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A Ray of Hope For Americans and Scientific Literacy?
An anonymous reader with a snippet from Politico: "A finding in a study on the relationship between science literacy and political ideology surprised the Yale professor behind it: Tea party members know more science than non-tea partiers. Yale law professor Dan Kahan posted on his blog this week that he analyzed the responses of more than 2,000 American adults recruited for another study and found that, on average, people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative. However, those who identified as part of the tea party movement were actually better versed in science than those who didn't, Kahan found. The findings met the conventional threshold of statistical significance, the professor said. Kahan wrote that not only did the findings surprise him, they embarrassed him. 'I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension,' Kahan wrote. 'But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the tea party,' he continued.'" More at the Independent Journal Review.
A lot of private practice Drs and Dentists back the tea party, as they vote single issue - lowering the taxes on their $300k+ incomes. Medical degrees and certifications are of course lumped in the science bucket so probably make up a large part of the total. They tend to dislike welfare programs such as medicaid and medicare too, as they cut into their profit margins.
I guess the assumption was that if you don't agree with something, you couldn't possibly know about it or understand it? I guess that's why there are so many atheists better versed in one or more bibles and religions than the supposedly devout followers of them?
Additionally, I could probably count as many "durp i done been abducted by aliens" and "angels are real!" morons from almost every political spectrum.
You spelled "know" incorrectly. Besides, it is the opposite political philosophy from the Tea Party crowd that have "magical thinking" about how things work. Mostly they just want centralized government to do less.
You like your computer networks decentralized, why not your government? Local is better.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
That can't be!
Everyone knows that the Tea party is a bunch of comic, laughable clowns with no grounding in reality. I mean, why else would they be so thoroughly lampooned using derogatory terms and snarky, dismissive comments.
Even Obama himself (praise be his name) mocks them.
It can't be true... can it?
You like your computer networks decentralized, why not your government? Local is better.
No, I don't, and no it isn't. Local government is as corrupt and incompetent as can be, and so deeply entrenched that only outside forces with actual eyes on them to keep them clean can fix them up.
Here is the actual Tea Party platform
Feel free to argue any of those points, but don't just make up stuff. Far too often (if not "always") there is no debate on the issues... just "but what about the children/unborn". Whatever.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The Unabomber knew lots of science too. It didn't make him any less crazy.
The stereotypical Tea Partier is, for me, somebody who is professional, a high achiever who believes that most, if not all of that is due to their own merit. They might be really good at science and math; but they're short on compassion and unwilling to admit that they benefited in their youth from programs that are socialist. It doesn't surprise me one bit that they'd be more scientifically literate than average. Scientific knowledge isn't everything when it comes to leadership, management, politics, etc.. In fact, I'd me inclined to say it isn't worth much at all in those positions. Face it. The squishy "human factors" matter.
What other variables were controlled for or tested?
Breaking News: Researcher assumes those he disagrees with and doesn't like are ignoramuses. Is shocked when he finds out they aren't.
People who think about politics and issues enough to join up with a nonmainstream group are often brighter and better informed than average. (Regardless of the wisdom of the positions they adopt.) The average types tend to stay in the parties they grew up with.
This would probably also hold with members of the IWW, for example.
I'm guessing it's almost all a selection effect.
I figured out in college that there were smart and dumb people (and informed and ignorant and good and evil ones) on all sides of pretty much any political question. That left emotions as the key issue, and it has never ceased to amaze and depress me how many people think of politics in the the most primitive, emotional ways: name-calling, tribalization, and tons of logical fallacies, all in the service of flinging feces at the Evil Others Who Don't Vote The Right Way.
The Tea Party is an interesting case in point. Their views, boiled down, amount to 1) the federal government should stick to its Constitutional powers, and 2) not spend more money than it has. Those are hardly extreme notions, but you'd never know it from the vicious attacks on them. This is not to say that every Tea Partier is correct on everything, or that their aren't nuts and unsavory types among them, but any political division that encompasses roughly 25-30% of the population will have some nuts and unsavory types.
So I don't find this result terribly surprising, but the people who think Tea Partiers are all ignorant racist/sexist/fascist/homophobes will certainly be surprised.
Final note: anyone interested in the psychology of political belief should check out the work of Jonathan Haidt, particularly his work on moral foundations theory. No matter what you believe politically, it will help you understand why the people who disagree with you think the way they do.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
A postulate such as this requires a probability-theory generalization of Betteridge's law. To wit: fat chance.
And people wonder why the US is all fucked up?
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
KAHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaNNNN!!!!!!!!!
That is all.
Grr filter.
Ron Paul types are idealists, not your "normal" Republicans. We don't think of Ron Paul as a TPer, but that's only because he's so extreme. He's also a bit weird (i.e. mystical) which is why he stayed in that party.
The anti-science people are merely Republicans. There's actually very little conservative about them, and when you ask them about certain aspects of government relationship with people, they'll go left of Stalin and insist upon an extremely authoritarian police state that tells people what to do.
Then there are the non-mystics. They know about science, because science is the only way anyone has ever come up with, for understanding Anything; it turned out that everyone else (the non-scientists) were always lying about everything they said. So of course, they're informed. Not extremely informed, just better than average (remember: average is a pretty low bar). And a lot of them are idealists too. And .. get this .. some of them go with non-planned economies, really thinking that a free market algorithm will tend to find some fairly good optima (and by "fairly good" they mean something superior to everything you've ever seen in real life). So they become Tea Partiers.
That isn't to say all non-mystics become TPers; some believe in Philosopher Kings instead. If only we put unbelievable amounts of power into the hands of the best planners, they'll do Good. And also do better than anything you've ever seen in real life.
And then there's the other 90% of the population, who believe in mysticism. They split between Republican and Democrat however their parents did. And then they (incorrectly) label themselves as conservatives or liberals, or sometimes even become their self-assigned right/left labels through the power of cognitive dissonance. But without the idealism or any intellectual component at all. So they'll project anti-mysticism by knowing about evolution or global warming, but they're really doing it as dogma, not science. They just happen to be correct, as a matter of luck. Had they been told to believe in Body Thetans, they would.
I think that means "they know just enough to be dangerous". Perhaps on occasion little knowledge is worse than none at all.
That said, I do not find Tea Party supporters laughable at all. On the contrary - I think they are dead serious, and quite scary.
Tea party members - feel free to mod this "troll".
I am an American of Chinese descent, and I happen to strongly agree with *some* of Tea Party's core values, mainly, a fiscally responsible, and socially less intrusive government, as well as personal independence and responsibility.
The Tea Partiers I've come in contact with over the years (there are a bunch of them here in Texas) are generally nice people, and mostly WASPs, unsurprisingly. Their not-so-subtle religious fundamentalism as well as racial superiorism are a huge put off, NONETHELESS, most are well educated, and have a genuine respect for education and science, if not passion/devotion.
Oh, you mean Jared Lee Loughner who was described as ""left wing, quite liberal,"[43] "radical."[44]" amd was registered as an independent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner
Your bias is showing.
Perhaps their idea of compassion just doesn't involve using the threat of force to take money from others for their own ends.
Your #1 is a flat out lie.
The rest I'll be willing to settle that you're simply deluded about. The spittle flecked hatred is palpable.
That's why we have elections.
If they piss off enough people, throw the bums out!
Don't blame them for taking advantage of a free taxpayer provided lunch.. its the electorate who are asleep at the switch and tolerate it. Its HIGH time we organized ourselves and get a government in place which represents the electorate, not just the special interest groups.
They will try to keep their stuff secret, just as a kiddie porn collector will do. Its up to the voters to DEMAND open government, and be willing to quickly expel via recall any politician who promised lipservice then fails to deliver.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Everyone is run through those "programs", and only some come out as high achievers and well-paid professionals. If the program were the cause, then everyone would come out the same.
Flawed logic. Take a group, and give them all the benefit of a socialist program, like government financed education. Some will do better than others, which is at least closer to a meritocracy than would otherwise be the case. Eliminate that socialist program, and only the well off will be able to afford a decent education for their children. You now have a system that is based more on your parent's wealth than your merit. Hence people who believe they've done well because of their merit, and believe that's what success should be based on, should be in favor of such a socialist program.
News anchors and columnists still think anyone that isn't in the Democratic Party is a bible thumping, gun clinging, racist hillbilly. And their view is what gets spread to people in big cities who never experienced a tea party member for themselves. No surprise then that the researcher was surprised that tea party members have a large nerd contingent. We weren't surprised because we've seen them here on /. quite a bit.
They also don't know enough history to understand that they are calling for a system where they are run by Dukes and Earls and a Monarch with very loose control over all it it - the sort of thing George Washington saved them from. That's their "small government" - all hail King Koch!
Have any of you RTFA, and looked at the website this is posted on? Pretty much a blog, a year and a half old with "stories", i.e. bloglinks so vacuous towards everyone. "Independent Journal Review" ? Slashdot just got Onion'ed.
The Soviets had a similar problem - except the lefties were in control and imprisoned or murdered the "deniers".
I won't mince words. Anyone who conflates what's widely considered a "leftie" in America with Stalinists, is a clown.
Well, there's really two different Tea Party movements.
One is your typical American-style libertarians -- essentially anarcho-capitalists, or at least somewhere in that corner.
But one of their key issues is slashing taxes. And wealthy people and corporations love that, so they pump a ton of money into "tea party" astroturf groups (like the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity) that use fear and hatred to boost membership. Which is the side of the group that hits the media hard of course, because that's where all the money is.
Then money taken by threat of force could legitimately be used for what? If you say nothing, you're an anarchist.
Just having a scientific leadership is enough to lift the group as a whole above average. Ayn Rand readers giving marching orders to truck drivers. Sounds about right.
Exactly. The Tea Party is full of well-financed astroturf organizations fooling the less informed into supporting the best interests of their billionaire backers. No shit quite a few of them are very well educated -- you think Koch's kids (do they have kids?) would be high school dropouts?
I suspect the results may depend heavily on where you find the respondents. Run the survey in a wealthier area and you'll get Tea Party backers, who will of course be quite well educated. Run it in a poorer area and you'll get Tea Party followers, who probably aren't.
You've got it backwards. That astroturf "movement" was funded and assisted so that large numbers of people that opposed the regulations that Koch and the other funders disliked could be bussed in to protests to give an appearance of a lot of support. The people that organised the transport, media releases etc were not "Tea Partiers" themselves but professionals paid to create events. Most of the tea party was literally a rented crowd which is why it has no cohesion and nobody within doing much in the way of organising anything. Left alone they do not appear to be able to organise a drunken party in a brewery.
I'm not knocking the individuals who stand for whatever they do, but instead that it's a disorganised mob that cancel each other out and ultimately don't really stand for anything. They are a weird "only in America" footnote whose time passed once the adult supervision driving the busses decided to do something else.
