No, people are saying that people should not be able to band together to create and distribute a movie critical of Hillary Clinton because THAT is what the CItizens Untied case was about.
A bunch of people, who did not want Hillary to ever be President, pooled their money and made a movie critical of her, intending to screen that movie in theaters shortly before the 2008 presidential elections (this was when everyone was sure that Hillary would be the Dem nominee in 2008). The FEC told them that election laws said that this was a violation of a law passed by Congress (The FEC was correct). Citizens United (the name the group of people gave themselves) challenged that law in court. The Supreme Court ruled that the statement in the Constitution which says, "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." applied to movies as well as to things published using a printing press.
If you reduce the power of the government, that increased access to power is of little value, which is the basic point of the argument made by those who favor limited government. IF the government has limited ability to influence a rich person's economic well-being, that rich person has limited incentive to manipulate the government. If the government has extended ability to influence a rich person's economic well-being, it has extended ability to be used by that rich person to handicap his competition, especially when that competition has little wealth in comparison.
Actually, inheritance taxes result in wealthy men setting up trust funds to manage their money in such a way as to make it harder for their heirs to lose the wealth they accumulated. Or, have you never heard of the DuPonts, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, and the numerous other families whose wealth was made by an ancestor when inheritance taxes were much higher than they are today?
If the large corporations lose the ability to use the government to harass and shut down competing businesses and business models, they will lose their power. Large corporations do not exist despite the efforts of big government to control them. They exist BECAUSE of big government efforts to control businesses.
The government has to be the biggest kid on the block because it has to be able to enforce its laws and regulations.
The problem with your thought process is that, whenever it is allowed to grow, government prefers one, or a few, big business over multiple small businesses. As a result, government encourages the formation of monopolies. The original AT&T did not become a monopoly because the telephone system is a "natural" monopoly. It became a monopoly because the government wanted it to be a monopoly.
This is because as government gets larger, the difference between government and large businesses and financial interests becomes less and less.
While this is more or less true, the situation is much worse than that. Bigger government PREFERS large businesses and financial interests. It is much easier for those who control the levers of power of a big government to maintain control of those levers if they can use their power over a single company to deny access to say electricity* to anyone who attempts to pry those levers out of their hands (*electricity is just one example).
The point is that big government LIKES and empowers big business. In other words, big government is a cause of big business not a control over it.
The Nazi Party was not considered far right until Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. Up until that point, they were members in good standing in the progressive movement.
Actually, many entrepreneurs are more successful on subsequent startups (although, I believe it is usually the third or fourth business that they start which succeeds).
What is the "most ecologically-sound" solution? Let's take the problem of malaria. The best solution to the problem of malaria was the judicious application of DDT. Except that was decided to not be "ecologically-sound", so it was decided that the solution was to live with people dying of malaria until another solution was found. Of course, to many of the "ecologically-minded" that was actually a plus.
When I read the headline, I thought the conclusion would be the opposite of the one drawn. I am sure the claims mentioned in the paper are made, but I doubt that they are widespread (I had never heard them before, and the idea that, at that time, a paper written by a man would be submitted under a woman's name seems to be a claim which requires pretty substantial supporting evidence).
Well, I guess not if you are one of those people who want to live life as a corporate/government drone. There is a reason why authoritarian governments prefer big corporations.
No, these companies had tasks which were worth about $15 an hour to perform, with the increase of minimum wage to $13 an hour the cost to have someone perform those tasks has exceeded that $15 an hour value so the company now does without having that task performed.
In other words...raising the minimum wage helps large corporations at the expense of small business. Further consider the fact that numerous studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of job growth comes from these small businesses.
Incorporating takes very little money. I worked for a guy who started an incorporated business AFTER he had run a sole proprietorship so far into the hole that it was cheaper to start a corporation than to file for bankruptcy and took less time. His decision to incorporate his second business was more about gaming the system to protect his new business from his former business' debts than about protecting himself from his new business' debts.
You misunderstand the logic. If the value an employee adds to the business is $10 an hour, that business will likely be competitive paying them up to about $8 an hour. However, that would only apply in certain very special edge cases, most of the time an employer will want their employees to add MORE value than the cost of employing them. When it becomes necessary to pay an employee who adds $10 of value an hour $9 an hour it is no longer profitable to employ that person. It is important to remember that an employee costs more than their base wage to employ. That is why employers will often be willing to pay existing employees double time for overtime rather than hire another person.
Rephrasing the point I made in the first paragraph: if a task adds $10 an hour of value an employer may be willing to pay up to $8 an hour to someone to perform that task, If it becomes necessary to pay someone more than $8 an hour to perform that task, the task will cease being done (these tasks will often end up being assigned to employees who perform high value tasks which are intermittent).
