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From Apple To Xbox, Tech Companies Lean Left
Velcroman1 writes "Only a week to election time! How does tech feel about politics? If you guessed liberal, you're right: Big Tech leans left. 'They're dominated by coastal people who tend to be more liberal,' says Jim Taylor, a management consultant who writes about the business of psychology. 'Also, those in Big Tech tend to be educated in the better schools, which lean left. Big Tech skews younger and hipper [and favors] social and environmental issues. Their political values trump financial concerns at the organizational culture level and the missions of many firms, especially those that are new media.' For example, Marissa Mayer, known as 'the face of Google,' gave $30,400 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2009. In fact, of the top 10 contributions made by Google in 2009, only one — by CEO Eric Schmidt — was to the Republican National Committee. Facebook has donated almost exclusively to Democratic candidates, according to Transparency Data, including $1,000 to California Sen. Barbara Boxer a year ago, and more recently, almost $5,000 to Richard Blumenthal, who is running for senator in Connecticut."
The revelation that California and the Seattle area, where most of these companies are based, tends to lean left is a complete revelation to me. You see, I have been living under a rock on a desert island for the last hundred years and didn't realize that every state in the Union was not, in fact, like my home state of Alabama. I am shocked to learn that executives from these tech companies live in a place where each public school-day DOESN'T begin with school prayer, a mandatory salute to the Confederate flag, shooting practice, and a discussion of why America would elect a satan-worshiping negro marxist as President. I had always assumed, on my desert island, that America was a homogenous place, and that no region had its own unique political leanings. Now, I know that there are actually areas in the U.S. where it's not okay to beat down anyone publicly admitting to supporting fag rights--where even *calling* someone a fag is considered somewhat offensive (even if they are). I guess I can understand these executives' leftist points of view, considering that they come from a place where it's considered impolite to burn down the houses of non-Christians. Thank you for enlightening me.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that energy companies leans to the right.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
They tend to hire youth, and they are often based out of California. Youth tend to lean liberal, and Calfornia is often seen as the most liberal state. This is a shocking correlation!
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The vast majority in tech I know lean more towards the libertarian side of things. These kind of tests, due to their flaws of being linear, usually fail to capture that. ("Left" comes up more commonly than "right" for many libertarians because of how self-extreming "right" has become lately.)
Seriously -in the US we have two parties. The far right party, and the psychopathic kill-and-censor-everyone-in-the-name-of-patriotism party.
In practical terms, we have no left. This article is BS.
if the donation is made by an individual, no matter how high ranking, then does it really indicate how the company would behave?
There are some people who will be surprised by this news...
Or they would be if they could stop brutally assaulting people they disagree with just long enough to hear it.
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Come on editors, i know you desperately want to talk about american politics, but isn't that what the poll to the right is for?
Who needs a big stupid flamewar? No one but Ralph Nader leans LEFT in the usa ANYWAYS!
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
In Alabama we still subscribe to the One Drop Rule. Surely at least that basic principle is universally accepted, right?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Unfortunately they are unwilling to use their corporate power (i.e. money) to create a media campaign in the way that corporations that lean right do. It's sad that only the right has the courage to anonymously funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into non-profits like Americans for Prosperity that were created for the purpose of supporting Right Wing candidates. According to their tax filings these non-profits have a primary purpose that is not political. Education, I suppose?
But the Supreme Court has decided that anyone with any moral fiber or system of ethics is unsuited for political office. The next 20 years are going to be pretty awful.
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I don't think you understand the word "liberal" in its oldest meanings. It used to be that liberal meant more freedoms, both economically and personally. Using that definition libertarians are the most liberal of parties. It is only in the last few years that liberal has become synonymous with the progressive movement, which isn't even liberal at all because most support less freedoms both personally and economically.
What the US really needs is more political parties so people could accurately state their belief system, because I don't think hardly anyone is truly a republican or democrat.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Note I said "liberal", not "progressive", not "Democratic Party", not either libertarian or "Libertarian".
The problem is that too many people confuse "fiscal responsibility" with "conservatism". Fiscal policy is separate from "liberal" and "conservative". I am *EXTREMELY* fiscally 'conservative'. But I'm also *EXTREMELY* liberal.
In fact, one could even argue that fiscal responsibility is, itself, liberal by definition.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
You see, I have been living under a rock on a desert island for ...
Ah-ha! Your post would have been believable if you had lived on a deserted island.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
... this means left in the US. For the rest of the world it still to the right.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It was both.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...in other words, the Democrats are neither liberal in any proper sense of the word, not "left" except in relation to the Republicans. From a European perspective, both big US parties used to be barely distinguishable, far off in the mist on the the right. Of course, the NeoCons and the Tea Parties have dragged the Republicans even further away, and the Democrats have followed more slowly, thus widening the distance. But that does not make the Democrats "left".
Stephan
Oh, don't be confused. They still refer to the same people. Us Americans just don't have anyone further left than the "right-wing" folks.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Telling me that only one donation was to the RNC or that so-and-so donated $5,000 to the Democrat is completely and utterly useless. It's a single number without context, people. (Yes, I know it's FOXnews. Doesn't mean Slashdot has to waste space repeating it.)
Where did the OTHER NINE donations go? The RNC is only one part of the Republican political machine to which one can donate: there are candidates and PACs, for example.
How large were they by comparison? One donation of $10,000 is surely more significant than 10 of $500, isn't it?
Because corporations cannot contribute to political candidates (though they can expend independently to support or oppose them), and because employees can and these donations are required to be publicly disclosed, its a fairly common (but, as you point out) misleading method to describe the political leaning of a corporation by the aggregated contributions of its employees.
For any business, since they exist to serve the interest of their owners not, except where this is the same thing (as in labor coops), their employees, it would make more sense, if you were going to judge a corporation's politics by looking at individual donations, to look at the donations of their shareholders, weighted by the proportion of ownership.
Big Corp wants nothing to do with capitalism or free markets.
Big Corp wants Big Government around to regulate their competitors out of existence and bail them out when they get into trouble.
A few months of actual free market capitalism would destroy most of the big corporations.
Note that, rhetoric to the contrary, neither major party has done anything to shrink the government in at least the last quarter century.
Want to get money and influence peddling out of the hands of feds? Pass a Constitutional Amendment to strip Congress of the Commerce Clause, relying on state's rights instead.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
This article has little to offer other than to highlight the most prevalent problem with our electoral system. Leaning left, leaning right, either way, a country whose leaders are funded by wealthy corporate donors tars the very notion of democracy.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
The US has two major political parties, but also has a very open primary system. In Canada, we have three major political parties, but their internal politics are far less transparent.
So while we have more choice on election day, I think ultimately you yanks get a lot more diversity of opinion and choice, if you care enough to participate in the primaries. Just look at the current battle within the Republican party between the old guard and the tea-partiers; you never see that kind of thing in public in most parliamentary systems.
As an outsider, I think there's several things wrong with the US democratic system. But the "two party system" isn't one of them.
