Don't fall for an Anonymous Coward's intuition that the Social Insecurity system is solvent. In truth, it is a failed ponzi scheme. Not only will it begin to pay out more than it takes in in 2013, but it discriminates against the poor, the colored, and the widows.
If you don't believe me, Check out the facts here.
(1) the only real political power comes from having a large pocketbook, not from having the right to vote;
False. Demonstrably so. It costs nothing to vote, and people are free to vote their conscience, not for some media-hyped buffoon whose Daddy was a big politician. Even you could vote for something other than a Democrat-Republican party candidate. Try Harry Browne for example. If people are too media-besotted to check out alternative candidates, let's blame the government indoctrination centers that taught them only government solutions (read Democrat-Republican) can solve "our" problems.
(2) the only candidates we are really permitted to choose from in elections are ones who take and raise tons of money, so your everyday citizen with a sharp mind and a genuine concern for the well-being of the general public simply can't afford to run a competitive campaign;
False again. You can vote for a Libertarian for President and for a majority of the U.S. House seats. In my state of Colorado, you can vote for Libertarians for nearly all the State House and Senate seats. You can even vote for freedom instead of Teddy Kennedy! The only way your statement could possibly have an ounce of truth is that the Republican-Democrat party has locked up all the campaign donations in the form of "Campaign Reform" PACs and other incumbency-protection devices.
3) the only candidates we are permitted to choose from are part of the same insidious little elite of lawyers, corporatists, and career politicians that have caused all the problems for this country in the first place.
Mostly false. If you vote for lawyers and professional politicians like Bush, Gore, Nader and Buchanan, you will be missing the UnPolitical choice of the Libertarians. Harry Browne isn't a politician, isn't a lawyer, and does tell the truth, something that can't be said of any of the other candidates.
And finally, "Campaign Reform" is just another way the Republican-Democrat party has of guaranteeing its incumbency. All "Campaign Reform" is an unconstitutional limitation on the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. Replace all "Campaign Reform" with a voluntary posting on a public website of all campaign contributions and their sources. That'll be real campaign reform.
Money isn't always evil, it's what you do with it that counts...
Exactly. And that's why "Campaign Reform" is such a violent attack on the freedom of advocacy guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Remember that most of the people who love and promote "Campaign Reform" do so because they remember what a single donor (of $800K) to Eugene McCarthy's campaign in 1968, did to defeat Lyndon Baines "Bomb 'em into the Stone Age" Johnson in the New Hampshire primaries.
Money talks. But if all the money available for campaigning is locked up in "Campaign Reform" PACs and other incumbency-insurance schemes, nobody outside the Republican-Democrat party can get elected.
4 - Replace the ponzi scheme of Social Insecurity with privately funded and privately directed investments that each citizen owns for themselves.
The Chileans had a Social Insecurity system somewhat before we did (they started in the 1920's, we didn't start down the road to serfdom until FDR's 1930's). Chile privatized their Social Security system in 1980 and Chileans are now retiring as millionaires.
Our current system is weighted against poor, colored people, since they generally die before they get to collect any Social Insecurity, and Social Insecurity can't be passed on to their heirs.
A privatized system like the Chilean system won't discriminate against the working poor and will allow them to pass their benefits on to their survivors.
Replace the coercively-funded Social Insecurity system with a privately-funded pension system that will truly provide for the working poor. Vote Libertarian!
McCain sucked because he sucked up to the media mavens who are convinced that the reason politics is boring is that there's too much "soft money" being thrown around. McCain's single note was "Campaign Reform."
Wherever "Campaign Reform" has been practiced, it has acted as incumbent re-election insurance.
"Campaign Reform" is nothing less than the violation of the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech. How can you differentiate the advocacy of a particular candidate from advocacy of, say, a particular pr0n site, or the green agenda, or even pro-life sentiments? All should be (but are not currently) protected speech. And the only one that's not rigidly protected by the ACLU is candidate advocacy. Limits on the amount of money I can spend to help a particular candidate are limits on my freedom of political expression. All such "Campaign Reform" limits are thus unconstitutional and must be replaced with freedom.
Any candidate who refuses to publicly post (on a website, of course!) the sources and amounts of his or her campaign contributions deserves to receive the ire of voters on election day.