The ironies are many, the largest of which are the strident calls for replacing the United States with the sort of fuedalistic system that the Boston tea party was a protest against. "Getting the government out of people's lives" really means letting the rich and powerful run a country without interference from the people - just like those English Lords could do.
Our best hope for scientific literacy for Americans is immigration reform.
Get enough people from places where they don't think the world was made in 6 days and it might raise the average some.
Either that or hope the South secedes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The irony of someone accusing the Tea Party of "Almost assassinat[ing] an American congresswoman" in the same post that decries "[d]ivid[ing] America to the worst point since the Civil War" is painful. The former had NOTHING to do with the Tea Party, and the accusations that it did were a prime example of the vitriol that's come to dominate political debate.
I don't support most of the platform that's associated with the Tea Party, but the accusation that they've somehow been more vitriolic is ridiculous (although they haven't been less). A simple scan of the comments here is the perfect counterpoint.
local governments just get picked apart one by one by the Corps and the 1%. A centralized gov't can be abused, but local govt is useless. It was the Federal Government that ended slavery and that bogus 'Separate but Equal' nonsense. Most conservatives championing small gov't just want one small enough they can abuse it themselves. Petty tyrants like Ron and Rand Paul that are all in favor of individual freedom as long as it's one of the freedoms they personally want.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You like your computer networks decentralized, why not your government? Local is better.
Exactly what part of the common network protocol specifications is decentralized? Last I checked all of the globally useful protocols were defined by a very centralized standards organization. The endpoints might be decentralized but if there wasn't some form of governing body to make sure it all works together, then you wouldn't have things like this forum to post stupid comments on -- or at least you'd only have a significantly smaller "local" version.
Yes, too much government can be bad. Not enough government is worse.
Let's see. Everyone is run through those "programs", and only some come out as high achievers and well-paid professionals. If the program were the cause, then everyone would come out the same. Maybe there is something to the concept that some people are different than others and they can excel because of who they are and not the socialist programs they were subjected to?
SERIOUSLY? Even within my small home town of 10,000, the quality of public school that you went to was pretty directly related to how wealthy your parents were. The school that all the doctors' and lawyers' kids went to? Renovated every 10 years, 20 or less kids per class, teachers' aides in every room, a number of gifted programs, and a lab full of modern PCs, along with PCs in every room, laptop carts, smart white boards, etc. But if you lived in one of the apartment complexes behind the mall you were going to the school where the bricks were falling off and the classes were packed and with few additional programs and your tech classes were taught on shared Apple IIes. In the same school district in the same town.
By highschool all of those schools filtered together...and you know what? I went to the elementary school with all the rich kids, and in highschool guess who I saw in all my AP classes, all my advanced math and science and such? The vast majority were the same kids I'd gone to elementary with -- even though there were six elementary schools in the district.
The problem isn't that these "socialist" programs don't work. The problem is that they aren't actually socialist.
2) Refused to even allow debate about gun-law reform as children are murdered in movie theatres and preschools. (2012)
That's because some of us are intelligent enough to have observed that criminals do not obey laws. We have also observed that governments which disarm their people become tyrannical. Want my guns? Come get 'em.
3) Held hostage the national debt forcing the most austere sequester in federal government history, leading to spending cuts and furloughs (2013)
Good. Any spending cut is a good spending cut. As it turns out, us fiscally conservative people you hate use our money more wisely than the government does.
4) Shut down the government and almost lead to the worst global economic disaster since the Great Depression (TWO DAYS AGO)
Funny. Two weeks of no government and I didn't notice a single difference. Global economic disaster? Melodrama much?
If you were to get a proper representation of the Tea-Party demographic (the three-C's: climate-change deniers, creationists, capitalists), you would find that there are more GEDs and high-school drop-outs than college elite. You would also find that multiple studies have proven that the college elite (read: EDUCATED) tend to be liberal.
You might not be patting yourself on the back if you'd stood in line to vote in my precinct. Obama's biggest constituencies seem to be welfare trash, non-English-speaking immigrants, drug addicts, and various other dregs of the big city. Conversely, everyone I know who owns a business AND a college degree votes Republican. The backbone of the American economy is not interested in the opinions of ivory tower liberals or Starbucks coffee-jerks.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Those that are literate enough to figure out what the tea party actually means might understand the science. The rest joined the "Don't Let O-bama Take our Gunz" party and have no interest in science beyond muzzle velocity and jacket composition.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
"Short on thinking the government is the source of all compassion. You can't claim that someone is short on compassion because they don't support your enforced-via-taxes government-is-the-only-way compassion model."
Well said. Compassion for one pet cause equals putting someone else in the poorhouse. Obamacare is a classic example. In only the smallest of 3 categories are premiums projected to be "less than expected", but what that report omitted was that all 3 categories are expected to have higher premiums... it's just that the one is going to be less higher "than expected".
How can you justify a program that was promised to have "no significant effect" on rate-payers, which was repeatedly going to "make no difference", yet is actually driving premiums up for almost all of America?
Forbes Magazine actually published an article asserting (and providing some evidence) that the healthcare.gov site works poorly on purpose, because the government doesn't want you to know how high the actual rates are.
The Republican party is actually very slit up.
You have the evangelicals, these are the Anti-Science People, their religion tells them that science is wrong, and they should follow only what the bible says. these guys swinged republican, to stand against the abortion issue, then they got more power, now they are the Anti-Science wing to the Republican Party.
You have the big Business men, These guys may know a good deal about Science and Technology, However they have earned a lot of money and they just don't want to waste it away on frivolous spending, and constantly changing regulations.
Now the Tea Party, is the middle ground of the two, they don't have any issues with Science, and want what the Big Business Men want (even though it may not be in their best interests) But they see how effective the evangelicals were with their no hold back attitude so they adopted it. It isn't the lack of Science Skills is their issue but stubbornness to realize that there are a lot of details to maintain. In many ways the Tea Party is like Physics Majors XKCD.
You can be good at science and still be very stupid.
Now the Democrats can jump on a lot of anti-science band wagon stuff too.
Such as Hyper Environmentalism. Where people condemn new technology and not consider that its tradeoffs overall is better.
Then you got the Foodies, Where they want all natural everything even if there is no evidences to their views.
Heck I remember when they found some findings that GMO Foods doesn't have any heal effects, all these guys jumped up an arms and just won't believe the data, making excuses, attacking the scientists motives etc...
However being the Colleges and Universities will tend to be supported by Government aid, Scientist will be more naturally gravitated towards the Democrat party.
For most of them, it isn't as much about the party being better then the republicans but the fact they pay the bills.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Funny, I've never met a single one who wasn't
In other words you almost never meet them because you are so insular - I know your type; you are the type I would not tell I am a Tea Party member because you would automatically turn against me without thought, and you'd never suspect me of belonging because my views don't match up with your bigoted notions of Tea Party members.
It's a shame that there are even some people I consider good friends who I cannot admit to being fiscally conservative, because I see how unhinged you become at the thought of any kind of conservative in your ranks...
Something to chew on is that Tea Party members are WAY more tolerant of alternative viewpoints than you are; we have to be.
The Social Conservatives are just the people more used to being loathed by people like you so they don't mind telling you what they are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What he means is what he finds out from international journalism reporting on the subjects.
I don't think his bias is showing, I think the media's bias is showing. His opinions are subjected to those biases. Or in other words, his opinions are limited to the exposure he receives which being an outsider, it limited to a few sources. I doubt he has enough interest to actually have a bias.
The stereotypical Tea Partier is, for me, an unemployed truck driver in front of the Capitol Building holding an effigy of Obama and a sign with racist epithets. I'm not trolling here; it's what a lot of people saw during the early days of its "coming out" on the cable news networks 4-5 years ago.
You should probably learn the difference between what's on television, and what is reality. You have just described a Democrat voter -- because your unemployed truck driver is probably a Teamster who votes Democrat because his union does.
I am a college graduate, a business owner, and I was Tea Party before you ever heard of it.
Stereotypes can be useful things, but only if you pull your head out of your ass and get them right.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
"SERIOUSLY? Even within my small home town of 10,000, the quality of public school that you went to was pretty directly related to how wealthy your parents were. The school that all the doctors' and lawyers' kids went to? Renovated every 10 years, 20 or less kids per class, teachers' aides in every room, a number of gifted programs, and a lab full of modern PCs, along with PCs in every room, laptop carts, smart white boards, etc."
And their property taxes paid for that school district's budget. All that remodeling, and all those teachers. It all ultimately came out of those people's pockets.
If you don't like that, then pressure government to stop paying for schools via property taxes. Maybe you'd rather pay out of your pocket? Or maybe it should be from state sales taxes? If the latter, at least you wouldn't have one district far richer than another.
I want to call bullshit on this. The Tea Party not only likes buying pseudoscience from Koch Brothers funded libertarian thinktanks like the Heartland Group, consistently is filled with people who think evolution and the big bang are Satan's tricks, and identify largely with the evangelical crowds. Something isn't right here.
That pretty much matches a good number of the Tea Party people I know. They got a good education in the sciences from very good public schools and universities but have nothing good to say about the education system and don't want to pay for it. Many of them work for government contractors.
Flawed logic, assuming that a socialist program is beneficial to all.
Oh please. Would it make you happy if I changed it to "potentially benefits", or can you work your way past some miniscule ambiguity of colloquial English? Are you seriously going to compare that to a whopper (warning: colloquialism) like "if the program were the cause, then everyone would come out the same"? We can have a substantive debate, or we can play sophistic games. Never mind, you've already made your preference clear.
Nobody is saying they ALL are, but their vocal majority is pretty awful, so guess what? If your vocal majority and the ones in control are batshit crazy and off the wall kooky especially when it comes to civil rights, climaye science, public education, taxes, and immigration, you MIGHT get lumped in their with them. I'm sorry, the Tea Party has made it pretty clear that they have gone off the deep end?
Just to add a bit to this, most of our perception of political entities we are not directly involved with are largely shaped by the wording others use to define and deal with them. In the recent shutdown episode, some of the conservative commentators have compared tactics by the president and democrats with Saul D. Alinsky's rules for radicals and found most of them to be in use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals
I will highlight a few that specifically intend to instil a picture of a group that is not consistent with reality.
âoeRidicule is manâ(TM)s most potent weapon.â
âoeThe threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.â
âoeIf you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.â
âoePick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.â
If in fact these tactics are in use, it is no wonder people find out what they think about the other guy is often wrong or vastly over inflated.
Non-sequitur. The point was about the compassion of members of the tea party (of which I am not one for what it's worth).