Conversley here in South America, everyone claims to be be of pure European descent(I guess they have been fucking their cousins for the last three hundred years to keep the race pure. So the one drop rule here means if you have one drop of European blood, you have to be white. I am a Colombian Cajun mix(cajun side being Sicilian settlers in Thibodaux) and before I excepted my present employment here in Colombia I was offered a relative high paying job in the Bay Area, but turned it down. I kept being accused of being a southerner when I spoke English and when I spoke spanish it was "you speak great english for a Mexican". I found everyone on the West Coast assumed every Latino was a Mexican.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Bill Gates never used to give anything to candidates. He figured, rather naively, that there was no reason to do that.
Then, a little company called Sun that gave a lot of money to the Democrats made a few phone calls and got some anti-trust action going.
So yeah. Pay up or else!
So far in 2010, the oil and gas industries have contributed $12.8 million to all candidates, with 71% of that money going to Republicans. During the 2008 election cycle, 77% of the industry's $35.6 million in contributions went to Republicans, and in the 2008 presidential contest, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain received more than twice as much money from the oil and gas industries as Obama: McCain collected $2.4 million; Obama, $898,000.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_05/023945.php
Sure, you can single out Exxon and Obama in 2008, because that's the exception to the rule you're pretending doesn't exist.
Except for the fact that erodes the point of a political party.
The point of a political party is to find candidates where you don't have to do a shitload of research on every single one of them to find out what they believe. The point of a political party is to summarize the core of your beliefs in one or two words. Rather than spending several hours researching each candidate from a variety of biased sources, out-of-context quotes and the like, you would simply find the party which you closely identify with.
Voter apathy is a major issue in the US and having a fragmented party does nothing to reduce it. With a republican, unless you are willing to do several hours of research for each person, you don't know if you are getting a person like McCain or someone like Ron Paul.
By having several parties to choose from it makes it easy on election day to tell at a glance which candidates you identify most strongly with.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
People complain that our universities, urban elite, etc. 'lean left'. Now let's see, the smarter and better educated you are, the more liberal you are. What does that suggest to you?
It suggests to me that we have too many ignoramuses, who lack the education and experience to learn to deal with different kinds of people, to understand how progress is made, and to be informed or to deal with complicated policy issues like global warming. And those ignoramuses are called "conservatives".
The tea-partiers are the useful idiots of the "old guard". They only exist to get votes for the GOP.
Educated people do not believe Obama is a communist Muslim.
Who'd have thought?
Our "leftists" could not even manage a public option for insurance coverage so that takes your first point right out, and our right-wingers support jailing people for victimless crimes so there goes the other.
Your insightful post is based on a completely unsupportable assertion.
You write:
"If you dump labor rights and issues then you are not a left leaning people."
All you are doing here is basing your analysis off your own personal definition of "left." Surely you can see how this is meaningless (to others, anyway).
John Podesta's brother, Tony Podesta is BPs lead lobbyist. John is the founder of the Center For American Progress and the former Clinton chief of staff. I know it is from Beck. But DAMN.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/42150/
Loved this!
I'm educated enough to see a logical fallacy when I see one.
College graduates also tend to come from higher income families. Therefore, according to your logic, the more money you accumulate, the more liberal you are. Obviously, the Democratic party is the party of the wealthy!
Learn about Photography Basics.
1. Donations to campaigns don't actually require the candidate to do anything in return. There is usually the perception that large donations imply some sort of tit-for-tat, but it isn't always the case. In Obama's case, individual donors, that is, those unaffiliated with any major corporation, contributed more to his campaign, both proportionally and in total than to any other national candidate in history, so if politicians truly are bought purely through money, well, guess who owns him?
What you really have to look at is the secret money, the stuff you don't get to see on campaign disclosure forms. Here I'm talking about all these secret super-PACs and lobbyists and such, where the money and who's donating it tends to get obfuscated by the system. That's where the influence peddling goes on; the stuff made in the public eye is usually for advertisement purposes ("Hey, look at me! I'm supporting Candidate X! Aren't I a good little corporate citizen?").
2. There definitely are differences between Democrats and Republicans. The problem is that Democrats aren't really liberals, and the Republicans aren't really conservatives. sure, they each pretend to lean left or right, to get their respective bases to pay attention, but in reality the Republicans work for the rich, who funnel massive amounts of secret money into their campaigns and bank accounts, and Democrats work for the unions and lawyers, because they're stupid and don't realize that the unions have had all their money taken away over the last thirty years and the lawyers are becoming rich, and therefore turning to the Republicans because the Republicans are pro-rich and anti-everyone else.
Could not agree more.
The left has come under criticism for rebranding "liberalism" as "progressivism." I strongly disagree -- I think it's a much more accurate term. Indeed, there is much in progressivism that is profoundly *illiberal*; i.e., incompatible with the set of values originally understood to be "liberal."
- Alaska Jack
No it would be "Zebra". See Zebra is exponentially more correct because George Jefferson, a black man, called his son's mixed race wife that all the time.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I'm smarter than Cindy Osborne because I know how to use paragraph breaks to increase legibility.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Annoyances of the article's quality and purpose aside, there is the fact that computers, technology, and "New Things"(tm) are often viewed with untrust, fear, and outright contempt from the various demographics. The older, conservative, stick-in-the muds sort who don't like change. Kind of like the ill-will those on the far right show towards academia and intellectuals. It's a social trend that I hardly ever see, but when it does rear it's ugly head I'm always shocked and saddened.
One part of me wants to smack them upside the head and yell at them to put down their buggy whips. But that would be wrong. Another parts is glad that they're "missing out" on the awesomeness of the future. But that's also kinda wrong of me. So usually I just end up being befuddled and move on with my life as far away from them as I can. Technophobic Luddites.
How about a dessert island?
A few months of actual free market capitalism would destroy most of the big corporations.
I think you underestimate the power of a fully funded and functional multi-national corporation. Trying to cut back the network effects can take decades, by which time your puny competitors will be bankrupt. If you doubt this, see how many companies still use IBM mainframes. And that which survives in one realm can leverage its existing power into another realm without regulation. See again, e.g., IBM.
That is all.
I don't think you understand the word "liberal" in its oldest meanings. It used to be that liberal meant more freedoms, both economically and personally. I don't think you understand the word "liberal" in its oldest meanings. It used to be that liberal meant more freedoms, both economically and personally.
Definitions change. You know what he means. Lets not quibble over terms unless we can't understand each other.
What the US really needs is more political parties so people could accurately state their belief system, because I don't think hardly anyone is truly a republican or democrat.