McCain deservedly got the ire of those voters who have realized that "Campaign Reform" is just a euphemism for Incumbency Protection.
I went to the primaries, and was shocked to find out that half the things to vote for had NO ONE under them, fill in the blank.
Have you investigated why most State Libertarian parties eschew primaries altogether? Have you noticed that this is a government-paid-for selection of the candidates of private organizations called Political Parties. Isn't it a bit disingenuous for the Republican-Democrat party (a private organization[s]) to force taxpayers to pay for their candidate selection process?
I'd like to welcome you back to the Libertarian Party, where we pay for our own primaries, and have an excellent presidential candidate Harry Browne and candidates for a majority of the U.S. House seats, a feat last performed by a non-Democrat-Republican party 80 years ago.
If the Libertarian party isn't too active in Omaha, activate it. Be a self-governor and take responsibility for your own political life.
Hmmm... This is even more damning. To call the ponzi scheme that floats Social Security a "sound financial base" is like saying Bill Clinton is a wonderful husband and father.
This is clear evidence that Ralph (and that's what I do when I read statements like this) Nader is not only a demented loon, but hasn't even read the website of the party he isn't a member of.
If Ralph wants to make a statement about his joy over the Green Party's platform, he should join the party.
I don't know much about GPS in aviation, but I am a little surprised that this type of system does not already exisit.
As a commercial/instrument rated pilot, I know exactly why this type of system doesn't exist: the horrendous bureaucracy of the FAA.
Ever wonder why general aviation airplanes (which are inherently simpler machines than current automobiles) cost 6X-10X as much as an automobile? It's the FAA "standards" and "certification" that airplanes have to meet that causes this. To replace the little rubber grommet that holds the shoulder belt in place on a Cessna seatbelt is prohibitively expensive because of the PMA (Parts Manufacturing Authority) required. That's why the shoulder belt continuously falls off in many of the rental Cessnas I've piloted.
In a Libertarian country, like America before the influx of European socialism in the 1910's, there wouldn't be an FAA. Instead, there would be certain interoperability standards (something like TCP/IP in the computer world) that everyone would adhere to, and airplane quality would be ensured by market forces and insurance companies.
In a Libertarian America, ADS-B would have been adopted five years ago and would have become an international standard by now.
If you'd like aviation to have the same affordability, accesibility and interoperability as the Internet, vote Libertarian.
Electing Ralph Nader a solution???? Ralph (and that's what I do when I read the Green webpage) will just hyper-empower the world's largest Corporation (the unconstitutional U.S. Government) and turn us all into little green peons.
If Ralph is so great, why won't he join the Green Party as a member?
If you're sick of corporations running everything, disempower the Corporation that charters them: Vote Libertarian!
The word "regulate" used to mean "to make regular." And making things regular in the 18th century meant something like what TCP/IP is to computers today: make some simple rules that everybody can follow so that lots of commerce can take place and no state government can muck up this glorious free trade zone that is These United States.
But then came the Bureaucratic Imperative: "Regulate or die!" and the word "regulate" came to mean "control." That's where we are today.
Replacing the current meaning of "regulate" with the far superior 18th century meaning will take some doing, but those of us that use the Internet know the benefits of doing so.
The FCC is an unconstitutional organization, since nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal government given the power to control the "press" (meaning: the way in which information is distributed). Since the First Amendment specifically forbids federal control of the press, the FCC is thus unconstitutional.
When Libertarians are elected, the FCC will be replaced by a free market bandwidth auction, and property rights will once again apply to the electromagnetic spectrum.
Ralp Nader isn't a member of the Green Party. Betcha didn't know that fact. They nominated him for President because he has good name recognition. And the fact that he killed the one technologically advanced car produced in Detroit in the '60s.
It's no wonder he's "distancing" himself from the Greens' watermelon platform. (watermelon=green on the outside, red on the inside).
...it is extremely difficult to get the rounded diet neccesary for a human on a vegetarian diet.
Interesting. I've lived nearly half a century without ever eating meat. I do eat milk and eggs (I'm what's called a lacto-ovo vegetarian) so I do eat more than just vegetables. But I've never eaten animal flesh or fish or crustaceans.