Tea Partiers don't seem to understand that the Social Security and Medicare programs they don't want changed in any way - both programs by the big, evil government they despise - are government programs. Oh, and that their friends in the Republican party - the people they're voting for all of the time - have spent the last 80 years (in the case of Social Security) and the last 50 years (in the case of Medicare) trying to destroy both programs. By any chance were the Yalies (that bastion of revolutionary thought) who conducted the study Tea Partiers themselves? ;-)
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he is suggesting that progressives (educated scientifically literate liberals) want a philosopher king. Woodrow Wilson could be considered the prototype of such a king. An authoritarian schoolmaster if there ever was one. Willing to trample the rights of the individual to make the correct decision *for* that individual. The fact he was very well educated and probably right quite a large portion of the time doesn't alleviate the effects of removing individual responsibility and freedom upon creative thought.
And the notion that a greedy optimization algorithm like a anarcho-capitalist pure free market is so incredibly elegant that it must work, neglects the nasty inelegant humans that are part of that market and screw everything up. If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter how elegant it is. I think that is the mysticism the gp was talking about. The faith Ron Paul has placed in elegant ideas often involves handwaving and appeals to common sense, rather than empircal tests. I think that is somewhat unfair as he does cite historical incidents, he just has different interpretations from his detractors. Also doing correctly scaled economic tests that control for all the variables is impossible. Still, he's kinda handwavy even compared to economists.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Everyone knows that the Tea party is a bunch of comic, laughable clowns with no grounding in reality.
Not at all. From outside the US, particularly from places like Europe where we have suffered when countries like extreme right wing political parties get out of control they look dangerous. The finding that they actually know science and reality but choose to reject it makes them scarier. I'd be far happier if I thought that all they lacked was education instead of medication.
Arguing that the federal government should not spend more money than it has in the depths of a recession is remarkably ignorant.
Let's see. Everyone is run through those "programs", and only some come out as high achievers and well-paid professionals. If the program were the cause, then everyone would come out the same.
Let's put this one down in the "not scientifically literate" category.
Huh? George Washington lost to the French who were the only ones still operating with a system ran by Dukes, Earls (actually they didn't have Earls) and a Monarch who thought he was appointed by God.
Now the English at the time of George Washington had a Parliament who was partially elected (the elected House controlled the purse) by the land owners and larger renters but was in need of electoral reform with whole cities without representation and ridings (electoral districts) with only a couple of voters who were quite happy to sell their vote to a rich business man. It had been 80 years since the last King who thought he was appointed by God was booted out by Parliament which finally was in undisputed control (The Supremacy of Parliament). So the King had about the same political power as the current Queen though he was more vocal. The Lords did have one house of Parliament so they could slow down and affect the democratic process and do things like push for limited copyright when the elected people were going to make it forever.
It was Parliament that enacted the laws that pissed off the colonists, a partially elected Parliament who did not represent the colonists and truthfully represented the rich, who were a mixture of business men who didn't want competition and landed gentry who thought they were special because of their parents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If people are that venal when their constituents can actually show up at their house and complain, what makes you think that the ones with more power over more money, with less direct interaction with the voters, are more honest?
Taxes are the lowest they've been in half a century.
The thing is, the tea party stereotype is not so much built on "partisan caricature" but rather based on the people they elect. Michele Bachmann ? Need I say more ?
Both Republicans and Democrats have officeholders who conform to the caricatures of the other side. Both also have officeholders who don't fit the caricatures. It all depends on how even-handed you want to be. If you think "Michelle Bachman, Ha Ha Ha!" is a fair way of dismissing the concerns of the Tea Party and/or Republicans, you can't object when someone dismisses progressives and/or Democrats with "Hank Johnson, Ha Ha Ha!" (Johnson is the Congressman who asked, at a House hearing, if stationing more troops on Guam might cause the island to "tip over and capsize."
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
You would also find that multiple studies have proven that the college elite (read: EDUCATED) tend to be liberal.
You should also note that this is a very SMALL correlation. Stop feeling that liberals are the smart ones, since you won't have to search to find many that are dumber than Sarah Palin. People everywhere tend to be parrots, repeating what they've heard and getting a hit of endorphins when their peers agree with them. This applies to people with or without college educations.
I think the more heavily liberal or conservative a region, the dumber they get as everyone keeps parroting each other. It takes no smarts at all to debate with people who agree with you but it takes a lot more intelligence to debate coherently with someone you disagree with.
Networks are not decentralized. At all.
remember that it's effectively "survey of idiots finds that idiocy rates were slightly different between the two groups of idiots".
Newsflash: that ain't a ray of sunshine.
Local government is easier to influence, however. Your vote in State and national elections have zero impact when taken on its own. In a local election, you actually stand a chance of making a difference. The problem is when people choose not to attempt making a difference.
One problem is that it's not at all clear what "stick to Constitutional powers" means, it is something that people can validly disagree about. However many of the loudest Tea Partiers, at least the ones that most people manage to hear, believe that it is all obvious and there's no need for debate. Some may even propose unconstitutional actions (defaulting on the debt which seems on the surface to be against the 4th clause of 14th amendment).
The other problem is "spending more money than it has". This is a great principle. But it has to be achieved in a rational manner. That means not cutting it off cold turkey. We actually managed to slow this down and flatten the growth of the debt during the Clinton era (with lots of Republican help of course). However there does seem to be a big desire to do more than just keeping the spending in limit, but to actually reduce the spending even after there is no debt. Plus the idea of using taxes to eliminate the debt is anathema to most tea partiers.
As you state the two principles above, there are probably many liberals who would agree with those statements but who would be unwelcome in the Tea Party movement. That's because there's also a very strong conservative and libertarian leaning there. So while there many be many who say they are only basing their views on those two principles only, they also have very specific ideas about the corollaries they derive from those principles.
Frankly, local government can be held more accountable in almost every model I can devise. While all people have the same motives, people that are worried about losing their jobs immediately seem to be more accountable than Presidents with minimum four-year terms and large armed forces at their discretion.
Go read the rest of my post.
It's clearly not just about how much money the district has when you can easily see inequality even within two schools in the same district pulling from the same budget. Even if you funded all schools entirely from the federal budget you'd still probably have a huge amount of inequality between them.
A 'socialist' model would be something like $ (students) * (cost of living) * C + (average per-day mileage of buses) * K per school.
Our model is more like $(students) * (average salary of town) * (percentage of students from above-average income households) * C
My co-worker is a Tea Party advocate, and I generally consider him bright, although a tad stubborn.
His issue with "science" is that he believes people in general are motivated by their wallet; and climate science, for example, is allegedly heavily biased toward "alarmist" results in order to justify yet more studies of a (allegedly fake) growing threat. If there are no fires, then nobody hires fire-fighters.
And evolutionists are allegedly biased to "deny a creator" so that they can sin without penalty. He knows all the usually down-side talking points, like the Piltdown fraud, the relatively suddenness of the Cambrian Explosion, few if any new phyla since then, etc.
Complex topics are difficult to verify on one's own and one has often has to rely on expert interpretation of fossils, weather patterns, etc.
Perhaps if he really dug into the topics, he'd see the stronger evidence, but it's not his interest to do such. He likes military history the most and reads only cursory articles on science-related topics, usually from biased sources. You are not going to "get to the bottom" of the topic that way.
As a semi-side note, I once wanted to "get to the bottom" of the UFO mystery and purchased many books on the topic from both sides. Unfortunately I still can't come to a conclusion. The skeptics don't make a good enough case to stop exploring UFO's. I consider it an "open mystery" still. Not everything has an available answer. I would note that the top skeptics surprisingly don't claim witnesses to the top cases are lying, but rather propose psychological explanations. But those explanations are odd, full of a few contradictions, and untested.
Table-ized A.I.
You mean vocal minority? The most vocal part of any organization will almost assuredly be a minority of that organization. The Tea Party is no different.
Do you judge Christians by the Evangelicals, or liberals by eco-terrorists?
That's because they don't have complete control. Give a single party unlimited power, and that's what they become, left or right.
The tea-partiers may or may not understand science, but, fortunately for the future of our democratic republic, they are manifestly ignorant of the legislative process, which is why they just got their heads handed to them on a platter in the U.S. Congress.
"Even if you funded all schools entirely from the federal budget you'd still probably have a huge amount of inequality between them."
That may be true but I don't agree with your idea of a "socialist" model. It is "getting all the money from the Federal government" that would be a socialist model.
Actually a lot of big business is just fine with increased regulation, which generally hurts smaller businesses more.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Technically socialism is an economic model, not a political model. Social Anarchism for example is a form of socialism with no government at all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anarchism
Not the tea party people... but rather the rabid statists that demonize them because they disagree with their big government agenda.
Understanding was never a priority. Having a discussion was never a priority. Getting to know was never a priority.
And so the statists and those stuck in their echo chamber do not not understand, have not discussed, and really don't know what they're talking about on the subject.
And they won't until they're prepared to put away the petty insults and ACTUALLY make some kind of effort to have an intelligent conversation on the issues.
Till that happens... their comments will remain as mindless as we've come to expect.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Whether I pay the free lunch for the douches or the turd sammiches, please tell me the effin' difference.
And don't come with that "but if enough people..." bull. If the majority of people weren't mindless sheep that follow any leader, voting actually had a chance to change something and then we'd have to find some other way to legitimate our government 'cause voting would most certainly cease to exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We don't have a tax problem in-so-much as a spending and entitlement problem.
Do you want to win in American politics big time? Level with the public. Just stand up and say "vote for me and I'll give you FREE shit". It would be a landslide victory. Take America off life support and let it die already. We're not just financially bankrupt, but morally and ethically too.
Life is not for the lazy.
And technically redistribution of wealth, via spreading it all out via the Federal government, is an economic policy, not a political policy.
Because they also do the politician handshake and NEVER actually force the politicians to assume any responsibility for their results. If anything, losing an election gains them more immediate benefit. Seems fairly obvious historically. The fact that government energy monopolies exist, manned with "retired" politicians all over the country is just one glaring example. Trash "boards" in California with $100k sitting fees for showing up six times a year, etc...
People use computer networks for many different purposes, and decentralized network is not necessary always better. The fact that mainframe computers are still used by many enterprises and show no sign of declining suggests that some tasks are better done in a centralized environment. Replacing a mainframe computer with multiple computers spaced many miles apart may not be necessary cost effective or even practical. "Local is better" may make a nice theory, but blindly claiming that a theory is a cure-all solution for all problems without checking that the prerequisite conditions has been met, could result in wastes and failures.
The Actual Pauline Kael Quote—Not As Bad, and Worse
The clearest example of the bizarrely naive quality of hermetic liberal provincialism was attributed to the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael almost 40 years ago, and has been discussed in right-wing circles ever since. It went something like this: “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” ... more
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
So where where the colonial elected members of Parliament? Obviously there were none. Consider that and you'll see my point. The colonies were most definitely a hangover from feudalism and the citizens of the colonies had effectively zero political power, being run entirely by the rich and powerful with no interest in the well being of the colonists. Has that spelt out the analogy clearly enough yet?