With parlimentary systems, the coalition is formed after elections, with many smaller parties joining up and compromising to be the majority. With the American system, the coalition is formed before the elections, with what would be many smaller parties joining up to form one of two parties before the vote. Or at least they do if they're smart about it. The Christian right and the fiscal conservatives united as republicans and dominated in a good number of elections for quite a while. The effect would have been the same had they both just formed a coalition after getting elected. Conversely, the "greens" often run as their own party separate from the democrats, and then are for some reason surprised when neither actually gets elected.
that corporations lean to the left or to the right based on some moral principles. Corporations butter whoever is in charge and whoever reciprocates them the most, that's all. The rest of this "younger, hipper, educated in better schools, etc" is anecdotal. Corporations support whoever lets them get away with "patriotic" activities like tax-evasion (hello Google, Facebook, Micro$oft, etc), in this case its the present administration.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
We need a new classification system. Old words like "liberal" and "fascist" are insufficient. I propose a new classification system with 3 variables (sliders) from a range of "none" to "full". The 3 variables are:
* Economic Control - How involved is the government in economic decisions and wealth distribution.
* Bedroom & Pleasure Control - Involves sexual and reproductive behavior, and recreational substances. How involved is the government in regulating these.
* Political Control - How much does the government control the political process. On one end you have highly democratic societies with freedom of political speech, on the other you have governments that allow little or no citizen participation in political decisions. Economic and political control used to go hand-and-hand, but Asia put that model on it's head. (Even in the US, the Supreme Court can overrule the will of voters.)
Each of these could be sub-divided further, but as a quick description to replace existing terms, it's good enough. Patent Pending ;-)
Table-ized A.I.
I didn't vote for a third party candidate because not voting is just as effective.
And the Republicans and Democrats both thank you for continuing to prevent any competition.
I'm always amazed at people who believe the "voting for a 3rd party is like throwing your vote away". Are you really saying that because your particular candidate didn't win, that you wasted your vote?
I had a conversation with a co-worker about our recent vote. I said that I had voted Libertarian (Bob Barr) for president. He laughed and claimed that I wasted my vote. I then asked him who HE had voted for. He then stopped laughing and quietly mumbled, "John McCain". I then proceeded to laugh, as we live in California, and Barr and McCain had roughly the same chances of winning the state (about 0% chance). Was his vote for McCain a "wasted vote", simply because McCain didn't win? Or was his vote OK, since it fell into your acceptable category of being a (R) or a (D)?
(1) It is very common for people to say they are socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. It has been pointed out many times, however, that this distinction falls apart when you start asking about details. Which extremely expensive social programs/entitlements are these people in favor of cutting? Davis-Bacon? Protectionist tariffs? EEO programs? Funding for the arts? Taxpayer support for abortions? Head Start? The Department of Education?
Not saying anything about you. Perhaps you are indeed one of the very few people who could accurately be described this way. But the fact remains: Social spending is *expensive*, and that money has to come from somewhere.
(2) This whole "reality has a liberal bias" thing to me just strikes me as bizarre.
Just 10 years ago, liberals would have cheerfully and forthrightly asserted the opposite. Remember this? -- "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged."? Indeed, that was the whole point of contention between liberals and conservatives. The liberal vision was *aspirational and visionary*. It was not based on how things *are*, but how they *should be.* The progressive belief is that we can "progress," in the process change human nature to be more collectivist, less selfish and more aware of social justice issues. Cultural attitudes can be adjusted if we just hit on the right combination of levers, after which we will all link arms and march into the future together.
The conservative critique was that this was all pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking; that you can't ever really change human nature; that people act out of enlightened self-interest, not selfless concern for their fellow man; that you can't legislate away things like the law of supply and demand; and that government policies should take these things into account.
So now, it just strikes me as total revisionism to claim "reality has a well-known liberal bias." I mean, that's not what liberals of previous generations said. If you accused them of being visionary and aspirational, they would have replied, "Damn straight." So, why are you right and them wrong?
- Alaska Jack
The Libertarian Party is not classically liberal. It's idea of "economic freedom" is plutocracy, a reduction in effective freedom for most people. As Kim Stanley Robinson put it, "That's libertarians for you -- anarchists who want police protection from their slaves."
The Progressive movement was intended -- and we can certainly debate how well this end was served -- to increase the freedom of individual persons by reducing the power of corrupt big businesses. To them, your right to (for example) sell tainted food and drugs ended where people's health began just as your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The TV companies are dominated by "leaning left" liberals, and therefore their reporting is also left-leaning. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN.
Why do you think that is? Has it ever occurred to you that the majority of the US population might in fact be liberal? Why do you think that in at least 10 states during this election cycle that the number of "independent" voters are actually the majority, where there are more independents than both Ds and Rs? The majority of the population does not identify with either major party. Since both parties are on the right of the global political scale, it would stand to reason that many of the people who do not identify with either party are in fact left of both of them. Take a look at this, are the blue and red folks on the left or right of center:
http://politicalcompass.org/uselection2008
It looks to me like the entire political system in the US is on the right, and so to anyone standing on the right, someone standing in the center looks "liberal" and "left", when in fact they're just in the center.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
As another outsider, I would concur, but I would also say that it is pretty obvious that one of those things wrong with the U.S. system is the subject of this article: money.
Those people are called hypocrites all political affiliations have them.
Except that that's not true -- media leans right. The "liberal media" myth is a straight-up GOP propaganda ploy that's served them very well.
The bias that you will find is that big media is in big cities, and therefore often reflects a more urban worldview -- more likely to be anti-gun, for example, and more likely to be tolerant of diversity. (With the obvious exception of Fox, which has chosen to pitch their infotainment to the red state demographic.) But the media is as leftist as the corporations that own it -- i.e., not at all.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It's not voter apathy. It's voter impotence.
Unable to satisfy your vote?
Buy vi@gra from can@d1an pharmarcy!
Big Corp wants Big Government around to regulate their competitors out of existence and bail them out when they get into trouble.
Before the Great Depression, the USA went through multiple financial meltdowns and the biggest companies came through them just fine.
A few months of actual free market capitalism would destroy most of the big corporations.
History seems to show that unregulated markets destroy the small corporations.
The larger company(ies) then consolidates the industry in order to form a monopoly/oligopoly.
This stuff is basic American history.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The cornerstone of the free market is *competition.*
Businesses don't want competition. They want a steady, predictable supply of government-guaranteed income.
Fighting for customers is hard. It is comparatively easy to hire an experienced lobbyist to lobby government to craft regulations that provide barriers to entry, limit competition ultimately transfer wealth from taxpayers to themselves.
That's why it is foolish to consider big business "conservative." The only thing they seek to conserve is whatever status quo made them big to begin with.
- AJ
This "psychologist" can't see that people at these companies are more liberal than average simply because they're smart. Not just any kind of smart, but the kind of smart that knows how to communicate with lots of other people, even if just in the abstract, technologically, not just with their hillbilly brother-cousins. Which is why they leave those hillbilly hollows to go places where companies like Apple and Microsoft can function. Back in hillbillyland they'd be burned as witches, or worse as homosexuals.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert
--
make install -not war
Oh, that's where you and your friends get to drink, smoke, and turn into donkeys and then escape and get swallowed by a big whale.
Another acquaintance is a big fan of raising taxes to fund mass transit, but has never stepped on a bus or train herself, because of that thing about rubbing shoulders with stinky people.
So they're willing to pay more in taxes for a service they will never use? Seems somewhat laudable.
