Again, you make claims with no evidence to back them up.
Did they know about the errors? Yes. Did they fix the problem? No. Did they warn their customers that they were having billing issues? No. There you go.
and did nothing to even warn their customers about the possibility of an overcharge on their bill due to problems with their billing system
It's your own responsibility to review your bill for accuracy.
So you're saying they aren't responsible for alerting customers when they know they have a billing problem that could affect them? They aren't responsible for sending accurate bills to their customers? How come in your world we're supposed to be responsible for our actions, but corporations aren't responsible for their actions? They were the ones overcharging people and keeping the money.
but instead just continued to collect the money and say nothing
Actually, they eventually fixed the problem with their billing system and agreed to offer refunds to the impacted customers. I've not personally observed this problem in over a year. I suppose you are entitled to keep believing that they "did nothing" if that better fits into your ideology though:)
Yes, they eventually fixed the problem. The problem is that they never told their customers they had a problem, even though they knew they did. It only took them several years and an FCC lawsuit to fix it. Meanwhile we only have their word to go on that they're refunding the proper amounts to everyone that should get a refund. I'm wondering why it took so long, and why they didn't start refunding these charges to everyone years ago if they know who these 15 million people are. And this is just covering this specific type of billing issue. They are still being investigated for others. But I guess in your world corporations are just benevolent organizations with their customers' best interests at heart, and would never do anything remotely dishonest. Right?
I'm not justifying anything, I'm only calling BS on your unproven accusations of fraud. Fraud:
deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.
Unless you can prove that Verizon deliberately did this there is no "fraud" here. Billing errors != fraud
I'm not saying they deliberately did it. I'm saying that once they realized it was happening, they deliberately allowed it to continue, and did nothing to even warn their customers about the possibility of an overcharge on their bill due to problems with their billing system, but instead just continued to collect the money and say nothing. By any definition you care to cite, that's fraud!
The fees are legitimate. Read the contract you signed. Verizon bills you $1.99 per MB of data, rounded up. You knew that going in, or at least you should have if you bothered to read the agreement that you signed.
What's not legitimate is that the fees were applied towards data that was supposed to be free.
So first you say the fees are legitimate, and then you admit they aren't, because the customers shouldn't have been charged, but got charged anyway. Seriously man, the mental gymnastics you are engaging in to try to justify this are just making you look silly. They were adding charges to people's bills that they should not have been adding. How much more clear can it get? Those charges are in no way legitimate.
It's not a huge leap at all once it was clear that people were being charged for things they shouldn't be charged for. At that point it's obvious that there's a problem with their billing and they should have been correcting it for everyone, not letting it ride and just fixing it for people that complain. That's the fraud!
Ah, but I'm not the one trying to claim that fraud happened, now am I? I suppose backing your claims with evidence is too much to ask for?
Why the hell would someone want to sue Verizon over a $1.99 fee that was (in my experience) refunded without any hassle when the customer complained about it?
So you don't see it as a problem that Verizon is just tacking fees onto people's bills for no legal reason? They've admitted that the fees aren't legitimate. You think it's ok for them to continue doing that to other customers just because those customers didn't notice the fee, or didn't know what the fee was and assumed it was another government-sanctioned charge? If so, then you're supporting fraud. Once Verizon knew about the charges from those who were disputing them, it was their responsibility to ensure that they were not overcharging their customers. They didn't do that. That's where the fraud comes in.
Translation: I can't prove shit but I'm going to accuse them of acting fraudulently anyway.
You have no proof of anything either, just your flip remarks. I'm not giving legal advice either. If you want to sue one of the big telecoms, go talk to a lawyer. There have been plenty of cases of people suing large companies. If you're lucky, they'll brush you off with a small settlement. If it's something like this, that affected millions, then they don't want to set a precedent that would encourage others to sue as well, so they'll bury you in legal paperwork until you can't afford to go on.
If you can prove the charges were fraudulent why don't you sue them for your damages?
Oh, that's right, you can't, you just see big scary evil corporation.
Not just big scary evil corporation, but also big scary legal system that can bankrupt you long before you finally get an actual verdict, years later. If you want to be buried for years in a lawsuit you can't afford to lose, then sure, go right ahead and sue them. They can afford a hundred lawyers for every one of yours. Have you ever experienced suing a large corporation?
Then perhaps you shouldn't have signed that contract? There are alternatives if having that freedom of action is important to you.
I think the point is that when you sign the contract you don't believe that you're giving them permission to add fraudulent charges to your bill. Of course you can't alter the contract either, as there is no negotiation of terms, so one could wonder if it truly is a binding contract at all. Yet you still are forced to pay a large fee if you cancel that contract, regardless of whether they committed a fraudulent act or not. It's utterly one-sided.
Why do you care where they get their information from? Who appointed you to determine what information I can receive in the 30 days preceding an election?
It's not determining what information you can receive. It's determining where the money for political speech can come from. People have the right to free speech. People have the right to pool their money to buy ads, flyers, etc. A corporation is not a person. It is a government creation and has only those rights that the government grants it, along with privileges like limited liability for the owners of the corporation.
It's insane to allow for-profit corporations to spend their money to influence politics.
It's more insane for the Government to be in the business of determining whose speech I should have access to.
It's perfectly legitimate for the government to say that you can't hide behind the shield they created to help facilitate commerce, and then proceed to use the benefits of that law to try to influence the political process to try to increase your profits, which will allow you to further influence the process. Government created the corporation, government can certainly put limits on it. The first amendment protects people, not laws that limit liability. We have other types of corporations that exist under different regulations and can be used to pool money from individuals for political purposes. That's a true association of people who want to make a political statement. For-profit corporations are nothing of the sort.
No, I mean to say it leads to complete polarization and nothing but lies being slung around by both sides.
So now it's the lies that bother you? Lying during political campaigns predates this Republic.
So, by all means then, let's do all we can to encourage it, and ensure that the airwaves are blanketed with lying ads. Wait, let's also ensure that there is no transparency at all, so that they can say whatever they want and then disappear after the election! Who needs accountability? Wow, I think we're pretty much there already.
Exactly, which is why those with the most money get to speak more often and more loudly than anyone else.
The 1st amendment doesn't have a fairness clause in it. Besides, even if I accept what you are saying it's an argument in favor of Citizens United. I do not have the time or the money to personally lobby my Congressman on the issues that matter to me. That's why I joined the NRA/ACLU/Sierra Club/take-your-pick. I can pool my limited resources with other like minded people and more effectively lobby for my position.
