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Obama and Romney Respond To ScienceDebate.org Questionnaire
rhsanborn writes "President Barack Obama and Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney have both responded to a questionnaire on the 'most important science policy questions facing the United States.' The questionnaire was created by ScienceDebate.org, a group consisting of many influential organizations in science and engineering. The questions are on many topics including research, internet regulation, and climate change."
... I don't want either one of them.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Critiquing science positions: bashing
Calling people you disagree with "tards": sensible debate.
YOU have just been slashdotted. Enjoy the bandwidth bill!
sudo make me a sandwich
Yep it's gone down hard and there's no Google cache. If anyone was able to load it, please copy and paste.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How long before technology figures out a way to beat the slashdot effect?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Obama never mention romney's name. Romney mention Obama in comparison 12 time. Furthermore some answer particularly on GW are less than satisfying. But hey. I don't vote so... Have fun all.
I always vote CowboyNeal.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
So net neutrality is pandering to special interests and "picking winners and losers" according to Romney? Any leader who considers the individual a special interest, and thinks that not backing net neutrality isn't by default picking winners and losers is either an idiot or a liar, or both. Picking winners and losers is your damn job - pretty much the crux of it. The "letting the market decide" BS is letting the powerful corporate interests win. Any "invisible hand" or "let the market decide" crap went out the window with the bailouts.
neither link works for me. /. effect?
I especially like his response to climate change. He says it looks to him like humans are causing it but it's still up for debate. What a weasel.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
At least not for EVERY question.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
sciencedebate.org Consider yourself slashdotted.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100427074402/http://sciencedebate.org/www/index.php?id=42
I can't get over how blatantly misleading and disingenuous republicans are about this issue. If you didn't know any better and you read Romney's response alone you would likely come away with a completely reversed view of the issue. They *must* realize that if they came out and said what the consequences of letting net neutrality fail are there would be massive public outcry - which you would think, as public representatives, would lead them to support it!
Corrupt, idealistic motherfuckers.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Google Cache worked for me, link here
Coral CDN: http://www.sciencedebate.org.nyud.net/debate12/
No, Mitt. There really is no "lack of scientific consensus". Two years ago it was at 97% of scientists in agreement.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
That's not what he said. In fact, this is pretty good news: both candidates actually admit the reality of AGW.
He said the size of the effects hasn't been nailed down, and that the science should inform the political solutions rather than dictate them.
Pretty sensible, for a politician.
Interesting that Romney actually states that he believes global warming is both occurring and partly due to human activity. That's a pretty big change from the standard Republican line. (Of course, he also says that he'll essentially do nothing about it, since China is worse than us and he doesn't want to threaten the coal industry...)
It does make me wonder though - Romney mentions putting more into nuclear power, but Obama doesn't mention it. Considering that Obama removed a lot of the red tape preventing nuclear plants being approved, you'd think he'd at least mention it considering that energy policy is a fairly big issue. It makes me wonder if Fukishima has changed the Democratic party line on nuclear power.
Just once though, I'd like to see some politicians give some straight answers instead of treating everything like a campaign ad. Their answers have a lot of words, but very little meaning.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Coral cache here.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When you measure his position, his momentum becomes uncertain. When you measure his momentum, his position becomes uncertain.
From Romney:
So ... more "research" instead of doing anything?
But at least we know that we don't need more "research" to know that Obama is the problem:
Romney cannot spell out what HE would do but he can blame Obama for doing what Obama has done.
I think the submitter meant their staffers responded to the questionnaire, based upon deliberations a to which answers will get the most votes. I doubt either Obama or Romney even saw the questionnaire.
Obama is "committed" to act on every part, Romney think Obama failed.
None talked about patents, about IP laws being a problem in innovation. None talked about nuclear energy when asked about their energy plans. On net neutrality, Romney begins to talk like he really understand what this is about then goes on to criticize Obama for one of the few things he did correctly.
People of Amercia, I regret that you have such a poor choice, but if you think they are equivalent, please read about Romney on foreign relations or religion. I know they are not an important subject in US elections, but they explain why most of the world root for Obama.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
CowboyNeal: Change you can believe in.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Browse through the cache or view in plain text on Pastebin.
The bald-faced denial of simple facts involved in his response to Internet governance makes his veiled climate denial seem reasonable in comparison. He called net neutrality "a solution looking for a problem."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Calling the people you agree with "tards" does not work well either.
OTOH, his position makes inaction justifiable. Republican's will have us "wait for the science to come in" up until the floodwaters are approaching Denver.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Since both candidates (but especially Romney) blabbered on for so long, I thought it might be helpful to have a summary of the candidates' positions. I tried to make it as accurate and neutral as possible, but I couldn't resist a few editorial comments.
Q1: How will you ensure America remains a world leader in innovation?
Obama: Double funding for research agencies, train more STEM teachers.
Romney: Increase visa caps for foreign workers, permanent residence for foreign grad students, cut taxes, make regulation harder, aggressive trade attitudes towards China and increased free trade agreements with "nations committed to principles of free enterprise", education reform, increase funding for basic research. [Much of this doesn't have anything to do with innovation as far as I can see, but this is what he said. -ed]
Q2: How will you deal with climate change?
Obama: Continue pushing for the same policies as before (e.g. invest in "clean energy" increased fuel economy standards, carbon emission limits for new power plants, international efforts to reduce emissions).
Romney: Doesn't believe there is a scientific consensus; suggests "No Regrets" policy (i.e. every policy implemented must yield benefits to America even if global warming is a hoax or if no other nations do anything; example: development of "low-emissions technology" and removal of regulations including nuclear power regulations)
Q3: How will you fund research programs?
Obama: Set goal to spend more than 3% of GDP on public and private research and development. Also argues that his administration's research funding, including stimulus funding, has yielded and/or will yield enough benefits for the money spent.
Romney: No explicit details on future plans, but implied proposal to implement new policies that "facilitate medical innovation" (i.e. relaxation of FDA regulations). Argues that Obama administration's research programs have not yielded and/or will not yield enough benefits for the money spent.
Q4: How will you deal with the threat of a pandemic?
Obama: Strengthen public health systems.
Romney: Strengthen public health systems, relax regulations on pharmaceutical companies to encourage innovation
Q5: How will you fix the education system?
Obama: Train more (good) STEM teachers (with private and charity support).
Romney: Destroy the teachers' unions, school choice, increase focus on standards and testing.
Q6: Where will you get energy from?
Obama: Increased development of renewables (solar, wind, hydro, biofuels), continue existing natural gas-friendly policies.
Romney: Relax environmental restrictions on oil and gas extraction and pipelines both onshore and offshore, but retain a full commitment to environmental protection [which really tells us nothing about how he plans to balance these factors... -ed], pursue energy free-trade treaties, reassess nation's energy reserves to reflect new technology [the implication is that Romney thinks the whole "energy independence" thing is overblown and we actually have plenty of oil, though this is not explicitly stated -ed] more focus on coal and oil than Obama's plan.
Q7: How will you protect the food supply:
Obama: Increase regulation by FDA in general; reduce use of antibiotics and pesticides; strict regulations on pesticides and other agricultural chemicals by FDA.
Romney: "Work closely with industry" to implement the preventive practices recommended by the industry.
Q8: How will you protect the water supply?
Obama: Increase investment in water infrastructure (esp. in rural areas) and funding to water conservation programs.
Romney: Re-examine water regulations; switch to more market-based approaches.
Q9: How will you handle the internet?
Obama: Protect intellectual property without reducing freedom of expression [another one of these answers that tells you nothing about how these factors will actually be balanced... -ed], shore up cybersecurity
Romney: Get rid of Net Neutrality.
1) government science policy is driven by politics, not science, and
2) both candidates are politicians, i.e. shills for their respective pwners, then
3) the entire exercise was a complete waste of time.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Slightly better paste from the source, with basic formatting, on Pastebin.
Mitt Romney's answers remind me of students who think that if they make an answer lengthy enough and yet stay away from saying anything concrete they can't get an answer right on a test. I guess no one ever told him it was always content that mattered and not quantity.
I'm not a huge fan of Obama but at least he keeps his answers concise and answer them with out going on for half a page or attacking his and then not answering the question at all. It's like Romney thinks he is in a debate on TV and not actually writing his answers down on for everyone to read an examine closely.
The page is coming up slow. I hope it's already slashdotted, or else it's in for a rude awakening.
I got the GOOG cache and here's a summary
1) What policies will best ensure that America remains a world leader in innovation? with the assumption that innovation = science and technology and not financial scams like the last decade or so.
El Presidente: wanna double funding, personally will prepare 100K STEM teachers, believes in that stupid idea of STEM shortage (aka wages are too high for postdocs)
Rmoney: middle class needs to work harder, need more immigrants, lower taxes on corporations, reduce regulation, stronger enforcement of IP laws, govt research has been a disaster and I'll do exactly the same thing but more
2) Talk about climate change
El Presidente: brags about how the economy has crashed thus the environment is cleaner.
Rmoney: its probably important, but lets do nothing other than talk about it, followed by five minutes of hot air global warming. Does oppose carbon taxes
3) Priority to investment in research, pretty much #1 rephrased.
El Presidente: pretty much #1 rephrased. Spend lots of money in stuff you like.
Rmoney: pretty much #1 rephrased. I'll do the same thing as 'bama but smarter.
4) biowarfare FUD, does we luvs it or no?
El Presidente: its very important
Rmoney:I am a strong opponent of disease and btw did you know my opponent sucks?
5) Edumactiaon. Americans are about average at it. Whadda you think?
El Presidente: Still believes education leads to the middle class, instead of lifetime student debt slavery. Dumb*ss. Also says we need more STEM people to push salaries lower and unemployment higher in STEM fields.
Rmoney: teachers make too much money and if we just make them poorer by getting rid of the unions then the kids will be smarter.
6) Energy. Obviously Rmoney has more than 'Bama because his responses are always twice the length. Aside from that:
El Presidente: I'm personally responsible for clean energy and I blue sky made up a plan that 20 years after I'm outta office the whole USA or whats left of it will be powered solely by sustainable, green, bioengineered unicorn tears.
Rmoney: Did you know my opponent sucks? After we get rid of regulation, energy will be cheaper.
7) Food. Most people think american agribusiness sucks. What you say?
El Presidente: I modernized the FDA so we spend more money. No results yet but I'm optimistic.
Rmoney: Food safety is important and self regulation of industries is the best (editors editorial note, didn't this idiot read Upton Sinclair? how stupid is this guy?)
8) Water, Fresh, without human sh1t floating in it, preferably. Comments gentlemen? ... weird
El Presidente: Spent a lot of money and created a lot of govt jobs, but I'm not talking about results, which is
Rmoney: if we remove regulation and laws we'll have more water
9) The internet, how will you gentlemen try to screw it up?
El Presidente: I support everyone on every side of every issue fully with absolutely no specifics
Rmoney: I will get rid of all regulation especially net neutrality while maintaining the status quo of monopoly providers
10) Remember #8, Water, Fresh? How bout Water, Salty?
El Presidente: Remember #8, Water, Fresh? Yeah ditto
Rmoney: Remember #8, Water, Fresh? Yeah ditto
11) Public Policy Science. Pretty much #1 and #3 rephrased for all 3.
12) Space, the final frontier of govt spending or whatever:
El Presidente: I take all the credit and I made some BS plan that won't take effect until decades after I'm gone and I'll continue to non-commitally "support" space
Rmoney: Nasa needs to be scrapped and rebuilt more pragmatically
13) Natural resources. Pretty much #8 and #10 rephrased for all 3
14) Vaccination / public health, is health good or bad?
