want! Individuals can and are liable when they "lie or know about important safety information." And what you call the "manufacturer" -- that you say should be protected from liability if consumers understand the risk -- is simply a collective entity with liability rules. And just for fun, in the case of disputes, we'll allow the consumer to sue the entity so as to determine whether it's the "manufacturer" or the management at fault. Congratulations, you have invented the corporation. :D
I'm referring to manufacturer in the same way one would refer to a buisness. I mean the person, or individuals who created the product. Where did I create the fictional legal entity again?
You misunderstand what society is. You seem to think that society is a collective group of individuals, but it's not. Society is the *rules*, the *structure*, by which the individuals function together. Society is as real as the written law books, and as real as social ostracization if certain unwritten rules are broken.
I think I understand the concepts of society.. but then again I think I understand the concepts of Santa Claus too.. neither actually exist.
So.. let me get this straight.. your saying society is words on paper written in some book, correct? You said before that society could not function without corporations, how is it that this book functions, and why would you care if a book or the words in it were malfunctioning?
You think society exists, then prove it. I think its a type of religion created like other religions by people wishing to control other people, but if not, show me a picture of it or something.. because I'll show you a picture of Zeus and Jesus having coffee at Starbucks before you show me a "society". You are using it as a noun right? "The society was hurt by ignoring fictional people called corporations. The society ran across the road." I'm using it correctly right?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Erm...states can't gerrymander anything to affect their electoral college, unless they allocate the votes by district.
Which California does not, and that actually hasn't even been proposed or implemented anywhere. Current proportional allocation proposals takes the entire state vote and divides that among the electors, not assigns it by district.
While I'd argue that doing it by Congressional district (and having the majority of the state pick the two votes that correspond to Senators) would be a good idea (Assuming ungerrymandered districts), that is not, and has never, actually been done in any state ever, to my knowledge.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I read your full reply. Oh, are you referring to the part where you say:
I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system...
By 'fair', I guess you mean fair to both political parties. I don't care about political parties. If California enacts a more representative system for distributing our electoral votes, that's all I care about. I don't want to wait around for other states to get their act together.
My god, you think voting or emigrating is escape, but that it's completely infallible to start your own company? Try emigrating from North Korea, you moron. The state has exclusive license over the use of force, and they usually don't allow corporations to enforce their will physically.
There were no voices saying that the previous Republican majority wasn't conservative until after the government failed miserably at everything it tried to do.
That, honestly, is the real difference between the parties. The Republicans are always 'conservative' until they inevitably fail, at which point they've never been conservative.
That's worse than the 'no true scotsman' fallacy. That fallacy, for those who don't know, is when you say 'No true X has the characteristics of Y', and then, when someone finds an X that does indeed have Y, you assert that this X isn't really an X...it's an exception, or a bad example for some reason, and shouldn't be considered an X.
But, with 'conservatives', it's like we've started that fallacy and have managed to eliminate half the population of Scotland, and not found a single one yet. It's like the claim here is 'no true Scotsman is from Scotland' or something, and we've had to discard Every. Single. Scotman we've run across.
The one that hasn't been kicked out of the party, Ronald Reagan, is still a 'conservative' because he didn't fail, despite not actually following any of the characteristics of 'conservativism'.
Meanwhile, Democrats do get called on their behavior. They are constantly accused of being too far to the right by, well, the whole damn internet. The actions they do that are inconsistent with the left are criticized at the time, not later, when they've failed horrible and everyone's looking for a reason to that it isn't their fault.
Just ask Joseph Lieberman. He got kicked out of the damn party. Not for failure, not retroactively, but because he votes like a Republican, period.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
That specific morality "for many" is based on a 2000+ year old religious text in its various incarnations used by Abrahamaic religions and on other religious beliefs. That ancient Greeks, who practiced a different religious system of beliefs before being conquered by Rome, strengthens the argument that the bias is a religiously-based moralistic choice rather than an ethical one.
There are no ethical reasons against same sex relationships. However, due to the higher risk of STD transmission, there are ethical reasons against unprotexted sex with multiple partners (as with hetero sexual sex, but higher due to the higher risk of disease transmission in anal sex).
It depends on your definition of usury. Not everybody is happy with the payday loan people and loan sharking is still not legal. The "any interest is proscribed usury" definition tends to be the religious moral one. The ethical one is that some expectation of interest for the loaning of capital to begin new projects is acceptable, but that the expected return must be proportional to the risk and should not result in de-facto indentured servitude for the lendee.
Generally I would have to say that ethics are derived based on an expectation of fairness and balance between individual and societal needs.
Morality claims to be the same thing - and often coincides - but is imposed by a religious oligarchy who may include their self-interest foremost.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
There are more opportunities for the poor than ever before yet many remain perpetually poor.
Again, you're blaming people for circumstances which are often beyond their control. If you've never been poor and don't know anyone who is, it can be hard to understand the difficulty of getting out of that situation, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
I was born poor. I came from a low income family, my dad was enlisted in the US Air Force from which he retired, and my mom worked her way through a 2 year technical school to become a lab tech in a hospital. While raising 3 children, I have 2 sisters. Even though we were poor, all three of us went on to college, luckily our mother taught us we could be almost anything we wanted to be as long as we worked at it and encouraged us to get an education. So, my older sister and I went into the military then to college after we got out. My younger sister worked full tyme while attending college. The older sister in now a nurse and the younger one earned her Masters and became a Certified Public Accountant. Not only does she run her own accounting firm, she also owns a few rental properties, including the apartment building I live in now.
People don't stay poor because they like being poor, or because welfare pays better than working
Bullshit! At one employer though I worked full tyme I didn't have insurance, the employer didn't offer it, so I looked into getting my own. Unfortunately because I made only a little above minimum wage and there's no free market in health or medical insurance, I couldn't afford to get any myself. So someone suggested I try medical assistance in the county I lived in. There they told me I made too much but if I quit my job I'd be able to get medical assistance. I would have also been able to get food stamps. Financially speaking I would have been better if I quit however I believe each person has to try to make it on their own and not sponge off of society.
Should there be a Law?
It should be noted that President Clinton cut the military - manpower, order of battle, the whole show - some 40%.
Not quite in half, but close enough.
The results have been on display in Georgia for about a week.
I think that it basically boils down to, the Republicans don't care about you because you don't have enough money and the Democrats don't care about you because you don't have enough money. The Libertarians care about you, but they think its wrong to force others to help you.
Fixed that for you.
Fixed that for you.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who are "pro-abortion." Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter is a far cry from jumping for joy each time a poor girl in a terrible situation walks into a clinic.
Well in general, it's not different than classifying people who are anti-abortion as being anti-choice or against women's rights in general. That said, in the more narrow cases, I find partial birth abortions and the practice of allowing failed abortion, live-born babies to just die so horrific and inhumane that I don't think it unfair at all to classify someone in favor of those as pro-abortion. I get the slippery slope argument but there is a bright damn line and once a child is outside of the womb & born, it's clearly infanticide.
Vote Quimby.
For example, if you can't find a job that pays well enough to feed your family, the Libertarian response is "Well, the market has spoken. You aren't needed. Sorry."
FUD, FUD, and more FUD.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You know, plenty of other rag-tag militia have had considerable success against modern armies in the past couple of decades, what makes you think that American revolutionaries would be any different?
Because even more rag-tag militia's have not met success, but mass slaughter. The Confederates couldn't pull it off, except they were a first class army instead of a militia.
The fact that they had to qualify liberalism with "classical" more or less highlights that there really is no "liberal" either.
The only conservative or liberal is "I like how it is right now"/"I don't like how it is right now". I think ~70% of americans are liberal, to the shock, dismay and disgust of ~20% of us. McCain, for the conservative, does want to make some changes, that left wing bastard.
It's unhelpful in the extreme to label a side of an issue as being liberal or conservative, big government or small government, capitalist or communist. That enables people to pick their side by associating with their friends. I want it to be illegal to label a position. I'll work on legislating that.
I think we want our government selection to be something more educated and thoughtful than "Hook'em Horns".
You may disagree with me on national health care, but I hope it's because you've personally evaluated your health care spending (and medical troubles), talked to your friends about their medical excursions, and really looked at your corporate health care. I believe you can do those things and still disagree with me, and that's just fine. But believing the bullshit talking man on TV because he's wearing an elephant on his shirt and his jersey says "McCain", should disqualify you from voting.
I want to live in a country with more pro-gun, anti-big business, pro health care, anti-monopoly, pro-capitalist, anti-centralization, pro-civil rightsists, and all the shades therein, and fewer republicans and fewer democrats. All the issues are vastly complicated, and finding the right mix and accurate information is pretty tough, we deserve more viewpoints and more choices than "a" or "b". Further, for those with lots of power and little concern for the greater good, who constantly work to muddle the issues and spread disinformation: it's much easier to work us over with only 2 positions than with 10.
"I'd imagine that most Democrats are socialists who look towards the Nordic welfare states."
Oh, I'd imagine most Democrats don't realize the word "Nordic" refers to more than exercise equipment.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I think I understand the concepts of society.. but then again I think I understand the concepts of Santa Claus too.. neither actually exist.
Okay, I get it. You think you have some grand philosophical insight that no one has ever thought of -- abstractions don't have physical reality. -gasp!-
Sorry, but this is just childish. Everybody knows that we are under no physical obligation to follow the abstract rules of society. Everybody knows this. It's just most people consider it 1) so obvious as to be not worth mentioning, and 2) completely irrelevant to a practical, fulfilled life.
You can pretend that you're so intellectually above everyone that only you realize that you have "true mental freedom from the constraints of abstractions" but it's just silliness. If your actions are influenced in any way by external rules (such as, say, paying the rent), then you have recognized the reality of the abstraction of society. After all, if it doesn't exist in any way (similar to God), why would it influence your behavior?
I know, I know. The rental contract's abstraction is as real as Santa Claus. True, but Santa Claus doesn't toss you out of your apartment if you don't pay the rent.
And by the way, when you get down to it, *everything* is unprovable to be real, except your own existence*. But most of us choose to play the fictional game that comes in through our senses.
*Well, this is actually arguable, but tangential to my point.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Funny, in my VA/DC neighborhood there are plenty of right-wing stickers. Quite a few "W '04" stickers, a particularly memorable "'Vegetarian' is an ancient Indian word for 'bad hunter'", and various others of this sort. It may not be 50/50, but it's nowhere near 99/1.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I support Indiana's independence movement!
Even if passed, what would stop a foriegn blogger from "violating this policy"? This isn't the 70's foolish Washington.
Wrong. This sounds like something a Randian would say.
Corporate power is backed by the government; that's why it's insidious.
You try to equate Ayn Rand to bad, however you advocate just what she did, reduce the power of government. Reduce that power and corporations won't have the power they do now.
Try getting electric power from a different company than your local utility. Sorry, there's no competition, as it's a monopoly. The government has granted them a monopoly, though they're regulated.
That's right, government made those corporations powerful. If government hadn't then there would be competition and not a monopoly. Fact is is you're arguing Libertarian positions.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
See, that's sorta damn stupid.
If the government wants there to be 'fair', unmoderated forums...well, um...nothing's stopping them from building a web site. People might think this is silly, but that's partially what the National Mall in Washington is for, so it's not like it's without precedent.
They could even organize it by having different forums for each branch of the government, each executive department, and each proposed congressional bill. And the entire US code. Make each comment require a captcha to cut down on spamming. (I don't think that would infringe on 1st amendment rights, at least if they handicap-accessible it.) Expire each comment after a week. Let people register an ID when registering to vote, or post anonymously or pseudononymously. Do not keep logs. Tada, it's the National Mall, online, although much better organized.
But, no, that would be too logical.
You know, to a certain extent, what you're talking about already happens...except it happens at the level of the forums themselves, instead of within a forum. No one can stop anyone else from making a blog that says whatever they want.
Actually, that happens in real life, too. The right to free speech means I can give a press conference at my house..and you don't have the right to run in and interrupt it.
You can, of course, hold your own press conference, and if I do it somewhere outside my control, you can interrupt me...and it is a valid point that nowhere on the internet is 'outside someone's control', but the obvious solution, as I said, if this is actually a problem, is for the government to build such a place, not set rules about what happens in my house.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Morality claims to be the same thing - and often coincides - but is imposed by a religious oligarchy who may include their self-interest foremost.
Almost, but not necessarily.
I subscribe to no religious dogma, other than the one I made up myself, and that explicitly makes it an oligarchy - but of what power and influence? I can not impose my moral beliefs on anyone other than myself - even my girl thinks I'm nuts. I lack the ability to force compliance with my beliefs. This is true with many people. This is the crux of my position.
Just because you can cite examples of morality being an agent of an ancient belief system doesn't make it ubiquitously so. One could cite modern beliefs about climate change on both sides to counter that argument.
The root is in the emotions, not the source. Many Catholics have left the Church and then cited their morals as being different - explicitly so.
The solution libertarians offer, laissez-faire capitalism, is the greatest engine of wealth creation mankind has ever discovered.
With respect to predatory lending, it sucks, but some people are stupid. Really stupid, or else they've been brought up in a culture where they've been actively discouraged from learning anything. If someone was too dumb to avoid being exploited, that doesn't necessarily mean that being exploited in such a manner was somehow deserved.
Being scammed by a con artist usually involves a bunch of voluntary steps, too. I don't think that a society where that kind of predatory behavior was unregulated would be a very pleasant one to live in.
There's a huge difference between guerilla fighting, armed insurrection, and an all out war. The Confederates entered into the last one, as did Saddam's army. Both got predictably flattened. Al Qaeda in Iraq and the various other insurgent groups are carrying out one of the first two, and are having considerably greater success. This is no coincidence.
Raising an army and fighting the US Army on the battlefield is idiocy. Carrying out guerilla warfare against the US Army is a smart way to get what you want in war.
Incidentally I'm having a hard time thinking of any examples where such rag-tag groups have met with such sudden, massive defeat as is predicted in recent times. Iraq and Afghanistan have both been significant successes for the enemy, although they seem to be very slowly losing overall. The Chechens gave the Russians a really rough time for years. The Viet Cong beat the US Army and the Mujahideen beat the Russians. FARC seems to be essentially impossible to defeat despite extensive US military help to the Colombians. The Israeli army repeatedly beat the ever-living crap out of their neighbors in only days, but falls flat against organizations such as Hamas. What are some examples of modern insurgencies which were met with mass slaughter against a modern army?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
There were no voices saying that the previous Republican majority wasn't conservative until after the government failed miserably at everything it tried to do.
Not true. Many conservatives called the Bush Administration out for No Child Left behind being decidedly un-conservative. Clearly anti-federalist - a big chunk out of state & local rights/control. Beyond that, there were many compelling arguments by conservatives (liberals at the time we very much in favor of NCLB though they later changed) that NCLB was unconstitutional and as a result, at most, participation was optional.
Personally, it's always been about fiscal responsibility money/spending being about as objective of view of government reach as we have. Right or wrong, to some extent, I've always been able to partially justify Reagan's deficit spending because it was necessary for the times and ultimately deserves at least some credit for winning the cold war. Where the circumstances of the times give Reagan some justification (excuse) the Bush administration never had any such reason other than they just liked to spend money.
Vote Quimby.
Good posts in this story, RM 101, thanks.
Fair enough,t hough I had meant to imply that they felt it wrong as government agents (IE, using someone elses money), not as individuals.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
If we were only spending the money needed to defend ourselves, we wouldn't need to nearly outspend the rest of the world put together.
Bzzzzzt, thank you for playing. We do not 'nearly' outspend the rest of the world put together. :)
We do outspend the rest of the world put together, thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan putting us over the edge.
In fact, spending on Iraq and Afghanistan alone beats every other country in the world. Twice. I.e, if you average that in half for two wars, we're spending more on each war than then the second most expensive military in the world, France, spends for their entire military.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I agree with your point that people should aim for economic stability (skills, job, whatever) before having children.
But what about people who are stricken with illness? I know a number of people that can't work anymore.
They were injured (someone dropped a tree on his back) or fell ill.
One friend, pneumonia destroyed 3/4 of his lung capacity. Previously, he was fairly successful and loved his job, would work 6 days a week voluntarily.
Another suffers from chronic migraines and fatigue, he's spent years researching but to no avail. Doctors say he has "chronic fatigue" (catch-all phrase for similar symptoms) and can't help him.
Should we just leave them for dead? These guys gave a damn, and were contributing members of society until something tragic happened.
I don't agree with that. No sir.
I dare you to name a single Republican position that's supported by more than 60% of the population.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter" seems to me a bit disingenuous. I don't see many (and I'll bow to your preferences and use the term "pro-choice") pro-choice people arguing against the government's vital role in funding Planned Parenthood for instance.
It seems perfectly consistent: like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction. It's likely that a comprehensive and fact-based reproductive-education program delivered to teens would reduce the number of abortions (for example, by informing kids that, yes, condoms actually are a very effective form of contraception; as opposed to dishonestly denying this fact, as do some government-supported "abstinence-only" programs).
Facts are always better than fables or wishful thinking.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who are "pro-abortion." Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter is a far cry from jumping for joy each time a poor girl in a terrible situation walks into a clinic.
I think you'd also be hard-pressed to find a Republican who is "pro-war". Wanting to do what needs to be done to protect our interests and defend our nation is a far cry from jumping for joy each time a soldier or civilian is killed.
So when I bash the Republicans for not being conservative enough, I need to also bash the Democrats for not be liberal enough, and while I'm at it, the greens for not being green enough and the libertarians......all right! Everyone back to their corners!
I'm going to need a government grant of at least $20K/year in order to maintain my exercise of free speech blog to their standards.
How would public blogs and forums like SlashDot maintain this standard - they have no control over the views of their membership. This is clearly another hair-brained nanny-state liberal idea that can't work. They only promote it because in the battle for ideas, all they bring is a knife to a gunfight.
Oh, please. Name the industry that is so dominated by patents that newcomers can't enter it.
Patents aren't the only way big businesses control competition, licensing and other regulations are used as well. Try to start a lawn care business in some places. Growing up I used to cut some people's grass, but if I tried now I'd have to have a license in some cities and counties.
Sure, Microsoft can break their own products, but they can't break everyone else's products
Oh but Microsoft did break other people's programs, Vista will not run many programs that run quite well on XP. The same with Windows 2000, NT4, ME, '98, and '95. MS doesn't even release the APIs to Windows developers in tyme for them to release updated software. Even if they are a member of MSDN, which can cost at least $700. Even then there are several different licenses. Because MS delays releasing the APIs MS's own divisions can release a product before the competition does.
The first company that produces a *good* Windows clone will make billions. They'll instantly get 20-30% marketshare.
In theory perhaps but not in real life. You don't think MS won't slap a lawsuit on a competitor who tries to clone Windows? MS has a war chest for lawsuits of hundreds of millions of dollars, both to beat competitors over the head, and when they steal someone else's patent.
also notice that corporations are OWNED by "the people" -- which you also can own -- and that's a hell of a lot more direct power.
