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Text Comments Out In YouTube "National Discussion" of Health Care

theodp writes "While the White House has invited the nation to Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform, it is currently only accepting 20-30 second YouTube video responses — text comments have been disabled. Which raises a question: Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest? BTW, the response-to-date has been underwhelming — 101 video responses and counting — and is certainly a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman "Showing my Apples", and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos."

58 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds bytes by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It sounds to me like the administration is looking for raw material they can put into commercials to run in districts that oppose Obama's plans.

    I.e,. this might be a huge casting call in disguise.

    I'm fairly skeptical these days when Obama says he wants to involve the general population in a discussion. His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana. It appears that at least sometimes, he's only pretending to take the general citizenry's views into account, even when he's saying otherwise.

    1. Re:Sounds bytes by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm fairly skeptical these days when Obama says he wants to involve the general population in a discussion.

      Skeptical is good.

      His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana. It appears that at least sometimes, he's only pretending to take the general citizenry's views into account, even when he's saying otherwise.

      I have little doubt there was significant internal discussion about the issue. It probably resulted in the consensus that the topic is political poison and they should avoid any public commentary. They still are concerned about the next election and need a longer period for policies to take effect and show a difference if they want many of their initiatives to last for the long term. I've been underwhelmed by the public participation programs put into place. It is hard to distinguish between the administration not hearing and the administration willfully pretending they did not hear anything, but at least on the marijuana issue it is pretty likely to be the latter.

    2. Re:Sounds bytes by superwiz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As opposed to 100% moderated filtering of questions (for further dissemination as coming "from the people")? Questions which are collected from a heavily a polarized population (of youtube viewers) which lacks no lackeys? That makes him a MORE effective propagandist -- not some man of the people that you are trying to convince us that he is.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    3. Re:Sounds bytes by WAN+Rover · · Score: 2, Funny

      His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana.

      Are you serious? Of course Obama didn't make weed legal even though it's quite popular in some circles. Popular opinion doesn't dictate good governance!

    4. Re:Sounds bytes by superwiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yep. The anxious need for schadenfreude is precisely what motivates me. You got me! I am also not the author of Progress and Nihilism.

      Luckily for you, I am stupid enough to miss the fact that your question is loaded. It heavily relies on the false premise that the President is able to fix this problem. My attention span is short enough that I forget that this is the man that managed to run a presidential campaign against 9 more experienced rivals and then won the general election against a decorated veteran and a war hero. Couple that with the fact I and everyone else has no idea that large-scale campaigns (in order to be successful) must run daily polls on every angle of their message. Then you'll really have us scratching our heads as to why would a President with resources 10,000 times in excess of the resources of a candidate is not commissioning scientific polls, but is rather making a gesture appeal to one of the most loony audiences he can find.

      I hope my dim mind sees the light for at least a brief enough moment to realize that appealing to loons in order to create the illusion of being a populist is just ANOTHER trick in the hands of con men. It is more creative than putting ring men among those who question you, but it is still just a sleight of hand.

      aawee schadenfreude... it's soooo cute when shills learn from what they see on TV. Let me quote you another line from Alan Shore (since you are so clearly a fan): "sincerity...once you learn to fake that, there'll be no stopping you."

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    5. Re:Sounds bytes by demachina · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "That's the reason why you can't acknowledge that Obama is a much better president than Bush"

      I'm pretty sure Obama is much more intelligent and is a vastly better speaker than Bush but that could just mean he will be more adept at manipulating the American people than Bush was. Bush/Cheney used blunt force to control the American people. Obama's team seems to me much better at deceit and making everyone one happy about being sold down the river. Take for example, all of these gimmicks to pretend like they are listening to the American people through the web. Listening through YouTube and Facebook is mostly designed in to suckering large numbers of Obama supporters, especially young people, in to thinking they are being heard when they really aren't. Congress and the White House still listen to lobbyists and corporations first, ordinary Joe's not at all, its going to take a seismic shift in our system for that to change, and its very unlikely to happen. Power just doesn't shift that radically without a major upheaval to force it, like a revolution.

      You simply can't listen to a couple hundred million people randomly spouting off in YouTube, Facebook or on a web site. The Obama people are mostly just conning their supporters in to thinking if they say something on a website someone will actually listen. Chances are very slim of that happening, like winning the lottery slim.

      I voted for Obama and I hated Bush/Cheney with a passion, but I am rapidly starting to agree with Bill Maher that in a lot of ways Obama really is Bush Lite. His popularity among Americans is about the same as Bush's at same point in their presidencies. Only thing Obama has is the rest of the world likes him while most of the world hated Bush from the get go.