El Presidente: thanks for the softball so I can brag about what my healthcare plan might accomplish in the future if all goes well.
Rmoney: vaccines are nice, I love them, don't you too? we need less regulation of critical life support and advanced medical stuff.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
On the contrary, even though I didn't agree with several things Romney had to say, what I saw in this article was, for many of the questions, Romney presenting a detailed (almost tl;dr) outline of specific things he felt his administration should accomplish. Compared to Obama, I thought Romney came across as a little bit more prepared and purposeful.
On the contrary, Romney's answers, like the response to the first question, seemed generic; i.e. here's how we're going to fix the economy. Nothing in that answer explained what was specifically being done that would promote innovation. This is more of an indictment of Romny's campaign staff--too lazy to look for any statement from him that shows how he supports a specific issue. Don't mistake length of answer for quality.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
That's not what he said. In fact, this is pretty good news: both candidates actually admit the reality of AGW. He said the size of the effects hasn't been nailed down, and that the science should inform the political solutions rather than dictate them. Pretty sensible, for a politician.
Translation: The polls show that denying global warming would cost more votes than acknowledging it.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Unfortunately, it is hard to find anything controversial or interesting in these answers, which is to be expected when political teams are given time to craft PC responses to questions like these. Everything here is what you would expect - Obama answers the questions by talking up his policies of the past 4 years and Mitt answers the questions by attacking Obama's policies of the past 4 years. I would much rather see these questions posed in a debate, where the candidates have less time and less help in coming up with responses.
It's scary, SouthPark had it right years ago.
The message from the episode though is useless.
Short of being "liberated" by another country, we are screwed again.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Focusing NASA. A strong and successful NASA does not require more funding, it needs clearer priorities....
Strengthening Security. Space-based information capabilities are the central nervous system of the U.S. national security community. If America is to remain strong as a nation, the national security space programs must remain strong and sustainable. I am committed to a robust national security space program and I will direct the development of capabilities that defend and increase the resilience of space assets. I will also direct the development of capabilities that will deter adversaries seeking to damage or destroy the space capabilities of the U.S. and its allies.
So, Let us not increase funding on the quasi civilian space program who's public mission is to promote space and motivate scientific endeavor, just be clearer with priorities that are dictated by people with no priority in space. However, let us increase spending ("robust") on some sort of defense system to protect our space assets and those of our "allies", but we can't tell you what that is because it is "National Security"
What a load of crap. Mr. Romney seems to day, We wont spend money on exploration and good science; we'll dump buckets of money on defense contracts to protect assets unknown to the public. How will we py for it? Don't ask us, we wont tell.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
I took it as him calling Obama's version of net neutrality a "solution looking for a problem," not net neutrality in general. Am I wrong here? I could have mis-interpreted it.
Vice-versa Obama's solution is to impose harsh carbon-usage penalties (taxes), force us to drive teeny-tiny cars (54mpg average by 2025) and even population downsizing through birth limits (not Obama's plan, but the UN's plan). It's entirely possible the globe will go +2 degrees and nothing much will happen to the earth at all.
After all it used to be +10 degrees and life still continued and flourished. I think it's incumbent upon any politician to prove a disaster is coming before he starts forcing people to drastically change their lifestyle.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Change you can believe in.
About 39 cents, to be exact.
I love how both candidates completely ignored the heart of the vaccination issue, pretending that the reason vaccination rates have fallen is due to people being unable to afford them or supplies running out, rather than the complete failing of our educational system, which has produced a generation of idiots who think that some celebutard's cry about vaccination-caused autism is somehow more worth listening to than a century of sound medical practice. I forget who originated the quote, but it goes something like "Democracy does not mean that your ignorance has an equal voice with my knowledge."
Anyway, just more of the same political dodging. We can't call people reckless morons for endangering themselves AND OTHERS by refusing to get themselves and their children vaccinated, because they might vote for me! I'd really like to have political interviews where we can tie the candidates down and keep asking the same question until they actually answer it,
Picking winners and losers is your damn job - pretty much the crux of it.
In what way is that the role of the president?
The presidents job should be VERY FAR away from that role. They should not be picking individual winners or losers, they should be thinking of ways to help people in general, not in groups.
If you claim the president should be picking "winners and losers" then you are also in support of:
1) The war on drugs (winner, drag cartels, looser, drug users).
2) Banks (banks that are "too big to fail" will be constantly refreshed with government funds).
3) Wars where you decide who in the nation gets to rule.
It has always struck me as funny that so many people that want to keep companies out of the government are seeking to draw them in via net neutrality. Once Comcast is told what to do by the FCC do you think lobbying will go substantially down, or up? And the best part is then Comcast can do whatever it likes because the rules came "from the government". If you loved the torrent throttling they tried to get away with you should be delighted with the total torrent ban in effect once network neutrality rules start allowing the government dictate how networks should be run - and who they can reach. After all, neutrality means only that you must be able to reach equally VALID network endpoints...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
is the blue font on blue background on the science debate page.
If you didn't know any better and you read Romney's response alone you would likely come away with a completely reversed view of the issue.
What makes you think YOUR view is not the one reversed?
Explain briefly one simply problem that proposed Net Neutrality laws will address.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's not what it says. It says climate change is real, we contribute to it, and that the nature of the threat needs more research. This is an entirely fair and accurate representation of the situation.
>>>net neutrality "a solution looking for a problem."
The problem is a company holding a monopoly (or duopoly) over the last ~25 miles of the internet. Net neutrality is simply a form of government regulation to prevent the monopoly from abusing its customers, just as the government regulates the electric, natural gas, and water monopolies.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The nice thing with Slashdot comments, is that if you lived in a complete seclusion for five years, and you come back to read them, you still understand the jokes.
No, he said more research on the scale of the threat.
I support more money for better reading skills.
I especially like his response to climate change. He says it looks to him like humans are causing it but it's still up for debate. What a weasel.
Not so much weasel as a religious interpretation. They believe in something I waffle-ishly also believe in, but I'm not praying at their altar.
This is the same religious-style outlook that previous R had toward AGW, its just that his methods are toned way down rather than in the old days R candidates would froth at the mouth how AGW believers need a pogrom and/or drone strike on their place of worship. Now they're just, eh, live and let live, but I'm not getting baptized in their church anytime soon.
Its a religious outlook and response, not a scientific factual one.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This was far more entertaining and far less blatantly biased than I was expecting. Wish I had mod points.
"The promotion of innovation will begin on Day One, with efforts to simplify the corporate tax code, reform job retraining programs, reduce regulatory burdens, and protect American intellectual property around the world."
In other words more of the same nonsense from the patent office and more stupid counter productive lawsuits, more money in the pockets of lawyers. Most importantly keep the American populace heading to Walmart to spend spend spend. Essentially Romney is just another shill for what screwed up the economy in the first place. Not to mention do nothing to regulate the corporate crooks that made 2008 inevitable in the first place.
If business becomes amoral and the practice of it does not include a concept of responsibility then essentially it becomes a public liability. To quote Jacob Marley "Mankind was my business!" Until America awakens to the truth in these words and corporations world wide are really held accountable for their actions there will be little hope for stable economic growth. Not all business persons are immoral but it says something when the "greed is good" credo of the 1990 still resonates strongly within the political framework of the nation.
Don't you understand? Giving tax breaks to the wealthy and ending all government regulation and letting big corps do whatever the fuck they want is the CURE ALL of the 21-st century. It will make the economy strong, give us all great jobs, improve education, and make your dick bigger! Just give the wealthy and big corps everything they want and we'll all live in a fucking paradise on earth!
Add in "And Obama sucks!" and I think that pretty much sums up Romney's answers to every question on this survey.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Well reducing fuel consumption and slowing population growth are good to do anyway, so we should do those things regardless of climate change.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
OTOH, his position makes inaction justifiable.
If inaction is, in fact, justified, then so be it. They could conclude that getting the economy healthy and humming so that we have ample revenue for R&D (in both the private and public sectors) into cleaner tech is the best path. They may even conclude that accepting a couple degrees hit is better in the long term.
This whole thing is several orders of magnitude more complicated than most people realize.
Republican's will have us "wait for the science to come in" up until the floodwaters are approaching Denver.
We'll just dam the flood waters with all the Internet's unnecessary possessive apostrophes.
Translation: The polls show that denying global warming would cost more votes than acknowledging it.
Translation: Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
Good job. (Golf clap)
Just say no to ideology, folks.
OTOH, his position makes inaction justifiable.
Why is that bad?
Would you rather they panic and we get the AGW equivalent of the Patriot Act, causing a lot of harm for very little real gain?
With politicians you WANT the default action to be "none", because otherwise you just get ill-informed bullshit codified into law.
A USEFUL course of action must be clear. We already know we have dropped carbon emissions to Kyoto levels already, so why in fact SHOULD we do anything more at the moment?
Republican's will have us "wait for the science to come in" up until the floodwaters are approaching Denver.
And you would prefer we double the cost of heating and gas for poor people before an inch of rise is observed?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Q: How will you deal with [scientific challenge]?
Obama: Create/expand a government program or incentive (with no explanation of what existing programs will have to be cut to compensate)
Romney: Eliminate government regulations and let the industry take care of itself (with no explanation of how to deal with inevitable industry abuses)
(How much you trust their answers or are concerned about their non-answers will probably depend on how much you subscribe to their political philosophy.)
Really? How many years of "research" did the tobacco companies fund to "research" if there was any correlation between smoking and cancer.
And always the results came back "inconclusive".
Converting candidate responses from legalese to English, please wait...*
... Pass.
Question 1: Innovation and the Economy:
BO: I plan on dumping at least twice as much money into corporate pocketbooks via the continued fucking-up of the US intellectual property process. Oh, yea, and I plan on hiring a shitload of STEM teachers to prep future patent lawyers, er, "engineers" for this task.
MR: Less taxes and regulation for businesses, more H1B Visas and foreign "trade agreements" that take jobs away from Americans.
Question 2, Climate Change:
BO: Sure, it's a problem, but I've already dumped a shit-ton of your money into the "clean energy" companies my buddies own, as well as attempting to set up a "carbon credit exchange" scam, er, system, that would have funneled even more taxpayer dollars into the hands of my campaign contributors - what the fuck else do you expect me to do about it?
MR: Probably bullshit, but I won't let my disbelief in the concept prevent me from using this as an opportunity to badmouth my opponent and recommend further redistribution of wealth to my also-rich homies!
Furthermore, since China doesn't give a fuck about the environment, I don't think we should either.
Question 3: Research and the Future:
BO: Uh, like I said before - more of the public's money given to corporations so they can privately profit; seriously, what don't you guys get about that?
MR: Agreed, with the caveat of, you guessed it, less regulation for the same corporations. After all, corporations are people, and if you can't trust people with your money...
Question 4: Pandemics and Biosecurity:
BO:
MR: Less taxes and regulation on business... Oh, and more public surveillance. How are we supposed to know who's sick if we're not watching you all 24/7?
Question 5: Education:
BO: Earlier in my administration, I proposed adding 100,000 STEM (science, tech, engineering, and math) teachers... just don't ask how that's going...
MR: Education is a serious issue these days... which is why I recommend busting teachers' unions, defunding public schools in favor of private "charter" schools, and of course, blaming the current abysmal state of education solely on my opponent.
Question 6: Energy:
BO: Hey, I mentioned giving fuck-tons of taxpayer money to my buddies who run "clean energy" companies, right?
MR: I disagree with my opponent; I think we should be giving fuck-tons of taxpayer money to the oil companies my buddies run instead.
Can I getta 'Keystone Pipeline,' anyone?