I think most of us know what liberal used to mean. But since it's never used that way anymore, and everyone knows the new meaning, you've got an uphill battle if you're gonna try to get people to use the old meaning in everyday discourse.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Please mod parent hilarious!
Support SETI@home
I think Americans need *no* political party. They should legislate and govern on a per issue bases. It's the fact that we have "big politco's" that I think is the problem.
You see, I've come to believe that many Americans simply pick a party based on one or two beliefs they hold most strongly and then vote for that party, regardless of all the other beliefs they may or may not agree with.
An example: An LGBT person probably supports LGBT rights. This might, in fact, be the one issue they really care about. Because of this they might vote Democratic because they're known for supporting popular LGBT "gay" rights like marriage. This can be in spite of the fact that they might not support any other issues the party supports.
I'd rather see the whole system stripped down to "the issues"(tm) and not "the party". Of course, there's also the fact that Representatives simply don't Represent anymore. Instead, they get elected and then vote THEIR beliefs (which often include their belief to keep their job by voting how the party wants them to vote so they can fund their next re-election campaign with all the bull-shit and spin that includes). That leads to simply trying to vote for someone who's "most likely to vote how I would vote" and that's too bad.
And this isn't to excuse the voters either. Very few people actually speak up and call/write their Reps. Though, that's not to say if they do, they'll listen. There's been some cases where it's been clear that Reps. are Rep-ing and we'll see them with a new job in a few weeks. (I won't say they'll be unemployed because ex-congress-people end up becoming consultants / lobbyists for special interests because they know how things work and who to talk to, so they'll still be making boat loads of money).
Of course, the whole thing is far more complex than just that, but that's just my recent thoughts.
Things have just gotten too "sporty" in terms of politics. It's like you have to support your "team" no matter what, and you can't agree the other team has some good ideas, simply because it's the other team. This shit isn't suppose to be a fucking competition. We're all suppose to be on the same team here.
Yet now, after our nation has been attacked on its own soil, after 3,000 Americans were killed, by freedom-hating terrorists, while going about their routine lives, they want to hold rallies against the war.
See, this is the kind of stupidity that you just can't reason with; our nation is attacked on its own soil, so halfwits think an appropriate response is to attack another country that wasn't actually the attacker. How can you even negotiate with this kind of vacuous mindlessness?
This only works if you can use government power to either force people to buy your products or outlaw alternatives.
Republicans and Democrats are 2 wings of the same corporate party...I fear he is correct. When you look at the causes of the financial meltdown we experienced, there are policies by both R and D congresses and presidents that all made it possible. I hate to over-simplify, but it appears they both suck.
And Jesse Ventura said he would be against Independents forming a 3rd party because you would have a 3 headed monster instead of a 2 headed one...I fear he is correct as well. His idea of disbanding all political parties sounded interesting, though.
Who knew that giving control of our money supply to private corporations was a bad idea? I mean besides Ben Franklin.
http://www.slate.com/id/2271828/
"The Fed makes money ex nihilo, pulling it out of thin air rather than taking it from its coffers. Then, it pushes the money into the economy by buying up assets from banks."
But the funny thing is, Democrats have been in control of the Alabama legislature for the past 136 years, and were in control of all politics in the state between the time of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement.
These were fairly conservative Democrats, mind you... but they still swing in the liberal direction on many issues.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Wanted to post the same myself, but you put it so much better. (and all my mod points are gone, so providing just moral support ;) ).
People who insist on voting for the lesser of two evils (or, worse, voting just to say that he voted for the guy who won) really surprise me if there is a real, even if long-shot, option available.
But then, we already know it (even judging from our signature lines :) ), but how do we really make others understand it?
As a side note, an alternative semi-scientific approach to get "political leanings of geeks" result would be to analyse signature lines of /.ers for bias. :)
Hmm, is there an API to download sig lines of all /. users? Anyone up for this project?
Paul B.
Maybe you have never been to the country, or a small town, but few of my friends live on anything less than 5 acres, and by any standard they live their lives about as simple as you can.
And lets cool it with the number of vehicles. The price for a working functional car/truck is less than most big TVs. You want to point a finger at simple living hypocrites? Point it at people driving brand new cars that cost 40k+. Living simply is not having your CAR cost more that the average person makes in a year.
Maybe not on paper. But let's be realistic - corporations don't just spend megabucks because they like a candidate. I think any successful long-term candidate understands in a gentleman's-agreement way that his large donors' concerns are to be treated with the utmost consideration. Otherwise those donors are likely to go the opposing side as soon as possible.
And I really took issue with this statement:
I understand we're reducing things in simplistic terms, but this is just not true even as a generalization. *Both* Democrats and Republicans work for the rich. It's just that the rich people the Democrats work for tend to be more comfortable with regulations, social programs and infrastructure as a long-term investment in America that benefits everyone - including the rich. Whereas the rich people the Republicans work for would rather get a larger own short-term personal cut of the pie for themselves, and don't believe that the long-term investment will benefit them enough as individuals even if it benefits the nation as a whole.
As for unions, Democrats support them for the same reason that Republicans support the goals of Christian conservatives - shared values and get-out-the-vote efforts. And as for lawyers turning conservative as a class due to wealth, that also isn't supported by any study I know of. If anything, lawyers are more likely to vote Democrat no matter what their wealth, because they daily see the effects of republican policies on the actual justice system.
Just my $.02 .
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
I'm really surprised libertarianism, with its ideals of personal freedom, isn't more popular in America. A case of bad marketing or just a lack of funding such candidates?
You forgot "and lose more American soldiers than civilians were killed in the initial attack." 3,000 dead from 9/11, 4,400+ combat deaths in Iraq.
"See here: For every American you kill, we'll waste 1.3 American lives attacking that guy over there! You've been warned!"
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Do you know anyone who would be able to raise the kind of startup capital that it would take to topple say, GM, Intel, Pfizer, et al?
Has it ever worked in the past that in the absence of regulation, large businesses were toppled in favor of smaller ones?
OR, has history shown instead, that very rich players in the market can and will use it's economic leverage to force smaller players out?
It's like saying, "If poker had no rules, any schmo would be able to beat Phil Ivey."
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Except Bill Clinton. (Assuming we use number of federal employees as the yardstick)
Odd that the summary neglects to mention two very high profile elections that have former major tech CEO's running as Republicans for this election cycle.
Um...No. You'd have to have spent the entire buildup to the Iraq war in a coma to believe this.
The TV companies are dominated by corporatists. They will provide the reporting that does the most for the parent company's bottom line. Left or right are irrelevant to them.
The only ideological network at the moment is Fox News. Some try to claim MSNBC is the liberal equivalent, but if that were true they wouldn't start their programming day with 3 hours from former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough.
To be fair, if you voted Obama you pretty much wasted your vote too.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'd recommend understanding how HTML formatting works before trying to claim someone is smarter than someone else.
Too many people mod down instead of replying in disagreement.