Corporations are owned by people, not "the people". Many people own no stocks in corporations. You even have less of a chance to influence corporations as a stockholder than you have influencing politicians as a voter. Unless you own a hugh chunk of stocks.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction.
Yes, that is certainly part of Planned Parenthood's mission. Let's not forget that it's also an organization that was originally called the Birthcontrol League and that PP performs the majority of all abortions in the US. Ergo, when the Government funds PP, it funds a lot of abortions. I am very torn about abortion, and have argued both sides in the past, and don't particularly feel like taking a position now (lame, I know..) ... however, I think you illustrate very well the typical pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you prefer..) viewpoint that I mentioned to the GP. If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't. Frequent problem with both the left and the right.
Being scammed by a con artist usually involves a bunch of voluntary steps, too. I don't think that a society where that kind of predatory behavior was unregulated would be a very pleasant one to live in.
I'm not arguing against regulation -- though, in this case, I don't think it was people being fooled so much as being greedy (by trying to flip their house), or thinking somehow things would work out when their payments were so high compared to their income.
The point to all this is that at least I can choose which lender to deal with. There is no law that compels me to deal with a "predatory" lender.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Then why is it considered by many for sex between two men to be immoral? The ancient Greeks had no problem with it. It used to be unethical to practice usury, now thats the standard.
When people talk of ethics, they seem to speak as an individual communicating the the agreed terms of a larger community.
People don't seem to make ethics a personal deal, it's like they view it as a rule over many, but people see their morals as very individual and unique things.
I think that, with Republicans, gay sex is just a moral issue. However, once they brought it into the arena of legislation, it turned into an ethics issue, because now, the lawmakers have to set an example. If they don't follow the ideals that they are trying to push, they are just hypocrites. I'm not so up to date on what Larry Craig's public stance on gay marriage in sex was, but once he was caught, he was stuck trying to get out of an ethical quandary.
I can not impose my moral beliefs on anyone other than myself - even my girl thinks I'm nuts. I lack the ability to force compliance with my beliefs. This is true with many people. This is the crux of my position.
You bring up a good point about not being able to impose your beliefs on anyone else. Really, you shouldn't be imposing your beliefs on others. A counterpoint that I learned from Church is that it's helpful to find someone that has the similar beliefs as you. Being a Christian, getting married to another Christian gives you a spiritual point that you can share with one another. It's a deeper connection that you can make with your spouse.
Exactly - organized crime (ie corporations) would take over if the feds withdrew.
Except Libertarians wouldn't let corporations do what they want: "What would libertarians do about concentrations of corporate power?".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The point of the matter is that most libertarians I know ... just believe in freedom of choice.
Well, most libertarians that post on Slashdot only believe in freedom of choice when it comes government benefits that they are unlikely to benefit from. They come up with all kinds of crazy logic to try to argue that people should be forced to pay for the military but not social programs.
Bottom line: whatever government programs you're talking about, you end up with a free rider problem. The US government spends about $10K per person per year. That works out to $40K per year for a family of four.
So some guy buys a large screen TV and only has $35K for the government - then his neighbor finds out and only ponies up $30K and pretty soon everyone's only kicking in a few hundred 'cause no one wants to be the chump.
The way I see it, if a government program improves the general welfare and if most people want the program then it's OK to force people to kick in their share.
Fighting in Georgia would be the first legitimate war we've gotten into since 1812.
Do you think that the Civil War wasn't a legitimate war? Also WWI and WWII. I think that those were legitimate threats. Hitler wanted to take over the world. If he continued down the line, we definitely would have to worry about what he's doing (if anyone can recall, think about the Season 4 opener of Star Trek: Enterprise)
I don't think Fox news is particularly "fair and balanced", why don't they start with that before planning to censor the internet again.
Government grants this protection to business men so they can operate with immunity. Does this seam fair?
It is absolutely more fair than the alternative.
But it not fair to the person who owns his or her own business. Let's use your example of Ford. Let's say Ford is a private company not a corporation, is it fair the owner can be sued for wrongful death but the CEO of the competition isn't?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
In other words, they're the only political organization who disagree with the "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" rhetoric coming from the Demopublicans.
Show me where the Democrats are saying this.
Worrying about your neighbor's freedom because you think your freedoms are next up on the chopping block is a feature, not a bug.
You should reread what I said and tell me where it was bad to protect other people's freedoms based on selfish motivations. You'll have to reread it a lot, because it isn't there.
Now it just sounds like you're comparing hitler and political bloggers
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GODWIN'D
While Teddy Roosevelt may have indeed expanded government, it was back in 1901-1909. I believe the Roosevelt you were referring to was good ole Franklin D.
It's because society couldn't function without them.
Oh darn, I realized I missed this. The reason corporations exist is not because society could not function without them. If this were true society would not exist now, society is thousands of years old yet the first corporation was granted a corporate charter in 1600. That corporation was the Honourable East India Company. The next corporation chartered was the Dutch East India Company, in 1602, which was also the first corporation to issue stocks. In exchange for limited liability Corporate Charters were granted only if it served the common, or public, good. Once a corporation no longer did it could have it's charter revoked. But thst has not happened in a long tyme, not in the US at least.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The correct response was, Republicans are trying to control video game content, and most blogs are progressive, consistently 70%+ of Americans support the progressive positions on issues, and the reason talk radio is so heavily weighted towards conservatives is because mass media corporations bought almost all the radio broadcast licenses in the country and refuse to play anything but right wing extremists on their networks.
There are some distinctions between a rental contract and society. A rental contract is an agreement two people enter voluntarily, they create a document detailing what is expected from each other etc.. This is a good thing. Only good results when people voluntarily interact. (granted that interaction is free from force or fraud, but then it wouldn't be voluntary if force or fraud was used.)
However.. rules of "society" are *not* voluntarily and are heavily enforced by the crazed believers of society; enforced with threats, fines, jail, and eventually guns. I think these people are as crazy as religious fanatics of old who would sacrifice people to their god and claim that their way was the only way and if we did not follow the rules some sort of hell would come about.
You said so yourself.. that without the unnatural system of corporations and the practice of creating fictional people to control buisness that society would fall apart.. Do you really think that chaos would result and fire would rain from the sky if fictional people did not operate businesses?
The practice of creating corporations breaks the natural concept and practice of the free market because it absolves people of responsibility, that's all I'm saying.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
The No True Scotsman fallacy is only a fallacy when your "no P is a Q" is a synthetic proposition, rather than an analytic one. If one were to say "no bachelor is married", and then someone stood up and said "I'm a married bachelor!", the first speaker would be perfectly correct in replying "if you are married, then you are not a true bachelor, despite what you may call yourself".
Of course, that's not incredibly helpful for us here because most of the qualities people take to be inherent in anyone rightly labeled "conservative" are actually synthetic rather than analytic qualities. About the only true "no true conservative..." sentence is "no true conservative favors rapid change", since the meaning of "conservative" is "opposed to rapid change". It just so happens that western societies and governments have recently (for the past century or two) been moving away from a very libertarian, capitalist model, and so those in favor of slowing or reversing that change get called "conservatives". But there's an even older flavor of "conservative" who was never happy with the move to that libertarian model in the first place, who are still trying to put a stop to the so-called "moral decadence" that it brought about. Two very different viewpoints, both calling themselves, and getting called, "conservative" - so who are the true conservatives then?
You can be a "true conservative" and support just about anything position that has any presence in the present, as to be a "true conservative" is just to want to conserve such things they way they are. Calling any particular political platform (aside from "lets be cautious with the changes here") "conservative" is like a Vietnamese person calling a European atheist a "Christian" (because European = Christian in his mind), or a medieval European calling an Indian Buddhist a "Hindu" (because Indian = Hindu in his mind). It's a sloppy substitution based on an inaccurate correlation. "European" and "Christian" do not mean the same thing, even though many or most Europeans may be Christians, so they cannot be used as synonyms like that. If you tried to do so and use that in support of an argument - e.g. "Most Englishmen are Protestant -> no true Englishman is Catholic" - then you would be committing the No True Scotsman fallacy.
But coming back from that tangent, my point is that words have a sort of historical inertia of meaning that persists despite peoples' misuse of them. Just because a bunch of authoritarian radicals (a radical being an extreme progressive, someone who wants lots of change made very quickly, the very opposite of a conservative) call themselves "conservatives" does not mean that they are, in fact, conservative. People with similar ideologies may have been conservative in times past, but since that ideology is a world different from how things are today, such people are not conservatives but in fact radicals.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The "Fairness Doctrine" applied to outlets that were licensed by the FCC, using "public" airwaves. The thinking was that the airwaves were a limited resource, and that limitation shouldn't be used to shut out competing voices.
The Fairness Doctrine never applied to print. There, your only restrictions were the laws against slander.
The question is, is the internet more like a news stand or broadcast? Since you don't have to have a license to run a web site, I think the press model (say what ever you like short of slander) should apply to the internet.
Ah, today I'd ask if a license is needed to broadcast. However I've already answered it. No, licenses aren't needed from a technical aspect to broadcast. The reason licenses exist now is because big businesses and the mass media want to limit competition.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Libertarians care about you
No, they really don't.
"Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content"
O, rly? So they're opposed to the PATRIOT Act, mandatory "family friendly filters" in publicly funded access points, and the DMCA, are they? Try asking them that.
There are many definitions what "moral" and "ethics" mean but the defintion I learned in school and I stick by is that ethics are the rules that you live by. Such as no stealing, no lying, no killing.
Moral is how well you stick to those rules.
So if I have the above rules but lie and steal then my morals suck ;)
If for instance I don't have the rule about stealing then I can steal all I want and still have good morals.
"This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (or STFU, for you un-hip people)."
You get that response a lot in America too, sadly...
Bad things happen to good people. People pick themselves up with the resources they have and get moving again.
Sure, when they have the resources to do that. When they don't, they just spiral downward.
At this point I have enough friends that I could find a job if needed and could help them if needed. None of us are 'rich.'
Hey, good for you! You're lucky to have that. Not everyone does, though.
I'm not sure why I should expect the government to help me if something bad happens to me, even if it was out of my control.
Here's why: because you live in a country where a majority of your fellow citizens think your life shouldn't be ruined just because something bad happens to you, especially if it was out of your control. They think that partly because they realize it could happen to them too, but also because, you know, they care about people.
I've been there. Growing up we qualified for food stamps and the like, but my parents refused to take them. Instead my dad worked his full time job and then had endless side jobs selling anything he could
Again, it's great that your folks were fortunate enough to have those opportunities. Unfortunately, not everyone has them.
The problem with anecdotes like that is that they're only applicable to the people who were involved. Yes, congratulations, you found an opportunity, but that doesn't mean a thing to someone who's in a similar situation but doesn't have a similar opportunity.
(His anecdote, on the other hand, does prove something: it proves that "get off your ass and do it yourself!" doesn't always work, and that we need a better solution to handle those situations.)
At some point you have to get off your ass and do it yourself. I've written software for call centers. Basically entry level places for people who only went to HS. What's funny is that there is a lot of advancement opportunity and the ability to make good money, but that requires people to actually show up.
Well, they'd like you to think there's a lot of advancement opportunity (because they want you to work there), but there really isn't. At best, it's the luck of the draw: some people will get the customers that lead to a bonus, and others won't. You can show up every day, work as many hours as they're willing to give you (which might not be full time), and at the end of it still find yourself earning minimum wage.
As a society how do we fix that? It's definitely not a money issue.
Don't be so sure of that. The way to fix it is to give people the skills and opportunities to climb up the ladder. Money can play a big part in that: for example, think of all the people who could go to college if they didn't already have to spend all their time working to support their families.
(This is the part where someone chimes in with a story about how HIS daddy worked a 12 hour shift at the mill every day and then walked ten miles uphill in the snow to the university, listening to lectures through the open window because he couldn't afford tuition, and anyone who can't pull off the same feat is just a lazy bum.)
I would argue if people don't like being poor they would be more proactive about getting out of it. The first thing they could do is stop popping out kids they can't afford.
Well, I'm with you on that one. But beyond that, there isn't a lot of bumper-sticker advice that will really help. There are plenty of poor people who don't have kids, too.
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I'm sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough. They don't offer any solutions that work on an individual level - that is, solutions that improve the lives of the people who need it most.
Laissez-faire capitalism is fine for the country as a whole. It can make us all better off on average, but that doesn't mean that any given person will be better off.
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a lot of Democrats had to answer to teacher's unions. I know quite a few dems came out in favor of NCLB, but to imply that there was across the board support for it from liberals is completely false.
No, I don't think so. You would've had health care and food stamps, but you would've been worse off overall (since you still have to pay rent, utilities, transportation, etc., not to mention the money you'd like to spend on entertainment and other luxuries).
Perhaps I should have said if I had had an accident I would have been better off by quiting work. Well I later found out. Almost 12 years ago I did have an accident. I was lain off from my last job and was in college when I was hit while riding my bike after my classes. I suffered a permanent disability and have been collecting Social Security Income for more than 11 years. I absolutely hate needing it, having paid into it when I did work makes it barely bearable.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ah, but you ignore the unintended consequences. If a radio station has to deal with TFD, then maybe its better to stay out of politics altogether.
Were this to prove 100% true across all broadcast media, I might be mostly OK with that, in large part because I think a spectrum free of politics could be preferable to what we've got today.
But political coverage didn't go away under TFD, so there's not a lot of evidence this makes it impossible to operate a broadcast operation profitably, or even preferentially.
Tweet, tweet.
Libertarians would have us believe that when charity fails, it's better to let those unfortunate people starve
Now you're lying, lying, lying, lying.
Then, what do you do when charity fails? If insufficient money is being given freely, and without government intervention or loss of life, what is the libertarian course of action?
Try emigrating from North Korea, you moron.
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about the USA. I didn't realize the North Koreans had their own Democratic Party, Republican Party, RIAA, and independent music labels.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Have you even been in such a situation? I have and am there now.
Indeed I have, and I'm very close to people who still are.
More than 10 years later I am still on disability. Yet I'm still a libertarian.
I don't doubt that. It's funny how people will stick to philosophies and political parties that work against their own interests, isn't it?
Not being forced means just that, not being forced which is what the government is doing when they take the money you work to earn as tax. And just because you don't want government to take your money does not mean you're cold hearted.
No, I'm sure there are plenty of kind-hearted libertarians. But just because they're nice people doesn't mean the policies they favor will actually help as many people as a government safety net. There were charities before any of our social programs existed; voluntary donations weren't enough then, nor are they now.
Or you may want to invest some for your retirement. Starting when 18 years old if you invest $2000 a year for 7 years at 10% per annum, until you're 25 when you retire at 65 you'll have more than $870,000 invested, compounded interest does amazing things if given the chance. Do you think Social Security will pay you that much?
Why would I? Social Security is a form of insurance, not an investment.
Do you think that 10% figure is a guarantee of some sort? If you invest wisely, maybe you'll earn that much, or maybe you'll choose wrong and lose it all. For the people who can't afford to invest in the first place, it's moot anyway. The point of Social Security is to ensure that you get something no matter what happens in the market or how much disposable income you had in the past.
[Libertarians would have us believe that when charity fails, it's better to let those unfortunate people starve]
Now you're lying, lying, lying, lying.
I wish I were, but sadly I'm not. They have no solution for the cases where voluntary charity can't provide for some of the people who can't provide for themselves. That means those people will suffer and die, right? Unless... hrm... you're not a Breatharian, are you?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I think it is basically a good idea; the only problem being how to define and enforce fairness. Several countries in Europe have something similar, which is why European news seem so much more varied than American news. The broadcasting services in Europe seem to have originated mostly as public services, and building in some sort of 'fairness-doctrine' only seemed natural, since the state is supposed to be the servant of the whole of the population, not just the party that happens to be in power.
The sad fact is that American news services are anything but balanced, which at the end of the day harms democracy. How can the electorate make an informed choice about anything when the news are all distorted? People aren't stupid - they can see that each broadcaster has its own agenda, so they give up trying to find out what really goes on and only tune in on the channels that don't challenge their chosen belief; and in effect politics, political news and political ideologies have become irrelevant backgroud noise, replaced by indifferent gossip about the politicians - like "Obama sounds like Osama, hur hur".
How can we repair America? That what I'd like to know. I know from experience that Americans are good and decent people; so why is the American nation such a vile bastard in many ways? Whatever else the explanation is, it is clear that the government of America is not a true representation of its people.
No, they're not going to give a fuck, and then complain when it does happen to them. But still not act to stop it from happening to anyone else. Thats what you get when you have a morally bankrupt philosophy based on greed.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Hey! Don't forget California. We also have ICBMs, short-range, medium-range, and long-range missiles; most of the tech sector and defense industry; although we've closed a lot of them, a load of military bases from every branch... we have cowboys, cheap illegal alien labor, and, on top of that (drum roll) all the NUTS that your states have sent us over the years!
We're fucking crazy! Woohoo! California is the new rebel South!
And you know that budget problem we have? Oh yeah, that disappears once we stop sending money to the Feds. If anything, CA, as a third of the USA's economy, has the biggest to gain.
So to be at all useful, shouldn't the survey question have been written like this?...
"Should the government require web sites and blogs like CNN.com, nytimes.com, and other mainstream news sites that offer political commentary (see attached list and precise definition of how these sites are to be differentiated from non-affected personal and commercial sites of al types), to present opposing viewpoints?"
There was once a time in America when Conservatives actually possessed honour, and would stand their ground, come hell or high-water. This has not been the case for a very long time now.
Witness how many contemporary conservatives are willing to renounce G.W. Bush now that he is no longer popular, and many GOP analysts believe association with the Bush brand is poison for Republican candidates.
Did you vote for GW in 2004? He was a well-known brand then.
Contemporary Conservatives don't really believe in accepting personal responsibility for their past actions. That just a ploy they use, enabling them to publicly flog single mothers.
Give me a break. GW is one of yours.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
"If South Carolina seceded again, but instead of putting up a military, they just stopped paying the feds and accepting help and whatever else they'd have to do...
S. Carolinians would lose $0.35 for every Federal tax Dollar their residents paid. Please go ahead and secede S. Carolina, make my day...
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Bullshit makes a good fertiliser for the grassroots community, dontchaknow? /duck
I don't know why any of you are discussing the relative merits of 'balance' or not... Surely the first thing to address is the vagueness of the survey question that makes the whole discussion that has followed (and not just on Slashdot) rather pointless as there's no frames of reference?
garbage in > garbage out.
Given the largely inter dependant nature of the US, how long do you think any single state would survive if you simply cut off the flow of goods from other states? Even a partial blockade (disable pipelines, block railroads and interstate highways) could be devastating. It doesn't even really need to stop the flow of people, just vital goods.
Still not impossible, but you'd need to make damn sure you've got your supply lines figured out before giving the feds the finger.
Murder is more than a moral thing, specially when things like theft and rape includes (as well as murder) the brake of another individual liberties. So, the laws doesn't legislate morality in that case but the "let me live, I will not annoy you!" or "laissez faire". So sorry, but you're wrong.
BTW, theft is against private property and without property an individual can't make gains on things.
ghostbar page.
probably also think that Internet is local US phenomenon and the extension of the media companies, and hence logically can be controlled by those same companies.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Actually, they have that, at least. You're free to pick between:
Of course, all the right/center/left designations over there have a single meaning - namely, which side of the Glorious Leader's dick it is preferrable to suck. On the other hand, Americans, with Republicans and Democrats, can at least choose one of the two dicks offered to them, and have the right to switch every 4 years...
Yes! This! A million times this!
If you make money on the blog, I think the fairness doctrine should apply. This prevents the moneyed and powerful from gaming the communications systems.
Noncommercial blogs? Your playground buddy. Have at it. If it happens to get 5 million hits a day. More power to you.
Of course if you're getting money under the table from the "Right-to-Arm-fetuses-with-green weapons" action committee for your "noncommercial" blog, I'd hope your jail sentence is long, and painful.
Democrats are socialists who admire the old Soviet state; they want to create a huge government to make everyone equal
you americans really dont have a zit of an idea what socialism, or soviet means. if you'd seen it, you would know that democrats you label as socialists is nowhere near what you portray them to be. you are TOO exaggerating.
democrats are your social democrats. half of europe is running on social democrat governments for the last 50 years, and they are experiencing incomparable wealth and prosperity and freedom compared to the shit of a freedom and wealth you think you experienced in republican or democrat periods in america.
Read radical news here
The budget is Congress' fault, not the President's. We tried to get a line-item veto that would have helped reduce budgets. It worked, just look at President Clinton. It gave him the power to cut a lot of crap out.
Sadly, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because it felt it moved budget control out of the hands of Congress to the Executive branch.
Congress likes to spend, regardless of party. Hence, our nation is doomed to bankruptcy.
anyone who opposes the views expressed by a blog is at complete liberty to start a blog of their own. It doesn't even need to cost anything, so what is the big fucking deal?
As for individual blogs, if someone wants to oppose something on my blog, they can comment, they can trackback, and I promise, I won't delete a message for disagreement. I only delete spam and trolls
That said, though, this is a non-issue. One FCC commissioner brought it up because he wants to cloud the net neutrality issue.
www.wavefront-av.com
Actually anytime I say people should get up and do it themselves I need to always qualify that excludes the mentally and physically handicap. There really are some people who can't do it themselves and they should be helped.
Whereas a democrat would say, "Stab Bill Gates, take his money and live in his house instead." Republicans would just slaughter your children and bathe in their blood because they are pure evil.
yea. just like what revolutionaries in france in 1789 have said about aristocrats, and that abolishment of privileges and overreaching wealth has become what has paved the way to our MODERN Society, in which you experience all these freedoms ?
yes exactly like that.
distribution of wealth is an important ingredient in a healthy society. REGARDLESS of how, if distribution of wealth is TOO distorted, you cant talk about a healthy society. 5% of the society hoarding 80% of the wealth is no different from aristocracy doing the same thing in 1789 france. the only chance is that, with a little, VERY little chance, like, 0.001%, you may become one of those aristocrats. no really, its the same - in old regime in france you could distinguish yourself in the battlefield or do great service to the crown, and get entitled to considerable nobility. these people were called 'nobles of the sword'.
what is being sold as a 'wonderful world of opportunities' today, is little different then ancient regime in france touting 'those who are worthy could get to be nobles'.
Read radical news here
If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't.
I don't care about legislating morality. I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom (possibly at the expense of corporate freedom), not reducing it. (Of course, I spend a lot of time being disappointed.) So I support programs and legislation that advance that goal; and that is why I would see both restrictions on abortion, and a reduction in support for Planned Parenthood as bad things. I don't support abortion per se, and I think it's tragic when it occurs; but I'm very much in favor of it being an option.
Why should they be forced to? Someone who makes the right choices in life (get an education, not get pregnant at 15, etc...) and becomes successful should now be forced to support those who made the poor choices? One of the reasons we're in this credit/housing mess right now is that we aren't letting people take the punishment for their poor choices. It's easy to take extreme risks when you think the government will always come to bail you out. Keep in mind I'm pointing at everyone from the greedy hedge fund guys on wall street to the hair dresser who buys an overpriced house 'because real estate goes up 20%/year.'
ill tell you why they should be forced to.
because THEY ARE MAKING USE OF THE RESOURCES AND ADVANTAGES OF BEING A SOCIETY
its plainly, flat out, this. mankind is only out of the caves and reaching for the stars because they have developed the ability to be a SOCIETY, and a compassionate, caring one at that. there are many kinds of societies in animal world, like the darwinian hellhole you picture - weak is left to die for the betterment of the herd, strong genetic strain lives and that shit. whereas the monkeys who constituted ancestors to this civilization had developed the habit of caring for EVEN their weak and disabled. (there are bones of early humanoids with disabilities who had lived a long life, which is not possible without the group caring for them). THAT was the thing that allowed the mankind to be able to develop tools, because they were able to play with stuff that is not vital to direct survival.
so here you are, basically in 21st century, proposing a darwinian, survivalist environment in 21st century technological level, to the contrary of what brought us to this state. let me tell you what causes this - its not anything that is beneficial to the society, its PLAIN OUT SELFISHNESS.
yes, you are going to GIVE to the society more than the services/products you generate. because, EVERYONE is generating services and products, while enjoying benefits of the society. therefore there is no debt to society, your group, being paid by anyone unless they give something EXTRA.
if you dont agree with this, take your baggage and go set up a small cabin atop a mountain and live away from the society.
Read radical news here
I don't follow, how does the electoral system prevent a corrupt metropolitan government from impacting the national election? In your example, with the electoral system they just need to control enough votes to swing the states popular vote to 51%
That's rather the point. The damage is limited to one state.
Please, PLEASE, seek professional help!
One minor adjustment, if you please: The day I was born in 1955, my father was serving with the U. S. Navy in . . . Vietnam. So the involvement was substantially earlier than the official historian's line would suggest.
Opportunities? WTF are you talking about. They had very little opportunity and worked their asses off to make their own opportunity. Show me one person who isn't handicap who can't work to better themselves?
Actually no. Performance is generally so bad that if you just do what's minimally expected you'll bonus. See, I've been on poor side and have worked with many people who would be considered part of the lower class. I see the poor choices they make nearly every day.
I didn't exaggerate because I didn't need to. I've been through hard times and pulled through on my own. There is no reason others can't take some personal responsibility and do the same. By the way, that same call center mentioned above offered FULL tuition reinmbursement. There were roughly 600 call reps there and I think 3-4 actually took advantage of it. What does that tell you? You want want more anecdotes? How about watching people have their RIMS repoed because they bought them on a rent-to-own basis. I don't know about you, but if I was struggling and trying to pull myself up, buying $2k-$3k rims on credit would be at the bottom of my list of priorities. I have endless similar anecdotes, but you're right I don't know what it's like to be poor. I don't know anyone who is poor. I also don't know know what's going on with the lower class. I'm sure all my anecdotes are unique and everyone just needs more money given to them to help them out of their situation. No sir, you're the one who is out of touch.
..is that Democrats have thought about the issue much less so than Republicans. Democrats advocate "fairness" in everything (wealth distribution, access to heathcare, etc.), but don't think about the perils of government-enforced fairness in a completely open medium like the Internet. If you turned the question on its head, and asked about government regulation of "objectionable" content on the Internet, I suspect the numbers would flip the other way, with Republicans not thinking how some of their own ideas might get caught up in the "objectionable" net.
Taking care of the disabled is one thing. Taking care of the people who just don't feel like doing anything is another. If you continue down that path long enough society will collapse because no one will actually be producing anything. By your logic we should all be able to stop work today and just live off government checks.
I'd like to see the comparison down to US state-by-state level and EU states (and their states/ districts), since the (intentional) patchwork federal system we have makes it really difficult to lump the USA all together, where all our different laws don't make us as homogeneous as it appears many other countries are.
That is, if the laws in an EU country are all the same, compare them to say New Hampshire or California or Vermont or Florida. All four US states have vastly different population levels and densities, income levels, employment rates, health levels, and all the other things that make up quality of life indexes.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Conservatism in the GOP died with Barry Goldwater.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Intelligent design make no predictions and is not testable, so it is not even a scientific hypothesis, let alone a scientific theory. By definition. Period.
It doesn't matter if evolution is actually false and intelligent design is actually true. One makes testable and useful predictions, the other does not without knowing the mind of God, which is impossible. Intelligent design is philosophy, not science and anyone claiming otherwise is ignorant or lying.
There is no debate and never was, only propaganda. Your comment and moderation shows the incredibly frightening state of ignorance about science and logic in America.
ID is not philosophy either. Philosophy (as defined in wikipedia) is "the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument."
There is nothing rational or systematic about ID it is clearly mysticism. It starts from a belief (god created man) and then tries to sell it using crap sciencism. It is nothing more than religion trying to imitate science. If ID "should be taught" what about flat-earth-ism? What about the many other very common religious beliefs? Should they all be taught as fact as well? Where should we stick them? P.E.? Home economics? If religious beliefs are to be taught in school the place they belong is in a comparative religion class. ID could be covered under the topic of "how contemporary Christianity interacts with public policy in the US.
-- QED
Two things:
Where did all the Russian supporters come from? Mostly from Russia. Russia issued passports to Ossetians and also sent Russians there to stuff the ballot box. Many of the upper government posts are held by former Russian generals.
Remember, this is like Maine and New Hampshire deciding to break away from the US because there are a lot of Canadian ex-pats voted for it.
Second, it is far more evil than what the US did in Iraq. We are not annexing the land, as Russia is doing.
Also, we had 19 UN resolutions backing our action. Russia has none. To say they are equally evil is to make a ethical/moral equivalence that is just not there.
Unless you want to argue UN resolutions don't mean squat and don't even give you a figleaf of coverage.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Or you could do the intelligent thing & use your vote towards getting a 3rd party federally matched funds in the next election cycle.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Hard-pressed? I'm surrounded by them. Hell, take a look at the rhetoric most are using against Obama for daring to suggest we should talk to Iran rather than immediately pulling the trigger. And summing up their attitudes as "Wanting to do what needs to be done to protect our interests and defend our nation" is massively out of line given there hasn't been a war in the last few decades that involved defending our nation. "Protecting out interests", perhaps, but those interests are frequently not worth taking up arms for.
A large number of the Republicans I know believe that any country that steps out of line should be threatened with war, and if that doesn't work, should be attacked. They're pissed we haven't invaded Iran or North Korea - yet.
It's certainly not all of them, but it's a significant number. It's legitimate to characterize anyone who does not believe war should be treated as a last resort, and then only if the alternatives are worse, as pro-war. There are plenty of Republicans who are pro-war, using that definition. The only way to define them as rare is to redefine pro-war to mean something most people wouldn't identify with that term.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That would be you the Slashtard
Just for the fact that you are even entertaining the idea of a fairness doctrine, which will run rampnt over the 1st Amendment.
But its no surprise here with some of you stating how MSNBC has right of center anything or that Fox News is one sided.
I have news for you douchebags, stop jerking yourselves off and start paying attention and maybe actually start watching Fox News.
I think what you'll find will be objectionable in that, it wont jive with your one sided jibe, you fucking dopes.
But then again its Slashdot, where you can see the idiocy of Global Warming, the Moral Relativism of equating the US or Bush with the cretans of the world or even Russian Hacks who think their homeland has one ounce of credibility to stand on in the modern age
Fuck You all
First off conservatism isn't defined by GW Bush. He's no exemplar of conservative thought or policy and has been consistently criticized from the right. Most people aren't terribly consistent in their political ideology, ESPECIALLY politicians since they must appeal to a broad coalition of support and most people have only the fuzziest political ideals. He no more defines conservatism than Clinton defined liberalism. You could make a decent case that as a practical matter Clinton who declared the "end of big government" and who's signature domestic policy ended up being welfare reform was more conservative than Bush who's signature domestic policies where massive increases in Education and Medicare spending. There's a strong pull on Presidents to achieve political success by stealing plays from their opponents playbook - you get your opponents votes because they actually agree with your policy and your own parties votes out of party loyalty. So Bush was able to get a "No Child Left Behind" policy sponsored and largely drafted by Ted Kennedy enacted with more Democratic than Republican votes... that didn't stop the Democrats who voted for it from castigating it as another "conservative" blunder by Bush once it proved unpopular though.
That being said, the classical liberal ideology that's often associated with conservatism in the US considers defense and police powers as the ONLY legitimate use of government power. The logic is something like this: Government governs by force (ultimately by violence or the threat of it). Therefore, government is only legitimate when acting in situations where the use of force is morally justified which basically boils down to defense. "(Law) is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense." - Bastiat
So from that classically liberal ideology spending on defense is at least within the proper scope of government whereas most of the other stuff government does is illegitimate.
Well, those trying to "legislate morality" aren't usually the same as those calling for smaller government. Political parties are coalitions, the libertarian right one usually thinks of when talking about the desire for smaller government aren't exactly the same folks as the religious right one would think of wanting to "legislate morality". I think it says something though that the libertarians have at least in the past found the religious right more palatable as political allies than the Left. The RR's desire to "legislate morality" was less offensive to small government types than the left's desire to legislate everything else. Indeed it seems to me that as a practical matter at least as much of the legislation of morality is coming from the left as from the right. "Sin" taxes on alcohol, tobacco and firearms and regulations about who, when, where and how they may be used are all coming from the left. Even in disputes directly between the left and the religious right it is almost as often the left that is using government to impose a moral judgement on someone who doesn't share that same moral code. Take the example of an evangelical that doesn't want to rent property to a gay couple. Which party in the dispute wants government to impose it's moral judgements on a private individual that doesn't share them?
"Free speach..except when I disagree"
People in this country don't understand that the principle is more important than any one use of it. "Fairness" laws like this are pure and simple censorship. If you want Free Speech you have to be willing to let others have it too and yes abuse it too. If you want warm fuzzies in the press move somewhere with an authoritarian society they right "fair" stuff all the time about the government.
"30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging" is saying "a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates" while 30% might be many more people in favor of government content management than I would have thought it *still* means there are enough opposed to it to, in theory, pass a constitutional amendment!
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Well now, there's a few reasons that could be truthy. For one, Bush isn't as popular as he used to be, so conservatives could be removing the stickers from their cars or otherwise hiding them because they're ashamed of Bush.
But most likely, you're suffering from a bad case of confirmation bias, in which you only notice the things that reinforce your preset beliefs.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Naive capitalism assumes perfect information is immediately available and parsable by all actors involved. The truth is, that assumption is dead wrong.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
It's possible, but I don't think so. Maybe the real ratio is 90:10 or something other than 99:1, but I wouldn't bet on it ;-)
I DO know that during my two years living in Chicago (a very blue city, yes, and during the 2004 election) I saw only 3 Bush bumper stickers anywhere in the city (I did keep track!). On the other hand, the number of Kerry and Obama stickers were literally too many to count.
You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.
Plus, if you're upset about an "evil" corporation taking power and making tons of money, you can easily turn the tables and make that corporation work for YOU. Just buy some stock and voila the corporation that was once oppressing you is now making you richer and giving you MORE freedom (at least in the economic sense).
When a corporation makes a profit, it adds to the wealth of the nation (since corporations are owned by the public - anyone who chooses to invest). Government then takes a share of that wealth and a huge portion of it vanishes into thin air. And who are you calling evil?
There's a difference between pure capitalism and the free market. The role of government in the economy should be to ensure smooth and efficient operation of the free market. Primarily this should include busting monopolies to ensure ample competition in the marketplace. Instead our governments (federal and state) have over-regulated the economy to the point that it discourages competition, and instead of busting monopolies, they allow huge mergers and give entities like the RIAA free reign. The whole system is a mess and the consumer and the nation suffers from it.
I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom...and that is why I would see both restrictions on abortion, and a reduction in support for Planned Parenthood as bad things.
I've heard this argument many times. The error in your logic lies in assuming that the fetus has no rights to personal freedom. By giving more "freedom" to the mother, you take away any freedom the baby has and would ever have. I'm sure you disagree with me here, but that's just the point. The debate is a moral one, not a freedom one. The core question is the moral status of the fetus. All other arguments fall from it.
You obviously believe the fetus has no moral standing, and so abortion laws limit the mother's freedom and nobody else's. Your opponents see you limiting the fetus' freedom. For the same reason we have laws against stealing and murder ... I'm sure you don't argue that stealing is ok. After all, prohibitions on stealing takes away my personal freedom of being able to take whatever I want.
It comes down to a moral question regardless of how much you try to ignore it.
On a slight side note, you don't think personal freedom is a type of morality? I do! I think you would find many people and governments around the world that would argue that individual freedom above all else is IMMORAL. What about the greater good? An individual's free choices are not always the best choices for everyone else.
That prognosis does not eliminate from discussion the idea that the GOP is corrupt and has been ever since Lincoln's death and them being co-opted by the railroad barons in the late 19th century. They've been in the pocket of big business ever since, Theodore Roosevelt the exception.
You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.
The problem arises when all of the corporations are evil, and pretty much everything runs through them.
A quick example: California just threw out No Compete clauses. These were provisions in employee's contracts that said, basically, you couldn't work for a former employer's competitor. One you took a job with Company A, you could never use your skills for Company B, C, or D. You were useless in your chosen field.
"That sucks," you say, "so don't work for Company A." The problem is, Company B, C, and D also have that same provision. The end result: you couldn't go to work without essentially selling yourself into slavery.
This is wrong, and needs to be restrained. In fact, I think one of the most important roles of Government today is to reign in the accumulation of power by corporations.
Thomas Galvin
Huh? It took me a while to understand what you wrote too. Me thinks you shouldn't try to read so deeply into these things. Not everyone is trying to personally attack you.
they SHOULD be allowed to "fudge" their explanation to the bumbling consumers who come in off the street with no clue of how finances work.
Explain to me how they "fudged" the explanation of payments exceeding ability to pay. Or does the average person have so little clue of "how finances work" that they don't know whether they have the ability to pay.
The fact of the matter is people were trying to score in the "forever" growing market. Perhaps they should be protected from their own greed, but don't argue they didn't understand what they were doing. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
He's referring to Gerrymandering. You know the process where the state redesigns the electoral blocks to increase their parties federal representation and surpress all others.
They do this by creating a few areas where the vote goes 90% for their opponent, and a majority of areas where the vote goes 60% for themselves. They do it by redrawing the divisions to force popular candidates of the opposing party to run against one another, while guaranteeing their own mediocre candidates are running against unknowns.
It's one of the biggest factors in the corruption of American politics.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
30% of Americans are total idiots.
Don't be ridiculous. Without government regulation, companies naturally grow into monopolies, like they did in the 1900s. Government is required to break up monopolies and restore competition. Remember, back in the 1800s, the federal government had little power, and monopolies were a result.
Sorry, no, I'm not arguing a strict Randian position. I believe in liberty and smaller government, but not to the extreme that many Libertarian nuts like you do. I'd call myself a "mild libertarian" (small-L).
I liked Ron Paul's vision of a smaller federal government, with many responsibilities handed off to the States to decide their own solutions rather than a one-size-fits-all federal one. But in modern society, with things like electricity, highways, and other critical infrastructure (which includes the internet), we do need government regulation to keep private companies from gaining too much power and controlling these things which the general public need, or else we have situations like Comcast censoring internet traffic, which was recently slapped down by the FCC. Without a sufficiently strong government, you wouldn't be free to express your opinion if your local ISP monopoly didn't like you.
[Once] you took a job with Company A, you could never use your skills for Company B, C, or D. You were useless in your chosen field. [...] This is wrong, and needs to be restrained. In fact, I think one of the most important roles of Government today is to reign in the accumulation of power by corporations.
Come on, at least understand what you're criticizing. A perpetual lifelong compete clause has always been illegal. They *always* have a time limit, normally a year, and often are geographically limited. If it's so restrictive that it prevents you from earning a living, then it's illegal.
I'm of two minds about noncompetes. On the one hand, I can understand that it sucks if there's no reasonable competitive reason to have it on you.
On the other hand, for, say, a salesman, I can totally understand that it would suck as a business to have your salesman, who knows your entire customer base and contracts, jumping to another competitor -- his primary value being, of course, that he knows all your customers and the deals they have. That sets up a market for spies to simply work at various competitors and sell the information to the highest bidder. Yeah, yeah, confidential information, trade secrets, yadda yadda. But in practice, it would be very difficult to stop a competitor from "coincidentally" contacting the customers.
So I believe that there are cases where non-competes are reasonable. Unfortunately, companies tend to blanket all their professional employees with them. I wish California had taken a more balanced approach to it, and issued strict guidelines for it.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Alaska seriously studied seceding from the Union during the 80s when the Feds imposed the D2 Lands bill.
Would the Feds use military action to keep the oil flowing if that were to happen today?
Typical expected response. No answers to the actual questions, just complaints. Nobody is suppressing your speech here but yourself.
"But this one goes to 11!"
In philosophy, ethics is the branch which is the study of morality. Just as epistemology is the branch of philosophy which is the study of knowledge, and metaphysics is the study of reality in a general sense.
So morality in philosophy is what is right and wrong.
The error in your logic lies in assuming that the fetus has no rights to personal freedom.
It's not an error, it's a value judgment. A functioning adult human, in my opinion, deserves more consideration than a fetus.
You obviously believe the fetus has no moral standing,
That's not true. But IMO the parents' rights trump those of an unconscious collection of stem cells. As I said upthread, I don't think abortion is a good thing; I merely think it should be legal.
and so abortion laws limit the mother's freedom and nobody else's. Your opponents see you limiting the fetus' freedom.
The notion of "freedom" presupposes conscious volition, which a fetus does not possess. Anyway, neither my "opponents" nor the fetus in question are in any position to make the no-doubt-heartwrenching decision whether to abort a pregnancy, give a child up for adoption, or risk their future, and their potential baby's, trying to raise a child they're not prepared to support. Only the potential parents are able to make that decision.
I'm sure you don't argue that stealing is ok. After all, prohibitions on stealing takes away my personal freedom of being able to take whatever I want.
Straw man. Maximizing personal freedom for everyone requires some limitations to be enforced. On the other hand, I think there are cases where stealing is a defensible (or even a positively moral) act.
That is not the distinction between "morals" and "ethics."
I was actually thinking Reagan. But no matter.
In 30 years, I have heard a lot of talk about small government, but every time people go and vote for the small government candidate I lose some freedom, and money out of my pocket book.
Maybe it's time we just had an honest discussion instead of all these emotional buzzwords?
I had an argument back in 2004 with a "conservative" friend of mine who argued that banning gay marriage meant smaller government. Because, apparently these gay married couples would consumer more government services than they would as individuals.
You talk about UN resolutions that were issued a long time ago (many over a decade ago). The problem is that these resolutions give very little justification for a unilateral response by America.
What we had were very weak legal arguments and an administration eager to flex its muscle before the law could restrain it. I'm not saying the administration made the right or wrong decision (before you accuse me of being partisan).
I am saying that the argument that UN resolutions justified our invasion of Iraq is a very weak justification because the UN resolutions were likely intended to govern multilateral UN actions, not unilateral US actions.
This is actually about the failure of Air America, and the failure to silence Limbaugh.
_First, the crowds are different:_
Conservatives actually *care* about issues and details. They talk about what's good for the country, from the viewpoint of history. They take the time to listen to the radio, they've been taught to think critically and ask questions. This makes for interesting radio. 90% of Democrats can't tell you the name of a single Supreme Court Justice, many Conservatives can name them all.
Democrats/Liberals appear to choose their presidents based on how they look. Why else? Ask yourself: can you actually say you'd trust these people to park your car?
- Al "I invented the internet" Gore and his sky-is-falling global money scam.
- John "I voted against it, before I voted for it" Kerry and his core values that change with each and every poll.
- Barak "That's not the [person] I know" OBama. He thinks the Japanese started WW2 by 'dropping the bomb' on Pearl Harbor, Claims to have visited "about 57 [US] states so far" in the primary race, and he "was going to several more". He claimed to see dead war heroes in attendance at a memorial service. Ever hear him NOT on a teleprompter? SHEESH!
These guys make Dan Quayle seem smart.
And let's be clear: Barak's darker-skin means nothing to me; he's just the latest goofball offered.
_The Content is Different:_
Spewing hate and repeating lies doesn't sell. Case in point:
- Air America was a VERY well funded attempt to break into talk radio. It failed miserably. No one tuned in.
Liberals/Democrats constantly pushing towards Communism, though it too, has been disproved roundly.. They still keep trying to elect people who tell us what kinds of cars we can purchase, what kinds of light bulbs we're permitted to buy, and what kind of ingredients are in our food. (See: Transfats banned in NYC). Then they complain about the intrusion of government into our daily lives, and assuming the Republicans did it. (The media tells them this)
Liberals are constantly unhappy. They talk about what's wrong with the world. They intone discrimination where there is none, to open new lines of advance. It's all about enslaving free people because they're not living their life properly.
Meanwhile, Liberal voters are tuned to FM Music radio and can't be bothered by the news.
- Limbaugh's been growing a massive audience for TWO DECADES.
Now if you don't listen to Rush Limbaugh, there are a number of things you don't know.
- He's not been a big, fat man for about a decade. Really.
- He's not a drug dealer/user/promoter. He did lose part of his hearing, though.
- He's probably the biggest civil-rights advocate you'll find.
- He's also not anti-gay or anti-Jew, or anti ANYTHING but stupid.
- He's completely wrong about Microsoft, but has a vision for seeing political trends unlike anyone I've seen.
Limbaugh talks in terms of optimism. He tells us about how it'll get better if we stay to our message:
- Smaller government
- Less intrusion
- Controlled immigration
- Term Limits
- People having more power than the government
Why would anyone want anything else?
_Conclusion:_
Understand that ONE media machine:
- Portrays fathers as ignorant boobs in TV commercials 20 years. Watch and see.
- Denies promotion of heros. I don't mean "fallen" or "broken" heroes.
- Cuts off all secondary information. What's Bolivia's beef with it's neighbors?
- Promot
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Ed Meese's porn crusade doesn't count?
I don't understand why you would try to compare social programs to defense.
Really? "Protecting the little guy" and "selling votes to big media" don't conflict with each other? Because guess what! Democrats do both (see, e.g., copyright issues, where Democrats sell us down the river).
That being said, I'm some sort of classical liberal-Democrat hybrid. I don't even know what terms to use anymore. Strongly left socially and mildly left economically? I think that makes me a slight somethingorother.
assuming that the fetus has no rights to personal freedom
My argument here is that even if the fetus does have rights, no one has the right to siphon nutrients off someone without their consent, while causing ill health effects and a great deal of pain. (don't even try to mention "implied consent" - could broken condom then be considered "breach of contract"?)
Bear in mind that this is just one isolated argument. There are others, but the "rights" issue is a non-starter.
Last post!
In the senate, it passed 91 to 8. Of the 8 No votes, 6 were Republicans, 2 were Democrats.
I know there are some difficulties with blanket classifying all R's as conservative and D's as liberal but the voting records only list party, not ideology. That said, I would call 197 to 10 House Democrats and all but 2 Senate Democrats as quite solid evidence of across the board support.
Vote Quimby.
That the Nordic states have universal generous maternity leave by law, long holiday periods (over 21 days) by law, and (in a couple of countries) free university education by law make them indeed superior to the United States in quality of life regardless of what region of the US you hold up as your argument.
Because "religious" and "liberal" are mutually exclusive.
If there's one thing Democrats royally screwed up on this century, it's allowing the Republicans to use abortion as the only True Test of religion. As opposed to "turn the other cheek" (anti-Iraqi-conflict), "do unto others" (pro-diplomacy-with-Iran), "love thy neighbor as thyself" (pro-gay-marriage), "Render unto Caesar" (maybe pro-taxes or pro-separation-of-church-and-state?), and to top it off environmentalism ought to be the most Christian of all issues (protecting God's creation, as we did get dominion over it in Genesis).
Yes, but the way you label your belief evinces your justification for the belief. "Pro-abortion" means you like killing babies and therefore support abortion. "Pro-choice" means you prefer women to have dominion over their bodies and therefore support abortion.
Of course, if you care only about outcome and not about motivation, you will disagree with what I've said.
Guess that depends on if you agree with John Deigh in Robert Audi (ed), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 1995.
I myself would have a hard time imagining what "utilitarian morality" would be. While "utilitarian ethics" is quite clear.
And somehow I have a hard time imagining even the most hard-core Moral Majority right-winger calling, say, masturbation "unethical."
The term "unethical" has a connotation of having a negative impact on another person or a community. While the term "immoral" has no such connotation--something you do in your own bedroom that affects absolutely no one else can certainly be considered "immoral" depending on your belief system.
I dunno, call me a descriptivist instead of a prescriptivist. But language is how people use it, not the Greek or Latin root word it came from.
pro-choice : pro-abortion :: killing in self-defense : murder
It's all in the justification. Suprisingly enough, most women don't get abortions because they love abortions (which is the opposite of the implication of "pro-abortion")!
Fairness doctrine. Air America failed and you want to take it out on the other side because they succeed.
Well, if you want to go down that route, people use "morality" and "ethics" interchangeably in common parlance.
Government education leads to one result.. government.
The patriot act is very patriotic. After all, it simply states what is already true; All governments own their populace. Boiled down, all laws are the threat of death*, period.
Anything you allow government to do *for* you, you allow it to do *to* you. Think of that next time you approve of a law being passed.. any law.
*Think me wrong? Get pulled over for no government mandated license plate. Don't pay the fine. Don't show up for court. Don't agree to live in a prison when arrested. Dead.
All laws lead to death of the people who passed them (yay!). Sadly, all laws also lead to the death of the minority who don't support them as well (boo).
It is painful reading opinions like this, mainly because of how much they are distortions of reality. It's just like hearing Republicans who say that Bill Clinton was a disaster as President. Opinions like these seem to be the result of so many being force-fed by their preferred political party and that party's respective pundits and as well as its special interest groups. That said, let's move to the line-by-line.
That would probably be on the grounds of looking at how the size of government changes under Republicans.
Source? If many Republicans had their way with entitlement programs, I am fairly sure that the Federal budget would get at least cut in half. Social Security and Medicare are 42% of the budget alone. I am not aruging for or against those programs. I'm just saying that if the Republicans want to cut 50% of the current total budget and even double a portion that comprises 25% of the current budget, that still results in a net loss of 25% of the overall budget.
Now why hasn't this happened? I am not going to speculate as to why except for the following possible way. In general, it is safe to say that Republicans love defense and hate entitlement programs. I think that it it is also safe to say that Democrats love entitlement programs and hate rampant defense spending. Now where does that middle ground leave? If the most good that Congress could agree on was defense, then it needed to be done anyway. Is that a rationalization? Maybe, but I think it's reasonable to assume that Republicans do want smaller government, but the current political process will not allow for it.
And as for "defense", that's what they call it but there is nothing defensive about most of the budget.
Source? Sounds like a conspiracy theory more than anything. Since when are tanks, planes, Humvees, missiles, bullets, guns, and everything else that they buy not defensive? Also, I think that the little piece of research that we now call the Internet was derived from the United States military. I think it's safe to say that has been beneficial to civilization. If we were so shortsighted as to the benefits of research being done, we would not have much of the technology that we do today. I guess we can consider a janitor at a Naval support center to not be "defensive", but at the same time that also seems like a necessary cost to an organization like the Navy.
The American people largely don't benefit from those expenditures, the defense contractors do.
Really? Have a source for that? Also, who comprises those defense companies and what implications does that composition have? I have some facts, right here, right now. A great number of Americans directly or indirectly benefits from our massive military spending whether you like it or not because of the nature of that spending. Much of it is classified and it simply can not be outsourced to other countries. Companies like AeroVironment, Boeing, Ceradyne, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and United Technologies together directly employ hundreds of thousands of people from engineers to factory workers to janitors. Then you have the subcontractors that are indirectly benefit from a contract being awarded. And then you have all of the research that universities do.
There are also the ancillary effects of all those people spending their money that are not directly related to employment or spending. What about all of the pension plans, IRAs, 401(k) plans, and other investment accounts that all rely on public companies that benefit from this defense spending? What about all of the investments in companies that rely on the spending of the direct and indirect beneficiaries of government contracts? The economy really is an ecosystem and destroying one part of it impacts the whole.
Also, don't forget that the government taxes just about everything. This basically means that every dollar they spend, they can received a sign
Red Bushies like Bush, McCain, the elder Bush, and Reagan always want bigger government, staffed with partisan cronies, and big tax giveaways and no-bid contracts for the party elites.
They just think you're gullible enough to believe they will give the middle class actual smaller government or actual lower tax burdens, when they do the exact opposite.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fortunately we don't generally enforce the death penalty for a generic breach of contract ;-)
A very good point. I was making a generalization about the way things are, and there are of course exceptions. I couldn't agree more with everything you said.
my personal favorite, are mad that the US was "One pretzel away from getting rid of Bush." ~shrug~
Okay, I give up. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but what the hell does this mean? I've never heard it or seen it before. As of this writing, a google search turns up nothing but a link back to your comment:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22One%20pretzel%20away%20from%20getting%20rid%20of%20Bush.%22
And it's not too often that I do a google search that returns:
"Results 1 - 1 of 1"
But just a couple of posts ago you said I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom (possibly at the expense of corporate freedom), not reducing it.. You now make the argument that sometimes to increase personal freedom, the government has to LIMIT personal freedom (that's how I interpret "Maximizing personal freedom for everyone requires some limitations to be enforced")
You're now on a very slippery slope due to the government's interest in a moral issue. Who exactly gets to decide the greater good / greater freedom? Is the greater freedom protecting life, or is the greater freedom allowing parent's to terminate a life? Is the greater freedom allowing a woman freedom over her own body, or is the greater freedom allowing a child to be born safely. This is exactly why I said earlier that when you get into arguments over legislating morality, both left and right run into the same problems.
have you ever looked at who does those rankings. It would be impossible for them to find an non nanny state to have a higher ranking because that's part of what they think gives people a better life.
Why do most women get abortions? I've seen different percentage results from surveys, and am suspicious of biases, but the obvious reasons are--accidental and unwanted pregnancy (this happened to a friend of mine, and it was rough), changed mind after getting pregnant, health issues (for mother or fetus), rape/incest. I think those 4 categories pretty much cover it all?
I think only health issues+rape/incest (which seem to be a small % of all abortions?) is the only choice that is at all akin to "killing in self defense" thus I think your analogy overreaches substantially.
I also think you're off base when you sy "it's all in the justification." Each side of COURSE wants to paint their side in the best possible light--who would want to be anti-life or anti-choice? Pro-abortion or anti-abortion simplifies the matter a lot. It rips the semantic crap away and gets to the heart of the matter. You think it should be legal, or you think it should not be legal. End of story--do verbal justifications change the end results either way? No.
It refers to this incident:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/14/bush.fainting/
The wording of the license plate may have been slightly off, but that was the gist.
Well, mostly when people talk about legislating morality, they're referring to a religious group's attempt to impose their doctrinal beliefs through government influence. When I wrote "I don't care about legislating morality", I only meant that that is not a criterion that I personally find very helpful. As you rightly point out, morality covers more than the narrow rules of various religious traditions, and much government activity carries moral baggage of some sort.
In general, when considering the merits of a law or regulation, a major question I ask is, "On the whole, does this tend to increase the amount of liberty people have with which to do interesting stuff with their lives?" Of course that's not the only criterion, and of course there are trade-offs involved. I certainly don't want everyone to have the freedom to shoot anyone they please, since that might seriously interfere with my own and my loved ones' rights.
I should add that this is a position I've arrived at only rather recently, after thinking of myself as a libertarian for some time.
For 90% of the content out there, the doctrine is already in effect.
So, your thesis is, that since Abraham Lincoln, every GOP politician (except one) has been corrupt.
Interesting. I'll let that argument stand on it's own merit (none).
Politics are sleazy and corrupt across party lines: it's human nature to accede to one's own interests. The Republican Party has been a lackey for big business--no doubt, but the Democrat Party is like the Gambino mob, but with matching federal funds.
But you just go on believing that one party is "lookin' after the folks" while the other is trying to destroy America.
Sigs cause cancer.
This will be great! If you ever get writer's block, just ask the government what you should write. Problem solved.
They may or may not be "pro-choice", but they are "pro-abortion".
If they were pro-choice they would have to support the right for a person to choose to own a gun or not. They would also support the right for a person to choose Hybrid or the biggest SUV out there. They would also have to support a person's right to choose to eat meat or not. In short to be pro-choice you would have to accept whatever a person decides and commit yourself to individual rights, liberals do a poor job of standing up to individual choices. Most liberal policies are collectivist vs. individual in nature, so the claim to "pro-choice" is dishonest. I mean from the poll that started this thread Democrats are far more against blogger choice more than Republicans. Democrats tend to be the ones claiming to be "pro-choice" however. Finally those claiming to be "pro-choice" do support abortion so they are "pro-abortion". Also if you are pro-abortion by your choice you are anti-US and the reason is clear the Declaration of Independence states that We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. If you support denying a baby life and thus the right to pursuit happiness (but not promise happiness), then your beliefs run counter to the founders and most Americans throughout history for that matter.
Respect the Constitution
No, you get "Bush is evil" because that is what the media keeps saying. Ask them how Bush could have done better and they will (after a long rant about how we need to stop the Iraq war) have nothing to say.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I said, "involvement in actual combat". Your father was not certainly not involved in a combat operation in 1955.
Sigs cause cancer.
Maine works similar to what you describe as I understand it, with there being two districts with 1 vote each and then the person who gets the popular vote gets 2 additional votes, so that Maine could break 3-1, instead of giving all 4 votes to one candidate, though I don't think it has ever happened ... yet.
Respect the Constitution
Went and read Article III, Section 2.
The first paragraph describes the situations where the judicial branch has jurisdiction. There is no mention of regulation nor exemption; it's a simple list of the kinds of situations that federal courts deal with. Including, among others, "all cases arising under the Constitution".
The second paragraph describes when the Supreme Court itself has original jurisdiction, as opposed to when it has appellate jurisdiction. It describes "in all other cases... the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction... with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
I think it's clear that Congress's power to "regulate" the Court is only the ability to decide that certain kinds of cases should go directly to the Supreme Court rather than starting at a lower court. I don't see anything here about bypassing the courts entirely.
like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction.
Yes, that is certainly part of Planned Parenthood's mission. Let's not forget that it's also an organization that was originally called the Birthcontrol League and that PP performs the majority of all abortions in the US. Ergo, when the Government funds PP, it funds a lot of abortions. I am very torn about abortion, and have argued both sides in the past, and don't particularly feel like taking a position now (lame, I know..) ... however, I think you illustrate very well the typical pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you prefer..) viewpoint that I mentioned to the GP. If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't. Frequent problem with both the left and the right.
False dichotomy:
providing funding does not equal legislating morality.
legislation circumscribes liberty by telling you what you CANT do.
funding enhances liberty by telling you: "if you want to do this, we'll make it less expensive for you"
keep in mind this is different from discrimination, because the discount is directly applied to the service, instead of a general easement of lifestyle based on personal preferences.
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Of course, the second people started talking about using this district-based system, the Democrats started whining, because they knew this would cost them around 20-25 electoral votes that they currently don't have to work for.
It's entirely unfair to do this in california (free republican electoral votes) without also doing it in heavy red states like georgia (where the opposite of your scenario would occur)
public opinion polls on major issues show 65% of the US population is liberal. If you're going to apportion electoral votes by district it must be done nationwide.
If it is done, democrats will never lose another national election.
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I read your full reply. Oh, are you referring to the part where you say:
I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system...
By 'fair', I guess you mean fair to both political parties. I don't care about political parties. If California enacts a more representative system for distributing our electoral votes, that's all I care about. I don't want to wait around for other states to get their act together.
in other words, you're a thinly disguised republican hack?
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Care to guess again?
Only Democrats would care about something like "fairness" in media, especially on the internet.
maybe it has something to do with the fact that the media is owned and controlled, both directly, and indirectly through advertising, by the ultra-wealthy people represented primarily through the republican party, and many of those media moguls have demonstrated moderate to extreme rightward leanings (example one)
Further, the anchors themselves are sealed in ivory towers. Their jobs cannot be outsourced, they're paid far in excess of the median wage, they live very urban lifestyles, and are nicely insulated from the everyday life everyone else lives day in and day out.
Requiring people who represent the opposition to the political agendas of media owners and the companies buying advertising from them be given equal time to state their case is imperative to prevent the kind of hijacking of public opinion going on right now through fox news, talk radio (death valley for anything moderate, let alone liberal), and the parroting verbatim of corporate press releases with little or no qualifiers indicating a source.
The republicans killed the fairness doctrine because it was getting in the way of their agenda (in conjunction with their "dumb-em-down" corporate masters) of discouraging critical thought, which is "bad for business" and bad for a party whose platform is built upon fallacy and intolerance.
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Republicans are fascists who want a few large corporations to take power, so they can claim people have freedom (even though they don't, because they're being oppressed by the corporations).
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape. With "corporate power", it's entirely voluntary to be under it. And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity. Example: The Democrats decide to ban "hate" music because it hurts people's feelings. You can go to jail and there is no escape. On the other hand, don't like the policies of the oh-so-corporate RIAA? Listen to independent music. Or create your music.
You have a much better chance of competing against an evil corporation than you do against an evil government.
Sorry, but when a corporation or an oligopoly is dictating the "choices", you are not free.
Just because the oppression is done via the "illusion" of choice rather than the straight denial of it doesn't make it any less oppressive.
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they did.
They won't hire you for a job that will pay modest apartment rent in a bad neighborhood unless you get a college education. Want to actually make enough to do something besides eat, sleep, and (explative deleted)? Then you have to go to a competitive school.
competitive schools cost money, and my competitive school only has a 50% recruitment rate. This means 50% of people there are graduating with near 6 figure student debts and going back to hat and nametag jobs, falling into the predator's trap.
3 decades ago, student loans guaranteed a basic standard of living. Now, theyre an extreme gamble on the lines of junk bonds.
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Not to (borrowing your term) pidgeonhole anyone or anything...
The whole purpose of labels like "conservative" and "liberal" is to pidgeonhole people. If you don't like it, deny the label.
The point the OP was making is that modern conservatives have essentially abandoned was was called "conservatism" as little as 10 years ago. George Bush and his supposedly conservative Congress expanded government more than any administration in US history. They increased spending more than any administration in history. They had/have the most irresponsible fiscal policy of any US administration. They, at best, gave lip service to social conservative issues like pornography, abortion and gay rights, not even attempting to push forward legislation on these issues. Civil liberties were, at one time, an important conservative issue which has been abandoned in favor of weird special rights. They've even gone after federalism by attempting to centralize security authority in the Federal government. Aside from "strong national defense", it's difficult to ascertain what conservative principles modern conservative still hold.
(who are, imho, 99% of the time liberal).
I don't know how many cars I've seen with "Support our troops!" yellow ribbons, Bush/Cheney '04 stickers, NRA stickers, etc. A lot more than 1%. Where do you live? It must be very left-leaning. Even in a leftist enclaves like Berkeley or Austin I would expect to see a more even split.
I don't know how many cars I've seen with "Support our troops!" yellow ribbons
That's funny, I've never considered yellow ribbons a partisan thing... I guess you do? I have Democrat friends who have ribbons their cars.. Pretty interesting to me that you would think liberals/leftists DON'T support the troops.
Even in a leftist enclaves like Berkeley or Austin I would expect to see a more even split.
In the past 5 years I've lived in Chicago, VA/DC, and NC. If you don't buy my claim, start keeping count--I did for awhile! Put a tick everytime you see a liberal bumper sticker, and an x everytime you see a conservative one. You could get fancier and track cars with multiple bumper stickers, cars with attack bumper stickers (ie that insult somebody, rather than just say Kerry/Gore or W '04, etc) Like I said in another post, I saw 3 Bush bumper stickers the entire 2 years I lived in Chicago.
The point the OP was making is that modern conservatives have essentially abandoned was was called "conservatism" as little as 10 years ago
Well, I don't disagree at all that the Republican party of the Bush admin has been very disappointing in many ways, I don't think that that's merely what the GP was saying. (I would add gun rights, trade issues, and taxes to issues btw)
Well, I've got one bumper sticker and I put it there because I think it's hilarious. It says simply, "Where are we going and why I am in this handbasket?"
The sad thing is that there's a very, very small number of people around here who actually get the joke.
Regardless of your feelings about people broadcasting their views (which, IMO, while it could be done more tastefully at least people are raising awareness in some way of issues they deem important) you've gotta give it to some of them, there's some damned creative ones driving around. My personal favorite has been, "Well, at least the war on the environment is going well."
"Just a fox, a whisper."
That's a hilarious bumpersticker...the kind I'd be proud to display!
QFT. There's only one thing about Lou Dobbs I like, and that's his attempts to bring "independent" back into mainstream politics.
Of course, "independent" on his show tends to come across more as "conservative, reactionary xenophobe."
Sure. My guess is: your dad wasn't involved in a conflict "so secret" that no one else knew about it--including the US and Vietnam governments, the American public, journalists, and every credible historian since. My guess is, your dad was jerking your chain, or you're making it up. Technically that's 2 guesses, but I'll take the liberty.
P.S. Floating around in the Gulf of Tonkin does not count as "conflict".
Sigs cause cancer.
So, by me wanting to have our electoral votes doled out in the most representative way possible, I'm now a 'Republican hack'? Please explain how that bit of logic works.
Oh, I see. Anything that might hurt the Democratic party's chances for winning is automatically a bad thing to you. And since in your small world, there are only two political parties (Ds and Rs), I must be on the Republican side. I don't vote for either party, thus my statement of "I don't care about political parties".
If several states seceded together, then it is possible the the US military would at least temporarily be crippled, since everyone from a secessionist state would have to be removed from their position until their loyalty was proven, and a unit with a sufficient concentration of secessionists is likely to mutiny, especially if the US tried to reconquer the state(s).
As soon as the first civilian casualties were reported, public support for war within the Union would be likely to evaporate quickly, making the use of force politically impossible in most cases.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."- Winston Churchill
That's true to a degree, but ultimately, whether you consider yourself "pro-choice," "pro-life," whatever, you're arguing over one action--aborting a fetus. And those on one side want that to be legal, and the other want it to be illegal. The rest is just semantics.
Exactly. The abortion debate isn't about "where life begins" but whether or not we should put doctors in prison for performing abortions.
I don't see many (and I'll bow to your preferences and use the term "pro-choice") pro-choice people arguing against the government's vital role in funding Planned Parenthood for instance.
The issues are unrelated. Planned Parenthood spends the vast majority of it's money on prenatal care, screenings for cervical cancer and other ailments, screening for STDs, and providing birth control. Poor Americans can't afford these services out of pocket. So funding Planned Parenthood is more about universal health care than about abortion per se.
I think current Federal law requires Planned Parenthood to pay for abortion services with other funds anyway.
Dude, didn't you see Antitrust!? -1 NotNerd!
So, by me wanting to have our electoral votes doled out in the most representative way possible, I'm now a 'Republican hack'? Please explain how that bit of logic works.
Oh, I see. Anything that might hurt the Democratic party's chances for winning is automatically a bad thing to you. And since in your small world, there are only two political parties (Ds and Rs), I must be on the Republican side. I don't vote for either party, thus my statement of "I don't care about political parties".
No, you want california carved up like this, but don't want republican strongholds like the southeastern block put through the same peacemeal process.
I'm sorry, but as a leftist (by canadian standards), I don't appreciate your efforts to destroy the one political party even remotely on my radar by focusing laserlike on california, when the exact opposite form of "vote dilution" is happening in the southeast and midwest.
I know no metropolitan centers which are not left-leaning. A big part of the right's platform centers around intolerance of "anything different than mom's apple pie", and metropolitan citizens run into enough different people to see how ludicrous that is.
If you're going to carve up geographic districts like this, then you do it everywhere, or nowhere, not just in the "blue" states.
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Have you researched all 50 states and territories?
After all, we have lots of free universities, vacation time differs by state (as does maternity leave). I don't know what they're like in other states, and barely my own for that matter.
Also, that's the way you guys (assuming you're Nordic) voted. We voted for something different, and it works for us. How does that make you (or us) better?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
No, you want California carved up like this, but don't want republican strongholds like the southeastern block put through the same peacemeal process.
I challenge you to point out where I ever said that I don't want other states to use the proportional system.
...by focusing laserlike on california,...
You probably didn't see my first post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=646439&cid=24607769
I live in California,...
If Texas or whatever other 'Republican' state puts the proportional system into effect first... GREAT! But I don't see why California should wait around to make things 'fair' for both parties, at the expense of the voters' will. My vote does not exist for the benefit of any political party; it exists for my voice to be heard.
Name one. Even state schools in the US charge some kind of tuition fees. And saying "So-and-so university gives full scholarships to some students" doesn't count. Here in Finland, all anyone needs to do to go to university is pay the student union fee, a whopping 60 euro a year (and it's optional for PhD students).
No US state mandates the three or four weeks a year of vacation time that most EU countries do.
I don't think it works for you. Nearly every friend and family member I have back in the US is miserable. They work too much, can't put away enough money, and feel everything's getting out of control. Meanwhile, me and my friends here in Europe work little, travel all over the world a good portion, and feel like we're getting by just fine. If your vote didn't make you happier, you voted wrong.
I challenge you to point out where I ever said that I don't want other states to use the proportional system.
this pretty much says it all. Don't you dare come at me with semantics, because the sentiment is pretty clear: california must be carved up now, and who gives a damn if any of the other states never do it, because those are red states, and republicans don't need to follow the same rules.
By 'fair', I guess you mean fair to both political parties. I don't care about political parties. If California enacts a more representative system for distributing our electoral votes, that's all I care about. I don't want to wait around for other states to get their act together.
If Texas or whatever other 'Republican' state puts the proportional system into effect first... GREAT! But I don't see why California should wait around to make things 'fair' for both parties, at the expense of the voters' will.
But if they change it alone, it is at the expense of the voter's will. California makes up some electoral votes similarly "diluted" in the southeastern and midwestern block metropolitan areas.
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Mod parent up.
Federalism is fundamentally undemocratic. One man, one vote.
The United States Military Academy at West Point, the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs are all free for everyone, at taxpayer expense.
As for vacation by state, I don't know. I've only ever lived in two, one left-leaning (MA) and one Libertarian-leaning (NH). NH doesn't mandate ANYTHING, we're all free to do as we wish. MA mandates everything... and people seem to emigrate to NH to escape it all.
Which states are you friends and family living in? Like I said, it REALLY matters a great deal. Ask most Vermonters and they'll tell you they're happy and talk to most people from Louisiana and they'll prolly tell you life sucks (but then again, the whole South does anyway). I'm sorry to hear they're unhappy with their lives. I hope it works out for them.
Over here we seem to have chosen the "more risk, more reward" method. At least, my state works that way. In MA, they have more labor laws (and more laws in general) and while it's easier to get fired in NH, we have a statistically significant and a lower unemployment rate. Our crime rate is low, too (and would be lower if we stopped letting the Massholes in, but I digress).
The travel part is interesting. It's well known that a low percentage of Americans have passports. I just got mine for the first time this year. But there are some interesting reasons for that. For one thing, the US is HUGE. You can drive 72 hours in a straight line going 80 kph and still be in the same country.... and that's not counting Alaska. Outside of Russia, I don't think that's possible in Europe (and I believe the European part of Russia is also not that large). I think my town is larger than several principalities y'all have over there, too.
The different parts of the US also offer different types of attractions, vacations, etc. For example, it's tough to ski in Florida but it's popular in the Northeast... and you don't need a passport for that (yet). If I want to visit a rain forest or tropical location, I can go to Washington State or Hawaii... and still no passport needed. The only thing about the USA, though, is that everything is still young. We have no man-made tourist destinations here that's particularly popular that's thousands of years old like y'all have in Europe, Asia or Africa.
If people are truly unhappy about the way things are over here, they are welcome to vote at the ballot booth and with their wallets. But if they like how it is and they are happy, who am I to disagree? That's how democracy works in the ideal, anyway.
Besides the social safety net Scandinavia has, what are the other parts you are the most proud of?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Performance is generally so bad that if you just do what's minimally expected you'll bonus. [...] By the way, that same call center mentioned above offered FULL tuition reinmbursement. There were roughly 600 call reps there and I think 3-4 actually took advantage of it. What does that tell you?
It tells me that the call centers in your neck of the woods are nothing like the ones around here. Believe me, I've worked in call centers and so have many of my friends, and none of them have been anything like what you're describing.
I have endless similar anecdotes, but you're right I don't know what it's like to be poor.
Look, the problem with your anecdotes is that they don't disprove anyone else's anecdotes. You know your experience, but you're incorrectly assuming that it's the same for everyone else -- it's not.
It's great that you had these opportunities, and it's great that the call centers in your area pay for college and offer outstanding bonuses to anyone who's willing to put in the effort. But that's not universal.
The fact is, those opportunities aren't available to everyone, and no matter how much you talk about the opportunities you had, it doesn't do a thing to make them available to anyone else.
No sir, you're the one who is out of touch.
Hilarious! You're the one assuming that your experience is universal, that everyone else shares your luck and opportunities, and that if they don't reach the same outcome it's because they're lazy. I think it's clear which one of us is out of touch.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Just ask Joseph Lieberman. He got kicked out of the damn party. Not for failure, not retroactively, but because he votes like a Republican, period.
PLEASE mod the parent up.
Do you know why I'm not a Republican? Because the Republicans refuse to toss out racists and religious nuts like George Allen, Ted Stevens, Strom Thurmond, Larry Craig, etc. And that's just the Senate.
this pretty much says it all. Don't you dare come at me with semantics, because the sentiment is pretty clear:
Um, I didn't come at you with semantics. You said that I wanted other states to keep the same winner-takes-all approach. I asked you to point out where I said that. Not only did you every show where I said that ('sentiment' my ass), but you came back with this bizarre statement that isn't even close to anything I said:
...because those are red states, and republicans don't need to follow the same rules.
That's so far removed from anything I've said in this thread that it makes me wonder what the words I typed look like to you.
And then you came up with these amazing leaps of logic:
But if they change it alone, it is at the expense of the voter's will.
Wha? So having the will of California voters accurately reflected is against the will of the California voters, because other states don't do things the same way? -1 = 1 in your world as well?
California makes up some electoral votes similarly "diluted" in the southeastern and midwestern block metropolitan areas.
California's electoral votes are California's electoral votes alone, irregardless of what other states do.
If you aren't even going to make sense, and just make up statements that I never said, then I'm through arguing with you.
I am not arguing the right or wrong either. I am arguing that US at least followed form. And it was not unilateral, although the US was the majority of forces engaged in Iraq.
Russia on the other hand, is practicing Realpolitik. They have invaded a sovereign nation with one thing in mind: expand Russian borders.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
The reason power is a monopoly is because of the wiring issue.
And? Power *IS* a monopoly. Trash service *IS* a monopoly. Water *IS* a monopoly. Telephone *IS* a monopoly. Any they're not monopolies because of "evil socialism", socialism means nationalization. They're monopolies because big companies bribed politicians into giving them monopolies.
Name the industry that is so dominated by patents that newcomers can't enter it.
The pharmaceutical industry. Virtually no newcomers due to interlocking patent issues.
The problem is that no one has had the balls to produce a redesigned, absolutely, positively, 100%-compatible Windows clone. And don't give me the old wrong answer about "Microsoft will just change Windows to make it incompatible." That's always been crap. Sure, Microsoft can break their own products, but they can't break everyone else's products, and you can also keep an antitrust war chest to sue Microsoft if they tried to make Office incompatible.
No, they can't. In order to re-implement Windows you would need access to the source code, and if anyone who has access to the source code tries to re-implement part of Windows Microsoft will sue them and win easily. Nor could any former Microsoft employee or anyone with extensive experience developing for Windows aid in the project. This is the whole point of the "open source" movement.
It is simply not possible to make a "clean room" clone of, say, Windows 2000. In this context "clean room" clone means the developers have absolutely no experience with Microsoft products whatsoever, have never seen Microsoft source, have never worked for Microsoft or near Microsoft and have no idea how to program anything in Windows. Typically they developers have to go out of their way to remain willfully ignorant about they product they are trying to re-implement (to prevent lawsuits, see above). It is far too complicated to make EXACTLY the same systems from scratch. SAMBA was accomplished through extremely slow and painful network traffic sniffing.
And this is all despite European court rulings requiring Microsoft to open interfaces. Rather than comply Microsoft has been soaking up billions in fines. The fact that MS is willing to pay $2 BILLION rather than open their source code should give you some idea of how big a war chest you would need to fight them on this issue.
And individual companies can't make antitrust claims, only the government. And the US government is reluctant to make anti-trust claims for companies they're completely dependent on, like Boeing and Microsoft. The previous anti-trust suit really only went forward due to bribery by Sun (also a big contractor).
It's your opinion that a spectrum free of politics would be preferable.
Hardly the central point of my argument -- it's largely a rhetorical point to underscore the fact that that it's highly unlikely TFD would be the *end* of politically oriented broadcasting. And again, there's considerable evidence to back up this assertion, given that broadcasters still covered politics while TFD was in effect.
But to some extent, I suspect you *could* fashion an objective argument stating that the current state of things may not even be marginally better than no coverage at all, if you start by considering some simple questions about values. What's the *purpose* of political programming? Is it simply entertainment? Or editorial propaganda? It's a value judgment, but I don't think it's just my "opinion" that it would be objectively better to have programming that transcends both of those functions and really educates.
And I'm not sure we've got it. Despite the "diversity" of programming, it's still apparently true that the majority of Americans don't seem to know much about policy issues underlying political decisions. If some accounts are true, a significant number still believe Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, can't locate Iraq on a map, are barely aware that there are Muslim sects and how they compete and are related. You'd think that after 5 years of war, most of us would have a deeper understanding of this -- in fact, for a well-tuned representative democracy, we'd *need* to know at least a limited amount of this in order to make good judgments when it's time hold those in office accountable via elections.
If these things are true, it's hard to argue the current broadcast media is providing a useful function on this front. And if it's not, then it's essentially something else, probably either the aforementioned propaganda or entertainment.
What about those who disagree and enjoy the products available today? Would it not be "unfair" to them to lose access to programming they enjoy?
To the extent that "enjoyment" means entertainment that excludes the value I'm describing, it doesn't fare well when in contrast, except perhaps to those who value bread and circus over a functional and responsible society.
As it happens, it doesn't seem to be the case that the entire landscape of broadcast media is devoid of which meets the standards I've described. In particular, I could point to This American Life. They aren't uniformly agreeable to my thinking, but it's inarguable that some of their pieces have really transcended reporting to become real educational journalism. As an almost quintessential example, the recent episode "The Giant Pool of Money" is an excellent layman's overview of the housing bust and credit crisis. There's been similar in-depth pieces on Iraq, on the history and current status of habeas corpus, and other topics.
But it's not hard to view this as the exception that proves the rule. It's such a strange show against the landscape. More than half of the time it isn't even politics at all, just oddly individualized narrative journalism.
Tweet, tweet.
If Hitler had taken out the Russians, we wouldn't be having this coversation right now. Anyway, despite whatever war propaganda you may have heard, it is quite obvious that it was not a priority of the NSDAP, nor of Hitler, to pursue agressiong with the Western allies.
France and Britain declared war on Germany first, then it was several weeks before the Germans did anything about it, and then merely to close the Western flank.
Roosevelt goaded the Japanese into attacking us so that we could fight it out with them -- but that also meant getting into it with Germany and Italy due to the Tripartied Pact.
Yes, World War I was a complete and total waste of time. Not a shot had been fired on German soil. Germany had not lost any territory. The Western Allies were about to capitulate and peace was going to be agreed upon. American involvement in the war merely prolonged it, allowing the French, who should have lost, to force Germany under the yolk, and that created the situation which lead to WWII.
The Civil War is not a foreign war and so it doesn't count for purposes of this discussion. I was born in New York, grew up in Virginia, with extended stays in New York, New Hampshire, and Ireland, and frankly just consider myself "East Coast" if I must be anything -- so I would just as soon keep out of that one.
They're monopolies because big companies bribed politicians into giving them monopolies.
Don't be absurd. They've been monopolies since the beginning of time because no one wants multiple sets of wires runnings through their neighborhood, or multiple sets of water pipes, or multiple sets of gas pipes, etc.
The pharmaceutical industry. Virtually no newcomers due to interlocking patent issues.
That's so absurd as to be parody. Exactly which patent stops someone from opening a lab and doing research? Here are two that I found in about five seconds of searching:
New pharma 1
New pharma 2
It is simply not possible to make a "clean room" clone of, say, Windows 2000. [snip ridiculous nonsense] It is far too complicated to make EXACTLY the same systems from scratch.
*cough*ReactOS*cough*
and if anyone who has access to the source code tries to re-implement part of Windows Microsoft will sue them and win easily.
As I pointed out to someone else in this thread, say what you want about Microsoft, but they have rarely, if ever, used lawsuits as weapons (unlike, say, Apple). The ReactOS project has been around over 10 years. I assure you that Microsoft knows about it. If they were going to try and crush the life out of them, they would've done it before now, when they have an XP-level beta release possibly coming out this year.
Also note that the WINE project has also not been crushed out of existence, despite the fact that you typically need to use real Windows DLLs to make it truly functional. See also: CodeWeavers, which makes *MS Office* run under Linux.
Of course, your own example of Samba also kills your argument. Last I checked, Microsoft hasn't sued them out of existence.
At least try and do a little research before posting rants like this.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Wha? So having the will of California voters accurately reflected is against the will of the California voters, because other states don't do things the same way? -1 = 1 in your world as well?
no, I think -1+1 = 0 which is how the republicans are currently pulling it with most of the red states which have blue capitals.
it makes perfect sense. The will of the democratic voters is being subverted in districts all across the southern and midwestern blocks. Thus, in this case, 2 wrongs actually do make a "precarious" right.
If youre going to change a blue state's electoral counting system in a way which counts against one major party, it's only fair to do the same with another equally weighty red state. Otherwise, you have a fundamental national imbalance.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I wouldn't call them free if they want you to accept a commission upon graduation, serve in the military, and then uneasily wait through your inactive reserve period afterward. Furthermore, those are not institutions meant for the general public, which includes legions of people who are in poor health, openly identify as homosexual, or just plain don't like the military.
Like most American families, mine is spread out everywhere. I grew up in Philadelphia, though after I graduated high school and left for Europe, my parents moved to Michigan. Much of my family is in Alabama. No matter where they are, they just don't have it as good as in any western European countries.
Most of the "reward" promised by the American dream is that you can work hard, save up money, and eventually have a big house in the 'burbs with 2.5 kids. But what good is amassing money if you lose so much of your life to work instead of leisure? I know by the time I retire, I won't have the energy in me that I do now, so the focus should be on quality of life throughout instead of the possibility of a merely OK retirement.
Most of the American excuses for why they don't travel just end up making Americans look boorish. Sure, the US is huge and there are many natural attractions and varied climates, but you're still in places where people are, well, the same as you. A big part of travel is meeting people who speak a different language and have a radically different way of life. The cultural difference between a New Yorker and an Alabaman is miniscule compared to the insights that, say, a Vietnamese or Indonesian person could offer to Western tourists. Americans even have some fairly exotic destinations open to them, like Quebec and Mexico, but most never seize those opportunities.
I especially like over here the generous state support of the arts, which means that anyone can go to the orchestra or opera several times a month, not just rich people (just student-price tickets in the US tend to cost more than normal-price tickets here). Also, public libraries are much better stocked, even in the smallest communities. My memories of the local public libraries in the US is that they had a lot of light popular reading like romance novels, but were not well endowed with educational reading.
Ahh, I didn't realize you grew up over here and then went to Finland.
As for the higher education, it's also not open to stupid people, and I'd wager stupid people make up a much larger group of people than the group the Academies don't usually let in.
Still, though, I'm convinced that Alabama, Philly and Michigan aren't what I'd call the best examples of the USA. Next time you visit the USA again, my I recommend northern New England: VT, NH and ME. I work a nice, leisurely 40 hours and get paid a fair wage, and I'm not wanting.
Interesting to hear about your library experience. My town is quite rural and our library has a much smaller fiction section than non-fiction section. At least, it did the last time I went there. It's been a while.
I have another question about your European experience: how do you deal with the language barriers? North America has what, three main languages, while Europe has an imperial crapload. Do y'all find a common one or just hope for the best or use lots of gesturing or what?
Thanks for your time. Though we don't seem to agree on much, it's been an enjoyable conversation for me.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Ah, but no one votes for the Democrats in order for them to be sold down the river by the media companies.
In other words, the Democrats have a platform that is not in conflict with itself. Or, rather, their actual platform has that in it...and no one who wants it there votes for them. The reasons that people vote for them are no in conflict. They often fall short, very short, of those reasons, but people don't for them for half a dozen conflicting things that are all 'conservative'.
I.e., while they might suggest driving cross country to New York from LA, and only make it to Houston, and sometimes go to Alaska instead, the Republicans want to drive from LA to Florida and Alaska and fly to Hawaii, all at the same same time. The Democrats just FAIL, the Republicans have impossible goals to start with.
Failure, especially failure by 'buying candidates', you can fix by actually voting in primaries. There's a reason the slogan at DailyKos is More and Better Democrats. Conflicting goals can't actually be 'fixed', because there are people trying to 'unfix' them into goals that you don't want.
Which is ironic, because the Democrats are actually the results of two political theories merging into one party: Progressivism and Liberalism. Progressivism wants to solve social problems using the government, and liberalism is what you just called 'classic liberalism', concerned about the rights of man. (Which does not, despite what the libertarians like to be pretend, include the right not to be taxed.)
But, in ironies of ironies, they get along pretty well, whereas the Republicans are the 'Democrats except' party...they'd be Democrats except for one single issue. I know at least three people who the sole reason they voted for Bush was abortion. (I live in Georgia, the one not at war with Russia.) And these 'one single issues' are often at odds with each other, which is why you get silliness like 'compassionate conservativism'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The Republicans are always 'conservative' until they inevitably fail, at which point they've never been conservative.
How do you explain McCain then? He was (and still is) harshly criticized by the right for not being a conservative.
In fact, pretty much all of the Republican nominees were criticized in that fashion.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Hmmm - that's a good point. Although is a similar situation, I think we would, for all intents and purposes, enforce the death penalty.
Imagine the only way someone could live was to be attached to my bloodstream 24 hours a day, and I'd have to cart him around in a wheelchair. And for this service, he's paying $10k/day. In this extremely contrived example, if he stops paying, his breach of contract will, in fact, kill him.
Last post!
In 30 years, I have heard a lot of talk about small government, but every time people go and vote for the small government candidate I lose some freedom, and money out of my pocket book.
Pah. In the last 30 years, every time someone has voted for a Democrat or a Republican, we have lost some freedom and money. That's the problem: both parties are in favor of bigger government, though one of them lies about it.
As for defense being a valid thing to spend government money on, it is, but the current crop of Republicans have perverted that thinking, claiming we need an extraordinarily high "defense" budget so that we can send our military all around the world to "protect" us from terrorism, rather than simply defending our borders as they really should. We would do just fine with a military 1/8 - 1/4 its current size, focusing on border defense, and keeping enough of a force in reserve in case we do have to send a few carrier fleets somewhere to attack another country. We don't need enough manpower to occupy multiple countries. The current Republicans don't subscribe to that, and the Democrats have never subscribed to that (Dems have always been big fans of using military force to push "American values" in other countries that don't want them: e.g. Vietnam).
Maybe it's time we just had an honest discussion instead of all these emotional buzzwords?
Hahaha! You want an honest discussion with politicians? I'm sorry, but that's impossible. It's not possible to have an honest discussion with sociopathic, pathelogical liars. Unfortunately, that's the kind of person Americans like to elect, because they tell them what they want to hear.
I had an argument back in 2004 with a "conservative" friend of mine who argued that banning gay marriage meant smaller government. Because, apparently these gay married couples would consumer more government services than they would as individuals.
He's an idiot. Being married doesn't allow gay couples to consume government services any more than when single. It might give them a tax break, however, but that's only fair as heteros have the same opportunity (of course, that depends on several factors, like if both spouses are working, etc.). Besides, gay people consume far less than their fair share of services. They tend to be better educated and make a lot more money, and not have any kids to spend it on (or get tax credits from). Basically, gay people are subsidizing the educations of heteros' children. If he wants smaller government by his logic, he should advocate banning hetero marriage and childbirth. I'm sure he doesn't want that.
IMO, government should get out of the marriage business. It shouldn't affect taxes, and it shouldn't even be recognized by government, other than as a contract between parties to deal with inheritance, power of attorney rights, etc. People should be able to make any such contracts as they please, whether with someone of the opposite sex, someone of the same sex, two people of the opposite sex, etc. People in this country squawk a lot about "freedom", but then they don't even allow people to have the freedom to marry whomever they want (or more than one person). This doesn't mean polygamists should get welfare benefits like those freaks in TX, but if they can afford it, they should be allowed to do it.
In my political campaign training I was taught that only 30% of voters are proficient on the Internet. That means that 70% of campaigning needs to be offline.
Libertas in infinitum
You're right that education is important, but as you have just proven, people who are uneducated can cause problems to society by voting. But what you don't realize is that the US is NOT a democracy, we are Constitutional Republic and the only part about the US that is democratic is the way our representatives are elected.
US|=democracy.
Libertas in infinitum
Yes, a municipal corrupt political machine did in fact win an election once. JFK was elected because of the crime bosses in Chicago.
Libertas in infinitum
Looks like the Libertarian party and Bob Barr '08 are the only place to go!
Libertas in infinitum
You get your morality from your parents, not everybody traces their roots back to ancient Greeze and people tend to pick and choose their morals. See: religion.
Blar.
Often, disaster strikes -- whether it's a natural disaster, an injury/illness, massive layoffs because of some change in the market, or anything else -- and there's nothing you could've reasonably done to avoid it. What then?
If you're more than a couple years out of college/apprenticeship and you don't have a disaster fund - at least 6 months living expenses, but 12 is better - you are simply irresponsible. If you have a family and have no disaster fund, you are not just irresponsible but reckless with the welfare of your family.
People don't stay poor because they like being poor, or because welfare pays better than working
No, people stay poor because they make stupid decisions about their lives, over and over. You *cannot* fix this by giving people money. I spent a lot of my early life being poor and living with stupid, irresponsible poor people. I climbed out of that by (eventually) learning to make simple, responsible decisions and delaying gratification. It doesn't take a genius here, it just takes a minimal fucking sense of responsibility for your own welfare.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yes, now that the party discipline has fallen apart thanks to Bush.
The fact that none of them qualified as 'real conservatives' is just as telling as the fact that Bush did 'qualify' when he ran...namely, it tells us that no one, not even voters, has the slightest clue what that means. And that there isn't any such thing.
All 'conservative' means is you're a successful Republican, or a Republican during a successful time. Sadly, it appears a certain Republican is so unsuccessful that his lack of success has become contagious, and random Republicans standing too close to Bush have been infected with FAIL, which in turn means, instantly, they were not and never were conservatives.
Tada, it's like magic. Or like that quantum physics thing where if you don't measure something, it's indeterminate, but once you measure it, it is, and always was, that specific thing. Like Schrodinger cat is both dead and alive until you open the box, at which point it has always been dead or alive.
Except here it's 'failure' instead of measurement, and the result always comes out 'not conservative'. Which is why Reagan is conservative until you point at his policies and force people to admit he wasn't...he never failed, so never got 'measured'.
You'll notice that McCain was apparently a conservative in 2000, and in 1992 for that matter, despite being significantly to the left of where he is now. As had Romney.
Or, perhaps, another way of looking at it is that Republicans are conservative until other Republicans vote them off the island, which usually happens only after something goes wrong...but they've just recently panicked and starting voting everyone except themselves off the island.
And I just know someone's going to respond to this with exactly what 'conservativism' is. I did not argue that conservativism did not exist. I argued that, as used in politics, 'conservative' is a way to refer to 'successful Republicans', period, and has no meaning outside that. Outside politics, it might, indeed, refer to some consistent political philosophy, I dunno.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You clearly know nothing of the history of the Vietnam War. During the Eisenhower administration, there were a handful of CIA propagandists serving the Diem regime, that's it.
It's you who obviously don't know the history of the Viet Nam War. Eisenhower sent US Air Force Officer Edward Lansdale to recruit, train, and arm opponents of The Geneva Conference agreement between France and South Viet Nam on one side and North Viet Nam on the other. The agreement was that the two Viet Nams would hold voting on whether to remain separated or to reunite.
Kennedy, who basically bought into the Cold War policy of Eisenhower, drew the line against Communism in Vietnam since the Bay of Pigs was a colossal failure
Kennedy escalated it but Ike started US involvement in Viet Nam.
You wanted to slime Republicans but just made yourself look ignorant instead. Use facts next time.
You're the one spreading slime, I suggest you check the facts.
Oh, and here's another fact: it was a Republican president who finally withdrew all American troops from Vietnam.
Ending the Vietnam War was the only good thing Nixon did. Otherwise he was a crook and liar. For instance did you know Nixon set up his own Presidential Commission to study whether hemp, aka marijuana, should be legalized? Well he did however he said no matter what the commission decided he would not legalize it which is exactly what they decided.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you're more than a couple years out of college/apprenticeship and you don't have a disaster fund - at least 6 months living expenses, but 12 is better - you are simply irresponsible.
Yes, of course, why hasn't anyone else thought of that? It's so simple! They wouldn't be poor if they'd just save all that spare money they have left over after paying for housing and utilities, buying groceries and fuel, etc.
And hey, if they don't have bread, why don't they just eat cake? How irresponsible they must be, turning away such a delicious treat.
Why, they must be making a fortune at those cushy call centers and air conditioned Wal-Marts. What's the going wage these days, $100 an hour? $200? It's been so long since I kept up with peasant news. Whatever it is, clearly they have no excuse.
No, people stay poor because they make stupid decisions about their lives, over and over. You *cannot* fix this by giving people money.
Preach it, brother! If someone doesn't have the skills to get a higher-paying job, and can't go back to school because he needs to spend his time working, there's nothing money could do to improve his situation. Absolutely nothing.
Get real. Sure, there are people who make bad decisions over and over. But there are also people who make one or two bad decisions -- or have one or two misfortunes -- and then find that they have no more options.
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I don't doubt that. It's funny how people will stick to philosophies and political parties that work against their own interests, isn't it?
It's not against my interest at all. If Libertarians had had their way it would have been the employer of the driver who hit me who would have had to pay not the government, ie taxpayers. Fact is is that employer, the person who hit me was working and driving a company vehicle, got off with a light slap. What's worse is that he had a record of causing accidents and one state had a warrant issued for his arrest. And that's with Democrats and Republicans in control not Libertarians.
There were charities before any of our social programs existed; voluntary donations weren't enough then, nor are they now.
Oh, really? President Roosevelt signed into law Social Security in 1935 during the Great Depression yet the economy was already improving as was employment. I suggest you look at these 2 charts of the economy and employment between 1920 and 1940. The worst year for employment and the economy was 1932-33, two plus years before Social Security.
Why would I? Social Security is a form of insurance, not an investment.
Why would you what? Plan your own retirement? So you don't have to sponge, depend, on others when you retire. It's everyone's responsibility to make sure they have enough. Heck by the tyme the last Baby Boomers retire Social Security probably will be broke. By spending all your money while you work and not saving any for retirement all you are doing is leaving a hugh Amount Due bill for future generations. Which is the opposite of how it should be. I don't recall exactly what he said but Sidney Poitier's character in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", one of my favorite movies, tells his dad it's his, dad's, responsibility to do everything he can for his child because he brought him into the world and he will have the same responsibility if he ever has children.
Do you think that 10% figure is a guarantee of some sort?
No I don't however over longer periods of tyme, decades, the financial markets do better. Heck you can 5% investing in bonds, which are guarantied. And remember, I only said invest for 7 years, however someone who goes to college and gets a Bachelor's degree and start working at the age of 22 can save and invest for 43 years (instead of 7 years), 'til the age of 65 and do a lot better. And before the person retires their home should be paid for. You might, as others have, say that the stock market could crash. Yeap it sure can, and depending on how old you are when it happens you could very well have plenty of tyme to recover. If you're old and close to retirement then you should have a good chunk of your investment portfolio in bonds, which as I said above are guarantied. If a business goes bankrupt the first people to get money are those who hold secured financial instruments, which bonds are.
If you invest wisely, maybe you'll earn that much, or maybe you'll choose wrong and lose it all.
If you invest wisely you won't put all your eggs in one nest. You'll have money spread out. Even though I'm middle aged if I could invest now I'd put most of the money in aggressive growth stocks, more than one in more than one industry or sector. I'd put the next biggest chunk in growth stocks, again more than one in more than one sector. Then I put a little in income and value stocks. Of course I'd do all this after I had 6 months living expenses in the bank. Say basic expenses are $2,000 a month, mine are about half that, I'd have maybe $6000 in cash and another $6000 in a 3 month CD.
I wish I were, but sadly I'm not.
But you are, no Libertarian I know would let others starve, unless it was their own fault. All I know help those they can who are willing. I
Should there be a Law?
Don't be ridiculous. Without government regulation, companies naturally grow into monopolies, like they did in the 1900s.
You're the one being ridiculous, it was government that created most of those monopolies during the 1900s. Pretty much the same can be said of those in the 1800s. It was government that gave the railroads the right of way along with the telephone and cable companies for instance. It was also government that gave corporations their corporate charters and then did not revoke those corporate charters when the corporation no longer served the common good. Libertarians on the other hand know what to do about the concentration of power in corporate hands.
Libertarian nuts like you
You're the nut. Bye
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's not against my interest at all. If Libertarians had had their way it would have been the employer of the driver who hit me who would have had to pay not the government, ie taxpayers. Fact is is that employer, the person who hit me was working and driving a company vehicle, got off with a light slap.
In that case, if Libertarians had had their way, you would've been lucky that he was on the clock when he hit you. What if he hadn't, and he didn't have enough assets of his own to compensate you for your injury? Tough luck for you, I guess.
Oh, really? President Roosevelt signed into law Social Security in 1935 during the Great Depression yet the economy was already improving as was employment.
Yes, really. Just because the economy was improving doesn't mean everything was fine; an improvement in the average doesn't translate to an improvement in every single person's life. If private charity and the market had been providing for everyone, there would've been no demand for social programs.
Why would you what? Plan your own retirement?
No, why would I expect Social Security to have the same profit potential as a risky investment? That isn't its purpose (hence the word "security").
Investing for your retirement is a good idea, obviously, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to do it myself. But not everyone can afford to invest, and not everyone who does invest will come out ahead. Social Security ensures that those people will at least end up with something, and I have no problem paying to live in a country where everyone has that assurance.
Heck by the tyme the last Baby Boomers retire Social Security probably will be broke.
That's what some people would like us to think -- the ones who stand to gain from moving all that money into private investments, for example -- but it's more myth than fact. If you want to worry about a program going broke, look at Medicare, not Social Security.
You might, as others have, say that the stock market could crash. Yeap it sure can, and depending on how old you are when it happens you could very well have plenty of tyme to recover.
Sure, you could, and hopefully you will, but maybe you won't. That's the difference between insurance and investment, and it's one reason why investments can't replace Social Security.
If you're old and close to retirement then you should have a good chunk of your investment portfolio in bonds, which as I said above are guarantied. If a business goes bankrupt the first people to get money are those who hold secured financial instruments, which bonds are.
Bonds aren't guaranteed to pay off; that's why they have ratings. If the company goes bankrupt and doesn't have enough assets left to pay the bond holders, what happens? Does the money appear out of thin air? No, the bond holders get screwed.
But you are, no Libertarian I know would let others starve, unless it was their own fault. All I know help those they can who are willing.
No Libertarian you know has sufficient resources. They might like to help everyone, but they can't possibly accomplish it.
That's the problem. They might be perfectly nice people who donate as much as they can to charity, but individual donations aren't enough. When the charity runs out, people will suffer and die, and Libertarian ideology says that's still better than paying taxes (or simply ignores the possibility that such a thing could happen).
Furthermore, many of us non-Libertarians believe that people shouldn't have to starve even if it is their own fault, i.e. that a bad decision shouldn't ruin your life. So, we might conclude that the Libertarians you know aren't too nice after all.
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Sure, but many lapsed Catholics still have a personal set of morals which is largely based on the Judeo-Christian tradition found in the Bible. Even if they reject certain tenets of Catholicism on things like abortion, ordained women, homosexuality, etc. they still believe in heaven, hell, Jesus, etc. There are some who completely reject the Judeo-Christian faiths and become atheists, agnostics, or Deists, and turn to secular humanism. But many just reject the authority of Rome or their local priest (or preacher/rabbi/mullah etc. for other denominations) and specific policy decisions handed down by the papal office and work out their own interpretation of the Bible. Those "heretics" in effect are still using a set of rules created by an oligarchy, that of the early church leaders who decided which gospels made it into the official version, even if they perform their own customized interpretation and filtering on the results. Thus I would say that I disagree with your affirmation.
Often the source remains the same, the only difference is that some people notice the more egregious portions of the self-interested additions supported by the oligarchy and reject those because they find them inconsistent with the changing environment. But the same people will still continue to accept the less extreme inconsistencies in the moral system that they have been indoctrinated with. The emotions arise after noticing the inconsistency, even if the process of noticing happens subconsciously. The emotions come from the internal conflict between the recognition of the inconsistency and the denial of that recognition by the "moral" conditioning.
If your morals are strongly influenced or based on your community's, and the largest portion of that community follows the precept of a particular religious leader or group, then your "morals" are still religiously based, even if it's secondhand. If your morals are derived from philosophical examination of base principles, like secular humanism for instance, then I would argue that what you have is an ethical system, not a moral one. So while you may not have influence in imposing your morals, this I think supports my argument that some people have no problems imposing their morals on others if they can convince enough people to adopt their moral system.
I guess it depends on what you consider to be part of your moral system. One dictionary definition is:
"Rules or habits of conduct, especially of sexual conduct, with reference to standards of right and wrong"
Now to me, most of those "standards of right and wrong" are based on religious sources. Ethical decisions are more nuanced because they can vary based on the individual situations and participants, and the probable outcomes for participants from behaviours and actions. They tend to coincide on many issues like "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal" because the negative outcomes are very consistent across the majority of situations.
However they can diverge in some situations when conditions have changed due to modern capabilities such as prophylactics and contraceptives, statistical social science studies tracking the relative development of wanted and unwanted children, and the force projection and kill ratios of nuclear warfare.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Try that line of bullshit with someone else. I've been there and done that. So have other members of my family. The keys are whether you're willing to live below your means, which means sacrificing pride and social standing, and commit years to a line of work you wouldn't have chosen in an ideal world.
I've known people making $20K/year and $200K/year who lived paycheck to paycheck, one month from disaster. I've known people making $20K/year and $200K/year who saved a third to a half of their take home pay. You have to make sacrifices, but as someone who did I can say that the sacrifice required reduced my actual standard of living by little, outside of status symbols. You don't need a house. You don't need cable. You don't need fashion. You don't need a nice neighborhood (though it's worth avoiding the really violent areas). You don't need a presentable car, just a reliable one.
Yes, you can be trapped by circumstance (or become genuinely disabled), and we should have a safety net as a civilized society - but for every person trapped by circumstance there are 10 or 20 trapped by simple lack of responsibility, the belief that working for a living is some sort of scam that they're too smart to fall for, or simply too much stubborn pride to work for someone else. There are always better jobs that WallMart available, once you have a couple years' stable work history to show for it, even if that's just a job at Costco instead.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
or risk their future, and their potential baby's, trying to raise a child they're not prepared to support
I love how you argue that a reason to abort the baby is because the baby's "future" would be risky if he/she was born. Abort the baby's future ... because his future might be risky. If you don't see the absolute irony, conflict, and (IMHO) grotesque error in your arguments, so help you!
Try that line of bullshit with someone else. I've been there and done that. So have other members of my family.
And therefore, anyone who can't do it is a lazy bum. It's so simple!
You have to make sacrifices, but as someone who did I can say that the sacrifice required reduced my actual standard of living by little, outside of status symbols. You don't need a house. You don't need cable. You don't need fashion. You don't need a nice neighborhood (though it's worth avoiding the really violent areas). You don't need a presentable car, just a reliable one.
So, what happens when you've made all those sacrifices and you still don't have money left over to save?
for every person trapped by circumstance there are 10 or 20 trapped by simple lack of responsibility, the belief that working for a living is some sort of scam that they're too smart to fall for, or simply too much stubborn pride to work for someone else
From what I've seen, you have the ratio backwards. I know plenty of people who don't have the resources to weather a disaster; I don't know anyone who's unwilling to work.
There are always better jobs that WallMart available
That's a nice glib remark, but it's not true. Sometimes the only better jobs require skills/experience that you don't have, or they're too far away to commute. Sometimes retail and call centers really are the only available jobs.
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Why did they do it? Did Russian spies instigate it to give Russia an excuse? I doubt it.
Why would you doubt this? Other Georgian break-away regions are controlled by Russia-funded militias. Russia has always supported and encouraged South Ossetian tendencies to break away from Georgia (just like Georgia supported Chechnya, although I'm not sure there was any actualy money and weapons involved there). It's not that odd for Georgia to stop that from happening (like Russia did with Chechnya).
The two have been at odds with each other for some time now, and I'd be really surprised if Russia didn't meddle in the affairs of Georgia's rebelious provinces.
I'm also guessing Americans didn't prompt it,
Not directly, and not like this, but Georgia wants to join NATO, and one of the requirements of NATO is that new members deal with any outstanding conflicts (like rebelious provinces) first. So Georgia had to do something. Just not this.
So America has evil points for Iraq, Russia has, let's say, a comparable amount of evil accumulated in a very short period in Georgia, and they got those points by escalating a conflict with a vastly asymmetric response. Any American involvement in a Georgian war would necessarily be a further unjustifiable escalation, and I don't think America can handle being any more evil right now.
Pure American involvement might be a bad idea, but NATO involvement is a different matter. Georgia isn't a NATO member, but it was definitely being considered. Russian occupation hurts NATO. And besides, the EU kinda needs Georgia if it doesn't want to be entirely dependent on Russian gas. (Russia ofcourse wants the EU dependent on Russian gas, because that'd mean Russia can get away with more of its own ruthless power politics.)
As one who also dislikes our two main choices, I encourage you to use your vote for 3rd parties as "Jaysyn" said, to help them get matching funds, and to help them get recognition. If a lot more people started voting for 3rd party candidates instead of the "lesser of two evils" (which is still voting for evil), we'd have some real change. It really doesn't matter who you vote for, as long as it's someone other than a Dem/Rep, and that you vote.
Interesting observation.
My memory of McCain in 2000 was that he was considered to be not a conservative. Who called him a conservative in 2000?
I don't disagree that there is some inconsistency and rewriting of history. However, I'm not sure this is the most important example in modern politics, and I'm not entirely sure that this is specific to any one group.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
So make a new top-level domain (.fair , .bal , whatever), and let websites opt-in to imposing a Fairness Doctrine on themselves by registering names in that domain. Failure to respond to alleged violations of the voluntary opt-in fairness mandates eventually lead to losing your registration.
This way, people who prefer to get their information from organizations working under these constraints can do so without imposing draconian restrictions on the rest of the web. There's enough room for everybody.
However, I'm not sure this is the most important example in modern politics, and I'm not entirely sure that this is specific to any one group.
Well, no, groups always try to disown people they previously supported when those people fail. But they usually don't disown the philosophies, because they usually don't have members that operate exactly opposite their philosophy.
I.e., the Democrats couldn't distance themselves from the failure of 'liberal' thought because they actually have objective standards of what that is, and objectively judge the behaviors of people in their party by them.
The problem is that the Republicans have, in essence, disowned everyone. Conservativism cannot fail, it can only be failed. I forget who said that, but it's true. All failure is due to people's (quite correctly pointed out) failure to actually implement conservativism, but that's simply because the whole damn party doesn't implement it.
Or, in other words, in a world with choices between a, b and c, the left picks 'a', and is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, whereas the right picks b but says they pick c. So every time b blows up in their face, they can say 'Oh, we meant to pick c. That guy that picked b wasn't really one of us.'.
And it's not the most important example in modern politics. The best example is probably communism. You go find an American Communist, and talk to them, and they will tell you that the absolutely failure of all communist regimes isn't due to communism, it's due to the fact that none of them were 'really' communism.
Communism, and conservativism, are apparently just impossible to implement correctly. Over and over people keep trying, and they're always corrupted by people everyone trusted, no matter how much those people were operating in opposition to the fundamental philosophy. American Communists at least have the excuse in that it was a bunch of other people trying to implement it, whereas conservativism keeps failing to be implemented correctly by the same political party. Often the exact same people
For some reason this considered a defense of those philosophies, instead of what any rational person would conclude: A political philosophy that cannot ever be implemented correctly is even dumber than one that just sometimes fails. It doesn't matter if it would be hugs and puppies if it was put into practice if it can't be put into practice.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It sure sounds like you're generalizing from liberal guilt, and not from your own experiences being poor and living in poor neighborhoods. There are definitely hard-working poor families, but from my experience these are mostly immigrants (legal or otherwise) with a srong work ethic and a strong sense of morality - great neighbors! These folk tend to live well below their means, either saving or sending home a significant chunk of their pay. They are actively improving their lot in life, generally *despite* the efforts of the government.
The majority of families, however, who are strigling because few family members are willing to work (usually the women), and the rest mostly complain about how unfair life is, how they can't get a job (six help wanted signs up on this street alone guys), how working for The Man is a scam they won't fall for, etc. Of course, they're wearing a month's pay of the working member of the family while they're complaining.
I know plenty of people who don't have the resources to weather a disaster; I don't know anyone who's unwilling to work.
I'm sure you do - that's about the definition of the middle class in America these days. Willing to work (or speculate on silly investments that promise unrealistic income), but unwilling to save, because that would require looking like you were less successful to your friends and neighbors.
Sometimes the only better jobs require skills/experience that you don't have, or they're too far away to commute. Sometimes retail and call centers really are the only available jobs.
Assuming you're an adult who's past the point of the first couple years of near-minimum-wage jobs. there are plenty of opportunities to move to a salaried job with benefits, but you need the capital to take advantage of those opportunities - a couple thousand to pay for training, or relocate, or whatever hurdle makes the opportunity available.
So, what happens when you've made all those sacrifices and you still don't have money left over to save?
Yup, there are people in that position: people who support the losers in their families who are unwilling to work. I've seen a *lot* of that. Back to my original point - these folks would be betetr served by cultural pressure to work for a living (to help them shed their parasites, if nothing else) than handouts. Guess what happens to the handouts if you've got such parasites.
Government-paid skill training does seem to work, as shown by Clinton's welfare reform, and it makes great sense from my experience. But that's quite different from "giving people money". Private charities can also work, if given by a social organization such as a church, because strong social pressure can be applied to change the underlying problem - but some people are simply too proud to benefit from such programs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Balance is primarily the reader's responsibility. Read widely and find the truth. It's great when a blog chooses to be balanced, but anything else is censorship.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
Do you realize that their is nothing in the 'trust fund' but air and promises.
Your link lies. SS goes bad when the net flow stops going into the trust fund and the feds start having to pay off IOUs.
That's 2017. At first the feds will cut everything but SS to pay for it. Then they will turn the printing presses 'up to 11' (they are at 10 now).
Good luck to all of us. I expect them to get rid of their obligations via inflation. Sucks when the 'guy' that owes you money controls the value of that money.
It could play out lots of ways. But the 'trust fund'/'lock box' is pure BS.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When you subsidize poverty you get more of it simply because their are people that will not work at all unless starvation is an immediate option.
It is true for all things involving human actions. Subsidize it and get more.
I am still calling BS on your 'starving' hyperbole.
My final comment is that all costs are opportunity costs. The cost of a forth chance for a chronic fuckup might well be a first chance for someone who doesn't know how to work the system as well as the fuckup. There must come a point (short of incarceration) were we say 'Until we see signs of you stepping up you are on your own. You can see your kids every other weekend. Good luck. Here's a shovel.'
At some level it is as simple as 'choosing not to be poor'. Until they (the poor) do that all help is wasted.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Don't be absurd. They've been monopolies since the beginning of time because no one wants multiple sets of wires runnings through their neighborhood, or multiple sets of water pipes, or multiple sets of gas pipes, etc.
In most countries there is only a single set of pipes because the the GOVERNMENT OWNS THE PIPES. Private contracts merely have "service contracts" to maintain the GOVERNMENT OWNED infrastructure. What has happened in the US is that the government built the infrastructure (insert anything you want here) and then GAVE it to private industry to exploit.
The ReactOS project has been around over 10 years. I assure you that Microsoft knows about it. If they were going to try and crush the life out of them, they would've done it before now, when they have an XP-level beta release possibly coming out this year.
I've actually worked on ReactOS, before I was disqualified. It's not going anywhere. Microsoft has never gone after them because they're still in the alpha stage. They HAVE gone after WINE. If you use real Windows DLLs in your distribution it's illegal. This is why nobody packages "MS Office for Linux".
Codeweavers has paid MS for permission. This is why their products cost money.
SAMBA, as I said, was created through laborious network sniffing. MS has no case against SAMBA and there are now a lot of storage vendors eager to defend SAMBA. But this approach had limited the ability to add new features to SAMBA, like running a Windows Domain.
There are "pain points" that developers are avoiding to keep Microsoft off their backs. One of the big ones is Domain Controllers/Active Directory. ReactOS is leaving this out entirely due to threats by Microsoft, and SAMBA isn't implementing it either. Because without AD, you have no Windows network. And as long as they control the LAN server, they control the LAN. Another is DirectX.
Forgot to respond to this one:
Exactly which patent stops someone from opening a lab and doing research?
Give me a list of medications approved by the FDA in the last 10 years that aren't owned by the big (5 or 7 I don't remember) pharmaceutical companies, like Glaxo-Smith-Klein. Devices (artificial legs, etc.) don't count. I think there are maybe a dozen, as opposed to the THOUSANDS approved by the big players. Part of this is just that testing is expensive, but the other part is that LAWYERS are expensive and it's much easier just to sell your medicine to one of the big players rather than try to beat their lawyers.
It sure sounds like you're generalizing from liberal guilt, and not from your own experiences being poor and living in poor neighborhoods.
Huh, that's odd. Maybe it sounds like that to you because you're in denial. For the record, I'm generalizing based on the experiences of my friends and basic logic (e.g. there's no reason to believe that someone working full-time at minimum wage will necessarily have money left over to save, since there's no guarantee that the basic costs of living will be lower than minimum wage).
The majority of families, however, who are strigling because few family members are willing to work (usually the women), and the rest mostly complain about how unfair life is [etc.]
I don't doubt that such people exist; however, I've never met any of them, and I see no evidence that they represent a "majority" of the working poor.
I'm sure you do - that's about the definition of the middle class in America these days. Willing to work (or speculate on silly investments that promise unrealistic income), but unwilling to save, because that would require looking like you were less successful to your friends and neighbors.
Again, I don't doubt that some people are, in fact, able but unwilling to save. However, I see no evidence that it's any more common than being willing but unable to save.
Some people would certainly like for that to be the case: particularly those whose ideology demands low taxes and no social programs, and who need to justify that by convincing themselves that the people who are helped by those programs are irresponsible, stupid, or otherwise inferior. But simply asserting it isn't enough.
Assuming you're an adult who's past the point of the first couple years of near-minimum-wage jobs. there are plenty of opportunities to move to a salaried job with benefits, but you need the capital to take advantage of those opportunities - a couple thousand to pay for training, or relocate, or whatever hurdle makes the opportunity available.
Yes, that's what I've been saying. So what happens when you don't have the capital to take advantage of those opportunities?
What if, say, you became ill or injured while you had one of those no-benefits, near-minimum-wage jobs, incurred five- or six-figure medical bills that you've never been able to pay back, and now no one will even loan you that capital? (Recall that medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy.)
Yup, there are people in that position: people who support the losers in their families who are unwilling to work.
Well, apparently that's the subset you'd like to focus on, but let me rephrase the question.
What happens when you've made all those sacrifices, you aren't supporting any "losers" in your family who are able but unwilling to work, and you still don't have money left over to save?
Or are you just stubbornly pretending that never happens?
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In that case, if Libertarians had had their way, you would've been lucky that he was on the clock when he hit you. What if he hadn't, and he didn't have enough assets of his own to compensate you for your injury? Tough luck for you, I guess.
No, because this wasn't his first accident he wouldn't have been driving. Legally at least. As it was, though the state he fled from had a warrant out for his arrest he was able to get a driver's license in the state I lived in at the tyme.
Yes, really. Just because the economy was improving doesn't mean everything was fine; an improvement in the average doesn't translate to an improvement in every single person's life. If private charity and the market had been providing for everyone, there would've been no demand for social programs.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul is never right, and that's exactly what government does when it taxes your income. Taxing also hurts the economy, because of taxes people can't spend as much, increasing consumer spending will create jobs. As it is now, billions of tax payer dollars goes to hugh corporations as subsidies. For instance Cargill, a private corporation, and Archer Daniel Midland (ADM) receives billions of dollars in farm subsidies. People talk about welfare but what is rarely ever heard about is the corporate welfare that goes on. ADM has been called a corporate "welfare queen". Over Bush's veto congress passed $300 Billion in farm subsidies. Yet it's not small farmers who are being helped with these subsidies, one farmer called leaving his farm to his children "child abuse". The average age of a farmer in the US is 53, younger people are leaving even though some want to keep farming. They can't compeat with large agricultural corporations who receive massive subsidies.
Investing for your retirement is a good idea, obviously, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to do it myself. But not everyone can afford to invest, and not everyone who does invest will come out ahead.
With lower or no income tax, the economy would be better thus increasing people's pay. With higher pay people would be able to invest more, which would increase employment and again pay. The one place I would tax income is on corporations and maybe on the dividends they pay out to stockholders. I admit many libertarians wouldn't tax corporations but I would. They have limited liability and they should pay for that privilege. Then I'd have user fees and maybe a pollution tax. A fuel tax for instance, drivers would pay a tax on fuel which would then be used to pay for roads. Roads are another place I disagree with other libertarians, at least some want to privatize roads but the USA Constitution specifically gives the federal government the authority to build roads.
I'll also admit I agree that as it is now not everyone will come out ahead. But I place that squarely on education and government. From what I've seen and heard for years school doesn't teach economics and finance much anymore. When I was in 9th grade a teacher I had for civics had us students play a game for some weeks. He had us pretend we had $25,000 to invest and we could invest it however we wanted. During class we'd look through the financial section of the newspaper and decide what we wanted buy and sale, say I may pick to sale the stocks in X I own then buy stocks in Y. The next day I'd look at the selling price of X, then multiply that by the number of stocks I owned in X. Then I'd look at the selling price of Y and divide how much money I had by the amount to see how many stocks of Y I could buy. And that was in a public school. Now, I have not heard of anything
Should there be a Law?
europe does great work ensuring that people who just dont want to work are made sure to work.
Read radical news here
Robbing Peter to pay Paul is never right, and that's exactly what government does when it taxes your income.
Well, there you go. That's an axiom on which we disagree. Libertarians are opposed to the very notion of taxes; the rest of us are not.
Taxing also hurts the economy, because of taxes people can't spend as much, increasing consumer spending will create jobs.
No, it'll mainly just move jobs around. If you dismantle, say, Medicare, and divert that money into private insurance, then the people who work for Medicare (directly or as private contractors) will have to find work with private insurers instead.
Whether jobs would be gained or lost overall depends on how many employees those private insurers would need to provide the same service as Medicare. If they need more employees, then they create jobs, but that means the system is less efficient overall. Those extra salaries don't appear out of thin air; they come from charging consumers more for the same services.
With lower or no income tax, the economy would be better thus increasing people's pay. With higher pay people would be able to invest more, which would increase employment and again pay.
You're still confusing the average with the individual. Even if we assume that the economy would be "better" with no income tax -- a claim for which there's little evidence, if any -- that doesn't mean everyone would have money left over to invest, because the improvement wouldn't necessarily be distributed evenly.
Have you seen the data? How much is in Social Security? How many Baby Boomers will be retiring? How long they're expected to live? I admit though I don't recall the numbers I have seen them and Social Security going broke, without the government putting massive amounts of money in, will happen. The only question is when.
Nope - some people would you like to think the Baby Boomers retiring will destroy Social Security, but the data simply doesn't bear that out. The Social Security Board of Trustees' 2008 report predicts that even with no changes, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until 2041 (a decade after the last boomers have retired); after that, even with no changes, it'll still be paying 75% of promised benefits in 2082.
The changes needed to keep it paying full benefits past 2041 are pretty minimal. The simplest is just to raise the cap on the Social Security payroll tax, which would also make that tax less regressive.
Bond holders are guarantied, they're guarantied to be paid before others are. However if going bankrupt is a concern then only buy AAA binds. And not just from one company, but from a number of different companies in different businesses. Or if it's that big a deal, then you can buy gold, silver, or other precious metals and gems.
Those are all fine ways to spread the risk around, but there's still a risk. That's what investment is all about, extracting profit by assuming risk; it's the opposite of insurance, which is about paying someone else to take risk off your hands. In a nation of 300 million individual investors, some of them will inevitably end up losing their investment, which is exactly what Social Security is meant to avoid.
True but more people with more money will help.
... but they still won't be able to help as many people as government-funded social programs, so no, private charity isn't a suitable replacement.
Meanwhile socialists want government to take care of everything, that people shouldn't be held responsible. Instead of turning the US into a socialist state, they can move 90 miles off the coast of Florida to Cuba. Oh darn, even Cuba has private businesses and enterprise [blogspot.com] now.
That's cute, but the only people who actually "want government to take care of e
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Well, there you go. That's an axiom on which we disagree. Libertarians are opposed to the very notion of taxes; the rest of us are not.
No, in general libertarians aren't opposed to taxes. I have no problem with property taxes, sales tax, or user fees. CATO has a policy analysis of The Economic Impact Of Replacing Federal Income Taxes With a Sales Tax. The study predicted such a shift would increase US living standards by at least 7%. Mind you, some libertarians don't like sales taxes but others do. For instance here's one person's Libertarian Taxation Theory. At the top, the most desirable tax is the user fee. From there he lists Taxes on negative externalities, Resource usage fees, Land value tax, consumption taxes, production taxes, income taxes, property taxes, and the worst, estate taxes.
Taxing also hurts the economy, because of taxes people can't spend as much, increasing consumer spending will create jobs.
No, it'll mainly just move jobs around.
Yeah, jobs were shifted around. Because big agricultural businesses like ADM and Cargill get billions of dollars in subsidies a small farmer can't compeat and so is forced to move to the city. The only ones who benefited though is ADM and Cargill.
Medicare, and divert that money into private insurance, then the people who work for Medicare (directly or as private contractors) will have to find work with private insurers instead.
First off, nobody deserves a dime of the public dole. All the government owes anyone, and everyone, is opportunity. If they a get employment with a private company good for them. And with government out of medical and health care more jobs with private insurers will be created.
Oh and while I'm at it I'll deal with health or medical insurance. I wouldn't totally get rid of a health care safety net. I'd let a free market in medical care. Let walk-in clinics to open on a street corner, or in the middle of a block of residences. Allow Physician Assistants and Nurse practitioners to practice under the supervision of a doctor. Then allow people to open and deposit money into Health Savings Accounts to pay medical costs out of pocket. For insurance itself, instead of only giving employers tax benefits for offering insurance give everyone else the same benefits if they buy insurance on their own. Say an employer gets a $3000 tax break for offering insurance, allow the employer to pay employees $3000 more without either one paying more taxes. People could then go and buy their own insurance thus creating competition. Insurance issuers will lower their prices to get as many insurance buyers as they can. To deal with those people who are denied health insurance or can't afford said insurance require health insurance policy issuers to pay into a fund that will issue them insurance. Said fund can be administered by something like Blue Cross and Blue Shield and not the government.
You're still confusing the average with the individual. Even if we assume that the economy would be "better" with no income tax -- a claim for which there's little evidence
There is no confusion. As for no evidence the economy would be better if there were no income tax, read the study I provided the link to above. There is evidence, whether you will accept it or not is another matter but the evidence does exist.
some people would you like to think the Baby Boomers retiring will destroy Social Security, but the data simply doesn't
Should there be a Law?
Correction: Republicans prefer wars outside our shores, as to waiting for wars to be brought to within our own borders. That's why most republicans favored Iraq, and the War on Terror in general. It really isn't necessarily a purely conservative position though. Even FDR and some other Presidents of the past have been forced to get involved in foreign wars, even though it really goes against what many of the found fathers would have wanted.
I agree, the Georgian crisis is a good example of what the Cuba Missile Crisis could be in reverse. How would Russia react if we started to arm these Georgians? You can bet they would react with force. Unless we want to reinstitute the draft we need to give diplomacy a chance here.
Because big agricultural businesses like ADM and Cargill get billions of dollars in subsidies a small farmer can't compeat and so is forced to move to the city.
Ah yes, that's why small farmers can't compete. It doesn't have anything to do with economies of scale, no sir.
If they a get employment with a private company good for them. And with government out of medical and health care more jobs with private insurers will be created.
Again, the only way we'd end up with "more jobs" is if the system became less efficient as a result. Not that that's unlikely -- private insurers already have higher overhead than Medicare, and countries with single-payer health care typically spend less to cover more people -- but it's odd that you're championing a move toward inefficiency.
Then allow people to open and deposit money into Health Savings Accounts to pay medical costs out of pocket.
People already can do that. You know why they don't? Because HSAs are pointless unless you're either (1) healthy enough that you won't get sick before the account is full, or (2) wealthy enough that it doesn't matter.
Oh really? Two workers paying payroll taxes for every retiree [bloggingstocks.com] isn't bankrupt? By 2018 Social Security will be running an operating deficit [financialsense.com]. "By 2030 Social Security's [usatoday.com] caseload will be 84 million people, up from 50 million today. Medicare will go from 44 million beneficiaries to 79 million. That will leave barely more than two workers paying payroll taxes for every retiree."
I call that bankrupt!
Then you're wrong. Sorry.
See, "bankrupt" means there's no money left to pay their obligations, but that's not going to happen any time soon. So what if there are only two workers paying payroll taxes for every retiree (at least until the boomers finish retiring)? What matters is whether there will still be enough money to pay benefits during that time - and there will be. The boomers' retirement didn't come as a surprise to anyone, although Social Security opponents would like you to think it did.
As for the "operating deficit", that's a simple misunderstanding of the facts. Social Security doesn't depend entirely on ongoing tax revenue. Here's a from the link I gave earlier (emphasis added):
"The trustees project that in 2017, benefit payments will begin to exceed Social Securityâ(TM)s tax revenues. At this point, Social Security will start using some of the interest it earns on its trust fund bonds to pay benefits. Nevertheless, the trustees project that in 2017, the trust fund will have $4.5 trillion in assets and that these assets will increase by another $1 trillion over the following nine years."
The trustees also project that they'll have to start redeeming the bonds in 2026, and the bonds will all be redeemed by 2041. That is when benefits will have to be cut (assuming nothing else has changed by then). But even then, tax revenue will be enough to pay 78% of promised benefits, declining to 75% in 2082.
Life is risk, Nobody owes you an easy ride. If you don't want risk lay down, roll over, and die. Unlike some, I;m willing to take a risk and pay for it if it turns bad. I am not willing to live in a nanny state, but if you want to there's Cuba 90 miles from Florida.
Ha! Considering that these programs have wide support and the majority of Americans are opposed to your "roll over and die" policy, maybe you should move if you want to live in a country that doesn't help the unfortunate.
Where is your proof? I'll give two examples your way doesn't work, China and the Soviet Union. And I'm talking about government not communism.
OK, here are some counterexamples: UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark... oh, and the USA. Government social programs seem to work just fine in real
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Ah yes, that's why small farmers can't compete. It doesn't have anything to do with economies of scale, no sir.
If economies of scale was all that mattered then large scale farms wouldn't need subsidies.
If they a get employment with a private company good for them. And with government out of medical and health care more jobs with private insurers will be created.
Again, the only way we'd end up with "more jobs" is if the system became less efficient as a result.
So what if private insurers didn't employ as many people as government run insurance, private is as you say more efficient. Employing more people to run insurance is just make work work, and taxpayers will have to pay those salaries. People complain about the expense of health care, employing less people, in insurance, reduces the cost. If you want to make more work then employ more medical people not more insurance people.
it's odd that you're championing a move toward inefficiency.
What's odd is that you first intimated private insurance would be more efficient, the only way we'd end up with "more jobs" is if the system became less efficient as a result, now you're saying the opposite. And no I don't champion inefficiency, I champion competition. and competition increases efficiency.
People already can do that. You know why they don't? Because HSAs are pointless unless you're either (1) healthy enough that you won't get sick before the account is full, or (2) wealthy enough that it doesn't matter.
But do they know that? I didn't find out until earlier this year when someone else posted about health saving accounts. I bet I can go out on the street and ask others if they know about them and many won't. But you are right in one thing, according to the Government Acconting Office, GAO, the average income of those who had HSAs in 2005 was $139,000 whereas the average for those without one was $57,000. But in the same report though it said lower income people are more wiling to gamble with their health. And as far as I'm concerned, you gamble you pay. You don't gamble then try to get out of it when you lose.
See, "bankrupt" means there's no money left to pay their obligations, but that's not going to happen any time soon
First, bankrupt means more than just not having enough money. It also means a person who is completely lacking in a particular desirable quality or attribute moral bankrupt[cy] or DISAPPROVING lacking in a particular quality, Onelook has more. Second I consider it morally bankrupt, see the first two definitions above, for anyone to be forced to work to pay for anyone they did not bring into the world themself, ie you are responsible to take care of all of the children you bring into the world but you have no responsibility to take care of anyone else.
As I don't want to keep going over this with you I'll just say one more thing then I'll end my part. You trust government more than business and I distrust business less than I do government. Government has caused more problems than any business, it has killed more people than any of them as well. And many of the problems business has made government allowed to happen.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If economies of scale was all that mattered then large scale farms wouldn't need subsidies.
Well, exactly. They don't need subsidies, and if your point is that we should eliminate farm subsidies, then I'm with you.
So what if private insurers didn't employ as many people as government run insurance, private is as you say more efficient.
If you believe that, then why did you say it would create more jobs? Did you accidentally misspell "fewer"?
Look, I'm certainly not saying we should make decisions about our health care system based on the number of jobs it'll produce in the health care industry. I'm just pointing out the contradiction. Either private insurance will be more efficient or it will create jobs -- not both.
What's odd is that you first intimated private insurance would be more efficient
Sorry you got that impression, maybe I wasn't clear. I don't actually believe it would be more efficient -- based on the fact that countries with less reliance on private insurance have more efficient health care systems employing fewer people to handle paperwork, and the fact that Medicare already has lower overhead than private insurance -- but I assumed (correctly, it seems) that you believed it'd be more efficient. Thus the contradiction, because you also said it'd create more jobs.
But in the same report though it said lower income people are more wiling to gamble with their health. And as far as I'm concerned, you gamble you pay.
Well, no, it reports the opinion of someone who "worries that low-income participants will gamble with their health rather than pay a huge deductible". In other words, they're "gambling" because they can't pay.
First, bankrupt [msn.com] means more than just not having enough money [...] I consider it morally bankrupt
Oh. So in other words, you were just talking out your ass when you said this:
"by the tyme the last Baby Boomers retire Social Security probably will be broke"
And this:
"Social Security going broke, without the government putting massive amounts of money in, will happen. The only question is when."
And this:
"By 2018 Social Security will be running an operating deficit [...] I call that bankrupt!"
And now that I've debunked those claims, you're weaseling out by feebly pointing to a metaphorical definition of the word "bankrupt". Cute, but I still remember what we were talking about, and it was money, not morals.
You trust government more than business
False. I simply realize that businesses can't solve every problem: some things are worth doing even if they aren't profitable.
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But they usually don't disown the philosophies, because they usually don't have members that operate exactly opposite their philosophy.
That's a good point. There are a disproportionate number of people who claim to be conservative and then turn out to be big spenders, etc.
You go find an American Communist, and talk to them, and they will tell you that the absolutely failure of all communist regimes isn't due to communism, it's due to the fact that none of them were 'really' communism.
Absolutely true. I have had such a conversation in the past.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.