Question 7: Food:
BO: Food safety was pretty fucked up when I came to office, so I made new rules that changes what qualifies as 'fucked up.'
MR: More government regulation and taxes. Hey, if those agri-business chumps want the same deal I give the oil and pharmaceutical companies, they need to pony up some campaign bucks, ya dig?
Question 8: Water:
BO: My administration has invested millions in fresh water conservation and restoration efforts. Granted, these programs would have existed anyway regardless of who held this office at the time, but hey - I do, so I get to take the credit. Suck it, Bush.
MR: Disband the EPA, less regulation on businesses, privatize the 'fresh water industry'.
What could possibly go wrong?
Question 9: The Internet:
BO: I promise to ensure online freedoms, granted they don't run afoul of all the new intellectual property and civilian surveillance we have/are coming up with.
Ha ha, remember when I told you I was going to veto CISPA? Suckers...
MR: The internet is for businesses to make money off of. Period. End of discussion. If you're somehow, some way preventing businesses from making as much money as possible from the internet, my administration will come down on
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This was ... far less blatantly biased than I was expecting...
Thanks, I put in a lot of effort to sh1t on both sides roughly equally, yet basically correctly represent their answers. If there's anyone on any side whom I failed to offend, I apologize. They're both awful candidates, in their own individual different ways, so its pretty easy to make fun of them both. I've always been a fan of Mencken, nothing I write is even 1/100th as good as him at his worst, but every day I try anyway...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
...all pawns and no kings chess game! Both of these idiots say exactly what they are paid to say, and nothing more. In order for REAL CHANGE to occur an independent candidate would have to get in, congress would need to be re-seated with impartial congressmen, and the senate would have to be re-seated with impartial senators. Then everyone would have to come together for the better of the country and not the better of the rich or the corporations. The probability of all of this happening is so close to 0 that there is no point in even calculating it. EndRant:
Anyone who refers to workers as "Human Capital" like Romney does in the first answer (and on his website) has no connection to normal humans.
mod me funny
I'm not seeing any answers. All I see is a press release saying that they answered.
Ok, I'll bite.
Vice-versa Obama's solution is to impose harsh carbon-usage penalties (taxes), force us to drive teeny-tiny cars (54mpg average by 2025) and even population downsizing through birth limits (not Obama's plan, but the UN's plan).
Thank's for clarifying that bit of scaremongering in parenthesis, while still looping it in with what you claim Obama "would" do.
Ok, now to pick apart the points individually:
impose harsh carbon-usage penalties (taxes)
There's nothing wrong with carbon usage penalties, and more generally, there's nothing wrong with taxes, especially on corporations. Small businesses are where the economic growth is at. The big businesses make all the headlines, but it's the neighborhood stores that determine the health of that neighborhood. Such regulations are not going to affect small businesses very much. But they will impose severe restrictions on the actions of large businesses, and that's a damn good thing in my book.
Why would this affect large businesses more than small businesses? Because large businesses are incredibly efficient. They are as efficient at creating goods and services as they are spending natural resources to do the creation. A penalty (tax) increases the overhead of creating things. And when their overhead is so small, any increase is a significant increase. On the other hand, because small businesses are not efficient, this penalty is not going to significantly contribute to their overhead.
force us to drive teeny-tiny cars (54mpg average by 2025)
Your hyperbole is showing. I'm not sure where a high mile per gallon equates to a "teeny-tiny" car. There are such things as advancements in technology, even in something as "old" as the automobile. I'm certain that by 2025, there will be plenty of cars capable of being large, and still having 54 MPG. Besides which, the limitation is on car manufacturers' offerings. It has nothing to do with your (or my) individual rights of purchasing our vehicle of choice--unless you consider a corporation an individual. It may affect the prices of larger cars. But tell me why shouldn't you pay more to pollute more? Unless you want something for nothing, which seems to be the case with people like you.
population downsizing through birth limits
I shouldn't even address this because it has NOTHING to do with Obama. You even say it yourself. But this is irrelevant to the U.S. Even with immigration, our population is holding steady, if not on a slight decline. Considering that population growth is not a problem for the U.S. and won't be so long as there a such stringent controls on immigration, wouldn't attributing that to Obama be incredibly, well, silly? You'd have been far more credible had you talked about how he's all for legalizing illegal immigrants.
If you're a libertarian, you really should be complaining about things like strong IP laws, government-sanctioned unregulated monopolies on public infrastructure, and other such intrusive government intervention into the free market. But you're not interested in small vs. big government. You're interested in promoting pro-corporate policies and denoucing anti-corporate policies.
I hope you can see far enough to know where such policies are going to end (hint: facism).
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Just to be clear, the UN's sinister plan to reduce population consists of only:
Educating women to increase their personal economic choices, making birth control available and education men and women in their proper use so they can decide when to have children.
I am glad people like you are around to save us from this.
8 out of the top 10 largest PAC's fund Obama
Not sure where you got that from, but it's almost literally the opposite of what's true. From ProPublica:
Restore Our Future (supports Mitt Romney) $82,224,493
Priorities USA Action (supports Barack Obama) $21,933,068
Winning Our Future (supports Newt Gingrich) $17,003,035
American Crossroads $12,078,463
Club for Growth Action $11,959,430
Majority PAC $10,459,928
Red White and Blue Fund (supports Rick Santorum) $7,529,620
Make Us Great Again (supports Rick Perry) $3,959,824
House Majority PAC $3,668,363
Endorse Liberty (supports Ron Paul) $3,579,627
Those are the top 10 PACs by spending. The Republican/conservative organizations are in bold. Note that the spending of all the Democrat supporting PACs comes to less than half what Restore Our Future alone has spent. Sorting PACs by contributions is similar. Obama has a lot of money behind him, but it's nothing like what Romney's got.
Thanks for the laugh, and for saving me 30 minutes of re-reading each answer in hopes of some actual content (to no avail). Have you considered being a professional BS translator for political debates and speeches? I'd love to turn on the news, and after someone gives a 5 minute response, hear "Translation: teachers make too much money and if we just make them poorer by getting rid of the unions then the kids will be smarter."
they need more funding, and they need 10 year plans that dont get rewritten every election
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
By far the most accurate summary here. I hope you starting book reviews for Slashdot, seriously. The regular ones are soooo boring.
Remember these guys?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
8 out of the top 10 largest PAC's fund Obama
Cite? I looked up http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/toppacs.php, and it looks like all the PACs give to both D and R. Of the top 10 in that list, 4 gave mostly to D's, 6 mostly to R's. Is there a different list you meant?
8 out of the top 10 largest PAC's fund Obama, including the banks, lawyers, and unions, RIAA/MPAA, etc.
When you have money, you'll realize you can actually afford to buy out both sides.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Damn. That's a lot of cash that could have otherwise been put to useful purposes.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The anti-neutrality folks are apparently trying to explain away that as well. There's an editorial in my newspaper today from some lawyer about how people have on average six different ISPs available to them, including multiple cable companies, fiber and DSL from the phone company, and 4G wireless. I'd like to know where the guy lives, considering around here the two options are the one cable monopoly (which does a pretty decent job, actually) and the phone company's DSL that is half as fast and costs twice as much.
Ironically, all those Republicans giving that much money to elect a politician want lower taxes.
I too, felt them to be generic. Most followed this outline (but obviously much more verbose):
Question: What will you do about X?
Romney: X is good. I like X. When Obama tried to do something about X, he was trying to destroy America. I will not destroy America. I will do good things.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Anyone that has $100M of net worth has no connection to normal humans.
Hey honey want to take the kids to dinner this weekend?
No, we can't, we had to buy clothes & shoes for them.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
This Q&A is more evidence that Romney is what everybody has been calling him from the start; basically moderate, smart guy who is cunning enough to play the part needed to get into office. He's a former governor, a distinguished JD MBA, and he hasn't got a deep dark secret besides being a little too capitalistic and a little too obsequious to his Church. I don't think anyone doubts that he would be an excellent director of policy and decision-maker in chief. If there were 535 Romney's in congress who only slightly disagreed with each other on center-right versus center-left policy leanings, we'd all be far better off. But that's not what we'd get with a Romney presidency. Romney is not the leader of his party; Clint Eastwood, Paul Ryan, and Grover Norquist are. What you see in Romney's platform and tempered responses (a four point plan here, a three-pillar foundation there) is not what you will get from the Congress elected along with him should he galvanize the base enough to keep the house and win back the senate. You'd get an agenda dictated by the hard-right and the tea party, with Romney stuck signing into law bills and policies that make government less effective and militate against his reasonable goals. It's actually been pretty sad to see this Faustian bargain develop; Romney got the nomination and has a serious shot at the becoming #45 in the history books, but he's had to pander to the base of the party over which he has little if any serious sway anyway, and will be utterly subservient to their agenda while in office. A fun twist on the lame-duck phenomenon. On the flip side, the GOP gets an electable candidate, but one whose core views they know in their hearts will never really align with their own. It will be hollow, Pyrrhic victories all around.
It's not ironic, it's greedy. It just gives you an idea of how much these people stand to save in taxes if Romney is elected that they're putting that much money into getting him elected.
Might well be a good place to drop this link...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"Thanks, I put in a lot of effort to sh1t on both sides roughly equally,"
Ah, so the same way the infotainment media approach science vs. pseudoscience.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
We have the filibuster in the Senate, which prevents anything from getting done until you get a 3/5ths vote, which is tough for any one party to reach.
paintball
It's entirely possible the globe will go +2 degrees and nothing much will happen to the earth at all.
Except that research has shown a link between AGW and unusual droughts of the past few years. It seems at least possible that the unusual weather patterns contributed to the extreme midwest drought of this summer. Corn production is down anywhere from 15-50%, Soybean production is down 10-40%. (Still being harvested, so estimates vary greatly)
So 2 degrees has resulted in "nothing much" except massive amounts of food in the country vanishing. It won't affect America much this year, but you can expect revolutions around the world based on high food prices this winter.
This is how I feel about Romney as well. That guy named Romney who ran Mass? He seemed pretty smart, worked on the environment, health care, taxes, is for exemptions for rape and incest in abortion laws. I could vote for that guy. Its too bad his twin brother is running instead.
Here is the pastebin if anyone is interested:
http://pastebin.com/McB20Q5s
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I have never understood the jokes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Citation or you're a liar.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well bear in mind that saying the PAC funds Obama is not the same as saying they fund ONLY Obama. :D)
(Yeah I'll go away now
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Does the Republican base know he thinks that? Because that does not represent what any Republican I know actually believes. The guys at work literally believe that anthropogenic global warming is a purposeful hoax committed by scientists with "an agenda". As usual for ideologs, they are very vague about what that agenda might be, of course.
Isaac Asimov quote from a column in Newsweek - Jan 21st, 1980
'There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."'
Source:
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/c93xs/antiintellectualism_has_been_a_constant_thread/
Economists don't understand people. Way bigger problem.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
You live is this strange thing called a society. You went to its schools, you drive its roads, you use the water and sewers that run to the place you live. We have places like Mogadishu or the bush in central Africa where you and you money can go and have a lovely time all by your selves. Just don't yell when a lion eats you or a bandit shoots you, because you won't be able to protect yourself with your money (save the purchase of a lion gun.)
If you really are someone completely out for themselves, with no interest is creating a cohesive society that looks after others and creates a strong and workable infrastructure for the benefit of that society, by all means, find yourself and island an go away nobody's stopping you depending on how much island you can afford. The rest of us look at the cost having a society capable of providing the basic needs for all or most, such that we can work together to create something even greater. I don't see that as an evil or a wrong. Of course the current government does use money in ways I don't agree, so I vote scallywags out whenever I get the chance.