The "effin' difference"? In most cases, it is far, far easier to "throw the bums out" at a local level, where getting word out and mobilizing the citizenry is way easier to do. The local "bums" don't have the massive reservoir of money and consultants to get them out of a jam like the national office-holders do. You screw up as a local official, and you can almost count on being ejected from office.
The smaller the population, the more an official has to be attuned to the cares and whims of the people he ostensibly serves. It's a question of simple logistics.
Now this doesn't scale up very well, so places like Los Angeles or New York City have a harder time putting this into effect than, say, Minot, ND.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Defaulting on the debt is only a scare job. The US government takes in roughly 200 billion a month in tax revenue and serving the debt only take about 20 billion. The problem with not raising the debt limit is that we spend roughly 1/3 more then we take in so spending over that limit would be absolutely required to stop. This is easy to do but it would mean that entitlements stop and other things until either the debt can get under control or the limit is raised.
So a default for not raising the debt limit is only a default if the president insists on not servicing our debt and keeping entitlements and/or other government not subject to a shutdown active.
There were economic activities during the Clinton year that made a balanced budget more probable that simply won't be recreated. We had Y2k fears which spurred an entire industry trying to avoid a computer meltdown that would send us back to the stone age, there was the creation and conversions of the IRAs to ROTH IRAs in which retirement income that was saved before tax had the option to pay the taxes and then become tax free at withdraw. We also saved a load on government spending by modernizing a lot of the departments and automating some systems. But Clinton actually negotiated with congress when the government was shut down which got welfare reform and a few other footholds in entitlement reform that allowed the budget to be balanced.
President G.W Bush had actually produced and passed a balanced budget in 2001 which projected to be balanced his entire first term as president. The problem is that those other activities didn't follow into his term and economic activity collapsed greatly after 9/11. Something else that Clinton had was cheap energy. This is something we found to be missing during Bush's terms in office, somewhat present today but is unlikely to happen on the same scale because of the threat of global warming. Energy is something the impacts everything from the production of food and products to the enjoyment of either as well as the costs just to get to work. If you look back at almost every booming economy in history (in the US) we have had cheap energy and when that energy became too expensive, the boom was over. But note, a booming economy doesn't mean a balanced budget or debt reduction. It just makes it more plausible if someone where to attempt to do it.
It would depend on your meaning of liberal. There are Tea Party politicians who appose the federal government doing a lot of th
Yes, it is. It's an economic policy enforced by a political entity. The point I was making is that the fact that it's distributed *by the federal government* isn't what makes it socialism -- the way it is distributed does.
$ (students) * (cost of living) * C + (average per-day mileage of buses) * K per school.
is an economic policy. It says how much money they get.
"getting all the money from the Federal government"
is a political decision. It says who does which tasks.
1.) Ultimately, "Tea Party" of the self-declared is little more than a bunch of true Scotsmen moving goalposts around. Once you get beyond "Tea Party" office-holders (i.e. the folks who actually get elected on what they declare to be "Tea Party values," and who are uniformly right-wing reactionaries), you're left with a myriad of small groups not much more than a dozen strong, who together can't even agree on what day it is. Which brings me to my next point...
2.) Knowledge of hard sciences is (at best) independent of knowledge of social sciences, or economics, or any number of other factors that arguably make one more fit to govern. Their inability to organize, to the point where they are being led around by the nose by the likes of Sarah Palin, should highlight this. So an average "Tea Party member" acknowledges anthropogenic climate change. Ask them what should, or even can be done about it. Ask them what is politically feasible to accomplish on a national or international level.
The author notes that he doesn't know any self-declared Tea Party members personally. The general inclination here is to view him as an "ivory tower academic." But there's a converse: the law professor doesn't know any Tea Party members because the Tea Party doesn't actually value the study of law.
Yep, the key is to give the various levels the various levels the power to watch each other, like the various branches of government within a state are meant to "balance" power and put a "check" on overreach. Civilization is an invention, we evolved to live in groups of a couple of hundred and that's why a small town can usually organise and take care of itself quite well. Our brains simply can't handle (let alone care about) all the individuals in a million strong city. Every human society if hierarchical, it's the only hammer we have to build civilizations. Yes it's possible to think of different ways of building civilizations, but in practice our tribal instincts always win the day.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Taxes are the lowest they've been in half a century.
Tax rates, maybe. But tax revenues tend to be in a fairly consistent range regardless of the actual rates.
Tax Revenues Return to Historical Average
Since World War II, tax receipts have averaged around 18.1 percent of GDP. Receipts have fallen due to the recession, but as the economy recovers, they will rise above the historical average level by the end of the decade, even if all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
As I said, the Parliament was in very bad need of electoral reform including ideally giving the established older colonies seats in Parliament. I wouldn't call it feudal no more then I'd call America feudal for not giving Puerto Rico voting seats in Congress. (did any territories have a vote in congress?)
It wasn't until something like 1947 before the UK seriously considered giving an American colony (Newfoundland) seats in Parliament and most people would agree that feudalism was long over by then. Even now places like the Falkland Islands don't have a seat in Parliament. Same can be said about Guam not having a seat in Congress. Colonies almost by definition don't have seats in the parent governments legislature and many colonies were run by businesses rather then government including a few of the American colonies starting that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The cognitive dissonance from this is that the politicians that seem to have the strongest tea party support tend to be the most scientifically backward bunch out there. From Michelle "pray the gay away" Bachman, to a whole host of global warming deniers. Have they decided to sacrifice their science principals to achieve the goal of lower taxes and smaller government, no matter what wacko they have to sign on with in order to get that?
A typical tea party type has more in common with a classic 19th century "liberal" than a modern "liberal".
A modern liberal has more in common with a 20th century collectivist (marxism, syndicalism, or corporatism) than a 19th century liberal.
A modern conservative has more in common with a 1930's progressive.
A modern progressive has more in common with a 20th century totalitarian (fascism, Stalinist communism).
All results of re-branding by the various ideologies after their various catastrophic failures.
But it's a better cut when it's against something you disagree with, right?
Really? Can you back that up with evidence or is it just a blind claim?
Give it a month or longer. Two weeks is nothing.
Fortunately we won't know how bad the effects of the US defaulting would have been. But I'm sure Ted Cruz will force us down that path again in a few months.
Therefore what? Are they citizens who have registered to vote? Yes? Then shut the fuck up.
Then you live a very sheltered life.
The backbone of the economy are the various and sundry people working out there, the ones whose wages have been stagnant for decades so the richest can take more home - and count on you to shit on the discussion and ensure nothing productive gets done.
... don't seem to be the ones elected to Congress in the last round of elections. I heard a report on the radio just the other day that stated that every single Tea Party-affiliated member of Congress that was elected in 2010 believed in a Young Earth (along with being knee-jerk climate change deniers and pretty much incapable of doing simple math when they get to talking about budgets). Where'd the researchers dig up the Tea Party folks that were exhibiting all the scientific knowledge? Surely not from the hallowed halls of Congress.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
"Yes, it is. It's an economic policy enforced by a political entity."
And Socialism isn't???
You are arguing against yourself. If you want to argue that Socialism is an economic policy, fine. It is. Technically. But if you want to argue that "redistribution of wealth" is an economic policy "backed by a political entity", then you have to accept that as a practical matter, so is Socialism. Everywhere that it exists.
You can't have it both ways.
I really think you need to read at least a bit of high school level history of how the colonies were run before commenting on the subject again - gut feeling and assumptions based on the modern day bring nothing but embarrassment.
I probably should have compared it to something else but thought people would have enough of a handle on history to get the point, and that they would not care if I used an example from outside of America.
Yes, socialism is backed by a political system. This does not have to be a government. Anarchy is a political system.
Linux is a piece of software backed by a hardware system. That does not make Linux hardware. Nor does it mean you can use 'Linux' and 'x86 system' interchangeably ('linux' is to 'socialism' as 'x86 system' is to 'funded by the government')
To stretch this analogy just a bit further...when I said 'this formula would be a socialist model', that would be like saying 'Cinelerra is professional video editing software'. That's kind of an opinion, I admit that formula could be crap. But to reply with 'No, socialism is for the federal government to be distributing the money' is like saying 'No, a multi-core CPU is professional video editing software'. Even if every professional video editing system has a multi-core CPU, that still doesn't make the CPU software. *Even if* socialism always requires a federal government redistributing the wealth, that still doesn't make that government the definition of socialism. And no, a multi-core CPU is not professional video editing software "as a practical matter". Even if they are "everywhere that it exists."
Don't blame them for taking advantage of a free taxpayer provided lunch
Why would I not blame them for that? Is it not possible to blame the people who do nothing about it and the people who abuse their power at the very same time? It is possible, and that's what I do.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Opportunist:
What you observe is exactly what I am referring to.... the majority of people being mindless sheep that follow any leader.
If these people get pissed off enough to put down their Hollywood drivel and sports and supervise those who control their lives - things will happen.
Yes, I said "supervise". Those people are elected. We pulled the levers that put them in office. They are beholden to US, yet we let them go willy-nilly and run their own show. I, for one, am highly disappointed with the performance of our so-called leaders.
You, like I, have been around long enough to see that way too many people do whatever the microphone-men tell them to do. And they wonder why they are treated like cattle.
If the electorate of this nation wake up in time, this mess can still be cleaned up in the election booth.
If they don't, it will be far messier. Riots. A lot of blood will get spilled.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Without a stronger central/federal government, we wouldn't have:
-The 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, and 24th amendments. Local governments are effectively prevented from discriminating based on race and gender.
-Won WWII. Being geologically isolated means we probably would not have been successfully invaded, but without the ability to conscript resources from the entire nation we probably would not have had the ability to project sufficient military power overseas.
-A space program of any sort. Again, the ability to pool resources for an undertaking no local government could possibly afford or would even consider. You can pretty much include any "Big Science" item; The Internet, The Manhattan Project, anything and everything the network of National Labs had a hand in really. You don't get big science without big funding.
-The national highway / railroad system. Imagine how costly and inefficient commerce would be with only a patchwork of locally built and owned roads and railroads, most of which would probably be toll roads to boot.
I'm sure if I review US history I could find a few more examples. I'm not trying to denigrate local governments - local governments are best suited for local issues and local actions. However when you are concerned about the nation and the rights and welfare of the citizens as a whole, you cannot rely on local politics to be consistent, fair or adequate.
=Smidge=
If the results are very surprising, "statistical significance" is not enough. They're probably still wrong.