As an aside, I generally only mod up, never down. Not just things I agree with, but things that are well thought out, incisive, or just plain funny. I try to deliberately mod up posts I disagree with if they raise good points. "Good" meaning hard for me to refute effectively.
In what way does spelling acumen limit your ability to stuff testicles in your mouth?
Honestly...if you're gonna say "teabaggers", at least have the cojones to not post AC...it's not like /. is a bastion of conservative thought.
Ahh, shit. IHBT
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Unfortunately, that claim of Clinton's is just another statistical mirage (of the kind both parties engage in).
First, when you talk about "federal employees" most people think of civil servants. But their ranks GREW during the 90s. The "shrinkage" was almost entirely due to downsizing the military.
The numbers also don't count contractors, jobs funded with federal grants, etc.
Depressing details here:
http://www.govexec.com/features/0199/0199s1.htm
No, they live in San Francisco. Most BART cars have an intense bouquet of aged urine, mellowed in sweaty denim with notes of street grime and used motor oil residue.
Then there's amazon.com, which in addition to their ground-breaking aggressive use of an inane software patent, was also donating money to the Republican party during the rise of the Bush Jr. regime... in contrast to Barnes and Nobles, which has been solidly blue, all along.
All you've pointed out here is that there are different yardsticks for measuring the size of government.
One could just as easily define the size of government as the number of volumes in the Library of Congress, or the total mass of all elected officials.
Number of people who get a paycheck directly from the US Treasury is as decent a measure as any other. Which means military cuts indeed reduce the size of the government.
If you'd prefer another yardstick, feel free to propose one.
As a european with many pre-conceived ideas about the USA, wouldn't it be "Satan-driven racially-challenged-african-american Marxist"? Isn't the rest completely un-PC?
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
My apologies I should have been more clear. I am *not* talking about farmers, commercial or otherwise. Farmers are the exception that often gets overlooked (and screwed). A single dwelling on acreage with outbuildings and a $250,000 vehicle in the garage, that sounds like yer rich, right? Except a farmer is in a single dwelling on acreage and the quarter million dollar vehicle is the combine harvester he co-owns with three other farmers. I fully undrestand, and I'm not talking about them.
I'm referring to the guy who has acreage because it's cool to look out the back yard at an acre of lawn bordered by shade trees hiding the ATV trails. Who doesn't farm and doesn't own a tractor.
But you raise a couple of good points. Firstly, that it's easy to lose sight of the professions that require what others would think of as obnoxious displays of wealth (and who might actually be in hock up to their eyebrows just trying to get the next crop in).
Moreover, you really can buy a serviceable truck for less than a high end TV. The metrosexual in a downtown loft watching a Beovision resting on his Macassar ebony flooring probably thinks he's living simply because he walks the 2 1/2 blocks to work, taking time to stop off at the local coffee shop while he holds up the line ordering an outrageously complicated drink and insisting they check "in the back" for those breakfast wraps they're out of. (Sorry, pet peeve.) The same guy who sneers at you because your job requires a truck.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
More to the point, they're willing for other people to pay taxes for a service that neither they nor most of the other people will ever use. Nobody is preventing you from donating your own money to whatever cause you please.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As a european with many pre-conceived ideas about the USA, wouldn't it be "Satan-driven racially-challenged-african-american Marxist"? Isn't the rest completely un-PC?
Whoa there - American? Make that "Satan-driven racially-challenged-African Marxist"
Fandroids hate facts.
"I am shocked to learn that executives from these tech companies live in a place where each public school-day DOESN'T begin with school prayer, a mandatory salute to the Confederate flag, shooting practice, and a discussion of why America would elect a satan-worshiping negro marxist as President."
Uh, I live there, went to high school and college there, and none of my days in public school ever began with a prayer or a salute to the Confederate flag. It always began with a pledge of allegiance to the stars and stripes.
If you were trying to be funny, you failed. If you were trying to paint a picture of the state, you failed miserably.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Really? It's like that here too. I wonder if there's any city where light rail does not smell like a Greyhound bathroom?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Seriously, I've been to the Bay Area, and given the state of Mexican food there I don't think they've even seen a Mexican since the territory belonged to Spain.
If Google is earning that money from investments overseas and spending it overseas, then there really is no problem.
The problem is companies that pretend to do that, but are really expatriating domestic profits, or failing to repatriate revenues on domestic products.
Change the rule to allow taxation on foreign investment, and you will simply kill multinational corporations in America. They'll all split into subsidiaries of a foreign holding company. There will be a Google America and a Google Everywhere Else.
Just not of the truly wealthy.
Do you really want to see what that would look like with all the formatting intact? Because I'm guessing it's all centered, in four rotating colors, has a textured background that camouflages the text, any number of graphical manipulations, and more than one instance of blinking bold italics.
I'm forgetting the actual word for the shape (not "bathtub", there's a good word for it), but basically the conservatism vs. education curve is not monotonic, while generally the education vs. wealth one is.
Conservatives tend to quit school after they get their BS or in some case MS, since they tend to focus on money from birth. Few Ph.D's are conservative. Very few who are using their doctorates at universities.
The thing about the "educated elites" argument is that they're basically saying they don't value smart people. And it works politically because they don't care if they're telling the truth, just as long as they activate the jealous hatred nascent in the voting public. Conservative politics is very tactical and highly specious. They utterly mastered the trick of putting a heinous proposition on the ballot, one they'd never put in as a party platform plank, which nonetheless brings out the sociopaths who, since they're already there to declare homosexuals non-persons, might as well vote for that nice dumb guy from Texas, because they're sure he's on their side.
Try writing in one language while peaking in another. English is my first language, but Spanish is heavily phonetic, so there is crossover if I am using both simultaneously. I was gabbing with a coworker while writing the post. I am not insecure, I just found California not as liberal as people claim it to be.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Google doesn't do IT services.
You're thinking of IBM, EDS, SAP, Oracle...
Ahhh, so you're from my wife's side of the family....
The primary system is not particularly functional. It is extremely uncommon for an incumbent to face a credible challenger, much less be defeated in the primary. This lessens its utility, especially in the US House of Representatives with its gerrymandered district boundaries meaning few seats turn over.
Having said that, given the Canadian situation I can understand how you'd prefer our system. As someone who has studied Canadian politics, I admire greatly much of what has been done there since 1945, but I don't think much of the Westminster system as it has evolved in Canada or the UK.
Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.
I know the feeling, my GF is half Indian (Navajo to be exact) and when we are out the locals will sometime just start speaking Spanish to her thinking she is Mexican. She just blushes and says no habla but I just love how her brother handles it "Me no Mexican, me Indian. Me scalp your kind!" . Maybe it's different here (north AR) surrounded by the military bases, but we always laughed our asses off at the idiot racists like the klan, who last I heard are hiding out on a hill in Boone county, because the thought that anyone here was "white" was about as stupid as saying my dog was anything other than a mutt. Here every race has mingled with every race (or as I like to call it "Forget fighting, let's just screw") so much there isn't a pure ANYTHING anymore. I look white but am actually Irish, English, German, Two kinds of Indian (Comanche and Creek) and Cajun, which of course is pretty much any race that ever stepped through Louisiana. My girl looks Mexican but is just as much a mix as me, so the thought that anyone still judges based on "race" is kinda just silly to me.