When you measure his position, his momentum becomes uncertain. When you measure his momentum, his position becomes uncertain.
That's because his conscience is guiding his behaviors. And since, as a politician, his conscience is the size of a subatomic particle, quantum effects come into play.
Other politicians usually fasten onto some other guiding principle, such as an ideology or greed. But since Romney is all about his principles, we get this weird Heisenbergian behavior when attempting to observe him too closely.
Next up, we throw Romney through a particle accelerator at a series of slits to test for an interference pattern.
:-P
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Well reducing fuel consumption and slowing population growth are good to do anyway, so we should do those things regardless of climate change.
The US already has slow population growth (without immigrants it might even be negative population growth, which is already where you want it to be). And reducing fuel consumption has opportunity costs, meaning that it is not automatically "good" to do anyway.
They are as efficient at creating goods and services as they are spending natural resources to do the creation. A penalty (tax) increases the overhead of creating things. And when their overhead is so small, any increase is a significant increase. On the other hand, because small businesses are not efficient, this penalty is not going to significantly contribute to their overhead.
And what the point of making society more inefficient?
We're talk about fair shares. Presently, the burdens are dreadfully imbalanced. Take away the priviledges and loopholes and all the extra crap and let's all get some equality. Then we can talk about wanting to hold onto what we "earn."
And seriously. "Income" is money which comes through commerce. Wages are NOT income. They are an equal trade of work for pay. You want to talk about "earning" don't talk about people doing commerce. They didn't work for it -- their employees did and they got paid for their services. The rest is income which should be taxable... payroll should not be.
What bugs me more than the wealthy who want to keep their money (I totally understand that) are the people who are not wealthy who want to protect the interests of the wealthy because they hope to somehow be wealthy one day. (A very poor chance of that happening statistically speaking.)
People should keep what they earn. Investment money is not earned money. Money through running a business? Somewhere in betweenm but there's a LOT of grey area in there isn't there?
Human capital is slavery. I can't see another possible interpretation. To have capital, it must be owned. Who owns these humans he refers to?
Funny how it's the racist party trying to defend their agenda. Obama was talking about infrastructure and basic Keynesian economics prove it true. Government investment in infrastructure allows businesses to succeed. In all honesty though your perception of redistribution is broken. Those who own a business rely on others for success. Now the Republicans are lying about what the statement means while avoiding the obvious philosophical issue that they're constantly running from.
Anyone that has more than 1M of net worth has no connection to normal human beings. So both candidates are out if that is the metric you are using.
What, exactly, do you think will happen without net neutrality laws?
Nothing that has not already happened.
Will all the ISP monopolies suddenly start acting like they have competition?
Why don't you ask the local governments that MAKE them monopolies. Them being monopolies is NOT NATURAL.
Even then, you usually have a choice between DSL, Cable, and some kind of wireless (by that I mean fixed wireless, not cell).
Will Comcast just never try to get away with throttling torrents again?
Here's a thought - would any network neutrality law proposed to date have stopped what Comcast did? No it would not. And it was MARKET FORCES that stopped Comcast, when they were found out they shut that down. Under Network Neutrality in fact it's far more likely you'd not be doing any torrents at all because they will probably be on a banned server list, which thanks to Network Neutrality laws must be obeyed by the ISP and no traffic allowed there even by direct IP.
Do you realize that if there are no "rules from the government", then ISP's can just do what they want anyway?
Do you realize we already know that's not true BECAUSE of Comcast? It was shown we do NOT need new rules to address real problems. What has yet to be shown to any reasonable degree is why it is preferable to let the government dictate what goes over a network. I'm curious between the greater costs which get passed to you, or the lack of freedom to access anything on the network without blocks, between those which yoke do you feel chafes less around the neck and seems decorative to you?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Summarized:
The Top American Science Questions: 2012 ...
1. What policies will you be putting in place that will keep America an Innovation leader?
O - Doubling funding to key research agencies
O - Goal of 100,000 new STEM teachers (science, technology engineering math) - with the goal of 1 Million new STEM graduates
M - Raise visa caps to allow for more foreign workers
M - Offer permanent residence to foreign knowledge workers
M - Reduce taxes on corporations
M - More vigorously defend intellectual property rights abroad
M - Deregulate industry
M - Ambiguous education reform
2. Climate Change. What is your position on cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and other policies proposed to address global climate change and what steps can we take to improve our ability to tackle challenges like climate change that cross national boundaries?
O - Policies that lead to the growth of using alternative energy
O - Already limited greenhouse emissions from vehicles
O - Large investments in green energy
O - Reduce emissions within federal government
O - Reduced dependency on oil (Claim is already readuced 3 million fewer barrels of oil every day, US is at a 20 year low)
M - Believes in climate change, and that human activity is a contributor, though because of "lack of scientific consensus" believes the next step is more debate / investigation
M - Believes that Obama policy will "bankrupt the coal industry" (poor guys)
M - Opposed to carbon tax or cap-and-trade systems
M - Supports government funded research on low-emission technology
M - Supports investment in nuclear power
3. What priority would you give to investment in research in your upcoming budgets?
O - Strong support
O - Current level is 3% of GDP, which is higher then the level achieved during space race
O - Created Recovery Act, - $100 Billion dollars in research spending / education / training / etc. $90 Billion of which was devoted to clean energy.
* Plans to make R&D tax credit permanent
M - Strong supporter as well
M - Critical of where money gets spent, would divy it up differently
M - Does not list actual intentions
4. OHMEGERD Bird flu.
O - Chill. We got it.
M - Further investment in public health monitoring systems (?)
M - Reduced restrictions on FDA
5. Our kids suck at science. How do we fix it?
O - Educate to innovate program, 100,000 STEM teachers
M - Spending ineffective
M - Teachers unions bad
M - Wants more choice for parents as to which schools their children go to
M - Higher standards (More national tests?)
6. Energy. What policies?
O - "All of the above" energy approach (wind, solar, oil, coal, etc.)
O - Since taking office Solar / Wind production doubled
O - World leader in natural gas production (100 year supply quoted)
M - Goal energy independence within a decade
M - Allow states to make decisions regarding energy resources on federal land within their borders
M - Open Off-shore drilling
M - Energy partnership with North america NAEP
M - Use federal money for performing energy surveys
M - restore "transparency and fairness" to permitting and regulation
M - Federal money for private sector energy research
7. Food Safety?
O - Signed comprehensive food safety law reform
O - Increased FDA funding
O - Believes in Organic farming
M - Encourages more "private" participation in regulation process
8. Fresh Water.
O - Grants to water conversation projects
O - Invested in waste water treatment infrastructure
M - Modernize federal laws governing water use
M - Incentives
9. Teh webz.
O - Free / Open internet essential (Net Neutrality)
O - Supports intellectual property law, as long as it doesn't hamper freedom of expression, or undermine innovation
O - Strengthen Cybersecurity, and data confidentiality
M - Believes government should not regulate internet, but should be left to "Mark
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
Sorry, I meant to say reducing fossil fuel use. Renewable fuel sources are a different matter.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Somebody who looks and sounds a hell of a lot like Obama said it on July 13, 2012.
Wow, you actually linked to a video that included the context of the quote but completely failed to notice that context. I can kind of understand those people who were too incurious to find out the context, but that's not you. You found the context and you pretended it wasn't there.
I am genuinely curious - what is going on in your head that lets you do that and not feel like an outright liar? Is it just blinding partisanship? Or do you do the same thing with the context of Romeny quotes such as, "I like being able to fire people?"
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The antecedent for "that" is not "a business," but rather "roads and bridges" and other infrastructure.
-NC
That website looks to basically be an atheist flame bait and venting forum. One of the poll headlines says "even religious voters overwhelmingly want the candidates to debate science." Even? Seriously? If 80% of the population of the world (the religious population) was anti-science then there would be little to no scientific progress.
Will atheists please stop confusing real/perceived ignorance of an area(s) of science or rejection of some specific subsection of science with being anti-science in general? It is complete and utter nonsense that does absolutely no one any form of good. All it does is piss people off and create larger divides. If someone is wrong, tell them why they are wrong and rise above the childish name calling.
To try and prove yourselves correct about all the "anti-science" religious people, find actual religious people (it won't be hard, you are surrounded by them) and ask them if they think science is important and if they think science is a bad thing. I have never met someone who is "anti-science" in my entire life and most people would be hard pressed to find even a single person like that yet alone a large segment of the religious population. Sure, there are Amish people, and others, that may fit the bill but that is not representative of the majority of religious populations. Stop fantasizing about yourselves standing on a pillar of science looking down on the religious dolts and actually ground yourselves in at least a small dose of reality that you claim to have such an amazing grasp on.
Yeah, this is a bit trolly and flamebaitish but most of that website, the basis of this thread, is even more so. The basic idea that website is founded on is a very good thing, we need more public discussion about these issues. The presentation, insinuations, and tone are downright shameful.
Both of them had points in their careers where they were alright. Both have been neutered by their respective party apparatchiks who tell them that they need to pander to the base in order to get the shit they set out to do done. Trouble is, by the time they get to the point where they might get to do that shit, they've lost their grounding to the ideas they originally believed in.
Politics ruins people. It makes them otherwise decent people into dicks.
Human capital is the stock of competencies, knowledge, social and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.
The term has no degrading or evil connotations, quite the opposite actually. Obama fumbles around mentioning skills and education, he just doesn't know the proper term to describe them, which is "Human Capital".
Might well be a good place to drop this link...
I think that idea is misguided populism. The problem isn't that "corporrations are people too" or that "money is speech" - the problem is the corrupting influence that money brings with it (which, is something I think applies everywhere not just politics, but that's a discussion for another time and place).
I like Lawrence Lessig's idea that we might as well embrace these concepts since they are so popular with the people with influence and they at least give us a framework to build on. His idea is to use these concepts in a form of judo - let people and corps donate all the money they want to politicians, but make them do it anonymously. In short, put all the donated money into a "black box" and then (a) let donors secretly rescind their donations if they want and (b) require the politicians to take all of the donations out of the black box in one big chunk after some period of time.
The idea is to disconnect the money from the influence - you can promise a politician that you are giving a million dollars, but you can't prove it. There is no restriction on speech at all - you can "say" all you want with words or money. You just can't tie the two together in a provable fashion.
Apparently something like this system was tried in an election for judges in south florida - the result was that none of the candidates got a single dime.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yeah, the PACs you listed are not the "Super PACs" that the Supreme Court made possible when it said corporations are people. The total outlay of the PACs you list won't pay for the flight budgets of the monied interests pouring over a billion dollars into the Super PACs, and worse, because they skirt the laws governing traditional PACs we'll never know exactly who or what is being spent. The tip of the iceberg however suggests the monied interests are pouring money into the Republican campaigns at a rate that may exceed 10 to 1. Here's a site that was updated the middle of August. Hope that clears things up for you.
Uh... given that scientists are an insanely tiny minority of the population and contribute the vast majority of human advancement... I would rather fund them in excess.
The linked site has posts sub-titled "Climate Denial Crock of the Week," indicating that they're part of the "science is settled" camp. So, anyone that disagrees with any part of the pro-climate-change-thus-pro-green-everything platform is a denier, rather than an alternative viewpoint? We're at an interesting time in the evolution of science, indeed.
Unfortunately PACS are only the tip of the iceberg. Individuals like the Koch brothers and George Soros, and organizations like the Tides Foundation pass hundreds of millions of dollars through to smaller organizations that actually spend the money, hiding the source and amount that the original donors are actually spending.