That's Bayes 101.
they matter but they should be minimized. Right now what you get is a shitton of uninformed people screaming 'there out to be law' every time something bad happens and politicians rushing to appease them with half assed bills. Feel-good policies are rarely good from the macro perspective. Piling bad opportunistic laws upon laws leads to a contradictory, opaque mess that is impossible to track and understand by an average citizen so now you apparently need that enlightened ancient Egypt priesthood class aka the bureaucrats to keep things in order and the citizen can safely go back to his favorite TV show.
Cold analytic minds who are able to see through the complex systems, understand the concept of unintended consequences and don't fall for pretty soundbites are important, but they are undervalued in democratic systems, as their vote still counts as 1.
Ever listen to Ron Paul and Ted Cruz defend their religious beliefs? They are raging evangelicals.
You don't get to redefine political terms on the fly to mean something utterly different than what the rest of the world understands them to mean. If you do that then you might as well start calling the sky yellow and grass grey, because it amounts to the same thing, which is Orwellian doublespeak a la "Freedom is Slavery" and "War is Peace."
Here is the standard understanding of the political spectrum, since you don't seem to know what that is, or because you're being cute, "According to the simplest left-right axis, communism and socialism are usually regarded internationally as being on the left, opposite fascism and conservatism on the right."
That means authoritarianism is not the sole province of the left (to which "liberal" belongs) or of the right (to which "conservative" belongs). The entire rest of the world understands that fascism and socialism are distinct political philosophies that stand on the opposite ends of that left-right political axis. Conflating the two is ludicrous and bespeaks profound ignorance of political science. It is nonsense. It is like asserting that democracy=fascism=socialism=monarchy=theocracy because they all have hierarchy and are not the one truly moral and good political philosophy, anarchy. You see? I have just done exactly what you have done by claiming Republicans are "left of Stalin," and it's ridiculous.
"Conservative" does not mean what you think it means, as a catch-all for everything sweet and light in the world like chocolate fudge sundaes and bunny rabbits and sweet, blond haired blue-eyed children gamboling on a sunny meadow. "Liberal" also does not mean what you think it means, as a catch-all for everything dark and evil in the world like taxes and public education and rules and safe food in your grocery store and helping out a random person whose car died on the side of the road. They are both political labels that describe political philosophies that are different, not smears. This is easily understandable by acknowledging that liberals also like sundaes, bunnies, and children, and that conservatives also like education and help random strangers whose cars are broken down on the side of the road.
Please quit perpetuating the idiotic meme that claims otherwise. Calling Obama a socialist fascist marxist muslim, all of which are mostly diametrically opposed (marxism espouses atheism, for example), does not tar him with anything because all of the tar has already wound up on you.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Tea partiers may know more hard science, but they know less economic science and social science.
Exhibit 1, the shutdown. Exhibit 2, Ted Cruz generally.
Well it really depends,
The problem is when the government starts moving a bit too fast and starts pushing out a bunch of regulations that makes things difficult. Yes it hurts the small businesses more, but still it hinders the large businesses too.
For example in Health Care,
For Federal Meaningful Use, we need to be sure we Record Race, Ethnicity, Language. Where Race and Ethnicity is rather general.
For NY State regulation we need to record information in far more detail, and often these details don't fit well with the general ones from the federal.
So we end up having to ask the patient twice to fill out this information, that has very little to do with actual heal care, but more so the politicians can understand the demographics of their area so they can alter their stances to get reelected.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Good. Any spending cut is a good spending cut.
So cut tax rebates and military spending.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
The Koch brothers, aka Tea Party, don't really care about science as such. All they want is to not pay taxes or get EPA fines for pouring toxins into the environment. If you tell them that their actions kill people why should they care if science or the tooth fairy tells you so? They just don't care. They simply want more money for themselves and they believe selfishness is the only ideal. Caring about the suffering they inflict on the world would be a sign of human frailty.
well, compassion implies a level of maturity which is not often hallmarked by using violence-infused, simplistic terms to make a nuanced point.
"this current recession"
you were saying something about remarkable ignorance?
"I support a good part of the Tea Party platform because I can do math"
Really, that's your opener?
"Today, however, the effective rates are highest in USA history"
No, not even close. How such idiocy promulgates when so much accurate information is so readily available demonstrates appalling intellectual laziness.
I'm in favour of a minimal government, with minimal spending, minimal laws and overall minimal involvement in people's lives. Essentially let people do what the fuck they want so long as they do not prevent other people from doing so.
This is not, however, what the Tea Party offers.
Interesting study.
Now please explain Sarah Palin.
Limiting government and being fiscally responsible are not extreme notions and most sane individuals support these ideals. What the Tea party gets insulted for is their insane black-and-white, near sociopathic approach to these ideals. This ranges from burn it all down and start over to blindly cutting huge swaths of programs with little concern for the consequences.
Or maybe that's just the loudest extreme arm of the group. Maybe the real Tea Partiers aren't like those elected to congress, where they vilify the poor and make some of the most idiotic statements I've ever heard uttered from politicians. Maybe we're all just getting a really bad impression because that is what the media wants us to see. The media shows us a bunch of uneducated white bigots with a banner "Tea Party" underneath it, and the real Tea Partiers just shake their heads and weep over how their good honest movement has been usurped by a bunch of neo-fascist, anti-science douchebags.
If that's the case, then the Tea Partiers need to make a solid effort to get these nutbags that claim to represent them out of office and get some real people in there. They are making you guys look bad.
~X~
I would be more open to your slam against stereotypes except you counter by stereotyping Democratic voters in the same way and on top of that you use the epithetical slur I hear so many conservatives use to refer to the Democratic Party (i.e. Democrat voter, Democrat party).
In the US, we don't have the system you've described in your story. Government education is extremely expensive and the children who learn useful things mostly live in wealthy areas. Children who live in poor areas get a much worse education at a roughly similar cost. Almost all of the money goes to pay union staff who get paid regardless of whether the children learn. And no substantive reforms are possible because the unions own the politicians.
Meritocracy is a good theme for a story. But government is about money, power, and control. People with merit are generally seen as a threat to that power or a resource to be exploited. Anyone who achieves anything is subject to taxation, audits, suspicion, and coercion by government -- unless they have powerful government cronies.
If we could have a socialist government that works, like some European countries, that would be a lot better than what we have now. We could actually have smaller, more honest government then. But we can't. Government in the US is corrupt. It's not like in your stories.
So what? The unions own the schools, the kids, and the politicians. There's nothing you can do about it.
If you want a true "socialist" education, you're going to have to vote for people who want to get rid of the current system, not people who want to defend it. Talk to your local Tea Partier about that. Maybe you'll find out you have an opponent in common.
Or just whine about how it's not fair and keep voting for the same people.
Acually, the corruption is especially rampant in the small local governments. That is where nepotism grows because the smaller and less important governments are under less scrutiny and people are more likely to know each other and do each other favours locally as well. A central government is way more faceless.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You might not be patting yourself on the back if you'd stood in line to vote in my precinct. Obama's biggest constituencies seem to be welfare trash, non-English-speaking immigrants, drug addicts, and various other dregs of the big city. Conversely, everyone I know who owns a business AND a college degree votes Republican. The backbone of the American economy is not interested in the opinions of ivory tower liberals or Starbucks coffee-jerks.
That's some blatant prejudice on display there. I mean, jeez, do you even listen to yourself?? You're claiming you stood in line to vote, and you looked at the others around you in line, and you knew, you could just tell, that a lot of them couldn't speak English, that many were on welfare, and obviously some used drugs to the point of addition. And best of all, you knew exactly how those people were going to vote! Of course you did, because only "dregs" would vote for Obama, right? I'm sorry, but regardless of whatever else you may have to say, the quote above proves you are indeed a stereotypical Tea Party member, with precisely the prejudices one would expect.
actually "decentralized government" is the last step usa needs in order to turn into replica of ussr.
that is, people asking for papers and permits on certain internal borders since they belong to different branch of the nation(and want bribes).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The fact that I'm supporting "people who want to defend it" is an assumption you are making based upon absolutely nothing.
I don't. And I'm fully aware some tea partiers have nearly identical goals to myself. And I try to work with them when possible.
Good. Other people reading this should follow your example.
To cold_fjord: Your quoted article doesn't touch on any of the background, but it touches on an example of how history -- if not actually repeating itself -- often rhymes.
A key component of Nixon's victory had to do with the schism in the Democratic party that formed in the late 1940's to 50's between the Northern Democrats (your "hermetic liberal provincialism", which sought to embrace the burgeoning Civil Right movement), and the Southern Dixiecrats (who portrayed themselves as primarily opposed to the expansion of Federal power, but also happened to be rather socially conservative). The Dixiecrats splintered off into their own faction -- the "States Right's Democratic Party"; at least portions of it saw themselves as separate from the the mainstream Democratic Party, even while attempting a Democratic party-platform takeover from within.
Not surprisingly, this conflict eventually would prove terribly destructive to the Democratic Party. Even though the Northern Democrats eventually won control of the platform, the climax of the conflict would come with passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, at which time President Lyndon Johnson was said to have prophetically stated that "We have delivered the South to the GOP for a generation" (note: variations in claimed wording of LBJ's quote, and he infamously has also been rumored to have remarked that "We'll have those N------ voting Democrat for the next two hundred years."). Nixon successfully courted the disaffected supporters of Southern ex-Democrats, winning him the presidency and successfully splitting the formerly Solid South -- the move that was the source Pauline Kael's bewilderment in your quoted article.
Of course, every reaction has it's equal and opposite reaction(s). The absorption of the Dixiecrats would also mark the beginning of the fall for Rockefeller Republicans. It also resulted the beginnings of an exodus for Black Republicans who had long supported the "Party of Lincoln", although the migration to the Democratic Party would take many years to complete.
Do you think lower-class black people voted Romney? You whine and complain about what I say, but you haven't got a factual leg to stand on. Find me ONE working-class black person who voted for Romney over Obama! Oh, but that's not bias, is it? Give me a break. How many fresh immigrants vote Republican? Oh right, none. You're complaining because I'm speaking the truth and you can't deny it.
We all know what dregs look like. We all know where we don't want to walk alone at night, or walk at all. We know what appearances to avoid: nice looking Jewish or Asian men in suits don't rob us. Unless they're lawyers, but that's another story. This isn't prejudice. It's observation.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
The absolute smallest amount possible, after everything else has been tried.
When government is actually helping people, it's often not necessary to threaten people to get their money. Roads can be built with money from the road users' fuel taxes. Air traffic control can be paid for by taxing fliers' airline tickets. Food inspections can be paid by taxing food -- and if it's too expensive to pay the tax, let people buy un-inspected food or food certified by non-government inspectors, like the guys who certify food is kosher. Courts can be funded by a surcharge on unsuccessful plaintiffs. Local businesses will probably be glad to pay a reasonable tax to fund an effective police force. Fire departments can be funded by a local tax on the property that the fire department protects from fire -- or by direct membership fees charged for fire protection. Sewers can be funded by charging home owners and businesses for service. The same goes for water. Trash pickup is often wholly privatized.