As for TFA, it is nice to see that some put their money where they believe, and not just on the bottom line. We have had pretty much constant tax breaks for the top 3% for the past 30 years, and are worse off than ever before. I can drive through entire towns nearby that are nothing but empty factories and boarded up homes, The level of unemployment is frankly just insane, and if it wasn't for the dems extending unemployment benefits I know quite a few that would be living in their cars, not because they don't want to work, but simply because there isn't any work to be had while they push for more and more education while at the same time expect us to be able to compete with someone who paid $5k for their degree compared to our $70k, it is just nuts. It is just simple math folks, you can't have these ever growing huge masses of unemployed without it blowing up in your face. Just look at what happened to Germany in the 30s, the fascists basically came to power by offering "bread and jobs" and the people went along. Right now you have huge masses that simply don't believe in the American Dream anymore, and they grow more numerous every day. Things simply have to change, period.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Corporations love big government instating a bunch of rules to freeze out their competitors. Corporations aren't Marxist entities. But they don't have problems with leftist governments. Or right. It really just depends.
Corporations compete and aren't in agreement about anything.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Nice try for factual inaccuracy. Among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Alabama ranks 32nd in its percentage of whites and 7th in its percentage of Blacks. It's one of the most racially diverse places in America.
Isn't tarring everyone with the same brush, based on nothing but skin color, actually racism? Are you a self-hating white racist?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The tea-partiers are the useful idiots of the "old guard". They only exist to get votes for the GOP.
Oh, so that explains all of the tea party supported candidates who defeated the GOP establishment candidates in the primaries (Alaska, Delaware, etc).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
a satan-worshiping negro marxist as President
Should be:
a satan-worshiping atheist muslim negro arab marxist fascist anarchist as President
You'd better get back to class, Billy-Bob; you'll make us look foolish.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Do you know anyone who would be able to raise the kind of startup capital that it would take to topple say, GM,
IF it wasn't for government intervention, GM would be toppled. While he is wrong about it only taking a few months, he is right that most bug corporations would be destroyed by true free market capitalism. How many of the fortune 500 were around before 1900? Of those would any of them have been Fortune 500 companies at that time? For that matter how many of today's Fortune 500 companies would have been Fortune 500 companies in 1950? How many of the top 500 companies from 1950 are still around?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
That doesn't refute my assertation. If GM, Ford, et al, didn't have to play fair, would there even be a Nissan, Toyota, Mini, etc?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Yes, the certainly don't represent the likes of George Soros, Warren Buffett, Paul Allen, and Steve Jobs.
Learn about Photography Basics.
I know it's second nature to tar both major US political parties with the "whores for business", and I've done it myself. However, in the 30 or so years since I started to pay attention to politics, this much has become crystal clear:
Luke, help me take this mask off
Clearly someone doesn't remember their history very well. This is precisely what happened in the late 19th century.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
we have a fair number of political parties for every opinion; people just don't know about it because democrats, republicans and big media shut them out of the 'public awareness' (CNN, NBC, ABC etc.).
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
The larger company(ies) then consolidates the industry in order to form a monopoly/oligopoly.
This only works if you can use government power to either force people to buy your products or outlaw alternatives.
What government made Windows 90+% of the market?
What government made Google 70+% of the search market?
What government made Google 70+% of the Internet advertising market?
What government made DeBeer's the diamond monopoly?
You know nothing about how economics actually work do you? Why do you think anti-trust laws exist?
Diverse would be a place like Miami, where 60% of the population wasn't born in the United States, and the largest ethnic group(Cubans) makes up only 30% of the population.
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill
Note, I'm "Right Wing" by international standards, the USA's main two parties are Right, and Ultra Right, why can you not simply have Centre Left and Centre Right like the rest of the world? And also colour them correctly, Red is for "left wing", Blue for "right wing"! You know, like, "The Reds are invading..."?
Things America needs to change reason #42 the Metric System....
---
I know the feeling, my GF is half Indian (Navajo to be exact) and when we are out the locals will sometime just start speaking Spanish to her thinking she is Mexican. She just blushes and says no habla but I just love how her brother handles it "Me no Mexican, me Indian. Me scalp your kind!" .
Best. Family. Ever. Marry her!
His vote wasn't a wasted vote because the result of the current Republican candidate has an impact on the chances of future Republican candidates, which are real. Your vote however was entirely wasted because the next libertarian candidate's chances will be as non-existant as Barr's. I wish it were otherwise but that's the system. At least you didn't end up voting against your own interest, like Nader voters in 2000.
first, democrats are left ? haahahahaha hahahahahahaha hahaahahahah...... that was a good laugh.
and
"Their political values trump financial concerns at the organizational culture level", and, they are phenomenally successful ? maybe we should all have our political values trump financial concerns.
Read radical news here
Now it's Main Street vs Wall Street or people vs corporations. And thanks to Supreme Court corporations have now unlimited powers to funding campaigns of both politicians and judges. This is significant difference between previous elections and this one. Wall Street is clearly winning on all fronts and ordinary people are basically f**cked at this point. If Gulf oil spill / fraudclosure fiascos doesn't tell it clear enough, I don't know what will. And I have no idea what could be done to stop this process.
The problem is that politics are not a simple left-right. Look at the Pournelle Axes on Wikipedia - they make a lot of things come clear. There are really two questions to ask:
1. Do you believe in big government? If you do, on the Pournelle Axes, you are on the right. If not (e.g., Libertarian), you are on the left. Both Democrats and Republicans have become "big government" parties.
2. Should the government drive social change? The democrats tend to say yes (Obamacare, New Deal, welfare programs, etc.), placing them in the top of the diagram. The Republicans tend to say "no", and hence are in the bottom half.
The problem in American politics is that there is no credible movement anywhere in the left half of this diagram. With any luck, maybe the Tea Party will change that - but this is not yet clear...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
That's because people as a rule are horrible hypocrits. When we yell that we want freedoms, that means we want freedom to do what *we* want, and the other guys can go fuck themselves.
Just take a look at how many folks invoke the founders to argue against something the other side wants to do and then proceed directly on to how eg. gay marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God and all well-thinking men.
True libertarianism is as impossible to do as is true communism. It makes assumptions about human nature that are simply not realistic, as we can see all around us every day.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Ehmm, yeah. Definitely. It's not as though the founding fathers were influenced by philosophies that been circulating around western europe for, oh, 2 centuries or so.
Oh wait, there's a document in the parliament of my country that bears a striking resemblance to the US declaration of independance...or I should say the other way around, considering ours was written at the end of the 16th century.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
You forgot 1 factor...age.
When you're in your twenties, come from a wealthy family and don't really have any serious cares in the world, you can afford to look around, see the state the world is in and go "What the fuck? What in the name of all that is holy have the idiots that came before been doing? Surely some intelligent dedicated people could do a better job?"