Tides alone probably gives more to liberal causes than all the PACs listed above give to conservatives.
by a total count of 30 to 13. However, the competition becomes much closer when the innovation count is normalized to word totals - 0.59% for Mitty compared to 0.40% for Barry. Not a bad effort by both candidates, but I happen to know several businessmen who hover around 3% on their bad days. "Leverage" and "synergy" hardly made an appearance. Clearly, America is doomed regardless of who wins the election.
Romney believes what he is paid to believe.
Just worthless. Corpro-bot 2.0
Regarding both candidates, we should wonder about the headline: Did the candidates answer the questions, or their science advisors, or their campaign advisors, or their sponsors?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You obviously don't know what the term Human Capital means:
Human capital is the stock of competencies, knowledge, social and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.
The term has no degrading or evil connotations [snip]
Except people are willing to invest it and write it off, just like money. Or more willing than for money, when it comes to writing it off.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
With all due respect to context, Obama's statement completely discounts the effort, innovation, hard work and, oftentimes, personal risk that goes into building a business. He, instead, places the sole focus and credit on the roll of the government in providing infrastructure and public education. Those of use who take issue with his statement see this great infrastructure as an enabler, but not an acting agent in building a successful company. If the opposite were true, we'd all be CEOs.
I'm quite comfortable with my interpretation of his words. It's consistent with his view of government as the great provider.
sig: sauer
It just gives you an idea of how much these people stand to save in taxes if Romney is elected that they're putting that much money into getting him elected.
Or that they don't actually understand numbers at all. I thought I remembered hearing that Mitt Romney has spent more money avoiding taxes than if he had just paid those taxes in the first place. Of course, I cannot find a citation for that at this time. Was I misinformed?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Wow, that's a stretch. That...that's actual contortion right there. You had to limber up good for that one.
sig: sauer
I think that idea is misguided populism. The problem isn't that "corporrations are people too" or that "money is speech"
It isn't the whole problem, but it's definitely part of it, and not just in terms of politics.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Iraqi: from Iraq. Israeli: from Israel. Kuwaiti: from Kuwait. Pakistani: from Pakistan. Moroni: from a person with mild mental retardation.
Thank you for making my point for me.
sig: sauer
A million net worth is a pretty low bar if you live in an area with high real estate costs. A nice four bedroom home costs about a million in my city. Most people living in these million dollar homes are middle class, can barely make the mortgage and rent out the basement to help make the payments.
$100,000, 000 is more of the net worth where you might be getting out of touch with the common folk.
Anarchists never rule
Here I was believing it was 42! Damn those politicians and their misleading ads!
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I'm quite comfortable with my interpretation of his words. It's consistent with his view of government as the great provider.
I think it is more accurate to say that your interpretation of his words is consistent with your beliefs about obama - its all pretty ironic since you started off lamenting the careless use of words to belittle the opposition.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Keep arguing against ghosts there, dude. To mix medaphors, keep fiddling while everything burns down.
It seems odd to pick the ones by "spending" at this point in the campaign. After all - the spending done so far for the GOP has mainly been to fight the GOP primaries. The democrat's PACs have JUST started spending, to nail Romney.
What are the biggest PACs in terms of how much money they have? Don't you think that matter more? If we want to talk money spent, we probably won't be able to compare fairly until the campaigns are done, correct?
Q: How will you deal with [scientific challenge]?
Obama: Do something.
Romney: Do nothing.
There is no irony here. I've used his own words as an accurate critique of his own actions.
I was initially scolded that "he didn't say that." I proved that he did say it, and was then accused of taking his words out of context. I acknowledged context, but as consistent with my view of his meaning. Now, I'm told my view is wrong, based on... something.
In summary: he did say it; being critical of his words is well within the scope of context; his context is consistent with his policies.
sig: sauer
I know this is going to be emotionally unpopular but do you really think responsible population management and driving smaller cars are bad things?
Forcing people to do these things would be unconstitutional but you don't have to force people to affect a change.
Proper education of the issues, tax incentives, etc can do it just as easily.
The only hard thing would be doing it in a fair way so that it doesn't become only the rich can possibly have a large family or own a large car (aka the tax incentive has to be enough to make you think about it but not so much as to actually affect your ability to live your life).
If I remember the statistics correctly most of the U.S population growth is immigration so things certainly aren't in a bad place population wise.
I do think it would be nice to protect our future from having a population explosion by helping people to think a little before having babies.
Helping curb oil usage alone by encouraging people to think before buying a car would be worth it, global warming or no global warming.
Interesting. Imposing a severe carbon tax on America could actually _increase_ global emissions. Unintended consequences.
I was initially scolded that "he didn't say that." I proved that he did say it, and was then accused of taking his words out of context. I acknowledged context, but as consistent with my view of his meaning. Now, I'm told my view is wrong, based on... something.
Pedancy doesn't make a persuasive argument.
Arguing that the narrowest literal meaning is the intended meaning and that the context which makes it clear to any critical reader is a "contortion" is a sign that you aren't interested in seeking truth, only rationalizing preconceptions.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It's entirely possible the globe will go +2 degrees and nothing much will happen to the earth at all.
So 2 degrees has resulted in "nothing much" except massive amounts of food in the country vanishing. It won't affect America much this year, but you can expect revolutions around the world based on high food prices this winter.
Can I quote you on that?
... can barely make the mortgage
If they have a mortgage, then they don't own the house, and it is not included in their net worth.
Anyone with a net worth of over $1M should not have to choose between buying clothes and going out for dinner. I stopped having to make tradeoffs like that long before my net worth got anywhere close to $1M.
The idea is to disconnect the money from the influence - you can promise a politician that you are giving a million dollars, but you can't prove it. There is no restriction on speech at all - you can "say" all you want with words or money. You just can't tie the two together in a provable fashion.
Apparently something like this system was tried in an election for judges in south florida - the result was that none of the candidates got a single dime.
Do you happen to have any links handy to document that? I've heard this claim before and if true it's quite telling and i'd like to know more. But I haven't seen anything more than a claim that it happened with judges somewhere in Florida.
I think you missed the importance of the word 'net'. If someone is barely making the mortgage on a million dollar house, they most certainly don't have a net worth of $1 million. If the house is worth $1 million and the mortgage is for $900,000, the net worth is, at best, $100,000.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I saw Lessig make it in an interview on the daily show - check comedy central's website I believe they have a full archive of all shows, it was the second part of the show, the part that didn't air due to time constraints. It sounded like he referenced it in his book on the topic.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Actually, Obama did say that. He also said more but is operating from a flawed concept to begin with.
There's been a certain subgroup that's attracted to an objectivist/Libertarian position, and seems to proceed from totally insane "pride". That is, they aren't just proud of having made a success of themselves by hard work, but they turn it into "I'm so much better than everyone else, I'm a totally self made man. I built a time machine, went back to invent English, and then taught it to my elementary school teacher so she could pretend to teach me what I already knew. I'm really an omnipotent omnescient god. I made my whole universe in my image from less than nothing. Even though every single person I've met is morally inferior to me and has done nothing but tried to sabotage my success, I don't hate any of them, but they hate me because I'm proud of being a self made man.". These people exist, and they seem to love Rand's argument about second raters who focus on their fellow man instead of reality, and whatever bits of john Wayne, Reagan, or whatever else they can take out of context to shore up this totally untenable position.
I wouldn't tar nearly all Republicans with that brush, but I'm seeing an increasing tendency to this sort of magical thinking there. We're not going to get a good answer to what makes a person do that. I had a boss once who had an increasing touch of talking like that, and he went on to kill the 15 year old he was cheating with, when she told him she was pregnant. Then he shot most of his family and tried to commit suicide by cop, and chickened out. He's in Supermax for life plus, and I don't think we will ever understand it, and knowing he really hammered at the self made man myth towards the end of his free life doesn't tell us anything useful about why he was the way he became.
I'm not saying that every Objectivist, Libertarian or Republican suffers from this. I am saying that these people are out there, in significant numbers, and if someone lets them claim to belong to their philosophical group, political party, or whatever, and doesn't distance themselves, they will eventually destroy themselves anyway, and probably the people who tolerated them unchallenged, and maybe the whole group. Right now, I think too many people in the Republican party are seeing these people as strong, not weak, and this will go on until the whole party pays the price of losing election after election, and the country pays the price of not even hearing any genuinely useful ideas the sane part of the party may have.
Who is John Cabal?
When Warren Buffett noticed that he was paying a lower rate than his secretary, that's a connection to a normal human being, right there. When Bill Gates explains why he'd rather focus his foundation on malaria than some of the diseases that mostly affect people with enough income to fund more research themsleves, that's a connection to some normal human beings (whether you would make the same choice or not, it's not like he doesn't understand the facts there). There are plenty of rich people who have a connection to 'normal' human beings, and a few of them actually seem pretty normal themselves. Then there's the ones who seem totally out of touch, regardless of whether they have 1 Million or a thousand million, or more.
Who is John Cabal?
Funny how it's the racist party trying to defend their agenda.
Which party is racist, exactly? One party's president sent federal troops to make sure minority schoolchildren could get into their local school over the best efforts of the governor of the other party.
Perhaps he dismisses the notion of the necessity of that infrastructure or it's importance in building a company. In the old days, people built their own roads, built their own rail ways, dug their own wells and did a lot of other things provided by public infrastructure.
Actually, that is a core difference between the two parties. One thinks that all the government should do is set an environment and let private firms take advantage of it. The other thinks the government should give or award the advantages.
There is a slippery slope in the other direction too. Once corporate interests control the interwebs, then goodbye to everything we love about it. Slippery-slope arguments are funny like that.
There is a type of republican who thinks that any type of regulation is bad. This is simply black and white thinking. If we ever think of no regulations, then move to Somalia. It is always a question of how much regulation, and what regulations create the right incentive structures. As such, it is a question of economics and law, and a little too nuanced for political discussion.
If you really believe that the proponents of net-neutrality want the government regulating every last bit of the internet, then you're living in bizarro world. If you really believe that corporate interests wouldn't do what special interests want (you scratch my back...), then you're an idiot. It is this type of corporate back-scratching that has destroyed real journalism in modern times. (You'd never say something bad about one of your advertises, for example.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Except all Obama and his party have done is move money in all the wrong fucking places. We have nothing to show for our infrastructure because nothing was really spent on it. Corporate welfare to the too-big-too-fail banks helps who exactly? That, and the feds blank check to print money which in turn devalues savings held by the private citizen. The Keynesian opportunity has been an epic failure!
And I don't care if Republicans get elected, the damage has been done. Russia, China, Iran, and N Korea could launch an ICBM at Washington DC and I can bet you that a large percentage of America wouldn't give two shits. In fact, many might silently cheer. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Ya, our nation is fucked!
Life is not for the lazy.
You're making the assumption that you stand on the veritable high ground with your interpretation and application of context. You've provided nothing to fortify your position, other than repetition of the Democrats' "what he meant to say was..." back pedaling. I've argued on the evaluation of his policies. This is not the narrowest literal meaning -- it's matching the talk to the walk.
sig: sauer
You're making the assumption that you stand on the veritable high ground with your interpretation and application of context.
Occam's razor at work - your interpretation is that obama is a complete nutjob or my interpretation is that he recognizes the obvious - public works infrastructure supports much of american commerce.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Obama may have a net worth of over 1M now (I don't know), but he spent most of his life poor. Romney grew up rich and privileged. That makes is a big difference.
Nice strawman, who exactly is talking about the government forcing birth limits on anyone? Some people are capable of making responsible family planning choices on their own, all it takes is a little education.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
You shouldn't be voting.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Thanks. The pastebin link was a lot more readable for me.