If you're not even going to try to have an honest debate, then why am I wasting my time here? Your straw man is ridiculous. You insist on conflating for-profit corporations with non-profits set up specifically for a political purpose. I've already explained the difference in several responses to you, yet you continue to use them interchangeably whenever it suits you.
Regular for-profit corporations don't speak for their shareholders. They have no idea what those people's political thoughts are, and they don't care. The shareholders can't and won't even know what candidates or political organizations the corporation supports because there is no transparency in the system. The for-profit corporation, shockingly enough, exists to make a profit, end of story. They don't have the concerns of the people in mind. They don't know or care what those concerns are. They want to put policies in place that will make them more money. Everything they do is in pursuit of that goal.
I've already said that I don't have a problem with non-profits set up to pool funds for a political purpose, so long as those funds aren't coming from for-profit corporations, so your arguments along that line are moot.
It's insane to allow for-profit corporations to spend their money to influence politics. They aren't people, they don't have the interests or values of people.
They are made up of people and those people should not be muzzled simply because they decided to associate with other like-minded people under the guise of a corporation. You keep repeating this bit about for-profit corporations but gloss over the fact that Citizens United was NOT a for-profit corporation, nor are the many corporations set up for the express purpose of political advocacy.
This is the money quote from the Citizens United opinion:
If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech. If the antidistortion rationale were to be accepted, however, it would permit Government to ban political speech simply because the speaker is an association that has taken on the corporate form.
Nobody is muzzling anyone. That quote also conflates for-profit and non-profit corporations. They are set up differently under different sets of regulations. Non-profits set up to represent the views of their individual donors are in no way the same as a for-profit corporation. As long as people try to pretend they're the same thing, we're going to have massive amounts of untraceable money from unaccountable sources pushing for policies that only serve the interests of a certain corporation or industry's profit ambitions. The candidates that bow to these interests will gain massiv
If they increase their own salary in some kind of agreement that they will use that money for political influence, then the would still be in violation of the law
Good luck enforcing that law.
It would be similar to enforcing laws like those against insider trading. Difficult, but worth doing.
Giving corporations the right to free political speech is absolutely toxic to the political environment in this country. We're seeing the results of that already, and it's going to get worse.
You mean to say that it doesn't necessarily lead to results that YOU approve of.
No, I mean to say it leads to complete polarization and nothing but lies being slung around by both sides. You'll notice that that's exactly what's going on right now.
The real problem is that money is equated with speech, and that gives those with the most money the biggest soap box.
Money is speech. It costs money to produce TV advertisements, fliers, lawn signs, etc.
Exactly, which is why those with the most money get to speak more often and more loudly than anyone else. With the vast majority of money in this country being concentrated in the hands of large corporations and a tiny minority of the population, who's messages do you think will be flooding the media? Who do you think can make their arguments most often and most loudly? If this stuff didn't work, we wouldn't see corporations spending tens of millions on it every time an election rolls around. They influence the elections in their favor, reap the rewards of policy influence, and do it all over again next time. That's how they manage to increase their wealth dramatically every year while the middle class has seen their wages flatline or worse in that same time. Some like to call any talk like this class warfare. I prefer to think of it as pointing out that the other guy has his thumb on the scale.
Since the vast majority of the money in this country is concentrated in the hands of a fairly small minority of the population, we are essentially allowing them to direct the politics of the country. This, of course, gives them the ability to direct policies in their favor, which they do.
No, the voters direct politics in this country. Your entire argument is based on the premise that those voters need to be protected from corporate speech. You fear that speech because you think that people may be exposed to it and decide not to vote for the candidates that you personally would like to see win our elections. Rather than counter it with your own speech you seek to muzzle it at the source. We call that censorship where I'm from.
Right. But where do they get their information? What gets them motivated to go to the polls? Like I said, these corporations don't throw millions at this stuff because it doesn't work. They know it works on the majority of people out there, which is why they pay for it. It's insane to allow for-profit corporations to spend their money to influence politics. They aren't people, they don't have the interests or values of people. They have exactly ONE interest, and that's increasing profits. If that's the only value we're concerned with as a country, then fine, let them spend their money to build themselves the biggest soap box to drown out everyone else. I really hope that's not what this country values though.
Your reasons don't hold water with me, for reasons I've already stated. I do have to say that it's pretty funny that you think the owners should be able to do it themselves but not the corporation. You do realize they can just increase their own salary to offset the printing and distribution costs, right? You've accomplished nothing other than to increase the paperwork burden required to exercise free speech.
If they increase their own salary in some kind of agreement that they will use that money for political influence, then the would still be in violation of the law, as the corporation is now paying them for political action. Giving corporations the right to free political speech is absolutely toxic to the political environment in this country. We're seeing the results of that already, and it's going to get worse.
The real problem is that money is equated with speech, and that gives those with the most money the biggest soap box. Since the vast majority of the money in this country is concentrated in the hands of a fairly small minority of the population, we are essentially allowing them to direct the politics of the country. This, of course, gives them the ability to direct policies in their favor, which they do.
Regular corporations would still not be permitted to donate to political influence activities.
So my local grocery store isn't allowed to publish a flier detailing how the new zoning law will impact them and their customers unless they go through the hassle of setting up a separate corporation for this purpose?
The owners of that store can publish all the flyers they want about how the law will affect their store. A for-profit corporation should not have that right, for the reasons I've already stated.
I see no reason why that should give it the right to take actions to influence the political decisions of the country.
Show me the part of the Constitution that says Congress can make laws concerning speech when said speech originates from a corporation. You won't find such a section. The 1st amendment is clear as day, Congress shall make no law.....
Again, the Constitution and its amendments apply to the people, not to laws that allow for the shielding of assets. Corporations are not people, and therefore have no inalienable rights. They are a creation of the government and have only the rights that the government grants them. The First Amendment has nothing to do with it.
Citizens United was (is?) a non-profit corporation created specifically for the purpose of political advocacy. Under the law that was struck down they were denied the ability to release their video during the campaign. That is not compatible with free speech no matter how you try and spin it.
Had they raised that money only from donations by individuals rather than for-profit corporations, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Otherwise they are just acting as a mouthpiece for for-profit corporations.
The bill of rights is precisely about rights for the people.