Then as you grow up, you discover that intelligence is overrated, ignorance rules and you settle down to worrying about mortgages and putting your own kids through college.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Here's the other side of that problem.
It's the left that gets to define "better educated" in most cases - particularly in light of degrees that don't produce much (liberal arts). Techies are notoriously more libertine on financial matters than the academic left.
The other side of that issue is that there are plenty of producers - small businesspeople, regularly employed - who don't have as much college education but more experience making money.
Only after being pushed by one the few semi-conservative congresses in the US.
WOOSH
You might not be able to change the system, you might not be able to make a huge impact, but at the very least you will have your vote as "none of the above" registered.
What I want to see is a legally binding 'none of the above' on every ballot.
If 'none of the above' wins, then the election for that office is re-held and none of the previous candidates may run again.
The ballot needs a reset button.
"You have liberated me from thought."
"Oreo" is incorrect terminology. A person with one white parent and one black parent is a mulatto. An "oreo" is a person with two black parents who is "black on the inside, white on the outside". It's an insult hurled at blacks by other blacks who they think "act too white".
And he's not being a dick, he's making a funny parody.
Free Martian Whores!
I've always said that kids should study more of Jefferson's work.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
TV Companies are also like Tech Companies
The TV companies are dominated by "leaning left" liberals, and therefore their reporting is also left-leaning. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN. All pro-"make the government bigger" biased as a reflection of their liberal workers.
You make it sound as though big media companies are structured like some sort of collective, with the organisation as a whole representing the beliefs of its individual members. Remarkably, that's not how capitalism works.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I understand you're just being a dick here (what leftwingers do best)
GP is engaging in parody, which is part of the arsenal of weapons available with free speech, something that rightwingers always say is important when defending murderous racism, sexism and homophobia, but get pissy about when used against them.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Except the downsizing (which a sibling rightly points out was mostly military) was going on before 1994.
I'm afraid my little Indian princess is scared to death of marriage at this point. She was married twice in the past and both were horribly physically abusive to her, which also gave her serious self esteem issues. Just the fact that we live two hours away from each other (due to the fact that we both have elderly parents we need to be close to in case of emergency) has my poor little princess worried sick I'm gonna "get tired of her" and find someone else.
Lucky for me even her grown kids just love the hell out of me, because they know I would NEVER raise a hand in anger or be abusive to a woman, and my family already considers her part of the family, so slowly but surely I'm working on building her back up. I never knew the long term damage physical abuse could cause until I fell in love with a woman who had been abused. What it did to her self esteem was worse than the broken bones IMHO, and definitely will take longer to heal. But they say time heals all wounds, and she is finding out I'm one seriously stubborn bastard when it comes to getting what I want.
Having to be apart these past 90 days due to illnesses in the families has been a perfect chance to show her she has nothing to fear, and I won't cheat on her or mistreat her when I don't get to be with her as much as I like. Of course when she shows up next weekend I have a feeling I won't be leaving the bed for a couple of days, but it is comfy and I like it there ;-) But yeah her family is a hoot, half Indian and half redneck makes for a hell of a combo. Just don't ride with them! Good Lord, if they are going less than 90MPH it is a miracle, crazy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They also assume every black person they meet is African-American, even when they're not in the US.
it is nice to see that some put their money where they believe, and not just on the bottom line
That depends on what factors influence the bottom line. Under Republican policies, which I've been assured many times are extremely "business friendly," we deregulated banks and finance companies and allowed the lines between them to blur (some of this was supported by President Clinton). Under President Bush we also depopulated the SEC, which was charged with the oversight of these businesses. In other words, we did exactly what banks and financial institutions were asking us to do. And it turns out that doing exactly what these businesses wanted was not as "business friendly" as we'd imagined, as the crash of 2008 demonstrates. It turns out that if we'd kept post-Depression era policies in place, all of the companies that lobbied for deregulation in the 1990s and 2000s would have been much better off, millions of jobless Americans wouldn't be jobless, and a lot of the tech companies that TFA mentions would be selling more cloud services and shiny devices than they currently are. The bottom line suffered tremendously for our "business friendly" policies. So these people are putting their money not just behind what they believe, but also on the bottom line.
Yeah, but he hit a big loss on the Hillarycare expansion.
Do tech companies support trade sanctions against China? Are they diehard supporters of labor unions? Affirmative action? Do they support $500 recycling fees for computers? Do they support increases in welfare? Greater government regulation of business? If the answer to all these is no, then tech companies are right wing indeed.
Ummm....CEO's of Fortune 500 companies don't walk around with degrees in Psychology and History.
The WORST economics people that I have seen are theorists and Keynesians - economic leftists. I'm not any sort of strict Austrian or monetarist by any means, but I keep wondering how they keep getting influence after what they said couldn't happen - inflation AND high unemployment - occurred in the 1970s. Techies are fiscally conservative. How is that wrong?
College degrees get paid more - true - but you don't have to have one to be a successful businessperson. Bill Gates?
Here in the Bay Area we still have *actual* Socialists and Communists. You can even walk up and talk to them! Ask them if Obama's one of them (yeah, what bullshit.) And, ok, most of the ones who call themselves "Communists" will tell you to get off their lawn, but there are a lot of Socialists around, and I knew a number of them back in NYC as well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I read a piece by a guy arguing that evo-bio programs are biased against the religious. Because they don't teach ID. :(
More informed = less religious. Sorry, not a bias it is just reality.
"liberals are usually the loudest, so you think there's more of them."
LOL. Aside from carpet bombing neighbourhoods I don't think the tea party could get any louder...
Almost all the daily news is variations on that. The rest is accident, or made up. Like the idea that there is some difference between Democrats and Republicans, that one side is morally superior, ...
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
The fact that you can count liberal billionaires on one hand negates your implied premise.
...the result of the current Republican candidate has an impact on the chances of future Republican candidates, which are real.
So by your logic, I we SHOULD vote for our third party candidates, as the higher their vote total is, the better their chances in future elections.
And the next (R) candidate is NOT going to win California. I mean, we are about to elect a crazy old man (Jerry Brown) to run our state, simply because he has a (D) next to his name. If we'll pick him over ANYBODY simply because of his party affiliation, then there is not a chance for any (R) to win the state.
I know the feeling, my GF is half Indian (Navajo to be exact) and when we are out the locals will sometime just start speaking Spanish to her thinking she is Mexican. She just blushes and says no habla but I just love how her brother handles it "Me no Mexican, me Indian. Me scalp your kind!" . Maybe it's different here (north AR) surrounded by the military bases, but we always laughed our asses off at the idiot racists like the klan, who last I heard are hiding out on a hill in Boone county, because the thought that anyone here was "white" was about as stupid as saying my dog was anything other than a mutt. Here every race has mingled with every race (or as I like to call it "Forget fighting, let's just screw") so much there isn't a pure ANYTHING anymore. I look white but am actually Irish, English, German, Two kinds of Indian (Comanche and Creek) and Cajun, which of course is pretty much any race that ever stepped through Louisiana. My girl looks Mexican but is just as much a mix as me, so the thought that anyone still judges based on "race" is kinda just silly to me.