1. Nice try with the strawman. I've asserted that Obama views government as the great provider. I did not call him a nutjob.
The view that businesses are not built by their owners is absolute nutjobbery. You can try to walk back your literal read of the words he used but you can't have it both ways. Either "you didn't build that" refers to a business or to public infrastructure, there is no inbetween interpretion.
"The government is the only thing we all belong to.
You are off in the weeds with that one, its irrelevant to the question of who builds a business.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I was citing last election cycle actually, but yes from that source. This list shows a lot more skew to the left, with the first right-leaning donor coming in at #19, the National Auto Dealers Association. Coincidentally the one group that got the shaft when Detroit got bailed out (remember all those GM dealers forced to shut down). IIRC the Realtors were the only other top-ten group to lean right in 2008. Note that Goldman Sachs was 75% Democrat 2008, unlike this year where they are fairly balanced.
But thanks for the link, should have checked it myself first, and admittedly any one list isnt the whole story, and one reason why I dont always bother with cites. Still, point being, while I agree Romney owes money favors Obama is no less beholden. I really dont understand so many people's utter and complete belief that one side is completely corrupt and the other is completely principled, when the vast movement of money to both candidates from large donors and PAC's seemingly makes it obvious the whole system is corrupt.
Restore Our Future (supports Mitt Romney) $89,654,176
American Crossroads $40,063,638
Priorities USA Action (supports Barack Obama) $24,739,392
Winning Our Future (supports Newt Gingrich) $23,908,055
Club for Growth Action $13,168,041
Majority PAC $11,648,736
House Majority PAC $9,268,191
Red White and Blue Fund (supports Rick Santorum) $8,388,547
American Bridge 21st Century PAC $7,890,414
Congressional Leadership Fund $6,511,401
So 6/10 are Republican supporting, but the funding breakdown is $181,693,858 for Republicans, $53,546,733 for Democrats.
For a hundred years or so americans have been amused, amazed and embarrassed by the bizarre beliefs of the mormons. Unfortunately we are currently distracted by the strange behavior of scientologists and a particular movie star adherent who is seeking a new scientologist girlfriend.
In our neverending search for novelty have we forgotten the weirdness of mormonism? Have we forgotten the thirst for power that drives the mormon church? Are we going to let that organization sit quietly in the background while we consider their pawn to lead this country?
The statements you have seen from Obama and Rmoney are from advisers. The candidates have likely never seen them. Look instead to the forces behind the candidates if you want to know where their loyalties lie.
...omphaloskepsis often...
His exact words: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
My exact response above: "Obama's statement completely discounts the effort, innovation, hard work and, oftentimes, personal risk that goes into building a business." If you want to label this "nutjobbery", so be it. Your words. I call it a simple, but consistent overestimation of the roll and importance of government in the lives of Americans. The video I posted above parallels this sentiment. Sorry you didn't notice.
sig: sauer
A CBS News story listing PAC contributors isnt the whole story of course. Several of those top PAC's were primary-only groups supporting not-Romney ($23M to Gingrich for example). And to put that in perspective, the Unions can spend whatever they want without going through a PAC (the AFL/CIO alone spent $39M on Obama campaigning so far, other unions show similar expenditures). The Supreme Court decision, in part, said that corporations should have at least the same rights as Unions. Taking the donation landscape as a whole, Obama has raised almost double what Romney has raised, including more from large wealthy donors AND more from large business. Your "10-to-1" doesnt pass even the simplest back of the envelope calculation.
Well, at least you are consistent - you only want people to take your own words literally too - ignoring all context.
So when you said that he antecedent for "that" is not "a business," but rather "roads and bridges" and other infrastructure is "actual contortion" clearly you meant that Neon Crossing was performing yoga while typing but you don't dispute what he wrote. If you had, you would have literally said he was wrong.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If they have a mortgage, then they don't own the house, and it is not included in their net worth.
The equity in the house is included. If they've lived in the house for 25 years then they very nearly own it (but still have to pay a huge chunk of their after-tax income every month for the remaining payments). Throw in a retirement fund marked "do not open until age 65" and a college fund for the kids and you can easily have $1M in assets without actually being able to spend any of it.
Anyone with a net worth of over $1M should not have to choose between buying clothes and going out for dinner.
And yet it happens every day.
That's a completely valid series of points.
This is one of the situations that really aggravates me. So many are operating on these distilled little platitudes that are supposed to represent greater ideologies, and applying them in a way that's completely uncompromising. And as we hear every day, compromising what you believe in is the same as weakness of will. Right?
So we get people that were lured by ideas of personal responsibility and fiscal conservatism spouting nonsense about how we need to remove all regulation, and let the markets sort things out. Or we get people throwing trash cans through a Starbucks because they think we should have let our largest financial institutions fail. God forbid anyone take a second and realize that sanity is usually somewhere in the miles of middle ground between any two textbook ideologies.
I wish we had the time and inclination to actually improve our collective quality of life through careful consideration. Instead we shout at each other, and say awful, untrue things. Meanwhile, we don't accomplish much of anything for our own benefit.
I'm no advocate for any kind of authoritarian rule, but sometimes I wish I had the ability to just freeze this circus in its tracks, and get people to talk to each other like civilized human beings.
And the rest of the world doesn't exist, does it? America contributes for a very large part to global warming, which is why we here in the Netherlands have to reinforce dykes and do other stuff to make sure we stay dry. We should sue you and try to get you to pay for that. Especially if Romney gets to sit on the throne there it will only get worse, not better. And of course Holland is not the only country that is in trouble thanks to global warming.
-- Cheers!
Here is the actual context of the quote, rather than your out of context quote:
Pretty much anyone who's given speeches in public without a teleprompter can tell you that sometimes we trip up. The context and the meaning of the quote is pretty obvious.
Somehow nearly every topic seems to be magically connected to his plans for tax lowering and the Obama government spending money to stabilize the economy.
It seems his answers were generated by dadadodo from the party program.
Moreover, not taking a unique standpoint on climate change is cowardish. Blaming that to a "lack of consensus" in the scientific community is ridiculous. In the scientific community always some people may disagree. However, the scientific community pretty much knows what thet know and what they dont know. To let oil-indudtry financed thinka tanks shuffle up singluar scientists "opinions" doe not sound like one would be interested in making science a base for sound decisions.
And yes, the calculation *that* emissions from Humans will severly affect Climate *severly* can be done on a single A4 (or letter) page using only a pencil and the knowledge about the suns surface temperature, the infrared absorbtion rate of CO2 and the Oil//Coal/Gas usage, and the current CO2 content in the atmosphere.
Between you and me: The candidate of about 99% of the US people wasn't included. Well, at least if people wanted to vote for someone with their interest in mind.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's more frightening than ironic when you consider that these people are willing to spend THIS amount of money to save MORE on taxes...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are so many ways to circumvent such a system that it's not even funny. Here's the obvious one: I open a trust, let's call it the "prosperity for a better USA" or some similar bull. This trust collects the money you want to dump on my candidate. I'll make sure to note who you are, how much you donate and what agenda you want to push. And when the time comes, I dump it into the black box.
Don't worry, nobody will see now how much of the money I put into it. Of course, free speech also means that I may share the information who gave me how much money with anyone I please. Like, say, the candidate.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My description of Lessig's proposal was necessarily just an overview. If you want to critique the plan, go read it first.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I wonder why everyone in the US is so opposed to taxes. I guess you can afford to pay yourself what your taxes pay for?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Connection" isn't the first thing that comes to my mind when reading this. It was more along the lines of "pity".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's what I think and I'm more or less a republican. Perhaps your problem is who you hang out with or know. Perhaps they like to take an opposite stance from you in order to rile you up.
Or more precisely, perhaps you aren't understanding them and take what they say out of context. Global warming has been exaggerated in the past, we do have a record of leaked Emails that show what at minimum on the surface seems to be not only an agenda, but steps to implement it. We also have a political agenda promised to be the fix that seems more like punishment for developed nations in the west and rewards for third world countries who are completely free to increase thier carbon emissions to levels well above any cuts in the western nations.
I've also been hammering the same point Romney thinks is a solution too. If global warming is as serious as its claimed, developing the tech for cleaner energy and emissions control and implementing that is the better solution then imposing burdens on the economy and causing financial hardships for the poor. In fact, Kyoto should have been an agreement to develop and share this tech instead of the monstrosity it was..
Now, now, these people don't keep slaves.
Slaves have to be fed and sheltered, and I can name a lot of jobs that won't enable you to provide that for your family. These clever bastards found a way to even undercut slavery!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, because doing the exact opposite has worked so well.
You are being a bit overly dramatic in your interpretation. Cutting taxes to a competitive rate not only removes incentives to move off shore to get the lower rates, it provides a more stable environment for businesses to invest and expand in the US. Tell me, which is more, 10% of $100 or 10% of $1000? That's what is expected to happen, more economic activity means more taxes at the same lower rates.
Cutting burdensome regulation also brings that about and lowers the bar for entry meaning more jobs to boot. Nowhere did he say they could do whatever they wanted. Regulation for the sake of regulation is never a good thing. Trimming the burdens and ensuring the regulation that remain are effective is what is needed. This is not the same deregulation from the Clinton days so don't pretend it is.
There is more to it too. Cheap and reliable energy will be needed. We have never had a prosperous or booming economy with high energy prices unless it was the result of cheaper prices previously and the more expensive prices haven't impacted yet.
Wonder if he was including dial up ISPs?
Medical Research? FDA has made things slower and increased costs. Need drugs to get to market sooner.
I'm not for deregulation, but I do think that terminal patients should have the option of using any promising treatment available elsewhere. Why should a person ever have to die from a condition because a possible remedy is considered too risky?
You realize many democrats run businesses, too? He would have pissed off his richest donors. Seriously, do you believe anyone is stupid enough to mean what you think he means? For fucks's sake you guys can't think at all anymore.
I know more than you drink.
But that's not what we'd get with a Romney presidency. Romney is not the leader of his party; Clint Eastwood, Paul Ryan, and Grover Norquist are.
And here I thought Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent led the GOP... Seems they are merely the mascots.
Might as well quote the whole thing. You're still twisting it:
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
He's obviously talking about infrastructure. Stop being willfully obtuse.
I know more than you drink.
It's the kitecat ratio 8 out of 10 PACs say their owners prefer Obama
Taxes are the lowest they have been in decades, and we have completely unprecedented income inequality. Those are the real results of 'trickle down', so fuck you, it's not working. Seriously, look something up. Until then, shut up.
That was one the major rejections about Kyoto Protocol.
As Europe lowered its emissions, it also increased imports from China and India. They may not be related, but it looks that way.
I don't need government to protect me from lions. With the help of a few neighbors we could pretty much protect ourselves from most anything in the wild.
I pay all sorts of monetary taxes for the societal convenience of judges, enforcers, generals, unified monetary system, etc.
To live in society requires responsibility; and I only covered the monetary side of it. So fuck off with your lion analogy. I work hard, I give back. And I don't expect all the uncircumstantial, unhealthy, lazy, or otherwise unfortunate people that don't perform their societal obligations to move to Mogadishu and fend off lions on their own.
Instead of re-summarizing what the candidates say, I'm going to resummarize all the slashdotter summaries:
Obama fan: Obama nailed it every time, Romney was completely full of disingenuous shit.
Romney fan: Romney nailed it every time, Obama was completely full of disingenuous shit.
Everyone else: wow, they're both completely full of crap.
-Styopa
Funny how it's the racist party trying to defend their agenda.
Which party is racist, exactly? One party's president sent federal troops to make sure minority schoolchildren could get into their local school over the best efforts of the governor of the other party.