No, the Bill of Rights is about making it harder for the Government to infringe on our preexisting natural law rights. It does not "grant" us anything.
Are corporations people?
Corporations are made up of people which can not be denied their free speech rights merely on the basis of grouping with others for a common cause.
And preventing corporations, whose reason for existence is to create a profit for their shareholders, from directly funding political speech and activities would have absolutely no impact on the rights of all those people to exercise their free speech rights. It just doesn't let the interests of a legal entity, that exists at the government's behest, to be treated as if it were a person. Corporations have no preexisting natural law rights to infringe upon. All of those people who own part of the corporation or are employed by it get no say in how its profits are spent. It is not representing them. Some types of corporations are created specifically for such purposes, and I can see a use for them, as they are basically binding the corporation's officers to use the money in pursuit of the stated goals, whether political or otherwise. They get money from people for those specific reasons and the corporate structure protects those people from having their money used for some other purpose.
Not according to the First Amendment. It written as a restriction on the laws passed by congress. No exceptions. In fact freedom of the press would be meaning less if rights didn't extend to corporations.
The same part that has people confused about "shall not be infringed".
People don't know what "no" means anymore; from spoiled kids to congress, "no" is just one of those words that means "you can probably do it anyway".
Or people have the ability to read and understand English, which gives them the ability to look at the entirety of a sentence and derive its meaning, rather than looking at a word or phrase and trying to exclude the rest of the sentence. Nowhere in the constitution does it provide for free speech by a legal liability shield. The rights of the people are protected. Corporations are not people and their speech can certainly be limited, as their entire existence is a creation of the government.
So you are fine with muzzling the speech of everyday Americans that don't have the resources or time to champion their issue on an individual level?
No, I support them being subject to the same rules that would not allow a corporation set up for the purpose of making a profit for its owners to direct those funds into influencing politics. Regular shareholders don't get a say in that, and that's not the stated purpose of the corporation. If there is a certain class of non-profit corporation that accepts money from people to support a certain political view or philosphy, then I'd be fine with that. It wouldn't be the same type of animal that a regular corporation is though. Individuals could use that to pool their money for the stated purpose. Regular corporations would still not be permitted to donate to political influence activities.
Dude, the freedom of speech is not the same thing as the freedom to lie about your identity.
So you don't think that anonymous political speech is protected by the 1st amendment? Why aren't you posting under your real name then?
There's a difference between anonymous speech and deceptive speech. I have the right to free speech, but that doesn't give me the right to slander someone. Nor does it give me the right to lie to a judge or other state representative. Why should a corporation be allowed to be involved in politics at all? Every owner of the corporation has that individual right, but the corporation itself is a government-created entity that exists only as a liability shield for the shareholders of the corporation. I see no reason why that should give it the right to take actions to influence the political decisions of the country.
The intent was that Congress would not be in the position of regulating speech.
Why are you so afraid of unfettered speech anyway? Is your opinion of the American electorate so low that you think they need to be shielded from this speech and can't form their own opinions about it?
I see no reason to allow corporations to have the ability to speak on political issues. The individuals of that corporation have that right. The corporation itself is simply a legal shield created by the government for the purpose of facilitating commerce, and as such should not have the rights of a person.
Case law is simply the interpretations of actual laws made by the legislature. The courts don't make the laws. Without someone making actual laws, there's nothing to interpret, and the interpretations depend upon the wording of the laws written by the legislature.
Ironically funny actually (or perhaps tragic?). I actually used to like Obama until I realized he wanted to spend money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Plenty of wild promises, little implementation details, and little way of paying for it short of diverting war funds or repealing tax cuts. And people wonder why the Tea Party is so up in arms -- I'm willing to bet a good chunk of them voted for Obama expecting something other than the status quo -- like maybe some fiscal accountability (ala transparency).
I seriously doubt that more than a very tiny fraction of Tea Partiers voted for Obama. Most economists, democrat or republican, were saying that the government needed to spend a lot to enable a quicker recovery. In fact they thought we should have spent more than we did. Bush even kicked off the spending before leaving office. Of course McCain's plans were also vague and had about equal amounts good and bad ideas in them. It's easy for Republican's to stand back and throw stones when they weren't on the hook to fix things. All of their claims about how it was Democratic policies that caused it ring hollow when they had about a decade of control in Congress, and Presidential control for most of that time, to fix things. If they thought things were so badly mismanaged, why didn't they do something? They also apparently believed that guys like Phil Gramm knew what they were doing, but they just made things much worse.
Well I voted Ron Paul. And personally, I feel that as long as people continue to have the partisan voting attitude, we'll never make any progress. No vote is a thrown away vote. Tea partiers are proof of that. I'm actually surprised more Dems didn't get behind Ron Paul actually -- he's so anti-war, he's practically an isolationist. And his voting track record matches what he preaches, unlike so many politicians (Obama included).
Where do you live that even had Ron Paul on the ticket? Until they fix the electoral system, 3rd party votes are at best a nudge to the major parties rather than a real threat, and we're still forced to choose between voting for our most preferred candidate and ending up with the least preferred winning, or we vote for the second choice as the lesser of two evils. That's just a bullshit system and it needs to change. Unfortunately it suits those in office, and they're the ones that have to change it. Americans tend to be resistant to change too, so it's hard to explain this stuff to them without them thinking it's too much of a change.
But he "brings things to light" in ways that actually harm the country -- he doesn't use facts -- he uses half-truths and sensationalist crap to mislead people into thinking what he wants them to think. Ultimately, he's a prey on the stupid and weakminded -- he's no different than Fox News or Rush/Coulter/O'Reilly/Hannity. If his facts stood up for themselves, he could present them in fair debate with all sides of an argument laid to bare. He's the intellectual equivalent of a blog linked to a blog linked to a twitter stream that claims it was eventually linked to a reputable news source. _All_ of these biased, spun sources (liberal and conservative alike) should be treated as the lies that they truly are.
Just like Fox manages to get some actual facts out sometimes, so too does Moore. Yeah, he dresses it up in his usual fashion, and tries to take it a lot farther than the facts actually go, but there are some truths in there that should get attention. I'd rather see someone with credibility and the ability to get national attention point these things out, but all too often that doesn't happen. So we just need to be good at picking out the truths from the rest of his crap and focusing on those things. Just like with the rest of the media.