And I've never spent a night in a hospital. So, the assertion that it is extremely difficult to live well on a vegetarian (or at least a lacto-ovo vegetarian) diet is falsified by my experience. And the experience of my siblings. And my parents. The least healthy of all my relatives is my father, who has reverted to a carnivorous diet.
When the government is in charge of education, they educate everyone to believe that government solutions are the only/always best solutions to "society's" problems.
Being educated in a Government Indoctrination Center often results in illiteracy, innumeracy, and a fantastical belief in a Utopia where the government takes care of all ills from cradle to grave.
As Ronnie Reagan so famously said, "Government isn't the solution to our problems, it is the problem.
As Dan Fylstra pointed out in last weekend's Libertarian Party convention, lobbying the Democrat-Republican Party is a losing proposition, because it's like trying to catch a greased pig. You get all tired and dirty and the pig likes it.
The tired old Democrat-Republican duopoly Party always has a government solution for every problem. Microsoft used that "government solution" against IBM in the early '80s and what goes around comes around. Scott McNealy had better watch his nether parts.
If Microsoft wants to adopt a party that will defend his "freedom to innovate" it had better adopt the Libertarian Party.
I'm personally against the use of Microsoft products because they stink. They crash, they have virulently obscure error messages, and they have interfaces designed by Rube Goldberg. I'm in favor of using my own market choice to punish Microsoft for their bad products.
But I believe the current Jihad against Microsoft being forced down the throats of the American people by such blowhards as Joel Klein of the inJustice Defartment is as great a tragedy as was that same Defartment's attack on the church in Waco.
A simple Executive order from our Philanderer in Chief that forbade any new purchases of Microsoft software by government operatives would have far more effect than the current inJustice Jihad. {but I'm not saying that the effect would necessarily be good}
I am ABSOLUTELY NOT a "Microsoft loyalist." At work I'm on AIX and Linux. At home, I'm on a Mac. Microsoft makes a darn good optical mouse, but their software is a kludge on a kludge on a kludge on a kludge on a kludge ad infinitum, ad astra, ad water and shake.
But the way the inJustice Defartment is treating this antitrust case is a travesty on a travesty on a travesty on a travesty on a travesty ad infinitum, ad...
Giving inJustice blatherers like Joel Klein the power to "break up" Microsoft is like handing a bottle of whiskey and the car keys to a teenager. Next week we'll have them breaking up the Sun monopoly on servers or the Apple monopoly on usable GUIs. The week after that, you'll have to take a government test and get a license to become a programmer or a sysadmin.
Wake up folks. When you hand over Bill Gates' "freedom to innovate" to the government, you've handed over your own freedom too. And when it's gone, it'll be twice as hard to get back. See "The Patriot" if you don't believe that.
I just returned from the Libertarian Party's national convention. One of the speakers was Dan Fylstra, the co-inventor of VisiCalc. He warned everyone in the computer business that lobbying the current duopoly Democrat-Republican party would lead to getting sucked into the black hole of political bribery and regulation. He suggested that investment in a "political startup" called the Libertarian Party would be the best way to assure freedom of innovation for all computer workers. I believe he's right. But check it out for yourself.
If William Jefferson Philander Blythe Clinton had really wanted to change the way Microsoft does business, the very easiest way would have been promulgation of an Executive Order preventing government operatives from buying any more Microsoft products. If he can order the Air Force to bomb Serbians, he can order the government to use market forces against Microsoft. {but even market forces in government hands have bad consequences}
Yes, AIX is pretty weird compared to other Unices, but it's weird in its own logically consistent way. If you have to use other Unices at the same time as AIX (I'm typing on 4.2.1 right now but have RHL 6.1 on the Gateway to the right) it's easy to use smitty to do the weirdness for you.
I disagree with the poster who claims you can't do nonstandard stuff with AIX. I've not found that to be the case. If you study the info docs, you can almost always find what you need to do on the command line. I've set up "raw" partitions for DBMS's, changed routing tables, made multiple IPs point to the same NIC, and many other off-standard tasks all on the AIX command line. But I still use smitty for most everything else.
Smitty gives you more safety in cobbling together huge command lines, while preserving your essential liberty to cobble up such command lines yourself, should you so wish. And F6 is always amusing and instructive, since it shows you the command line that smitty has cobbled up for you.