Yup. And later on that presidents party made a concerted effort to get the votes of the people who elected that governer and succeeded. In doing so they changed their stance on issues of race and freedom. Parties don't stay the same over time. What they stand for changes.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Some people are capable of making responsible family planning choices on their own, all it takes is a little education.
And some people are capable of putting out a bunch of kids, no matter how educated they are. The Chinese approach to population control didn't come about because people weren't sufficiently well educated, but because they were having too many kids for the situation.
I never understood the confusion of education with general infrastructure even for making mass behavioral changes. One doesn't assume that education will cure crime, for example. In the absence of any sort of punishment, it just expands the criminal's ability to take stuff.
One doesn't assume it'll cure war since war fundamentally is about societies attempting force on other societies for their own advantage. Until the advantage is removed, the incentive for war remains, no matter the level of education.
And of course, education doesn't do by itself any of the mundane things we associate with physical infrastructure such as transporting people and goods, holding back huge quantities of water, or communicating between distant points on Earth or elsewhere.
He was probably talking about French people.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Global warming has been exaggerated in the past,
[citation needed]
we do have a record of leaked Emails that show what at minimum on the surface seems to be not only an agenda, but steps to implement it.
For example?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I know I'm NOT voting for Obama or Romney.
It's the first week of September. Why the hell should I have to know who I'm voting for already?
I'm leaning towards Gary Johnson, but I'm also considering voting for Ron Paul as a write-in or simply not voting.
Gary Johnson would be 100X better than Obama or Romney. However, I have serious problems with his foreign policy views, his opinions on the U.S. banking and financial system and some other things. I'll probably vote for him however because his votes will at least be counted.
Tragically, I think the best case scenario would be for Romney to lose with the perception that Johnson garnered enough support from Ron Paul Republicans to deny Romney a victory.
I'm hardly a believer in trickle-down economy, but won't most of that money be spent paying for a bunch of people's salaries and such? It's not like it's being used to buy financial products or private beaches.
Dilbert RSS feed
I'm not voting for either of the major party candidates either. I considered writing in Ron Paul, but I think that would be misinterpreted so I'm writing in Rick Santorum.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This needs a score higher than 5.
Except all Obama and his party have done is move money in all the wrong fucking places. We have nothing to show for our infrastructure because nothing was really spent on it. Corporate welfare to the too-big-too-fail banks helps who exactly?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but TARP was signed by Dubya.
People should keep what they earn. Investment money is not earned money. Money through running a business? Somewhere in betweenm but there's a LOT of grey area in there isn't there?
Right on! Even the IRS calls it "unearned income."
Have you considered being a professional BS translator for political debates and speeches?
I would absolutely hate it because much like a git commit once its "saved" I can't fix stuff like the following:
"teachers make too much money and if we just make them poorer by getting rid of the unions then the kids will be smarter."
Kicking myself today for not adding at the end something like "therefore obviously Rmoney's schoolteachers were obviously extremely well paid"
If we had something like a wiki for news I'd have a lot of fun "improving" the stories.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I sincerely doubt it goes to anyone who needs it. You've seen the costs of one political TV ad? Not a whole lot of people are involved in that for a whole lot of hours.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"Funny how it's the racist party trying to defend their agenda."
This alone makes the comment a -1 Troll. The rest is debatable, but this is nothing but ignorant and inflammatory rhetoric designed to stifle debate. You see, when one has confidence in their own positions, they don't need to engage in that kind of ad hominem.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
"basic Keynesian economics"? You realize that Keynesian economics have been discredited for decades, yes? Stagflation is something that doesn't exist under classic Keynesian economics, and yet has been a demonstrable outcome of policies that, under Keynesian economics, should produce growth. Therefore, using this economic system as a justification for anything is highly suspect.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
By this logic, Adam(or his equivalent, I'm not fussed about the details) deserves credit for everything, everywhere. Reductionism rapidly becomes ridiculous. And hey, that wasn't the purpose behind developing the internet. That was more of a happy side effect.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Dear Mr. Romney: TL;DR. Thanks, Samazon
I have the hiccups.
I live in North America. If not paying taxes means having to deal with the lions all by myself, well, shucks. I guess I'll have to manage.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
It's not that poor of a chance. The top quintile of earners in the US mostly(61%) originate from the lower quintiles. Only four of the top ten wealthiest individuals in the united states had parents describable as wealthy.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Of note is that while this is fundamentally accurate, Romney is by far the wordier of the two. Interesting, at any rate.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
It's not an exceptionally large part, really. China's the "very large part" you really want to blame.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Unfortunately for Obama supporters, he may have intended for "that" to refer to the infrastructure spending in the previous sentence instead of the business in the first clause of the current sentence, but that isn't the natural way to interpret it. I'm willing to concede that's probably what he meant, as it harkens back to elizabeth warren's earlier speech, but it's not a provable claim. It's still flawed in numerous ways, as no where in the speech does he concede any responsibility for their own success to the business owner at all. The full context makes it clear he thinks a successful business got there through luck and the support of others. He specifically decried any possibility that they were actually smarter or harder working than other people who were less successful.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
No it isn't. The immediate antecedent is the business mentioned in the preceding clause, not the infrastructure from the previous sentence. He spoke... poorly.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Actually, that's entirely true of Obama supporters as well. Since at no point in the full context of the speech did he acknowledge any of the success came from individual effort or talent, you have to believe that he only intended to refer to infrastructure based on other knowledge. If you need the context of other speeches to justify your interpretation of a particular speech, then enough context was not provided to make the claim that his intention was clearly what you think he meant.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
It's obvious to you only because you think it's a more sensible belief about business. If you didn't have any prior agreement with obama policies, there would be no reason for you to believe he's actually reasonable. Examine that whole speech in isolation. Nothing in the context of just that speech makes your preferred interpretation more likely than the possibility that Obama doesn't think small business owners are even majorly responsible for the success of their business.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Actually, it was both. The point being made was that small business owners didn't build the roads, bridges, and other infrastructure necessary to support their business and thus did not build their businesses on their own.
Neither side is accurately presenting the quote. One side seems intent on ignoring the first subject of the antecedent of "that" because it brings up difficult questions that can't be answered in a 30-second sound byte. The issue for them is taxation and a challenge to their ideal that people with wealth don't "owe" (should not be taxed) anything back to society. The other side strongly denies the second subject of the antecedent of "that" because it makes them appear (or perhaps exposes them as for some segments) extremist on issues of property rights and wealth. The implication being that one cannot build (and therefore cannot own) anything since society at large has provided the things that made it all possible. Ergo, society is entitled to take anything (and possibly everything) you have for its own purposes.
It's an interesting quote because the challenging questions it raises will never be widely discussed. What it really exposes is how 95% of the battle in public debate today is framing the question or issue. If you can make it about greedy rich people or you can make it about radical socialism, you put the other side on a constant back foot. If you can make it about killing babies or about invading a woman's body, you don't have to actually debate anything. Thus, we never solve problems or answer questions anymore because all our time and energy is spent on bullshit that has nothing to do with solving problems or answering questions.
At least the Romans had bread and circus. We seem to only get shit and more shit. Bring back the lions, I say.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
That phrase, "picking winners and losers," is a loser. It totally denies the structure of human society, in which most achievements require broad collaboration. Yes, collaboration can lead to conspiracy and corruption. But it is also essential to building civilization. A major role of government and politicians is to encourage the healthy sorts of collaboration, and discourage the corrupt sorts. So already, government and politicians should be trying to pick "winners" who display good ethics, and make "losers" of those who don't. Can government go overboard? Sure. Like all things worth doing well, it can also be done badly. But it needs to be attempted, or we end up with conspiracy and corruption dominating, and become a nation like Italy or Afghanistan or Somalia, depending on the degree of that domination.
So the question isn't "Does government pick winners and losers?" Government has to be picking winners, which is to say encouraging collaborations in society among the ethically good players - where "good" in defined in terms of virtues like honesty and concern for the broader well-being of society. Governments aren't just about penalities for those who are bad players (e.g., torturers, those committing fraud in financial institutions - neither of whom are currently penalized, as it happens, due to the weakness of our government), but rewards for those who are good players (including giving them government contracts, such as the Ryan family as prospered from for generations). Government should contract and collaborate with and support good players, and shun and otherwise hinder the bad. That's just essential. And there's no way to separate that from "picking winners and losers." Those who use that phrase are not just opposed to bad government, but even to good government, as if the withering away of the state to produce the utopia foreseen by an intellectual vanguard were not just the failed dream of Karl Marx, but a practical program for today. This libertarian dream is the mirror image of Marxism, and just as evil when put into practice. We need government, we need government to be good, and we need government to be on the side of good, or else good cannot prevail. Because all government is is a large-scale structure for social collaboration. And without that, there can be no civilization.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Romney's response to Question 11:
I understand the cost of a reduction being $10 billion. What does it mean to say that the extent of a reduction in mercury pollution is measured in dollars?
You are parroting the Republican idea that there is this huge population of lazy people that don't want to work and want handouts. Could you post a link to some research that supports this conclusion? I hear the claim all of the time, but I just don't believe that the hardworking Americans turned lazy in January of 2008.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
Way to excuse your partisan comrades. Neither of your excuses fits the facts. These are otherwise smart guys who have simply taken the position that anthropogenic warming does not exist. None of them will even attempt to answer the question "Which part of global warming do you disagree with: the fact that CO2 traps heat or the fact that CO2 in the atmosphere has increased?" That question simply gets ignored. Literally, they will not address it if asked. I have had guys storm out of my office when asked that question. Usually with a line like "read those emails". As if incriminating emails from a single climate scientist somehow has anything to do with the physics of CO2 absorbing infrared radiation.
Furthermore, there are hundreds if not thousands of scientists in the field of climate study. Emails from one or two are meaningless in the context of the overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic warming. Even the lead author of a Koch-funded study now agrees.
He was able to afford to go to Kenya and Indonesia before he was 22. I don;t know many people that could even afford that plane trip
And here's the complete context, where you can see that he was talking about infrastructure:
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
Good job proving the grandparent's point.
The problem is that would require a constitutional amendment too, and I can't see such a thing ever gaining popular support.
Good job removing the context. Because hey, context isn't important, right?
With all due respect to context, Obama's statement completely discounts the effort, innovation, hard work and, oftentimes, personal risk that goes into building a business. He, instead, places the sole focus and credit on the roll of the government in providing infrastructure and public education. Those of use who take issue with his statement see this great infrastructure as an enabler, but not an acting agent in building a successful company. If the opposite were true, we'd all be CEOs.
It's a response to the people who feel they owe no obligation to society under the mistaken belief that they did everything themselves.
I wouldn't tar nearly all Republicans with that brush, but I'm seeing an increasing tendency to this sort of magical thinking there. We're not going to get a good answer to what makes a person do that. I had a boss once who had an increasing touch of talking like that, and he went on to kill the 15 year old he was cheating with, when she told him she was pregnant. Then he shot most of his family and tried to commit suicide by cop, and chickened out. He's in Supermax for life plus, and I don't think we will ever understand it, and knowing he really hammered at the self made man myth towards the end of his free life doesn't tell us anything useful about why he was the way he became.
Maybe he came to realize it was a myth and when it crumbled to dust, he had nothing, nothing left.
"Unusual" droughts??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_States
Looks like they're a regular thing to me. And that's just for one part of the world.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
His exact words: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
My exact response above: "Obama's statement completely discounts the effort, innovation, hard work and, oftentimes, personal risk that goes into building a business."
Ugh. I'm not an Obama partisan, but even I know the word 'that' in Obama's statement did not refer to "if you've got a business," you liar.