Well I get all my news online (don't watch the sensationalist TV news), and I just saw her today on the front page of Yahoo Finance:
Or perhaps he's more polite with someone who is a senator or presidential candidate than he is with some loudmouth hypocrite?
Well, as I said, I have only that one example in googling transcripts -- but he's done similar with presidential candidates. He certainly didn't pull any punches on McCain (http://crooksandliars.com/2007/04/25/senator-mccain-on-the-daily-show), and he was both a senator _and_ a presidential candidate.
Ok, I'll agree that he was less than polite in that one. However, that was just one of the many times that McCain had been on the show, and there was obviously a lot of frustration around the political games that were being played with the war, and McCain was one of the ones doing it. We're talking about life and death stuff and people trying to trade on it for political gain.
I actually used to like the guy, and was planning to vote for him when I first heard he was going to run for president. He started changing all his positions though, flip-flopping if you will, and then picked that nitwit Palin for VP, so that pretty much clenched it. Had he at least gone with someone who was a moderate like he used to be, before he volunteered for GOP reprogramming, I may have still voted for him. As long as they keep letting the social conservative, fundamentalist nutjobs run the show, they aren't gonna get my vote. So either I don't vote and feel dirty, or I vote Democrat and still feel dirty. I can't win.
Total fruitcake how? What exactly does he do that is so mockable
Okay, maybe total fruitcake was a bit of an exaggeration. But I'm going to have to leave this one where it is because it's another flame war I'd like to avoid. But to summarize: I believe he makes wild and spectacular claims on subjects he has very little true subject matter expertise in. And I believe he's a bit of a hypocrite. But I'll leave it at that.
Aside from a couple pretty obvious screwups that I can recall (core temp of the earth being one), he mostly points to the scientific consensus, which is shared by pretty much every scientific organization that has studied the matter. So while people may not like what he has to say or how he says it, he's not making wild or crazy claims. He's just going with the best information that science can currently give us, which is all science ever does since it's always subject to revision as more data is gathered and interpreted. I can understand the hypocrite thing though. I thought the same after hearing about his home and all his travel and such, so I think that's fair. Of course he's done a lot since then to rectify that situation too.
What high-profile left-wing loons has he neglected to mock?
The Left definitely has its own brand of "Rush/Coulter/O'Reilly/Hannity". Most of them are internet personalities like Arianna Huffington. Al Franken -- or other Air America personalities. Hell, Michael Moore in particular is a choice target, as frequently as he uses "convenient editing" to try to sell his arguments. Stewart hits Fox News all the time for clipping/splicing footage, yet none of Moore's works gets lambasted for doing the exact same kind of "creative editing"/spin.
Stewart doesn't generally go after Fox for splicing stuff together. There was the instance with the rally, but that was just them showing a different rally than the one they were talking about, yet implying that it was that one. He goes after them for hypocrisy more than anything, and he often uses clips from earlier shows that highlight how full of crap they can be, and how they'll bash a liberal for the same thing that they praise a conservative for. That stuff is infuriating to anyone who is remotely fair-minded, so I'm glad they spend the time to research this stuff and call out the media outlets for that crap as well as all the other things they're guilty
I hope you see my point -- guests he doesn't agree with he grills, ambushes, cuts off, and throws under the bus -- others that share his viewpoints he merrily converses with, tossing in anti-Republican jibes wherever he gets a chance.
Or perhaps he's more polite with someone who is a senator or presidential candidate than he is with some loudmouth hypocrite? John has done plenty of interviews with very right-wing folks where he was quite polite, Newt Gingrich for instance. I think your example is an apples to oranges thing.
And that's the exact argument _always_ used to describe the imbalance of jibes in the Daily Show. And frankly, I think it's complete bullshit. BOTH sides have nutty individuals. For instance, where's all the unadultered crazy from the Green Party? During the "Gore fad" when global warming was a hot button issue, NONE of the loudmouthed loons from that movement got put on TV (it is _just_ as "cult like/extreme" as the Tea Party). And there's plenty of them. Heck, where's the Gore mockery? That guy is damn close to a total fruitcake -- even South Park mocks him.
Total fruitcake how? What exactly does he do that is so mockable, aside from being an amazingly boring speaker with a voice that makes people pass out? I can't even remember the last time I heard anything about the green party in the news, so it's not surprising that we don't see anything about them from the Daily Show either. They tend to target things that people have heard of and that are being reported on by the major media outlets.
In other examples, McCain shooting a buddy by accident in the woods gets a hell of alot more screentime and constant replay value than Obama's nutty childhood pastor (which is just as gag worthy), which got maybe 5 minutes of screen time and never mentioned again
First, it was Cheney that shot someone, and that's just not something that happens with a VP every day (or ever since we stopped dueling), so of course it gets a lot of play.
Second, Wright got a lot more than 5 minutes. His antics were mocked quite a bit, but much like now, Jon sought to bring some rationality to the discussion too. Maybe you need to go search the archives over at the show's website if you really think it only got 5 minutes of coverage.
-- Edward's affair might get a few minutes of on-time gags before getting back to the usual staple ridicules of McCain's age or Bush's laugh or some other BS that. Democrat jabs are _very_ fleeting on Daily Show and barely ever reoccuring -- even now with Bush a nonplayer in government do you see Stewart continually return to mock him.
Lol! Oversensitive a bit? GWB was one of the least eloquent speakers we've ever had as a president. That he's mocked for it to this day doesn't surprise me, especially as that became a running gag on the show. I'm only thankful that I don't have to hear his voice anymore. Really though, I think you just notice the right-wing jabs more than the left. Kinda like I tend to notice the things that I disagree with more than the rest.
At any rate, I once again claim you're looking through rose colored glasses here -- the left have just as many high-profile loons. And just as many stupid decisions. In fact, they have an entire year of failed attempts to right the economy that could be picked apart to great amusement. Yet Stewart's jabs in their direction are the comedic equivalent of softballs. Hell, he spent alot of the year railing against Republicans for their "obstructionism" even when the Dems had a filibuster-proof majority earlier in the year. He'll dismiss a Kerry Republican talking point but _defend_ an equally bullshit (or applicable, depending on how you want to see it) Democratic talking point? Please.
Dems never really had a filibuster-proof majority because they're all over the map and it's damn near impossible to get them all to agree on a
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they deliberately allowed it to continue
Again, you make claims with no evidence to back them up.