I think the "casual Friday" movement was about not having a noose around your neck that constricts blood flow to your brain and not having pants that stick to your legs if you sweat a bit.
Dockers just happened to have the right comfort quotient in a brand that you could count on for quality, repeatability of sizing, and wide availability. Advertising had little or nothing to do with (at least) my reasons for purchasing Dockers.
...we (as the Western World) have lost the willpower to actually place our troops in harm's way.
It's no surprise that the Western Powers have lost this willpower. The leaders of the Western Powers have squandered the willingness of their citizens to fight because they have repeatedly sent their troops off to foreign wars in which their own citizens had little or no personal stake. (c.f. WWI for the U.S., Korea, Viet Nam, Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosova)
If These United States would follow the Constitution and limit war strictly to the defense of the borders of These United States, then every man, woman and child American would come to the aid of their country in case of a threatened invasion. (Canada? Mexico? The Mexicans actually might have a legitimate beef, but the Canadians have been assimilated.)
Besides saving perhaps $150Billion a year in foreign postings, bases, equipment deployment, usw., this would allow These United States to be an enemy to none and a friend of all who love freedom.
Compare any CNN/NBC newscast to a BBC newscast. CNN/NBC are selling entertainment, not information.
Yeah, I've compared the two. The censorship and slant is just a lot more subtle on the Beeb. The Beeb is financed by taxes taken by force and violence from the pockets of UK citizens by the UK government.
The more illuminating comparison is how much Nicaraguan Proletarian Radio (NPR) and Proletarian Broadcasting System (PBS) resemble the Beeb in their pro-authoritarian (read: Establishment, for you '60s types) stance.
Today, it isn't the government, but corporations with far more power filtering.
I'll politely disagree. No corporation has the power to grant or deny a radio or TV license. Corporations with radio or TV licenses do bend to the bucks (see "The Insider" for some pretty hard evidence against Censorius Broadcasting System), but corporations are never monopolies (yes, even Bill Gates has competition for OS creation: the BSD's and GNU/Linux). Governments are, by definition, a monopoly on power. And they use it.
You don't believe the government of These United States uses censorship? Then check out this Electronic Museum.
The real problem is that the moderation trolls (trolls who moderate) haven't read the guidelines for moderation. Instead of mostly moderating up, they use all their moderation points to moderate down.
Moderating down is a kind of book burning. And it illustrates one of the basic defects of democracy: the majority becomes invincible and minorities and minority viewpoints are trampled under the jackboots of the mob. That's one of the major reasons I never vote DeMOBlican, and instead vote Libertarian.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't believe me, Check out the facts here.
And finally, "Campaign Reform" is just another way the Republican-Democrat party has of guaranteeing its incumbency. All "Campaign Reform" is an unconstitutional limitation on the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. Replace all "Campaign Reform" with a voluntary posting on a public website of all campaign contributions and their sources. That'll be real campaign reform.
Remember that most of the people who love and promote "Campaign Reform" do so because they remember what a single donor (of $800K) to Eugene McCarthy's campaign in 1968, did to defeat Lyndon Baines "Bomb 'em into the Stone Age" Johnson in the New Hampshire primaries.
Money talks. But if all the money available for campaigning is locked up in "Campaign Reform" PACs and other incumbency-insurance schemes, nobody outside the Republican-Democrat party can get elected.
If you want a real choice this time around, vote Libertarian!
4 - Replace the ponzi scheme of Social Insecurity with privately funded and privately directed investments that each citizen owns for themselves.
The Chileans had a Social Insecurity system somewhat before we did (they started in the 1920's, we didn't start down the road to serfdom until FDR's 1930's). Chile privatized their Social Security system in 1980 and Chileans are now retiring as millionaires.
Our current system is weighted against poor, colored people, since they generally die before they get to collect any Social Insecurity, and Social Insecurity can't be passed on to their heirs.
A privatized system like the Chilean system won't discriminate against the working poor and will allow them to pass their benefits on to their survivors.
Replace the coercively-funded Social Insecurity system with a privately-funded pension system that will truly provide for the working poor. Vote Libertarian!