If you want to get rid of the two party system, get rid of government support for party primaries. Let the parties select their candidates however they like...if they want to do it via an election, let the parties pay for that election.
You make the mistake most of the others on here make. The Electoral College may not boost the power of the VOTERS in the small states, but it does boost the power of the states.
As conceived by the Framers of the Constitution, the voters of the United States do not decide who the President will be, the States do. The fact that all states currently allocate their Electoral College representatives based on the results of an election does not change the fact that the Constitution gives each state legislature complete freedom to select their EC representatives in any manner they so choose.
4,000 complaints certainly warrants an investigation. Perhaps someone will do one. However, until these complaints are investigated we have no basis for taking action. You cite some interesting stats concerning arbitration vs lawsuits. Those are not mentioned in the CBS article, nor are they mentioned in the letter from the Senators, who are basing their letter on the CBS non-investigation.
There may be a problem with arbitration (and if the numbers you cite are true, there is...although those numbers suggest there is a similar problem in the opposite direction with the courts). If an investigation reveals that such a problem exists, then action should be taken (although, your numbers make it seem like that problem represents a violation of existing laws, so the action might be prosecution rather than new laws).
Isn't CBS News the news company that ran with the story that George W. Bush went AWOL from his Air National Guard unit based on documents which could not have been written less than 10 years after they purported to have been written? (rhetorical question)
The news article quoted in the summary found over 4,000 COMPLAINTS that AT&T had used arbitration to overcharge. It does not tell us how many of those complaints it actually verified. The only evidence they offered that arbitration is biased is that only 18 customers actually used it. They did not provide any evidence that a larger number tried to use it and gave up, only that only 18 customers used it.
Does not matter. You do not have a First Amendment right to post on government forums, nor do you have a First Amendment right to receive public pronouncements from the government.
Which is interesting because the U.S. does not HAVE 17 intelligence agencies which would all have any knowledge or expertise, of whether or not the Russians hacked anything. In other words, most of those 17 intelligence agencies were just saying what they were told to say (which makes you wonder whether the agencies with the knowledge and expertise were doing the same thing...especially when you discover that no government agency ever had access to the servers which were hacked...at least, not as part of the investigation into the hacking).
Slashdot Mirror
No, people are saying that people should not be able to band together to create and distribute a movie critical of Hillary Clinton because THAT is what the CItizens Untied case was about.
A bunch of people, who did not want Hillary to ever be President, pooled their money and made a movie critical of her, intending to screen that movie in theaters shortly before the 2008 presidential elections (this was when everyone was sure that Hillary would be the Dem nominee in 2008). The FEC told them that election laws said that this was a violation of a law passed by Congress (The FEC was correct). Citizens United (the name the group of people gave themselves) challenged that law in court. The Supreme Court ruled that the statement in the Constitution which says, "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." applied to movies as well as to things published using a printing press.
If you reduce the power of the government, that increased access to power is of little value, which is the basic point of the argument made by those who favor limited government. IF the government has limited ability to influence a rich person's economic well-being, that rich person has limited incentive to manipulate the government. If the government has extended ability to influence a rich person's economic well-being, it has extended ability to be used by that rich person to handicap his competition, especially when that competition has little wealth in comparison.
Actually, inheritance taxes result in wealthy men setting up trust funds to manage their money in such a way as to make it harder for their heirs to lose the wealth they accumulated. Or, have you never heard of the DuPonts, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, and the numerous other families whose wealth was made by an ancestor when inheritance taxes were much higher than they are today?
Without the support of the government, monopolies ALWAYS come apart after a short time.
If the large corporations lose the ability to use the government to harass and shut down competing businesses and business models, they will lose their power. Large corporations do not exist despite the efforts of big government to control them. They exist BECAUSE of big government efforts to control businesses.
The government has to be the biggest kid on the block because it has to be able to enforce its laws and regulations.
The problem with your thought process is that, whenever it is allowed to grow, government prefers one, or a few, big business over multiple small businesses. As a result, government encourages the formation of monopolies. The original AT&T did not become a monopoly because the telephone system is a "natural" monopoly. It became a monopoly because the government wanted it to be a monopoly.
This is because as government gets larger, the difference between government and large businesses and financial interests becomes less and less.
While this is more or less true, the situation is much worse than that. Bigger government PREFERS large businesses and financial interests. It is much easier for those who control the levers of power of a big government to maintain control of those levers if they can use their power over a single company to deny access to say electricity* to anyone who attempts to pry those levers out of their hands (*electricity is just one example).
The point is that big government LIKES and empowers big business. In other words, big government is a cause of big business not a control over it.
The Nazi Party was not considered far right until Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. Up until that point, they were members in good standing in the progressive movement.