Did they know about the errors? Yes. Did they fix the problem? No. Did they warn their customers that they were having billing issues? No. There you go.
and did nothing to even warn their customers about the possibility of an overcharge on their bill due to problems with their billing system
It's your own responsibility to review your bill for accuracy.
So you're saying they aren't responsible for alerting customers when they know they have a billing problem that could affect them? They aren't responsible for sending accurate bills to their customers? How come in your world we're supposed to be responsible for our actions, but corporations aren't responsible for their actions? They were the ones overcharging people and keeping the money.
but instead just continued to collect the money and say nothing
Actually, they eventually fixed the problem with their billing system and agreed to offer refunds to the impacted customers. I've not personally observed this problem in over a year. I suppose you are entitled to keep believing that they "did nothing" if that better fits into your ideology though :)
Yes, they eventually fixed the problem. The problem is that they never told their customers they had a problem, even though they knew they did. It only took them several years and an FCC lawsuit to fix it. Meanwhile we only have their word to go on that they're refunding the proper amounts to everyone that should get a refund. I'm wondering why it took so long, and why they didn't start refunding these charges to everyone years ago if they know who these 15 million people are. And this is just covering this specific type of billing issue. They are still being investigated for others. But I guess in your world corporations are just benevolent organizations with their customers' best interests at heart, and would never do anything remotely dishonest. Right?
I'm not justifying anything, I'm only calling BS on your unproven accusations of fraud. Fraud:
deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.
Unless you can prove that Verizon deliberately did this there is no "fraud" here. Billing errors != fraud
I'm not saying they deliberately did it. I'm saying that once they realized it was happening, they deliberately allowed it to continue, and did nothing to even warn their customers about the possibility of an overcharge on their bill due to problems with their billing system, but instead just continued to collect the money and say nothing. By any definition you care to cite, that's fraud!
The fees are legitimate. Read the contract you signed. Verizon bills you $1.99 per MB of data, rounded up. You knew that going in, or at least you should have if you bothered to read the agreement that you signed. What's not legitimate is that the fees were applied towards data that was supposed to be free.
So first you say the fees are legitimate, and then you admit they aren't, because the customers shouldn't have been charged, but got charged anyway. Seriously man, the mental gymnastics you are engaging in to try to justify this are just making you look silly. They were adding charges to people's bills that they should not have been adding. How much more clear can it get? Those charges are in no way legitimate.
It's not a huge leap at all once it was clear that people were being charged for things they shouldn't be charged for. At that point it's obvious that there's a problem with their billing and they should have been correcting it for everyone, not letting it ride and just fixing it for people that complain. That's the fraud!
Ah, but I'm not the one trying to claim that fraud happened, now am I? I suppose backing your claims with evidence is too much to ask for?
Why the hell would someone want to sue Verizon over a $1.99 fee that was (in my experience) refunded without any hassle when the customer complained about it?
So you don't see it as a problem that Verizon is just tacking fees onto people's bills for no legal reason? They've admitted that the fees aren't legitimate. You think it's ok for them to continue doing that to other customers just because those customers didn't notice the fee, or didn't know what the fee was and assumed it was another government-sanctioned charge? If so, then you're supporting fraud. Once Verizon knew about the charges from those who were disputing them, it was their responsibility to ensure that they were not overcharging their customers. They didn't do that. That's where the fraud comes in.
Translation: I can't prove shit but I'm going to accuse them of acting fraudulently anyway.
You have no proof of anything either, just your flip remarks. I'm not giving legal advice either. If you want to sue one of the big telecoms, go talk to a lawyer. There have been plenty of cases of people suing large companies. If you're lucky, they'll brush you off with a small settlement. If it's something like this, that affected millions, then they don't want to set a precedent that would encourage others to sue as well, so they'll bury you in legal paperwork until you can't afford to go on.
If you can prove the charges were fraudulent why don't you sue them for your damages?
Oh, that's right, you can't, you just see big scary evil corporation.
Not just big scary evil corporation, but also big scary legal system that can bankrupt you long before you finally get an actual verdict, years later. If you want to be buried for years in a lawsuit you can't afford to lose, then sure, go right ahead and sue them. They can afford a hundred lawyers for every one of yours. Have you ever experienced suing a large corporation?
this walking away also has a steep cost
Then perhaps you shouldn't have signed that contract? There are alternatives if having that freedom of action is important to you.
I think the point is that when you sign the contract you don't believe that you're giving them permission to add fraudulent charges to your bill. Of course you can't alter the contract either, as there is no negotiation of terms, so one could wonder if it truly is a binding contract at all. Yet you still are forced to pay a large fee if you cancel that contract, regardless of whether they committed a fraudulent act or not. It's utterly one-sided.
But where do they get their information?
Why do you care where they get their information from? Who appointed you to determine what information I can receive in the 30 days preceding an election?
It's not determining what information you can receive. It's determining where the money for political speech can come from. People have the right to free speech. People have the right to pool their money to buy ads, flyers, etc. A corporation is not a person. It is a government creation and has only those rights that the government grants it, along with privileges like limited liability for the owners of the corporation.
It's insane to allow for-profit corporations to spend their money to influence politics.
It's more insane for the Government to be in the business of determining whose speech I should have access to.
It's perfectly legitimate for the government to say that you can't hide behind the shield they created to help facilitate commerce, and then proceed to use the benefits of that law to try to influence the political process to try to increase your profits, which will allow you to further influence the process. Government created the corporation, government can certainly put limits on it. The first amendment protects people, not laws that limit liability. We have other types of corporations that exist under different regulations and can be used to pool money from individuals for political purposes. That's a true association of people who want to make a political statement. For-profit corporations are nothing of the sort.
No, I mean to say it leads to complete polarization and nothing but lies being slung around by both sides.
So now it's the lies that bother you? Lying during political campaigns predates this Republic.
So, by all means then, let's do all we can to encourage it, and ensure that the airwaves are blanketed with lying ads. Wait, let's also ensure that there is no transparency at all, so that they can say whatever they want and then disappear after the election! Who needs accountability? Wow, I think we're pretty much there already.
Exactly, which is why those with the most money get to speak more often and more loudly than anyone else.
The 1st amendment doesn't have a fairness clause in it. Besides, even if I accept what you are saying it's an argument in favor of Citizens United. I do not have the time or the money to personally lobby my Congressman on the issues that matter to me. That's why I joined the NRA/ACLU/Sierra Club/take-your-pick. I can pool my limited resources with other like minded people and more effectively lobby for my position.