Wherever "Campaign Reform" has been practiced, it has acted as incumbent re-election insurance.
"Campaign Reform" is nothing less than the violation of the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech. How can you differentiate the advocacy of a particular candidate from advocacy of, say, a particular pr0n site, or the green agenda, or even pro-life sentiments? All should be (but are not currently) protected speech. And the only one that's not rigidly protected by the ACLU is candidate advocacy. Limits on the amount of money I can spend to help a particular candidate are limits on my freedom of political expression. All such "Campaign Reform" limits are thus unconstitutional and must be replaced with freedom.
Any candidate who refuses to publicly post (on a website, of course!) the sources and amounts of his or her campaign contributions deserves to receive the ire of voters on election day.
McCain deservedly got the ire of those voters who have realized that "Campaign Reform" is just a euphemism for Incumbency Protection.
I'd like to welcome you back to the Libertarian Party, where we pay for our own primaries, and have an excellent presidential candidate Harry Browne and candidates for a majority of the U.S. House seats, a feat last performed by a non-Democrat-Republican party 80 years ago.
If the Libertarian party isn't too active in Omaha, activate it. Be a self-governor and take responsibility for your own political life.
This is clear evidence that Ralph (and that's what I do when I read statements like this) Nader is not only a demented loon, but hasn't even read the website of the party he isn't a member of.
If Ralph wants to make a statement about his joy over the Green Party's platform, he should join the party.
Ever wonder why general aviation airplanes (which are inherently simpler machines than current automobiles) cost 6X-10X as much as an automobile? It's the FAA "standards" and "certification" that airplanes have to meet that causes this. To replace the little rubber grommet that holds the shoulder belt in place on a Cessna seatbelt is prohibitively expensive because of the PMA (Parts Manufacturing Authority) required. That's why the shoulder belt continuously falls off in many of the rental Cessnas I've piloted.
In a Libertarian country, like America before the influx of European socialism in the 1910's, there wouldn't be an FAA. Instead, there would be certain interoperability standards (something like TCP/IP in the computer world) that everyone would adhere to, and airplane quality would be ensured by market forces and insurance companies.
In a Libertarian America, ADS-B would have been adopted five years ago and would have become an international standard by now.
If you'd like aviation to have the same affordability, accesibility and interoperability as the Internet, vote Libertarian.
If Ralph is so great, why won't he join the Green Party as a member?
If you're sick of corporations running everything, disempower the Corporation that charters them: Vote Libertarian!
When Libertarians are elected, the current irresponsibility of corporate officers will be replaced with full responsibility.
This will change the way corporations do business and will return us to a truly free market.
Fully responsible corporations will probably not exceed a reasonable size, and thus not be capable of the kind of roughshod power they currently have.
But then came the Bureaucratic Imperative: "Regulate or die!" and the word "regulate" came to mean "control." That's where we are today.
Replacing the current meaning of "regulate" with the far superior 18th century meaning will take some doing, but those of us that use the Internet know the benefits of doing so.
The FCC is an unconstitutional organization, since nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal government given the power to control the "press" (meaning: the way in which information is distributed). Since the First Amendment specifically forbids federal control of the press, the FCC is thus unconstitutional.
When Libertarians are elected, the FCC will be replaced by a free market bandwidth auction, and property rights will once again apply to the electromagnetic spectrum.
I just hope the Sealand folks left all those anti-aircraft guns attached. They're going to need them.
It's no wonder he's "distancing" himself from the Greens' watermelon platform. (watermelon=green on the outside, red on the inside).
And I've never spent a night in a hospital. So, the assertion that it is extremely difficult to live well on a vegetarian (or at least a lacto-ovo vegetarian) diet is falsified by my experience. And the experience of my siblings. And my parents. The least healthy of all my relatives is my father, who has reverted to a carnivorous diet.
Being educated in a Government Indoctrination Center often results in illiteracy, innumeracy, and a fantastical belief in a Utopia where the government takes care of all ills from cradle to grave.
As Ronnie Reagan so famously said, "Government isn't the solution to our problems, it is the problem.
Something like Groucho Marx's, "I wouldn't become a member of any group who would have me."