Stealing money from person A to give to person B requires the threat of force.
You have strayed so far in this rambling from what was actually said, and the actual point, that I really don't feel a reply is justified, other then maybe this explanation of why I am not replying.
I'm all for cutting military spending -- my exact words were, see above, "any spending cut is a good spending cut." I'm not sure why anyone is having trouble with that. The Constitution spells out the responsibilities of the federal government specifically.
Tax rebates are not spending. A tax rebate is where government takes my money, and then gives some of it back. Or takes less money from me in the first place. It's not government just giving me something, or spending money on me. Do you understand the difference, or do I need to use smaller words?
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
That wasn't non-sequitur, it was a perfect argument rebuffing your comment. No taxes (money taking by force) means no government, means anarchy.
Lack of compassion is the exact problem of the - everybody for themselves, I'll give to charity if I want to help - crowd, they are usually well off and do not understand and relate to the plights of people who are not. It is not about advocating against violence, just violence against them. They are perfectly willing to use violence to keep people hungry, poorly educated and without adequate shelter.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
How about you and WOOFYGOOFY get together and have a big slap fight. Whoever wins gets to tell the rest of us who's against the wall when the revolution comes.
I'm a supporter of the Tea Party, but these empty threats are reprehensible. The Tea Party isn't about having revolutions for the sake of having revolutions, but to create and maintain a sensible, fiscally responsible, law abiding government. I used to think this sort of craziness at least on Slashdot was contained to climate change nutcases like WOOFYGOOFY, but you proved me wrong.
I've been making the exact same point for this entire discussion. Shit I've been directly quoting the same original two posts for most of it.
Indeed. As in most of these cases, it is mental issues rather than political. I think it was a fair response to an attempt to link him to the tea party though.
One could use taxation to fund government without having a compassionate bone in your body. It's orthogonal. In fact, I would argue that an excessive zeal for taxation displays a marked lack of compassion for those who are negatively affected by that taxation.
It's a matter of degree. Negatively impacted by taxation usually means: "Cannot afford a new car or bigger house." and on the other hand you've got "starving", "freezing", "dying of disease". I'll save my compassion for those who cannot afford new car until the time, everyone has basic food, shelter, education and health covered. Those are not optional, you have no choice but to address those problems and if you cannot make enough money to address them, you live your whole life as a slave. America says it has abolished slavery, but that is a load of crap, it just got transformed. And you have the audacity to equate freedom with paying less taxes.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Or more precisely, most people don't understand it.
The correlation coefficient (which goes from -1 to 1) was 0.05.
I.e. It's VERY CLOSE TO ZERO, meaning that correlation is NEGLIGIBLE.
In other words, when asked if there is ANY relation between science comprehension and considering oneself a "part of the Tea Party movement", the answer was - WE CAN'T FIND ANY.
Same goes for science comprehension and "liberal-conservative ideology and party self-identification" (i.e. science and political conservatism) - only that one is a negative 0.05.
Still comes out to bupkis though.
I wonder how would we measure correlation of this study to attention whoring?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Zowie. Apparently Australia has turned tyrannical when I wasn't watching.
Aha. How do you get to work? How will you get to work when roads can't be funded out of general revenue anymore (using Australian terminology). Note here that I'm assuming that since you are a good republican voter, you drive a massive fuck-off SUV built in detroit via subsidised car companies, and shun that horrible socialist public transport system. Note that road registration systems never provide for funding of the road despite uninformed opinions to the contrary - that expense is simply far too large for any feasible user pays system - the user would revolt.
Oh wow, special. And it's ironic perhaps to think this article is discussing science education. Where's your data?
That wasn't non-sequitur, it was a perfect argument rebuffing your comment. No taxes (money taking by force) means no government, means anarchy.
No taxes (money taken by force), simply means people aren't forced to pay to support a system of governance. That doesn't imply anarchy, or necessarily any political system. All it implies is that people are free to do with their money as they please. For all we know, some brilliant person may come along and invent a workable tax-free form of democracy. The fact that you can't separate taxes from governance means you've already been brain-washed.
Lack of compassion is the exact problem of the - everybody for themselves, I'll give to charity if I want to help - crowd, they are usually well off and do not understand and relate to the plights of people who are not. It is not about advocating against violence, just violence against them. They are perfectly willing to use violence to keep people hungry, poorly educated and without adequate shelter.
Ok, that's just taking it too far. Sounds like you have some animosity towards the people you describe. Either way, I'll bite. You may very well be right. For all we know, every single person that you describe as being in the "everybody for themselves, I'll give to charity if I want to help" crowd is a mean human being, and only cares for his/her self. Ok, now... From that assumption, you have to jump to justify stealing from them, in order to fulfill your noble(and kind) goal of helping the needy/sick/poor. Whatever compassion you display for one group will become morally worthless if it is at the expense of another.
I hold an apparently bizarre position on global warming:
Yes, the climate is changing, and evidence suggests it is following a warming trend. However, I do not fully attribute that change to anthropocentric causes. In light of these two statements, I am firmly opposed to knee-jerk high cost outcome-vague reactionary measures that serve to drastically affect the economic stability of the nation, or even the world. I am however, in favor of further study, while implementing 'gentle' changes, ie, more efficient power generation, reduction of emissions as quickly as is cost feasible, development of more efficient homes, tools, and machines to reduce our energy needs, etc.
The bizarre and potentially harmful ideas people are floating as serious solutions to global warming are absolutely terrifying. I have seen serious proposals ranging from genetically re-engineering cows and kangaroos(?) to produce less methane, to blanketing the seas with iron oxide to cause algae blooms to absorb carbon, to anchoring giant mylar bags of C02 to the ocean floor, to scattering reflective particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space. These, along with a host of other ideas, are beyond insane. I don't claim that global warming is a complete farce, but ideas like this, in the off chance that we are actually *wrong* could do immense and possibly irreparable damage to the environment in their own ways.
Effectively, in terms of climate change 'repair' we need a planetary version of the Hippocratic oath. "First, Do No Harm." any corrective action we take simply must not put the planet at further risk down the road. However, that is not an excuse to do nothing, greater energy efficiency across the board, and cleaner energy production are a must, and a long term benefit to humanity, no mater the final result of 'climate change science'.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Want wait wait, we can't have you coming in here with a coherent and intelligent breakdown of political alignments. We're trying to argue about politics here, you'll ruin everything!
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Forbes Magazine actually published an article asserting (and providing some evidence) that the healthcare.gov site works poorly on purpose, because the government doesn't want you to know how high the actual rates are.
Then Forbes Magazine has idiots working for it. We actually knew the prices well in advance of Oct 1, and they aren't that high.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The problem with not raising the debt limit is that we spend roughly 1/3 more then we take in so spending over that limit would be absolutely required to stop. This is easy to do but it would mean that entitlements stop and other things until either the debt can get under control or the limit is raised.
So a default for not raising the debt limit is only a default if the president insists on not servicing our debt and keeping entitlements and/or other government not subject to a shutdown active.
*BZZZZZT* Wrong.
Government spending is required by law. That mean each time a government obligation comes due, the President is required to pay it by law. (Well, presumably he only to pay it if he has the money on hand. This has never been tested in court, but he can't do things that are physically impossible.).
There is no legal justification, and it would be criminal, for him to refuse to pay an obligation on Monday just because on Tuesday he has some debt to service. Even if that obligation on Monday is completely trivial that the government could easily not pay at the moment, he is REQUIRED BY LAW to pay it, right then and there, no matter what consequences happen on Tuesday due to lack of money.
(There are some circumstances where he can possibly make a judgement, like if he had to make two payments in the same day but could only afford one, but that's not actually important here.)
People who assert otherwise are either a) morons who don't understand that the executive branch operates under the law, including _when_ and to _whom_ payments are made, and cannot diverge from this, or b) Republicans who do understand them but are rather suspiciously suggesting that President Obama decide to break the law...they all pinky swear they won't impeach him, of course.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
And that post should not be read to imply that no government spending is under control of the executive. Grants, for example, could stop being issued, and certain projects where the executive has discretion could be delayed.
However, social security couldn't possibly be stopped by the executive, and neither could 90% of military spending. Hell, 60% of the budget is 'mandatory', meaning it is money we have to pay under standing law, not under the year-to-year budget process. And probably 90% of the remaining money is allocated, by law, under the budget process.
I'd be amazed if the amount of money legally under the control of the president, to the extent he can legally choose not to spend it, was more than 5% of the budget.
(And this entire stupid argument, ignoring the fact it's illegal for the president, is under the rather dubious logic that people would continue buying government bonds simply because that is the one part of the government still working, while we're failing to make payments on everything else. Uh, no. That's not how loans and bond markets work.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
That's not what I said at all.
The reason Newton, Kepler, Copernicus believed the "world was made in 6 days" is because they lived before plate tectonics, Darwin and carbon dating.
There is nothing incompatible about religious faith and science. Lots of great science has been done by mystics. You mention Newton, and he was an alchemist and believer in scrying and other occult practices too. Nobody would mistake him for a circa 2013 American Christian Fundamentalist. In fact, Evangelicals would consider Newton a heretic and dangerous person. They'd be trying to pray the demons out of him.
Kepler was an astrologer. You know a lot of American Fundamentalist Christians who are into astrology?
Copernicus? Well, Copernicus was a faithful Catholic, and for his trouble had to delay publication of his work on heliocentrism out of fear of the Church. If you read the dedication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (to the Pope), you can see how delicately and carefully he had to present his case that the Earth was not the center of the Universe.
And did you know there is a movement in American Catholicism that still believes to this very day that the Earth is the center of the Universe?
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-04/news/ct-met-galileo-was-wrong-20110704_1_modern-church-universe-splinter-group
And I note that Charles Darwin's name is conspicuously absent from your list of great scientists who "think the world was made in 6 days". Is that maybe because the American Christian Fundamentalist group "The Discovery Center" believes in Creationism?
So don't you dare tell me that "most of modern science rests atop pillars" built by anyone resembling American Christian Fundamentalists in any way. It's just baloney.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's nothing in your little rant that has anything to do with school funding. Or anything to do with reality, for that matter, given the bipartisan war on public schools.
LAMO. If somebody showed up at teabagger event arguing for equal school funding, and higher taxes to pay for it, he'd be tarred and feathered on the spot.
No, that's capitalism. Socialism gives workers ownership of the means of production.