Note that word "is". It indicates present tense, while you're talking about things that happened roughly fifty years ago. The leadership, membership, and philosophies of both parties have changed significantly in the interim. Of especial significance in this context is that the groups that used to be "Southern Democrats" or "Dixiecrats" have largely moved over to the Republican party in the last thirty years.
I know it shouldn't matter, but that site looks like crap! I know I should care more about quality than presentation, but still...*shudders*
If this has been covered, I apologize for re-iterating but the problem with politicians answering questions like this is that they never seem to answer them in the manner of what they actual believe. I say believe because it doesn't have to do with the answer to the question but rather the way it can cater to one side or the other. It becomes politicized and is the case with much of what becomes politicized, it loses its original meaning and instead has been determined to pander to one demographic or the other. So, I really don't think any politicians will answer these sorts of questions in the original context. As well, consider that in a recent Gallup poll, it was found that Republicans would not change their mind even if given sufficient evidence that should change their mind one way or the other. This is decidedly unscientific and those that associate strongly with a political faction seem to held captive by their convictions. Consider that the recent statements from such people as Missouri Congressman Todd Akin in regards to the reproductive system of women who have been raped is not the only anti-science person within, of all things, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee! He is joined by Ralph Hall, who tried to use porn to scuttle a science funding bill, and Paul Broun, a creationist ON THE SCIENCE COMMITTEE! Is it any wonder that I saw "I want neither of them" posted? Politicians and science evidently do not mix.
Thank you for proving poe's law
He specifically decried any possibility that they were actually smarter or harder working than other people who were less successful.
Really? You can actually quote him saying that? That doesn't pass the laugh test because if he specifically said that the GOP would be making hay with THAT quote and not half-assing it with the questionable parsing of "you didn't build that." I think it's far more likely that you, like that other guy, are projecting your own biases onto him.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No I'm not. I'm saying hardworking people who pay their share of taxes benefit society, if for no other reason than help fund it. They
Yes, there are lazy people, just as there are unhealthy people, just as there are criminals, etc., etc., that probably take in more than they 'deserve' at times. You can't argue that. My argument isn't that "there are a huge -growing- number of people just riding the system man", every country/state/city/town/neighborhood has that.
What I disagree with is that hard working people, rich people, lucky people, well-connected people need to pay at higher _rate_ of taxes. For instance, Romney might have paid 15% while I paid 28%, but I fucking guarantee you he contributes A LOT more than me to this 'society fund'. Pick your poison. Pick your frame of thought. Pick your strategy. I NEVER agree wholeheartedly with any single political party, and neither should you.
Regarding taxes I'm more prone to thinking it should just be a flat tax, then give the so-called 'job providers' discounts. It would create the least amount of argument and eliminate all the social divides that has been stirred up this last election cycle. Yes, a Democratic talking point.
>>>There's nothing wrong with carbon usage penalties, and more generally, there's nothing wrong with taxes, especially on corporations
Yeah I don't care if you tax them to death, but carbon usage penalties hurt the poor (it's an added tax to their bills). It's a "regressive tax" to borrow a phrase I often hear Democrats use to describe gasoline tax & medicare tax.
>>>Your hyperbole is showing. I'm not sure where a 54 mile per gallon equates to a "teeny-tiny" car.
Ever since the EPA started measuring MPG and slapping the number on new cars, there have only been two cars that surpassed 54mpg average economy. One was the two-person Honda Insight and..... well that's it. The second car was the Lupo but it only sold in Europe. If it had been sold here it would have scored ~70mpg on the EPA test.
>>>But tell me why shouldn't you pay more to pollute more?
I don't have a problem with that..... IF it can be shown the global warming will mean the extinction of the human race, and therefore it's worthwhile to impose these limits. So far, that has not been shown. Obama and people like him are demanding we lose our freedoms based upon..... nothing. A belief essentially. Like how the Catholic church forced Galileo to be imprisoned in his home, because they thought it was too dangerous to let him out.
Now instead of the church, we have Democrats/Greens who are trying to imprison us/takeaway our freedom based purely upon a BELIEF that humans are heading towards extinction.... and nothing to back it up.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Even though both have some good and not so good answers, I don't think that either of them has a good enough answer to most of questions.
For Obama, his answers are very abstract. In other words, his answers tend to be simplified for layman and are targeted certain group of readers. Because of this abstract type of answers, these answers are often too vague and need to be clarified. I am not sure how he could reach the goal he is promising.
For Romney, his answers are descriptive with many key words that people nowadays want to hear -- job creation, middle class, Reagan Economic, research, economic, etc. One major issue I am seeing is that his answers contain mixed messages (certain answers would be mutual exclusive for certain political side). I think the reason is from his intention to target all groups of readers -- some answers are way far to the left, some for those who are in the middle, and some others are way far to the right. One thing I do not like at all is that his answers contain attack to his opponent. This is exactly one of reasons that politic makes me sick.
All in all, I am not really satisfied with their answers...
First, I'm a left wing extremist, not a conservative.
Second, the Supreme Court was able to exercise "checks and balances" before Marbury v Madison gave them power as the final arbiter of a law's appropriateness under the Constitution.
I would say that changing the definition of "person" to include corporations is way outside the purview of "checks and balances". It goes way beyond finding that a law is unconsitutional and actually warps entire categories of laws. Finding that a municipality is empowered to seize personally-owned real estate because there is a corporation that can make more money with that property is also pretty far afield of "checks and balances". Finding that a local government should stop counting votes in a close election is also outside of "checks and balances".
The current court has taken powers for itself that any of the previous courts would have found egregious.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I thought I was the only one who saw that Mitt Romney's answer to everything was to bash Obama...about entirely everything else but the question being asked.
I encourage everyone to do themselves a favor: count the number of negative things each candidate has to say and then tally it up.
So raising the taxes to punish the rich is somehow going to give it to the working and bridge that income inequality or fix all that ails you?
Please do not attempt to conflate greed with how tax policy should or does work and nobody said a damn thing about trickle down. Businesses need to make money to survive. Businesses need to survive and grow in order for there to be jobs. They do this be making sure their costs are less then their income in order to give profit that gets distributed. Taxes is one of those costs and when the others are too high, lowering them can and does spur growth.
I understand why you posted as an AC spewing crap like that. It's ok, If I posted something as ignorant as you did, I wouldn't want anyone knowing who I was either.
This is all pretty much common knowledge by now. If you don't know about them, I seriously doubt you are versed enough in the global warming debate to try to participate in it.
Try looking at James Hansen and how democrats staged his first session in front of congress in 1988. Also, look into the CRU East Angola emails.
I do not think I said anything about other guys in your imagination or elsewhere. Way to not only bring up a strawman but insist a red hearing is pertinent to what was actually said.
Perhaps if you would stick to what was said instead of what you think or want to be said, you would have a better grasp on reality.
Interesting. Imposing a severe carbon tax on America could actually _increase_ global emissions. Unintended consequences.
It's a valid point, but it's also not particularly difficult to avoid those consequences. Simply apply a carbon tax to imported goods as well. Get it right and not only would a carbon tax work to reduce emissions, it would also work to increase domestic manufacturing.
Except if they've been in the house for 20 years or so, in which case they're still paying the exact same payment, but their net worth is around a million. Why do you seem to think that everyone with high net worth has all kinds of disposable liquid cash? Hell, median net worth of the average 55 year old is 1 million (and I guarantee they're not all swelling with gobs of disposable income): http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/97/07/9707jw.pdf
It's a valid point, but it's also not particularly difficult to avoid those consequences. Simply apply a carbon tax to imported goods as well. Get it right and not only would a carbon tax work to reduce emissions, it would also work to increase domestic manufacturing.
When has the government gotten anything right?
This is all pretty much common knowledge by now.
It may be "common knowledge". But is it true?
If you don't know about them, I seriously doubt you are versed enough in the global warming debate to try to participate in it.
What debate? The science is the science. Debate policy, not fact.
Try looking at James Hansen and how democrats staged his first session in front of congress in 1988.
What on earth are you blathering about?
Also, look into the CRU East Angola emails.
I did. And?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Is what true? The fact that people have exaggerated global warming in the past or that the emails made it look like a scam to some people? Yes, that it true.
I sincerely do not think you are competent enough to be discussing this. I certainly appears your reading comprehension is lacking in critical areas. Of course we are talking about policy. This entire thread, entire article, entire story is about policy.
How do you measure carbon emissions in foreign countries? How do you tax it without breaking WTO rules?
You suggested they were just trying to rile me up or that I was misunderstanding them. Neither is the case. It is merely convenient for you to suggest that many of your fellow Republicans are not self-deluded ideologs, since I must certainly be misinterpreting them.
I guess I did.. My apologies. I had been fielding several other comments by imbeciles and took yours out of context.
Well, not really. Your interactions with the idiots you mentioned are not typical of the republicans I know of. If you asked them about Co2 or the heat trapping effect, the ones I know would just say "so".."what's your point and can you prove it?"
Actually, most the republicans I know understand global warming probably better then most democrats. I understand my anecdotal evidence is not proof of anything, but their concerns with it is in not hurting the economy, putting poor people at risk of financial hardships, or jumping into something that retards the financial success of a few countries and rewards others in the process.
What I always find funny here on slashdot is where republicans want to throw money at science like Romney does in studying more of the impact, causality and mitigation of global warming as well as developing efficiencies and viable sources of clean energy or making our energy cleaner and because it doesn't tow the liberal line of ***(deleted in order to not get offensive, but we know about the tax more, don't have kids, depend on the government with public transportation instead of being free with your own car and rewarding donors with gov backed loans as a solution), it isn't good enough. Then ./ bitches that they aren't spending money on science. What would the world be like today if the half billion spend on Solyndra was spent on science investigating pollution sequestration research or energy efficiency research instead? Don't tell me about self deluded.
How do you measure carbon emissions in foreign countries? How do you tax it without breaking WTO rules?
You don't need to measure carbon emissions in foreign countries, you only need to set a tariff equivalent to what the carbon tax would be if the goods were manufactured locally. It doesn't have to be particularly accurate, just close enough to discourage moving production offshore purely to avoid the carbon tax. As for WTO rules, the US has repeatedly violated them in the past. What makes you think they'd be reluctant to this time?
That's because many companies outsourced their labour to China. But the US still contributes to global warming on an immense scale compared to their number of inhabitants. It's high time you take the environment seriously.
-- Cheers!
" I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)" That is directly a dig at the claim that successful people got there through their smarts or hard work. The later line " The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together" does a lot to soften it. Granted, I did use stronger language pointing that out than was truly warranted, because all he technically indicated is that hard hard work and smarts are not sufficient to make someone successful.
The R's aren't focusing on the lines I quoted because "You didn't build that" sums up the same idea in a sound bite.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Oh come on, another out of context quote?
The sentence right before your quote starts is "If've you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own."
The way I see it there are two ways to take it:
1) The context means nothing and Obama really was saying y'all are nothing.
2) The context means everything and Obama was attacking the strawman that republicans believe businesses are fully independent of the environment they exist in.
I think it is a lot more reasonable to believe a politician would attack a strawman in a political speech than he would validate the strawman argument of his opponents.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The context doesn't save the quote. The quote is an attack on the possibility that they are smarter or harder working than other people. The context only mentions that someone else helped. It does not recognize that business owners may actually be harder working or smarter than other people, in addition to that help. Other than the later line that I already mentioned, there is no recognition that they are at all responsible for their own success. I think it's likely that he intended to attack a republican strawman (even rabid individualists recognize that other people did things for them. For which they were paid, of course) but his actual language was in fact a lot stronger than he intended.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari