SocSec is paid for by a specific withholding on payroll dedicated to that purpose only, not out of the general fund. The SS trust fund currently has a large surplus and is forecast to be solvent until at least 2040. If you want to abolish SS then you'd better start thinking about how you're going to pay me back for all of the money I've been putting into it since around 1965. If you calculated the federal deficit properly then the money borrowed from SS would show up as a liability and make the deficit look even worse. (And no, I'm not collecting SS yet, it'll be 8 or 9 years from now).
Open source isn't the answer. How can you ever know that the code you're running is truly the open source code you validated unless you compile and install it yourself (I'm talking about every voter here)? How can you know for sure that the OS or BIOS isn't corrupted somehow? If you're going to use software in the election process then the process needs to be designed in such a way that it doesn't matter if the code is open or closed source.
I think it's ignored because when it's been investigated it's never been found to be much of a problem. There have been a few isolated cases but I don't think it's ever been shown to be enough to change an election.
My thought is that all of the sales/use taxing authorities in the country ought to get together and create an online clearing house for the taxes. Then all a seller would have to do is submit the ship to or bill to address and other pertinent information to the clearing house and it would return the appropriate charge for sales/use tax. The seller would then send a lump sum to the clearing house each month for all of the taxes collected and the clearing house would take care of distributing the money to the individual taxing authorities charging a small percentage for administrative costs. Each taxing authority would be responsible for keeping it's own parameters updated in the clearing house. That would simplify things for the sellers since they only have to deal with one entity.
I always thought that not taxing internet transactions is unfair to the local sellers who do have to collect the tax and to the tax payers who are conscientious about paying their taxes.
Both the R's & D's listen mostly to the people financing their campaigns and spending the big bucks on lobbying them. They throw us little people a bone every once in a while to keep us happy. It's all about power and in the USA it's mostly money that defines power.
I believe research has shown that the single biggest factor in fertility levels is the educational level of women. In general the areas with the highest population growth are the areas where women are the least educated.
"I won't say that the telecoms are as pure as the wind driven snow, but it is obvious that they acted in good faith to aid this country in an time of crisis. Does no one remember what is was like following the 9/11 attacks?"
What was the crisis in February 2001 when the warrantless wiretapping started? That was 7 months before 9/11.
One place to start would be the review titled "THE MYTH OF THE 1970S GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS" that looks at the papers published on subject from 1965-1979. You can see it here: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf According to this there was a mention of possible climate change due to the release of CO2 from burning of fossil fuels in a 1965 report from the Presidents Science Advisory Committee (to Lyndon Johnson).
Until emergency rooms and other medical service providers can turn you away because you can't pay for their services it's an entitlement here in the US as well. It's just by doing it this way and allowing the insurance providers and drug companies to make ridiculous profits it costs us about twice as much per capita for medical services than in the rest of the "Civilised World ®".
In my first year of college taking the 2nd term of calculus the ta said on the first day that you can't do any worse in the course than you did on the final. So the only time I attended all term after the first day was the 2 mid-terms and then I crammed hard for 2 days before the final and got a B (missed an A by 2 points). I think that's the most pissed off I've ever seen a teacher in my life.
To defend it just a little, moneyed interests including corporations have always had "excess" influence in the government but I think the Bush administration has taken it to a level that we haven't seen since the era of the robber barons.
The reason that the telco's have suit filed against them is that they were breaking the law by acceding to the governments request for wire taps without warrants *BEFORE* 9/11. That's before any bill was considered that would make the practice legal. And in my opinion the only way to make the wire tapping of US citizens without a warrant legal would be a constitutional amendment that supersedes the 4th amendment.
Your analysis is flawed because it doesn't take into account the difference in the densities of the fuel. The density of Jet A-1 is about 0.8 kg/L (depending on temperature while the density of liquid hydrogen is about 0.07 kg/L. Therefore the larger size of the lapcat is due largely to the low density of the hydrogen fuel which doesn't necessarily make it heavier than an A380.