Actually, many entrepreneurs are more successful on subsequent startups (although, I believe it is usually the third or fourth business that they start which succeeds).
What is the "most ecologically-sound" solution? Let's take the problem of malaria. The best solution to the problem of malaria was the judicious application of DDT. Except that was decided to not be "ecologically-sound", so it was decided that the solution was to live with people dying of malaria until another solution was found. Of course, to many of the "ecologically-minded" that was actually a plus.
When I read the headline, I thought the conclusion would be the opposite of the one drawn. I am sure the claims mentioned in the paper are made, but I doubt that they are widespread (I had never heard them before, and the idea that, at that time, a paper written by a man would be submitted under a woman's name seems to be a claim which requires pretty substantial supporting evidence).
Well, I guess not if you are one of those people who want to live life as a corporate/government drone. There is a reason why authoritarian governments prefer big corporations.
No, these companies had tasks which were worth about $15 an hour to perform, with the increase of minimum wage to $13 an hour the cost to have someone perform those tasks has exceeded that $15 an hour value so the company now does without having that task performed.
In other words...raising the minimum wage helps large corporations at the expense of small business. Further consider the fact that numerous studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of job growth comes from these small businesses.
Except that most "McDonalds' employees" do not actually work for the company which pays the salary of the CEO of McDonalds.
Incorporating takes very little money. I worked for a guy who started an incorporated business AFTER he had run a sole proprietorship so far into the hole that it was cheaper to start a corporation than to file for bankruptcy and took less time. His decision to incorporate his second business was more about gaming the system to protect his new business from his former business' debts than about protecting himself from his new business' debts.
You misunderstand the logic. If the value an employee adds to the business is $10 an hour, that business will likely be competitive paying them up to about $8 an hour. However, that would only apply in certain very special edge cases, most of the time an employer will want their employees to add MORE value than the cost of employing them. When it becomes necessary to pay an employee who adds $10 of value an hour $9 an hour it is no longer profitable to employ that person. It is important to remember that an employee costs more than their base wage to employ. That is why employers will often be willing to pay existing employees double time for overtime rather than hire another person.
Rephrasing the point I made in the first paragraph: if a task adds $10 an hour of value an employer may be willing to pay up to $8 an hour to someone to perform that task, If it becomes necessary to pay someone more than $8 an hour to perform that task, the task will cease being done (these tasks will often end up being assigned to employees who perform high value tasks which are intermittent).
The problem with that is that you have to allow people to SPEND money campaigning in order for them to "get it back".
If you want to get rid of the two party system, get rid of government support for party primaries. Let the parties select their candidates however they like...if they want to do it via an election, let the parties pay for that election.
You make the mistake most of the others on here make. The Electoral College may not boost the power of the VOTERS in the small states, but it does boost the power of the states.
As conceived by the Framers of the Constitution, the voters of the United States do not decide who the President will be, the States do. The fact that all states currently allocate their Electoral College representatives based on the results of an election does not change the fact that the Constitution gives each state legislature complete freedom to select their EC representatives in any manner they so choose.
4,000 complaints certainly warrants an investigation. Perhaps someone will do one. However, until these complaints are investigated we have no basis for taking action. You cite some interesting stats concerning arbitration vs lawsuits. Those are not mentioned in the CBS article, nor are they mentioned in the letter from the Senators, who are basing their letter on the CBS non-investigation.
There may be a problem with arbitration (and if the numbers you cite are true, there is...although those numbers suggest there is a similar problem in the opposite direction with the courts). If an investigation reveals that such a problem exists, then action should be taken (although, your numbers make it seem like that problem represents a violation of existing laws, so the action might be prosecution rather than new laws).
Isn't CBS News the news company that ran with the story that George W. Bush went AWOL from his Air National Guard unit based on documents which could not have been written less than 10 years after they purported to have been written? (rhetorical question)
The news article quoted in the summary found over 4,000 COMPLAINTS that AT&T had used arbitration to overcharge. It does not tell us how many of those complaints it actually verified. The only evidence they offered that arbitration is biased is that only 18 customers actually used it. They did not provide any evidence that a larger number tried to use it and gave up, only that only 18 customers used it.
Does not matter. You do not have a First Amendment right to post on government forums, nor do you have a First Amendment right to receive public pronouncements from the government.
Except that the "17 intelligence agencies" were supposedly U.S. agencies according to the "news" articles.
Which is interesting because the U.S. does not HAVE 17 intelligence agencies which would all have any knowledge or expertise, of whether or not the Russians hacked anything. In other words, most of those 17 intelligence agencies were just saying what they were told to say (which makes you wonder whether the agencies with the knowledge and expertise were doing the same thing...especially when you discover that no government agency ever had access to the servers which were hacked...at least, not as part of the investigation into the hacking).