Wrong. The laws automatically appropriate funding which is considered spending but it in no way requires it _all_ to be spent or _all_ to be spent at once. Under the 14th amendment of the US constitution, the president is obligated to service our debt first then deal with any lawful spending. I know it is a problem for most of you on the left when the constitution gets in your way, but constitutionally, he is obligated to honor the debts before any spending by law. that means even if congress passed a law saying all money appropriated either by entitlement law or whatever must be spent on anything other then the debt, it would be unconstitutional to do so.
So, if we didn't raise the debt limit, the constitution would supersede any laws in place, the president would have to service debt obligations and then make judgement calls about which entitlements would remain fully funded. To suggest that a law can create a conflict here is incorrect as the US constitution as well as judicial declaration, clearly places the constitution and it's amendments over top of any law made by congress or states or judicial order.
Everything else you wrote is negated by that fact there alone. I will not bother addressing them in detail but no criminal act can withstand conflict with the Constitution so that argument is dead on arrival. Your ad hominem attacks fail also because it clearly demonstrate you have a lack of knowledge of the constitution and it's role in government.
And the idea of an impeachment is already completely ignorant because Obama has already violated his constitutional obligations and faced no repercussions at all over it. Why do you think that all the sudden one more time would make a difference when congress cannot even get together to work out a reasonable deal on the debt or budget? IS it because the thought emboldens your ignorance and bluster's your false understandings?
what is "teabagger event"? There are events now? Tea Party is 10-20% of voters. You don't need to go to an "event" to find them.
And if he talked to Tea Party people about wanting to change the schools, they would realize that they need to break the union stranglehold to make any real changes that either of them wants. They could agree to be allies against a common opponent. Lots of Tea Party people want better schools for poor kids -- which is similar to "equal" schools.
The Tea Party people would probably say that once the union is no longer involved, funding at current levels will be more than adequate to help poor kids. They might disagree on that. But it doesn't matter at all until the union stranglehold is broken.
That wasn't non-sequitur, it was a perfect argument rebuffing your comment. No taxes (money taking by force) means no government, means anarchy.
No taxes (money taken by force), simply means people aren't forced to pay to support a system of governance. That doesn't imply anarchy, or necessarily any political system. All it implies is that people are free to do with their money as they please. For all we know, some brilliant person may come along and invent a workable tax-free form of democracy. The fact that you can't separate taxes from governance means you've already been brain-washed.
Society implies rules, laws, no laws means anarchy. Laws imply enforcement, non-enforced rules mean anarchy. In a complex society, more rules are needed, with the complexity, judges and law enforcement cannot be part-time volunteers, but have to be professionals. So someone has to support their lives, while they perform this duty. Either there is one wealthy person supporting this group, which would imply dictatorship or feudalism, or more wealthy people, that would be oligarchy or the cost and the selection of rules is evenly spread around everyone, whcih would be democracy. Unless the society is primitive, there is a need for taxes to preserve democracy. But I'd like to hear your non-brainwashed way to do this. You so far offered no workable alternative. :)
Lack of compassion is the exact problem of the - everybody for themselves, I'll give to charity if I want to help - crowd, they are usually well off and do not understand and relate to the plights of people who are not. It is not about advocating against violence, just violence against them. They are perfectly willing to use violence to keep people hungry, poorly educated and without adequate shelter.
Ok, that's just taking it too far. Sounds like you have some animosity towards the people you describe. Either way, I'll bite. You may very well be right. For all we know, every single person that you describe as being in the "everybody for themselves, I'll give to charity if I want to help" crowd is a mean human being, and only cares for his/her self. Ok, now... From that assumption, you have to jump to justify stealing from them, in order to fulfill your noble(and kind) goal of helping the needy/sick/poor. Whatever compassion you display for one group will become morally worthless if it is at the expense of another.
If you live in the same state, where you setup the rules (minimum wages, business taxes, trade rules, labor migration) in a way that 2/3 of people barely make living and then you enforce such rules, you perpetrate violence that keeps others hungry, sick, dumb and homeless. To me, that is sickening. The only reason, why you have the money in the first place is that you skewed the rules in your own favor. Increasing taxes is not taking the money away, it is the same form of rule making you used to create an environment in which you get the money yourself disproportionatelly compared to others.
There is enough wealth to use less than 50% GDP to have everyone, fed, sheltered, educated and healthy. It was not the case always, but since about middle of 20th century, this number got under 100% and now it is going down each year. In 21st century in 1st world countries it is now under 50%. It is immoral by any standard not to do so if there are the means to it. How you split the remaining 50%, I don't care. Feel free to make rules where one guy gets it all if you want. But as long as there are people starving, sick, homeless and poorly educated, your moral imperative is to do something about it.
It works in Scandinavia, it works mostly in Canada, so there is no way to say it is impossible to do so.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I fucking LOLed.
The, a 'Independent' Journal Review is not terribly independent - Pretty Right wing actually, and the article cited has a *lot* of context missing. It's not as bad as some I've read - the basic thesis is true, but statistically neither the Conservatives, the Liberals, or the Tea Party itself are *meaningfully* correlated with better or worse understanding of Science - very slight negatives in the main body of Conservatives, very slight positives in Liberals and Tea Party members, but the correlations are miniscule. The researcher has some choice words to say regarding the attempt to make the Tea part look like hyper-encephalic geniuses here, including a bit of snark along the lines of "Hey Suddenly Eastern Ivy League Studies are completely trustworthy among Tea Party Conservatives - Who Knew!"
Original Post: Some data on education, religiosity, ideology, and science comprehension
His Update with a review of responses: Congratulations, tea party members: You are just as vulnerable to politically biased misinterpretation of science as everyone else! Is fixing this threat to our Republic part of your program?
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I am not sure that it is necessarily all that surprising. For one thing, if you are against something, you would have to learn something about it, so you can argue against whatever you disagree with.
And the thing is, being stupid often requires quite a lot of intelligence - you have to be able to gain some degree of insight, and then you have to be able to explain away the conclusions you don't like, which is actually hard work, intellectually. So, the people who are prominent in those fringe movements have to be very intelligent. Think "emperor's new clothes": the clever, experienced and insightful adults are the ones that are taken in, and the naive child accepts the obvious conclusion.
Merging would necessarily result in combining common administrative functions, for instance. Commerce and labor merging would result in reducing the number of statisticians and data collection workers. Be creative - lots of opportunities to avoid duplication of effort. If you're not getting this, don't worry. You're not alone.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
And they will cheat and steal and lie and fight and die for their "right" to take your money and tell you what to do. Now what?
That sort of person doesn't die for free lunch. This reminds me of the vicious infighting in the Third French Republic prior to being overrun by the Nazis at the beginning of the Second World War. The right-wing which had somewhat similar fiscal views to myself on government made the decision to collaborate with the Nazis in part because they could implement without contest the policies they desired and which couldn't be done in the crippled pre-war years.
That eagerness to force people to do what they considered to be the right thing damned them. I will not go that route. If it comes to outright civil war, sure, I'll help the mooching class with the fighting and especially the dying, but otherwise they have to learn things for themselves - such as when everyone is a thief then there's no one to steal from.
"Far right" is TINY government (or possibly no government) with almost no power and no taxes and maximum freedom
By your definition, not mine. The US political spectrum is shifted so far to the right on the non-US spectrum that we need to use our peripheral vision to see it which admittedly does merge things together. The US system works well when you have rapid growth as the US has enjoyed in the past. Regulation tends to get in the way of that and is not required because things are growing rapidly enough that if someone is blocking you or your company in one direction you can easily expand in another.
However where it fails, as we see it doing now, is when growth slows and there is increased competition for limited resources and benefits. In this scenario you need regulation to restrain the largest players becoming bullies. Just look at the US today - it is run by corporations who can practically dictate the laws for their own benefit. Saying that the system gives everyone 'true' freedom is only half the story because those with power can then use their freedom to effective restrict the freedom of others. The end result is that only some actually have true freedom and everyone else is left with a hollow freedom where certain choices can leave them penniless, homeless and without any healthcare. It's the same sort of freedom you have when someone puts a gun to your head and says "do this or I shoot you" - you are free to choose not to do it so hey you must have "true freedom" right?
At the same time the left places far, far too many restrictions on everyone's freedom in some insane drive to produce absolute equality for everyone and I would completely agree that many European countries have gone far too far down the socialism road. I'd also agree that there is a fine balance, perhaps not a knife edge, between straying too far to the right where we lose our freedom to corporations, and too far to the left where we lose it to government. What I would disagree with is that the US is somehow going to escape needing to make the same balance. You are no longer a young nation flush with the exhilaration of youth and if you are going to continue to be successful as a nation you need to find your own balance to maximize everyone's freedom not just those with the most money and power.
Scandinavia and Canada don't have the government corruption problems we have in the US. Big government is a hard sell when people know it will just be used against them to enrich lobbyists and cronies and union bosses and lawyers and already-rich farmers and rent-seeking corporations. Law and order is a hard sell when people know the laws only apply to the little people, never to the ruling class.
It's not "anarchy" to oppose funding corruption.
If you want to keep the money you earn in your paycheck, you are scary.
You see, this is yet another from a long list of excuses for people to justify their morally indefensible behavior. When slavery was a law on the books, the laundry list of arguments justifying it was just as long.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Back then, I bet some people used the "excuse" that they wouldn't support a government that enabled slavery.
And the government-power supporters of the time probably claimed it was a "justification". Because they didn't want to talk about how they were supporting slavery, just like the government apologists of today don't want to talk about how they're supporting government corruption.
There are a whole spectrum of people from those who are rich through comfortably off through on the edge. Every time you raise taxes or reduce someone spending power in one of those other sneaky ways like running the presses, you push some more people over that edge.
If you have compassion for those starving, freezing, or dying of disease, reach into your own pocket, (as do many of those you accuse of lacking compassion), not others.
You mean vocal minority? The most vocal part of any organization will almost assuredly be a minority of that organization. The Tea Party is no different.
Do you judge Christians by the Evangelicals, or liberals by eco-terrorists?
No, but I judge Catholics by the actions of the Pope and the church leadership they support. And guess what? I judge political parties by the actions and rhetoric of their leadership as well. The Tea Party doesn't just have a few nutters--it's covered in batshit from top to bottom.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Mostly they just want centralized government to do less. You like your computer networks decentralized, why not your government? Local is better.
That's called "autogestion", is what Saul Alinsky's work was all about, and I'm not sure that Tea Party is really embracing it.
Would it make you happy if I changed it to "potentially benefits", or can you work your way past some miniscule ambiguity of colloquial English?
Claiming that all benefit from a socialist education is not a miniscule ambiguity, it is a patent absurdity. I've chosen to debate the issue, you're the one who is trying to claim that simple words don't mean what he said. Yes, my preference is clear. So is yours. I'd be happy if you used the words you wanted to use the first time and didn't try ducking the problem by asking me if I'd be happier if you wrote something else.