      Obama has continued SO many Bush policies unaltered he has mostly proved what everyone says, there isn't a dimes worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats any more. To name a few issues where there is no "Change":

      - Warrantless spying on American citizens
      - Bush tax cuts for the rich continue
      - Tax cuts for middle class, are tiny, are going to get killed in a year or two and are a joke
      - Gitmo is still open and it appears it really hasn't changed much from where Bush/Cheney left it
      - Squandering money he doesn't have like a drunken sailor, just squandering it in slightly different directions
      - Iraq war strategy is essentially the way Bush left it
      - Afghan/Pakistan war strategy, escalation, and I wager its how Gates planned it under Bush
      - Insane claims to justify secrecy just like the Bush administartion
      - Multipage signing statements outlining all the parts of new laws from Congress he will ignore.... just like Bush.
      - Response to the economic crisis no different than Bush/Paulson other than the retarded $700 billion stimulus which squandered money to no good end, its was mostly Democratic pork. Bush/Paulson would have just handed out more money to Wall Street so it would have been Republican pork.
      - He maybe banned torture but I imagine the Bush administration had already been shamed in to stopping that, and Obama let all the people who enabled it at get away with violating U.S. and international law. Its criminal all the enlisted soldiers at Abu Graib did hard time for doing something that was White House mandated policy and happening at U.S. prisons around the globe.
      - Defense spending is at the same staggering levels where Bush left it

      Only areas its clear Obama is diverging from Bush so far:

      - Cap and trade bill which, if it even makes it through the Senate, wont solve anything other than kill more U.S. manufacturing jobs. For cap and trade to work it has to be global or polluters who can move, will move. They could have made a better bill by slapping tariffs on China and India until they join a global cap and trade system. China and India are going to add more pollution than the U.S. will ever cut under that bill.

      - This health care bill. First strike against Obama he said "No Manda

      --
      @de_machina
    6. Re:Sounds bytes by 1u3hr · · Score: 2, Interesting
      If you want marijuana legalized, you should be happy about that. Obama will be up for reelection, so if he pushes for that now, it will be the basis for a billion dollar smear campaign designed to make the public panic and vote for the Republican. And that could set back the cause quite a bit.

      If he doesn't do anything, how is "the cause" advanced? You think he'll suddenly legalise pot in his second term?

      Sure, his other policies make him the best choice, but on this one, he has no credibility.

      If there were any logic, governments would simply exchange all the laws for tobacco and marijuana. Make marijuana legal but discouraged, treat tobacco like a poisonous narcotic.

  2. It's an attempt to filter out the crazies by phantomcircuit · · Score: 3, Funny

    Apparently it's not working.

  3. thank god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you ever looked at the comment section of a YouTube video? I wouldn't want a low-level staffer to spend half a second wading through that pile of drooling morons. Posting a video at least requires minimal effort.

    1. Re:thank god by ChienAndalu · · Score: 2, Funny

      This (and this)

    2. Re:thank god by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      True... but have you ever looked at the average YouTube video?

      Unfortunately nutjobs usually have lots of time on their hands and are masters of minimal effort.

  4. Article title is flat-out wrong by Curien · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA:

    Don't know how to respond to the President's video with your question? Check out this tutorial from YouTube about how to create your own and add it as a response.

    If you are a Twitter user, you can also ask your question with this hashtag: #WHHCQ or head to Facebook and ask your question there.

    If I were the staff member in charge of wading through the discussion, I wouldn't want to have to use Youtube's craptastic comment system either.

    --
    It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
  5. You do not need a camera to post vids on youtube by Lorcas · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can open up your favorite video editing software and just put some slides of text. No camera involved.

  6. Price of admission by Mononoke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?

    Looks to me like a computer is the greatest part of that admission price. The camera (assuming the computer didn't come with one) is just an extra fee.

    --
    NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
  7. Who needs a camera? by Ihmhi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker.

    Say it in 24 bit color, baby!

  8. the internet isn't some magic solution by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, as a technical question it's now easy for everyone to communicate with their public officials! But what exactly are these officials supposed to do with ten thousand poor-quality comments? Institute a Slashdot-style moderate system? A digg-style voting system? (Obama did actually try that last one.) Develop a new version of spam filter that is some sort of "shitty comment with no useful content" filter? It seems what they're trying here is exactly what the submitter criticizes, a "barrier to entry" filter, with the hope that people who bother to make a video about their idea at least have an idea they've thought through for 5 minutes. Looks like that may have failed, too, but I can't blame them for trying.

    In a different context, Gerhard Fischer pointed out in 1996 something similar about the internet not being a magical solution for education:

    The "Nobel Prize winner" myth: Every school child will have access to a Nobel Prize winner. --- This was one of the selling points for the information superhighway. While this argument is true (or will be true soon) at the level of technical connectivity, it is doubtful that Nobel Prize winners will look forward to getting a few thousand e-mail messages a day.

  9. "national discussion"? by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I often hear (on NPR, usually) politicians calling for a "national discussion" or a "national debate" on some topic.

    Exactly what is a "national discussion/debate"?

    It seems to me like things usually work out this way: news organizations cover some topic, congress and the President start discussing it, lobbyists come onto the scene, and in the end the Congress either (a) sells us out to lobbyists, or (b) makes a completely irrational piece of legislation.

    So is calling for a "national discussion/debate" really just an attempt to dress, as democratic, a decision which the common citizen has no capacity to influence? That is, like what happens with so-called "town-hall meetings"?

    1. Re:"national discussion"? by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 2, Informative

      Excellent point. Its ridiculous to think that we the people have any control or influence over our government. They do what they want and make it appear as if you asked for it.

      They rarely ever do what the people ask them to. They instead will give them a bill for example: "National Health Care reform act" which sounds great on a glance but it will be full of corporate hand outs and designed in a way that doesnt help the people at all get what they voted for.

      Its all a magic trick with lots of misdirection. Politicians do not care about or say or do anything that voters want them to do.

      An election is a method of being elected into wealth. It has little to do with what the people want or representation.

      Support Universal Single Payer health care...

  10. Already a restriction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Surely it raises another question: Should internet access be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?

    If you're going to restrict discussion to those with access to the web it doesn't seem a giant leap to expect them to have a cheap and cheerful webcam.

  11. Then write a letter by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If your opinion is so valuable then write a letter and mail it to the President or your elected representative.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re:Then write a letter by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dude, I'm sure he gets letters from everyone. So if you really wanna make an impression, you need to give him a present. I think a chocolate gun would be a good present and you should run up to him really fast to give it to him.. because he's so busy.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
  12. It's a compromise. You honestly don't know this? by writermike · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Color me trolled.

    Look, this is plainly a compromise that tries to cull wheat from chaff. Don't believe me? Go look at any major American newspaper website. Pick any random story and dive into the comments. Now, take note of the insults, the extremely partisan rhetoric (from all sides), the bad grammar, the incredible misunderstandings of the entire point, and, yeah, even hopes that one or the other subjects go die.

    It's simply much easier for anyone to click reply and type out, "HURR DURRR UR A FAGGG." Sure, you can do the same with with a web camera -- and apparently some folks are doing so -- but I bet there are going to be much less to go through than if everyone could pop a comment under the story.

    --
    If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
  13. Re:Boo. by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Its YouTube though... Compared to YouTube, 4chan is a refuge of sanity and even /. trolls end up sounding like something out of a scientific journal.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  14. They DO take text comments ... by Skapare · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... only from Facebook users via their Facebook site. The link is on the referenced page.

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  15. Moderator? by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "While the White House has invited the nation to Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform, it is currently only accepting 20-30 second YouTube video responses â" text comments have been disabled.

    Am I the only person who's concerned that the Whitehouse has been allowed to be the moderator of such discussions?

    After all, the administration has a political agenda, and therefore an incentive to bias the discussions on any particular topic of debate. Deciding details such as the length and form of submissions can be a powerful device for controlling the topic and direction of debate. At that point, it's a rather useless vehicle for arguing a side that the administration doesn't want advanced.

    1. Re:Moderator? by bistromath007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This differs from governments' usual way of making policy how, exactly?

      It doesn't, which is pretty much exactly my point. Whether you think the political process in general is working correctly or not, this "discussion" is extremely unlikely to be a meaningful part of it. It therefore amounts to propaganda: an attempt by the administration to appear to be more open to suggestion from the people and more in touch with modern culture than previous ones.

  16. Re:Easy answer by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.

    The libraries near me are full of poor people using internet connected computers. My cell phone has a camera, but it doesn't do video and the only way to get images off of it is to pay absurd data transfer rates. Many people I see only have pay as you gocell phones with no camera capabilities. I think you might be a little disconnected from the realities of the lower class and their access to video cameras.

  17. Re:Easy answer by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?

    Yes. I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.

    And only land-owners should have the right to vote?
    I know people that can afford a computer (at the public library), but who can not afford a cell phone (regular monthly expenses).

  18. Sometimes I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry by QCompson · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...and such was the case with the "one-finger salute" video. That intellectual powerhouse thinks Obama somehow snuck into the White House even though he is a Kenyan citizen, and mourns the loss of the Pontiac Firebird.

    I think I'll cry.

  19. Video lectures by TheLink · · Score: 3, Informative

    > The "Nobel Prize winner" myth: Every school child will have access to a Nobel Prize winner

    In some ways yes:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn8PNMTSlwo

    Plenty of other lectures/talks from MIT, Stanford, and other universities around the world are available online.

    > it is doubtful that Nobel Prize winners will look forward to getting a few thousand e-mail messages a day.

    I'm sure Feynman isn't too worried about that :).

    FWIW, you can learn a lot from people without sending email to them, or communicating with them.

    --
  20. Weedout? by theurge14 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Raising the technical bar weeds out the sincere from the rest.

    At least that was the idea until the talking butt came along.

  21. Re:You do not need a camera to post vids on youtub by rtfa-troll · · Score: 5, Funny

    You are the person who invented sending four line comments in powerpoints aren't you. Now we have your ID we are going to hunt you to the ends of the internet. You can't run and you can't hide. Our advance team is in Montréal already. They will be arriving at your home soon. Stay there so that at least you die surrounded by the things you know.

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  22. One-finger salute, talking butt, 'see my apples' by joib · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just as intellectual as the rest of the farce known as politics. The only difference is that the professionals wear fancy suits and genuinely think they are saying something insightful.

  23. Re:One-finger salute, talking butt, 'see my apples by rockNme2349 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just as intellectual as the rest of the farce known as politics. The only difference is that the professionals wear fancy suits and genuinely think they are saying something insightful.

    Sounds a lot like slashdot to me.

    --
    Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
  24. Re:Easy answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You sir are an ignorant bastard. I think we can tolerate the absence of stupid elitist slashdot posters that don't understand what a quality cell phone with video + internet data plan costs compared to entry level PC's and dial up internet so prevalent in most low income households.

  25. Re:Opinion by pHus10n · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Where in this discussion so far did someone suggest otherwise?

  26. Re:ummmm....what? by GeorgeS · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Middle class people are the only people that really care about this issue. They are the ones that get screwed over if taxes go up to pay for health care. Rich people already have plenty of health care and the poorest of people either don't have to pay or have nothing to lose if they can't pay.
    So, I'd say the middle class folks are the ones most affected by this issue and most, if not all of them, have internet access and some form of camera so they should be quite able to make some sort of reply.
    I'm not saying this is the best idea but, it's better than most others and should generate some real discussion between politicians and the public.

    --
    "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
  27. Re:Easy answer by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2, Funny

    I picked up a used cellphone with a camera in it for $20 off Craigslist. And I'm an ignorant bastard, so you see how easy it is.

    This is simply not a serious barrier comparable to e.g. owning land which separates people into demographics (landowners vs renters) having legitimate and distinctly separate policy interests. Not being able to produce a video in order to comment on a stupid Obama Youtube stunt doesn't really place you into a protected minority. Youtube is a private entity, and private entities are free to discriminate. And a direct societal benefit is gained by discriminating against the wider class of people unwilling to produce a video- like myself, with better things to do. It cuts down on the number of responses from ignorant bastards like me, who would just show up and post something similar to the GP.

    Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have worked very well.

  28. "What can you do for ME?" by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you actually watch many of those videos, it is easy to see that the vast majority of them are people asking, "How can this benefit me?? (Or my sister, or my uncle, or...)"

    Very few have been asking the hard questions, like "What part of the Constitutional gives you authority to do this?"

    For someone who is supposed to be a "Constitutional scholar", Obama does not seem to have much understanding of it.

  29. Re:One-finger salute, talking butt, 'see my apples by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sitting in front of a computer in your underwear is NOT a fancy suit. Yes, it's fancier than a birthday suit, but it's still not fancy.

  30. Re:Opinion by superwiz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Obama administration is far, far better than any Bush administration.

    I agree. They are much, much better liars. Listening to Bush lie was boring. It was obvious. It insulted my intelligence. While Obama's lies are grandiose. They are eloquent. They take at least 10-15 seconds to parse through before the waaaait-a-minute moment. It's a pleasure. We are very fortunate to have a much more skillful entertainer in the White House.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  31. Re:Easy answer by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That would be a good argument for banning the video comments as well. There could easily be some other motivation at work here (besides callous indifference to the lower classes) for disabling text comments. Probably a stupid one. Maybe they figure they'll be buried in comments and forced to pick and choose and introduce a bias if they want to make the page look flashy and interesting.

    Seriously, who cares. I wonder what's up with this dude sometimes, but in terms of signal to noise in Obama stories (a real problem), this story is pure noise.

  32. Super'bama! by TiggertheMad · · Score: 2, Insightful

    His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana.

    Or perhaps, he is just waiting for the right time to take up the topic. Just because he hasn't legalized weed in the first few months of his presidency does not mean he is ignoring the issue. Don't you suppose that, while anti-drug laws are pointless and archaic, they are SLIGHLTLY less important making sure that the economy doesn't implode further, getting out of the Iraq war, winning the Afghanistan war, Dealing with North Korean nuclear proliferation issues, and drafting national healthcare reform? Perhaps? Maybe?

    I know a right wing nut who insists that Obama is a failure as a president because he hasn't SINGLE HANDEDLY FIXED THE LARGEST AND MOST COMPLICATED ECONOMY in the world yet. Let's get some perspective here. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so much the president can do. Just because he hasn't willed weed laws away with sheer psychic might (remember the president can't draft laws, just stamp yes or no on it.) doesn't mean he is ignoring things.

    --

    HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
  33. Re:Opinion by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism"

    I remember that one....

    Those people kneeling behind their cars with razor blades look pretty silly now.

  34. Re:Opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Promises of financial "transparency", yet his actions regarding this are more of the same Bush policy. Banks still get to lie about their solvency, GS, JPM, and others still have their hand right in the taxpayers wallet via the treasury. Bailout Nation continues.

    Ending the war in Iraq. Still no exit strategy. More money being spent, more people being sent over.

  35. Re:Opinion by superwiz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    1. Toytas are made in America. Bailing out GM means sponsoring Toyota's competition. If GM went bankrupt, more jobs would have to be created by Toyota to make more cars that would be bought instead of the GM's that are being bought now. So he is sponsoring American jobs at a bad car companies while preventing a good American car company from hiring. This is done under the guise of "saving jobs". Why is he even bothering with the hypocrisy? Because GM is unionized and Toyota is not.
    2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7FS5B-CynM exposes his hypocrisy on education quite well.
    3. Oh, and the biggest hypocrisy of all is the attempt to blame the banking industry for the bubble created by Fannie Mae regulation. Yes, yes, I know... greed. It's new. They are trying greed for the first time. Before that there was none of it happening. The fact that Fannie Mae regulation REQUIRED banks to loan to less eligible borrows thus increasing the banks' exposure to risk is somehow swept under the rug. The fact that FED completely failed in its mission to keep monetary supply consistent with the level of economic activity is somehow conveniently overlooked when discussing what created the bubble. It was greed, greed, greed.... repeat after me... louder now!
    4. The fact that he has NO (none whatsoever) education in economics somehow qualifies him to make predictions as to how his economic plan will pan out? Please, please, please, tell me that "he has good advisers"... because that was the line that everyone told each other to console themselves about the fact the the president was George Bush.

    bleh... I'll stop... I am sure you'll want to jump in and divert attention from what I said to some way of saying that "but look at what the crazy evil stupid Republicans are doing." After all, it's Sunday night. And Timothy posted this one with what I can only suspect was a bucket of pop corn ready at his side.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  36. Re:Opinion by infosinger · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Pay as you go... Oh, except for the stimulus($700B), and the budget ($400B), and oh yes, health care ($600B-$1.5T). But other than those we want a balanced budget.

    -------
    ...the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.

    Robert A. Heinlein--Stranger In A Strange Land.

  37. Re:Elephant in the room by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the US is still in the midst of economic meltdown, cutting spending is the last thing they should be doing.

    --
    That is all.
  38. Re:Elephant in the room by superwiz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the US is still in the midst of economic meltdown, cutting spending is the last thing they should be doing.

    If I recall, the government of the Soviet Union spend quite a bit of money on the Soviet Union economy. Some might argue that is what caused their meltdown. But then again, some might argue that the only thing that anyone learns from history is that no one ever learns from history...

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  39. Re:Elephant in the room by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The US is in economic meltdown and the only thing that it can do to save itself is to stop spending. Well, that and it must stop printing short term and long term money so that dollar inflation will stop. Then, if it cannot pay its debt, it must default, which will inevitably happen anyway. It will either be done honestly (unlikely) or dishonestly (most likely) - by printing money and inflating the dollar so that the bonds and dollars held by the debt owners will become worthless.

    One way or another the only thing that can turn the economy for the US around is to stop spending, default, start saving and start producing and trading in the global market. When US starts producing something more than just the useless US dollar, the foreigners may see it as fit to start trading with again.

    This is what must happen to restart the economy.

    What will actually happen: US will never admit that it cannot pay its debt, so instead it will inflate dollar by holding the interest rates artificially low and printing dollars, bonds, treasury bills. The dollar will die, the foreigners will stop trading with US.

    Here there are a number of possible scenarios, some of them include starting wars, even nuclear (not surprising that North Korea is being used now as the next probable stage for a war - Asian Pacific, the strategic place to bring in the US fleet so that maybe Japan will 'forgive' about the US debt and China will not switch off of the USD just yet).

    However internally the US will go through a metamorphosis turning itself into something the USSR used to be - people will not be allowed to exchange in actual money (gold), probably exchange in anything but USD will become illegal, so no gold, it probably will be confiscated again (yes, again, it has happened in the States before.) The inflation will force the prices to rise sharply and the gov't will implement price controls thus instantly causing shortages of basic goods (even food). So government will force the farmers to only deal with the government, people probably be issued rationed food stamps to be used together with money.

    The Constitutional rights will be all but forgotten, the switch to a dictatorship will be organic, not based on ideology but on 'necessity'. The people will be regulated very personally on the government level, they will no longer be allowed to move around freely, the US gov't will probably close the borders with some sort of an 'iron curtain', will not allow the population to escape and move the remaining capital out of the country. The government will become completely dictatorial under the guise of saving the country etc.

    Suggestion - get out while you can, move money out of USD to other currencies outside of the country even, if you don't have that kind of capital at least invest into hard items like nonperishable food items, alcohol, equipment for producing your own food/clothing/energy. All of this will be more difficult to come by later on, once hyper-inflation forces companies to drastically cut inventory and raise prices and then price controls and shortages will finish this off completely.

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  40. Re:Easy answer by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You think libraries let you plug in Webcams and install drivers and talk and record video on site?

    Either will let you participate in the "national discussion".

    Not unless you own your own computer they won't.

    When even disabling text comments on a YouTube video sparks talk of social injustice, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find it.

    There is serious inequality when it comes to being listened to by politician, but this is a pretty minor instance of that. I merely object to people who don't have any idea how hard this can be for many people spouting off based upon their preconceptions and ignorance of the difficulties many people face.

  41. Re:Opinion by anothy · · Score: 4, Informative

    you make a good point about Toyota jobs in the US. your conclusion as to the reason (unionization) is totally unsupported, but at least the question is interesting, and is something not talked enough about.

    on the financial situation, though, you're way, way off. the "Fannie Mae regulation" you're thinking of wasn't a Fannie Mae regulation - otherwise it wouldn't have applied to other banks. you're presumably thinking of the CRA, which did apply to other banks, but wasn't designed either to put banks at the crazy risk they put themselves in (it contained explicit language against such behavior) or to support securitization of the loans (enabled by a later amendment). the numbers on CRA default rates, compared to the "general population" also doesn't support putting much blame there.

    the notion that there is some idealized money supply inherently consistent with a given level of economic activity is laughably naive. you set monetary policy as a tool to achieve a given end; the current economic level is context for that activity. i've not seen (but would be quite interested in seeing) any serious, quantitive analysis of the Fed's handling of money supply that makes a strong case that they could have avoided the housing bubble without serious consequences (like astronomical inflation).

    and no, of course greed is not new. but we've spent 20+ years disassembling the regulatory structure designed to keep our greed in check, which had worked very well for about 50 years before that. greed drove the disassembly, of course, coupled with a religious devotion to a particularly warped conception of the free market and crypto corporatism.

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    i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
  42. Re:Elephant in the room by roman_mir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Keynes is absolutely wrong for what is happening right now - destruction of currency based on overspending, borrowing without having any collateral, losing the manufacturing capacity and generally becoming uncompetitive in the global market.

    What is happening right now not a normal situation, so your normal theories are not valid.

  43. Who cares what random people think anyway? by qieurowfhbvdklsj · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It sounds to me like the administration is looking for raw material they can put into commercials to run in districts that oppose Obama's plans.

    Particularly with the 20-30 second requirement. Who can say anything other than "great plan, Mr. President" in just 20 to 30 seconds? I'd love to add my two cents, but I don't think I could squeeze it into less than a few minutes. Well, let's see...

    "This healthcare plan sucks."

    Well, that was easier than I expected. I had a lot more to say, but when I write, I try to write things so that the audience can understand what I am saying, and sometimes you know you just can't say anything.