I have the same experience. I'm half Indian (Lumbee) and half (mostly) Scot-Irish. The Lumbee is the remnants of several tribes, escaped slaves, and Scot-Irish...basically, anyone that was rejected from polite society was chased into the swamplands of southeast North Carolina. Red-headed Native Americans? REALLY? With a brother that has a flat nose and black curly hair (curly as in "of African descent"). Yeah! There's a lot of pure blood there.
But Mexicans will occasionally speak to me in the native tongues, and I just look at them with a "What the hell did you just say to me?" look ('cause I'm wondering what the hell he just said to me). My bond haired, blue-eyed wife and my dark-skinned, fair featured sons all think it is a hoot.
We don't live in a post-racial society, yet, but the "check your race" on the government forms are getting sillier every year.
As for TFA, it is nice to see that some put their money where they believe, and not just on the bottom line. We have had pretty much constant tax breaks for the top 3% for the past 30 years, and are worse off than ever before. I can drive through entire towns nearby that are nothing but empty factories and boarded up homes, The level of unemployment is frankly just insane, and if it wasn't for the dems extending unemployment benefits I know quite a few that would be living in their cars, not because they don't want to work, but simply because there isn't any work to be had while they push for more and more education while at the same time expect us to be able to compete with someone who paid $5k for their degree compared to our $70k, it is just nuts. It is just simple math folks, you can't have these ever growing huge masses of unemployed without it blowing up in your face. Just look at what happened to Germany in the 30s, the fascists basically came to power by offering "bread and jobs" and the people went along. Right now you have huge masses that simply don't believe in the American Dream anymore, and they grow more numerous every day. Things simply have to change, period.
Those jobs aren't coming back, not matter how well educated you are. We just had a person "given the opportunity to find another job." She was replaced by a shell script. Seriously, we automated her out of a job. The History Channel (Modern Marvels, I think) was doing a special on cotton, and was talking about the mills. The showed a machine and talked about how one machine replaced THOUSANDS of workers. Secretaries are quickly becoming a dead profession. The list goes on.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Someone on /. said a long time ago, "People don't vote for laws to restrict themselves. They vote to restrict their neighbors." Then there is the old adage that when the populace finds that they can vote themselves largess from the public purse, the country is doomed (I paraphrase).
Combine those two. No one can get elected saying that Granny should go penniless in her old age, because she partied her whole life instead of preparing for it. No one can get elected saying that we don't need to be responsible for the bastard children of vagabonds and sluts. No one can get elected saying that we shouldn't tap everyone's phone in order to catch the terrorist. No one can get elected saying that it's not our damn business to tell an adult what they can smoke.
Basically, we have very smart people telling us that they can solve all of our problems, if we just let them have control. The majority of the people buy into that bullshit.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Except that that also rebrands progressivism to mean anti-progressive or conservative (in the classical sense).
Whether someone gets 1% or 3% is not going to make any difference for his party's chances, there's no hope for election in sight. Given that California has voted in Repubs before, future Republican candidates' chances are greater than 0.
One thing is for sure: the Democrats are better at managing their image and negatively impacting the competition's image. Most people don't really know anything about politics, but the "average" American believes "Democrats = good, Republicans = evil". And, like it or not: "perception is reality"
Yeah right, which is why the evil Republicans never get elected anywhere.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Another factor is the development of an elitist mindset amongst sudden wealth.
As opposed to the elitist mindset amongst those with inherited wealth, you mean?
And anyway, since when did left wing mean elitist?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You'd THINK college would do that, but I have seen a bit too many college-educated leftists doing the parroting, and you just have to look at the voting record of uneducated minorities to see that there are sheep on both sides.
We're currently dealing with mistakes by those "less conservative" economists as well. Sorry, I'm just REALLY disillusioned with modern Keyneseists.
And yeah, I should have used "libertarian" than "libertine." Overthought that one.
Actually, I just looked at a top 25 list and pulled out the ones I thought the Slashdot crowd would recognize. The top earners in America are actually somewhat mixed, and money seems to have little or no impact on politics.
In case you missed it, my original point was to point out a logical inconsistency, not to claim a causal relationship between wealth and political viewpoint.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Wow, mods. Insightful?
When you claim to be cutting government employees, most people assume you are talking about civil service. Clinton, like you and I, was perfectly aware of this.
So sure, there are different yardsticks. The obvious point is that Clinton only got his claimed result by using one different that that which most people use.
And your second claim is also false. "Number of people who get a paycheck directly from the US Treasury is as decent a measure as any other." No it's not. Clearly, a measure that includes grants and contracts is more "decent," since it gives a more accurate and realistic picture of the resources spent.
- AJ
FTFY
If we're gonna use total government expenditures / GDP as the yardstick, then Clinton still cut the size of the government. If we're just going to use total government expenditures without correcting for overall economic growth, then we're not being serious and just want to rile people up.
You just did a bait-and-switch.
Go back to the beginning of this thread:
The OP said: "neither major party has done anything to shrink the government in at least the last quarter century."
Then you said:
"Except Bill Clinton. (Assuming we use number of federal employees as the yardstick)"
All I did was point out simple facts:
(1) That almost NO ONE considers the post-cold-war drawdown in military strength to be "shrink[ing] the government."
(2) This is quite reasonable. The military does not "govern"; that is, they do not execute the programs or services that most people associate with "government." People understand cutting "the military" and "government employees" in two quite distinct ways.
(3) Without that military drawdown, the number of federal employees actually grew during the 1990s.
Jeesh, I don't see what is so hard to understand about this. Using any measure, and under every president and congress, the size and scope of government has inexorably grown every year. Sometimes it turns quickly, and sometimes slowly, but the wheel of government growth is a ratchet; it only turns one way.
- AJ
FTFY
The hard part is understanding that you are not everyone.
The military is the ultimate ability of the government to enforce it's will. The military is the literal power of the government. One only has to ask the Confederate States of America if the military executes government programs. Or perhaps the residents of Little Rock, AR who didn't want to integrate their schools and were faced with the 101st Airborne.
To claim that the military is not "the government" is to engage in sophistry designed to carve a special exemption for military spending. Usually by people who want to pretend they're "serious" about balancing the budget while ignoring the largest part of our budget.
None of which, obviously, addresses the point.
But fine. Let's just leave it with a statement we can both agree on:
"Clinton claimed 'the era of big government is over.' And it is true that the number of people who received a paycheck directly from the federal government declined slightly.
* The post-war drawdown of military forces accounts for all of the decline. The number of non-military federal employees actually increased during this time period.
* So did the number of employees whose work was funded by taxpayers through government contracts and grants. In other words, the government paid these people, just not directly -- the government paid a third-party organization, which in turn passed the money along to the worker.
* How much of this gets Clinton credit for "shrink[ing] the government" is left up to the reader.
Cheers
- AJ
No, I'm sure he's got a masters degree in faith-based economics from Ron Paul University.