If you're not even going to try to have an honest debate, then why am I wasting my time here? Your straw man is ridiculous. You insist on conflating for-profit corporations with non-profits set up specifically for a political purpose. I've already explained the difference in several responses to you, yet you continue to use them interchangeably whenever it suits you.
Regular for-profit corporations don't speak for their shareholders. They have no idea what those people's political thoughts are, and they don't care. The shareholders can't and won't even know what candidates or political organizations the corporation supports because there is no transparency in the system. The for-profit corporation, shockingly enough, exists to make a profit, end of story. They don't have the concerns of the people in mind. They don't know or care what those concerns are. They want to put policies in place that will make them more money. Everything they do is in pursuit of that goal.
I've already said that I don't have a problem with non-profits set up to pool funds for a political purpose, so long as those funds aren't coming from for-profit corporations, so your arguments along that line are moot.
It's insane to allow for-profit corporations to spend their money to influence politics. They aren't people, they don't have the interests or values of people.
They are made up of people and those people should not be muzzled simply because they decided to associate with other like-minded people under the guise of a corporation. You keep repeating this bit about for-profit corporations but gloss over the fact that Citizens United was NOT a for-profit corporation, nor are the many corporations set up for the express purpose of political advocacy.
This is the money quote from the Citizens United opinion:
If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech. If the antidistortion rationale were to be accepted, however, it would permit Government to ban political speech simply because the speaker is an association that has taken on the corporate form.
Nobody is muzzling anyone. That quote also conflates for-profit and non-profit corporations. They are set up differently under different sets of regulations. Non-profits set up to represent the views of their individual donors are in no way the same as a for-profit corporation. As long as people try to pretend they're the same thing, we're going to have massive amounts of untraceable money from unaccountable sources pushing for policies that only serve the interests of a certain corporation or industry's profit ambitions. The candidates that bow to these interests will gain massiv
If they increase their own salary in some kind of agreement that they will use that money for political influence, then the would still be in violation of the law
Good luck enforcing that law.
It would be similar to enforcing laws like those against insider trading. Difficult, but worth doing.
Giving corporations the right to free political speech is absolutely toxic to the political environment in this country. We're seeing the results of that already, and it's going to get worse.
You mean to say that it doesn't necessarily lead to results that YOU approve of.
No, I mean to say it leads to complete polarization and nothing but lies being slung around by both sides. You'll notice that that's exactly what's going on right now.
The real problem is that money is equated with speech, and that gives those with the most money the biggest soap box.
Money is speech. It costs money to produce TV advertisements, fliers, lawn signs, etc.
Exactly, which is why those with the most money get to speak more often and more loudly than anyone else. With the vast majority of money in this country being concentrated in the hands of large corporations and a tiny minority of the population, who's messages do you think will be flooding the media? Who do you think can make their arguments most often and most loudly? If this stuff didn't work, we wouldn't see corporations spending tens of millions on it every time an election rolls around. They influence the elections in their favor, reap the rewards of policy influence, and do it all over again next time. That's how they manage to increase their wealth dramatically every year while the middle class has seen their wages flatline or worse in that same time. Some like to call any talk like this class warfare. I prefer to think of it as pointing out that the other guy has his thumb on the scale.
Since the vast majority of the money in this country is concentrated in the hands of a fairly small minority of the population, we are essentially allowing them to direct the politics of the country. This, of course, gives them the ability to direct policies in their favor, which they do.
No, the voters direct politics in this country. Your entire argument is based on the premise that those voters need to be protected from corporate speech. You fear that speech because you think that people may be exposed to it and decide not to vote for the candidates that you personally would like to see win our elections. Rather than counter it with your own speech you seek to muzzle it at the source. We call that censorship where I'm from.
Right. But where do they get their information? What gets them motivated to go to the polls? Like I said, these corporations don't throw millions at this stuff because it doesn't work. They know it works on the majority of people out there, which is why they pay for it. It's insane to allow for-profit corporations to spend their money to influence politics. They aren't people, they don't have the interests or values of people. They have exactly ONE interest, and that's increasing profits. If that's the only value we're concerned with as a country, then fine, let them spend their money to build themselves the biggest soap box to drown out everyone else. I really hope that's not what this country values though.
Your reasons don't hold water with me, for reasons I've already stated. I do have to say that it's pretty funny that you think the owners should be able to do it themselves but not the corporation. You do realize they can just increase their own salary to offset the printing and distribution costs, right? You've accomplished nothing other than to increase the paperwork burden required to exercise free speech.
If they increase their own salary in some kind of agreement that they will use that money for political influence, then the would still be in violation of the law, as the corporation is now paying them for political action. Giving corporations the right to free political speech is absolutely toxic to the political environment in this country. We're seeing the results of that already, and it's going to get worse.
The real problem is that money is equated with speech, and that gives those with the most money the biggest soap box. Since the vast majority of the money in this country is concentrated in the hands of a fairly small minority of the population, we are essentially allowing them to direct the politics of the country. This, of course, gives them the ability to direct policies in their favor, which they do.
Regular corporations would still not be permitted to donate to political influence activities.
So my local grocery store isn't allowed to publish a flier detailing how the new zoning law will impact them and their customers unless they go through the hassle of setting up a separate corporation for this purpose?
The owners of that store can publish all the flyers they want about how the law will affect their store. A for-profit corporation should not have that right, for the reasons I've already stated.
I see no reason why that should give it the right to take actions to influence the political decisions of the country.
Show me the part of the Constitution that says Congress can make laws concerning speech when said speech originates from a corporation. You won't find such a section. The 1st amendment is clear as day, Congress shall make no law.....
Again, the Constitution and its amendments apply to the people, not to laws that allow for the shielding of assets. Corporations are not people, and therefore have no inalienable rights. They are a creation of the government and have only the rights that the government grants them. The First Amendment has nothing to do with it.
Citizens United was (is?) a non-profit corporation created specifically for the purpose of political advocacy. Under the law that was struck down they were denied the ability to release their video during the campaign. That is not compatible with free speech no matter how you try and spin it.
Had they raised that money only from donations by individuals rather than for-profit corporations, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Otherwise they are just acting as a mouthpiece for for-profit corporations.
The bill of rights is precisely about rights for the people.