    I think we'd be a lot better off to pass a law that medical providers must present the cost of any service or treatment in advance. Any time I ask for prices in advance, I find great deals, like the oral surgery I once needed. I got an x-ray, some time with the doctor when he discussed what he was going to do, then the actual surgery on another day which involved at least 30 minutes of work by the doctor and a couple of assistants, plus some pain drugs, and a follow-up appointment a week later just to make sure it was healing correctly. Total cost: $300

    Compare that to some lab work I had done recently which I didn't check the price of because the government was paying for it. (I would have simply not bothered otherwise, which isn't to say it wasn't a real problem, just that long-term chronic fatigue isn't something anyone can afford to investigate without insurance.) I had some blood drawn for some tests, a chest x-ray, and an EKG. Some time later I got a letter in the mail indicating that the government paid $1200 for those services. I was only there for ten minutes. X-rays are just photographic film and an x-ray tube, and an EKG isn't that complex either, both technologies have been around at least a hundred years. ...but the real kicker was that they charged $50 for a venipuncture.

    Insurance is just a band-aid. The problem is that people spend without knowing how much, because they accept medical services without asking about the cost, assuming the intake person in the E.R. can even give you any answers. Insurance puts the costs up-front, and to keep premuims low, insurance companies force doctors to not waste so much money, but they also allow people to seek medical care when they really don't need it since it won't cost very much and they've already paid for it anyway, and that raises the costs back to what they would have been anyway. The end result is that your monthy premium costs more than oral surgery and it doesn't even come with a dental plan.

    Despite my intense hatred for libertarians, I really think this is one issue where the free market can do a lot of good, if only the rules are changed so that the free market has some means by which to affect people's decisions. Passing a law that requires people to buy insurance only gives them a half-ass solution that was already available to them anyway, and it removes the solution of simply buying insurance for extreme situations and using the "shop around for a lower price" solution for more common needs, which is always going to be cheaper than buying insurance for everything.

    As for Obama's fucked up idea of requiring insruance to cover pre-existing conditions, how about we do something sane like require insurance to cover post-existing conditions? If I get cancer while I have medical insurance, it will pay for my treatments, but only as long as I continue to pay the premiums. Imagine if homeowners insurance worked that way. One day your house burns down, which causes you to miss a few days of work, so your boss fires you because he's a prick, and now you can no longer pay your homeowner's insurance. Well, too bad, now they're no longer going to pay the contractors rebuilding your house.

    It's retarded. Any illness that occurs when someone has coverage should be covered, no matter how long the treatments take. Insurance companies want it

    1. Re:Who cares what random people think anyway? by superwiz · · Score: 2, Informative

      In 20-30 seconds, one could ask a simple question: which article of The Constitution gives you the authority to do any of what you are proposing? If you can't name the article, how do you reconcile your proposals with the 10th amendment explicitly prohibiting you from doing anything you are not explicitly authorized to do by The Constitution?

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  44. Re:Opinion by twostix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It absolutely *stuns* me, I mean jaw drops, cannot move holy shit WTFOMGBBQ that still to this day after millions of man hours dedicated to and billions of pages written dissecting each and every micrometer of the global mess that is known as the financial meltdown. That there are *still* individuals such as yourself so self assured in your absolute delusion drooling "freddie and fannie forced to give loans" even makes sense, let alone was what brought the entire worlds economy to its knees.

    Truly you are an intellectual giant. To somehow miss the entirety of the worlds press output and conclusions in dissecting the cause of the crash and manage to attribute it to a few US home mortgages that were given due to some legislation in the 90's takes some *serious* mental horsepower.

    Here's the cause of the financial meltdown for you in easy to digest pieces.

    1. Banks begin selling mortgages directly to investors.
    2. This makes banks a huge amount of money, and so they start handing out mortgages willy nilly so they can sell even more, even to people who they would *never* have lent to before. But now they don't care AS THEY DON"T OWN THE MORTGAGES. -- see that's the bit where they *chose* to give out the crap mortgages. But of course now they try and blame it on the government so corporate lick-spittle dimwits would sell themselves down the river to protect said banks.
    3. They package these BAD mortgages up as AAA rated mortgages with the complicity of criminally fradulent ratings agencies.
    4. They sell these corrupt mortgage package on to investors rated AAA when in fact they should be rated -ZZZ GTFO.
    5. Investors then on sell them, sometimes even *back* to the banks, the packages stop representing any sort of true wealth at all and become fake paper wealth, only held up by the stupidity of huge investment firms and financial institutions.
    5. A few people default on their mortgages...investors suddenly realize that their AAA rated mortgages actually are mixed up with extremely high risk mortgages as well.
    6. Investors shit themselves and sell them ASAP.
    7. A couple of mammoth financial institutions take big hits.
    8. AIG insures said institutions...except AIG actually doesn't actually have any money to give them.
    9. Banks, financial "institutions" and half of wall street are stuck with a few trillion dollars worth of "toxic" assets, that is packages that are so extraordinarily complicated and recursive that noone knows who actually owns what and how much is real wealth and how much is fake ponzi bullshit scheme wealth.