From wikipedia the A380 has an empty weight of 267,800 kg, a maximum payload of 90,800 kg and a maximum takeoff weight of 560,000 kg. So that's about 201,400 kg of fuel or about 35% of the maximum takeoff weight.
So even though the lapcat appears larger than the A380 its maximum takeoff weight may be significantly less.
If you're printing the ballots on demand on blank stock then it's easy to keep enough on hand since if you don't use them in one election you can use them in the next. The ballots should have a tear off serial number for auditing purposes. In one place I used to vote we'd fill in our ballots, slip then into and open ended envelope that covered your vote but left the s/n tab exposed. Before depositing your ballot in the ballot box you would tear off the s/n tab and deposit it in a box(to compare to the number of ballots later) then slip your ballot out of the envelope into the ballot box.
In Oregon if you are homeless but want to vote you can have the ballot delivered to a homeless shelter or other service agency. Also, you can go to the county elections office and fill out your ballot there. Since the ballots are mailed to voters about 2 weeks before election day you can do that at any time during that 2 week period.
I have to say I'm happy with this system. It give you time to consider the ballot and take your time filling it out. I do suspect that in some authoritarian families there may be some people forced to vote for the authority figure's choices but I've never heard of a problem with this so I doubt it happens a lot.
"Who said anything about dogma? The current accepted theory about the origin of life on earth evolution. The majority of scientists accept this view."
Of course evolution doesn't really say anything about the origin of life. It just explains the variety of life we see.
AFAIK written languages are less than 10000 years old. And the printing press is only a bit over 500 years old. Before that making copies of written manuscripts was difficult and expensive. Also, few people were literate and able to read the stuff until relatively recently and had the free time to pursue that knowledge. I think more than half of the human beings who have ever lived on this planet are alive today. That give you a huge pool of people to advance the rate of progress in human knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
Re: Shock See "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein
SocSec is paid for by a specific withholding on payroll dedicated to that purpose only, not out of the general fund. The SS trust fund currently has a large surplus and is forecast to be solvent until at least 2040. If you want to abolish SS then you'd better start thinking about how you're going to pay me back for all of the money I've been putting into it since around 1965. If you calculated the federal deficit properly then the money borrowed from SS would show up as a liability and make the deficit look even worse. (And no, I'm not collecting SS yet, it'll be 8 or 9 years from now).
Open source isn't the answer. How can you ever know that the code you're running is truly the open source code you validated unless you compile and install it yourself (I'm talking about every voter here)? How can you know for sure that the OS or BIOS isn't corrupted somehow? If you're going to use software in the election process then the process needs to be designed in such a way that it doesn't matter if the code is open or closed source.
I think it's ignored because when it's been investigated it's never been found to be much of a problem. There have been a few isolated cases but I don't think it's ever been shown to be enough to change an election.
My thought is that all of the sales/use taxing authorities in the country ought to get together and create an online clearing house for the taxes. Then all a seller would have to do is submit the ship to or bill to address and other pertinent information to the clearing house and it would return the appropriate charge for sales/use tax. The seller would then send a lump sum to the clearing house each month for all of the taxes collected and the clearing house would take care of distributing the money to the individual taxing authorities charging a small percentage for administrative costs. Each taxing authority would be responsible for keeping it's own parameters updated in the clearing house. That would simplify things for the sellers since they only have to deal with one entity.
I always thought that not taxing internet transactions is unfair to the local sellers who do have to collect the tax and to the tax payers who are conscientious about paying their taxes.
Remember the Maine.
Both the R's & D's listen mostly to the people financing their campaigns and spending the big bucks on lobbying them. They throw us little people a bone every once in a while to keep us happy. It's all about power and in the USA it's mostly money that defines power.
I believe research has shown that the single biggest factor in fertility levels is the educational level of women. In general the areas with the highest population growth are the areas where women are the least educated.
"I won't say that the telecoms are as pure as the wind driven snow, but it is obvious that they acted in good faith to aid this country in an time of crisis. Does no one remember what is was like following the 9/11 attacks?"
What was the crisis in February 2001 when the warrantless wiretapping started? That was 7 months before 9/11.
One place to start would be the review titled "THE MYTH OF THE 1970S GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS" that looks at the papers published on subject from 1965-1979. You can see it here: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf According to this there was a mention of possible climate change due to the release of CO2 from burning of fossil fuels in a 1965 report from the Presidents Science Advisory Committee (to Lyndon Johnson).
I nominate the invasion and occupation of Iraq as the apex of American political stupidity. I know it's off topic but I had to say it.
Until emergency rooms and other medical service providers can turn you away because you can't pay for their services it's an entitlement here in the US as well. It's just by doing it this way and allowing the insurance providers and drug companies to make ridiculous profits it costs us about twice as much per capita for medical services than in the rest of the "Civilised World ®".
In my first year of college taking the 2nd term of calculus the ta said on the first day that you can't do any worse in the course than you did on the final. So the only time I attended all term after the first day was the 2 mid-terms and then I crammed hard for 2 days before the final and got a B (missed an A by 2 points). I think that's the most pissed off I've ever seen a teacher in my life.
And why they generally spend less than 2/3 per capita for medical expenses that we do in the USA.
The thing is the main stream media is as much a part of the problem as any of the other moneyed interests.
To defend it just a little, moneyed interests including corporations have always had "excess" influence in the government but I think the Bush administration has taken it to a level that we haven't seen since the era of the robber barons.
The reason that the telco's have suit filed against them is that they were breaking the law by acceding to the governments request for wire taps without warrants *BEFORE* 9/11. That's before any bill was considered that would make the practice legal. And in my opinion the only way to make the wire tapping of US citizens without a warrant legal would be a constitutional amendment that supersedes the 4th amendment.
Your analysis is flawed because it doesn't take into account the difference in the densities of the fuel. The density of Jet A-1 is about 0.8 kg/L (depending on temperature while the density of liquid hydrogen is about 0.07 kg/L. Therefore the larger size of the lapcat is due largely to the low density of the hydrogen fuel which doesn't necessarily make it heavier than an A380.
From wikipedia the A380 has an empty weight of 267,800 kg, a maximum payload of 90,800 kg and a maximum takeoff weight of 560,000 kg. So that's about 201,400 kg of fuel or about 35% of the maximum takeoff weight.
So even though the lapcat appears larger than the A380 its maximum takeoff weight may be significantly less.
If you're printing the ballots on demand on blank stock then it's easy to keep enough on hand since if you don't use them in one election you can use them in the next. The ballots should have a tear off serial number for auditing purposes. In one place I used to vote we'd fill in our ballots, slip then into and open ended envelope that covered your vote but left the s/n tab exposed. Before depositing your ballot in the ballot box you would tear off the s/n tab and deposit it in a box(to compare to the number of ballots later) then slip your ballot out of the envelope into the ballot box.
In Oregon if you are homeless but want to vote you can have the ballot delivered to a homeless shelter or other service agency. Also, you can go to the county elections office and fill out your ballot there. Since the ballots are mailed to voters about 2 weeks before election day you can do that at any time during that 2 week period.
I have to say I'm happy with this system. It give you time to consider the ballot and take your time filling it out. I do suspect that in some authoritarian families there may be some people forced to vote for the authority figure's choices but I've never heard of a problem with this so I doubt it happens a lot.
chicx u lube - The new competitor for K-Y Jelly.
"Who said anything about dogma? The current accepted theory about the origin of life on earth evolution. The majority of scientists accept this view." Of course evolution doesn't really say anything about the origin of life. It just explains the variety of life we see.
I just think of capital punishment as retroactive abortion.
Interesting you mention the Nuremburg trials. Chris Dodd's father, Thomas Dodd was one of the principal prosecutors there.
AFAIK written languages are less than 10000 years old. And the printing press is only a bit over 500 years old. Before that making copies of written manuscripts was difficult and expensive. Also, few people were literate and able to read the stuff until relatively recently and had the free time to pursue that knowledge. I think more than half of the human beings who have ever lived on this planet are alive today. That give you a huge pool of people to advance the rate of progress in human knowledge.