No, the Bill of Rights is about making it harder for the Government to infringe on our preexisting natural law rights. It does not "grant" us anything.
Are corporations people?
Corporations are made up of people which can not be denied their free speech rights merely on the basis of grouping with others for a common cause.
And preventing corporations, whose reason for existence is to create a profit for their shareholders, from directly funding political speech and activities would have absolutely no impact on the rights of all those people to exercise their free speech rights. It just doesn't let the interests of a legal entity, that exists at the government's behest, to be treated as if it were a person. Corporations have no preexisting natural law rights to infringe upon. All of those people who own part of the corporation or are employed by it get no say in how its profits are spent. It is not representing them. Some types of corporations are created specifically for such purposes, and I can see a use for them, as they are basically binding the corporation's officers to use the money in pursuit of the stated goals, whether political or otherwise. They get money from people for those specific reasons and the corporate structure protects those people from having their money used for some other purpose.
PEOPLE have First Amendment rights.
Not according to the First Amendment. It written as a restriction on the laws passed by congress. No exceptions. In fact freedom of the press would be meaning less if rights didn't extend to corporations.
How so? That makes no sense at all.
The same part that has people confused about "shall not be infringed".
People don't know what "no" means anymore; from spoiled kids to congress, "no" is just one of those words that means "you can probably do it anyway".
Or people have the ability to read and understand English, which gives them the ability to look at the entirety of a sentence and derive its meaning, rather than looking at a word or phrase and trying to exclude the rest of the sentence. Nowhere in the constitution does it provide for free speech by a legal liability shield. The rights of the people are protected. Corporations are not people and their speech can certainly be limited, as their entire existence is a creation of the government.
So you are fine with muzzling the speech of everyday Americans that don't have the resources or time to champion their issue on an individual level?
No, I support them being subject to the same rules that would not allow a corporation set up for the purpose of making a profit for its owners to direct those funds into influencing politics. Regular shareholders don't get a say in that, and that's not the stated purpose of the corporation. If there is a certain class of non-profit corporation that accepts money from people to support a certain political view or philosphy, then I'd be fine with that. It wouldn't be the same type of animal that a regular corporation is though. Individuals could use that to pool their money for the stated purpose. Regular corporations would still not be permitted to donate to political influence activities.
Dude, the freedom of speech is not the same thing as the freedom to lie about your identity.
So you don't think that anonymous political speech is protected by the 1st amendment? Why aren't you posting under your real name then?
There's a difference between anonymous speech and deceptive speech. I have the right to free speech, but that doesn't give me the right to slander someone. Nor does it give me the right to lie to a judge or other state representative. Why should a corporation be allowed to be involved in politics at all? Every owner of the corporation has that individual right, but the corporation itself is a government-created entity that exists only as a liability shield for the shareholders of the corporation. I see no reason why that should give it the right to take actions to influence the political decisions of the country.
I see no reason to allow corporations to have the ability to speak on political issues.
You do realize that the NRA, AFL-CIO, ACLU, Sierra Club, AARP, etc, are all corporations, right?
Sure, and I'm fine with it applying to them as well.
The intent was that Congress would not be in the position of regulating speech.
Why are you so afraid of unfettered speech anyway? Is your opinion of the American electorate so low that you think they need to be shielded from this speech and can't form their own opinions about it?
I see no reason to allow corporations to have the ability to speak on political issues. The individuals of that corporation have that right. The corporation itself is simply a legal shield created by the government for the purpose of facilitating commerce, and as such should not have the rights of a person.
Case law is simply the interpretations of actual laws made by the legislature. The courts don't make the laws. Without someone making actual laws, there's nothing to interpret, and the interpretations depend upon the wording of the laws written by the legislature.
Ironically funny actually (or perhaps tragic?). I actually used to like Obama until I realized he wanted to spend money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Plenty of wild promises, little implementation details, and little way of paying for it short of diverting war funds or repealing tax cuts. And people wonder why the Tea Party is so up in arms -- I'm willing to bet a good chunk of them voted for Obama expecting something other than the status quo -- like maybe some fiscal accountability (ala transparency).
I seriously doubt that more than a very tiny fraction of Tea Partiers voted for Obama. Most economists, democrat or republican, were saying that the government needed to spend a lot to enable a quicker recovery. In fact they thought we should have spent more than we did. Bush even kicked off the spending before leaving office. Of course McCain's plans were also vague and had about equal amounts good and bad ideas in them. It's easy for Republican's to stand back and throw stones when they weren't on the hook to fix things. All of their claims about how it was Democratic policies that caused it ring hollow when they had about a decade of control in Congress, and Presidential control for most of that time, to fix things. If they thought things were so badly mismanaged, why didn't they do something? They also apparently believed that guys like Phil Gramm knew what they were doing, but they just made things much worse.
Well I voted Ron Paul. And personally, I feel that as long as people continue to have the partisan voting attitude, we'll never make any progress. No vote is a thrown away vote. Tea partiers are proof of that. I'm actually surprised more Dems didn't get behind Ron Paul actually -- he's so anti-war, he's practically an isolationist. And his voting track record matches what he preaches, unlike so many politicians (Obama included).
Where do you live that even had Ron Paul on the ticket? Until they fix the electoral system, 3rd party votes are at best a nudge to the major parties rather than a real threat, and we're still forced to choose between voting for our most preferred candidate and ending up with the least preferred winning, or we vote for the second choice as the lesser of two evils. That's just a bullshit system and it needs to change. Unfortunately it suits those in office, and they're the ones that have to change it. Americans tend to be resistant to change too, so it's hard to explain this stuff to them without them thinking it's too much of a change.
But he "brings things to light" in ways that actually harm the country -- he doesn't use facts -- he uses half-truths and sensationalist crap to mislead people into thinking what he wants them to think. Ultimately, he's a prey on the stupid and weakminded -- he's no different than Fox News or Rush/Coulter/O'Reilly/Hannity. If his facts stood up for themselves, he could present them in fair debate with all sides of an argument laid to bare. He's the intellectual equivalent of a blog linked to a blog linked to a twitter stream that claims it was eventually linked to a reputable news source. _All_ of these biased, spun sources (liberal and conservative alike) should be treated as the lies that they truly are.
Just like Fox manages to get some actual facts out sometimes, so too does Moore. Yeah, he dresses it up in his usual fashion, and tries to take it a lot farther than the facts actually go, but there are some truths in there that should get attention. I'd rather see someone with credibility and the ability to get national attention point these things out, but all too often that doesn't happen. So we just need to be good at picking out the truths from the rest of his crap and focusing on those things. Just like with the rest of the media.
Well I get all my news online (don't watch the sensationalist TV news), and I just saw her today on the front page of Yahoo Finance:
Well, as I said, I have only that one example in googling transcripts -- but he's done similar with presidential candidates. He certainly didn't pull any punches on McCain (http://crooksandliars.com/2007/04/25/senator-mccain-on-the-daily-show), and he was both a senator _and_ a presidential candidate.
Ok, I'll agree that he was less than polite in that one. However, that was just one of the many times that McCain had been on the show, and there was obviously a lot of frustration around the political games that were being played with the war, and McCain was one of the ones doing it. We're talking about life and death stuff and people trying to trade on it for political gain.
I actually used to like the guy, and was planning to vote for him when I first heard he was going to run for president. He started changing all his positions though, flip-flopping if you will, and then picked that nitwit Palin for VP, so that pretty much clenched it. Had he at least gone with someone who was a moderate like he used to be, before he volunteered for GOP reprogramming, I may have still voted for him. As long as they keep letting the social conservative, fundamentalist nutjobs run the show, they aren't gonna get my vote. So either I don't vote and feel dirty, or I vote Democrat and still feel dirty. I can't win.
Okay, maybe total fruitcake was a bit of an exaggeration. But I'm going to have to leave this one where it is because it's another flame war I'd like to avoid. But to summarize: I believe he makes wild and spectacular claims on subjects he has very little true subject matter expertise in. And I believe he's a bit of a hypocrite. But I'll leave it at that.
Aside from a couple pretty obvious screwups that I can recall (core temp of the earth being one), he mostly points to the scientific consensus, which is shared by pretty much every scientific organization that has studied the matter. So while people may not like what he has to say or how he says it, he's not making wild or crazy claims. He's just going with the best information that science can currently give us, which is all science ever does since it's always subject to revision as more data is gathered and interpreted. I can understand the hypocrite thing though. I thought the same after hearing about his home and all his travel and such, so I think that's fair. Of course he's done a lot since then to rectify that situation too.
The Left definitely has its own brand of "Rush/Coulter/O'Reilly/Hannity". Most of them are internet personalities like Arianna Huffington. Al Franken -- or other Air America personalities. Hell, Michael Moore in particular is a choice target, as frequently as he uses "convenient editing" to try to sell his arguments. Stewart hits Fox News all the time for clipping/splicing footage, yet none of Moore's works gets lambasted for doing the exact same kind of "creative editing"/spin.
Stewart doesn't generally go after Fox for splicing stuff together. There was the instance with the rally, but that was just them showing a different rally than the one they were talking about, yet implying that it was that one. He goes after them for hypocrisy more than anything, and he often uses clips from earlier shows that highlight how full of crap they can be, and how they'll bash a liberal for the same thing that they praise a conservative for. That stuff is infuriating to anyone who is remotely fair-minded, so I'm glad they spend the time to research this stuff and call out the media outlets for that crap as well as all the other things they're guilty
I hope you see my point -- guests he doesn't agree with he grills, ambushes, cuts off, and throws under the bus -- others that share his viewpoints he merrily converses with, tossing in anti-Republican jibes wherever he gets a chance.
Or perhaps he's more polite with someone who is a senator or presidential candidate than he is with some loudmouth hypocrite? John has done plenty of interviews with very right-wing folks where he was quite polite, Newt Gingrich for instance. I think your example is an apples to oranges thing.
And that's the exact argument _always_ used to describe the imbalance of jibes in the Daily Show. And frankly, I think it's complete bullshit. BOTH sides have nutty individuals. For instance, where's all the unadultered crazy from the Green Party? During the "Gore fad" when global warming was a hot button issue, NONE of the loudmouthed loons from that movement got put on TV (it is _just_ as "cult like/extreme" as the Tea Party). And there's plenty of them. Heck, where's the Gore mockery? That guy is damn close to a total fruitcake -- even South Park mocks him.
Total fruitcake how? What exactly does he do that is so mockable, aside from being an amazingly boring speaker with a voice that makes people pass out? I can't even remember the last time I heard anything about the green party in the news, so it's not surprising that we don't see anything about them from the Daily Show either. They tend to target things that people have heard of and that are being reported on by the major media outlets.
In other examples, McCain shooting a buddy by accident in the woods gets a hell of alot more screentime and constant replay value than Obama's nutty childhood pastor (which is just as gag worthy), which got maybe 5 minutes of screen time and never mentioned again
First, it was Cheney that shot someone, and that's just not something that happens with a VP every day (or ever since we stopped dueling), so of course it gets a lot of play.
Second, Wright got a lot more than 5 minutes. His antics were mocked quite a bit, but much like now, Jon sought to bring some rationality to the discussion too. Maybe you need to go search the archives over at the show's website if you really think it only got 5 minutes of coverage.
-- Edward's affair might get a few minutes of on-time gags before getting back to the usual staple ridicules of McCain's age or Bush's laugh or some other BS that. Democrat jabs are _very_ fleeting on Daily Show and barely ever reoccuring -- even now with Bush a nonplayer in government do you see Stewart continually return to mock him.
Lol! Oversensitive a bit? GWB was one of the least eloquent speakers we've ever had as a president. That he's mocked for it to this day doesn't surprise me, especially as that became a running gag on the show. I'm only thankful that I don't have to hear his voice anymore. Really though, I think you just notice the right-wing jabs more than the left. Kinda like I tend to notice the things that I disagree with more than the rest.
At any rate, I once again claim you're looking through rose colored glasses here -- the left have just as many high-profile loons. And just as many stupid decisions. In fact, they have an entire year of failed attempts to right the economy that could be picked apart to great amusement. Yet Stewart's jabs in their direction are the comedic equivalent of softballs. Hell, he spent alot of the year railing against Republicans for their "obstructionism" even when the Dems had a filibuster-proof majority earlier in the year. He'll dismiss a Kerry Republican talking point but _defend_ an equally bullshit (or applicable, depending on how you want to see it) Democratic talking point? Please.
Dems never really had a filibuster-proof majority because they're all over the map and it's damn near impossible to get them all to agree on a