The tired old Democrat-Republican duopoly Party always has a government solution for every problem. Microsoft used that "government solution" against IBM in the early '80s and what goes around comes around. Scott McNealy had better watch his nether parts.
If Microsoft wants to adopt a party that will defend his "freedom to innovate" it had better adopt the Libertarian Party.
I'm personally against the use of Microsoft products because they stink. They crash, they have virulently obscure error messages, and they have interfaces designed by Rube Goldberg. I'm in favor of using my own market choice to punish Microsoft for their bad products.
But I believe the current Jihad against Microsoft being forced down the throats of the American people by such blowhards as Joel Klein of the inJustice Defartment is as great a tragedy as was that same Defartment's attack on the church in Waco.
A simple Executive order from our Philanderer in Chief that forbade any new purchases of Microsoft software by government operatives would have far more effect than the current inJustice Jihad. {but I'm not saying that the effect would necessarily be good}
But the way the inJustice Defartment is treating this antitrust case is a travesty on a travesty on a travesty on a travesty on a travesty ad infinitum, ad ...
Giving inJustice blatherers like Joel Klein the power to "break up" Microsoft is like handing a bottle of whiskey and the car keys to a teenager. Next week we'll have them breaking up the Sun monopoly on servers or the Apple monopoly on usable GUIs. The week after that, you'll have to take a government test and get a license to become a programmer or a sysadmin.
Wake up folks. When you hand over Bill Gates' "freedom to innovate" to the government, you've handed over your own freedom too. And when it's gone, it'll be twice as hard to get back. See "The Patriot" if you don't believe that.
I just returned from the Libertarian Party's national convention. One of the speakers was Dan Fylstra, the co-inventor of VisiCalc. He warned everyone in the computer business that lobbying the current duopoly Democrat-Republican party would lead to getting sucked into the black hole of political bribery and regulation. He suggested that investment in a "political startup" called the Libertarian Party would be the best way to assure freedom of innovation for all computer workers. I believe he's right. But check it out for yourself.
If William Jefferson Philander Blythe Clinton had really wanted to change the way Microsoft does business, the very easiest way would have been promulgation of an Executive Order preventing government operatives from buying any more Microsoft products. If he can order the Air Force to bomb Serbians, he can order the government to use market forces against Microsoft. {but even market forces in government hands have bad consequences}
As for me, I'd rather have a sluggish, inefficient government that didn't kill off its citizens with ruthless efficiency.
In fact, I'll even stand in line once every ten years to get a passport. I'll even stand in line for an hour or two.
I think that's a reasonable tradeoff.
I disagree with the poster who claims you can't do nonstandard stuff with AIX. I've not found that to be the case. If you study the info docs, you can almost always find what you need to do on the command line. I've set up "raw" partitions for DBMS's, changed routing tables, made multiple IPs point to the same NIC, and many other off-standard tasks all on the AIX command line. But I still use smitty for most everything else.
Smitty gives you more safety in cobbling together huge command lines, while preserving your essential liberty to cobble up such command lines yourself, should you so wish. And F6 is always amusing and instructive, since it shows you the command line that smitty has cobbled up for you.
Dockers just happened to have the right comfort quotient in a brand that you could count on for quality, repeatability of sizing, and wide availability. Advertising had little or nothing to do with (at least) my reasons for purchasing Dockers.
If These United States would follow the Constitution and limit war strictly to the defense of the borders of These United States, then every man, woman and child American would come to the aid of their country in case of a threatened invasion. (Canada? Mexico? The Mexicans actually might have a legitimate beef, but the Canadians have been assimilated.)
Besides saving perhaps $150Billion a year in foreign postings, bases, equipment deployment, usw., this would allow These United States to be an enemy to none and a friend of all who love freedom.
The more illuminating comparison is how much Nicaraguan Proletarian Radio (NPR) and Proletarian Broadcasting System (PBS) resemble the Beeb in their pro-authoritarian (read: Establishment, for you '60s types) stance.
You don't believe the government of These United States uses censorship? Then check out this Electronic Museum.
Moderating down is a kind of book burning. And it illustrates one of the basic defects of democracy: the majority becomes invincible and minorities and minority viewpoints are trampled under the jackboots of the mob. That's one of the major reasons I never vote DeMOBlican, and instead vote Libertarian.