People like you and I have been saying this for years, if not decades, but it's not changing it's getting worse. I am very frustrated and don't know what else to do about it, suffice to say I can see that it's a good idea to consider your options _outside_ the U.S. (and that's something I really don't want to consider... I'm not opposed to the idea of leaving the country out of some prejudice, but there are other important reasons, like the fact that all my family is in the U.S.).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I know it is a problem for most of you on the left when the constitution gets in your way, but constitutionally, he is obligated to honor the debts before any spending by law. that means even if congress passed a law saying all money appropriated either by entitlement law or whatever must be spent on anything other then the debt, it would be unconstitutional to do so.
Hey, look, it's the complete dumbass who has no reading comprehension but constantly pops up to defend whatever fucking stupid thing the right believes.
You just repeated exactly what I said...that the president must pay any currently outstanding debt. I just additionally pointed out that if there's an outstanding debt, he has to pay it, period, he can't save the money for a more important debt that's going to happen later.
And, despite what is going on in your fevered imagination, he is, in fact, required by law to pay social security, for example. If the president could just decide not to pay social security, I have a feeling some Republican president would have actually tried that at some point, don't you?
You did notice I used the word 'obligations' in my post, right? What the hell do you think that means? The government owes that money to people on social security. The government owes defense contractors. The government owes its employees their wages. Those are debts. They must be paid, on the schedule laid out in law. (Only if the executive has money, presumably.)
You, along with the right, have decided that the only 'debts' are 'issued bonds'. Or, rather, you idiots have spent absolutely no time thinking about this.
If someone comes and works on your house for an agreed on amount, and you haven't paid them yet, you are in debt to them. Um, duh. If you are a company, and pay employees your wages on Friday, and it's Thursday, the wages you owe for the week so far are debts and will be reflected as such on your balance sheet. Um, double-duh.
Bonds, are, rather obviously, just one of the many ways to be in debt...if they were the only way, uh, no human being would be personally in debt, because human beings usually don't issue bonds. We should try that with banks. 'No, I don't owe you any money. To owe money is to be in debt, and according to the Republicans the only sort of debt that exists is bonds. I have never issued you or anyone else any bonds, thus I am not in debt.'(1)
Now, you say we must pay debts because of the 14th amendment, and I don't think the 14th is that relevant, and assert that's just basic law, but whatever, that's rather moot. The point is, 95% of money that exits the Federal government is to pay obligations, aka debts, created by the law. (And the other 5% is to pay obligations created by entities under the executive's control that he could stop, but are still obligations once created...but he could stop making more obligations.)
The President is required, by law (And possibly by the constitution, whatever.), to pay all those debts, not to just the ones to bondholders.
1) Hilariously, this logic makes the entire debt ceiling rather pointless, because if 'bonds' are the only 'debt', the president could just get loans some other way, like via credit cards and other unsecured bank loans. Heh. Actually, money owed to the social security trust isn't 'real' bonds (We call them bonds, but they are not, really.), so we're already a good deal under the debt ceiling if you only count 'bonds'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You know, sometimes after I make a post, I can psychically predict sumdumass's response, and this time I predict, drumroll please, that he will attempt to argue that the 14th's amendment is relevant here, despite the fact I pointed out it doesn't matter.
So, I will preemptively respond by conceding that point, for the purpose of this argument. The 14th amendment does apply here.
So now sumdumass will have to address my actual point, in that almost all government spending is to repay debts, so anyone who thinks the 14th somehow means 'bondholders get paid first' is an idiot. There's nothing special about their debt vs. everyone else's under the constitution or the law. It doesn't say 'US bonds shall not be questioned'. It says the debt can't.
In fact, let's look at the actual wording of that part of the 14th:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
And before you try to argue that some specific thing isn't listed there, as I also psychically(1) predict you will do, please notice that 'bonds' are not in that list either. The list is not inclusive. I was just pointing out the amendment lists two specific examples of public debts, and neither of them is bonds...one is a retirement system, and one is wages!
1) It is very easy to psychically predict sumdumass's responses to things. He will pick a completely irrelevant thing said and argue as if it's important. Notice I didn't say an incorrect irrelevant thing...if sumdumass were to start accurately nitpicking responses, people would go 'By gum, you're right!' No, sumdumass will find something that is, indeed, completely correct, but completely irrelevant to the point, and argue about that, like he just did with the 14th amendment. That way other people will argue back over the pointless thing, and the original point will completely lost.
Don't fall for it. Ask yourself 'If sumdumass was right, would my point still stand? Yes, I know he's wrong, but if weren't, would my actual point be correct anyway?' If the answer is 'Yes', then just concede his idiotic position and repeat your actual point as if he's right. He'll keep trying to argue the point and come across as a complete idiot.
(For example, see his followup post, where he will try to argue somehow that 'public debt' only means bonds, despite the fact the 14th amendment just explained that 'bounties' and 'pensions' count as it!)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Like i said, your drivel is negated by the 14th amendment. Your explaination of why you think it is not is also negated. The laws about automatic spending can not be constitutional if the congress does not appropriate funding for it. Otherwise during a budget impass, none of the government would shut down at all. A law binding social security payments can not remain constitution without the means to pay it.
Debt, as in what the 14th requires the US to pay is debt paid. Not creating debt that has not occured yet because a law says it should be created. Despite social security being funded differently the the rest of the government (it can pull from it trust fund without incuring additional debt unlike other spending), any law mandating payments would be unconstitutional if the funds weren't availible and congress didn't authorize funding.
You simply cannot pass a law that takes away the constitutional roles of congress or the president and have that law supercede the constitution. All laws regarding spending have to be interpreted through the constitution else they ae become unconstitutional. If the debt limit wasn'T increased, it would be a duty of the president to chose which spending continued within the bounds of the capabilities of what is availible. If legal obligation exceed the abilities, the president would have no choice but to view spending in excess of our ability to pay as unconstitutional if only for the duration of the inability to pay.
Or in words an ad hominem slinging partisan hack like you who tried to insult without effect rather then argue the logic of your pisition can understand. If the ability to fund the spending is not there, regardless of any law, the funds absolutely cannot be spent constitutionally and like any other law that the constitution doesn't allow, would become unconstitutional. Ehat you seem to want to argue is that if a law regulating speech like inviting a riot is ever enforced in a way that is unconstitutional, it must be enforced because there are ways it can be enforced that is constitutionsl and that is completely wrong.
Like i said, your drivel is negated by the 14th amendment. The spending in excess of what we are capable of would have to stop in order to remain constitutional.
What's being willfully obtuse?
You guys really have constructed this alternate reality to match your ideology, haven't you? Unions have nothing to do with unequal school funding and do nothing to prevent teachers from being fired with cause.
Hey, moron, reread my post.
As I pointed out, almost everything the government pays out is 'debt' in one form or another, as in, things it owes people by law. You managed to complete ignore the entire fucking post, and have started yammering about the 14th amendment yet.
The 14th amendment requires that we pay all debt. (Well, not really, but, as I said, I won't argue that.) I will, again, point out as part of the debt we have to pay it gives examples of pensions and bounties. It does not say we have to repay 'bonds', it says we have to repay 'debts'. All of them. Bonds, pensions, bounties, back pay, social security, medicare owed to doctors, all debts.
You, while yammering that we have to repay all debts, have managed to completely fucking ignore is that almost everything is debt.
All those things are, equally, debt, and they have to be paid on time. By law. (And, you assert, by the constitution, to which I say 'Whatever.')
We cannot decide not to pay social security debts because we have bond repayment debts coming up tomorrow. (In fact, under your logic, it would be unconstitutional to try to do that.)
The laws about automatic spending can not be constitutional if the congress does not appropriate funding for it. Otherwise during a budget impass, none of the government would shut down at all.
This is a large part of why, under the budget shutdown, only 13% of the spending stopped, you idiot. Thank you for pretty much proving my point.
You seem to think the government is somehow deciding to spend money in real time, that it pays money and gets things in return.
Uh, no. Like all businesses, it hires people and they work for free for two week (Or however long) and then they get paid. Those people are owed their wages. Those wages are debts the government owes them.
Likewise, the government does not go out and buy bridges. It enters a contract with a company to build a bridge, and then when the bridge is done, the government owes that money.
(I won't argue social security in this post, because that is much more complicated, but people really are owed social security benefits under the law. But even without social security, we're still screwed.)
If we stop raising the debt ceiling, we still owe all that money, and, as you keep insisting, government debts shall not be questioned.
You can yammer about 'Not creating debt' all you want, but the fact is the government has billions and billions of outstanding debt that isn't bonds, right now, already existing, and the government must pay them, which means at some point, many debts payment are going to be missed, including bond repayment.
This is even accepting the dubious preposition it is legal for the president to 'choose' not to make new debt in violation of the laws saying he has to. The constitution says all debts are valid, but it does not logically follow from that 'And thus if the president thinks the government won't pay debts when they come up, he has the power to ignore current law and not create them.'! There's nothing in that amendment about the government not having the power to create debt, or the president to override the creation of debt.
But even in that rather surreal world which gives the president nearly unlimited power, the US would slide over a frozen debt ceiling almost immediately due to fucking payroll, even if the president instantly laid everyone off in violation of the law. (Because, duh, even laid off people get paid for the time they already put in.)
If the debt limit wasn'T increased, it would be a duty of the president to chose which spending continued within the bounds of the capabilities of what is availible.
No, it's not. It's the duty of the president to do what the laws and constitution say.
In the actual world, if Congress has allocated $40 million for a library in Dover, the president (That is, the e
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I am definitely considering that.
Right now, I am developing a product personally to have manufactured and sold. I have another guy with me, also laid-off aerospace, who is really good with low-level precision analog and networking. I think we have quite a viable product - it will be open source, and we intend to earn our keep by supporting it and building custom stuff for it.
This can be done from anywhere.
So far, New Zealand looks promising... but before we try to go anywhere, we want to make sure we have a viable economic engine running so we will be productive citizens for anyone taking us in. The last thing I want to do is show up at any nations doorstep with an empty plate.
Its only a matter of time though unless there is a major world war between China/Russia and the USA. Its not the USA that is the problem, rather it appears to be the British bankers now control the politicians ( and the US military ) in order to enforce their ownership claims on everything. Debt is running rampant. There seems to be no fiscal responsibility among the leading elite. I am of the belief that the French way of resetting the pareto curve is inevitable. Just like a social relaxation oscillator, inequities build up over time and periodically reset.. and it appears time is getting ripe for a system breakdown and restart.
Yes. I am afraid. I feel as if I am standing too close to the terminals of a big power transformer, knowing the breakdown voltage of air, and feeling the pull of the electrostatic forces against my hair, smelling the ozone as the field tears nearby oxygen molecules asunder - and knowing what will happen once the arc strikes.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]