    10. Dimwits somehow blame all this on some ridiculous 1990's legislation that doesn't even GOVERN 70% of the institutions at the top of the problem.
    11. Thieves in said institutions use the ensuing shit fight by useful idiots blaming the "over entitled poor people" to stage the biggest plundering of a public treasury in the history of the world.

    12. Occasional dimwits continue to blame the government - in some sort of bizarro world NOT for their lack of regulation in order to prevent such an enormous pyramid scheme from being concocted in the first place...but for somehow *forcing* these institutions to fraudulently package shit mortgages that they *chose* to give out as AAA rated investments, making trillions of dollars profit by doing so and trying to pass them along before it all fell apart as is typical of any ponzi scheme.

    13. Give it up and learn FFS.

    That said the Federal Reserve bears alot of responsibility for the low cost of money making credit to easy to get for the large firms. Of course the fact that the VERY SAME large firms make up the majority of the seats on the Federal Reserve makes blaming the government even stupider.

    Except of course for giving the Federal Reserve that sort of power in the first place. Which is a call for more regulation...not less.

  45. Re:Support Universal Single Payer Health Care!!! by theaceoffire · · Score: 2, Funny

    This deep, well thought out comment brought to you by YouTube!

    --
    I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
  46. Re:Opinion by Aquitaine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is somewhat OK, but one of your points is grossly understated and you're missing one. The 'oh the banks are greedy and everything is their fault' is a very popular line these days, and certainly they have their share of responsibility.

    #0: A lot of people who can't afford expensive mortgages buy them. This happened before #1 and was, indeed, at the behest of the Federal government (both Clinton and Bush). Fur further information: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19cisneros.html?scp=8&sq=federal%20housing%20clinton&st=cse. I don't know about you, but even if the Feds decide that the national rate of home ownership should be closer to 75-85% as opposed to 50% (to say nothing of why such a number should be arrived at by fiat rather than by, I don't know, what people can afford), and even if banks then begin falling all over themselves taking advantage of government policy that both enables and encourages them to begin (at best) foolish or (at worst) predatory practices, this still required buy-in from untold numbers of individual, real, human beings, who looked at their mortgage like most people look at their credit cards these days: free money! Nobody held a gun to their heads, and obviously a huge squadron of trained, pushy mortgage brokers can have a field day with a chunk of the population that suddenly has access to large dollar amounts and isn't familiar with how everything is going to work 1, 2, or 10 years from when they sign the papers -- but the idea of living according to your means isn't a new one, or even a difficult one.

    #7: 'A few people default on their mortgages.'

    A year ago, there were 500,000 foreclosures in the two months alone -- (source). It's interesting that you would choose a word like 'few' to play down the impact of the average, everyday joe in this equation. It's as if you feel more comfortable blaming banks and businesspeople (oh noes! they make money so they are evil!) even though you've got quite a few other facts in order here. Don't get me wrong - I'd be happy to line up some of these mortgage brokers or the execs who issued the AAA bond ratings and do terrible things to them, but the government opened the door for all of this to happen. Your description of banks issuing bad mortgages because they don't own them is not really accurate. If the banks actually had no exposure to these mortgages, then WaMu and Countrywide wouldn't have gone under. They 'chose' to give out crap mortgages because the government (via Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) was guaranteeing quite a lot of them. If the market establishes that half of Americans can afford homes and half can't, and then somebody in Washington decides that that number should be 75%, then you are fairly rapidly entering the area where somebody is going to be issuing a mortgage to somebody who can't afford it. No bank in their right mind would do that in a free market -- and even in our market, some banks went hog-wild with the false sense of security and the thought of collecting interest from so many new mortgages, while other banks still got into the deep end but realized a little sooner that you can't wave a magic wand and cause nearly a hundred million people who previously couldn't afford a mortgage to afford one.

    The Government waved that wand and so the blame in this picture is theirs in that they opened the door, but it took a lot of self-important bankers and brokers to complete the disaster. It does seem ironic that 'more government regulation' is somehow the answer.

    Sincerely,

    A dimwit